Beloved Poison (16 page)

My father never mentioned the dress.
I
never mentioned it, but I had always known it was there. The purple bracts of lavender had scattered about the floor as I lifted it out of its hiding place. The dress had smelled of flowers, and slightly of mildew, and I held it against myself and stood before the mirror. How small she had been – no bigger than Eliza. No wonder the act of giving birth to one so tall and spindly as I had ripped her insides apart.

I had pressed the fabric to my face. Could I smell her? Could I imagine her arms about me? Would she have loved me for what I was – her daughter, no matter how disfigured, no matter how ugly, how blemished beyond repair by that hideous scarlet mask? But what purpose was there in such thoughts? I had taken her life – and perhaps my brother’s too. My father had decided on the punishment: I must live out my life as a man in a woman’s body.

I sat on my father’s bed then, the dress crumpled in my lap, staring at my own reflection in the mirror. Who was I? I was no woman, with my short hair and long stride, but I was no man either. What joys were denied me? Childbirth and motherhood? The care and comfort of a man? But childbirth brought with it the risk of death. And as for a husband – who would have me, so unsightly as I was, and so schooled in the freedoms and sovereignty of men? Nor could I be a husband, that much was clear. But there was one person whom I loved with the strength of man and woman combined. I knew I would never be able to tell her. I folded the dress as neatly as I could, and put it back in the chest.

My father still watched me, his face stony, the leech in his hand squirming from side to side.
Was she anything like me, Father? Would she have been proud of me
?
Did she hold me in her arms?
But I said nothing.

He plopped the leech into another glass jar and turned back to the tank. ‘Go out, Jem,’ he said, his voice expressionless. ‘Go out and find your Mr Quartermain and leave the past where it is.’

I found Will sitting on the roof of the brewhouse, looking out across the churchyard. The brewhouse was a low, single-storey building that backed onto St Saviour’s churchyard. The roof was flat, and the chimney provided protection from the wind. I often went up there myself when I wanted to get away from the hospital but still be in the midst of everything. The mounded greensward of the churchyard gave the illusion of countryside, as long as one did not turn one’s head very much.

‘You were out early,’ I said.

‘I wanted to speak to Dr Bain.’ His back was against the chimney stack so that he was sheltered from the wind, his face towards the graveyard. On his lap, he had a sketch book. He had drawn the church – a low-slung building whose porch and nave appeared to have sunk into the earth. The place had once sat proud of its surroundings, but over the centuries the ground had gradually risen up; packed with the numberless dead, until it was no more than twelve inches below the windows. These days, parishioners entered the church by descending a short flight of steps, cut into the corpse-filled earth.

‘I thought I should make a sketch before the job begins,’ he said.

I sat down beside him. ‘There are fewer bodies in there than you might think,’ I said. I told him about the rains and the terrible tangle of bones caught at the gates. ‘They were taken away. More have been added since, but not so many as there were.’

‘I fear your childish memory deceives you,’ he replied. ‘What seemed like a multitude was, in fact, no more than a dozen or so, so the sexton told me. How many might be left beneath the earth? Two hundred? Five hundred? A thousand? Perhaps even more than that. The dead have been shoved into that patch of ground for seven hundred years.’ He shook his head. ‘I can think of no worse undertaking than this. And the ground is largely clay. That alone leads me to suspect the worst. Thank you for your attempts to make the task seem more . . . agreeable, but it’s still a ghastly job.’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, I went to see Dr Bain, and then I came here to take a look at the place.’ He put his face up to the sun. ‘It’s warm on this roof, and quiet. I got up by climbing on the churchyard wall.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘It’s my place too. Why did you want Dr Bain?’ I added. I knew I was intruding, but I couldn’t stop myself. ‘Is it about last night?’

Will blushed. He rubbed his inky fingers on his lapel.

‘You went with that girl, didn’t you? The red-haired one who looked like a consumptive?’

He nodded. ‘But I couldn’t—’ He closed his eyes. ‘I don’t know why. I felt nothing at all. Nothing. I was . . . repelled. Is that . . . is that usual?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But I spent twenty minutes looking out at the fog and advising mine how to avoid the pox. What do you make of that?’

Will laughed. He sounded relieved. ‘I ended up showing mine card tricks,’ he said.

‘Did she enjoy it?’

‘She seemed to.’

‘I believe they always do,’ I said. ‘It’s part of the job, to seem to enjoy anything.’

‘Oh, this one really
did
enjoy it,’ said Will.

‘There!’ I laughed. ‘You sound
just
like a man now!’

Will’s smile wavered. ‘But I still couldn’t bear to . . . So I thought I might ask Dr Bain. He seems very experienced, and he’s a doctor. He might know what’s wrong.’

‘There’s nothing wrong,’ I said. ‘Not everyone’s like Dr Bain, you know.’

‘You, for instance?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘But no one’s quite like
you
though, are they?’

I said nothing. Then, ‘So, did you see the doctor?’

Will turned back to his sketch. ‘He wasn’t in. The housekeeper said his bed hadn’t been slept in either. She said he was probably out seeing a patient.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘perhaps he’s back now.’ I sprang to my feet and held out my hand to him. ‘It’s almost midday. Let’s find out.’

The clear skies and sharp wind were a relief after the thick brown fog. But whereas the fog concealed everything, the sunlight and the wind served to draw attention to the dilapidation of St Saviour’s Street. Straw, grit, rags, dust, all blew from west to east past the infirmary gates and along the thoroughfare. The stuff that was too heavy to blow away – offal, vegetable matter, ordure – clogged the street, churned into ridges of putrescence by the wheels of passing vehicles. Each ridge was home to a fizzing cloud of flies, which rose when disturbed by the traffic. Maggots crawled lazily amongst the debris, and I was forever finding them on my boots. Still, I thought, at least the wind meant that the flies were less bothersome that day.

