Mary Toft; or, the Rabbit Queen

by Dexter Palmer

  By the following spring, just past the boy’s fourteenth birthday, John Howard and Zachary’s parents had come to an arrangement, and a contract was signed to bind Zachary over to the Howards as an apprentice for a period of seven years. The agreement was amenable to all, though Crispin still harbored regrets—Zachary suspected that there were times in the past when he and John Howard had been at odds, but their professions required them to maintain a certain cordiality, since there were regular occasions, invariably unfortunate, when a Godalming citizen might need both their services at once. The cleric’s reservations aside, Crispin and Clara had managed to secure a rare opportunity for the child that lodged him in one of the more prosperous homes in Godalming, guaranteed his livelihood, and promised him prestige; the Howards received a fifty-pound premium that would cover the expenses of Zachary’s room and board; and Zachary would be able to indulge a fascination that would, John hoped, be the genesis of a genuine love of the profession. (Though John had a few unvoiced doubts about the boy, and his eagerness for tales of injury and sights of ruptured bodies—he found himself wondering if Zachary wanted to become a surgeon not merely because he wanted to do good, but because he wanted to witness the evil done to human bodies by disease, chance, or the willful malice of others. But the Lord uses all people for his instruments, and John often felt the need for an extra pair of hands. Best not to question; best not to judge.)

  Soon thereafter, Zachary moved into the loft in the Howards’ home, a dim but capacious room that only rarely caught a sliver of sunlight from its lone window. Amid the single-story structures on the street, the towering house seemed extravagant and labyrinthine; its spaces suggested a future that its owners had once imagined as newlyweds, but had mostly failed to come to pass. Zachary’s loft sat above the rooms that constituted the surgeon’s offices on the floor below, which had a separate entrance from that of the domicile proper; it was the only room on the second floor that was occupied, and in the mornings he could hear John’s wife, Alice, locking and unlocking the doors to empty chambers, for no reason he could fathom. When he ate his midday dinner with the couple who had effectively become a second set of parents, John sat before his plate of broiled pilchard or chicken roasted with cucumbers in a high-backed chair at the head of the long dining table, while Alice and Zachary perched on the ends of benches at his left and right hands, leaving room for five more at the least; settings at the opposite end of the table lay coated in a thin layer of dust. At night the house’s darkened corners ate the candlelight; sounds hit the walls and fell dead.

  By entering the Howards’ lives, Zachary felt as if he’d walked in on a tale halfway through its telling; after John and Alice’s years together, they shared a language that he did not speak and that they could not teach him, what with it being built upon their store of shared memories. When Alice looked at John with a particular narrowing of the eyes, it somehow did the work of a paragraph; John could make Alice laugh with a barely noticeable tilt of the head. Even at fourteen Zachary could tell that the secret language of the Howards was born out of a love that was merry, weathered, and earthy. They touched, in a way that his parents never did—Alice sometimes quietly reaching out to graze the tips of her fingers across the back of her husband’s hand—and they conversed in a manner that suggested that they saw each other as equals (while Crispin Walsh, who felt his rumbling baritone was backed by the authority of God, was given to making pronouncements to which his wife and son were expected to assent in silence).

  Zachary also sensed that his new caretakers would be permissive in a way that his parents were not. With little prior experience with children, they could not be expected to know what sort of trouble youths were apt to get into; they also seemed to be unworried about the ideas that Zachary might encounter, whereas his own father thought that some concepts ought to be self-evidently shunned, as they would turn good people from a good path. Crispin Walsh was deeply suspicious of Locke and his like, though he too possessed a copy of the Essay that had barely been read past its introduction; he thought all that professed love of man’s unique ability to reason was an excuse to smuggle atheism into the public discourse, despite Locke’s pro forma protestations to the contrary. (“Beware the sentiment that a man’s thoughts alone are enough to let him understand the world,” he’d said once to Zachary at dinner between mouthfuls of mutton, gesturing at his son with quick stabs of his fork. “It is a fraudulent idea, the product of the devil himself, who wishes us to cover our own eyes rather than behold the wondrous sight of the Lord.”) John Howard, on the other hand, though not inclined toward atheism, seemed at least willing to accept the argument that the exercise of man’s reason could only redound to the glory of God, and so one’s curiosity ought to be indulged whenever possible.

