Points of Departure (43 page)

“Careful there,” John said. “They’ve a nasty, irritable temper. I was stung four times last week.”

“They’ll not sting me,” Charlie said. The insect crawled over the massive hand, its wings buzzing, but it never stung.

“Come,” said John. “There’s more to see.”

John led the way to the fishpond, where he bred carp, tench, leeches, and eels for
experiments. On the way, he noticed that larks, finches, and other small birds seemed to be particularly abundant in the fields that day—the grass was alive with them. They fluttered up from the grass before them, circling the giant’s head before flying away. Once, to John’s amazement, a lark landed on Charlie’s shoulder, tipped back its head to release a torrent of song, then flew away. John was
wondering at what had brought the birds to this place when Charlie fell behind. John looked back to see the man unfastening his shoes. One large foot was already bare.

“Feels good underfoot,” Charlie said. “Warm. Not like the streets of London.” He took off his other shoe and set the pair beside a fencepost. Straightening up, he lifted his arms over his head in a prodigious stretch. He looked
healthier than he had for weeks.

“The sunshine agrees with you,” John commented. He considered the giant for a moment. “You could stay here for a time, if you like.” That would solve so many problems—Charlie might live longer, but John would no longer have to worry about losing the body. The situation would be under his control.

Charlie’s face brightened momentarily, but then he frowned and
shook his head. “I cannot do that.”

“I could take you into London, now and again,” John persisted. “But you could stay out here the rest of the time. The city air’s unhealthy. It does you no good.”

Charlie shook his head stubbornly. “Until I can return to Ireland, I must stay in London. That is where the Irish are and that is where I must stay.”

“As you will,” John said. He considered, as he
walked, whether the right time had come to ask the giant about his bones. He tried to introduce the notion of scientific investigation gently. “You must see my other animals.” He led the way back to the paddocks surrounding the house. He stopped by the pigpen and leaned on the fence. “I’ve found pigs to be the best for experimentation. They are easily managed and breed well in captivity.” The old
sow had pushed close to the fence and was staring up at Charlie. The tall man leaned over to scratch the top of her head, and she sighed in contentment.

“What has happened to her piglets?” Charlie asked. All three of the young animals bore scars on their right hind leg and limped a little.

“They are part of an experiment,” John explained. “I am investigating the way bones grow. The French botanist
Henri Duhmamel du Monceau claims that they increase by accretion throughout their length. I maintain that they grow from the extremities.” He explained his experimental procedure to Charlie. He had operated on all the piglets.

On each one, he had laid bare the bone of the right rear leg, drilled two holes precisely two inches apart, inserted lead shot in the holes, and then stitched up the incision
again. In the weeks following the operation, John was butchering the piglets one by one, at weekly intervals, and checking the, bone. Though the leg bone had lengthened overall, the distance between the deposits of lead was the same as it had been on the day that he inserted it. This supported his hypothesis that bones grew through accretion at the ends, not in midspan.

Charlie stared at the
piglets in the pen. “Why is it you want to know how bones grow?” he asked at last. “Isn’t it enough that they do? By God’s grace, they grow quite well.”

“Can’t always trust in God’s grace,” John said briskly.

“What else is there?”

“Knowledge,” John said. “Sometimes, they do not grow, or they grow improperly. I want to know why.” He gazed at the piglets. “There is so much to know,” he murmured.
“Do you know, Charlie, if I could look at your bones, I might be able to tell why they pain you so. It would not help you, but it might help someone else whose bones ache.”

“My bones?” Charlie stared at him, his eyes suddenly wide. “You want to see my bones?”

“When you die, Charlie, as we all must do,” John said gently. “If I could take your body—”

Charlie was backing away from him, his expression
shocked. “My bones, John? What would you do with my bones?”

“Examine them, Charlie.” John spread his hand, the gesture of a reasonable man making a reasonable proposal. “You’ll have no more use for them, once you’re dead.”

Charlie was shaking his head. His big hands formed fists at his sides. “My bones must return to Ireland,” he said.

“That’s where they belong. I promised my father—”

“Superstition,
Charlie,” John said gently. “You must not take it so seriously.”

