Authors: Robin Blake

A Dark Anatomy (26 page)

BOOK: A Dark Anatomy

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I stood still, in amazement.

âWhy? Who's Van Aken?'

âHe sticks the faces that others paint on a canvas, and paints the body around it â clothes, hands, wig. He's famous for his drapery.'

âGood lord! Is that how it's done now?'

âBy Mr Winstanley it is.'

âYou do not approve?'

âI think an artist should be a complete man. Not one that farms things out.'

âYour master is trying to get the best possible result, I suppose.'

âNo. He does it because it makes him feel more important. Only the face matters to him. It is all he can be bothered with. The rest is for others.'

âLesser beings, he thinks?'

âYes. He's God Almighty, him.'

âSo when we view the portrait at last, it will only be my lord's face we see. The body will be that of another person?'

âNot another
person
. A lay-figure. That's a puppet made of wood. A toy in toy clothes.'

âCouldn't
you
do the drapery for him, George?'

âI'd refuse and he knows it. I'm not to be treated as less than him.'

Such confidence, in a mere boy and apprentice, took me by surprise. I decided to caution him about it.

âTo think like that could cut short your indentures, George. Only a particularly patient master will endure insubordination. I hope Mr Winstanley is patient.'

I said this in as kindly a way as I could.

âOnly a patient apprentice will endure a bad master,' he said, looking me boldly in the eyes. âAnd I am not patient, Mr Cragg. Time with Dr Dapperwick or Dr Fidelis is better spent than it is with him.'

Though I was itching with curiosity to know if Abby Talboys had had an inkling of Mrs Brockletower's unusual
physiologia
, the real purpose of my visit to the Talboys was to tell her I would, after all, be needing her as a witness at the inquest. I found her father in his shop, unpacking some newly delivered rolls of Nottingham lace.

âEh, Titus!' he exclaimed when he saw me, and came round the counter to clap me on the shoulder. âBailiff locked you up, but could not keep you. You bested the man!'

I had not bested Grimshaw â not yet â but I thanked my old friend for his sentiment. Then I asked after his eldest daughter.

âAbby is to go to Yorkshire,' he told me. âTo her late
mother's sister at Gargrave, a good Christian woman. She will give birth there and stay on after.'

âYou will miss her.'

He laughed, for with Talboys good humour cannot help breaking through.

âEh, I'll miss her work. Not her wilfulness.'

âAnd you'll be a grandfather, before I am even a father. Think of that.'

âMust I think of it? I have enough trouble with fatherhood. Four daughters and three still cluttering my home!'

âI wonder, Ned â¦ has Abby told you anything more in detail about her conversations with Mrs Brockletower?'

âNot me. She tells me nothing. But here she is and you can ask her your questions in person.'

Abigail had come in from the street, carrying some packages.

âAbby,' said Talboys, âMr Cragg would like a word. Would you like to take him up to the fitting room?'

Abby seemed neither welcoming nor hostile. She led me briskly up to the first floor, and into the room that looked out over Friar Gate. It was furnished with a couple of dressmaking dummies, but otherwise resembled a comfortable parlour, with upholstered chairs, polished furniture and a fire burning in the grate.

I sat in one of the fireside chairs while Abby put her purchases on a sideboard.

âI am to make a journey into Yorkshire, Mr Cragg,' she said. âAs I shan't be returning soon, I have been shopping for necessaries.'

âYes,' I said. âYour father told me. It is a good solution.'

âJudging from letters to my father, my aunt does not think so. And nor do I. I will be spoken to roughly on arrival, no
doubt, and put to work with the pigs and chickens. I am out of favour, in disgrace, but the fault is all my own.'

She was standing at the window, looking not at me but out into the street.

âNot entirely,' I said. âThere is someone else who takes half the blame.'

âOh, you may forget him,' she said huffily, spinning around and briskly removing her bonnet, which she laid beside the parcels. âSo, what is it you want to speak to me about?'

I told her that I would still need her as an inquest witness tomorrow, but that there would be no need for her to reveal her pregnancy.

âIt will be enough for you to tell the court that Mrs Brockletower told you during your private sessions together that she very much wished for a child, and that she hoped to be able to adopt one. That is the only testimony the court will need.'

