This Golden Land

by Wood, Barbara

  John Conroy said quietly, "I did not."

  "Will you swear to that?" Willoughby asked, knowing that the Quaker would do no such thing.

  "Friend, my way of speaking is plain speech which is truthful speech. Therefore I have no reason for making a sworn statement. Instead I offer an affirmation that my witness is true."

  "The high court in London will want more than that, sir. You must place your hand on the Holy Bible."

  "That I cannot do. But I affirm before God that I did not poison Margaret Falconbridge."

  "We'll see about that. His Lordship has sent for the constable. In the morning, your case will be presented to the magistrate. There will be a formal inquest, and I shall recommend charges of medical malpractice, professional malfeasance and criminal negligence be brought against you."

  Willoughby turned to leave when his eye fell upon Conroy's black medical bag. Without asking, he undid the clasp, looked inside, and lifted out a bottle containing purple liquid. He read the label: Experimental Formula #23. "You experimented on the baroness! You might have at least saved it for one of your farm wives, sir!"

  "I was not experimenting," Conroy said. "I merely call it my experimental formula. There is a difference. I have used it in my treatment of other patients. I assure thee, Friend, no harm came to Margaret Falconbridge through my use of the iodine."

  "And I will thank you, sir, to stop calling Her Ladyship by her Christian name!"

  "I know of no other to call her," Conroy said quietly.

  "She is Her Ladyship to you, sir. You will show some respect to your betters."

  "Can he do that, Father?" Hannah asked after Willoughby had left. "Can he accuse us of those things?"

  "A man can be accused of anything, Hannah," John Conroy said as he sank into an upholstered chair and turned melancholy eyes to the rain washing the windows. Shadows crept along the cold carpet, shifting, changing shape—ghostly phantoms, he thought, mustering for an attack. His eyes swept the shelves of books that had a look of neglect, and he thought of the forgotten knowledge they contained, the undisturbed passions, suspended lives and ecstasies lost to memory.

  "Don't worry, Father," Hannah said as she looked around for a blanket. "You have friends, and there are your patients. They will speak up on your behalf." But even as she said it, Hannah thought of how rich and powerful Lord Falconbridge was. A High Court judge would sooner heed him and wealthy men than farmers and village shopkeepers.

  "I shall ask Mrs. Keen to bring some tea." Hannah went to the bell pull by the dark fireplace, gave it three firm tugs. When she came back to her father's side, she searched for anything that might keep him warm, but found nothing. Musty furniture stood in ancient shadow, giving the room an eerie, abandoned feel. Hannah took the one burning candle and lit a candelabra of six, bringing it closer to her father. The additional light did little to add warmth to the sepulchral atmosphere.

  As Hannah moved about this room that was not hers, taking over as if she were the lady of the manor, drawing heavy drapes against the rain, tugging the bell pull once more, examining the coal bucket and seeing if there were tinder for a fire, John Conroy marveled at his daughter's new self-assurance. Thirteen months ago she had left Bayfield a shy, quiet girl of eighteen, but she had returned a confident nineteen-year-old woman eager to tell stories of patients, fellow students, and professors. "It's a waste of time to educate a girl," friends and villagers had warned Dr. Conroy. "It makes them uppity with notions of reaching beyond their station. No man will want to marry her." John Conroy had turned a deaf ear. And look how he had been rewarded! A year's course in midwifery had gifted his daughter with a lifetime of wisdom and skills, or so it felt to a very proud father who had looked forward to sharing his medical practice with his daughter.

  Until now . . .

  "Medical malpractice, professional malfeasance and criminal negligence."

  Words sharper than knives and deadlier than bullets. John Conroy felt his heart quiver beneath the assault. A body can take any punishment, he thought, but the soul is a vulnerable thing. He whispered, "Hannah, bring me my bag."

  She was suddenly at his side, searching his face, gently touching his wrist to feel his pulse. When she had left for London, her father had still been in good health. But when she had returned, Hannah had been shocked by the change. That was when she had learned the extremes to which he had gone in his obsession to find a prevention for childbed fever. On the evening of her return from London, with her luggage still crowding the parlor, her father had called from his small laboratory: "Hannah! Hannah, come quickly!" Lifting the hems of her skirts, she had hurried through the house to find her father bent over his microscope. "Take a look, Hannah. Tell me what thee sees."