Charlie turned and fled. Startled by Charlie’s reaction, John called after him, but the giant did not look back.

John ran after him, but did not have a chance of overtaking him. Finally, he let the man go, knowing that he would eventually return to his rooms in London.

John was sorry that Charlie had reacted so precipitously.
He reviewed the conversation in his mind, wondering how he might have made his suggestion more delicately. In the end, he decided that nothing he could say would have overcome the giant’s superstition, and John made peace with himself. He spent that night at Earl’s Court, dissecting a series of worker bees, an exacting task that soothed his nerves.

The next day, on his morning stroll, John noticed
a new variety of flower growing in the meadow. The plants grew low to the ground and bore tiny golden blossoms. They grew only in discreet patches. John realized, on close examination, that the flowers had sprouted in the giant’s footprints. He attributed this curious effect to the compression of the soil beneath Charlie’s feet and drew up plans for a series of experiments to test the sprouting
of seeds under pressure.

Charlie heard John’s voice calling him back, but he did not stop. It was a cold afternoon, and the walk back to London was a long one. A farmer gave him a ride for a few miles in an ox-drawn cart filled with straw, but he walked the rest. His legs ached by the time he reached the outskirts of the city proper. He let his head hang, unwilling to look up and see the smoky
sky overhead. The road was cold and hard beneath his bare feet.

When rain began to fall, he made no effort to take shelter. The cold drops soaked his coat, plastered his hair to his head, ran down his cheeks like dirty tears, leaving tracks of soot behind.

Back at the rooms, he fell ill and lay on the straw-tick mattress that served as his bed, unable and unwilling to move. “It’s the gin,” Vance
said. “I told you it’d be the death of you.” Charlie did not reply. He lay on the pallet of blankets that served as his bed, staring into the flames of the fire.

A few days later, Kathleen found him there. When he did not come to visit her stall in Covent Garden, she came looking for him. On the door beside the cane shop, a notice said: “No show today. Come back tomorrow.” By the look of it,
the notice was several days old. When Kathleen banged on the door, Mary, the landlady, answered and regarded her with a sour look.

“I have come to see Charlie,” Kathleen said. “I’m a friend.”

“Visit him quick,” Mary said in a scornful tone. “He may not have much time left.” She let Kathleen in and the hunchback found her way through the dimly lit, stale-smelling rooms to Charlie’s bedside.

He lay on a straw-tick mattress by a fire that burned low. Light from the glowing coals gave his face a ruddy color that did not match his feverish eyes and mournful expression. He was shivering despite the blankets that covered him. “Ah, Kathleen,” he murmured. “Sit with me for a time. I am lonely now, very lonely.”

Sometimes, he shivered and huddled closer to the fire; sometimes, he threw off
all his blankets, suddenly drenched in sweat. He complained that his head ached constantly.

He was sick and delirious for three days, and she stayed with him, bringing him bread and cheese to eat, tucking the blankets close around his shoulders, holding his hand so that he would know he was not alone. On the seventh day, he came to himself again. Kathleen had fallen asleep on the floor beside
his mattress, and she woke to see him watching her.

“Kathleen,” he said. His eyes were sad, but the fever had left them. “What are you doing here?”

“Taking care of you, Charlie my lad.”

“There’s not much use to that now,” he muttered. He shook his head weakly. “I’ve been foolish. I thought that the magic would be strong enough. But that’s dead and gone. The world is changing.”

“Don’t say that,
Charlie.” Now that he was finally giving up his mad notions, it pained her to see it.

“I’ll die here in London.”

“No, Charlie,” she said, “you’ll get better soon.” He just shook his head, recognizing the lie.

“Have you seen Joe Vance?” he asked.

Kathleen went out looking for Vance. After the darkened room, the courtyard seemed brilliantly lit. She found Vance lounging in the gray light that
passed for sunshine in London, practicing a game involving three shells and a pea. When she told him that Charlie wanted to see him, he reluctantly followed her into the room.

“You’re looking bad,” Vance said. “That doctor—John Hunter—came to see you again. Says he might be able to give you something for the fever, if he could see you. A swell gentleman, by the look of him.”

