A Corruption of Blood

by Ambrose Parry

  Sarah smiled despite herself. It was at least some comfort to know that certain things had not changed. Lizzie was as unpolished and irascible as when she left. As Lizzie began pouring tea Sarah realised that there was someone else standing on the threshold. Lizzie noticed her looking.

  ‘Christina,’ Lizzie explained. ‘You remember her, aye? She started here just before you left.’

  Sarah looked again at the girl hovering in the doorway. Quiet, unsure of herself, in stark contrast to Lizzie’s brashness. She looked as though she or her forebears hailed from warmer climes: olive tones in her unblemished skin, dark hair and eyes.

  She stepped tentatively into the room. ‘I’ve to help with the unpacking,’ she said.

  ‘Well, get on with it,’ Lizzie said. ‘I need to go down and help with the dinner. There’s more of them than usual tonight.’

  She clattered the teapot back down onto the tray and took her leave, all jutting elbows and indignation, in high dudgeon at the prospect of having extra guests to serve. This caused Sarah to smile again. The thought of Lizzie brandishing a ladleful of stew at Raven’s intended . . .

  Sarah took a sip of tea, the warm fluid easing the tightness in her chest. She examined the food piled up on the tray, a selection of Mrs Lyndsay’s finest cooking that would tempt the most reluctant of appetites. A large slice of game pie with pickle. Bread thickly sliced. A wedge of cheese. A fruit scone with raspberry jam. She tore off a small piece of bread and put it in her mouth. She chewed slowly, tasting nothing.

  She became aware that Christina remained rooted to the spot just inside the doorway. Sarah pointed to the trunk sitting at the end of the bed.

  ‘You can start with that if you like.’

  The girl still did not move. Then, without warning, she started to weep. Silent tears spilled down her cheeks. Sarah put her cup down.

  ‘Whatever is the matter?’

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ Christina said. She looked so miserable, Sarah’s own feelings writ large on her young face. Sarah felt compelled to stand and hug her, to comfort her as she would a child. As she held her, the girl began to cry in earnest and Sarah wondered what on earth Lizzie had said or done to provoke this degree of upset. Unpacking a trunk was hardly a demanding task.

  She fished about in her pocket for a handkerchief and pressed it into the girl’s hands, giving her a moment to compose herself. Sarah poured some more tea and offered her the cup.

  ‘Why don’t you take a seat and tell me all about it.’

  The girl cradled the cup in her hands, looking a little unsure. She took a sip of the tea, then drained it. She sat down on the bed beside Sarah with a shuddering sigh.

  ‘Is it Lizzie?’ Sarah asked. ‘Or Mrs Lyndsay?’ The cook was volubly intolerant of shirkers.

  ‘What? No.’ Christina shook her head vigorously. ‘Everyone has been kind to me here.’

  ‘Then why the tears?’

  She looked at her hands. ‘I can’t find my baby,’ she said, her voice a whisper. Sarah thought that she had misheard.

  ‘Your baby?’

  Christina nodded, sniffed, wiped her nose with the handkerchief.

  Sarah tried to recall what she knew about this girl, a former resident of the Lock Hospital as Lizzie had been. Dr Simpson had for a number of years been in conflict with the management there. Too much religious instruction and not enough medical care, prayer being of limited use in the treatment of venereal disease. The hospital rescued these girls from a life of vice and then he rescued them from the hospital. Or so he liked to say.

  ‘I had a baby,’ Christina continued. ‘That is why I had to leave my previous employer.’

  ‘And the father?’ Sarah asked.

  Christina shook her head, beginning to tear up again. ‘I cannot tell you.’

  Sarah put her arm around the girl, squeezing her shoulder. She knew that there was probably no point in pressing her for this information. She had perhaps been taken advantage of, seduced and abandoned. Or forced: a common enough occurrence in certain households. To some, domestic staff were disposable, easily replaced. But then again there were many ways in which a man could so disappoint a woman that she would not wish to be reminded of him.

