The Resurrection Fireplace

by Hiroko Minagawa

  “Is not the Public Journal in the business of fanning the flames of rebellion from below?”

  “Finding myself at the bottom, it is only natural that I should call for the downfall of those above me. Incidentally, allow me to introduce this young man.” Harrington placed his hand on Nathan’s shoulder. “This is Mr. Pym, a contributor to my newspaper. Despite his youth, he is a writer of rare ability.”

  Evans duly offered Nathan a handshake. The warning in his eyes was clear: Say nothing you will regret. Nathan would have revealed Evans’s deceptions on the spot—if not for the memories of prison carved on his mind. If he went against him, he would be sued for fraud. He would be returned to that prison.

  Ah, if only he could stand up, confess his forgery to all within earshot, and beg their forgiveness. Could he prevent Evans from carrying out his threat that way? But no. Confession would not erase his crime. He would be sent back to Newgate.

  “Is his ability actually so rare?” asked Evans.

  “His satire is perceptive,” said Harrington. “Pym, you must write more of it for me. The Public Journal has been banned from publication, but I shall soon found another newspaper with a different name. What say you, Evans? Can I count on your investment in this venture?”

  “Little profit in publishing, I fear.”

  “The Public Journal sold well. It will recover. No—I shall revive it. The more it inflames anti-government sentiment, the more popular it grows. And then the stock-market will rise or fall in ways we can predict.” He leaned closer to Evans. “Let us revive our partnership,” he murmured.

  Evans changed the subject. “I cannot let your praise for the boy pass without comment,” he said. “I had been hoping to find a promising, talented young man whose development I might guide. Mr. Pym, was it? Allow me to take this further, if I may.”

  “You will not regret it,” said Harrington. “He is sure to enjoy success. Though young in years, he is well acquainted with the older forms of our language, too.”

  “Indeed? A good sign.”

  Evans raised one finger to summon a waiter and paid the bill for all three of them, including the tip. Then he tapped Nathan on the shoulder. “Would you care to accompany me?” he said. “Perhaps we can discuss your future.”

  Nathan realized despairingly that Harrington would not help him. The journalist’s position against Parliament did not derive solely from a sense of justice. It seemed also to be for profit. If Nathan confessed his forgery, Harrington might even support Evans in bringing suit against him.

  A shiver went down his spine as he realized the extent of Evans’s stratagems. Evans had claimed that he had pulled the necessary strings to have Nathan released after Harrington had come to him with concerns about Nathan’s predicament—caught up in the riot and thrown into prison.

  But Harrington had not even known about my imprisonment.

  Evans, on the other hand, had known. He had persuaded the Lord Mayor to have the charges against him dropped, paid the fee for his release from Newgate, and followed him to the offices of the Public Journal. What had been his aim? To recover the missing page from the poem by “Thomas Howard,” and secure a completed version of the Elegy. Nathan knew that now.

  Evans had seen through the Howard poem as soon as he obtained the missing page. Nathan was living proof of its falsity. It made him shiver all the more.

  Once I finish my Elegy, will Evans… ?

  This was a man with influence over the mayor. Nathan had little understanding of what it meant to manipulate stocks, but presumably the mayor was also profitably involved in his schemes.

  As soon as they left the coffee-house, Evans’s expression became a scowl.

  “You spoke of the matter to him as well?”

  “Yes, when I was free to say what I wished to whomever I wished.”

  “Are you sure you wish to speak to me in this way?”

  It was clear that Evans could no longer be bothered to dissimulate.

  “Matthew’s is too risky, just as I suspected. Harrington is a regular there. Write in your room from now on.”

  Nathan glanced at the fountain, then turned to look back at the coffee-house. He might never see his friends again… .

  But he was not entirely helpless. Was there no way to escape?

  The razor had been his only weapon, and Evans had taken it away.

  His purse held only eightpence. If they had not run into Harrington unexpectedly, he would have used this to pay for his own refreshment. Evans had given it to him as they left the house, so that he might watch from a distance without revealing the connection between them.

