Points of Departure (40 page)

Charlie tasted it gingerly. “It has
more of a bite than whiskey,” he said. “But it does warm me.”

“That it does,” she said. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table and looking up at Charlie, wondering what to do with him. An overgrown schoolboy, that’s what he was. “Why don’t you go home, Charlie? Go home to your mother’s farm. You don’t belong here.”

He downed the rest of the glass of gin and shook his head. “My father
told me I must bring the Irish home. I cannot go home alone.”

Kathleen shook her head. “The Irish will never go home. We all talk of the green hills and how we long for them, but we remember the famines and the hardships as well. We won’t go back.”

“But you must,” he said, his tone urgent. He had another glass of gin, and told her of falling asleep in the Giant’s Boneyard. He told her of how
his father came to him and told him what to do. “He gave me his sword,” Charlie said, gesturing with the staff. “It’s a magic thing. On the ship that carried me from Ireland, I waved my staff and a wind came to blow us to England.” He leaned forward, his face already flushed from the gin. “And when I waved it over the river, the waters parted, leaving a path of dry land.”

Kathleen sipped her
gin and listened, watching his broad daft face. He was an innocent and a lunatic, that was clear enough. But she could not help thinking about the stories that her mother had told her when she was a little girl. Legends of giants and heros and magical swords.

Charlie’s story began like an old tale—the enchanted son, the magic sword, the quest.

As Charlie talked, he drank gin, downing glass after
glass. With each glass, his words grew louder and made less sense. He was growing agitated. “And the Irish will follow me to the side of the sea,” he said, his voice loud enough to cut through the noise of the tavern. “And I will wave my staff and the waters will part before me.” He stood up, knocking over his bench and stretching his hands apart to show how the waters would open to let him through.
“We will march across the empty seabed, walking back to the land where we belong.”

“Sit down, Charlie,” Kathleen said. “Calm yourself.”

Around him, the costermongers and apprentices were staring and laughing.

“Come with me,” he called to them, spreading his arms. “Come with me, my people. I will lead you back to Ireland.” The gin had released a passion in him, and he shouted to be heard over
the laughter and the rude shouts. “Follow me,” he called to them. “Follow me back to Ireland.”

Kathleen watched him sway just a little, made unsteady by the gin. He lifted his staff, and apprentices scrambled aside for fear of a clouting. Charlie strode into the gap, his head held as proudly as a king. He lifted his staff high, and the crowd parted, leaving him a path that he accepted as his
due. “Follow me,” he called, his voice slurred with drink. Kathleen stood to pursue him. The poor fool would never find his way home alone. But the crowd closed in behind him, leaving her to struggle slowly toward the door.

The night air was cold and Charlie was woozy from the gin. He found himself on the street, puzzled that no one had come after him. Surely in the tavern, when they had made
way before him, they had planned to follow. But when he looked back, no one was there, not even Kathleen.

He had not meant to drink so much. But the gin had touched the empty spot that had been in his gut since he left Ireland, providing him with warmth and comfort.

When the wind blew, he shivered and shuffled in the direction that he thought might lead to his rented rooms.

His head seemed
to have grown large and unwieldy: his feet seemed very far away and very slow in responding to his desires. He managed to walk just a few blocks before he sat down beneath a streetlamp for a little rest. Benumbed by gin, he fell asleep in the gutter.

On the far side of the street, a pair of whores trudged past, carefully picking their way through the garbage and filth from chamberpots. It was
getting late, and law-biding citizens were at home in bed, their doors barred against cutthroats and robbers.

A dog ventured from the mouth of an alley where it had been feeding on scraps of garbage. The animal walked with a peculiar lurching gait, its right hind leg having been broken years before by the well-placed kick of a carriage horse. The bone had healed crooked, and the leg no longer
touched the ground.

The dog sniffed Charlie. His suit smelled of roasting meat and gin, aromas from the Black Horse Tavern. Attracted by the man’s body heat, the dog curled up by Charlie’s side and went to sleep. In his sleep, Charlie moved a hand to encircle the dog.

For a time, the man and dog slept peacefully. A burning wick in the oil-filled globe that served as streetlamp cast a dim yellow
light on Charlie’s face. He smiled in his sleep.

