Sawbones (20 page)

His heart pounding heavily in his own chest, Ezra hung up his apron and put on his jacket. Then he swung out through the theatre doors and into the courtyard of St Bartholomew’s.

The sky was clear and the sounds of the cattle in the market at Smithfield sounded almost pastoral. Ezra thought on Mr Lashley, furious as an ox about to enter the abattoir, and felt much better than he had in a very long time.

Coldbath Fields House of Correction
Coldbath Fields
Clerkenwell
London
November 1792

E
zra stood in front of the prison gates and rang the bell. Behind the crumbling red brick wall he could hear the inmates, and the sounds did nothing to change his opinion that the dead were often infinitely less terrifying than the living.

He had cleared out of Brunswick Square in minutes. He had few possessions apart from the clothes he stood up in and his leather apron, which he’d rolled up and carried over his shoulder. Earlier this morning he had also owned a good coat and an illustrated book on anatomy the master had presented to him last Christmas, but he had pawned both in exchange for the three silver coins he now turned over and over in his pocket, where they rested against the pages of Miss Finch’s letter.

Ezra wished he hadn’t yelled at her and told her he wanted nothing to do with her again. Her theories were outrageous, but, together with everything he’d seen and what Mahmoud had told him, they all made sense. He’d wasted time playing the good apprentice in Lashley’s service when he should have attended Mr Falcon’s post-mortem. He would have bet his three silver coins that Mr Falcon’s heart would have looked as shrivelled as Mr Finch’s.

After the trip to the pawnbroker Ezra had gone to the magistrate’s office in the hope of explaining that Mr Ahmat, who had shot his master, was also responsible for the deaths of two conjurors and was in fact part of something bigger. He had been laughed out of the office.

Ezra recalled the faces of the gunman and his accomplice and cursed. He needed proof; he needed to be certain that whoever was responsible for Abd’s death had also had Mr Finch and Mr Falcon poisoned. Was Ahmat acting alone? There was one way to find out, Ezra had decided: go straight to the source, talk to Ahmat in person. After all, he was in prison now, safely locked up, awaiting the hangman. Ezra wasn’t foolish enough to think he would tell all, but perhaps he could get the man to give something away.

After a long wait, a tall man, rather in need of a good shave, shuffled out of the gatehouse. Ezra hesitated. This could not be as bad as the Fortune of War, he told himself, and stepped forward.

“Excuse me, sir!’

The man squinted at him. “Don’t I know you?” he said. “I do, I do! That scar.” He pointed at Ezra’s face. “I’d remember a phiz like that any day of the week. You’s that surgeon’s boy, ain’t you? Best thing my wife ever done for me, get me a ticket to one of his lectures.” The man whistled, remembering. “Damnedest thing, to see inside a body, how it works, all blood an’ bones! You are him, ain’t you? Bad news your master’s death was – well, we got the cove that done it, that we did.”

“Yes—”

The man cut in. “Don’t tell me.” He began to turn the lock and open the gate. “That’s why you’re here, to see the man what done your master in.” He waved Ezra in. “The pleasure,” he said, “is entirely mine.”

Ezra didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t thought it would be so simple to get in. He followed the warder – “My name’s Harries” – round the outside of the crumbling prison walls to a door that led down underneath the mass of the building.

Harries kept on talking as they descended the stone steps, but Ezra wasn’t listening. He was too busy going over in his head what to ask, how to approach this – but all his questions went out of his head when Mr Harries opened the door.

There, laid on a table covered in a winding sheet, was a body. It wasn’t a cell – it was a mortuary.

“We did for him this morning,” the warder said.

“He’s dead!” Ezra exclaimed. “But there was no trial! I was never called as witness…”

“I hear as he confessed – well, not with words, exactly, of course. Signed something, he did. And there’s no point them keep taking up space when they’re guilty.” Harries began to unwind the sheet. “There you go – and if you, you know, want to do a bit of anatomizing on him now, like, feel free. The bugger deserves everything he gets.”

The face of the hanged man on the table was bloated, its eyes bulging. A thick red rope burn ran under its chin and around the neck.

But it wasn’t the man who’d killed the master.

“Was this the man called Ahmat? You are sure?” Ezra said at last.