Abigail pressed her hand to her forehead, like one soothing a headache. Then she turned to me, her face breaking into a charming smile. She had excellent white teeth.

âI am relieved, Mr Cragg,' she said. âIt had been preying on my mind that I would be terribly frighted, speaking in public about being with â¦ you know.'

âWell, no one need know about that who doesn't need to know.'

I looked around me.

âWell now, this is the room in which ladies have their fittings, is it?'

âYes, sir.'

âMrs Brockletower included?'

âYes.'

âSo it is here that you often talked so intimately, as you described to me the other day?'

âYes. This is where we talked.'

I coughed and shifted in my chair. How on earth was I going to put this?

âDid she ever speak to you, I wonder, about exactly why she was childless?'

âShe only said it was impossible for her to conceive.'

âWithout saying why?'

âYes.'

âAnd you formed no idea yourself on the subject? That there might be some physical deformity, say.'

âPhysical deformity? What can you mean, sir?'

âIn the way her body was made. I imagine a dressmaker knows her customer in that way better than most â taking measurements and so on.'

She looked at me intently for a moment.

âWhy do you want to know this?'

Her voice was sharp, and edged with emotion as she went on.

âMrs Brockletower was a good friend to me. I will not have her talked of as being deformed.'

âI am sorry, Abby. Sometimes a coroner must ask displeasing questions.'

She turned back to the view from the window.

âWell, I cannot answer yours. If there
was
anything, I knew nothing about it.'

âThen we shall speak no more of the matter.'

I rose and moved to stand beside her. The afternoon traffic in Friar Gate was mostly of carts and packhorses trundling empty churns and barrels of unsold produce back to the country from Market Place. Abby sighed.

âA farm girl, that's me from now on, sir. A slave of the muckheap, pigsty and cowshed. I had hoped for a life of more
refinement. Not to be, now. I'll never get a husband that isn't coarse, and a bumpkin.'

She was probably right. She was bonny all right, but with no dowry, and a little bastard in tow, her stall in the Gargrave marriage market was not likely to be under siege. I tried to boost her hopes.

âAbby, you are pretty and you have wit. Some fellow of dependable means and good sense will come your way. Hold out for that, will you?'

This time she smiled tightly, with closed lips. I could see she did not believe me but perhaps, with time for reflection, she might one day. So I found myself hoping as I gently took my leave.

Chapter Twenty-six

A
FTER LEAVING ABBY TALBOYS I returned home. Legal correspondence does not stop merely because one is in the middle of an inquest so, having had a bite to eat, I intended to go from the parlour into the office. But first I allowed myself a quarter of an hour in the library, getting down the fourth volume of Tonson's
Miscellany
of poetry, stoking the fire and settling into my chair beside it.

Turning the pages I soon found what I was looking for: Mr Addison's rendering in English of the fourth book of Ovid's
Metamorphoses
, in which was embedded the lovely, liquid story of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus. It is a brief tale, told in a single scene. Hermaphroditus, handsome son of Hermes and the goddess of love, strips for a bath in a woodland pool, fed by a stream that gurgles under the protection of the nymph Salmacis. Seeing him naked and powerfully swimming, she so strongly desires him that she hurls herself into the water and locks her arms around him. Their passion is such that (I read)

Piercing each the other's flesh they run
Together, and incorporate in one:
Last in one face are both their faces join'd
As when the stock and grafted twig combin'd
Shoot up the same and wear a common rind:
Both bodies in a single body mix,
A single body with a double sex.

I shut my eyes, imagining the picture â a beautiful image of the very act of love, in which my beloved and I strive so strenuously to unite, to merge each into the other. My own person may be a little distant from Hermaphroditus, son of beautiful and illustrious parents. But Elizabeth â¦ Elizabeth is the perfect vision of a nymph, or so I thought, and think.

I jerked awake. An hour and more had passed, and I had slept. I hurried into the office, where Furzey greeted me with a superior look.

Later, letting Elizabeth know I would be dining out with Luke Fidelis, I put on my hat and strolled across Church Gate to the Turk's Head, where I found him in one of the confidential booths, smoking and drinking Burgundy wine. I joined him in the wine and called for a pipe, telling him of the poetry I had been reading. Fidelis is not one for poetry, not even when I mentioned Ovid's use of the word intergrafting.