  Because the room was small and crammed with a workbench, stools, a desk and boxes of records and supplies, Hannah had had to move carefully so that her wide crinoline skirt did not knock anything over. She bent to the eyepiece. "I see microbiotes, Father."

  "Are they moving?"

  "Yes."

  He had removed the slide and replaced it with another. "Now look."

  She peered again through the eyepiece. "These are not moving."

  "The first is from a patient, Frank Miller at Bott's farm. He has a gangrenous wound. I collected pus from it and smeared some on my hands. I then washed my hands in the latest formulation."

  "Father! You have been experimenting on yourself?"

  "Watch, Hannah. Verify it for me."

  Using the remaining supply of matter harvested from Miller's wound, Dr. Conroy had smeared it on his hands and then scraped off a sample and placed it on a slide under the microscope. Hannah peered in and saw the sub-visible creatures squirming there. Conroy then washed his hands in a bowl filled with a strong-smelling solution, rinsed his hands in a bowl of clear water, filled a tiny pipette with the rinse water, dropped it on a slide and positioned it under the lens. "Now what does thee see?"

  Hannah looked. "They are not moving, Father."

  John Conroy murmured, "Praise His name." Then, with more animation: "Hannah, I believe I have found the formula at last. The cure that I have been searching for. I will go to London and present my findings to the learned men there."

  "But, Father, last time . . ." That day, two years ago, was burned painfully into Hannah's memory. She and her father had gone to London where he was to speak before the College of Physicians. Prior to his speech, they had taken a tour of Guy's Hospital where Hannah had seen doctors in frock coats smeared with blood and pus. These, she learned, were badges of a doctor's popularity. The filthier his coat meant the more patients he attended to. Hannah's father was of the radical and unpopular belief that such fluids, even when dry, possessed contagions that could be spread from patient to patient. Which was why Conroy advocated that a physician wash his hands before touching a patient, and even change into clean clothes on a daily basis.

  "No one knows what causes fevers," the gentle-spoken Quaker had said that day as he addressed the respected gathering of Britain's elite physicians. "No one knows why the human body burns where infection is present. But I believe . . ."

  He had gone on to describe to his learned audience his belief that sickness was the result of unseen beings invading the bloodstream. John Conroy had even invented a word for them: "microbiotes," from the Greek mikro, meaning very small, and bios, meaning life. Conroy believed that microbiotes secreted a poison that made a person sick.

  But his audience was not won over. One gentleman had shouted from the back of the auditorium, "It has been demonstrated time and again, sir, that fevers are the result of too much blood in the body, and that only by blood-letting can a fever be reduced."

  Conroy had countered with: "I have personally examined, under microscope, blood drops from healthy people and from those with fever. In the blood of the sick person I have seen white cells in greater preponderance than in the blood of a well person."

  "You mean greater preposterousness, do you not?" called a ma
n from the front row, and everyone laughed. "White cells! Microbiotes! Are you sure you are not a novelist, sir, dishing up a fiction?"

  Hannah had been in the visitors' gallery watching as her father became the target of insults, mocking laughter and stamping feet until he was finally forced to step down, albeit it with solemn dignity.

  "Daughter, my bag," he said now. "I am not feeling well."

  Hannah brought his medical bag to him, and then she went to the door and opened it upon a deserted corridor. Closed doors beneath Tudor arches and two silent suits of armor were all she saw. Why had no one answered her ring? "Hello? May we please have a fire in here? It is terribly cold." She listened. Muffled voices—male, upset, authoritative—came from upstairs. Had the constable already arrived? Hannah could not believe how she and her father were being treated. He had come out in the rain for Lady Margaret.

  She returned to his side and brought the candelabra closer. Judging by his sudden pallor and the way he grimaced, she knew it was the pericarditis. Exposing himself to infection had caused a chronic inflammation of the membrane around the heart. She opened his bag searched for the familiar vial. "Father, I cannot see your medicine."

