I had always known that there must be some reason why he chose to dress as he did. His costume and contrived appearance were so ostentatious, so vivid – in the same way that my hideous red birthmark drew attention away from the person behind it, I recognised a disguise when I saw one. And yet he had always been so kind, so gentle and so fond of me, that I had respected his privacy and had never asked his reasons. Now, when he sat down, he was a different man. Unsmiling and watchful, he was a man I had never met before.
‘My name is Joshua Milner,’ he said. ‘I was only a young man when I ended up in Angel Meadow. My story is, perhaps, not an uncommon one. I was not from the city, but from a village in Northamptonshire. I was taught by a man called Bickerstaff, a retired medical man who saw something in me that was worth encouraging and gave me an education that neither my parents, nor the schoolmaster, could ever have provided. He saw me every day, gave me the use of his library, and encouraged my love of learning, my curiosity about the world and man’s place within it. It was the making of me, and yet also my undoing, for he also schooled me to expect more from life than the hand fate had dealt me at birth. My parents could neither read nor write and were content to scrape out a miserable cottagers’ existence.’ He sighed. ‘I should have respected their contentment with their lot, but I could not. Instead, I despised them for it.
‘Thanks to Dr Bickerstaff I gained a place at medical school, here in London. I left for the city as soon as I could and I never saw either of my parents again.’ He was silent for a moment, his face filled with sorrow. But the deep lines in it had softened. ‘I was at St Saviour’s for a while, Jem. I knew your father—’
‘My father?’ I said. ‘Back then?’
‘Yes. I think he felt sorry for me. I hid my sense of inferiority behind a blustering self-importance that served only to make my fellow students spurn me. Your father saw through it straight away. He used to help me with my materia medica for he knew more about physic than anyone. That’s how I met him, Jem. I knew you then too, though you don’t remember me. To you I was just another arrogant student.’
‘My father knew who you were?’
‘He knew me as Joshua Milner, and as Dr Stiven. He was the only person who knew that those two people were one and the same. He was a good man, Jem. He never judged me, not for what I’d done or who I was – but I am getting ahead of myself. I want you to understand – you too, Mr Quartermain, for I know you to be a kind-hearted man and one I would trust with my life—’
‘Let us hope it won’t come to that, sir,’ said Will. ‘Pray, continue.’
‘I worked hard as a medical student – too hard, it turned out – as I had to prove myself as well as earn my keep, and at the end of my third year I became sick, brought on, they said, by overexertion, the heat and pestilence of the city and ill-ventilated and verminous lodgings. For days I raved and sweated. No one visited me, and I was sure they would find me dead and cold only when they came to collect the rent. Of course, I did not die, for here I am before you, though since then there have been many times when I wished that I had.
‘I was still recovering when I received a letter. It was from my old benefactor, informing me that my father had been caught poaching for the third time, and this time had been hanged at the summer assizes. My mother – alone now and unable to pay the rent – had been evicted from the cottage she had lived in all her life. In grief and despair she had drowned herself.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘I can hardly recall the events that followed, but what I do know is that I bought a pistol, and I went to the home of the landowner who had evicted my mother and condemned my father with the full intention of shooting him through the heart. When the time came, however, I could not do it. And so instead I . . . I turned the pistol upon myself.’
‘Self-murder?’ whispered Will. ‘You?’
Joshua Milner raised his hand to touch the long pink scar at his cheek. ‘The fellow’s gamekeeper had other ideas, for he set his dog upon me at the very moment I pulled the trigger. You see here the result of his intervention. I have no idea what happened next, though I’m told I tried to end my life again, by slashing at my wrists with a pen knife.’
Will handed the man his handkerchief. ‘And yet you are still here, sir,’ he said gently. ‘And you are amongst friends now.’
Tears ran down Joshua Milner’s cheeks. ‘I refused to eat. I refused to speak. I was in the depths of the most profound melancholia. I was aggressive too, attacking those who came near me, even those who tried to help.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Angry, full of loathing for myself and for the world, I was sent to live out my days as a criminal lunatic at Angel Meadow Asylum.’
‘You knew Dr Hawkins then too?’ I said.
He nodded. ‘I have much to thank him for. Dr Hawkins had new ideas. Humane ideas, and I was a beneficiary of them. But I was put in the criminal ward. I had attacked a man and threatened him with a pistol. I had tried to murder myself and been violent to any number of others. And so I was restrained, and quartered with the very worst of them. The asylum superintendent at the time insisted upon it.
‘The criminal ward was a terrible place. If one was not mad before one entered such a hell there was every chance one would become so before long. Once inside any chance of recovery, or improvement, was impossible. We were treated worse than beasts. We had no liberty, no air, no comfort. Sleep was unattainable – the cold, the dirt, the smell of the place. The noise.’ He closed his eyes and dabbed at his lips with Will’s handkerchief. ‘You remember Newgate, Jem. I tell you to add to that the screams and violence of those who are without reason or logic; those who are rendered madder still by cruelty and fear. I could not bear it. I knew I would die if I remained in such a place. And yet I was fortunate – God help those who are not – for Dr Hawkins was interested in my case. Suicide interested him. Like Dr Golspie he saw it as one of the consequences of the age, and my own case – a clever lad from the country forced to live amongst strangers, weakened by hard work, want, grief and loneliness – seemed to bear this out. He knew that whatever had driven me to act as I did was temporary, that I might be cured – so long as I had food and rest and quiet.
