“Joshua immediately stammered out an explanation—Ah, hm, you see, yes, Mary awoke while you were out and demanded the company of a rabbit, and so I had no choice but to do what I could to comply, et cetera, never mind that even a place that prides itself on offering the most obscure delights at short notice is not one where one could expect to lay hands on a live rabbit within fifteen minutes of the request in the middle of the night. Mary lay in the bed, eyes closed and silent, shamming at being dead to the world, just as, I realized, the woman in whose company I’d been a moment before had also been shamming. Clearly seeing that the pretense was not worth keeping up, the porter merely nodded at us both and took his leave, carrying the rabbit with him.
“I seated myself at the table with my abandoned solitaire game before me, so enraged I could not speak. Joshua, insistent on keeping up the hoax until the end, said, ‘If Mary is calling for rabbits, as she did while you were out, this most likely suggests that the strange phenomenon still has hold of her, and that she will give birth to the eighteenth rabbit within a day or two at the most.’ To which I replied, ‘I will most certainly discuss this event with the other surgeons on the morrow—then we will come to a decision.’
“Joshua said nothing: he merely closed his eyes, stretched out on the bed, and slept once more. In the morning Nathanael St. André came to relieve me: as I have said, I am slow to trust him, and so I did not confide in him regarding the events just past. Nor have I met with the other surgeons to discuss the issue yet, because,” Manningham sighed, “I do not know what to do. I am at an impasse.”
“Because there are more actors in this play than ever before,” Lord P—— said. “Even if all four of you were to state publicly that this was a hoax, if you were all men enough to admit that you now believed you had been deceived, you would still be at odds with the hundred who stand outside, and the hundreds more to whom they speak. And it is in the best interests of those hundreds to claim that what the Tofts say is true—I would go so far as to wager that they care not a whit whether the woman is in fact birthing leaping litters of rabbits, or whether she lies. If you got one of them alone where he couldn’t be overheard and offered him a drink, he’d be the first to say that the idea was absurd! Because they are not engaged in a search for the truth. Their vigil is a purely political act—a rebellion against, and an attempt to usurp the position of, the intellectual elite of this city. They wish to strip the value from your fine certificates, your sheepskin degrees, your years of learning, from the very sir that attaches to your name, Sir Richard.”
Lord P—— leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers and looking at Manningham through half-lidded eyes. “Make no mistake,” he said. “The truth, as you think of it, does not matter to them. In circumstances such as these, our notions of truth are quaint. This is a coup, and the woman, whether witting or unwitting, is its leader. You must tread carefully in these coming hours, lest you look around one morning to find yourself a man in exile on your own soil.”
* * *
*
“What must I do?” said Manningham. “This ends badly for all four of us, no matter how it ends: Ahlers, myself, John Howard, and even St. André. I see no escape that lets us save face in the public eye. Yet each day we delay worsens the problem, and will make our eventual chagrin all the greater when the day of reckoning comes.”
Lord P—— paused, and considered. “There is a possibility that you surgeons are not the only ones who are finding that you are in a situation it would be salutary to escape,” he said. “And if all four of you do not presently find yourselves hemmed in, you all will soon. Surely the others must have their unvoiced suspicions, just as you do; perhaps tonight they are having their own private conferences with their own trusted friends. Even if they do not have the direct evidence you do, Mary has not birthed a rabbit in well over a week, and this sudden failure of fecundity coincides with her being under constant watch—each day the conclusion becomes increasingly difficult to avoid.”
“And the Tofts themselves must be tired of this charade as well,” Manningham considered. “The woman is in terrible health—she continues to have a high fever and a rapid pulse. And she and her husband must feel imprisoned—they must see no exit. In their hearts they must desire an end to this as much as the rest of us.”
“There will be no graceful withdrawals for anyone, I fear,” said Lord P——, “especially poor Mr. St. André, who rushed to publish his findings and promised more findings still to come. But from where I sit, it appears that the least painful resolution will come to pass if Mary Toft herself confesses—if the vigil keepers outside the bagnio would not listen to you, they would be bound to accept her own confession out of her own mouth.”
“But how could she be convinced to do so?” said Manningham. “She is ensnared in the same trap as the rest of us, and, like the rest of us, it becomes harder for her to escape it with each passing day.”
The two of them sat in silence, thinking, and each refilled their brandy.
Then Manningham said, “I think I have a way. I would not be able to take the other surgeons into my confidence just yet, and it will not be pleasant for the woman. Nor for Nathanael St. André—in fact, my method involves gambling that events outside our knowledge are proceeding as you speculate, and that he has rethought some of his recently expressed sentiments regarding the case with a clearer mind. But I believe it is our last, best chance.”
| CHAPTER XXV.
MANNINGHAM’S PLAN.
The four surgeons met at their usual table at the Blackamoor the following afternoon, of Sunday, December 4; Zachary and Laurence were dispatched to the bagnio to watch over Mary Toft, with instructions (which Manningham, at this point, secretly thought unneeded) for one of the apprentices to run to the coffee shop to retrieve them all if any of the usual symptoms occurred that, in the past, had preceded a preternatural birth.
