To a woman who appeared to be the mother of ten halfnaked children I gave a specialist mixture of wormwood, chincona and back cohosh, a remedy designed to purge all manner of internal parasites. The children were listless and silent, bundled in rags like badly wrapped parcels, their little faces pinched and hollow. In the next room a woman was tearing up the pages of a Bible and using it for tinder.
‘Got it from them wimmin,’ she said when I asked. ‘Them visitin’ wimmin.’ She screwed up another page and fed it into the small pyramid of sticks and clinker she had assembled in the fireplace. ‘Said they was from some society or other. I weren’t listenin’.’ She coughed explosively.
We were on our way back to St Saviour’s Street when we heard the shouts of men and women and the barking of dogs. I had heard sounds like that before, when I used to come to Prior’s Rents with my father, or Dr Bain, and I knew what it heralded. As outsiders we would not be welcomed, though I was aware there would be at least one man who would be glad to see me.
I could tell from the way the ground was churned and mashed that many feet had passed that way not long before. From up ahead came the roar of an unruly crowd. I gripped my bag tightly. ‘This way,’ I said to Will, and I plunged down a vile thoroughfare flanked by oozing walls.
At the end of the passage the houses gave out onto a space formed by a collapsed building. Here and there makeshift pigsties had been erected out of the rubble. The space was confined on all sides by tall tenements, faces peering from the gaping windows. No sunlight reached us, and no breeze, so that as an arena it was dim and shaded, the press of bodies that filled it a stinking sea of unwashed clothes and flesh.
‘Ugh!’ said Will. ‘What’s this stuff on the ground? It looks like paste, rust-coloured paste. And the smell!’ He sniffed, his face disgusted. ‘I thought my nostrils had been assaulted by every stench the city had to offer but that . . . that tang. What in God’s name is it?’
‘The place is used as an impromptu butcher’s yard,’ I said. ‘When it’s not filled with people.’ Around us, the roar and scream of voices echoed off the walls in a dizzying pandemonium. A fat bluebottle droned back and forth before my nose in search of a ripe carcass. ‘Stick with me,’ I said.
‘Where are we going?’
I took his arm. ‘To the ringside.’
In front of us, two burly men were standing shoulder to shoulder, looking over the heads of the crowd. ‘Excuse me, gentlemen,’ I said as I tried to shove between them.
One of the men seized my collar. But the other punched his hand away, jabbing a dirt-blackened finger at my bag – a leather one with a rich oxblood patina that Dr Bain had given me years ago. ‘Doctor, ain’t ‘e? Let ‘im through.’
The bag, as I had expected, was the key with which I might unlock the crowd, and I flourished it before me as I pushed my way forward. ‘Excuse me,’ I cried. ‘The doctors!’ We encountered no hostility. Most strangers, no matter how well intentioned, could expect to be treated as fair game – worth robbing, at the very least – in such a crowd as this. I put my hand to my pocket book. It was still there. From up ahead I heard the dull, meaty slap of a fist striking flesh.
We emerged, gasping for fresh air but finding none, into a circle of faces – men, mostly, but women also. ‘Who is it?’ I shouted to the man standing beside me.
‘Big Brendan O’Dowd,’ he screamed in my ear. ‘No one beats ‘im!’ His gaze was fixed on the scene before us. ‘Go on, Brendan!’ he shouted. ‘Get in there!’
In the middle of the circle made by the crowd, two men stripped to the waist faced one another. The smaller of the two danced back and forth, his bald head glistening in the vaporous light, his fists held up. The other – bigger, taller and more thickset – stood motionless. His shoulders were covered in pimples and scars, streaked with dirt and matted with curly black hair. His face was blotched with the bruises of previous battles. His teeth appeared to be entirely absent and the bridge of his nose had collapsed – though whether this was due to fighting, from being poisoned in the womb by his mother’s drinking, or from congenital syphilis, it was, from the ringside, impossible to say. He swung a thick hairy arm. The smaller man bobbed backward and the fist swept past without impact. The crowd roared.