‘And so he put me in a cell on my own. He gave me a wooden bed, rather than the straw the others were obliged to sleep on. The asylum was busy – too many lunatics, not enough doctors or attendants. I was his project, he said. An experiment to prove that those condemned as violently insane might make a complete recovery. He gave me books – his own, mostly – on philosophy and theology, on physiology and anatomy. I learned all I could, and I remain convinced that it stopped me from going truly mad.’
‘You were released?’ said Will.
Joshua Milner shook his head. ‘Over time I was granted privileges. Dr Hawkins persuaded the superintendent that I was no longer a risk, and I was released into the men’s ward, away from those of a truly violent and criminal nature. He and I became friends. I helped him in the mortuary, dissecting and preserving brains and organs, and in the infirmary, looking after those who were sick. But no matter how many books I had, no matter how well treated I was, the fact remained that I was a prisoner. I was locked in my cell every night, and the violent acts I had committed – against myself and others – meant that I would never be permitted to go free. I could not bear it. I was young, was this to be my life? Dr Hawkins said that he would do his best to have me released, but always there were objections and I grew impatient.
‘One day Dr Hawkins and I were in the gardens. Gardening was a part of the therapeutic regime Dr Hawkins was attempting to develop at Angel Meadow, and allowing the patients access to the grounds rather than simply having them shambling around in a cinder-strewn yard was a humane exercise not everyone was in favour of. God forgive me for it, for I cannot forgive myself, but when we were out of sight of the main buildings I . . . I attacked him. I knocked him down and left him bloody and unconscious. I took his coat, his pocket book and his keys. Escape, after that, was simple. And it is easy to
hide in London – so many lodging houses, so many streets teeming with so many people. With a good coat and a little money it was not difficult to find work. And you must remember that I was no average felon. Yes, I had been mad and I had been violent, but I was mad and violent no longer. And so I became Dr Stiven. I had three years of medical school behind me, and Dr Hawkins had taught me well. I knew as much about physic as any doctor – and I knew more than many about madness.
‘I could never show my face, of course. The scar I bore revealed my identity to anyone who cared to look. I must confess that I did not like to look at it either, for it reminded me of who I once was, and what I had once done. And so I covered it up. Time passed. I travelled, I prospered, I became the man you know, not the man I used to be. And yet I had wanted to kill a fellow human being – that had been my intention when I spent my last shillings on a pistol. I had tried to end my own life, and I had assaulted my only friend, Dr Hawkins, and left him, bleeding, upon the grass.’ He covered his face with his hands. ‘What could I do to make reparation?’
‘So you saved Susan from the gallows, and the asylum?’
‘Yes.’ He looked up then, his eyes shining. ‘In so many ways she was my salvation. My life was transformed by her. Susan Chance made me want to confront my past, as much as she was trying to come to terms with her own. I always hoped I could tell Dr Hawkins, I wanted to ask his forgiveness, to show him that I had become the man he always said I could be. Though she does not know it, Susan made me think that such an atonement was possible. When I came to Angel Meadow I hoped I might . . . I wanted to . . . But I did not tell him. I could not. And now . . . now Susan is locked away in that terrible bedlam and it is my fault. I brought her to it. I knew of her past. If only I had stayed away.’
‘I don’t think she killed Dr Rutherford—’
‘How can you be sure? She had every chance to take my keys. She was in the asylum. She hated him. She blamed him for her mother’s degradation, for her own violation, everything—’
‘I know all that. But she’s no murderer. At least, not this time. Have you seen her? Talked to her?’
‘She will not talk to me. She will not talk to any man. Jem,’ he seized my arm. ‘She may not talk to a man, but I think she will talk to . . . someone like you.’
‘You know?’ I whispered. ‘You know who I am?’
‘You’re your father’s child,’ he replied. ‘That is what I know. Who I am, who you are, these are not the mysteries here. You must find the truth, Jem. You must find it before it is too late.’
Angel Meadow Asylum, 18th September 1852
I learned later that had I kicked and thrashed things might have turned out differently. I learned too that when the hood was pulled from my head I looked indistinguishable from my sister felons — black faced and bloody lipped, my skirts soaked with my own fear and shame. The three of us were loaded onto the anatomists’ wagon and trundled through the streets to St Saviour’s Infirmary.
I awoke in a curious place. The air was cold as the grave and there was a horrible smell in the air. Putrid and sickly, but sweetish too – not a pleasant sweetness, but nasty and cloying. I heard the murmur of voices, and then all at once I was awake and gasping, my eyes streaming. My eyeballs stung, throbbing in their sockets as if they were two sizes too big. My throat smarted, the skin on my neck stinging as if it had been burned away. I raised my hands. It felt moist to the touch and hurt like the devil from where the noose had chafed and burned, and when I took my fingers away they were wet with blood.
