Avery & Blake 02 - The Infidel Stain (26 page)

‘Men of England, wherefore plough

For the lords who lay ye low?

Wherefore weave with toil and care

The rich robes your tyrants wear?

‘There’s plenty more political verse:
The Masque of Anarchy
,
Prometheus Unbound
,
Queen Mab
. He was a famous infidel.’

‘Damn me, Jeremiah, I thought you didn’t like poetry. You were so resistant to Mountstuart’s.’

‘There were many things I liked about Xavier, just not his verse,’ said Blake. ‘He educated me. In the early years I was hungry for anything he passed my way: poetry, history, philosophy, geology. I thought if I could read the whole world, I’d understand everything.’

He took another swig from his flask, then shook his head and leant back heavily on the gaslight, his face shiny with perspiration.

Anxiously, I cast about for a hansom cab, realizing I too was all-in.

Blake would not let me accompany him home, insisting rather that he would meet me at seven the next morning at the Crown and Anchor.

‘You know,’ I said, ‘Heffernan reminds me of someone but I cannot think whom. You say you never forget a face. Who is it?’

He shook his head, clambered out of the cab and set off, half staggering up the street.

At the Oriental there were messages and invitations to dinner. But I longed for nothing but my bed and oblivion. I ordered supper and a bath in my rooms. I wrote letters to Louisa and Helen: a description of the day’s events for my sister; a description of London without its darknesses, with promises to buy her something pretty, for my wife. Sleep descended upon me like a curtain, and once again I had the dream.

The men fly off the cliff one by one and I am unable to save them.

I woke at six as the carters and cryers began plying their trade in the square and reached the Crown and Anchor well before seven. In the streets the hawkers were selling broadsides about ‘Woundy’s Monstrous Murder’ and the ‘Bookseller Butchered on His Own Press’. I purchased one. There was a lurid description of the discovery of the body which owed a great deal more to the author’s imagination
than the actual circumstances, and no mention at all of Wedderburn and Blundell, nor thankfully of Blake and me.

I waited for Blake for nigh on an hour. When he did not appear I decided to go to his lodgings – concerned for his health, of course, but also secretly pleased to have a reason to see inside his living quarters. The morning was bright and the city seemed less unfriendly. I retraced our route of the day before through Covent Garden, across St Martin’s Lane and Leicester Square, asking for directions when I could not remember, feeling with some satisfaction that I was starting to know my way about. The shops in Dean Street were opening as I approached his door, a great solid panelled thing at least a hundred years old, I would have said. I gave two smart raps with the great curlicue of a tarnished knocker and waited. Then I gave another two.

Presently a throaty voice protested, ‘Awl right, awl right, doan wake the house!’ A large ill-tempered woman in a well-worn night bonnet and bed robe opened the door. She was wiping her hands on a dirty apron and was surrounded by an unpleasant, guttery smell.

‘My apologies. I’ve come to make inquiries after Mr Blake, madam. Is he in?’

‘You an’ everyone,’ she wheezed back grumpishly. ‘Dunno if he’s here. Doan tell me nuffin. Doan usually entertain guests. What’s your business?’

‘My own,’ I said, pushing past her. ‘What floor?’

‘Second,’ she said crossly. ‘And tell him to stop cooking those horrible furrin dishes. Stinks the place out.’

I took the stairs as quickly and quietly as I could, the rough drugget covering them dampening my steps. The smell receded as I reached the second floor. Another old door, studded with woodworm, three panels, slightly ajar.

‘Blake?’ I said, pushing the door open in one swift movement.

The room was cold.

He was on the floor, half on his side, his knees bent up to his stomach. One arm lay across his face, but I could see that he had taken a blow to the face. His nose and chin were smeared with blood and he had the beginnings of a black eye. Two men stood in
the room: a very large one in a soft cap who stepped back in surprise when he saw me, and a shorter one in a grey worsted suit.

I threw myself at the taller man, catching him a blow full in the face. He staggered back, righted himself, brought up his fists and caught me in the stomach. I should have taken a fall but my blood was up and I threw myself on to him, driving my left fist, still holding my news sheet, into his face. He tumbled backwards on to a chair. His hand shot up to his jaw, and he would have come back at me had not the smaller man told him to stay down, rather as one speaks to a dog.

‘What the devil is the meaning of this!’ I shouted.

‘Avery,’ said Blake in a muffled voice, ‘my visitors are leaving.’

‘Mr Avery,’ said the man in the grey worsted suit.

‘
Captain
Avery, if you please. Good God! Sergeant Loin? Explain yourself!’

‘I am sure Mr Blake will do the honours,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘No hard feelings, eh? After that blow you dealt my man here, Captain Avery, I think we might call it quits. Mr Blake, remember what I said. I am deadly serious. Come along, you.’

The large man followed dutifully, holding his jaw, glaring at me.

Blake’s eyebrow was cut; blood was dribbling into his eye and down his cheek. Perspiration streamed from his brow, he was shivering and his breath came fast and shallow.

‘You have a fever,’ I said. ‘I must fetch a doctor.’

‘I just caught a bellowser to the stomach, that’s all. It winded me. No doctor,’ he whispered. ‘A bit of quing hau in the cupboard. And a knob of opium, that’ll do me.’

I helped him on to the settle and he winced with pain and clutched his ribs. There was a second room and I ran into it. On a bed, low and narrow like an Indian charpoy, were some blankets and a pillow; I took them and a shirt from a hook and a half-filled jug of water. I made him as comfortable as I could, then looked for his fever herb, quing hau. It was in a small wall cupboard among rows of powders – the scents of India – in a tin box. It was the best cure for fever, sweet-scented and bitter-tasting. Next to it was a small pouch in which I knew the opium would be stowed. I started on remaking the fire to boil the water.