Charlie shook his
head. “I told you I will not see him.”

“Been a week since any money came in,” Vance said slowly. “And Mary will be looking for her rent, come Monday.”

Charlie said nothing. He was watching the flames, ignoring Vance’s words. When Vance stood up, as if preparing to go, he roused himself. “You got to help me, Joe,” he said. “Can you tell me where I’d find an honest undertaker?”

Mr. Fields, undertaker
and friend of Joe Vance, studied Charlie with an expert eye and decided that he wouldn’t last long. His face was pale and wet with sweat; his eyes were bloodshot.

“You’re interested in a coffin?” said Fields. “I’ll have to build it special. That’ll be extra.”

“You must make the arrangements for me,” Charlie muttered weakly. He reached out and grasped Fields’s hand. “Take my body back to Ireland.
To my mother’s farm. You must see to it. I’ll pay.”

“I’ve heard of Chinamen sending their bones home,” the undertaker said, “but never an Irishman.”

“Please,” Charlie said hoarsely, squeezing the man’s hand. “You must see to it.” He fumbled in his bedclothes and pulled out a small pouch that clinked in his hand.

Fields eyed it, assessing its contents. “You must take me home safe.”

“For a price,
anything can be arranged,” Fields said heartily. “You can rest easy, Mr. Bryne.”

Kathleen nursed Charlie as best she could. But when her money ran out, she had to return to her stall in the afternoons and evenings to earn the money she needed to bring him food. She brought him bread and cheese and mutton stew, though he did not eat half of what she brought.

It rained that week, a dark sooty
rain that turned the streets to mud. The costermongers went out late and came in early, with little profit to show for their efforts. The mud clung to the wheels of coaches and to the horses’ hooves, and the hackney drivers cursed the weather. The men who carried sedan chairs got chilblains.

Early in the morning on the seventh day of rain, all the dogs of St. Giles Rookery congregated at the
door to the cane maker’s shop. The cane maker tried to drive them away with kicks and curses, but as often as he scattered them, they returned. He gave up at last and tried to ignore them, glancing out only occasionally to see the filthy mongrels sitting beneath his sign. Surprisingly, the dogs did not fight.

The cats came later, slinking over the rooftops. Despite the rain, they crouched above
the cane maker’s shop, glowering at the people in the street below. Strangely, the dogs did not bark at the cats and the cats did not yowl at the dogs. They waited quietly.

Early in the afternoon, a sparrow came to perch on the wooden sign that marked the cane maker’s shop. For a time, it sat alone in the rain, its feathers fluffed against the cold. Then it was joined by another sparrow and a
pair of finches. A little later, four mourning doves came to perch on the sign, not far from the cats. But the cats made no move to stalk them.

The cane maker looked up when a sound that was at once familiar and strange penetrated his consciousness, making its way past the rattle of coach wheels and the cursing of drivers. He paused, brush in hand. Still holding the cane that he had been varnishing,
he went to the doorway, following the sound that called up memories of his boyhood in the country. Sitting on his sign, above the filthy street, a meadowlark was singing its heart out.

From the eaves, the mourning doves watched him with their bright black eyes. From the gutter, the dogs regarded him sadly. The cane maker looked up at the small, goldflecked bird, then retreated into his shop.

Twilight settled over London. The light had a peculiarly gray tone, as if the city had sucked all color and life from the air. The proprietor of a pie shop was lighting an oil lamp to hang in the door of his establishment. Here and there, the yellow glow of burning lamps marked the shops and taverns that remained open.

Joe Vance emerged from the hallway beside the cane maker’s shop, kicked his
way through the crowd of waiting dogs, and made his way to the nearest tavern. Just inside the door he surveyed the smoky interior, then made his way to the corner table, where the undertaker waited with John Hunter.

“How fares the patient?” the undertaker asked jovially.

He had been drinking gin, by the smell of it, and he was smiling, an expression that sat uncomfortably on his long face.

“Won’t be long now,” Vance said. “I took him a bottle of gin to ease the pain.”

“And hurry him along,” said Fields, chuckling. He grinned at John Hunter, but John glared back, not sharing the joke.

“I’d help him if I could,” John muttered defensively.