Ace, King, Knave (57 page)

‘Not I,’ says Betsy-Ann. ‘And I’m not a-going to hang over him pretending. Though I could talk as soft as you, too, with a Mr Gingumbob to tie the noose for me.’

To this Sophia can find no reply. She could do very well, at the moment, without the company of Betsy-Ann Blore.

The surgeon is a man of middling age, whose florid and corpulent person attests to a thriving practice. Rubbing his hands together to warm them, he approaches the truckle bed.

‘May I present myself? Mr Wilson, Madam, come to be of assistance to Mr Hartry.’

As Sophia stands to greet him, blood drops from the cloth she is holding onto the carpet. ‘I am Mrs Hartry. This lady is Miss Blore.’

The surgeon looks from one shabby woman to the other. ‘Indeed,’ he says. ‘Well. Let us lose no time.’

He feels for Edmund’s pulse.

‘Will he recover?’ Sophia asks. ‘Will he know me?’

‘Shhh ―!’

They are obliged to wait in silence. Letting Edmund’s wrist drop back on the bed, the surgeon frowns. He proceeds to thumb open each eyelid, peering close as if to read inside Edmund’s brain. To Sophia there is something nightmarish about the eyes thus exposed: glaring and blind as the rolled-up eyeballs of a poisoned dog Radley once showed her. She is relieved when the eyelids are thumbed down again.

‘You didn’t think to take off his coat and shirt?’

‘I was afraid of hurting him. Of doing harm, I mean.’

‘He was insensible, then, at first?’

‘I believe so.’

‘Has the bleeding decreased at all since he came in?’

‘I can’t tell ―’ Her voice cracks. ‘I’ve tried to staunch it.’

‘You’ve done no harm, Mrs Hartry, and may have done good,’ says the surgeon, relenting. With a pair of silver scissors he commences snipping at Edmund’s coat, pausing only to order the maids to bring in more coals. ‘He must not be allowed to lose vital warmth.’

‘I said he was cold,’ observes Betsy-Ann.

Edmund’s coat and shirt are cut away at the front. Taking a fresh clout, the surgeon cleans the wound with deft swabbing movements.

‘If you would be so good as to help me turn the patient.’

‘I’m not sure I’m able to.’ Sophia blushes at her uselessness. ‘My shoulder ―’

‘Here,’ says Betsy-Ann Blore. She holds Edmund up so that the surgeon can cut away more of his clothing. Seeing the sheet beneath soaked in gore, Sophia gasps.

‘Just keep him there, miss,’ says the surgeon.

Despite welling blood, the injury to Edmund’s breast is small, even neat. Now Sophia utters a cry of incredulous horror: the flesh of his back is torn open, scarlet and ragged as beef. She thought she was helping, dabbing at what now seems the merest scratch, while all the time ―

‘Dear God!’ she wails.

Betsy-Ann has turned her face aside.

‘It’s a nasty one, right enough,’ Mr Wilson says coolly, as if examining a sprain.

‘Is it?’ A stupid question, but her voice has grown so feeble and husky at the sight of Edmund’s insides obscenely exposed to the air that perhaps the surgeon did not catch it.

‘The ball flattens, you see.’ He indicates the wound in Edmund’s chest. ‘He was shot from front to back.’

‘Will he have to be cut, Sir?’ Betsy-Ann’s voice is hardened by the strain of supporting Edmund’s torso upright.

The surgeon continues to dab and wipe. At last he is finished, and gives the signal for the patient to be returned to his original position. As Betsy-Ann lets him down, Edmund utters a peculiar groan.

‘Is he in pain?’

‘Only in a manner of speaking, Mrs, er ―’

‘Hartry.’

‘Mrs Hartry. Your husband is like a man asleep. Sensation is faint, as in a dream, and passes in an instant.’ He holds up his hand for silence. ‘There. You perceive he has ceased groaning.’

Betsy-Ann Blore looks as if she has heard such comfort before, and found it barren. She repeats, ‘Will he have to be cut?’

‘The ball’s already out. But there’s splintered bone – a tricky business – and bleeding in the lungs.’

‘Is that very dangerous?’ Sophia asks.

‘Few things are more so.’ He speaks with a grave emphasis, his eyes turned full upon her. ‘It would be wicked of me to pretend otherwise.’

‘Is there any chance of his knowing me?’

He lays his hand upon hers: a fatherly gesture, intended to impart endurance.

‘My dear Madam, what am I to say? You naturally desire your husband to regain consciousness. Try to bear in mind that insensibility can be an instance of Divine Mercy. Were he conscious, his suffering would be intolerable.’