‘Use the spirit stove,’ Blake ordered, his voice hoarse.

‘No words from you, you should rest. Anyway what—’

‘In front of you.’

There was a painted Indian chest on top of which was a curious metal object: a round copper vessel with a trivet hinged over the top and a small brass bottle to one side, connected to it by a metal tube.

‘The fuel’s in the bottle. You need a match. Turn the lid, it lets the gas through. Light the trivet. Heat the water.’

‘Ingenious.’

‘Ha.’

I turned the fuel bottle and placed my flaring match at the mouth of the tube; a small ring of flame danced under the trivet. I took a milk pan from a hook on the wall, poured in water from the jug and placed it upon the contraption. I dipped the shirt in the jug of water to wash away the blood, but he pulled it from me and simply pressed it against his head.

I poured hot water over the fever herbs and waited for them to infuse. To my relief Blake’s breathing had deepened, though he was still too hot and the cut on his brow continued to bleed.

‘That must be seen to. And your ribs. I shall get a boy to bring a doctor – is there someone you know hereabouts?’

‘No doctor,’ he said, his eyes shut. ‘Give me a little of the opium ball. There’s some gin in a bottle in the cupboard. It cleans fine.’

I broke off a little of the opium ball, then propped him up and brought the mug to his lips. He swallowed a little, coughed and took the opium from me, then sipped the infusion once more.

‘How is it that you think so much faster in these situations than you do the rest of the time?’ he muttered.

‘The truth is, I’m afraid, Jeremiah, that in these situations I do not think at all.’

He gave a small smile and winced with pain. I tried again to clean the blood from his face. He pushed me away.

‘You are a dreadful sight – not that it seems to deter the ladies.’

He laughed this time and clutched his ribs.

‘I am getting a doctor, Jeremiah. Not another word.’

I ran downstairs. The old woman’s door was shut and so I passed
into the street where Miss Jenkins, her clothes as neat as the day before, was preparing to open her shop. She summoned a little maid-of-all-work from the back, and told her to bring the doctor, taking a purse from her skirts. But I was ahead of her and gave the girl a penny, telling her there would be another when she returned, while Miss Jenkins collected a jug of warm water and a cloth and followed me up the stairs to Blake’s.

Blake frowned mulishly when he saw us but said nothing. Miss Jenkins gaped.

‘Oh, Mr Blake, what’s been done to you!’

Blake gave me a long-suffering look. ‘Just a few cuts and bruises,’ he said hoarsely.

‘I always keep a supply of clean, boiled water, Mr Blake. I have a bowl of it here. I must wash your cuts, and we will find something to put on your eye to reduce the bruising.’

She sat on the edge of the settle and, with a hand that shook a little, began with infinite gentleness to clean the blood from his face. The scene had an awkward intimacy. When she had finished, she handed him the cloth so he could staunch the blood from his brow himself, and stood up quickly as if she feared she might become too comfortable.

‘The cut on your brow is deep, the nose is not broken, only bloodied, and you will have at least one black eye. I fear you have a few bruised or even broken ribs,’ said she. ‘I do quite understand that it is not my business, but I do worry sometimes at the state of you, Mr Blake.’

‘You mean this has happened before?’ I said.

She bowed her head.

‘She means she has seen me after similar encounters,’ Blake rumbled. ‘I assure you, Miss Jenkins, I am fine.’

She nodded her head obediently.

‘And I thank you for your help, truly,’ he said.

She smiled at him: an adoring, hopeless smile. ‘I am always pleased to help after all the kindnesses you have shown me, Mr Blake. But I must go and open up the shop. I shall, if I may, return later to see that you are not in need. I think I have a little sage
which we might make into a compress for the bruising. Captain Avery, you should light the fire, and he should eat something. Do you have food?’

I’d seen nothing but a little bread and two bottles of small beer. She said she would send something hot and would make sure the doctor examined Blake’s ribs and sewed up his forehead. I heard her descend the rackety wooden stairs carefully, one step at a time. Blake, conveniently, had drifted off to sleep.

I set about lighting the fire, then looked about the room. It was far from luxurious – worn boards, woodworm in the panelling, bare brick above – but it had some fine old features. The fireplace, though blackened and topped with a metal hoop over which a stewpot or kettle might be hung, was an elaborate one, far grander than the room deserved, with curling Greek motifs below the broad mantle. The panelling had once been very elegant, and the two windows overlooking the street were large and well proportioned, with handsome box frames. On the floor was a moth-eaten Indian rug, but of a complex and unusual design. There were Indian watercolours upon the wall: one of two tigers by a waterhole; another of a native man and a woman, playing chess. The settle had an aged, but again fine, Indian embroidery across the back. There was a round table by the window piled high with papers: his notes about Wedderburn, and the only hint of disorder in the room. And then there were books – on the deal shelves, piled upon the floor, on the tables – among them Montaigne’s
Essays
,
The Philosophical Dictionary
by Voltaire,
Sketches and Essays
by William Hazlitt, Lyell’s
Principles of Geography
, Thomas Paine’s
Common Sense
and
The Age of Reason
, Percy Shelley’s
Queen Mab
, a thick, battered copy of a book called
Chemical Manipulation
and another called
Chemical Philosophy
. I had read none of them, and not even heard of the last two.