‘What type of voice was it?’ I said.
‘A low whining voice, tearful and cringing.’
‘It was a man’s voice?’
‘Oh yes. I can say that for certain.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘Then I heard the sound of footsteps pacing back and forth. I heard a second voice. It was Aberlady—’
‘Are you certain?’
‘Quite certain. “I must get rid of it,” he said. There was a pause, and more footsteps, and then the first wretched voice said, “I cannot”. There was some muttering, and the sound of glass jars being moved. I heard Aberlady cry out, “Do it! Do it now!” There was a whimpering sound, and then a scream—’
Dr Sackville dabbed at his lips with his handkerchief. ‘I shouted his name and battered on the door, but it seemed to make him more agitated, and I heard him shout “They’re here! Oh God!” And then there was the other wretched voice crying out, “It’s too late! Too late!” I heard the Pestle girl scream, and the sound of scuffling, and breaking glass, and then all at once the key rattled in the lock, and the girl flung open the door and burst out of the apothecary like a rabbit out of a trap. She slipped between my legs and vanished up the stairs onto the deck. I rushed inside and was just in time to see John Aberlady spring out of the window.’
‘And when you entered the apothecary was anyone else in there?’
‘No one. I have no idea who the other person was, or where he went. I assume he has jumped into the river, too. Perhaps Aberlady hoped to save him. There’s no sign of the body, though as it’s so dark it may not be found until daylight. Besides, there are currents amongst the ships, especially when the tide is on the ebb, and there is every chance that the poor fellow’s corpse has been sucked downriver. But he will surface. Everyone does, in the end.’
He turned slowly, his face lost in shadow, to watch two orderlies carry the tarpaulin-shrouded body of John Aberlady towards the mortuary. ‘Mr Flockhart,’ he said. ‘It seems the Blood has a vacancy.’
Confession of Jenny Quickly on arriving at Siren House
My name is Jenny Quickly. I don’t know how old I am though I believe my age to be twelve years. I’ve never had a birthday, but I was told the Queen got married as I was born and the excitement of it brought me into the world. My mother worked on Spyglass Lane, in one of the houses there. One of the better houses, so I were told, though I don’t know what makes for better or for worse as I’ve not seen any but the one I worked in and it never seemed any good to me. My mother was one of the girls. I don’t know which for they all looked after me – which is to say all of them kicked me up and down the stairs and clipped my ear for me when I didn’t answer them fast enough. I got no name but Jenny, though they called me Quickly on account of the fact that they was always shouting it at me when they wanted me to do something. I got no memory of being a baby, or even of being a child, though Mr Aberlady says I still am a child, so I should know what it’s like. If that’s the truth then I don’t think much of being a child, neither.
I’ve always done the same things for as long as I can remember – changing beds and kindling fires and pulling corset strings tight. I heard what went on in those rooms and I knew it was coming to me, though I didn’t see why it should.
They used to send me up to the Seaman’s Dispensary for raspberry leaf and pennyroyal, or valerian for the cramps. Or sometimes for mercury when things was bad. Mr Aberlady used to give me liquorice root to chew. Like a twig it was and you chewed it and chewed it. It lasted for ages and I kept it in my apron pocket. I used to ask about the medicines – all those jars and bottles and drawers, and powders and coloured liquids. Mr Aberlady told me what they were for. He used to let me measure stuff on the scales when Dr Proudlove was out, for Dr Proudlove liked things done proper, and he wouldn’t have a street urchin touching his precious things. Sometimes Mr Aberlady let me grind the powders with his pestle and mortar. I remember those times when I went to the dispensary as the best days of my life. The others used to chase me away, but not Mr Aberlady.
Back at the house it was mostly scolding and slapping and cleaning. Then one day a gentleman asks if he might have me. He offered me a silver sixpence and said I might have it for my very own if I would just do as he asked. And one of my mothers said he might certainly have me, if the price was high enough, and that I might have the sixpence but that she’d keep the rest. She told him it was no more than what I’d been expecting all my life and that I was most excited to have such a fine gentleman as my first and it was high time I earned my keep.
