Authors: David Donachie
‘I shan’t be back at Uppark for two months, and I can’t keep you anywhere near Piccadilly. Quite apart from my mother, there’s the expense.’
‘Am I not worth an extra shilling?’
‘Don’t carp at me, Emma. Be grateful for what you have.’
Her fingernails dug painfully into his groin. ‘Grateful? I can smell the whores on you, even through your sweat and drink.’
‘Damn you!’ he cried in agony, arching forward and sending the contents of his goblet flying.
‘And damn you, sir,’ snapped Emma, rolling out of bed. ‘I don’t see you for near a month and you can’t cross the distance without paying for something I give you free.’
‘Free! You’re as much of a whore as the pair I bedded earlier.’
She seemed to lose some of her strength as she bent to lift the dress off the floor. The sewing ring was entangled with it, and Emma answered with resignation as she tried to separate them. ‘I am to you.’
‘Not just to me, girl. Don’t you think I know how many of my friends you’ve serviced?’
‘At your discretion, sir.’
When he replied his expression was close to a sneer. ‘A fine thing, Emma, when you term your natural inclination a command from me.’
‘You wretch!’
The sewing ring, flung with all her strength, took him on the ear. Sideways on it would have split the skin, even flat it caused pain. Harry leapt from the bed, one hand on his head, the other balled into a fist. Emma ran to the corner and picked up his silver-topped cane, holding it out like a club. ‘Lay a hand on me again, Harry, and I’ll dash out what passes for your brains.’
It wasn’t fear that stopped him from hitting her. Emma knew, as he pulled himself upright and reached for his breeches, that his movements were composed of indifference.
‘Never fear, Emma, I shan’t lay a hand on you, ever again.’
‘Harry?’
‘Desist. I am tired – just as much of your company as I am fatigued.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He laughed, buttoning his shirt. ‘Are you, Emma? I’m damned if I am.’
‘You can forgive me, surely. Had you the means earlier then I would have less passion now.’
The anger returned, but not in a loud way. He spoke with more of a growl, as if he was intent on ensuring his own superiority. ‘It is even more galling to be rebuked on that score by a woman who has forfeited any ability to ply her true occupation. I have paid your bill, but I’ll not give you another penny. From now on you must fend for yourself. Do not, under any circumstances, write to me again.’
He picked up his jacket and went out of the door, leaving her naked, silhouetted against the glowing embers of the fire, and still holding his silver-topped cane like a club.
‘The offer is no more than temporary, Emma, as one of the good doctor’s goddesses has a fever. But an empty alcove is no good to man nor beast, and I daresay you can fill it better than most.’
The lady who had taken over her mother’s position at Dr Graham’s spectacle was like him, Scottish, with a slow, deliberate way of speech that made her employer, by comparison, sound like a gabbler. She had turned down flat the request that Emma be allowed to take back her singing duties, since that position was now ably filled.
‘Should I not see the doctor?’
‘Not unless you have an ailment, girl.’
Having turned away, the Scotswoman didn’t see Emma’s face drain of blood, and by the time she looked again the rosy countenance was quite restored. As if fortune had deserted her completely, the morning sickness had come to Emma the day after her row with Harry. Fortunately she had always emptied her own chamber pot, so as long as Mrs Mulderry didn’t hear the retching, she would remain in ignorance. The problem was the continued payment of rent.
‘Dr Graham leaves matters of this nature to me. All that is required is that we alter the Hygenia costume to fit you.’
‘I am forced to enquire about the payment.’
‘Two guineas a week is what you will receive. But that can be multiplied by what is on offer from the male custom.’
That was something Emma knew already. In her previous spell here she had seen the passage of notes from the back entrance to the dressing rooms, invitations to supper or a rout, routinely delivered to one or other of the statuesque beauties her mother had costumed.
‘Indeed, if the Hygenia you are to replace took more care of the chill night airs, when she was bestowing her favours, she would not be confined to her bed now.’
It wasn’t what she wanted, little better than a return to Arlington Street, which Emma was determined to avoid. There were sound reasons for that, quite outside the loss of face, the almost certain feeling that she was with child being the greatest. Her mother would help but she couldn’t face her
either, having refused her advice so comprehensively. What Emma needed was a breathing space, with enough coming in to pay her rent until such time as matters resolved themselves. A week or two with Dr Graham would provide part of that, and if some fellow wanted to take her to supper and pay for her food she would agree.
