Mary Toft; or, the Rabbit Queen

by Dexter Palmer

  But here, in the midst of these people keeping vigil, he seemed…if not younger, exactly, then stronger, and nearly as virile as he claimed to be. If his visage had not changed, there seemed to be a new kind of life behind his eyes, and with it a calmness, an acceptance that growing older might mean exchanging one kind of beauty for another. Recently she had come to dislike taking his hand in hers—it was always hot and wet and clammy, as if a furnace inside him were in a hurry to burn itself out, but now, standing here among the group of people that had grown to twenty-four, the temperature of his palm had cooled to match her own. And this was good.

  And look—here comes another, making his way across the marketplace to join them. And another, and yet one more.

  | CHAPTER XX.

  SECTS.

  “Would you look at this?” said Lord P—— to Joshua Toft, pulling aside the curtain to Mary Toft’s room and peering outside at the market below. “It’s patently ridiculous. Never a shortage of fools in this world: one falls victim to his own idiocy and two more come to take his place.”

  Lord P—— was a friend of Lord M——, though to Joshua the two noblemen were interchangeable, for they paid him the same heed, which was little. There was something strange about the very rich, Joshua was finding, this being his first exposure to them and, he had come to hope, his last: they seemed to regard those not of their circles as, not so much lesser people than they were, but not even entirely human. Not animals either, not dumb beasts, but no more than ghosts, or rumors. When Lord M—— or Lord P—— or Lady E—— deigned to talk to Joshua, they looked at him as if he were not as plainly visible to them as were others of their kind—as if he were a mirage of their own minds, one so convincing that it was best to humor it so that it would disappear all the faster. And yet the lords and ladies adopted this haughty attitude with such surety that when they addressed him, Joshua half expected to see through his own hand, were he to hold it up before his eyes.

  There were twenty-five people standing out front of the bagnio, looking up at the window where Lord P—— had stood before, and what was unusual about them was their regimented order, in the midst of the Covent Garden Market’s noise and swirl. They stood in five neat rows of five: some of the men and women had the disheveled look of the perpetually indigent, though there were several of the middling sort whose clothing suggested that they’d decided on impulse to shirk an honest day’s work. They seemed indifferent to the weather, this close to December. They did not speak; they did not move, and the crowd merely moved around them. They all held the same easy stance, hands loose at their sides, feet spread slightly apart. Sometimes a few of them would close their eyes and open them again after a few moments, as if they were offering up an unvoiced prayer. They waited.

  “Who do you think they are? What reason would they have to gather here?” Lord P—— said, and Joshua realized that he was not being asked the question, really, but that Lord P—— thought he was conversing with the man he considered the wisest in the room: himself. (John Howard was also in the room with him, but he was so immersed in the book he was reading that he was dead to all the world.) “Perhaps they’re all from some strange religion or other?” Lord P—— speculated, not waiting for Joshua’s response. “Muggletonians, most likely. Muggletonians, or Diggers, or Fifth Monarchists, or one of a half-dozen other crack-brained sects. You know the type: apt to see signs of the end of days in everything from the beheading of King Charles to the pattern of mold on bread.” He chuckled. “Perhaps they believe they have at last found a thing on which they can all agree.”

  He turned away from the window. “They only think they know what we have in here. But I know.”

  * * *

  *

  Since Lord M——’s first visit to the bagnio two days ago, Joshua and Mary Toft had not had a single spare moment to themselves. After Lord M—— had sat in his chair for two or so hours, looking on the afflicted woman in silent contemplation as an occasional beatific smile bloomed on his face, another imperious rap at the door to the room had announced the entrance of Lord P——, whom Lord M—— greeted effusively: their ensuing conversation, to Joshua, sounded as if it were entirely composed of a list of places that only rich people were permitted to enter, along with confirmation that both Lord M—— and Lord P—— had been in those places in the recent past, though regrettably not together. After some consideration, Lord M—— and Lord P—— deduced that since they had independently found their way here simultaneously, this signaled that this room in the bagnio was, de facto, also one of those suitably exclusive places, even if a few of the other people present—most notably the patient and her husband—were not rich, and yet could not be gotten rid of without robbing the spot of its value altogether.

  Lord P—— immediately assumed the vigilant position vacated by Lord M—— once Lord M—— had somewhere else to be and had gotten his fill of the enlightenment he was clearly experiencing, even if Lord M—— did not, or could not, articulate the exact nature of that enlightenment. Lord P—— stayed there for the rest of the afternoon, only breaking his silence to order hot tea from the bagnio’s harried porter (and Joshua shared a smile of acknowledgment with the porter, which Joshua presumed must have looked to Lord P—— like two spirits recognizing their ephemeral natures, their tenuous presences in this material plane). Lord P—— sipped his tea and considered, and occasionally nodded his head in approval when Mary brought forth a particularly wrenching wail. Eventually, he turned away from the woman and stared at Joshua, in an intense manner different from the way that Lord M—— had ever looked at him, or, before this moment, Lord P—— himself: he seemed to need Joshua to be temporarily corporeal.