Beside me, Will could only gape at the spectacle before us – not least because on the other side of the ring, between a pair of burly bellowing men, stood the last person either of us expected to see. Susan Chance’s face was crimson with excitement, her mouth open in a yell. I could not hear what she was saying – for some reason I was grateful for it – though her intention was clear. The big Irish man was the one she had put money on. She had not caught sight of us, but like Will I could not take my eyes off her. Gone was the spry, upright young lady, Dr Stiven’s cosseted darling, and in her place was a tiny, screaming, devil-faced figure. Her hands, now gloveless, were balled into fists, her hat was trampled in the mud at her feet. Her stance was pugnacious, crouched as if to dart away or spring forward as the occasion required, her eyes bright as she shouted – What? Blandishments? Oaths? Encouragement? She jabbed at the air twice with her left fist, bobbed sideways and then punched the air with her right. She moved with such speed that I could hardly believe what I had seen. Until she did it again, this time punching with the right and swinging a sharp left hook. And all the while she was shouting, her gaze fixed upon the big prizehghter.
The smaller of the two men bobbed back once more, out of the range of Big Brendan’s giant fist. He had been forced to the edge of the crowd, his back to Susan who was standing almost directly behind him. And then, to my amazement, Susan Chance lifted the hem of her skirts. I caught sight of a stockinged leg, a red garter and a flash of white underthings as she kicked the fellow’s arse with her steel-callipered boot. The crowd roared with laughter as the smaller prizefighter staggered forward, into the waiting arms of his huge opponent. Brendan grinned, revealing that he was not toothless after all, but was in fact the proud owner of a mouthful of shattered yellow stumps. He released his victim and drew back his right hand – just as the other fellow smashed his left fist hard up against the big Irishman’s jaw. Brendan dropped to the ground like a giant lump of masonry and lay prone in the dust. There was a moment’s stunned silence, and then the place exploded in uproar: from one half of the crowd a groan of disappointment, from the other a roar of delight, followed by a general hullaballoo as they turned to one another and began settling their debts.
The victor, his face cut and bloodied, was carried off – I presumed to the Six Bells, a hideous drinking den not far from the arena. The vanquished lay where he had fallen, recumbent in the mud. Someone seized me by the arm and began to drag me towards him, but at that moment something else caught my eye, something bright in that sea of dark clothing and dirty faces. I could not see what it was, though somehow it was familiar. I pulled my arm away. ‘Wait—’
I glimpsed him for a moment only, but a moment was all I needed. A pale face with fair hair and white lashes. Dr Christie. His face was set in a half-smile, his gaze fixed, unwavering and unblinking, on Susan Chance. He was not accompanying her, that much was clear, for he appeared intent on hanging back, keeping her in sight even as he avoided her line of vision. His expression was a mixture of satisfaction and disgust, as if he was pleased to find her back in the Rents in so violent a location, and also that he was unsurprised by it. Had he followed her there? I would not have been surprised. Was he spying on her? I wondered whether to accost him, to ask what he meant by it, but it was too late. The crowd heaved and surged and he vanished amongst it.
Someone yelled into my face that if I had come to see to Brendan, I had better get on with it, and I was pushed forward onto my knees at the side of the fallen giant.
‘What do you have for him?’ said Will.
‘Not much,’ I said. ‘Witch hazel and alcohol.’ I dabbed at the man’s cuts.
‘Poor fellow,’ said Will. ‘From the stink of him he’s already full of the stuff.
He’d probably achieve much the same benefit if he licked his own wounds.’
‘Look at his face,’ I said. ‘Today’s pounding was no worse than he’s received in the past.’ I smeared some arnica balm onto the black and purple bruises beneath his eyes and examined his fists.
‘Did you see her?’ said Will, unable to keep his thoughts to himself any longer. ‘She was here. She was watching! What an adventuress!’
I was tempted to point out that I regularly came to Prior’s Rents alone, and had seen many such street fights. But I didn’t. I tied a bandage around the knuckles of the unconscious man, and held a bottle of salts beneath his nose. He groaned, and opened bloodshot eyes. Around us the crowd was swirling like refuse in a drain, the press of bodies diminishing as people sought egress through alleys, lanes, passages I had not even noticed.
‘Quite extraordinary,’ said Will. ‘Did you see her, Jem? She was right opposite us!’