It comes to Sophia that the man talks only of suffering or lack of it.

‘You don’t expect him to live.’

‘He
may
,’ Wilson quietly corrects her, ‘but I think it unlikely. I shall do my utmost, but my best advice is to prepare yourself. Pray for him, and leave the rest to Heaven.’

‘Edmund would laugh at prayer.’ The wretched tears, that have never gone quite away, are pricking now in her eyes and throat. ‘He has lived a very –
imperfect
life. How, in his present state, can he make his peace with God?’

‘That, I’m afraid, is a question I cannot answer,’ replies the surgeon. ‘But consider: how can we know what might be passing in your husband’s soul, even as we speak? To God all things are possible.’ He gives her hand one final pat and moves away to rummage in his bag.

Edmund is again raised in the strong arms of Betsy-Ann Blore, turned and laid on his side. The blood around the smaller wound is beginning to congeal.

Sophia stands aside, forcing herself to watch as Edmund is probed for splinters, then stitched up, his breath coming with an ominous wheeze. The spring before her marriage, Papa’s hunter, Blaze, impaled himself on a fence. Radley told Mama that the horse bubbled bloody foam at the mouth: will Edmund do that? Perhaps he
is
conscious, paralysed, speechless, suffering unimaginably as his flesh is gathered and crimped under the needle.

Or perhaps he dreams himself safe, strolling amid pleasant gardens, when he was never more in danger: his soul, the immortal part of him, hangs upon the brink of the abyss.

Nothing, she thinks, is more important than such moments. We know it as we sit by a sickbed or kneel by a grave. Then we arise, and go about the world’s business, and forget.

‘Sir,’ Betsy-Ann Blore is saying. Sophia becomes aware that Edmund’s breathing has changed, the wheeze grown shallower and more ragged.

The surgeon shakes his head.

‘What’s happening to him, Sir?’

‘It’s as I thought, the internal bleeding.’ He cuts the thread with which he has pulled Edmund together like so much cloth. ‘If we keep him propped up, Miss, it will help him to breathe. You,’ he beckons to one of Cosgrove’s spying maids, ‘get cushions for his back.’

Edmund moans. Sophia is on her knees directly, crying into his ear: ‘Repent, Edmund! God will forgive you ―’ so that the surgeon is obliged to edge her aside in order to continue propping the patient. Straightening, she sees Betsy-Ann’s sleeves rolled up, her naked forearms bloodied and trembling with the effort of holding Edmund’s torso upright.

‘He’s going,’ the maid says, as if seeing a tradesman off the premises. Since it is his privilege to pronounce upon the patient’s condition, the surgeon does not reply. He again takes up Edmund’s wrist, feeling for the pulse, then lays it down with a gentleness that tells Sophia everything she dreads to know. With a cry of exhaustion Betsy-Ann gives way, allowing Edmund to sink back.

Sophia kneels once more by the side of the bed, clasping Edmund’s hand between her own. It is in this manner that she sees her husband die, insensible of either wife or mistress. His breathing ceases abruptly, without any marked change beforehand; his eyes remain closed but his mouth falls a little open. The maid, with a knowing look, pinches it shut. Sophia watches Edmund’s face grow pale, as if the skull is working its way up to the surface of his skin. His mortal flesh is now a death mask; the immortal Edmund is fled, gone to stand before the Judgement Seat. What can he find to say there, after such a life! Yet God is Love and has Eternity to hear his creature’s plea and consider it, perhaps to forgive.

‘A very sad business, a dreadful business,’ the surgeon murmurs. Sophia realises that her torn shoulder is pincered with pain. She does not move away; it seems as if she and Edmund are suffering together, even though he is no longer here. ‘Altogether shocking. Such a fine fellow’ (will he never hold his tongue?) ‘should have lived to see seventy.’

Even the heartless maid is now gazing on Edmund. Around the bed, the living are fixed, fascinated by death, until Sophia has to swallow down a hysterical urge to laugh.

It is not until the sheet is pulled over Edmund’s face that Sophia realises she has not the wherewithal to pay the surgeon. She stammers out an apology but the man assures her this is quite unnecessary. Nor will he call at her house: it is already agreed that Mr Cosgrove will settle the account.

‘Let him, since he wants to,’ whispers Betsy-Ann. ‘Takes off some of the scandal.’

Sophia has not sufficient strength for contention. She submits, asking only what she should do about the body.

‘That will depend upon your personal arrangements,’ replies the surgeon. ‘You may send someone to bring him away. I’m sure Mr Cosgrove will help, so far as it lies within his power.’