‘Get out of that dress,’ the Scotswoman barked. ‘We have but an hour till the doors open.’
‘Dr Graham’s fanum is the most amazing thing, Nelson. You simply must let me take you there. Quite apart from anything else it might lift your spirits and aid you in your recovery.’
Lieutenant Tom Foley’s face was alight with enthusiasm. With his dark curly hair, hazel eyes and the lilt of a Welsh accent it seemed for him a natural condition. They had been friends and correspondents ever since they had been midshipmen together in the
Raisonable
all those years before, Tom the bravest of his companions in the fight to contain the tyranny of Rivers and Makepeace. Nelson had been called to London by the prospect of a ship. Tom, in town while his own vessel refitted for service in America, had immediately offered him a share of a set of rooms he had taken.
Right now Nelson was in limbo, with letters flying back and forth between himself and the Admiralty, aided by dozens of missives from friends and relations. The American war presented opportunity to a serving officer, though there were, as always, more applicants than ships. A queue of unemployed post captains filled the First Lord’s anteroom hoping for employment.
In his case he had the patronage of Sir Peter Parker, the backing of William Locker, who was trusted for his honesty, and a residue of goodwill left over from his uncle’s tenure at the Navy Board. There was a brief note on the First Lord’s desk from his second cousin the Earl of Orford to the effect that the Walpole family deserved recognition for services to the realm; since Captain Nelson was the only candidate available to receive it, he should have it as his due.
The Admiralty secretaries would weigh all this and when recommending appointments to Lord Sandwich they would seek to offend as few people as was humanly possible. The First Lord, adding politics to the brew, would consider the needs of the administration, already under serious strain from the lack of military success in the American colonies. No one too closely identified with its critics could hope for preferment, which bothered Nelson, who had been sometimes a touch too free with his views.
His health would give them cause for concern, and all the gossip of the Pump Room at Bath, where he had convalesced on his return from the West
Indies, would be pored over to see if his infirmity could save the Admiralty making a decision. Nelson didn’t like Bath any more than he liked being ill: it was a place that sustained itself on a diet of gossip and a most exacting social grading that afforded scant attention to a mere naval captain. But his father had insisted he come to where the best doctors practised, rather than return to Norfolk where medical help was less accomplished and the county, at this time of year, was in the grip of a harsh winter. That it coincided with the Rector’s annual visit to Bath, made every January, was never mentioned.
Then there was the expedition that had brought on the illness. Success would have brought him great credit. As it was, he now had to worry about being associated with failure. The Lake Nicaragua fortress was captured not long after his departure, but it lacked the supplies to sustain further operations. Worse, of the two hundred men from his ship eventually committed to the operation, only ten had survived to see Jamaica again, and that included himself and Frank Lepée. The price for the soldiers had been even higher, to the point where, with three times as many in the cemetery as still effective, all discipline had vanished. The final result had been an ignominious retreat.
That weighed on him the closer he came to success. It was unofficial, but Locker had hinted at a frigate bound for Baltic service. Yet nothing had come yet and the ugly face of Lord Sandwich gave little in the way of hope.
‘I’ve had enough of physick, Tom. The doctors in Bath pored over every inch of me. I have been bled, blistered and every motion I’ve passed for three months has been examined.’
There had been his father too. Whatever good Lepée and his
ministrations
had done for him during the journey home, it was still a weak, skeletal individual who had been hoisted ashore at Portsmouth. He could not but admire the way his father had cared for him, carrying him to and from his bed, seeming to suffer as much pain from the excruciating torture of movement as his son. Weeks had gone by before he could fend for himself, weeks when his father had never flinched from his duty, regardless of the unpleasant tasks he had been obliged to carry out.
‘And as to recovery,’ Nelson added, ‘I feel I am a new man.’
‘Yet you’re still troubled by that arm?’
‘Intermittently, Tom,’ Nelson replied, failing to add that the affliction in his left arm, which felt stiff and painful, now extended to his left thigh and leg.