But I wasn’t excited at all and I didn’t want one single bit of it. I knew what those gentlemen did in those rooms upstairs and I’d dabbed enough of my mothers’ bruises with witch hazel and put powder over their pox sores to know what sort of a life I would be getting into if I stayed. And so I ran away. I ran to the apothecary on board the Blood where I knew I would find Mr Aberlady. Mr Aberlady said I should go to Siren House first, and so here I am.
Note on Jenny Quickly on leaving Siren House.
I have decided to take on Jenny Quickly as a grinding boy – to help in the apothecary on board the Blood. Should she prove to be adept, and biddable, I will train her as my apprentice, with a view to her sitting the licentiate examinations at Apothecaries’ Hall. Might a woman manage the training required to practise medicine? Proudlove and I think so. Antrobus and Cole think not. Three guineas rest upon the outcome.
Chapter Six
On board, the apothecary was in disarray. On the floor beside the open window was a set of keys. I snatched them up and put them into my pocket. The night air that drifted in was damp and sulphurous, and I shivered as it tickled my neck like the trace of a ghostly finger. Instinctively, I moved closer to the stove. Its door was open, though the coals were dying, and their glow was pitiful. On the hearth was a teapot – the white, round-bellied style Aberlady favoured. He avoided spirits, I knew, preferring instead to get tea directly from one of the warehouses near the East London docks. Beside the teapot lay the poker and a bloody rag, a splash of red matter streaking the boards beside it.
‘D’you notice the smell?’ I whispered.
Will wrinkled his nose. ‘Something horrible. Something scorched. But not the stove; not coal or wood or paper.’
‘Skin,’ I said. ‘Burning flesh. That’s what it is.’ I picked up the poker from the hearth and wiped its tip on my handkerchief. It came away red. ‘Blood,’ I said. I looked around the apothecary. On the table, a single lantern burned dimly. About it broken glass glittered in angry shards. There was more of the stuff on the floor.
‘Was he looking for something?’ said Will. ‘What’s this all over the bench and the floor—?’
I crouched down, and touched the mixture of black powder and crushed dried leaves with my fingertips. ‘Coconut shell charcoal,’ I said. I picked up a broken jar. ‘Bayberry. And this other one here’s black mustard seed.’
‘And their uses? Is there some logic to this—?’
‘In controlled quantities, the mustard seeds are used as a liniment, for chest infections, headache, cholera or typhus,’ I said. ‘In larger amounts – say three drachms mixed with warm water – it serves as an emetic.’
‘The bayberry?’
‘Also an emetic. Or a throat gargle—’
‘Chest infections or cholera?’ said Will. ‘Throat gargling? It hardly seems likely, does it? What of the charcoal? What does that signify?’
‘These remedies are all used against poisoning – the first to encourage vomiting, the charcoal to absorb the toxin before it enters the blood. Given what I know of his interests it’s not impossible that Aberlady poisoned himself by mistake. Dr Bain at St Saviour’s regularly tested poisons on himself – many doctors do.’
‘But to undertake such experiments on his own?’
I shook my head. ‘It’s unlikely. What’s more likely is that John Aberlady became convinced that he’d been poisoned, and was endeavourin
g to purge himself of it before it was too late.’
‘Can you identify what it was?’
‘Something that made his fears become bigger and more terrifying. Ergot, perhaps, or henbane. Possibly belladonna. Or even lily of the valley. He clearly had moments of lucidity – thus the herbs to make him vomit the poison up, the charcoal to absorb it. We might also ask how the stuff entered his system. The teapot seems the most likely source.’
Will put his hand to the belly of the pot. ‘Stone cold,’ he said. He peered inside. ‘The dregs. Does anyone drink the dregs from a pot of cold tea?’
‘No,’ I said, perplexed.
‘Are you sure he was poisoned?’
‘He must have been. There’s no other explanation.’
‘Might it have been the effects of opium, Jem?’
‘But opium induces languor, sleepiness. It does not turn men into maniacs.’
‘And yet are not the cravings for the stuff a torture of a particularly violent kind?’