They were all, the four of them, tired. The shifts that Manningham had put them on, watching the patient at all hours of the day and night, had interfered with their regular schedules of sleep, necessary as they all believed this watch to be. Ahlers’s characteristic bonhomie and serenity was only slightly abraded by his sleepiness, but St. André’s normal exuberance had given way to a cranky irritability. Howard had bags under his eyes that were shading further into violet with each passing day; meanwhile, Manningham’s face was somehow growing longer, his lips pursing tighter, his eyebrows arching more steeply.
“Mary Toft’s last birth was on Thursday, November 24,” Manningham said, beginning without preamble. “Ten days have passed, when the rabbits once appeared with a frequency of two or three each week. Yet other than the ceasing of delivery, her condition has not improved—she persists in this lassitude, her fever remains, and her husband insists not that the crisis has passed, but that another birth is imminent.”
“I see no reason not to believe that another birth is forthcoming,” said Nathanael St. André. “Whatever changes occurred to her body to produce the preternatural phenomenon could not have vanished as easily as that. It seems impossible that one would revert to a normal physiology so quickly and easily.”
“Have any of you heard anything from the king?” said John weakly. He looked exceptionally unwell, Manningham thought, but said nothing.
“I am increasingly afraid that the king’s fleeting desires brought you to London only to abandon you, friend,” said Cyriacus. “His dilettante’s mind may perhaps have moved on to another subject.”
“Yet the king’s whim has the force of command, in practice if not in theory,” said Sir Richard. “So here you remain until there is some manner of resolution, even if you have left his thoughts.”
They drank their coffee, hoping for it to restore them to some semblance of alertness, but the wakefulness it brought was inadequate—it made them wide-eyed, but did not speed their sluggish thought. The drug was no replacement for a
solid night’s sleep.
“This has to end, somehow,” Cyriacus Ahlers said.
“It does,” said Manningham. “And I have been considering our next course of action. I feel that we have convinced ourselves that the situation is not urgent when, in fact, it is—it is likely that Toft’s life is in danger, and we might let her die through neglect. In short, though I disagreed with Nathanael at our last meeting, meditation on the subject has brought me around to seeing things from his point of view. I believe he is correct.”
“Surgery,” Cyriacus said.
“Yes,” said Manningham. “Invasive and, given how little we know about what we will encounter once we begin, necessarily improvisational. But needed. Else she will die. As you say, Nathanael, whatever has occurred in her physiology cannot have reverted back to its original form so easily—I would add that it is highly likely that these anomalous organs in her body continue to impede the function of those organs within her that are otherwise normal. Hence her continued lassitude, her fever, and her lack of urination: she makes water once every two days now, and then only weakly.”
“As much as I am pleased to hear that such an august personage as yourself sees my reasoning as correct,” Nathanael said, “I’m not sure I—”
“No, no, no need for bashfulness,” Manningham interrupted. “I feel, in fact, that you should be credited with the decision to perform the surgery: it is, in fact, on your implicit recommendation that we will do this. Granted, if this were a fraud of some kind—and we can all assure ourselves that it is not—then, Nathanael, your name would be attached to a murder rather than a surgery, but thankfully that is not the case, yes?”
“Yes,” Ahlers said after a moment’s pause. “Yes. I am beginning to see things your way.”
St. André blanched. “I don’t—”
“Recall your Locke,” Manningham said. “If a statement be not self-evident, there must be proof. We have, all four of us, delivered rabbits, or rabbit parts, from Toft with our own hands. But the evidence of our experience is limited—the inner workings of her body are a mystery to us, as is testified to by the competing hypotheses about Toft’s condition. Is this the work of God, or is it caused by some other physical abnormality, or are both of these the case? We cannot say conclusively.”
“I don’t think we should cut her open,” John Howard said quietly.
“Oh, but I have reconsidered,” said Manningham. “Now I think we should. Now I think we must. Think of what we could learn, were we to set aside our moral scruples for just a moment in the service of a greater good. Surgeons rarely receive the gift of such extremely rare circumstances as those in which we now find ourselves, and we would not want to make the mistakes of those who have preceded us in this profession. Consider that it was only until the last century that we realized such a simple thing as that blood circulates through the heart, instead of being created by the liver. Do you know why? Because Christian doctrine forbade dissection! Think of all the time we spent relying on the medical treatises of Galen to steer our path, when we might have done so much better. Think of all the lives that we failed to save. Because of some so-called religious obligation. Do we wish for surgeons of the future to look on us as we do on Galen? Should we give them cause to regret our moral scruples, as we regret those of our forebears? I submit that we should not.”
“I cannot help but wholeheartedly agree,” said Ahlers.
“We stand at an unfathomably important point in human history,” said Manningham. “We must cut her open. What we find inside her will, at the least, advance medicine by a decade. And it may be the case—and I don’t think we should shrink away from this idea—that we have before us real, indisputable, empirical evidence of the existence of God. If this is true, there may even be a chance that she survives the surgery! If God wanted to provide clear evidence of his existence, as he may well be doing here; if he is doing what he has never done before, and writing on her body in a manner that is plain for us to read; would he be so cruel as to ensure that his vehicle for this proof would not remain alive through the investigation that he, knowing all, knows we must make? Nathanael, thank you. I believe that in future years historians will find that humankind owes you a debt it can never repay.”