“Oh yes. The Turks what brought him in told the magistrate so. The fella couldn’t speak a word of English,” Harries said, smiling. “In fact, he didn’t say much at all – look.”

Harries opened the man’s mouth. It was a mess, a bloody pulpy mess – he’d had his tongue cut out, but it must have been recently.

This short, square man had nothing in common with the slight, narrow-faced gunman who had called himself Ahmat – or his towering accomplice, for that matter. Ezra stepped forward, unravelled the sheet further and pulled out the man’s right arm. Perhaps he would have a tattoo like Abd; perhaps this was some poor sod who worked for the harem or the embassy – but there was nothing there. On his left arm was a sailor’s tattoo, as he’d seen on many cadavers washed up in the Thames.

Ezra checked the body over completely. As well as the removal of the tongue, the man had suffered a blow to the head, possibly at or around the same time.

Whoever did this had probably got some poor drink-sotten cove out of a tavern, coshed him, cut out his tongue so he couldn’t speak and given him to the magistrates as Ahmat.

“The fellows that turned him in, do you know who they were?” Ezra asked.

Harries shrugged. “Grand, I can tell you that – from the embassy, I heard. Turned in one of their own, they did, on account of how he did in poor Mr McAdam, the best surgeon in London.”

Ezra nodded to Harries. “Thank you.” He handed him one of the silver pieces. The warder looked disappointed that he wasn’t going to get to see any anatomizing, but Ezra was sure this body would have nothing to show him. Besides, he had no time to waste – Mr Ahmat was still out in the city, and by the sound of it safe in the embassy. Mahmoud was not safe.

Coldbath Fields was less than a quarter-mile from Clerkenwell Green. Ezra covered the distance in minutes, and knocked hard on the door of Mrs Gurney’s townhouse.

No one came. He knocked again. This time the maid opened the door, the look on her face one of irritation.

“They are all out!” She began to close the door.

“No, wait. Perhaps you could take a message? For Miss Finch?”

The maid shook her head. “Miss Finch has left.”

“Left?” Ezra felt fear grip his heart. Had Ahmat come for her already? “When? Is she still in London?”

“Mrs Gurney said that some gentlemen come looking for her and she did a flit. Left her rent, though, she did.”

“What men? Do you know what they looked like?”

The maid rolled her eyes. “I said as it wasn’t me. If you want to take it up with Mrs Gurney…”

“No, no.” Ezra stepped back and the door shut hard. He looked around. What if something had already happened to Loveday? Why had he been such a petulant idiot and walked away?

Ezra kicked a stone out into the road. He liked to think of himself like the young French surgeons, rational, sober, but sometimes he could be as much a creature of wilfulness as Miss Finch.

Ezra had reached Holborn before he realized he had no idea where he was going. He wasn’t thinking; his mind was fogged up with worry and something else. Dread. He scanned every face on the street, terrified he’d walk into Oleg or Ahmat. He had to find somewhere safe. The city was a blur of people and movement – where could he go? There was only one answer, the only place that had ever been home: Great Windmill Street.

Ezra made his way in through Ham Yard as he had done early that morning. He was careful to make sure no one was watching as he slipped inside the lecture room and then into the house. He called out to Mahmoud, who appeared at the top of the stairs looking cleaner and better dressed than earlier, clutching a whole pie in one hand. He was smiling, too.

“Miss Finch is here. We have been waiting for you all day.”

Loveday appeared next to Mahmoud on the landing and Ezra felt the tension in his bones ebb away.

“Thank heavens! I went to the house – the maid told me some men—”

“I thought they might come after me. So I am wearing my travelling habit. She lifted up the skirts of her dress and they positively clanked. She grinned. “I remember Pa saying it’s always best to carry money close. I suppose he was talking about the rubies, too. Come in, there’s dinner.”

Ezra followed them into the master’s office to find a picnic laid out on one of the dust sheets.

Mahmoud sat down cross-legged on the floor, finished his pie and took another. He and Loveday assured Ezra that this was the Turkish fashion and so most apt.

Ezra watched them share a joke about a dog, a fox and a three-legged milking stool, and he wished he could be that easy with people, especially when lives were in danger.

He went to the window and looked out through a hole in the shutter. Out in the street, life went on as normal. Assassins were only notable by their absence.

