Mary Toft; or, the Rabbit Queen

by Dexter Palmer

  The diagnosis was, of course, self-evident, though Howard made a brief show of puzzlement after he ushered the two of them into his office and seated them. He sat behind his desk, stroking his chin and humming idly to himself. “Oh, it could be any number of things,” he opined, and Phoebe’s face dropped as she seemed to imagine a prescribed series of increasingly rigorous and absurd curative regimens, all of which were doomed to fail as the child wasted down to a skeleton.

  Then Howard turned to Zachary, who stood silently against a wall beside the door, waiting to be acknowledged. “What do you think?” he said. Phoebe turned to him, as if she had only just realized he was there.

  “Quinsy, I believe,” he said, not skipping a beat. Good, even if he’d picked up on Howard’s playacting.

  With a gesture, Howard beckoned Zachary over toward Phoebe’s son. “Take a look.”

  Zachary approached Oliver, who seemed a bit confused, but who at least did not have the dawning expression of distress that was appearing on his mother’s face, which Zachary was clearly doing his best to studiously ignore. “Tip your head back, and open your mouth as wide as you can,” he said, standing over the other boy, looking down on him (and as Howard watched, he saw Zachary realize that Oliver was becoming, at this very moment, Zachary’s first real patient, dependent on him for healing, and therefore willing to accept his commands).

  Zachary peered down Oliver’s throat, squinting, and winced and drew backward as one of Oliver’s exhalations hit him in the face. “I see the abscess,” Zachary said. “Next to the tonsil.”

  “I do believe you are correct,” Howard said, leaning back in his chair, hands behind his head. “Now that you say it, it seems quite apparent.”

  “My breaf ith haw’ble,” Oliver said, with what might have been a small amount of pleasure.

  “Does this call for scarification?” Zachary said, perhaps too eagerly, his voice at that last word slipping up into one final childish squeak.

  I wish he hadn’t tipped our hand so early, John thought, but there was nothing to be done about it. “Come with me across the hall for a consultation,” he said to him. “Mrs. Sanders, Oliver—sit comfortably. We’ll return shortly. I promise we will effect a cure of your son within the hour; there’s no need for alarm—”

  “Scarification?” Phoebe Sanders said, hands clutching the armrests of her chair.

  “Sit comfortably, I said. Zachary: come with me.”

  * * *

  *

  Once in the operating chamber across the hall, Howard shut the door behind him and turned to Zachary. With the two of them alone, it was clear that the boy finally felt the weight of the moment on him—he’d gone pale and wide-eyed, drawing his arms around himself as if to protect himself from the future. “I believe,” said Howard, “it is time for you to have your first experience with wielding a knife. Do you feel ready?”

  “Yes,” Zachary said, stepping back from Howard.

  “That was a well-meant lie, and a good one to tell,” said Howard. “You don’t feel ready, but trust me—you never will until after you make the first deliberate cut, and you see with your own eyes that wounding a person is often the first necessary step toward healing him. Then your mind will become calm, and all your fears will vanish. And this is a simple procedure—you’ve seen me do it, and because you have had it performed on yourself, you will have an instinctive knowledge of the method, and a sympathy for your patient that will make it easier still.” It may actually make it more difficult, Howard thought, but the boy need not know that.

  “Easy,” Zachary said, nodding slowly, talking himself into it.

  Howard approached his cabinet of tools and began to prepare a tray for Zachary, just as Zachary had for him on a hundred past occasions. “Imagine that the surgery is already completed, sometime in the distant past, and you are merely reenacting the event, retracing the steps that led to your success. The procedure was simple. The patient lay on his back and you looked down his throat. You saw the abscess; you pinned down the tongue with a wooden paddle in your left hand, and inserted the knife in your right hand down the patient’s throat. You did not warn him of what you were doing beforehand, because you wanted to rely on his initial surprise and terror to keep him still. You acted with precision, but also with speed, because you were confident, and because you knew that with each passing second, the patient’s panic ran the risk of overwhelming the sedation provided by the gin—he might have begun to thrash, and that would have led to disaster. You did not think of what you were doing as cutting, precisely. You did not think of letting blood. You merely inscribed three quick lines on the abscess with the knife, as if you were writing with a pen on paper, and your inscription effected a cure. You withdrew the knife and the wooden paddle from the patient’s mouth. The procedure required no more than fifteen seconds.