  His head dropped back against the back of the chair. "I must have left it at home . . ." Closing his eyes, he listened to the rain beyond the windows, and felt the chill of the small library penetrate his coat and shirt to meet the pain that was building behind his breast bone. He felt as if he were in a vise, and he knew that, without the medicine, he would most likely not survive this attack. So he sent his thoughts to God, praying for guidance, for forgiveness and for peace.

  "Father," Hannah said decisively, rising to her feet. "I shall send for a carriage. Can you tolerate the ride home?" She looked around the room and saw no bottles of brandy or wine. It was a dark, saturnine chamber illuminated by the occasional flash of lightning. "Are you able to walk?"

  Conroy labored for air. "Hannah . . . I must tell thee the truth about thy mother's death . . . it has been on my conscience . . ."

  "Do not speak, Father."

  "The letter, Hannah, read the letter . . ."

  She blinked. "Letter?"

  The walls of the tomb-like parlor were hung with ancestral portraits, men in padded doublets and women in farthingales. As Hannah knelt at her father's side, she felt their eyes on her, the greedy eyes of the jealous dead hungry for her father's life force. You can't have him, she wanted to cry.

  John Conroy didn't breathe for a moment, then he looked at her, at the face that was so like Louisa's, the high forehead and delicate cheekbones, eyes the sparkling gray of mother-of-pearl framed by black lashes. Hannah wore her hair the same as Louisa had: the black tresses parted in the middle and swept over her ears like raven's wings, to lie at her neck gathered in a silk net. He lifted a weak hand and placed it on her cheek. "How like thy mother thee is."

  John Conroy's life had begun, he always said, the day Louisa Reed came into his life "like a fabulous butterfly." Hannah thought it a love story for the ages. Louisa Reed had been touring southeast England with her theatrical company when she had sprained her ankle in Bayfield. Since she was an actress, Miles Willoughby's distinguished predecessor would not see her. And so she was taken to the local practitioner, a shy young Quaker with a brand new shingle.

  What had it been like on that fateful day, Hannah often wondered, when Louisa had brought her gaiety and outgoing personality into that quiet, modest cottage? What had the beautiful young woman with the midnight hair and lemon yellow gown seen in the softly-spoken man in black? John and Louisa must have been like night and day—and yet, like night and day, they had complemented each other and had fit together into a perfect unit. Hannah's mother had fallen so deeply in love that she had given up the stage to be with John, and he had been so in love with her that he had allowed himself to be expelled from the fellowship of the Society of Friends in order to marry her.

  Reaching into his medical bag, he brought out the bottle of experimental formula. "If I had had this miracle six years ago, I could have saved thy mother." Taking Hannah's hand, he pressed the small bottle into it, saying, "I pass it to thee, Hannah, as my legacy. Use it in thy midwifery. Save lives."

  "We will use it together," she said in a tight voice.

  He rolled his head from side to side. "My time in this mortal life is at an end, daughter. God calls to me. But I must tell thee the truth about thy mother's death . . . I should have spoken long ago . . ." He swallowed painfully. "The letter explains . . . but it is hidden . . . find it. . .."

  "Father, I do not know what you are talking about." Hannah squeezed his shockingly cold hands. "I will fetch Dr. Willoughby—"

  "No!" A harsh whisper spoken with the last of his strength. "It is my time, Hannah. We must accept." He opened his eyes, tried to focus on her face, then let his gaze roam the room. He paused, frowned, and said, "Who is that?"

  Hannah looked over her shoulder. "Who is what, Father? There is no one there."

  "Why . . ." John Conroy whispered. "I know thee, sir . . . " His face cleared, the shadows retreated and Hannah was startled to see her father suddenly smile. "Yes," he said, nodding toward the specter that only he could see. "I understand . . ."

  And then: "Oh, Hannah! The light!" He brought his eyes back to hers and she was stunned to see focus and clarity in them, and an intensity she had not seen in years. He reached for her hand that still held the bottle of formula and said, "I see so much now. Hannah, this is the key!"

  Tears rose in her eyes. "Father, I do not know what you are talking about. Let me take you home."