“I feel I must object to—”
“Object to your coming fame? Nonsense. If you do not want to take the lead, then you may stand aside—rest assured that Cyriacus and I will grant you the credit that is your due. I will attempt to speak to the king about this tomorrow morning, though in matters of medicine I may act with his authority without prior consultation—either way, prepare your knives for tomorrow afternoon—”
“I’d like to speak to her,” said John Howard.
Manningham turned to Howard. “Oh?”
As pallid as Nathanael looked, John looked even paler. “I’d like to spend the late-night vigil with her tonight, if you please,” he said. “Alone. We must arrange for Joshua not to be present. I was the first surgeon on this case, and the responsibility of explaining the terms of what you propose falls to me. But I would like to speak with her without any…other parties present.”
Cyriacus glanced at Manningham.
“If you wish to speak with her alone,” Cyriacus said, “then the three of us will escort Joshua somewhere else, for a while.”
“Agreed,” said Nathanael St. André. “Agreed!”
* * *
*
And so, that evening, in the King’s Head room at Dr. Lacey’s Bagnio, Zachary and Laurence turned to see all four surgeons filing in, one after the other: John Howard, Sir Richard Manningham, Cyriacus Ahlers, and Nathanael St. André taking up the rear. Mary Toft lay on the bed with her eyes closed, as usual; Joshua sat sprawled in a chair, coming alert as Manningham spoke his name.
“We need you to come with us,” Manningham said.
“But why?”
“It is not in your best interest,” said Manningham, “to protest.”
As Joshua rose—there was steel in the old man’s voice that brought him to his feet—St. André, standing behind Manningham and Ahlers, beckoned to Laurence. “Come on,” he said gently. “You, too.”
“Is there something wrong?” Laurence asked.
“No, there isn’t. Just come.”
Meanwhile, John had pulled a chair beside Toft’s bed and seated himself in it. “Zachary?” he said.
“Sir?”
“You’ll need to leave, too. You should go to our room at London Bridge, and return here in the morning.”
“Come with us,” said Ahlers to Zachary as he and the surgeons began to leave along with Joshua, who had the strange appearance of being under guard. “You have nothing at all to worry about.”
“I am going to talk to Mary this evening,” John said. “For some time. I have a few secrets to share. And perhaps, in the end, she will too.”
* * *
*
As the surgeons, the apprentices, and Joshua left and Nathanael pulled the door shut behind him, Mary Toft’s eyelids fluttered and, slowly, drifted open.
Wearily, John Howard wiped his patient’s damp brow with a cloth, sighed, and began.
| CHAPTER XXVI.
TRANSVERSE PRESENTATION.
Mary.
I would not have imagined, a few months ago, that you and I would end up here, together—I do not know where I thought this would end when it all began, nor did I imagine how far we would travel together, on that first horrific day. But here we are.
You must yearn to end this silence and stillness, yes? Stand, sing, turn cartwheels? You have been on your back for over a week now. It must have been easier for you back in Godalming, when you were not always in our sight. It was certainly easier for me.
We could go back there, whenever you wanted—all you have to do is speak, and this can end.
* * *
*<
br />
I have been thinking about the slippery nature of truth as of late, as I suppose we all have been—me, and you, and the other surgeons, and the people who wait patiently outside for the performance of your last miracle (but it will never be the last—you must know by now, after seventeen of these, that giving us one only creates the want for another. It seems that a proof of the miraculous can never satisfy). A hoax—and by now I feel it’s urgent that we say the word, that we call things by their names, for truly, your life is in danger—requires a first perpetrator, and it is convention to regard all those other believers except for the first as victims or dupes. But I think—and I say this not to salve my own feelings, but because I have truly come to believe it—that something more complex goes on in the mind of those who we say are “fooled.” That there is an additional self-deception, a self-victimization. The dupe become both robber and robbed, both living in the same mind, the one constantly deceiving the other.
Because something profound must happen in the mind to convince a man to distrust the common sense acquired over decades, not just once, but continuously. This woman before me gives birth to pulverized rabbits three times a week, despite the fact that neither I nor anyone I know has seen such a thing with his own eyes before; this company has been granted a monopoly on trade in the South Seas that will be quite lucrative, despite the fact that the lands are presently controlled by a nation with which we are at war, and I have no reason to believe that England will ever be able to trade there; this man was born of a virgin, was crucified and arose from the dead, despite the fact that this goes against all I know of human physiology.
Ah, but that last was blasphemy—forgive me. I did not mean it. I merely mean to suggest that when my thoughts turn toward darkness, as they have more often lately, I sometimes consider that the only difference between a hoax and an article of faith is the number of people who profess belief in it. If ten million people were to believe in these miraculous births of yours, rather than a hundred or a thousand, then perhaps there would be no doubt: perhaps it would be as good as if it were true, and the belief would cause no harm, might even do some good, might become a cause that convinced people to join in harmony.
Mary Toft; or, the Rabbit Queen Page 27