‘He is too kind.’ How does one arrange a funeral in this city? For that matter, she has no very clear idea of how it would be done at Buller, but supposes Papa would speak with the minister and the carpenter, who between them would engage everyone else. Here she has nobody to whom she can apply. So very private has her religion become that even the habit of churchgoing has fallen away.

It occurs to her that collecting the remains is only the beginning of her perplexities. Should Edmund be interred in the chapel at Buller Hall? How intolerable to pray there, with his memorial in full view! Besides, he was never of the place, and despised everything it stood for; had he become master, he would have pillaged the estate. And then the business of the inscription: Mr Zedland, or Mr Hartry?

Was the man lying on the bed ever her husband at all?

Downstairs a man in a greasy wig is writing in a notebook. Cosgrove presents him as an officer, come to take statements about the night’s dreadful events, and asks if Mrs Hartry is equal to answering his questions. Mrs Hartry replies that she is. She explains that she had not seen her husband for some days, and fearing his taste for gaming had got the better of him, had come to the club to see if he was there. While waiting in the crowd she was attacked and threatened by Harry Blore, to whom Mr Hartry owed money. A humiliating scene ensued, followed by Blore’s assault upon her husband.

‘Did you see Mr Blore fire the fatal shot?’

‘I heard it. He showed me the pistol earlier.’

The man, a skilled scribe, notes her answers almost as quickly as she can produce them. When he looks up his eyes are shrewd.

‘And the other lady? What is her part in all this?’

Sophia is at a loss.

‘Harry Blore was my brother,’ says Betsy-Ann. ‘My name is Betsy-Ann Blore.’

‘Did you know Mrs Hartry before tonight?’

‘Miss Blore was a friend of my husband,’ Sophia replies, having by now worked out that the flimsiest investigation will reveal Betsy-Ann’s visits to the house. ‘I’m not familiar with London and I wished to see Cosgrove’s. She offered to accompany me.’

‘Very obliging, I’m sure,’ says the man, sitting back and putting the quill between his teeth. He’s letting her see that he’s noticed the garments. ‘And you disguised yourself? Made something of a . . . a prank of it?’

‘I wished not to be recognised.’

‘And why was that, Mrs Hartry?’

‘So my husband shouldn’t think I was spying on him.’
Although I was.
It rings so loudly in Sophia’s ears that surely the man can hear it.

‘It’s fortunate for you, Mrs Hartry, that you were standing where you were. A number of witnesses have confirmed that you were placed almost opposite the door when the shot was fired.’

‘Do you mean it might have hit me?’

‘I mean you could been under suspicion. We found no pistol on Mr Blore or anywhere near his body. Several persons report the shots as coming from further off, from a tree at the edge of the square. We believe there may have been an assassin concealed amid its branches. The first shot hit Mr Hartry, the second Mr Blore.’

‘Someone in a
tree
?’

‘That’s my information. Are you quite sure, Mrs Hartry, that Mr Blore showed you a pistol?’

‘I saw something shiny. He said I’d get a taste of it.’

‘Something shiny,’ the man repeats. ‘Not necessarily a pistol.’

‘He carried a shiv,’ says Betsy-Ann.

‘Is that so?’ He reaches into his pocket and brings out a brutal-looking knife. ‘And is this the one?’ The haft is of some dull grey metal, the blade about eight inches long.

Betsy-Ann nods. ‘Could be.’

‘I doubt he meant to use this on Mr Hartry,’ the officer tells her. ‘Too many witnesses. He wanted the satisfaction of milling him, that’s all. Someone else had different ideas.’

‘But he
was
holding the knife?’ Sophia asks.

‘We found it between the flagstones. It’s my opinion that he lost it as he fell.’

They are ushered into Mr Cosgrove’s personal carriage with assurances of continuing assistance. The man has been kind far beyond what was expedient: at the memory of her earlier contempt, Sophia’s face floods with shame.

As they are driven away she cannot help but look back. Behind the great windows the players continue unabashed, no doubt stimulated by the frisson of passion and scandal attaching to tonight’s events. Rain has begun to fall. Night air and drizzle are sucked into the carriage but she lacks the energy to shut them out: it is Betsy-Ann who leans forward and closes the blind. ‘What will you do now, Madam? Go back to Zedland?’

For an instant Sophia thinks it is Edmund she means. ‘I expect so,’ she says. Her future existence rises before her in pitiless detail: that poor dupe Sophy Buller, the talk of every tea party, her life a blend of ennui and humiliation.