  ‘You were dismissed when your employer found out?’

  ‘I tried to hide it for as long as I could. As soon as it was discovered that I was with child, that was it. I was told to leave.’

  ‘Who was your employer?’

  Christina shook her head again.

  It hardly mattered. There was nothing that could be done about it now.

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘I was taken in by someone. A respectable woman by the name of Mrs King. My employer paid for her to look after me until the baby was born. Or that’s what I was told.’

  ‘But the terms changed,’ Sarah suggested.

  Christina nodded. ‘By the time he was born I had run up a debt. Mrs King told me I had to find the money or my baby would be given away. She said she wasn’t looking after him for free, and she knew of many couples who were desperate for a healthy child, especially a boy. She often found good homes for unwanted babies, she said. But he was wanted.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I earned the money the only way I could. Ended up in . . . a house of . . .’

  She could not finish, but nor did she need to.

  Sarah was neither shocked nor surprised by the revelation. Dismissed with no prospect of reputable employment, with debts to pay and a child to support. There were not many other options for a girl in such a position.

  ‘I kept up the payments for a while,’ Christina went on. ‘But then I got sick and couldn’t work any more.’ She started to cry again. ‘I told her to wait, that I would get the money. I went back with my first wages from here, but my baby was gone.’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Yes, gone. Mrs King wouldn’t tell me where he is or what has happened to him.’ She sniffed and wiped her nose again. ‘She said it’s for the best. Maybe she’s right. What kind of life could I give him anyway? When I was offered the job here, I began to think I might be able to redeem myself. Earn my right to be a mother to him. But even here, where I have a decent job among good people, it’s not like I could have him with me. How could that possibly work? And now he’s gone, likely given away and I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye. I just want to know he is all right.’

  ‘When did you last speak to this woman?’

  ‘The last few times I went there, there was nobody at home. I’m worried now that she’s gone too and that I’ll never find out what happened to my wee boy.’

  ‘What did you call him? Your son?’

  ‘Jamie.’

  ‘And how old would he be now?’

  ‘About six months.’

  Still just a baby. How heartbreaking it must be for this poor girl, blamed and shamed. Dispossessed. Bearing the brunt of all this alone. Sarah clasped her hand.

  ‘I wish there was something I could do to help.’

  Christina looked at her beseechingly. ‘Mrs Lyndsay says you’re smart as a whip. Maybe you could find him for me?’

  Coming from Mrs Lyndsay this was praise indeed, but Sarah doubted she was likely to have much success. If this woman had absconded, she would have made sure to cover her tracks. Finding her would be no mean feat, never mind uncovering what had happened to the child.

  ‘Would you know him, Jamie, if you saw him again?’

  The girl looked horrified. ‘Of course I would.’

  Sarah evidently did not look convinced.

  ‘I would know him,’ Christina insisted. ‘He has a mark on his left arm.’

  ‘A mark?’

  ‘Birthmark.’

  Sarah looked at her tear-streaked face. She squeezed the girl’s hand.

  ‘I’m not promising anything,’ she said. ‘But I’ll see what I can do.’

  Christina sniffed, smiled and hugged her.

  Sarah realised that sh
e had just agreed to a near-impossible task and briefly wondered why she had done so. Probably because she needed someone to have faith in her right now, even if it was this poor girl, because after Grafenberg she had lost all belief in herself.

  SIXTEEN

  aven stood outside Calton Jail, its silhouette picked out against the slowly setting sun. It was an occasional source of confusion to visitors from other parts who had a tendency to confuse it with Edinburgh Castle. With its gatehouse, battlements, towers and crenelations it looked more like a castle than the castle itself. Why such external embellishments had been deemed necessary when building a prison was anyone’s guess. Within the mind of whoever had designed the thing there seemed to have been some doubt about its purpose, whether to keep prisoners in or invaders out. The pouring of boiling oil over the battlements was unlikely to be necessary anytime soon. It had been built to replace the Old Tolbooth jail, a medieval structure described by Lord Cockburn as ‘an atrocious place, the very breath of which would fell any stranger who had the misfortune to cross its threshold’. Raven hoped that the air had improved since the jail’s relocation.