‘Yes, I saw her.’ I couldn’t say more. Susan Chance had been in my mind more than I cared to admit. I was used to a lonely life, but I could still remember how it felt to touch and be touched by someone I loved with my whole physical being, whose nearness made my skin prickle and my blood sing in my veins. And yet, as much as I longed again for love, I knew I could never have it. For who would want me? I could not be a husband any more than I could be a wife. But what about Will? Why should Will endure a similar loneliness? I watched him searching the crowd for Susan Chance, his face aglow, and felt sadness flood through me like salt water.
Chapter Eight
I arrived home to find Dr Mothersole rapping on the door to the apothecary with the head of his stick. ‘My dear fellow.’ He seized my fingers between his meaty paws. ‘Such a tragedy. Such a loss to the profession and to Angel Meadow.’ His skin was smooth and soft and slightly tacky to the touch, as if he were wearing a pair of flesh-coloured kid gloves.
‘You knew Dr Rutherford well?’
‘No,’ said he. ‘But I have only the highest praise for him and his work.’ He swabbed at his face with a giant handkerchief. ‘Forgive me, sir.’ His eyes glistened with tears. ‘I have a good deal of heart. Too much, some would say, and I am generous in my regard for others, especially when they are dead. It behoves us to remember Dr Rutherford with the profoundest respect.’
Dr Mothersole turned to his daughter, who waited at his side like a pilot fish. ‘Write that down, Constance, my dear. His bounty was as boundless as the sea.’ When she made no move to obey he added, ‘Come along, my dear, write it down. It captures my largesse with admirable restraint.’
‘But it is not your own, sir.’ Constance Mothersole licked the tip of her pencil.
Dr Mothersole blinked. ‘Not my own? What do you mean, not my own? I have just uttered it, have I not?’
‘Those are Shakespeare’s words.’
‘Further evidence, if indeed it were needed, of my felicity of expression.’ He waved a hand. ‘My eloquence finds its equal!’ He stuffed his handkerchief back into the bosom pocket of his coat, and stared down at me expectantly.
‘After you, sir,’ I said. ‘And you, Miss Mothersole.’
Dr Mothersole eased his giant bulk through the apothecary door. Will had left me on St Saviour’s Street and gone up to the House of Correction. Gabriel – who had regarded Dr Mothersole’s appearance with alarm – seized an apple from the basket, snatched up his penny blood and disappeared into the yard. I would have Dr Mother-sole and his daughter to myself.
A fold of paper was propped against the clock on the mantel – a note from Dr Hawkins – and I snatched it up and tore it open as Dr Mothersole removed his hat and lowered himself into my father’s wing-backed chair before the fire. The contents were brief: Edward Eden has been arrested. I was not surprised. Would we be able to prove he was innocent before he ended up on the gallows?
Dr Mothersole sat with his ankles and feet daintily pressed together. His face was smooth as a pebble, his mouth a crimson rosebud between porcelain cheeks. His head had not a single hair upon it, and his lashes and brows were entirely absent, giving him a curious appearance, doll-like, and yet half complete, as if he had escaped from his maker before the finishing touches had been applied. He blinked his tiny eyes, his gaze darting to the pocket in which I had pushed Dr Hawkins’s crumpled note.
‘I realise that we are scarcely acquainted, you and I, though I assume you know who I am,’ he said. ‘My reputation generally precedes me.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know you, sir,’ I said. ‘But then I don’t claim to have made the acquaintance of every medical man in London.’
‘Well, well,’ he chuckled. ‘I flatter myself, clearly. I am a guest at Angel Meadow, though I have known Dr Christie for many years in one way or another. Think of me as a visitor come to assist, a kindly uncle happy to help those who are less fortunate.’ His eyes vanished into the folds of his cheeks as he gave what he presumably considered an avuncular smile. ‘Dr Hawkins approved. My approach is not unknown to him, and he was only too pleased to have me come amongst the poor benighted souls in his care. Like so many of our asylums, there are more who are mad than there are doctors to treat them.’
‘Dr Mothersole specialises in women’s minds,’ said his daughter.
