Chapter 34
T
homas could not remember it being so cold. Even when his father had taken him up the Delaware in winter to hunt elk as a boy there had been a passage through the ice, but now even the Thames was frozen over. London became a strange landscape of drifts and dunes that rose to rooftops and fell down gullies. In the streets razors of crystal ice sliced through the frozen air as they clung from eaves and overhangs, and men’s breath looked like the hot steam from cups in coffeehouses.
On the river itself children lit bonfires and enterprising traders set up their stalls on the ice. It was as if the blood that flowed through the great artery of the city that normally pulsated with ships and barges and wherries had been leeched.
At first the sack-’em-up men were worried, too. The ground was so hard their picks and shovels barely marked the surface of the graveyards, but then, as the frost took hold, followed by the deep snow, they found they no longer had to dig. The young and the old were falling in the streets, frozen to the marrow. All they had to do was pick them up and deliver them to the dissecting rooms.
There the corpses would be packed in the very snow that had killed them, waiting their turn under the anatomist’s knife. Stored in outhouses, the cadavers remained intact for days, protected against the ravages of rot and worms, ensuring a regular supply for eager students.
Thomas had been approached several times. In fact there seemed to be more bodies for sale than loaves of bread that winter. He gave the scoundrels short shrift. He wanted no truck with their filthy trade and besides, he had more than enough to keep him occupied on those long, dark winter days since his return to the capital.
Christmas had come and gone and two months had elapsed since his last visit to Oxford. In between performing amputations and lecturing to packed auditoriums, he had devoted what little spare time there was to testing for the most obvious and easily detected poisons, such as mercury and arsenic in Lord Crick’s sample. He had found nothing to arouse any suspicion. If the truth were told, he felt quite wretched about his efforts and the quest to find the poison that had killed the young nobleman. He had only agreed to continue his searches on behalf of Captain Farrell because he believed there was a possibility he was innocent and because Lydia had asked him to.
Thomas had spoken with the captain at length before he left Oxford, asking probing questions about any other poisons that may have been used on the estate. Farrell insisted he had no access to any other toxic substances and knew of no others. The young doctor had drawn a blank. He was working in the dark and, without a dim and distant light to follow, however weak, his journey toward the truth remained strewn with blind alleys.
Lydia had journeyed back to Boughton Hall alone. After their visit to the prison, Thomas had put her onto the coach for Brandwick and Lovelock planned to meet her there. Their parting had been strained and muted. The mutual pleasure they once shared was a guilty secret and would have to remain so.
On cold, bleak nights, when the snow lay piled high in London’s eerily silent streets, it was difficult not to think of her and long for her warmth.
He had lost count of the letters he had written her late at night in his solitary room, longing for her presence. Yet he knew if he had sent them and they had been intercepted, both of them would be undone. If Francis Crick had seen him leave Lydia’s room that night, he had said nothing. Indeed, the young student had been notable by his absence of late, attending none of Thomas’s lectures since their last encounter at Boughton Hall. His disappearance troubled Thomas, but he brushed it aside and tried to concentrate instead on finding out the truth.
The body holds within it many secrets. Each organ stores its own particular mysteries, ensconced deep within its membranes, hidden in tissue or stored in beefy cliffs of muscle. How easy, how straightforward it must have been, mused Thomas, as he pored over the young earl’s heart, to be a priest in Babylon or in Ancient Greece or Rome. In those days of soothsayers and oracles it was the liver that was the seat of the soul and the center of all vitality. All one had to do if advice were sought on how to outflank an enemy or gain revenge was to sacrifice a sheep or a goat and slit open the belly. By simply gazing deep into the patterns of the ducts and lobes, the markings of the liver and the lay of the gallbladder, the future would be revealed.
“Such divinations aided no lesser figure than Julius Caesar,” pronounced Dr. Carruthers one evening. He had taken to sitting with his young protégé in the laboratory every evening as he labored, seemingly fruitlessly, on Lord Crick’s heart.
Thomas was feeling completely bereft of any inspiration, divine or otherwise. The only revelations on which he could rely would be not from the gods but of his own making.
“Surely, sir, justice, like science, should not only be based on the natural order, but on fact,” retorted Thomas. “In the absence of hard fact that justice is flawed and the justice that is about to be dispensed next week at Oxford Assizes is based largely on supposition and circumstantial evidence.”