  And so Zachary felt less trepidation than he would have otherwise when broaching the possibility of attending the Exhibition of Medical Curiosities. He mentioned it over supper, a dish that Alice had prepared of peas and lettuce, heavily seasoned with salt and pepper, stewed and thickened with egg yolk. “Have you heard of the Exhibition of—”

  “Monstrous Calamities,” Alice finished.

  “Medical Curiosities,” Zachary corrected, as Alice raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “I’ve heard it mentioned,” said John. “Mrs. Glasse has colic and paid an early-morning visit—while you were still abed, Zachary,” he finished pointedly. “She talked of it no end; her excitement could not be contained. She said that the passengers in the caravan that arrived this morning have taken up every room in the Silver Hart, across the street from her home; that some of them must be sleeping three to a bed. That when they alighted from their carriages and entered the inn, all but the proprietor of the exhibition and his young herald had black velvet cloths draped over their heads, so that their faces could not be seen. Zachary, what do you think I prescribed for Mrs. Glasse this morning?” A chance to atone for his indolence; a test, on which permission hinged.

  Zachary thought for a moment. “The Rheum Quinquinatum,” he said, stumbling only slightly over the tongue-twisting Latin. “To purge the stomach.”

  John offered Zachary the smallest nod of approval. “Mrs. Glasse said that one of the travelers was terrifying to lay eyes on, even with her head concealed by the velvet cloth,” he continued. “From the neck down she appeared to have the shape of a young woman, but the way the cloth hung on her head indicated such a grotesque form beneath that Mrs. Glasse wondered if she were not looking on some kind of chimera. Without the covering, she must be quite a sight to behold. Zachary, what are the ingredients of the Rheum Quinquinatum?”

  Zachary paused again, longer. “Canella bark, ground into powder. Bitters; aromatics. Roasted oranges infused in wine.” He looked up at John, who only stared back placidly, saying nothing. Then: “Rhubarb!” Zachary blurted.

  “I might have eighteen pence to offer this Nicholas Fox, so that we might view the exhibition that he’s been so kind to bring to us from London,” said John. “In the interest of your education.”

  “You’ll only need twelve,” said Alice. “I want no part of it.”

  * * *

  *

  Nicholas Fox’s traveling caravan had employed an advance scout to secure locations for his exhibition as it migrated from town to town along the River Wey; in Godalming, the display would take place late Sunday afternoon in an enormous barn on the north edge of town, with large doors on either end that let in the sunlight. It had once been used to store wool—even after two years of sitting empty, the musty odor of sheep still imbued its wooden panels. But the industry that had kept the town alive for centuries had been decimated at last by competition from the Continent: the sturdy Hampshire kersey cloths that were once the pride of the village were no longer wanted by the French, and evidence of Godalming’s once lucrative clothing trade had nearly vanished. In the midst of prosperity, driven by the formidable economic engine that was Londo
n, England still nonetheless possessed a few scattered patches of blight. It was a testament to the exhibition’s enchanting nature that so many were willing to spare sixpence—more than it would cost the largest of men to get dead drunk on gin—to see what wonders Fox had to offer.

  John paid his and Zachary’s fees to the man waiting at the barn’s front door, and the two of them entered. Zachary was surprised to see his own father, Crispin Walsh, in the crowd just ahead of him, out of place in his cassock and peruke tied back with a black silk ribbon, half a head taller than all those around him. John gently touched Crispin’s shoulder to get his attention, and when he turned to look down at Zachary he offered one of his rare sallies at humor. “I’ve caught you here, as I might have expected,” he said. “But it seems you’ve caught me here as well.”

  “My master suggested we attend in order to further my education,” Zachary replied, in a performance of doe-eyed innocence all the more brazen for its transparency.

  “Would that my church had been as full this morning as this barn is this afternoon,” said Crispin. “I feel compelled to inform myself of the true nature of my competitor.”

  A platform of wooden planks had been erected on the opposite end of the barn, on which a pair of musicians stood in front of a gauzy scrim that hung from a frame that was slightly askew. The musicians were dressed in matching suits that had once been white but that time and repeated wear had tinted a dingy pale yellow. They were seeming brothers, both with thick heads of curly black hair, both sporting unruly beetle brows above dark eyes; as they improvised intricate melodies on a recorder and violin, swaying their portly bodies in tandem, blurred shadows moved behind the scrim, which was lit from behind by the afternoon sun.