“What is up with you, Ezra McWhatsit?” Loveday said, brushing the crumbs off her dress. “Mahmoud and I have put the world to rights while you look out of the window with a face as long as Friday.”

“Sorry, I was distracted,” Ezra said. “I was thinking how there can never be justice in this whole matter. I saw the man they hanged today for my master’s murder – the man they think is Ahmat – and it was not him. That means we are still in danger.”

Mahmoud wiped his mouth. “I would simply tell the magistrates they have made a mistake.”

Ezra sighed. “They laughed me out of their offices. I am just a surgeon’s apprentice. No one would believe me.”

“The word of a servant is never worth as much as that of a man of substance,” said Mahmoud. “That is the way of things.”

Ezra scowled. Loveday gave him a sharp look and unwrapped a parcel of three small seed cakes.

“Cake, see?”

But Ezra was not to be distracted. “Mahmoud, you may not care who lives or dies, but I guarantee this Ahmat and his Russian friend are working to unpick your beloved empire.”

Mahmoud nodded slowly. “This Ahmat is a dog. Perhaps if I could see the ambassador himself…”

“Surely he would believe
you
,” Loveday said. “The son of the sultan.”

“I am not supposed to be here,” Mahmoud reminded her. “He would call me an impostor. It would go badly for my grandmother, too, if I was found out.”

They were all quiet for a long while. Mahmoud ate up every last crumb until the dust sheet was perfectly and completely clean. Loveday ruffled his hair as if to apologize for not having any more food, and Ezra saw the street boy again, not the sultan.

Ezra sat up. “There is only one answer. Mahmoud must leave as soon as possible, sell the jewels, use the money and get away before he is hunted down.”

“But then your Ahmat would still be at the embassy, dripping poison,” said Mahmoud.

Ezra looked at him, surprised, but could see by his thoughtful frown that he was in earnest. It seemed the boy was more willing to take Ahmat seriously when he was considered a threat to his precious empire.

“I know,” said Loveday. “We can take a letter signed by you, Mahmoud. We could take it straight to the ambassador.”

Ezra looked at her. “We went to the embassy, remember? They wouldn’t even let us through the door!”

Mahmoud nodded at Loveday. “Yes. You must find a way. I will write two letters. One will be for my grandmother, the valide sultan. You must hide it in the diplomatic post. She will know I am safe and coming home. And then for the ambassador I will write another letter, about this Ahmat – revealing the name of the snake, the turncoat – which you will leave on the ambassador’s desk. Only once that is done will I go.”

Ezra made up a bed for Loveday in Mrs Boscaven’s room. Mahmoud insisted on sleeping on the floor on the top landing, ready for fight or flight. Curled up in a ball, Mahmoud looked less like a sultan, Ezra thought, more like a cat – but Ezra could hardly blame him for his vigilance. Now that Loveday was being hunted too, the threat that surrounded them seemed more real and present than ever.

Before Ezra fell asleep he looked around his empty room and made a small prayer to remember Mr McAdam. Then he blew out his candle stub and prayed for some protection – for Loveday, for Mahmoud and for himself.

The next morning Ezra went out to fetch some breakfast, making sure no one saw him as he left. As he made his way down the street he was wrestling with the problem of how to get inside the Ottoman Embassy unseen. Then he realized he had walked past the St John shop without thinking of Anna once. He turned back. The sign creaked in the breeze. She was in another country, across a sea. Ezra felt a little sad, but that was all. He was glad she wasn’t here to see what had happened. She would not approve at all, she would have told him to go to the authorities or forget everything. He would not. The man who shot his master must not walk away. He knew this was the right thing to do. He was certain.

Ezra sped up towards the baker’s. His friends would be waiting for breakfast.

When he returned, Loveday had gone, left early, taken her sword. “Mahmoud! You shouldn’t have let her go!”

Mahmoud tore off a piece of the loaf Ezra had bought. “You were gone for quite a long time. How could I stop her? She said she had an idea.”

Ezra raked his hair with his hands. “She didn’t say what she was doing? Where she was going?”

Mahmoud shrugged. “She said not to worry, she had her rapier, and she promised she would be back before dark.”

Ezra swore. She would be eyeballing the embassy – she would be seen. She was hardly the sort of girl who faded into the background.