  A strange glow seemed to suffuse his features, his smile now was one of ecstasy. "I was blind, Hannah. I did not understand." His cold fingers grasped her hand tightly so that the small bottle dug painfully into her palm. "This is it, the key to everything. Oh Hannah, my dearest daughter, thee stands at the threshold of a glorious new world! A wondrous adventure—"

  John Conroy died then, smiling, while generations of arrogant Falconbridges looked down gloatingly from their ancient canvases and Hannah, suddenly left alone in the world, wept against his chest and clutched the tiny bottle that had, ultimately, killed him.

  THE CAPRICA

  AUGUST, 1846

  2

  I

  F THE BOY DIES, CAPTAIN, WE TAKE OVER THIS SHIP AND SAIL for the nearest land. Because it's a death ship for sure, and we ain't gonna let our families perish in the middle of the ocean." The angry Irishman curled his huge hands into fists to punctuate his threat.

  "I assure you," said Captain Llewellyn, Master of the Caprica, "Dr. Applewhite is doing is utmost best to stop the contagion."

  "Yeah?" shouted a Scotsman who clutched a heavy belaying pin. "Then how come we're dropping like flies down here and that lot up there ain't even touched?" He flung his arm toward the quarterdeck, where the ship's four paying passengers enjoyed privacy and better accommodations than the Caprica's two-hundred-plus immigrants who were crowded into steerage.

  Captain Llewellyn drew in a steadying breath to curtail his temper. As the three-masted square-rigger rolled and swayed along its nautical course, alone on a vast sea that sparkled to the far horizons, Captain Llewellyn, a gruff, thickset man with bushy white whiskers and a brusque manner, took the measure of the enraged Irishman. He might not be armed, Llewellyn thought, but the crew and officers wouldn't stand a chance should mutiny erupt. The Irishman was not alone. Nearly a hundred angry Scotsmen, Welshmen and Englishmen were lined up with him on the deck, for once forgetting their political and religious differences, united in one cause: to take over the ship if the Ritchie boy died.

  As more immigrants appeared on the deck, faces twisted in fury, Captain Llewellyn glanced up at the quarterdeck where he saw a lone man watching. Neal Scott, the young American, one of the Caprica's four paying passengers—a scientist bound for Perth to work on a survey vessel for the colonial government. A pleasant fellow, Llewellyn thought, if a bit mysterious, traveling with those
strange crates right in his cabin instead of stowing them in the hold. The captain did not care for Mr. Scott's current keen attention on the brewing trouble. Scott would tell the others and then the captain would have a panic on his hands.

  Llewellyn brought his attention back to the Irishman and fixed him with a stern gaze. The Master of the Caprica had small bluebell-colored eyes, like two pin pricks set deep in the creases of his weathered face, and they did not miss a thing. Behind the angry men, womenfolk were starting to line up, widows who had buried husbands and children at sea and who now brandished broomsticks and rolling pins. It will be a bloody slaughter, Llewellyn thought. And neither side will win.

  Although Llewellyn knew he was a good and fair captain who treated his crew better than most, he also knew that a seaman's life was hard and that if the immigrants did take control of the ship, his sailors would be only too happy to sail her to the nearest rock if the immigrants were generous about it, which he had no doubt they would be. Turning to his First Officer, he said quietly, "Send for Dr. Applewhite."

  Mister James hesitated. "Will it do any good, sir? The doctor's been down there numerous times already."

  During his long career at sea, with each voyage carrying a ship's doctor, Captain Llewellyn had learned that medical men were unpredictable. They were not regulated the same way sailing men were. Llewellyn had had to serve many years as an ordinary seaman, and then had had to study long and hard at navigation, the stars, weather, how to read maps, how to handle a sextant and to read the wind before he got his master's ticket. But any man could call himself a doctor. There was no general standard, no regulations, nothing by which to measure a medical man for competency. Private medical schools dotted the map like mushrooms, with courses as short as six months and then the diploma was awarded. And so when one hired a ship's doctor, one never knew if he was of the barest education and experience, who didn't know a boil from a scab, or an Oxford scholar who could name every nerve in the body and who spoke in words that cost a shilling apiece. Llewellyn himself had sailed with his share of charlatans and snobs, and in the grand scale of things, he counted Applewhite among the more capable. If the contagion could be stopped, Applewhite was the man to do it.