  “Alice is well?” said Crispin, as he and John and Zachary wedged themselves forward through the press of spectators, jockeying for a good view of the stage. The flat delivery of the question suggested that if John and Alice had been in church this morning, he would not have had to ask it.

  “She is,” John answered. “She felt that attending an event such as this would…not be to her taste.”

  “This is as it should be,” said Crispin. “I would not have allowed Clara to attend, had she requested. Such sights are not for women’s eyes.” He proclaimed this with certainty, despite the fact that no one had much of an idea of what the gathered audience was about to witness; indeed, almost all of the people in the barn were men, and the air was filled with the low susurration of their collective chatter and grumble. The few women who had entered in the company of their husbands looked around themselves with evident discomfort, occasionally catching each other’s eyes across the barn with worried glances.

  Soon, the front doors of the barn were closed, dimming the space as the only illumination came from the other set of open doors behind the platform. The musicians ceased their improvisations, bowed to the audience, and stepped to either side of the scrim as it parted. As the crowd quieted to a murmur, Nicholas Fox stepped onto the stage.

  Zachary found Fox comical at first. He was a tiny man, and his clothing made him seem even smaller; his red, cherubic face was swallowed up by the ivory locks of the wig that tumbled down the sides of his head and the voluminous frills of the jabot fastened beneath his chin, which seemed to somehow produce still more frills as Zachary watched. He wore a suit of ditto, his waistcoat, coat, and breeches all of the same emerald green. But his ridiculous figure was counterbalanced by his unexpectedly deep and resonant voice, which brought on a stunned silence from the audience as soon as he spoke.

  “Welcome, friends,” said Fox, “to my Exhibition of Medical Curiosities! What a glorious chance is yours, for you are about to witness the most wondrous, terrifying alterations of the human form, brought to you from all the corners of the British Isles! When I look out at you, I cannot help but envy your innocence. For those of us who are no longer young, who’ve become jaded by the sight of ten thousand sunsets, is it not the rarest of pleasures to find oneself once again on the edge of the unknown? To truly encounter the new? Do I not tease you mercilessly with my curtain and my preamble; do you not smack your lips at your own delicious impatience? You do! A-ha: I see your smiles!” Nicholas Fox grinned with a delight that was genuine, and infectious.

  But then his countenance darkened. “But is it not true that not all is worth knowing? Are there not many mysteries best left as such? Are there not certain truths that live in the black spaces of your mind that you would claw out of your own head if you could? I cannot speak with surety on whether what you will witness in just a few moments will bless or curse you, but know, as you stand here, that you take a risk, and that risk is one that some would be wise to avoid. Some forms of ignorance are gifts. In fact, before we begin,” Fox continued, “I must ask: are there any women in the audience who are with child? If so I must, with regret, request—no, insist—that you leave. My assistant stands at the exit to refund your entrance fee, with all good will.”

  Leaning forward with his hands on his hips, he surveyed the crowd as it turned restless, and Zachary realized that this was part of Fox’s performance, to yank the audience from one emotion to another without notice, leaving them disoriented. “No women who are soon to become mothers? You must be certain. Such sights as will soon be revealed to you may have an especially adverse impact on those with delicate conditions. I swear to you that this is not a boast, that this is not theater. I give you this final chance: leave, and you may save your future son or daughter from a life of misery; remain, and the blame for any harm that comes to the child will fall on your head.”

  Near Zachary, a woman turned with an audible sigh, face turned crimson, and began to work her way back through the audience, toward the thin crack of light now spilling from the opening front doors of the barn. Her husband followed behind her, hand placed on the small of her back, gently urging her forward, scowling at the gawkers surrounding him. (“Well, there’s some news,” Zachary overheard a man next to him say.)

  Fox waited until the barn doors had shut once more and the audience’s tittering had died down, then continued. “Did such a precaution seem excessive to you? I assure you that it was not—by this exhibition’s end I guarantee that you will find yourselves thoroughly convinced! Some of you have already seen the first piece of evidence in the face of the young woman who announced our arrival yesterday, whose poor angelic face was blighted by a birthmark: no one who truly understands the intricacies of human anatomy would be surprised to learn that her mother had an unusual love of wine, and of strawberries.”

