The Art of Dying

by Ambrose Parry

  Henry came to a short while later, blinking and groaning. Gabriela looked to Raven, ready with more chloroform, but Henry was awake enough to refuse her.

  ‘Thank you, my dear, but I am impatient to survey Raven’s handiwork.’ He grimaced. ‘Gods, it looks like a pigskin football.’

  Then he offered Raven a smile.

  ‘I jest. Neatly done, old friend. You have my gratitude. Now, if you don’t consider it rude after your considerable endeavours, it is my firm intention to lapse into unconsciousness, which will not require the assistance of your chloroform. If it turns out I am not dead in the morning, please do make sure I am roused by eight. Langenbeck is giving a lecture on battlefield amputations at nine and I do not wish to miss it.’

  TWO

  hat was very courageous, what you did,’ said Gabriela. It was the first either had spoken since they fell upon each other.

  They lay upon Raven’s bed, tired, languorous, yet far from sleep. Liselotte had stayed with Henry, ministering to him overnight, although not in the way she had perhaps intended some hours ago. For Raven and Gabriela, however, the proximity to danger had produced an unexpected amorousness; morbid fear transmuted into passion.

  Raven had known her for several weeks, having been introduced at a dinner hosted by the Charité’s prosector, Dr Virchow. Although he was head of the pathology department at the hospital, Virchow had an interest in obstetrics and therefore an interest in Raven, who, despite his lowly status, had worked as an apprentice to the famous Professor Simpson. Everyone was keen to know more about the great man and his remarkable discovery. Gabriela was a friend of Rose Mayer, soon to be Virchow’s wife. She had shown little interest in what Raven had to say about chloroform but became considerably more attentive when he mentioned his experience with the Edinburgh photography pioneers David Octavius Hill and the late Robert Adamson.

  Gabriela was a slight woman with dark eyes and dark hair, curls loosely swept up, always at imminent risk of unfurling. He was constantly struck by the contrast with the women at home, their hair pulled rigidly into place, their skin so pale. It was not merely their appearance that seemed constrained by comparison. Fifteen years Raven’s senior, Gabriela was a writer, artist and sometime artist’s model who had some years ago outraged her wealthy family by leaving her aristocratic husband. She was not a woman prepared to be bound by convention, which both excited Raven and yet made him wary of her. They both knew their relationship was not something that could last: its very transience, no doubt, was part of the allure. Neither would have sought the other out as a suitable partner otherwise.

  Raven looked at her in the light of the candles she had placed around the bed, jammed into the necks of wax-encrusted bottles.

  ‘I have performed surgical procedures before. Surgery, however, is not my primary area of interest. The courage was Henry’s in entrusting me with the task.’

  ‘No, I mean how you fought off those men who tried to rob us. There were three of them and you faced them alone, knowing one of them had a pistol.’

  Could he detect an edge to what she was saying? One of the things that made him wary of Gabriela was the fear that she had the wisdom and experience to see through him to the truth of what he might conceal.

  ‘I wagered he would not have time to reload it.’

  ‘Something of a high-stakes wager.’

  Raven looked away, fearing what more his expression might involuntarily disclose, specifically that his wager had been wrong. He opted for a playful response instead, as though making light of it.

  ‘I would have given them money had we any to offer. Having drunk it all, there seemed little option but to fight them off. I think it unlikely they would have accepted our apologies in the absence of payment.’

  ‘Nonetheless, three on one is not a fair contest, yet you did not shrink from it.’

  ‘It was not my first brawl, if that is what you are implying. I have the experience to know that those who prey upon the weak and unsuspecting do not always rise to the challenge when faced with a real fight.’

  ‘You placed a high-stakes wager on that too.’

  Raven said nothing. His gaze was drawn to the letter that lay by his bed, to which he still had not replied. Dr George Keith was leaving 52 Queen Street to set up practice with his brother Thomas, and Professor Simpson was offering Raven the position of his new assistant. He was fully qualified now, an apprentice no more, and in his year abroad he had expanded his medical knowledge more than he would have thought possible in such a short space of time.