‘Twice last week you complained of it,’ Foley insisted, his open face a mixture of worry and excitement. ‘How can you contemplate taking up your duties until you have tried every method to effect a cure?’
‘I’m not yet convinced I have a duty.’
‘You’re better placed than I, Nelson. I’ve yet to be made Post.’
‘Electricity is so much stuff.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘The doctors in Bath told me. Not one of them had a good word to say in its favour.’
‘Hardly surprising, Nelson,’ Tom said, ‘since they don’t make use of it themselves. But opinion here in town has Graham as a sort of genius. Stories abound of cures he has engineered with his delivery of shocks.’
‘And just as many speak of tomfoolery.’
‘I hazard only from bodies that, like those corpses in Bath, have not paid a visit.’
Tom was not to be gainsaid and eventually time and his eloquence wore Nelson down, until he agreed that a visit to the Adelphi was essential to his well-being.
The sight of the two giants at the door, in their gaudy uniforms under the flaming flambeaux, nearly put the putative patient into reverse. But Tom grabbed his arm, which was enough to remind him of why he had come. It had been white and dead that morning but now it was swollen, red and painful to the touch, so he allowed himself to be led through the narrow entrance, in the midst of the shuffling crowd of well-heeled patrons. The pile of discarded crutches and peg legs caused him to raise an eyebrow. But he parted with his guinea, the fee that allowed him to reach the inner sanctum, which smelt of eastern perfumes, the soft singing of high-pitched voices like that of the cathedral cloister.
Inside, the walls were lined with flaring flambeaux, which gave the room an ethereal look as the flickering flames played on the silks and curtains that covered both walls and ceilings.
‘Look at that, Nelson,’ Tom whispered, pointing to one of the young ladies in the alcoves. ‘If that ain’t enough to cure your arm, nothing is.’
‘The ability to be crude comes easy to you, Tom.’
‘Don’t you go getting pious, Nelson. Remember you was a midshipman once. I have shared a mess with you and heard you at your nocturnals. One hand clapping is never as silent as the perpetrator supposes.’
That made Nelson blush and look away, to be immediately confronted by a scantily clad young woman draped in muslin and silks that did little to hide her charms. Most striking was her auburn hair, which fell in wavy tresses from under her tawdry Greek helmet. The spear she held was set like that of some archaic sentry and her gaze was so direct and level as to make her look like a character in a tableau. Yet she was no figure of
papier
mâché.
The shape of her thigh was as unmistakable as the rise and fall of her breasts.
‘Ain’t she just the thing, Nelson?’ whispered Tom. ‘And there’s five more like her. Graham is not one to stint his clients when it comes to shocks, natural or otherwise.’
Nelson had to drag away his eyes so as not to be caught in the act of staring. But even if he sought to disguise it from his friend he felt a surge of energy through his limbs. The creature was striking in her beauty. And even as he looked at the occupants of the other alcoves the image of that
full-lipped face stayed in his mind. He knew, without looking again, that her eyes were green and felt, without knowing why, that her disposition was kindly. Then he had to remind himself of past experience, of the times he had been fooled by other impressions, seeing a kind heart only to discover at the end of the carnal transaction that it was in reality made of silver fed stone.
Yet he kept glancing back as Tom prattled on about the other models, the machines and contraptions that Dr Graham employed in his treatments.
‘Now there’s a bed fit for a king,’ he enthused, dragging Nelson’s eyes to the great round couch, padded with satin, decorated by near lewd furbelows that, in his present state, brought about a degree of tumescence. A mighty clap came forth next, and the stage behind the bed was suddenly occupied by even more scantily clad beauties, with that sweet female voice rising to a warbling crescendo. One man stood in the middle, in powdered wig and sober black, his eyes lively and his expression animated as he accepted the applause of his audience.
‘Ladies, gentlemen and sufferers, welcome,’ he intoned, his voice heavy with a Scottish brogue, arms outstretched like a Christ receptive. ‘I come among you as a healer, a humble servant of God, who has put me on this earth to advance the cause of a troubled humanity.’