  If he fled, where would he go? He lacked even the funds to make the humiliating journey home. If he were caught begging, he would be sent to gaol; caught snatching purses, he would be hanged. The indigent, even those who had done nothing wrong, were made to serve on board warships. The life of a new sailor was little better than a slave’s. No one would choose that fate voluntarily, so the press-gangs obtained recruits by force, using methods that amounted to plain kidnapping.

  Could he beg Tyndale for help? Impossible.

  What about Edward and Nigel?

  If they learnt of the forgery, they would surely despise him too. He had no hope of assistance there. In any case, how could he get in touch with them?

  But for the time being, at least, I am safe from Evans, as long as the Elegy remains unfinished.

  Chapter 7

  “Your preparations are at risk of falling into somebody else’s hands,” said Edward.

  “What!?”

  Barton started up from his chair by the fireplace in the dissection room, where they had retired to continue their discussion.

  “I recently had cause to learn about the financial situation of your brother, Robert,” said Edward hesitantly. “It seems that he is heavily in debt.”

  Nigel was with them in the room, but remained silent.

  “How did you learn this?” asked Barton.

  “Like you, Professor, your brother entrusts the management of his assets to the Temple Bank.”

  “My meagre savings are hardly worth the effort, but yes.”

  “The bank is alert to the financial status of its important clients,” Edward said. “Of course, its employees would never reveal a customer’s private affairs. In their line of business, trust is all-important. But just as Dr. Barton is important to the bank, so too are you to Mr. Hume personally. You know, I think, that he still feels indebted to you for helping Mrs. Hume during her difficult labour.”

  “They feel indebted to you as well.”

  “Indeed. They treat me with great kindness.”

  Jacob Hume was head of the Temple Bank, and lived with his wife on the third floor of the bank’s premises. The president, a Mr. Cartwright, had a sprawling mansion in the West End.

  About half a year ago, the Professor had paid a visit to the bank to transfer payment to a certain merchant in exchange for some rare animal specimens from the New World. Edward had accompanied him, to assist with practical details. Barton, for his part, considered Edward a very capable secretary.

  The Temple Bank was located near Temple Bar. Too small to merit comparison with the Bank of England on Threadneedle Street, it was old-fashioned and unglamorous, but highly regarded nevertheless, with branches in Paris and Frankfurt also.

  The entrance to the bank was usually watched over by Peter, a pimple-faced boy of sixteen who was large for his age. Although not formally employed by the bank, he carried messages and ran errands for tips when he was not ensconced in a rickety chair. The Temple Bank he considered his territory.

  Hume had been restless on the day of their visit. “The truth is, my wife is lying in,” he explained. “The midwife is with her.”

  Hume was past forty—about the same age as Barton—but his wife was in her e
arly twenties, and this would be their first child. Women customarily returned to their own family for their first delivery, but Mrs. Hume’s parents were deceased and she had no family home to go back to. Hume was devoted to his young wife after a long period of solitude.

  Now anxiety showed in his face. “It is taking rather long,” he said. “Her pains started yesterday, but the child has yet to come. Mr. Barton, could I impose on you to look in on her?”

  Barton had often assisted in his elder brother’s practice as a gynaecologist, so he had the necessary knowledge. Dissections, too, had made him intimately familiar with the foetus and its circumstances.

  Enlisting another employee to take over the work at hand, Hume led his two visitors to the third floor. In the bedroom—now serving as a delivery room—a heavily pregnant Mrs. Hume lay groaning on a bed stuffed tight with horse hair while the midwife pushed at her abdomen, perspiring with the exertion. A chill wind blew outside the window, but the hearth was piled so high with bituminous coal that the very firebox seemed in danger of igniting. The room was like a smoke-house.

  “This is Mr. Daniel Barton,” Hume said to the midwife. “He is here to help with the delivery.” He mopped his wife’s brow, squeezed her hand, and stirred the coals in the fireplace before finally leaving the room with obvious reluctance.

  Reliant on experience and superstition, the midwife had rubbed a gold coin against Mrs. Hume’s lips, wrapped a snakeskin around her abdomen, rubbed butter where the child would emerge, and was currently pushing on her patient’s body with her entire weight.

  Barton moved her aside—the resentment in her eyes at this slight!—and began to administer more appropriate treatment: rye ergot to induce contractions, cinnamon and anise water as a tonic.

  Hume was outside the door praying, helpless before the mysteries of childbirth.