“A good judge will recognize that, young fellow,” reassured Dr. Carruthers. But Thomas was not so sure. Each day since his return from Oxfordshire he had entered a surgery, much as a judge did a court of law. More than once he had seen a patient awaiting an amputation, much like an accused awaiting trial. The hapless people would be nervous, tense, unsure of what fate was about to befall them, but no matter the outcome they knew it would be painful.
“But, sir,” Thomas countered, “it is the surgeon and the surgeon alone who is responsible. He alone makes an incision. He alone is close enough to hear the little crack at the end when the arm or the leg falls from the table. There may be students watching, but we are the adventurers. We are the ones who forge pulsing rivers of blood and bound from bone to bone.”
Dr. Carruthers nodded. “You have a point there, young fellow.”
Fired up, Thomas went on: “A judge, on the other hand, leads an expedition. He is not alone. True, he charts unfamiliar ground on occasion; ground that is strewn with inaccuracies, deviations, and untruths, but he can only direct what he hears. He cannot control it.”
This thought frightened Thomas. He had no control. He was in the hands of others whom he did not know and therefore could not trust. Why had Captain Farrell’s defense counsel not yet contacted him, even though the trial was imminent? Surely he would be asked to give evidence?
Later that evening, as Thomas and Dr. Carruthers sat by the fire taking a nightcap before bed, the old anatomist sensed that all was still not well with his protégé. He was reading
The Daily Advertiser
in a monotone and the old doctor could tell his mind was elsewhere.
“Tell me again about that fire in Great Portland Street,” he said suddenly.
“Fire? What fire?” replied Thomas before realizing his master’s ruse.
“Your mouth read out the article not five minutes ago, young fellow,” jibed Carruthers. “But your head was somewhere else.”
“ ’Tis true I am a little preoccupied with the trial at the moment,” he replied humbly.
“Preoccupied! A monkey’s arse,” chortled the old doctor. “Your head never came back from Oxford and I’ll wager you left your heart there, too.”
Thomas was glad his mentor could not see the blood rush to his cheeks.
“ ’Tis a good job you go on the morrow!” exclaimed Dr. Carruthers. “Around here, you’re no good to man nor beast.”
Chapter 35
A
t first light the following day Thomas took the coach back to Oxford, but instead of taking a room once more at the White Horse, he hired a mount to ride to Boughton Hall. It was early evening when he arrived and Will was there in the courtyard to greet him.
“Dr. Silkstone,” he called as Thomas turned in through the gate.
The young doctor smiled and rode up to the boy. “Are you expected, sir?” he asked, taking Thomas’s reins.
“No, Will, I am not,” he replied, starting to dismount. Just as he had taken one foot from the stirrups, however, something, a rat perhaps, disturbed his horse and it reared up suddenly. Thomas tried to grab on to its mane, but he could not and was knocked to the cobbles.
Will tugged on the bridle and quickly controlled the gelding, settling him once more. But the damage had been quickly done. Although Thomas had no bones broken, he had fallen against the boot scraper near the rear door and had gashed his hand quite deeply. He held it as the blood began to surface.
“Sir, you’re hurt,” cried Will, noticing the crimson slash on the doctor’s hand.
“ ’Tis nothing,” replied Thomas, knowing full well that the wound needed attention.
The young boy led the horse into a nearby stable as Thomas grasped his injured hand in pain.
“My mother has ointments to stop bad things taking hold, sir,” he said, guiding Thomas by the elbow. “Please come with me.”
The doctor’s faint protests fell on deaf ears and Will led him to his own home, just across the courtyard.
“Mother. Mother!” the young boy called out. Hannah Lovelock stood at her kitchen table, mixing dough for bread. As soon as she saw Dr. Silkstone she wiped her hands on her apron and came to see what the matter was.
“The doctor’s cut real deep,” said Will, guiding Thomas toward his mother.
“ ’Tis nothing, please,” protested Thomas.
Hannah looked uneasy, but went up to the young doctor and inspected the wound. She gestured to a chair and Thomas sat down as he was bidden.
“Fetch me that jar,” Hannah instructed Will and the boy obeyed. Thomas’s eyes followed him to the shelf that would have been more at home in an apothecary’s shop than a servant’s home. Row upon row of tinctures and salves were lined up in jars and pots. Rarely had he seen such a gallimaufry of herbs and plants, of dried fungi and strange roots. Shelves groaned under the weight of gallipots of preserved leaves and urns packed full of petals. There were ampules of oil and pots of creams and lotions ranged in rows.