Some of the flambeaux had been extinguished, and the room had darkened. Nelson half listened as the good doctor began his lecture, talking of the connection between the soul and the body, and his claim to have found in electricity the umbilical cord that connected them. References to the act of procreation he handled with a skill that could scandalise no one, as he wandered from afflictions in general to his particular subject, the begetting of children and the problems associated with any man’s inability to sire an heir.
‘For it is with we, the heirs to Adam, that such responsibility lies. You would shudder to see the brave men I have had weep upon my shoulder when forced to admit that they are unable to provide the seed of life. And all, my friends, is not dissipation. Our God, in one guise, may be our saviour, but in another he is tormentor enough to leave innocent souls bereft of the process of the mind that turns a limp sliver of useless flesh into the spear of creation.’
Nelson turned to look back to that alcove. The girl had relaxed now, almost a shadow in the dim prevailing light, leaning against the side of her perch. Her spear was at rest and he observed that her eyes were closed as if she was asleep. Eyes that could see a distant ship under a gloomy sky had little difficulty in assessing those features in repose. Like those of a child, they bespoke of an innocence that was at odds with her occupation. Behind him Graham spoke on, his voice sinking to a deep, soporific drone, as he sucked in his audience. Vaguely he observed some attendants approaching the snuffed flambeaux, in preparation for lighting them again, which acted as a cue to the alcove attractions to re-adopt their poses.
‘Now, friends,’ Graham barked, his voice returning to normal at the same time as the lighting, ‘is there anyone here with an affliction that requires attention?’
Nelson heard Tom’s voice. ‘My friend, doctor.’
‘Tom!’
‘He is newly returned from Bath, Dr Graham, where he has been recovering from a malarial fever.’
Graham stepped down from the stage and came up to Nelson, to stand so close to him that the herbal odour on his breath was easily discernible.
‘Not wholly recovered, I fancy,’ Graham said softly, ‘judging by the peak of the skin. Your name, sir?’
‘Nelson.’
‘
Captain
Nelson,’ added Tom, with just a hint of envy.
‘Your coat tells me that, sir. What it does not tell me is how and when you came by your fever, and how often it recurs.’
‘It is not something that falls within your province, sir.’
‘Captain, how would you react if I told you how to sail a ship?’ Nelson didn’t answer. ‘I fancy you’d tell me that you knew your business. Please allow that I know mine.’
Graham put a thumb below his eye and pulled the skin down to expose more of the pupil as Nelson talked. He told him briefly of the first fever in the East, the number of times it had recurred, and of the state in which he had been obliged to quit the attack on the San Juan Fort. At the same time Graham’s other hand went to Nelson’s wrist, two fingers on the flat, the thumb pressing at the back.
‘Your tongue, sir, if you please?’ He had to comply, given that he was now the centre of attention. ‘It is not a healthy specimen, I see, and there is a fetid odour on your breath.’
‘His arm pains him,’ said Tom.
‘In what way?’
Nelson had no choice but to answer, nor, when Graham insisted he remove his coat, could he demur. The doctor prodded and poked, sensing the pain he was causing to a man who had no desire to show it publicly. A call over his shoulder produced a contraption that consisted of a handled wheel inside a wooden frame, with bright metal connected, plus two flexible metal strips with amulets attached.
Graham first had his man wind the wheel, then held the two amulets close to each other until a series of sparks flew across the gap. That was accompanied by cries from his audience that ranged from fear to wonder. Graham insisted that Nelson remove his shirt from one arm and shoulder, then place one amulet on the wrist and the other high on the upper arm.
‘You have a blockage, sir, which does not permit the message of your vital spirit to transmit itself to the extremities of this limb. It is my aim, using the latest discoveries of the sciences, to undo this. You, sir, when I wind my wheel and generate the force that will course through you, will think you
are partaking of a miracle. You are not, sir. You are merely in receipt of God’s good grace. What we have has been on this earth since Creation. Only now has God seen fit to enlighten us as to its use.’
The first tingling sensation was pleasant, of the kind he had experienced when in anticipation of some great treat. But that didn’t last as the wheel was spun faster.
‘Stand back there,’ Graham barked, mostly to Tom Foley, but also to the curious crowd. ‘You will transfer the cure, and perhaps even the affliction if you touch the patient.’