  And yet.

  He thought of what Henry had often intimated regarding his ‘perverse appetite for mayhem’, as he put it. Moreover, he had his mother’s words echoing in his head, spoken sometimes in jest, sometimes in earnest.

  You have the devil in you.

  Raven had come to hope that was no longer true. He had not been involved in any such chaos for a long time, certainly not since leaving Edinburgh, and thought it was because he had tamed his nature. He wondered now whether it was merely that the opportunity had not arisen. When bidden tonight, the devil had roused itself, proving it was not dead but merely sleeping. And back in that alley a man had paid for disturbing its slumber.

  Gabriela placed a hand upon his shoulder.

  ‘Remember me?’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry. My mind strayed. Thinking about Henry.’

  She laughed. ‘Your mind strayed much further than the next room. Do not take me for a fool, Raven. I have been with you many times, remember? Whenever we lie together, afterwards you are not here.’

  It would be folly to deny it. Certainly not to her.

  ‘You are somewhere distant, in the company of someone else. I have always wondered who she is.’

  He wanted to say that it was a more complex matter than that, but he did not wish to encourage further scrutiny. She was older than him, wiser than him, and he feared there was little he could hide from her. He wondered, then, why he wished to.

  Raven thought about the men Gabriela must have had before him. He did not contemplate it in a way that was jealous or disapproving. Rather, he wondered what version of herself she had presented to each of them. He wondered at the lives with which she had intersected, the many people she had been.

  ‘Gabriela, you have lived in several different places, uprooted yourself and started again. Is it possible to become someone else, to create yourself anew? Or do you always bring with you the person you truly are?’

  Gabriela traced a finger across Raven’s chest.

  ‘I think the question you must ask is who it is you wish to become. Do you even know?’

  ‘I wish to be a successful medical practitioner. Respected by my peers and sought after by patients.’

  ‘Why would you need to change yourself in order to do that? It is everything you have been educating yourself for.’

  ‘Yes, but in Edinburgh the standards and expectations are so high, and I fear I will betray myself somehow. It is a place where reputation is everything.’

  Gabriela raised an eyebrow and stared intently at him.

  ‘You would speak to a woman such as myself about reputation? If you had any notion of the disdain to which I have been subject …’

  ‘But that is why I ask. Can you truly become the person society expects? Or is it always a matter of wearing a mask to hide your flawed nature?’

  Gabriela considered this a while before answering.

  ‘If you wear it long enough, a mask will become a comfortable fit. But you risk losing the man behind it.’

  Raven thought it sounded a price worth paying.

  ‘I have been to London, Paris, Vienna, Leipzig, and now Berlin. I have studied at great institutions, learned at the hands of great men. I should feel transformed, and yet in many respects I fear I have not changed at all. I thought that the more I learned, the more I experienced of the world, the more of a man I would become. I thought that I would feel certain of myself. But instead I feel as though
the world just keeps getting larger and I am not growing to meet it.’

  Gabriela nodded, giving him a sympathetic look that was at once comforting and yet made him feel like a child.

  ‘I suspect that you have journeyed long enough, Will Raven. If you have become lost, there is only one place you can be sure to find yourself.’

  EDINBURGH

  THREE

  he waiting room was crowded, as usual, the patients jostling for a position on the chairs closest to the fire. It was early yet, and Sarah suspected that the throng would soon be spilling out into the hallway and onto the stairs. Despite the chaotic nature of the domestic arrangements, Sarah still loved 52 Queen Street and was determined that her change of circumstances would not alter what she saw as her role here. She felt embedded in the place, bound to it.

  It was so much more than a house or a family home. It was a place of learning. It provided an opportunity to acquire knowledge of medicine but also how best to apply that knowledge and look after those who were suffering. Here were rich and poor together, although only the former were expected to pay. Irrespective of financial means, or lack thereof, the treatment was the same: need alone was deemed just qualification. The variety of conditions which presented here also meant that the clinics were the best classrooms and every day was a chance to learn more. She sometimes liked to believe that the opportunities afforded her by working here were better than those of many a medical student at the university.