‘Yes.’ I sighed. ‘The body as well as the mind are quite torn apart. There’s every chance that opium consumption added to his sense of distraction, his derangement. But mania, of any kind, is not what one expects from an opium eater, even when they are in the depths of their suffering. Muscle cramps, shivering, self-pity, waking nightmares, yes. But this? I don’t think so. Besides,’ I pointed to the bottle of laudanum on the shelf. ‘There’s plenty of the stuff up there if he wanted it.’
‘Perhaps that’s poisoned, and he did take some.’
‘And he put it back on the top shelf afterwards? I doubt it. Besides, laudanum is used by physicians for everything from toothache to cholera. If you took the stuff away they would have very little else in their bag. If the poisoner put his lethal drops into the Blood’s own laudanum bottle he would risk killing the entire ship. No, Will, this is something else entirely.’
I turned about, imagining my friend entering the apothecary, struggling to hold onto his final unclouded thoughts as the poison gripped his mind and body. Hallucinations would have assailed him, strange fancies and distorted notions of what was real and what was not. And yet there would be physical symptoms too: dizziness, cramping, pain in the abdomen. ‘And so, in his agony and confusion he dropped the remedies he thought he needed,’ I said. ‘He became overwhelmed. And then when Dr Sackville battered on the door his disordered mind convinced him that his persecutors had arrived, and in his panic, he leaped from the window.’
‘Who were his persecutors?’
‘That we must find out.’
‘And why did the poker have a bloody tip?’
‘Think, Will! The smell of burning flesh, the fresh wound on the arm of the corpse—’
‘What!’ Will’s face was ashen, his eyes wide with horror. ‘Who amongst us would deliberately brand himself, or cauterise his own flesh?’
‘Anyone, if they were out of their mind with fear and delirium. It is why that is the more pertinent question.’
‘What of the man Aberlady was with? I suppose we must ask Pestle Jenny—’
I clicked my tongue. ‘He wasn’t with anyone,’ I said. ‘He was talking to himself. I’m surprised Dr Sackville did not realise – especially when it turned out that there was no one here but Aberlady.’ I stared out of the window for a moment, and then with a shiver pulled it closed. The shadows seemed to rear and jump around me, my own head buzzing with the horror at what we had stumbled upon, so that I was half-tempted to open the window again, despite the damp stink of the river. ‘I must see Aberlady’s rooms – he has quarters downstairs. We must find out what happened. He was murdered, Will—’
‘Murdered!’ The voice came from behind us. ‘But why, and by whom?’
Neither of us had heard anyone enter, and when we turned around the door was still closed.
‘Forgive me, gentlemen—’ A man stepped forward out of the shadows. I could only conclude that he had been there, listening in silence, since we first came in. The reason we had not seen him was because he was dressed in a long black travelling cape, buttoned to the neck, with the collar turned up against the cold and foggy night. His face, too, was as black as the shadows from which he had emerged. ‘My name is Erasmus Proudlove – I am one of the surgeons here.’
I felt my cheeks colour at our carelessness. We should have checked we were alone before we said anything to one another. ‘Really, sir?’ I said sharply. ‘No one here mentioned you.’
His lip curled. ‘No doubt they forgot. They are adept at forgetting me – when it suits them, of course. And yet I’ve been away for ten days so perhaps there lies their excuse on this occasion. And yet, it is you, I think, who are the real mystery. I am a man with every right to be here, but who are you, and why are you creeping about Aberlady’s apothecary in the night time?’
I made our introductions. ‘I was a friend of John Aberlady’s,’ I added. ‘And I have just been hired by Dr Sackville to be acting apothecary.’
‘A friend, you say? Aberlady made no mention of you.’
‘Dr Proudlove,’ said Will, with some impatience. ‘If you are on this ship then how can it be that you didn’t know that Aberlady is dead? The place has been in uproar—’
‘I came on board not five minutes ago via the larboard steps – men use them who are coming aboard from clippers and merchantmen out on the water. I came straight through to the apothecary. A moment later you and your companion entered. I waited to see what you were about. I heard your conversation – eavesdropping is often the only way I am included in the goings on aboard this ship. And now here we are. Are you satisfied?’