  He was grateful for the late light and clear skies. He could not have been prevailed upon to visit the place at this hour during any other time of the year, and even in daylight the sight of it tended to make him shudder when he thought how close he had come to ending up here only a few months back.

  Having established his credentials at the gatehouse, Raven was escorted through a series of corridors and shown into a small room where Gideon lay sprawled on a bed, staring at the ceiling. Raven noted that he was the sole inmate. These were not the accommodations to which he was accustomed, but they afforded considerably more privacy and security than Raven had enjoyed in the Night Asylum for the Houseless when it was used as an overspill for the police’s holding cells. Evidently when you were the son of Sir Ainsley Douglas you were entitled to better treatment, even when you stood accused of murdering him.

  Gideon climbed languidly to his feet, almost as though Raven’s visit was an inconvenience. Raven guessed it was for show. Gideon would not wish to admit even to himself that he was the supplicant in this scenario.

  He had a bruise beneath his eye. Raven wondered if he had earned it at the hands of McLevy’s men, or perhaps one of the guards here. Then he remembered seeing Ainsley strike him there and on the jaw – mere hours before Ainsley was supposedly poisoned.

  ‘You don’t seem surprised that I responded to your plea,’ Raven said, choosing his words deliberately.

  ‘I conveyed my summons through Eugenie for a reason,’ Gideon replied. ‘I knew you would be disinclined to assist me and would doubtless derive some satisfaction from seeing me hang. But I also knew that failing to help would jeopardise your good standing with your intended bride.’

  ‘Summoned, was I? Perhaps I came merely to see you caged, knowing only one of us could walk out of here tonight.’

  ‘Were that the case, you would at least have waited until you had an idle hour. You came running immediately, though you were probably at dinner. There is no shame in it. Doing something you find unpalatable merely to stay in your betrothed’s good graces strikes me as perfect training for marriage.’

  Though it was not what Gideon meant, Raven thought of his mother, walking on eggshells, always taking care not to do or say anything that might precipitate his father’s rage. He thought of what he had seen in the stables and wondered whether Gideon had witnessed the same.

  My mother’s only weakness was her blindness to what you are, he had said. But in time the scales fell, and that was why she . . .

  ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ Gideon invited, gesturing towards a careworn chair that looked likely to collapse under his weight. Raven descended gingerly onto it while Gideon perched himself once more on the bed. He looked oddly childlike in his posture, arms wrapped around his knees. Raven suspected that he was afraid; worried but determined to hide it.

  ‘How are the servants looking after you in your new home?’ Raven asked. ‘Do you think you’ll remember their names?’

  ‘Only if it turns out that I need something from them,’ Gideon replied.

  Raven could not decide whether this brazenness was actually a form of contrition. Or maybe his pride was all he had to cling to right now.

  ‘Did one of them give you that?’ Raven asked, pointing at his face, curious to hear how he would answer.

  Gideon took a moment to grasp what he was referring to, his fingers briefly touching the bruise.

  ‘No. This was . . . an accident. I have been treated well, other than the trifling matter of being wrongfully accused of poisoning my father.’

  ‘The bump has certainly jogged your memory, given that you now recall my name and presumably that we knew each other as students. How has your medical career progressed, by the way? What field did you choose to specialise in?’

  Having noted his previous evasion, Raven wondered what else Gideon might lie about if invited, and what truths he might inadvertently reveal.

  ‘Cane-fields, mostly,’ he replied. He fixed Raven with a stern eye, conveying his suspicion that his interrogator knew he did not complete his studies. ‘My father sent me to the Indies to oversee his interests there.’

  ‘You were forced to abandon your medical degree?’

  ‘You could say I studied at my father’s pleasure. When he needed my help, I had little choice but to oblige.’