  “I seem not to understand human anatomy,” John mumbled, as other people in the audience nodded their heads after a moment of confusion.

  “But the phenomenon I will describe can lead to yet more tragic deformations,” said Fox. “Consider our first subject, the son of a woman who, when with child, had an insatiable love of the practice of bear-baiting. Several times a week she would pay a visit to a London bear garden, to watch packs of slavering bulldogs tear at the flesh of a chained ursine prisoner, to see the maddened creatures knocked back with a single swipe of the giant beast’s paw, their bellies ripped clean open, the pink strands of their guts spilling forth! Oh, I assure you, she found the carnage quite a delight! She would greet each death of a dog with merry applause; her cheeks would turn just as red as if she’d spied a swain across the street! And when the bear was at last felled, robbed of its life by a thousand bites, she would chew her own lip hard enough to taste her blood. But witness the sad result. Caleb?” he called offstage. “You may come forward.”

  The man who stepped through the parted curtains was shirtless, wearing nothing but a threadbare pair of breeches; his head hung forward, so that his damp, stringy brown hair obscured his face. He seemed to be in decent health, though perhaps a little thin and wiry to Zachary’s eye: despite what could not have been the best of living conditions for him, he was tall, and ropy muscles rippled ben
eath his skin. He shifted his weight from one bare foot to another in nervousness, clenching and opening his fists.

  “Turn, Caleb,” Fox said gently.

  He stood still, shaking his head no, and Zachary realized that Caleb was quietly weeping.

  “Turn, Caleb,” Fox said again, quietly but insistently. “You know that you must.”

  After a last moment of hesitation, Caleb did as Fox requested, whimpering as he shuffled around to present his back, and the audience gasped as one. For a large ovoid patch of Caleb’s back, from one shoulder blade to the other, from the nape of his neck to the base of his spine, was covered in a tangled mat of thick, dark, dirty fur. Lodged within the fur were strange anatomical anomalies: a single staring eye, the color of a currant; a pointed, protruding tuft of hair in the shape of an animal’s ear; and, with its teeth bared, a bear’s snout, the tip of its black nose wet and glistening.

  Zachary squinted at the man before him as his jaw dropped open. Did that lone black eye in the middle of the poor man’s back—did it move? Did it blink?

  “No!” Crispin Walsh cried as the bear’s mouth embedded in the middle of Caleb’s back pried itself open ever so slightly and emitted an anguished, wordless whine, in a voice that seemed weirdly, troublingly human. (Did Zachary actually hear that, a sound like a naked child’s wail in the wilderness, so soft and distant that he might have confused it with a memory?)

  * * *

  *

  As the exhibition continued, Nicholas Fox explained the medical theory that accounted for the parade of monstrosities that marched before his audience, one that seemed to Zachary to have the ring of truth to it. According to Fox, a principal influence on the shape of a newborn child was the state of mind of its mother during the months of her pregnancy: just as the daughter of a woman with a strong taste for wine might have a face with a birthmark like a glass of Burgundy spilled across a tablecloth, a woman who had expressed a fascination with bear-baiting might give birth to a son whose back advertised her depraved love of the cruel sport. Fox accompanied the reveal of each of his subjects with a tale of a mother’s obsession, sin, or failure: the woman who never missed a chance to join the cheering crowds on Tyburn’s hanging days as the necks of thieves and murderers were stretched at the gallows, whose son had half of his brainpan sheared off as neatly as if it had been done with a surgeon’s saw; a woman who had an insuperable aversion to the taste of meat no matter the care taken in its preparation, whose daughter was born without a single bone in her body (Fox brought this unfortunate young lady out on a giant silver serving platter, a quivering, gelatinous mass of pink flesh topped with curly blond tresses). A shirtless man who propelled himself forward on crutches, the bones of his vertebrae visible through his brittle, mottled skin, his legs withered and bent backward like a dog’s, was the supposed son of a woman who, said Fox with a leer, had an “unnatural affection” for a spaniel; a bearded giantess who towered over Fox, broad-shouldered and flat-bosomed in her frilly dress, hunched and growling with a simmering anger, was the product of a mother who “spent an undue time in the sole company of men, carousing in pubs as if she were one of them, heedlessly accepting their embraces once made sufficiently dizzy by the demon drink.”