‘Quite so,’ he said. ‘And I have put my principles into action in my own life, for what use would a man be if he advised others to do one thing when he himself did another?’
‘What indeed,’ I said.
‘My wife is a jewel of quiescent womanliness.’ He held up his fat hands in a gesture that spoke of simplicity and obviousness. ‘With her there has been no need to improve upon perfection. Constance, of course, is a very different matter. Take a look at her, Flockhart.’
‘Sir, I—’
‘Go on! Don’t be shy, man, she’s quite used to it. As you can see she is flat-chested, dull-complexioned, lankhaired, excessively tall, excessively angular and generally awkward.’ He spoke as if the girl were not present, and I blushed for shame at how she must feel to have her private worth so publicly judged. ‘The menses are absent too,’ he went on. ‘Intriguing, don’t you agree? She has no role as a woman – she cannot be a mother, she cannot be an ornament. I’m afraid she is entirely redundant as no man would have her. I make use of her as best I can without inflicting her upon the world and she makes an admirable secretary.’
‘I’m sure she is grateful for the opportunity to assist,’ I murmured.
‘Do you mock me, sir?’ Dr Mothersole’s mouth tightened into an angry button, all trace of medical bonhomie vanishing like smoke in a gale. I became aware of the numerous feminine touches visible here and there about the apothecary – the bowls of dried rose petals and orange peel I used to scent my room upstairs and which I had refreshed only that morning; the shawl I draped about my shoulders when the nights were cold; the raspberry leaf and valerian mixture I used for menstrual cramps which stood on the table beside him.
‘Not in the least,’ I said. I fumbled for something to say that might pacify him and, at the same time, reassure him of my manly self-belief. ‘But don’t you . . . don’t you worry about the balance of her mind? With so much work to do, so many . . . words to write—’ Miss Mothersole stared at me, her expression as cold as I deserved. ‘I refer, of course, to her role as your biographer—’
‘The richness and complexity of my thoughts are meat and drink to her.’ Dr Mothersole laughed. ‘They are so much more than words, sir, they are ideas. As a well-bred woman she is unlikely to get any of her own. And so I give her mine. It is a gift like no other.’
I glanced at Constance Mothersole, standing still and erect beside her father. She had not moved, or spoken. I noticed a muscle flexing in her jaw.
‘And yet perhaps she does have ideas,’ I said. ‘Ideas of her own. How could she not, with you as her guardian and guide, with your own thoughts constantly before her? Perhaps she just chooses to keep silent – out of respect for you, sir.’
‘I have scho
oled her never to venture an opinion.’
‘And she does you credit. Yet you say she is an admirable secretary. Perhaps you should inflict her on the world – if I might be so bold as to use your own expression. After so intelligent and rigorous a training she can only be of value to others.’ I glanced up at Constance as her father looked away, and winked. Her expression remained impassive.
Dr Mothersole smiled. ‘You should marry, sir,’ he boomed suddenly. ‘Every man should marry, you know, and do it to advantage.’ He eyed his daughter. ‘Note it down, my dear. We are to have a section on aphorisms, I think, in our first volume? That’s a good one. It is sage advice for all men.’ Then to me he said, ‘I must speak as I find, for my wife brought me twelve thousand a year and I have benefited from it greatly.’ He looked about at the apothecary, its shelves crowded with bottles and jars, its table scuffed and stained and littered with apparatus. He wrinkled his nose. The place certainly had a sulphurous reek to it that day. ‘You could do better, Flockhart,’ he said. ‘A man of your abilities.’
‘I must sharpen my pencil,’ said Constance.
‘Allow me,’ I said, stepping forward.
‘Leave her, sir!’ cried Dr Mothersole. ‘What use would she be if she forever needed help with her utensils? Constance can whittle a point faster than you can say “cat”.’
I stepped back. I had hoped to take a peek in her notebook – had she not been scribbling away for the entire evening on the night that Dr Rutherford was murdered? I could not help but wonder what she had written about me in it too.
‘The madness of women,’ mused Dr Mothersole. ‘There is not an aspect of it that I am unfamiliar with – causes, manifestations, prognosis, treatment . . . all fall within my purview.’
‘Dr Rutherford claimed a similar expertise,’ I said.
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