  ‘It is difficult to imagine a man such as your father needing help,’ Raven suggested. Still less him turning to you, he left unsaid.

  ‘He has . . .’ Gideon paused for a moment before correcting himself. ‘He had several business interests in the Indies, the largest of which is a plantation on the island of Tobago. It was being poorly managed locally and my father needed someone to go over there and sort things out. For such a man of parts, he always had trouble delegating. He could not be in two places at once, so the next best thing was to send his own blood.’

  ‘Wasn’t that a little beyond your area of expertise?’

  ‘I had visited the plantation before. Amelia and I went there with our father after our mother died. But yes, it was not a task I was particularly well-prepared for. I think it was a test.’

  ‘Did you pass?’

  Gideon appeared to think about this but did not answer. Or at least, did not answer directly.

  ‘The estate had sustained considerable damage during a hurricane a couple of years ago and was slow in recovering the losses accrued, mainly because the rum-soaked overseer was by that point failing to do much of anything. Merely by remaining sober during daylight hours I represented a considerable improvement.’

  ‘A test with a low bar, then.’

  Gideon gave him an odd look, not so much irritated by the comment as by how little Raven understood.

  ‘Within six months I had arrested the decline. I diversified, planting cacao as well as cane. The sugar business is not what it once was.’

  ‘Something to do with emancipation, I imagine,’ Raven suggested. He knew that the Douglas family’s fortune had been built upon the backs of slaves and felt a desire to point this out.

  Gideon ignored the jibe. ‘It was not the life I had imagined for myself, but I found the climate suited me. I would have stayed on, but my father relieved me of my duties and summoned me home. I failed the test, you see.’

  ‘I thought you said you had arrested the decline.’

  Gideon gave him that look again. ‘When it comes to my father, there is no such thing as good enough. He tells me that I will fail, and he is continually proved right because it is always in his gift to define what constitutes success. Thus he is permanently disappointed in me, in an unending cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy.’

  Leaving aside Gideon’s use of the present tense, his words were doing little to support his claim of innocence.

  ‘You are making a strong case for the prosecution here in the event that they do not already consider you to h
ave motive enough,’ Raven observed. ‘What is it that you think I can do for you?’

  Gideon shifted uncomfortably on his bed, sitting up straighter and unclasping his arms. It was as close as Raven was likely to get to a gesture of openness.

  ‘I feigned not knowing you when last we met. An evening dedicated to my father’s self-aggrandisement did not make me well-disposed. But I did remember you. I had heard stories, in fact. Your investigations exonerated your employer a few months ago.’

  ‘You spoke to Eugenie.’

  Raven hated the thought of her having been in conversation with Gideon unbeknown to him, and no doubt without the need for secrecy.

  ‘She talked of little else but you,’ Gideon said, then gave him a crooked smile. ‘But I also heard rumours about you from altogether less respectable sources. Whispers in taverns. I was given the impression that you are a man who could search this city’s underbelly should he need to.’

  ‘And why might I need to? What would I be looking for?’

  ‘You met my father two nights ago. You must have got a measure of him and the spheres in which he moved. Powerful men accumulate powerful enemies. Do you really believe I could be chief among them? The most ruthless?’

  ‘Greater enmity borne towards your father by others is immaterial. Arsenic has been found in his stomach. You stood to gain the most from his demise and were the one best placed to carry out the deed.’

  At these words, Gideon had a look of satisfaction about him, as though Raven had finally stumbled upon what he wished him to.

  ‘And that is precisely what proves my innocence,’ he said. ‘I was conveniently placed to take the blame, but whoever actually did this has failed to take into account that I studied medicine.’

  ‘Or perhaps they simply knew of your examination results.’

  Gideon glared. He had no more patience for sparring.

  ‘Even I attended enough classes to know that arsenic is a metallic poison. It is easily detectable in the body and can be found in the tissues long after death has occurred. If I were going to poison my father, arsenic is the last thing I would use.’