Charlie was dreaming: In his dream, there was music: the singing of larks and the laughter of children filled the air. He was leading a triumphant procession made up of all the Irish who had left the island to seek their fortune in England. He was bringing them home, and they were all dancing after him. The girl who sold flowers was dancing with
the rude lad who had called Charlie King of Fools.

The girl’s rags flapped around her legs and her bonnet had fallen back on her head. She and her partner were pale from lack of sun and thin from bad food, but already the sunshine was putting roses in their cheeks again: Everyone was dancing: the prostitute from the tavern; the old woman who sold apples; the mudlarks and the ragged Irish beggars
from the streets of London.

Charlie danced at the head of the procession, laughing at the way the old apple seller capered. Overhead, the sky was blue, and the sun was on his face. The earth was warm beneath his bare feet. He led them through the country roads to his mother’s farm, past the fields filled with growing grain, out to the Giant’s Boneyard, where he lay down in the fragrant grass.
He belonged here, among the bones of his father. With his head pillowed on his arm, he closed his eyes. In the distance he could hear people laughing and singing.

Someone was calling to him: “Charlie. Charlie Bryne. You can’t just lie there like a great lump. Rouse yourself, man. Wake up.”

Charlie blinked his eyes. Kathleen was shaking him awake. “Wake up, you gin-soaked lump,” she grumbled
at him. “The cold will be the death of you if you lie here all night.”

Charlie squinted up at her. “What happened?” he mumbled.

“Where did all the people go?” He stared at the houses around him—tall, gray, and foreboding in the dim light.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Kathleen was saying. “I knew you couldn’t find your way alone. Now where is it you’re living?”

Charlie sat up, groaning with
the effort. Disturbed by the movement, the dog that lay beside him stood up, shook itself, and wagged its tail tentatively. Absentmindedly, Charlie reached over and rubbed the animal’s ears.

“I lay down to rest for a time,” Charlie said. “I felt mortally tired, Kathleen.”

“Mortally drunk, more like it. You put away enough gin to fell an ox.”

The dog leaned against Charlie’s side, a small patch
of warmth in the chilly night. Charlie’s hand stroked the animal idly. “They didn’t follow me, Kathleen. It seemed to me they would.”

Kathleen reached out and touched his shoulder. “Go back home, Charlie. If you stay here, you’ll die in the gutter with a bellyful of gin.”

He straightened his shoulders. “The old blood runs in my veins. I’ll bring my people back to Ireland.” Then the edge of doubt
crept into his voice for the first time. “You believe me, Kathleen. Don’t you?”

“You must get on home,” she said in a weary voice. “Tell me where you live and I’ll walk you there.”

“’Tis right by a cane shop on a narrow street where a man can scarcely see the sky,” Charlie said. “Not so far from Covent Garden.”

“I know the one,” Kathleen said. She held her hand out to him, coaxing him as if
he were a wayward child. “Come along, Charlie. I’ll take you home.”

“It isn’t my home,” Charlie said stubbornly. “’Tis a place I live, nothing more.”

“True, but it’s a warm place to sleep, and for tonight you’d best settle for that,” she said. “Now come with me.”

Leaning on his staff, Charlie staggered to his feet. The dog moved away, wagging its tail in earnest. When Charlie stood; Kathleen’s
head did not reach his chest. He looked down at her and placed a hand on her shoulder, seeking the warmth of contact with another person as much as the support. Charlie and Kathleen started off down the street, and the dog followed Charlie, trotting easily on all four legs.

Charlie sat in a chair by the fire. He had been on his feet all afternoon, answering questions from the gentry and showing
off his size. His head ached with a blinding pain. For the past few days, the world seemed to close in around him when his head ached; his vision narrowed and blackness nibbled at the edges, like the premature coming of night. He closed his eyes for a. moment.

“Hey there, lad,” Vance said. Charlie heard Vance pull another chair close to the fire and sit down. “You all right?”

“I’m cold.”

Charlie
heard Vance poke the fire and toss some more coal on the grate. He could see the light of the fire dancing on the inside of his eyelids and feel the heat on his hands. But the warmth did not seem to penetrate the skin. The fire could warm the surface, but his bones were cold. Only the sun and earth of Ireland could warm him deep down. The sun of Ireland or a glass of British gin.