I reared up from the cold hard slab upon which I lay. Hands pushed me back down. But they were not rough hands, not the hands of thieves or gaolers. Instead, their fingers were soft and cool. I could not see who they belonged to, for my sight was dim and clouded, though I could make out the movement of dark shapes, could see that the place I was in was bright, and lit from above by patches of ochre-coloured London sky.
‘Salts,’ said a voice. ‘But carefully this time.’
There were six of them, their leader an older, smallish man with long yellow teeth set in a grimace, and a curious half-crouching posture like a creeping burglar about to spring. He was in his shirt sleeves, and he moved quickly about the table where I lay, staring down at me hungrily, though with disappointment in his eyes once he saw that I was not dead after all. The other five gentlemen wore old overcoats and caps, against the cold, I was sure, but also against the terrible stink of decay that pervaded the place.
I struggled to sit up once more, then slipped off the table and onto my feet, the gentlemen so shocked by my movement that they hardly knew what to do.
‘Shall we catch her, Dr Graves?’ said one of the younger men.
‘What’ll we do, sir?’said another.
‘Get her back!’ snapped the small man in the shirt sleeves.
‘Quick,’ said a third. ‘Dr Graves, sir, she’s taken your coat!’
Dr Graves’s coat stank of sweat and death. Its pockets were full of sugar lumps, which scattered to the floor and crunched painfully under my feet as I turned about looking for a means of escape. On all sides there were jars and bottles of sparking glass, inside each an object so monstrous that I was sure I must have woken up in hell itself. A double-headed baby, pale as fat, its eyes two pairs of sightless milky orbs. Beside it was a lizard with its stomach slit open and pinned wide, the delicate bags of its innards on display like a purse full of jewels. To my right I saw a pair of filthy mottled feet and ankles, and the hem of a soiled chemise, and even in my delirium I knew that beneath the winding cloth lay the coiner’s wife; the skinny bruised ankles on the slab beside her those of the wronged maid. Worst of all, next to them both gleamed an array of knives and blades. I heard a scream and my throat stung, so I knew at once that it had been mine. I staggered back, into the arms of an anatomist.
My knees buckled, and I screamed again as the arms around me grew tighter. ‘Kitty,’ whispered a voice. Kitty!’ I looked up. I could hardly speak. My neck burned and my voice was as barbs in my throat. Tears filled my eyes, tears of relief and surprise for there was my old teacher, the medical student from the thieves’ kitchen in Prior’s Rents.
And that is how I became once again briefly acquainted with Joshua Milner. It was he who had taught me to read and write; how to add and subtract, and how to speak with the easy confidence of his adopted class. And yet fate had more in store for Mr Milner than he or I could ever have guessed. That evening at Angel Meadow, when we met again, I recognised him instantly. He had a powdered face and was dressed in fine clothes, but he could not hide his kindly eyes and smile, and when he spoke to me it was in the voice I had known and learned from so many years ago. I knew that Joshua Milner recognised me too that evening – why else had he spoken to me in his own voice – and it was all we could do not to embrace each other like lost lovers, sobbing out our tales of torment and sorrow, tales we were obliged to keep hidden from the world. Miss Mothersole noted our conversation down, I suspect, though whatever words she overheard can have meant little to her, or to anyone, so extraordinary were our interconnected lives.
Once he heard what I had to say Joshua Milner – Dr Stiven, whatever you wish to call him – said he would help me in any way he could. I have had many enemies, but I have also had many friends, and I have found the latter in the most unlikely of places. It was Joshua Milner who educated me, Joshua Milner who helped me to get well after I was hanged, and Joshua Milner who helped me get back what was rightfully mine. He helped me because he felt sorry for me. And because he knew it was right.
Chapter Seventeen
The façade of the female criminal ward was laced with cracks and fissures, the whole structure shored up at its eastern and western ends with heavy beams of wood. As we approached we could hear howls and cries coming from within, along with a high-pitched screaming and a fearful anguished sobbing sound, as if someone’s heart had broken in two. Did one of those terrible demented voices belong to Susan Chance? I thought of th
e last time we had seen her, running down St Saviour’s Street, her hair wild about her terrified face. I would never forget it, though it was the noise – the sound of the Black Maria’s iron wheels upon the road, the rhythmic strike of her cripple’s boot upon the pavement, the screaming and kicking as she was bundled into the van – that troubled me the most. And now she was locked in here? She did not deserve such a fate. In my satchel I had some witch hazel and distilled water, some iodine, gauze and bandages. I had little else I could offer.
The heavy wooden door was marked with the letter ‘C’. From the bunch of keys in my hand I selected a pair similarly marked, one long and thick, the other longer still, but narrow, like a witch’s finger. The thin key fitted a lock at the top, the other fitted a lock in the middle.
In a cramped parlour adjacent to the door two grubbyfaced women were sitting on either side of a mean fire. The room was furnished with two armchairs of a stained and degraded appearance and a rickety table that would have been better suited as kindling. Against the far wall a cupboard stood open, upon a shelf inside I could see blue poison bottles: bromide and laudanum – the clumsy staples of asylum treatment. Two pairs of bloodshot eyes turned to look at us.
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