  “When do you think it will happen again?” Lord P—— asked. “The miracle.”

  “It…is difficult to say,” said Joshua.

  “I’ve heard that it happens to her every two or three days on average. So it must be due soon. Yes?”

  “It may be…that the effort of traveling here has upset her. That it has delayed whatever is going on inside her.”

  Lord P—— considered. “True enough that no woman with child should brave the rocky roads to London,” he said. “But given what her body has already experienced, she must be preternaturally resilient. She will recover from the journey shortly. Yes?”

  Why did Joshua have the feeling that Lord P—— did not find it too out of the ordinary to instruct a pregnant woman to give birth on command? “One would hope,” he said.

  “I understand that these events cannot be predicted to the minute,” Lord P—— said with exasperation. “But I hope to be present when the event does occur. I want to know what her surgeons know—”

  There was another knock at the door, and Lord P—— rose to greet Lady E—— and her young female companion. Lord P—— and Lady E—— had the same conversation about the secret moneyed places of the world that Lord P—— had had with Lord M—— earlier in the day, and then, without ceremony, Lord P—— went on his way while Lady E—— made herself comfortable in his vacated chair, with her companion sitting next to her. Lady E—— stared intently at the woman in the bed, while her companion pulled some knitting from a silk bag and began to rhythmically work the needles; neither of the women made the faintest acknowledgment of Joshua’s existence, and he felt more invisible still to himself, not even sure that his own thoughts were real.

  * * *

  *

  As evening came and the din of the market outside dimmed, the bagnio’s porter brought Joshua some food: nothing more than five shriveled pork sausages on a plate along with a fork and knife, but enough to keep soul tethered to body. “I will be quite busy for some time tonight,” he said in a low voice. “But you seem as if you and your wife could use this, and I wanted to provide it when I could.” Joshua gave the porter his sincere thanks, and the man (old, gaunt, and stooped, dressed in an embarrassing outfit that,
like the bagnio’s facade, was meant to be “Turkish,” with faded purple pantaloons and a full, billowing blouse) replied, “If you are unfortunate enough to find yourself awake an hour before sunrise, join me for a glass of gin in our lounge: it is how I celebrate the end of my ‘day.’ ”

  “I will,” said Joshua, as Cyriacus Ahlers entered the room unannounced, with Sir Richard Manningham just behind. Would Joshua ever have a moment of privacy? It seemed not. “Has there been any change in the patient?” Manningham asked, shrugging himself out of his coat. “We thought to look in, and spend some time observing: it’s been a few hours. Lady E——,” he said, with a slight bow.

  “Sir Richard,” said Lady E——, standing as her companion rose with her and packed up her knitting. “I am relieved to discover that this grievously afflicted woman is in the care of London’s finest.” Turning to her companion, she said, “He saved my life, three years ago. My poor daughter was lost—during the birth she presented sideways—but it was either one of us, or both.”

  “I continue to wish I could have done better,” said Manningham. “The longer and more storied a surgeon’s career, the more troubled his soul becomes.”

  “You did what you could,” said Lady E——, “and every day I have remaining is your gift to me. Come, Torie: let’s leave these men to their business. Sir Richard, we will return at some point tomorrow, or possibly the day afterward, and perhaps I will see you again.”

  “No change,” said Joshua as Lady E—— and Torie left; he seated himself on the side of the bagnio’s bed with the plate on his lap and began to cut the cold sausages into pieces, ravenously stabbing one slice into his mouth with the fork and then feeding another, carefully, to glass-eyed Mary.

  “I think,” said Manningham, approaching the bed and standing over Mary and Joshua, “that now that we are in London, one or the other of us surgeons ought to have a presence here as often as we can manage it. Which, now that we have Mr. Howard settled and have dispensed with any business that accumulated in our absence, ought to be always. There are four of us—we can take six-hour shifts. Occasionally we will have to keep hours more appropriate to the establishment in which we find ourselves than to polite society: as I’ve concocted the plan, it is only fair that I am the one to keep his eyes propped open this first night.”

  “And I will relieve you,” Cyriacus Ahlers said, “until Mr. Howard arrives in the morning.”

  “Leaving Mr. St. André to lie abed, as is likely his wont.”

  “On my way out,” said Cyriacus, “shall I ask the porter to bring you anything?”

  “Coffee, please, as close to boiling as you can manage,” said Sir Richard, seating himself at the little marble table, “and a deck of cards. Solitaire helps pass the time for minds too exhausted for more rigorous endeavors. And do please ask if and when the services of a messenger are available—if a birth is about to commence, the king must be alerted immediately.”

  “My pleasure, Sir Richard,” said Cyriacus, pronouncing Manningham’s title with good-humored teasing. “Until tomorrow.”