Each night,
he went out to the streets to preach to the Irish. There were some who came to hear him each night, a few who believed in him. The old apple seller called him a saint and brought her ailing granddaughter to him for healing. The little flower seller sought him out, but that may have been for practical reasons; she could count on him for a supply of fresh blossoms. The rude young men called him a conjurer,
a madman, a fool. The costermongers laughed at him. He offered to show them that he could make the river waters part, but no one would follow him to the riverside. Each evening ended the same way: in the tavern, drinking gin with Kathleen.

He blinked and Vance came into focus. The little man was leaning forward in his chair, peering into Charlie’s face with a considering air. “You’ve been drinking
too much, lad. Gin will be the death of you.”

“This country will be the death of me,” Charlie muttered.

“Right you are, lad.” Vance was not paying attention.

He was counting the take. When he handed Charlie his share, he frowned a little.

“Now don’t spend it all on gin,” Vance said. “You’d do well to stay home tonight.”

Charlie stared at Vance. He did not like the man’s proprietary tone.
“I will go or stay as I please,” he said slowly.

Vance stopped in the act of gathering up the coins.

“Well sure, Charlie, of course you will. I was just saying, as a friend, that you—”

“I go to the ginhouses to find my people,” Charlie interrupted. “I find them there, drinking gin to warm their bones. They miss the soil of Ireland, though they do not know that’s what it is they’re missing.
They feel the hollowness, just as I feel it, and they drink gin to fill it. I go there to find them and bring them home.” He stood up and glared down at Vance.

Vance studied the giant with cold, blank eyes. “Just take care not to sleep in the gutter, lad. Your cough’s getting worse.”

Charlie’s shoulders slumped a little. His head ached and the power had gone from him. “Right you are, Joe. I’ll
not sleep in the gutter. I’m sorry, Joe.”

Now that’s enough of Charlie Bryne. Let’s consider John Hunter, a man of science, as different from Charlie Bryne as a man could be. We can begin at Kathleen’s stall in Covent Garden, on a chilly morning just a few weeks after she met Charlie.

The wind off the Thames blew through Kathleen’s wool shawl and made her hump ache. A burly Scot dressed in a
fine wool coat passed her stall and glanced into the shadows where she sat.

“You there,” he said. “Have you seen the man with the dancing monkey? I’m looking for him.”

“I have not seen him this morning.” She studied the gentleman, wondering if she might earn a penny from him. It was bitter cold, and she had only told a single fortune that day. “I might see him later. I could give him a message.”

The Scot glanced at her, his expression cautious, but strangely greedy. “I hear his monkey died,” he said softly.

“I heard the same.” The animal had died of a chill and the man was grief stricken, mourning the loss of the income from the monkey’s dancing.

His voice dropped a little further. “I have a need for the animal’s body,” he said. “I will pay for it handsomely. Here.” He fumbled in his
pocket. “A penny to tell the man that John Hunter has an offer for him.” He held out the coin.

John Hunter—she knew the name. Surgeon to the king, he was. And, from the stories that she had heard, an unnaturally curious man. When the tiger died at the Royal Zoo, he had anatomized the beast and mounted the skeleton.

When the Siamese twins in the Covent Garden freak show died, rumor had it that
the manager had sold the body to Hunter for a tidy sum. People said he was a bodysnatcher and a resurrectionist.

“And what would you do with the body?” she asked him. “You’ll anatomize it, won’t you?” She hadn’t cared much for the monkey, a dirty, noisy animal that spent more time scratching for fleas than it did dancing. But it seemed unnatural to want to poke and pry into its innards.

“Why
don’t you let the poor beast rest in peace?”

“Would you bury the beast so its body can rot, benefiting no one?” he asked angrily. “Why is it that people have no trouble eating the meat of a cow—but they consider it wrong to examine the dead animal too closely? Yes, I’ll anatomize the beast. I’ll examine the organs and see what killed it. I’ll study the muscles and mount the bones so that I can
study them later. And when I’m done, I’ll add a few humble observations to our knowledge of natural philosophy.” His tone was bitter, and she had the feeling he was talking to himself, as much as to her. “A patient of mine, a young boy, died today of a coughing disease. When I wished to examine his lungs, to see how the disease had affected them, what influence my treatment had had, his father forbade
it. The ignorant fool. What I learned from his son’s body might have helped me heal another child. But instead his son’s body must rot in peace and children must go on dying. How can I learn to cure what ails people, if I can’t observe the action of disease on the body? Would you have doctors continue in ignorance, peddling salves and tonics that work indifferently well? Little better than
butchers, most of them.”