  “Do you remember all of this? How it happened? How easy it was for you? How silly it was that you could have ever considered it difficult?”

  “I do,” said Zachary.

  “Good. Take this bottle of gin and this glass out to the patient,” said John, handing them to him. “One dose quickly, all in one swallow, and a second dose fast behind that. Make idle conversation with the mother for ten minutes—soothing the relatives of the patient is an inconvenient but necessary component of our craft. Then bring him in here, and begin.”

  Zachary looked up at John, and, with a single slow nod, he turned as Howard opened the operating room door for him. Howard remained behind as Zachary crossed the hall alone, and he smiled to himself as he heard Zachary say, “Here: drink this. Quickly. Because I’m going to do it.”

  “What?” Phoebe shouted.

  Well, perhaps Zachary wouldn’t be able to handle the mother entirely by himself. He couldn’t leave him alone to do that.

  * * *

  *

  There was a brief moment, as Zachary was escorting Oliver into the operating room, when Howard saw Zachary’s tight grip on the woozy patient’s arm, as if he were leading him to the gallows instead of to a surgery, and thought that he had made a bad bet, that it wasn’t yet the young man’s time. But to his relief, Zachary executed the procedure perfectly, and exactly as Howard had envisioned it (largely because Howard had convinced Phoebe to stay in his office alone, and not to watch: if she had, Howard was certain she would have tried to valiantly sacrifice her own flesh to spare her son from the blade). When Zachary and Oliver entered the office afterward, with Howard trailing respectfully behind, Phoebe jumped from her chair, ran toward her son, and clasped him in her arms, pushing his head deep into the crook of her shoulder. “Will he be well?” she asked Zachary accusingly. “I heard screams.”

  “Those may have been yours,” Howard replied. “We promise that your son will be in full health inside of a week. One shilling, please.”

  Phoebe let her son go and began to rummage in the pocket attached to her waist, feeling for the proper coin. “I hear there is a new guest in the inn,” she said, idly. “A most mysterious figure. Seems to think he owns everything he sets his eyes on—this is what Amelia Glasse told me. She spies on every person going in and out of that place, you know: when someone catches her eye, she’s quick to ask questions.”

  “Where from?” said John.

  “London,” Phoebe breathed. “He’s a surgeon. He brought an apprentice, a smart little man dressed just like his master. Supposedly,” she said, edging closer to John, “the fellow was dispatched here by none other than King George himself.”

  Quickly, Phoebe cut her gaze back between John and Zachary, noting the apprentice’s open mouth and the startled expression on his master’s face. “Now,” she said, firmly pressing the shilling into John’s palm, looking him dead in the eye. “I wonder what sort of events might be occurring in this little place, of note enough to convince the king of all England to send a surgeon here, of all places. He is
a man of your illustrious trade—might you be able to offer a supposition? Yes?”

  “This is a surprise to me,” said John as Phoebe rolled her eyes—she apparently felt no need to disguise her disappointment at such a weak attempt at subterfuge. “But if you happen to hear something of his business, or even his name, please do not hesitate to tell me. Now, I have…urgent business. And as much as I would like you to stay, I must regretfully ask you to leave.”

  “I expected as much,” said Phoebe.

  * * *

  *

  The mysterious figure of whom Phoebe had spoken arrived that afternoon, announcing himself with a rap on the door so loud and persistent that Howard feared his visitor had left a dent in the wood. Zachary opened the door, only to find that he had to quickly lift his arm to guard himself against a knock on the head by the oaken cane, tipped with a sphere of ivory, that the man was using as a drumstick. The door had its own knocker, but the gentleman seemed to have judged it inefficient for his needs.