âIt is exactly the conceit used by Dr Dapperwick,' I explained. âI believe it is what he meant by saying the poet is a better philosopher than most realize, and that he had thought the thing out.'

âNo,' Luke muttered. âDapperwick is merely happy to find poetic support for his daft theory. But as evidence it is not worth spitting at.'

I told him he'd be a better man if he loved poetry more, and he countered by maintaining I'd do better to prefer reason to rhyme. So, differing amicably, we poured more wine and I asked Fidelis what he had been doing. He pulled a book from his pocket.

âAfter leaving the Mayor, I also did some reading, though rather different matter from yourself. It is Dr Thomas Allen's account of the Hampshire hermaphrodite, Anne Wild, born in the last century. It is among the Transactions of the Royal Society.'

He tapped the book with his index finger.

âWild had the sexual equipage of both the male and the female,' he told me. âBut since at first she appeared to have no penis, she was raised as a girl until something remarkable occurred.'

I was agog.

âWhat?'

â
Presto!
A male organ appeared and for three years she was more like a boy. Then, just as suddenly, her menses began to flow, which continued for another two years until, suddenly again, she began to have a beard. After that her body increasingly resembled a man's.'

âSo she became a man, after all?'

âNever entirely. She could be aroused by either sex. Listen to this.'

He opened the book and read aloud.

â“One night as she was making merry with her companions she cast her eye upon a handsome man and became so much in love with him that the excess of her passion made her hysteric.”'

He closed the book once more.

âSo Anne Wild was capable of feeling both as a man and as a woman, depending on the circumstances.'

âWhat happened to her?'

âThe article does not say. She lived and died in obscurity. Without Dr Allen's intervention we would not have heard of her. The country people had been superstitiously afraid of her
at first, no doubt, but probably came to tolerate or even grow fond of her in the end.'

âIt is better than being exhibited in a circus show, which might have been the case. But it isn't easy to see how she can have been happy.'

âShe must have been tormented. I do wonder about the veracity of this author when he states she was making merry. Her life must have been a continual puzzle, a torrent of questions. The same goes for Dolores Brockletower. Waiting for your arrival, I have been trying to calculate the number of those questions.'

âAnd have you succeeded?' I asked. âHow looks the balance sheet?'

âIt is divided into three columns: moral, medico-philosophical and legal.'

âI am interested in the legal column, of course.'

Fidelis held up his finger.

âIn which the prime question asked is, what was Mrs Brockletower's legal status? Was she male, or female?'

âI think I know the answer. But tell me first the philosophical position â the medical one.'

âAll right. Medically speaking, she was as Dapperwick described her: a hermaphrodite. Compared to the Hampshire case, she seems more female on the surface. She had the voice, skin, bosom and shape of a woman. Of course under her shift, in layman's terms, were a cock and balls, if somewhat reduced in size.'

âAnd the latter, I think, are the items that solve the legal puzzle. Medically she may have been of intermediate gender, dressed she may have seemed a woman, but the genitalia I fancy made her legally a man.
Ergo
, if she was legally male, her marriage could not have been valid. What flows from that?'

âWe encroach on the moral column here. What flows is the disgrace of the husband.'

âYes, and his financial ruin, too. Think of the debt-encumbered estates that his uncle told me of. She â let's call her that since we don't have another pronoun â she had inherited property and securities that kept him from sinking. She was wealthy.'

âJamaican sugar.'

âYes. And sugar is sweet. But if the marriage is sour, the husband cannot have the sweetness of the money. Her family will recoup the lot. I'm thinking this might be considered a motive for favouring murder over divorce.'

Luke shook his head.

âNo, Titus. I see it as a motive for keeping her alive. Or, if for killing her, only in such a way that it could not be detected. A violent slaying of a kind we have seen would be bound to trigger an inquest and an examination of the body â as it did. That was the last thing Brockletower could permit.'

Fidelis was right, of course.

âOh dear,' I reflected, âwe already knew it was impossible for him to have killed her in person. But I was beginning to hope that, since it appears the squire wanted an end to his marriage, we could show he killed through an accomplice, whilst he skulked in Yorkshire. But, if what happened in the Fulwood was the wrong kind of killing to be explained by
that
, I am no further on.'

âYou
are
further on, a little. He certainly didn't kill her, or have her killed. We can say that. But you can be fairly sure he stole her body from the Ice-house â using an accomplice also, I would think.'

