Beloved Poison (40 page)

‘Oh, dear, close that window!’ I heard Mrs Magorian say. ‘Whatever are you thinking of letting the smell of the abattoirs in like that?’

I felt a sharp kick to my arse as Eliza helped me off the window ledge with the tip of her boot, and I plunged downwards, my arms windmilling. Above my head, the window slammed closed.

I burst into the apothecary. ‘What happened to you?’ said Will.

‘Eliza Magorian threw me out of her mother’s bedroom window.’

Will raised an eyebrow. He did not pause in his labours, but continued wiping the rounded belly of a giant retort with a chamois. The squeak of the soft moist leather on the glass set my nerves on edge. I caught sight of myself in the mirror that hung between the coat pegs – my shoulders and lapels were stained, my collar awry, my hair matted with wet grass and laced with bindweed. But in my hand, I held my prize.

Will and I sat at the bench, Mrs Magorian’s dead son’s boot before us. It was brown, well made, and hardly worn. It was no bigger than something Gabriel might wear, though the workmanship was of a finer quality: the upper and sole a smooth Italian leather, rather than the thick hide of the coarse boots Gabriel favoured. ‘Pick it up,’ I said. ‘Tell me what you see.’

Will turned the boot over in his hands. ‘It’s not new. But it’s had little wear – look at the soles and the heel. And it’s been worn recently.’

Even in the darkness of Mrs Magorian’s dressing room I had felt it. The leather was cold, soft and pliable to the touch. Unmistakably damp. I ran my finger around the edge of the sole. ‘Smell it,’ I said. I held the mud under his nose.

Will recoiled. ‘It stinks of the dead. I should know, I spend my days amongst them.’ He pointed to his own boots, drying on the hearth. The soles were rimmed with the same thick, hard crusts of yellowish clay.

S
t Saviour’s had become a place of fascination. News of my brief imprisonment, and of my father’s confession, had spread through the city, and by the end of the day it was as though we were under siege. On St Saviour’s Street, crowds of people gathered outside the infirmary, jeering and pointing. The porter locked the gates, only opening them to allow doctors or patients in and out. The apothecary, mercifully, was inside the hospital precincts, so we were at least spared the discomfiture of having crowds of ghoulish sightseers pelting our door with mud or trying to peer in at our windows. I had never been so grateful that we lived within the hospital as I was during those days. It seemed not to matter that many of those in the crowd had known my father all their lives, that he had often given them medicines paid for with his own money. All they could think of now was that a murderer had been in their midst; he had killed a good doctor, an innocent woman and a poor, helpless slum child. I knew they felt duped, deceived into liking and admiring a man who, it appeared, had wished to harm them, and I could hardly blame them for it. Many of them had known Dr Bain. Still more claimed to know Joe Silks, and whereas the boy had had few friends when he was alive, when he was dead it seemed as though the whole of Prior’s Rents wished to claim him as their own. And so they gathered at our gates, angry and violent, their voices a furious howl echoing off walls and windows as though the day of judgement was upon us.

As for the apothecary: once the bustling hub of the hospital, it was now eerily silent. The door did not bang open and closed all day, doctors did not come in and out, the lady almoners stayed away. People only came in when they had to, but they said little, and would not meet my gaze. Doctors sent in students, men unknown to me, rather than come in and have to speak to me themselves. No one but Mrs Speedicut came to see us, but I could see in her face that even she doubted my father’s innocence. He had confessed, had he not? What innocent man would do such a thing? But she said nothing, and for that I was grateful.

‘We have to get out,’ said Will. The noise of the crowd out on St Saviour’s Street was a dull angry murmur. ‘We can do nothing from in here, and we need to speak to Old Dick. Is there another way out?’

We left St Saviour’s via a narrow underground thoroughfare. Low-ceilinged and no more than three feet wide, it was known as the Prior’s Hole. The entrance – or exit – began in the sub-basement under the mortuary; the air there was dank and chilly, and our candles burned less brightly as we entered, as though the flames themselves were crouched and shivering. In the far corner of this place, a low, iron gate gave out onto the drain-like Prior’s Hole. We floundered through a dark pool of standing water. Neither of us spoke. The Hole was a thoroughfare that did not encourage talking, but at least we were able to leave the infirmary without having to pass through the mob.

We found the sexton in the churchyard, sitting on top of one of the gravestones, cross-legged like the Devil himself. He was watching the excavations, his greasy, blue-bottle coat spread about him like a pool of spilt oil. He was chewing on an old clay pipe, his tricorn hat pulled down low over ears bristling with wiry hair. Beside him was his spade, though the hands that rested in his lap were too twisted and misshapen with rheumatism to use the thing. But it is hard for a man to abandon the tools of his trade, and Dick carried the spade everywhere, as if hoping he might one day come across a patch of earth soft and yielding enough for the final dig.

‘Afternoon, Dick,’ said Will. He unwrapped a currant loaf he had bought from the baker’s on St Saviour’s Street and held it out. Dick sniffed at it suspiciously, though what he possibly had to fear from a currant loaf, I had no idea. But the loaf, it appeared, was acceptable. Dick stuffed it into his coat, out of sight and protected from the rain.

He turned back to the earthworks and pointed a horny finger. ‘There’s not as many as there was,’ he remarked.

‘Bodies?’ I asked. I looked up at the great mound of corpses, stacked one on top of the other, which reared up beside the pit. There seemed to be a prodigious quantity of them.

‘Men,’ said Dick. ‘I been watchin’ ’em. They don’t like the work much. Can’t say I blame ’em.’