  “Oh, goodness, there you are,” said the visitor as Zachary yelped and clutched his forearm, which would surely develop a bruise. “No, wait: you’re not the man I seek. Too young; too young to be the future legend.”

  (Behind his desk, Howard’s ears perked up. Exaggeration, to be certain, and perhaps it was meant to be overheard, and meant to flatter. Even so, the fact that someone considered him to be one whom it might be worthwhile to flatter was, to Howard, its own good sign.)

  Zachary looked the man before him up and down—his voluminous and heavily powdered horsehair wig; the cocked hat folded under his arm; the waistcoat of a stylishly different color than the rest of his ensemble, deep blue in contrast with the green of his coat and breeches. Blue knitted silk stockings covered his breeches at the knee, and the blue and white silk shoes that completed the outfit had some of the tallest heels Zachary had ever seen. Behind him stood a boy who appeared to be a copy of the man in miniature, with a similar wig and similarly coordinated three-piece suit, though the heels of his shoes were not so absurdly large. The boy vacillated between glaring at Zachary with an affected imperiousness and gazing pointedly at the sky, as if insulted that Zachary had the gall to look on him in return.

  “Forgive me,” the man before Zachary said, “I forget that I am no longer in London, where my visage usually suffices as my entrance pass. Please notify your master that the surgeon Nathanael St. André has arrived, at the request of the king of England, to observe his most notable medical case for himself. My eyes are his eyes. And Laurence,” he continued, speaking to the boy who was presumably his apprentice, “would you return to our inn and arrange to have our baggage delivered here? Considered relative to the surroundings, this residence is positively palatial, and will suit the two of us just fine.”

  * * *

  *

  “Would you believe,” said Nathanael St. André at the Howards’ supper later that evening, “that the surgeon’s trade in London is so mercilessly competitive that an attempt by a still unidentified professional rival was once made on my very life? That I was poisoned?”

  “My goodness,” said Alice Howard, “I can’t imagine who would even consider such a thing.”

  “Few who have made my acquaintance could,” said St. André, placing his hand to his chest as he suppressed a belch. “But as a close confidant of mine has said—I will admit that he has expressed an earnest desire to become my biographer—I am a most uncommon man, and so I must suffer a life filled with most uncommon incidents.”

  This was the first time since Zachary had become John Howard’s apprentice that Alice had served five at supper. John sat in the lone chair at the head of the dining table, with Alice and Zachary on the bench to his right, and Nathanael and Laurence seated opposite. Despite the unexpected guests, Alice had been able to throw together a meal of fried pork sausages and sliced apples, along with some stewed cabbage—though when serving himself, Nathanael had fastidiously picked through the dish of sausages and loaded his plate with almost all the meat, leaving the apple slices and the cabbage to feed the rest. Zachary was unused to supper being a race—he sensed that this night, the lullaby that sent him to sleep would be sung by his grumbling stomach.

  Nonetheless, John Howard favored Nathanael St. André with a gaze most often associated with those in the early days of a love affair, and Nathanael’s tale—which showed evidence of having been polished and enhanced through repeated retellings—held John enraptured. “I was seated in my office when I received a visit from a stranger who seemed to be in desperate straits—surely he would have been, to approach me directly instead of arranging an audience through the well-known proper channels. I am famous, I should say, for my red-hot flashes of rage at breaches of protocol. However, this night I was in a forgiving mood, and due to his clear agitation I determined to hear his entreaty. He claimed that his wife suffered from a venereal disease that none of the doctors he had enlisted had been able to identify, that she stood before the underworld’s gate, and that I was his last resort. I sensed a rare challenge to my talents, and so I followed this fellow through London’s labyrinth, finally reaching a two-room apartment, strangely unfurnished, its bedroom door closed. The man offered me a cordial, which I thought strange, but accepted out of politeness—the drink was so foul that I could only manage two sips of it, but that was enough to serve this fellow’s dastardly purpose. My eyelids became heavy, and I collapsed.”