  She was no longer a housemaid, but there were days when she still felt like a servant. Dr Simpson had a habit, when the weather was cold, and as he had done that morning, of shouting for tea and a dish of oatmeal for the patients in the waiting room. Many had travelled long distances to be there and were cold and hungry when they arrived. This would have been harder to bear were it not for the fact that Mrs Simpson was usually serving the patients alongside her.

  There were other days when she felt more like a nurse or assistant, and days when she felt almost as if she was a member of the family. She often helped with the children and had become particularly fond of Jamie. He was prone to eczema; the itchy eruptions were a constant torment to him and she was often tasked with bathing him and rubbing his inflamed skin with olive oil. Despite this he was a sweet child; calm where his older brothers were boisterous.

  Sarah heard a clapping of hands.

  ‘Come away now. Let’s have another.’

  She led an older lady down the corridor to Dr Simpson’s consulting room. He was standing at the door waiting as they approached, unsuccessfully trying to stifle a yawn. ‘I had a hard drive last night in a carriage without springs,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘I changed it but was no better off and today I feel well pounded.’

  Sarah returned to the waiting room to collect the empty cups and bowls from the morning’s repast. She carried her loaded tray down the hallway, negotiating a route past David and Walter, who were using umbrellas as Arabian tents, and Glen the dog, who was as usual stationed beside the coat-stand, hoping to accompany his master should he choose to go out. She entered the kitchen to find Lizzie scrubbing at the porridge pot and Mrs Lyndsay chopping vegetables at the kitchen table.

  ‘Has he finished feeding the five thousand then?’ Mrs Lyndsay asked. Sarah was never sure whether the cook was a supporter of Dr Simpson’s largesse or not. She was a religious woman in the conventional sense – a supporter of the Free Church and regular attender at Sunday services – but whether this extended to opening your house and your kitchen to the poor of Edinburgh was not apparent.

  ‘I think that’s all for now.’

  Sarah took her tray over to the sink. Lizzie looked up from her scrubbing and gave her a thin smile. Lizzie had been rescued from the Lock hospital, one of Dr Simpson’s waifs and strays – as Sarah had once been herself, although mercifully not under the same circumstances. Lizzie had been a fallen girl – Mrs Lyndsay’s words – and though her venereal disease had been cured, the canker on her soul had yet to be expunged. Hard work had been deemed the remedy for that, and as a result the poor girl was given the work of two.

  ‘The good doctor should have more care for the contents of his pocketbook,’ Mrs Lyndsay said. Sarah was about to reply that funds did not seem to be in short supply when Mrs Lyndsay gestured to her to come closer. In a conspiratorial whisper she said: ‘There is money gone missing. A discrepancy in the household accounts. It has Mrs Simpson worried.’

  ‘A simple mistake, perhaps?’ Sarah suggested, but she could tell from Mrs Lyndsay’s tone that the cook thought something more sinister was afoot.

  ‘Has anyone checked the windows?’ Sarah added, referring to the time when Dr Simpson had used a ten-pound note to stop a rattling sash.

  Mrs Lyndsay did not smile but looked over at Lizzie, still up to her elbows in hot water. ‘I have my own suspicions,’ she muttered.

  On her way back to the waiting area, Sarah was called into Dr Simpson’s consulting room, where he had finished examining the older lady, a widow by the name of Mrs Combe. He helped her into a chair, then sat himself down on a stool beside her, preferring to be at eye level when discussing a patient’s condition. He disliked standing over people, particularly when imparting bad news.

  ‘Dr Simpson, don’t sit on such a lowly seat,’ Mrs Combe said, evidently unimpressed by his solicitude. ‘It’s not fitting for a man such as yourself.’

  ‘It’s more than I merit, for your condition has baffled me,’ the doctor replied, shaking his head.

  ‘You look tired,’ Mrs Combe told him, seemingly unperturbed by the lack of a diagnosis; concerned more for her physician than for herself.