âPiltdown?'

âWhy not? His woman's son was found in possession of the
body. But it was all done at the squire's behest, I am sure. He was forced to it by the inevitability of an inquest following the murder.'

âWhich still goes down as committed by person or persons unknown,' I said, with an exasperated groan.

For half an hour we continued to turn over these questions until, quite suddenly, the coffee-house hubbub of card players and politicians stopped, as is conversation in a theatre when the curtain rises. Fidelis and I looked out of our booth to see the cause.

âI'll be damned,' whispered my friend.

Ramilles Brockletower, in his riding clothes, had made an entrance from the street. With every eye on him, and awed whispers flurrying in his wake, he stalked wordlessly into the room, checking each table until he reached ours. I saw his eyes bulge fractionally when they met mine, after which, still saying nothing, he spun around and crossed to the internal door that led through to the kitchen and the stairs. The keeper of the coffee house, Noah Plumtree, was standing there in his apron. The two men conferred and Plumtree stepped aside to allow Brockletower's passage through. I noted that under his arm the squire was carrying something. It looked like the polished cherrywood case I had seen the day before on the floor of his library.

As soon as he had left, the chatter rose again sharply, as the room filled with speculation.

We ordered chops and another bottle of wine and, while we awaited our food, I told Luke about my meeting with Abby Talboys, and her blighted prospects in the Gargrave farmyard.

âThe silly baggage,' he said. âShe should have been more careful.'

The chops arrived and I was hungrily preparing to cut myself
a slice when I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Noah Plumtree leaning towards my ear.

âCompliments of Mr Brockletower, Coroner,' he said. âHe asks would you be so kind as to attend him in our upstairs private room?'

The cherrywood case that I had seen in the Garlick Hall library rested unopened on an oak table in the centre of the private room. It was about the size of a closed gammon board, with brass catches and corners.

Ramilles Brockletower stood awaiting me, with his arms folded, and head lowered. As soon as I entered he roused himself and strode behind me to the door. With a rapid movement he turned the key, snatched it from the lock and slipped it into his pocket.

âThere. We are alone.'

He coughed, a formal clearance of the throat, and went on.

âWe've had our differences, Cragg. But can we agree on one thing, at least? Ours is a race of endless airs. Don't you loathe the prattling, the cozenage and the cupidity of it? Worst of all is its preoccupation with damned trifles and trivialities. Every thought of the human race makes me heave with nausea.'

This frontal assault on humanity was, to say the least, unexpected.

âHave you taken me from my supper just to preach misanthropy? ' I asked.

He had begun moving slowly and aimlessly around the room, tapping his chin with his fist. It was a good-sized room floored in a polished wood, which enabled Plumtree to let it to a dancing master for his weekly classes.

âPreach. That's good. But I am no divine, Cragg. I have sailed across the oceans. I have seen men disembowelled. I never
felt a feather's weight of pity at the sight. I was weighed down only by a ton of disgust. I have witnessed diseased human flesh bubbling like soup over a flame, sir. Then I have witnessed it swelling up and exploding! When will your painted people, your dancing masters and fops, face
that
? I would devoutly like the Deluge to come again. Indeed I would, wouldn't you? And this time let's agree that Noah and his brood shall perish with the rest. Let everyone be swept away. We are all vermin, are we not?'

âYour views are too extreme for me.'

He started, as if it were his turn now to be surprised.

âBut I am given to believe you are a clever man, and the possessor of a good library.'

âI have a library, yes,' I admitted.

âDoes your reading not lead you, then, to the same conclusion â distaste for every living man, woman and child in creation?'

âWell, people are less tidy in person than they are in books, I grant you, but Iâ'

âThat's not what I mean. I am speaking of the people who write the damnable books! Authors, sir, authors!'

He was becoming increasingly excited, raising his voice and gesticulating.

âNo better than those they scribble about. All are the same.'

Brockletower pulled a book from his pocket and threw it on the table, where, beside the cherrywood case, there stood a pair of candlesticks. Between these lay a silver pen tray containing a bunch of quills, and the book struck the tray, pushing it across the polished surface and over the table's edge. The tray and quills scattered across the floor's polished boards.

Ignoring the spilled pens, he pointed at the book.

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