Dr Bain’s house faced north. Even in the midday sun the building was a tall, dark cliff face. I pulled the bell and waited. The room we had been in last night looked out at St Saviour’s Street, the tiny rectangle of grass beneath its window a tangled patch of dandelions and plantain. The weeds were crushed: the plantain leaves hanging by their threads, the hollow stalks of the dandelions snapped and broken.

The door jerked open. The housekeeper was as tall as a man, and thickset like a prizefighter. She folded her wrestler’s arms across her broad bosom. ‘Doctor Bain’s not in, sir. He sent me out last night and I’ve not seen him since.’

‘Oh,’ I said. And yet, if the doctor was not in then we might as well pick up the coffins and take them back to the apothecary. ‘Well, might we come in, please? Mr Quartermain and I left something important in Dr Bain’s front room last night.’

‘That front room’s locked,’ said the housekeeper.

‘I have a key. I would be grateful if you would let us through.’

The woman stared at me. I knew she wanted to say ‘no’. She had never liked me – my birthmark unsettled her, I could tell. She looked at it continually, her face set in an expression of pity, disgust and horror. But I could also see that she was curious. Perhaps she might get to see what was in that locked room, with its shuttered windows and its strange sounds and smells. ‘Well, Mr Flockhart, since it’s you.’

She led us down the hall to the drawing room door. I could hear the rats rustling within, and I turned the key in the lock, and ushered Will inside as hastily as I could. ‘We’ll show ourselves out, thank you,’ I said, and I closed the door before the woman could stick her nose in.

Dr Bain’s parlour laboratory was as dark as a tomb. Last night we had worked with the shutters open. Clearly, Dr Bain had come into the room again after getting back from Mrs Roseplucker’s as the shutters were now closed. The air felt cold, with the wind moaning in the chimney and the fire long since burned out.

I locked the door behind us. I knew my way around the place well enough and I negotiated the table, the piles of books and the cages to arrive at the window without falling over anything. Other than the anxious rustling of the rats, the room was eerily quiet. I folded back the shutters. A shaft of dusty yellow light sliced through the darkness.

Afterwards, I wondered whether I had paid enough attention to the state of the room. It was as muddled as ever – the screen against the wall hung with bloodstained aprons, the table littered with glassware and papers, the floor mounded with books – so that any additional disorder was hard to apprehend at a glance. Later, when I tried to visualise the room, my mind seemed powerless to focus. I was able to recall nothing but that dark shape, head thrown back, lips and teeth stained red, that lay before us on the hearth rug.

His eyes were open, and glassy; his skin livid, his expression rigid. His lips were uncommonly bright, tainted by the tincture of bloodroot, the residue of which coated the bottom of the glass that lay at his side. I lurched past the table and flung myself to my knees beside him. What had happened? What had he done? I tried to speak, to say his name, but my throat seemed to have constricted. My breath rasped. I was no stranger to death – I saw it every day and I knew it to be both brutal and commonplace – but to find it here, now? If only I had come back with him after we left Mrs Roseplucker’s. Dr Bain’s mood was bleak when we left him. The appearance, and removal, of Mrs Catchpole had shaken him. He had slunk out of Lily’s bedroom as the front door slammed, and I knew he had heard everything. He hardly spoke as we walked back to St Saviour’s Street. If I had stayed with him, would things have turned out differently? What if we had not gone to Mrs Roseplucker’s at all? But such thoughts are as pointless as they are wretched. Time moves forward, not back, and here I was, crouched in the half-light in Dr Bain’s front room, Dr Bain’s corpse before me. I felt the tears hot against my cheeks, and I could not stop them.

And then Will was beside me. He pulled me to my feet, and put his arms around me. My body felt rigid. Not since I was a child at the wet nurse, crying for the mother that would never come, for the father that didn’t want me, had someone held me close. He smelled of pencil shavings and draughtsman’s ink, and very faintly of spike lavender, against the moths. It brought me comfort, and for a moment I thought I understood why Dr Bain had so often hired the affections of Mrs Roseplucker’s girls. I rested my head against his shoulder and closed my eyes. Perhaps, when I opened them, everything would be back to normal. But it wasn’t. I looked down at Dr Bain.

‘Who did this?’ I whispered.

‘Why, he did it himself,’ said Will. ‘Look at the glass. Look at his lips.’

I put my hands over my face. I could not bear to think of him dying, alone and in pain, perhaps calling out for me. For all his faults, Dr Bain had been a good friend. He had treated me as an equal. He had taken my part against Dr Graves and Dr Catchpole many times; he had asked my advice, and sought me out as his companion. But those characteristics in him that I had loved – his irreverence, his lack of prejudice, his kindliness – had been overshadowed in the minds of others by his vices – selfishness, venality, intellectual arrogance. How lonely I would be without him. How dull St Saviour’s would seem. And how would I tell Gabriel? The lad would be distraught—

I took a deep breath to steady myself. All my life I had been master of my emotions, I would not let them get the better of me today. Besides, would crying bring Dr Bain back? Would such a display undo what had been done? Will’s words circled in my brain.
Look at the glass. Look at his lips.
But the Dr Bain I knew would never make such a mistake. He would never experiment alone, could not possibly have drunk the stuff unwittingly, and would not dream of taking his own life. I took my hands from my face and surveyed the room.