The Hidden Man

 

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In memory of my mother

Beryl Mary Blake née Murphy

1918–2012

She is foremost of those that I would hear praised.

 

Chapter One

S
TANDING IN
THE
doorway, with medical bag in hand, Luke Fidelis peered into the shadowed room until its main features had resolved themselves: the outline of the low pallet bed; the man's gaunt, ghostly face looking steadily upwards; the pale hand resting motionless outside the covering blanket. The doctor went to the window and pulled aside its rough curtain to admit more light but, in doing so, let in a damp gust of air from off the Moor. Picking up a stool beneath the window he placed it beside the bed and sat, depositing his bag on the hard mud floor. The prostrate man's breath was shallow but absolutely regular, as if he reposed with not a single care. Fidelis spoke in a low voice, his mouth close to his patient's ear.

‘Adam. Adam Thorn. I am Dr Fidelis come from Preston at your wife's request to attend you. Do not fret about the fee – there won't be one.'

Fidelis touched Adam's brow and found no fever. He felt his wrist. The pulse was even, and so was the heart, which he checked by pressing a silver listening-trumpet to the chest, and placing his ear on the earpiece at the narrow end. Next he felt with soft fingers around the contours of the skull. Finally he drew a candle end and tinderbox from his bag, lit the wick and leaned across to peer with the help of its light upon Thorn's face. His skin was dry, his lips cracked, his eyes staring in his head. Fidelis shielded the light from those eyes for a moment with his hand, then revealed it again, and noted how the pupils contracted in response. By this he determined that the automatic processes of the body were continuing as normal. But was the man conscious? Was he aware?

Standing, he returned to the window and dropped the curtain again, then crossed back to the door and ducked his head as he passed into the main room. Here a child of three sat playing on the ground and a baby grizzled in its cot, while another sucked at the breast of its mother who sat on a rough bench beside the cheerless fireplace. This was the month of June, in the year 1742: far from cold enough to make a fire essential for warmth, though this had not been much of a summer in the north country, and the doctor knew that Dot Lorris, his landlady, would have a log burning back at his own room in Preston, and glad he'd be of its comfort when he returned home on this damp day.

‘You have no fire, Amity,' he observed. ‘Do you not cook?'

Amity Thorn unplugged the child from the nipple, and let it loll back against her shoulder, dreamy with milk. With her free hand she pulled up her dress to cover the breast.

‘I'll cook tomorrow. There's not the fuel for a fire every day. I have to learn thrift, with him the way he is…'

She cocked her head towards the inner room.

Fidelis sat down at the worm-eaten table on one of the room's two chairs. To learn thrift, you first had to have something to be thrifty with, he thought, looking around the bare room.

‘Well,' he said, ‘I've had a look at him, and now I want to know more about how it happened.'

‘I wasn't there. I didn't see.'

‘But you found him, didn't you?'

‘No, it was John Barton that found him and brought him home.'

‘Barton the horse-coper up at Peel Hall Stables?'

‘That's him.'

Barton's yard had been part of a dismantled estate that centred on Peel Hall, now more or less of a ruin on the edge of the Town Moor, to the north-east of Preston.

‘Where did John Barton find him, then?'

‘Out on the Moor, lying on the ground. It were near the Bale Stone. John Barton saw him and heard him moaning.'

‘When was this?'

‘A week ago now.'

‘A week? Has he been lying like that for a week?'

‘Yes, except the once, he's neither moved nor talked, just sort of twitched sometimes. He gave over the moaning after we'd got him to bed.'

‘What about food and drink?'

She nodded to the table where a spoon and porringer lay.

‘He's been taking soup and milk off the spoon. I have to pull open his mouth, mind, but he's been taking it.'

‘Did you not think to send for me or another doctor before this?'

‘I had old Mother Greenshaw in to look at him – the wise woman. She told me what to do – if he'd take it, give him the soup and milk and porridge and maybe a beaten egg and some brandy, and just wait, and he might come round. Was that all right, what she said?'

‘It's not bad advice. My own would not have been very different. Did you follow it?'

‘As well as I could, only he's not come round, has he? He just lies there staring, staring. It frightens me.'

‘You said he was like that “except the once”. What do you mean by that?'

‘After he'd been in bed a bit, he seemed to revive, like. He started groaning again, then I could make out some words. Babbling he was, and I saw he was moving one of his arms.'

‘What was he saying? Did he give any indication of what happened to him out there?'

‘No, he was only thinking about how he felt. I came to feed him and he kept on lifting his hand and trying to bat away the spoon, saying “rich, rich” meaning the food was too thick for him, or too flavoured, I guessed. The same way, he couldn't stand too much light, or noise.'

‘As if all his senses were heightened? It's a possibility.'

‘Well he were grateful to me. He kept saying I was precious to him. It were touching.'

‘So how long was it before he lapsed into the state I have just seen?'

‘He went on with his babbling for an hour or more. Then when I went back in to him he was lying still again, just breathing quietly. I talked to him but it seemed he never heard. When the baby screamed, he never flinched and he made no more fuss about the food I gave him. He's been like that since. If he doesn't come round, what am I to do? There's no one here but me and the little ones.'

‘Have you no family anywhere – someone who can come and help?'

‘There's nobody, only Peg.'

‘Peg?'

‘His eleven-year-old niece that he's had charge of since her ma's died.'

‘Does Peg live here?'

‘Not now. She's gone into service as a housemaid. He thought the world of her, him. But we couldn't afford another mouth to feed even before this. Now I don't know what I'll do.'

‘Can you make any money on your own account?'

‘There's the little I get from selling my eggs at market. We have a few birds. But most of our money came from bits of work he did, for farmers and gardeners and such. He got some good pay at harvesting, which we put aside to help us through winter. But I had to pay the wise woman, and then there was the brandy to get. So I've had to spend.'

‘If you're very short you can go to the parish. You'll be allowed something until your husband recovers. I'll put in a good word with the church warden. In the meantime, I'm afraid there is nothing more to be done except to care for him with warmth, food and drink, as best you can.'

‘What is the matter with him, doctor?'

‘He has suffered a seizure of the brain. There is also an injury to his skull, a lump from a bang on the head. It's difficult to know which came first. The head injury could have caused the seizure but just as likely he got the lump by falling down after the seizure. They very often do happen over their own accord, seizures. They make the sufferer insensible so that he falls to the ground.'

‘But Adam will get better? If not, I don't know what I'll do.'

‘I regret it's impossible to be sure, Mrs Thorn. He might come round at any time, or stay the same indefinitely. Or thirdly, I am sorry to say, he might suddenly be taken from us, without any warning whatsoever.'

She rose and deposited the child in the cot beside the baby, and went to a side table. There she took a scoop of cold gruel from a pot and poured it into the wooden porringer. After placing this on the table she picked up the eldest child from the floor and balanced it upon her knee to feed it. The somewhat battered and dented spoon carried the gruel inefficiently, but by working fast she managed to force a high proportion of the thin liquid into the mouth, though the child pulled faces and wriggled with dislike of its dinner.