For a moment there was a silence between us. I could see that his coat was moist from the fog and the river, and he had a travelling bag at his feet. ‘What made you come to the apothecary?’
‘I wanted to show Aberlady what I’d found.’ He held up a small glass bottle. Inside were a pair of houseflies, five mosquitoes and a bluebottle. ‘They’re all from a single room at Mill Pond Lane over in Rotherhithe,’ he said. ‘There’s an outbreak of the ague over there, a number of cases all in the same dwelling. I am unconvinced by the prevailing notion that the ague is caused by bad air.’ He shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t London be crippled by malaria if that was the case? And yet it isn’t. Instead we find the disease only in low places – marshy stagnant waters. During the summer mostly, though it’s been unseasonably warm throughout the autumn and as a result the ague hasn’t abated. Stagnant waters breathe vapours, it’s true, but they also breed insects such as these.’
‘I’ve always doubted the capacity of bad air to cause the diseases men blame upon it,’ I said. ‘The same applies to miasma. The microscope—’
‘Precisely,’ said Dr Proudlove. ‘You’ve compared air and water?’
‘I have,’ I said.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Will. ‘A man has just died—’
‘A man who would be fascinated to hear my conclusions,’ said Dr Proudlove.
‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘To the naked eye air and water both appear colourless – or almost so. Yet under the microscope water contains all manner of tiny creatures and putrescent matter whilst air contains nothing perceivably alive.’
‘Air is one part carbonic acid, seventy-eight parts nitrogen and twenty-one parts oxygen,’ said Dr Proudlove. ‘No part of it is made up of anything that might conceivably cause malaria, cholera, typhus, or any of the diseases generally attributed to it.’
‘My thoughts exactly,’ I said. Dr Proudlove and I smiled at one another.
‘And the murder?’ said Will. ‘What of that?’
‘What microscope do you have?’ said Dr Proudlove.
‘Lintz and Munn,’ I replied.
‘A beauty!’ he said. ‘I have a von Krause. All the way from Vienna.’
‘So what does cause the ague,’ interrupted Will. ‘If we must continue this fascinating discussion before we can return to the subject of a man’s death.’ He looked at Dr Proudlove’s bottle. ‘Flies?’
/> ‘I believe it’s a plausible theory,’ he said. ‘Mosquitoes are the most likely as they live in all areas where the ague is found – even Gibraltar, a place not known for its pestilent vapours. Their anatomy is designed to pierce flesh quickly and with precision, to draw blood. And if they might suck blood out, might they not also inject some sort of matter in? Aberlady was convinced too. This last week I’ve been in Liverpool. There’s a fellow there, recently returned from Panama, who thinks the same way.’
‘And you have just returned to London?’ said Will.
‘I journeyed to Rotherhithe directly. It’s notoriously damp and marshy, especially in the region bounded by the Halfpenny Hatch and Mill Pond Lane, and I’d left some malarial patients there – there seemed little point in bringing them aboard as I had left medicine enough where they were. While I was away I charged them to catch all pests, whether crawling or airborne, that inhabited the room where they lived. They gave me these.’ He held up the bottle. ‘Mosquitoes, amongst other things. The colder weather makes the creatures sluggish and they were able to trap them quite easily.’ He put the bottle back into his pocket. ‘And that’s why I came to the apothecary – to discuss the matter with Aberlady, whom you now tell me is dead.’
‘He jumped from the window,’ I said, ‘whilst in the grip of some delirium. Poisoned – as you heard. Did you see him before you left for Liverpool?’
‘Yes,’ said Dr Proudlove.
‘How did he seem?’
Dr Proudlove shrugged. His eyes darted to the mess on the table, the open door of the stove and the bloody rag in the hearth. ‘Well enough,’ he said.
‘Soon after you left, John Aberlady disappeared. Perhaps you have some idea where he went?’
‘No,’ said Dr Proudlove.
‘And he was not with you?’
‘He was not.’
‘Dr Cole seemed to think he might have been in an opium den,’ I said. ‘I knew he was fatally drawn to the laudanum bottle. Was he in the habit of smoking the stuff too?’
The Blood: What secrets lie aboard? (Jem Flockhart Book 3) Page 7