  Zachary looked across the table at Laurence, who seemed to view him as some sort of rival; for what reason, he couldn’t fathom. Between bites of food, Laurence lifted his chin and stared down his nose at Zachary, making his most valiant attempt at a haughty glare. What strange London fashion, dressing children as tiny adults—Laurence seemed to think that the clothing granted him years and authority, though Zachary guessed that the boy was a year younger than himself; moreover, he found Laurence’s ensemble ludicrous. There was time enough in life to shave one’s head and don a powdered wig; Zachary preferred to postpone that day as long as possible.

  “I have heard conflicting tales of the time between then and when I found myself in my bed the following morning,” Nathanael continued. “One person said that I had been dumped unceremoniously in an alley, drooling and insensate; another that I was wandering the streets, disheveled and raving. It matters not. For two weeks I fought the poison, as my body alternated between ice and fire, and my mind blended reality and nightmare. But a man such as myself is not easy to kill: in addition to my naturally strong constitution, a diet rich in meat and small beer has made me a man of iron.” He belched again. “After a fortnight I returned to my feet, as hale as if I had never been poisoned at all. I have not been troubled by such attempts since; presumably, my enemies now know the nature of the star that shines on me.”

  “Were you ever able to determine who perpetrated the crime?” Howard asked. His meal had gone mostly untouched, as if he’d been too distracted by St. André’s tale to eat, or thought mastication rude in the presence of such a guest.

  Zachary stared forlornly at the last available sausage as St. André forked it into his mouth. “I have not,” Nathanael said, speech muffled by his chewing. “The man who called on me was unfamiliar, and I was taken to the apartment where I was poisoned by such a twisting path that I would never be able to find my way back. He might have been an agent of anyone in the trade who had cause to envy my position, or who perhaps wished to usurp it: Ahlers; Davenant; perhaps even Manningham, though I would not expect him to stoop so low. Which brings me to a new subject: when I read the notice of the recent events in Godalming in the British Journal, I knew that I was in the presence of yet another uncommon incident, of the kind that acts on me as a lodestone. How was this news transmitted from here to there? Whom did you contact, initially?”

  “Nichols,” said Howard, thinking. “Stillingfleet. Douglas Hammond. Caryll.” Then, sheepishly: “Davenant.”

&nb
sp; “Ah, well, Davenant is no one to fear,” said Nathanael. “Avaricious, perhaps, but avarice is powerless without an ambition to match it. He is a lazy, provincial fellow—one might as well propose that he visit the Continent as that he leave London. And this case will likely not draw Manningham’s eye: it is too out of the ordinary, and he fears risk, preferring to keep his reputation intact by concerning himself only with quotidian matters of medicine. Ahlers is the one we must watch out for, friend. Risen to an undeserved station despite his mediocrity; unwilling to let any scruple stand in the way of advancing his interests. If Ahlers arrives in Godalming, we must be on our guard.”

  At that, St. André rose, and Laurence with him. “And now, my hosts, it is time for us to retire,” he said, licking the tips of his fingers. “Tomorrow, John, we will visit your dear patient. I expect it will be a historic day, the first of many for us all. I tell you, in ten years this little town will be noted by Chinese mapmakers. Now. Madam,” he said to Alice, “have you prepared our room? If not, will you do so promptly? I long for a bed, and digestion is aided by lying on one’s back.”

  Alice gave St. André the blackest of looks, to which he seemed determined to appear oblivious. Then she turned to Zachary. “Come with me,” she said, “and assist me with this woman’s work.”

  * * *

  *

  “I have so very many questions,” Alice said to Zachary in one of the otherwise empty rooms on the house’s top floor as they stretched the sheet over St. André’s straw mattress. “Which I will merely voice into the air, as if I am talking to myself: no need for you, apprentice of the legendary John Howard, to respond. Though you might overhear something you wish to consider, to reflect upon with your master in your own time.”