  * * *

  *

  Night fell, and the market’s silence was replaced by a collage of sounds from the bagnio’s dozen rooms and the lounge on the floor below, coming muffled to Joshua through the walls: bursts of laughter that erupted with the suddenness of pistol shots; guttural strings of curses; the percussive patter of men engaged in gambling, the shouting of numbers and cheerful slapping of cards against tables; the rhythmic rapping of headboards against walls; occasional wordless arias of pleasure, which seemed as if they were practiced. He lay next to his wife, drifting in and out of a drowse, and she slept little at all.

  Manningham had positioned the card table so that he could sit behind it and watch Mary and Joshua, and whenever Joshua arose from his twilight sleep he found Manningham staring at him, unblinking, seemingly able to play solitaire without glancing at the cards, laying them down in precise arrangements as he speared Joshua with his pinpoint gaze. “I hear that Lord P—— visited here briefly today, as well as Lord M—— and Lady E——,” he said. “Lord P—— is an acquaintance of mine. I sometimes move through those circles, if only because my surgeon’s satchel serves as an entrance pass.”

  He laid one card down, then another, then looked down at the table, frowned, swept the array of cards together, and shuffled it with a nimbleness that suggested extensive experience with the deck.

  “Court and parliament are positively abuzz with the news of your wife and her presence here at the behest of the king,” he said, once again dealing the first few cards out. “You can safely bet that if Lord M—— and Lord P—— and Lady E—— have all paid a visit here, then all the Houses of Lords and Commons will want to pass through this place, all the dukes and barons. They will want to be here, and will want to be seen here. Their unending knocks will wear a hole in the door.”

  He covered a king with a queen, and he smiled.

  “You realize,” he said, “that until Mary gives birth to another rabbit, you will have no rest, no solitude? Not a single second? And when she does deliver again—why, who knows what will happen? Sensation and mayhem! Hustle and bustle! Why, I can’t even begin to imagine the coming hubbub.”

  “I believe I will wander down to the lounge to refresh myself,” said Joshua, rising wearily from the bed.

  “You do that,” said Manningham. “No need to invite me along. I am content to wait here, with your wife, until you return.”

  * * *

  *

  Joshua stayed in the bagnio’s salon until it emptied out, sprawled on a worn-out couch, watching a last few gamblers as their fortunes shifted and nursing a dram of spirits provided to him by a sympathetic whore. Eventually, the bagnio’s porter sat down next to him, a bottle of gin filched from behind the bar in one hand, a glass in another. He carelessly filled his own glass until the liquor splashed over the edges, drank it down in one long stinging gulp, refilled it, and poured a dose into Joshua’s empty glass as well.

  “You would not believe the things I have seen,” the porter said, lying back with his eyes half closed, exhausted. His pantaloons sagged about his thin legs; a stray wisp of white hair on his mostly bald head poked awkwardly upward. “Each night brings a new and unwelcome surprise. Because I am not real for them, they have no shame before me. Look: here is my withered arse; here is my limp prick; bring me some tea. Bring me oysters, porter—I need to fuck and bugger to feel alive.”

  “They are bastards,” said Joshua.

  “Bastards and sons of bitches,” the porter agreed.

  They drank to that.

  “And I don’t like the way these rich men look at my wife,” Joshua said.

  The porter’s ears perked up. “How strange to see people who would never choose to darken this establishment’s doors traipsing through here, one after another,” he said. “The whores and I have laughed about it. The very Lady E—— stepping in here with her nose up just as if this were Saint Paul’s Cathedral. One never would have thought.

  “You,” the porter said, leaning closer, “have pulled off some kind of strange trick.”

  “No trick at all,” said Joshua. “No illusion: the surgeons we will never be rid of will tell you as much.”

  “No trick?” said the porter, topping off Joshua’s glass.

  And as Joshua took a sip from the newly filled glass of gin, he looked into the aged porter’s kindly, milky eyes, set in twin nests of wrinkles, and his heart opened.

  The two of them finished the bottle of gin, trading jokes and stories until morning sunlight began to peek through the lounge’s curtains and the tumult of the market began again. Then they parted, the porter dragging himself home to sleep until afternoon when he would have to return, and Joshua returning upstairs to collapse in the bed in the King’s Head (a room that, it dawned on him, was as much a prison cell as a p
lace of comfort), snoring for hours under the watchful eye of Cyriacus Ahlers, blissfully unconscious, his dreams no more than blurs of color and vague suggestions.

  * * *

  *

  As Lord P—— went to the window to look out of it again, hours later, a new person arrived to join the group of people standing before the bagnio as silent sentries, a woman who might have been pretty had her face not been ruined by an unfortunate birthmark. Without a word, the group began to rearrange themselves, changing from an array of three rows of five to four rows of four; then they resumed their gaze up at the bagnio window (and though the eyesight of Lord P—— was not the greatest in his old age, he believed he could see a smirk on the new woman’s face, as if her purpose there was to tease all the others without their realizing).