“You keep many remedies,” Thomas ventured as he watched her fetch a linen cloth and a jug of water.
“That I do,” she snapped, drawing the conversation to a close before it had even begun.
She sat down beside him at the kitchen table and cleaned the blood from the wound before taking a few crushed leaves from the jar and adding them to a little oil. Next she took a pad of gauze and poured the oil onto it before placing it gently on the wound.
Thomas noted that on each of these jars were pasted leaves or petals or pieces of root. He surmised that as Hannah in all probability could neither read nor write, this was her way of identifying their contents. He saw that the leaf stuck on the jar whose contents Hannah was using was large and oval and slightly hairy in appearance, but he did not ask his nurse what it was. Aware that she felt uneasy Thomas let her work in silence. The herb had no distinctive odor, but the oil was soothing against the heat of his wound.
“Mother says it cures all ills,” chirped Will.
But Hannah snapped at him. “You hush your mouth. ’Tis nothing but a common weed.”
There was an awkward silence as she tore a piece of linen from an old petticoat and wrapped his hand in a bandage with great expertise.
“I am indebted to you, Mistress Lovelock,” said Thomas as she tied a knot.
She did not bother to look up. The young doctor felt awkward. If he pulled out a few farthings from his pocket she would be offended, he knew, so he simply rose and thanked her for her attentions.
Will escorted him out of the quarters. “I told you she could help you,” he gloated.
Thomas smiled. “Your mother has a rare knowledge. Perhaps I could talk with her sometime.”
Will shrugged. “All I know is her ointments help the burning on my hands and her potions help me sleep at night,” he replied.
“You are fortunate,” said Thomas and young Will beamed with pride.
Thomas found Lydia cutting the first daffodil stems in the walled garden. Her chestnut hair was swept back so that he saw her in profile. She was every bit as beautiful as he remembered her. He looked around him to make sure no one else would witness their reunion.
He walked up to her and, as soon as she heard his footfall crunch on the pebbled path, she turned. For a split second she simply stared at him, then her face broke into a smile. It was something he had seen her do very rarely and it surprised and delighted him, but fearful that someone might be watching them, Thomas simply took her hand and kissed it. It was then that she saw the bandage. “But you are hurt,” she cried.
“A scratch,” he told her dismissively.
“It is so good to see you,” Lydia told him as they walked along the box-hedged path toward the house. “I have missed you so much,” she blurted, grabbing his arm, but then remembering herself and letting go just as quickly. “The trial is ...” Her voice waned.
“I needed to be here,” said Thomas earnestly.
“You did not write,” she said reproachfully.
“I thought it too dangerous.”
She nodded, knowing it to be true.
After a few seconds’ silence, she said: “It is not easy without. . .” She stopped herself uttering her husband’s name, as if the very mention of it hurt her.
“How is he bearing up?” asked Thomas.
“His spirits are low and his health fails.”
Detecting a note of despair in her voice he said quickly: “I have been continuing with the tests in London.”
“Yes?” she replied eagerly.
“But I am afraid I still cannot identify the poison that killed your brother.” He felt woefully inadequate. He knew he had failed her so far.
As they walked on, the watery March sun was sinking below the garden wall and the green shoots of bluebells were emerging from their winter beds.
“ ’Twill soon be spring,” he told her, not meaning to sound trite.
“It holds little promise this year,” she countered.
For a moment they walked on in silence until Thomas caught sight of Lady Crick at the far end of the garden. The old woman was about to open the wrought-iron gate that led toward the track to Brandwick. Lydia saw her, too, and instantly called out to Kidd, who was hoeing a bed nearby.
“Stop her!” she called out, and the gardener sprang into action, bounding up to the old woman and taking her by the arm. She seemed agitated at first, but by the time Lydia arrived she had calmed down a little.
“Now, Mama, we don’t want you getting lost, do we?” chastised Lydia gently, before Kidd led her away back toward the house.
“My mother will keep wandering off,” explained Lydia as they began their journey toward the house once more.
“She enjoys her freedom,” ventured Thomas.
“Yes,” replied Lydia, frowning. “When Francis is here he takes her for walks in the woods. He is kind to her.” She turned her face toward his, reminding him again of her fragile beauty. Her eyes met his for a fleeting moment and darted away again. He had not told her of his encounter with her cousin on the landing and nor did he intend to.
“Francis is a good man,” she added as if talking to herself as much as to Thomas. He only hoped that discretion was another of his qualities.