  ‘Well, I was six flights up in a room on the Cowgate last night, trying to save a poor woman who had been badly mauled by her husband. I happened to meet the police and they asked me to look at her. I think she’ll live.’

  Dr Simpson ran a hand through his tousled hair and then roused himself, standing up with some effort and rubbing his lower back. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘A touch of sciatica.’

  He walked to the desk and wrote down a prescription while Sarah dressed a sore on the patient’s shin. ‘Though the diagnosis eludes me, I hope this might provide some relief from your symptoms,’ he said.

  The lady began to rummage about in the little bag she carried. Dr Simpson placed a hand on her arm.

  ‘Put your money away. I will take no fee,’ he said. ‘I have done nothing. I deserve nothing.’

  Sarah wondered if he had been made aware of the hole in the household finances and, more importantly, whether he knew who was responsible for it. The old lady rose from her chair and made her way to the door.

  ‘Do see that you take some rest, Dr Simpson,’ she said. ‘So many in this town rely upon you – we cannot have you becoming ill.’

  ‘I thank you for your concern,’ he replied. ‘Ordinarily your good counsel would have to be disregarded but I am happy to say that I have found a replacement for Dr Keith. I have appointed a new assistant.’

  Sarah stopped what she was doing. This was news to her too.

  ‘And who is this new assistant?’ the lady asked. ‘Do we know him?’

  ‘You might have met him before. He was my apprentice not so long ago.’

  Sarah dropped the length of bandage she had just finished winding into a neat roll and it slowly unspooled as it wheeled across the floor.

  ‘His name is Will Raven.’

  FOUR

  here was a bite in the breeze as Raven climbed from the carriage and hefted his bags down to the pavement. Late autumn in Edinburgh. He permitted himself a wry smile at its chilly embrace, like a welcome home from a relative with a grudge. Its teeth were not so sharp as they once felt, however. He used to think that the wind off the Forth was a cruel presence. That was before he had felt the gusts that whipped along the Danube.

  The familiarity of the city’s sights and smells was heartening. He had only come to appreciate how much he missed Edinburgh once he had comm
itted to return, and if he had doubts as to the wisdom of his decision, they were blown away like steam as his eyes lit upon the door to 52 Queen Street.

  How vividly he recalled the first time he came here. He had been unconscionably late, dishevelled in his worn and grubby clothes, and sporting a recently sutured wound upon his face. He raised his hand to his left cheek in a semi-reflexive action, his index finger tracing the length of the scar. He thought of the individual responsible for it but quickly put that ugly visage from his mind. It was said the best revenge is living well, and he was certain their respective fortunes would have been satisfyingly divergent in the time that had passed. Raven had left that world behind, while his assailant was no doubt utterly mired there, if he still lived at all.

  His facial disfigurement aside, he felt his appearance to be considerably improved since he first presented himself here. His wardrobe, like his travels, had been financed largely by the involuntary contribution of another gentleman, late of this parish, who had no need of luxuries where he had ended up. His clothes were new, tailored to fit, and his boots were polished to a high shine. He wondered if he would be recognised, so complete was his transformation.

  When Raven had first seen it, 52 Queen Street had represented a route to wealth and renown, his aspirations filled with aristocratic patients and their hefty fees. Professor Simpson had shown him what it truly meant to be a doctor. This house and those who lived there had been the making of him, had saved him from himself. Now that he had returned, he wanted to show them all how he had flourished.

  He paused on the front step, trying to anticipate the changes he would find inside, conscious that things were unlikely to be as he had left them. He remembered with a mixture of fondness and exasperation the gallimaufry of messy humanity which was often to be found behind this door. The personality of its owner was stamped upon the place from the attic to the basement. It was warm, cheerful, bustling, challenging and inspiring; but it could also be chaotic, confounding, fraught, thrawn and downright overwhelming. There were animals running loose, children running looser, patients spilling out of doorways, staff scrambling to accommodate the guests invited upon a whim of the professor, and somehow amidst it all had been made a discovery that changed the world.