‘No,’ said Will. He drew his oilskin closer about himself. The mountain of bone glistened, washed white by the rain. Hanks of hair clung here and there like weed at low tide, the remains of shrouds hanging in grey rags from the sagging sides of broken coffins. A cart stood beside the corpse mountain, its axle resting on a pile of bricks, its front left wheel missing. ‘And now that we have only two carts, progress is slower than ever.’ He gazed dejectedly at the bones. ‘So there they stay.’

‘Might as well ’ave left ’em where they was,’ said Dick.

‘I suppose so,’ said Will.

‘What you goin’ to use to fill that pit?’ The hole in the earth which had once contained the bodies was cavernous.

‘I had no idea there was going be so many,’ said Will. ‘But there is plenty of rubble to be got. And some of St Saviour’s itself will go into the hole when the place is demolished.’

Dick threw Will a look of deep suspicion, and sucked on his pipe. It gurgled emptily.

‘Dick,’ said Will, handing him a tin of tobacco he had bought especially for the purpose, ‘how long have you worked here?’

‘Always,’ said Dick. His apple pip eye vanished in a mass of wrinkles as he scowled up at us. ‘I told you that already.’

It was not a good start. ‘Perhaps he doesn’t want to talk today,’ I said.

Will ignored me. ‘You must have seen some changes.’

Dick fingered the tobacco, examining its quality. ‘Like what?’

‘At St Saviour’s. In this graveyard.’

‘Like what?’ said Dick again.

‘This is getting nowhere,’ I muttered. I watched the three corners of Dick’s hat dripping water like gutter ends. He seemed unperturbed by the recent downpour. No doubt he was used to being wet: from what I had seen of his home he had spent his entire life in dampness and moisture. I would not be surprised if he had webbed fingers and toes. My glance strayed to his hands. They were large, twisted with arthritis and bound up with rags. ‘You know, I have some salve that might help your hands,’ I said. From my pocket I pulled a small pot of fresh salve – comfrey and camomile – which I had picked up before we left the apothecary.

‘No one can help ’em,’ said Dick, but he held them out to me all the same.

Before he could draw back, I took one of his hands in my own. The skin was black and weathered as old leather, the ridged nails the colour of amber. The strips of coarse canvas he had wrapped about them were shiny with grease and filth. I peeled off the wrappings. Dick stared at my fingers, mesmerised.

‘Your mother used to look after my ’ands,’ he said. ‘Back when they was first gettin’ stiff.’

‘My mother?’

He nodded. ‘She were like you. Just like you.’

‘But I look like my father.’

‘Not to me you don’t. You got ’er eyes. An’ ’er touch. She were gentle. No one cares about my ’ands, but your mother did. She were an angel. There’s not many like she was, not round here. Most of ’em’s devils.’

‘You never said a truer word, Dick,’ I said.

But Dick was not listening. ‘I sat next to ’er grave ev’ry night till I knew she were no use to ’em. Them medicals! Said it were fer the good o’ mankind. Fer the sake o’ ’natomy. But I’d not let ’em dig ’er up and chop ’er into bits.’ He shook his head, his gaze still fixed upon my pale slender fingers moving over his dark stubby ones, gently rubbing the salve into his swollen knuckles. The joints burned like fire.

‘How hot your hands are,’ I murmured. ‘They must be so painful. But the salve will help. The camomile is good for inflammation, the comfrey helps the bones.’

‘Helps the bones,’ repeated Dick. He sighed. ‘The bones is all we have left in the end. And even them’s not left in peace.’

‘Why not?’ I asked. I stroked his fingers. ‘Who disturbs them?’

‘I ain’t never told what I saw.’ He screwed his eyes closed. ‘But I can remember it all right, even if it were a long time ago. I’d not thought much about it till I saw ’em again.’

‘Saw who?’ I said.

‘The man and ’is boy. Used to see ’em all the time. First time was not long after I were sitting by your mother’s grave with my dog and my lantern. But then there they were again, the night that young lad were found in the pit over there. Last week.’

‘Can you describe them?’

‘Black hood and cloak. Tall. The lad carried the lantern.’

‘His face, Dick. Did you recognise his face? Or the boy’s?’

‘How would I see his face?’ said Dick. I felt his fingers stiffen. I thought he was about to snatch them away, but he didn’t. ‘It were dark. An’ I weren’t about to go over an’ ask to see it. The Abbot’s what they used to call him out in the streets, on account of his hood.’ He gave a snort, which turned into a terrible rattling cough, and hawked a giant blob of brown phlegm onto the ground. ‘
He’s
no abbot. I knows
that
much.’

‘And the boy?’ I said. ‘What was he wearing? A cap? And pale trousers? A short jacket?’

‘Pr’aps,’ said Dick.

‘And what did they do?’

Dick shrugged. ‘The boy? Sat on a stone an’ ’eld the dark lantern, like I said. It were always the same. Same pair, same place, same things.’

‘Same things?’ I said. ‘What things?’

‘Sack, shovel, body,’ said Dick. ‘Puttin’ ’em
in
the ground, not takin’ ’em out. But them doctors were always up to it. I seen ’em. And ’eard ’em. Drunk as lords, sometimes.’

‘We found some of the remains of the anatomy subjects,’ said Will. ‘Mostly against the far wall near the infirmary. Bones with saw marks. Skulls with holes.’

But Dick was not talking about the human refuse from the dissecting tables, I was sure. His eyes were fixed on the northern wall of the churchyard, away from the hospital. ‘What about “place”?’ I asked. ‘You said “same pair, same place”. What “place” d’you mean?’

‘Over there,’ said Dick. He jerked his head. ‘At the foot o’ that wall.’

We looked over to where Dick was pointing. The excavation of the churchyard stopped about ten feet from the northern wall. ‘We stopped digging at the edge of the grave plots,’ said Will. ‘Where the ground slopes downwards. Beyond that there was nothing. The ground was hard. Empty. It’s clay mostly; the worst kind, too.’