  “Push! Push! You mustn’t rest!” urged the midwife. Barton silenced her, then whispered in Mrs. Hume’s ear, helping her to establish a regular rhythm in which to push.

  The woman was exhausted. Her contractions were weakening.

  “We must force it out, sir,” the midwife insisted. “You push her belly, and I shall pull the child.”

  “There is tartar emetic in my bag,” Barton said to Edward. “Dissolve three grains in a cup of water.”

  Once this was ready, the problem was how to have Mrs. Hume drink it. As she was almost senseless from exhaustion, Barton told Edward to administer it mouth-to-mouth.

  The midwife moaned at the unseemliness of it.

  A few minutes later, Mrs. Hume vomited explosively.

  “The cruelty of it! I know you, Daniel Barton! A corpse-carver! What have you done to her? Mr. Hume, you must send him away!”

  Seeing the door open a crack, Barton met Hume’s gaze. Everything is all right, his look said. The door closed again.

  The vomiting spurred the muscles of her womb out of their torpor and her contractions began again. The pain was beyond the young woman’s endurance.

  “Edward, palpate Mrs. Hume.”

  “The child has descended to the pelvic outlet,” said Edward. “Almost there.”

  When the top of the baby’s head came into view, the midwife pushed the two of them aside, thrust her fingers in to seize the child by the ears, and attempted to pull it out by force.

  “Do you want to tear its head off?” cried Barton, shoving her away. “Edward, as I taught you.”

  Supporting the baby’s chin, Edward rotated it in the birth canal to help it descend further, then put his hands under its armpits and pulled it out in several motions timed to match the womb’s contractions.

  It was a boy.

  Even after the birth, Barton clashed with the midwife as his attempts to apply the new science of gynaecology conflicted with the traditional knowledge she proudly maintained. When he told Edward to wash off the blood and muck that covered the child’s body with warm water, she protested strenuously. “The baby has yet to receive the sacraments!” she said. “This stuff protects him from the Devil. Wash it off, he says! The very idea!”

  “You may be a Catholic,” said Barton, “but the child, like his parents, is Anglican.” He and Edward quickly dipped the baby in a basin of warm water to wipe it clean.

  As Edward wrapped the child gently in a new piece of cloth, the midwife made her last complaint. “You mustn’t wrap him that way,” she said. “Lay him straight as a rod, and then swaddle him up tight, so that he can’t move. His bones are still soft—you must stop his arms and legs from bending. Upon my word, these youngsters today are an ignorant lot!”

  Edward was content to let her rant, but Barton lost his temper. “Will you stop nagging!” he cried. “Or I shall fit you with a scold’s bridle!”

  The disposal of the afterbirth occasioned further squabbling, but at least a healthy baby boy had been safely delivered. Barton’s judicious intervention also helped the mother avoid puerperal fever, and she was back to her vivacious self in no time.

  Since that day, the Humes had shown Barton the utmost affection and respect and quite spoilt Edward, while the midwife had spread tales of Daniel Barton, corpse-carver.

  The baby had been named Daniel, after its benefactor.

  “Mr. Hume must have found it very awkward,” Edward said. “Without touching on the matter directly, he managed to convey a quiet warning to me. It seems that a fall in the stock-market has driven your brother almost to bankruptcy.”

  Of investment and speculation and the like Barton knew no more than a child.

  “He has taken out loan upon loan, and appears to have offered the preparations as security for it all. Including the specimens in your possession. In his view, they also belong to him.”

  Barton was clearly shaken. “What should I do?” he asked his pupil.

  “Mr. Hume was not quite so frank about the matter of security,” said Edward. “He spoke more vaguely. Tomorrow or the next day, I shall ask him for details. Does the law permit your brother to mortgage your preparations without permission? We must establish ownership clearly. Depending on the circumstances, a lawyer may be needed.”

  Barton should have resolved the issue of ownership before this. However, his elder brother had a trump card: the threat of cutting off his funding. Even if Barton established a secure claim to the specimens, without money he would be unable to continue his dissections, let alone create more preparations.

  Robert was also dependent on his younger brother to keep the anatomy school functioning, and so in a way they each had a knife at the other’s throat. Yet even if the school were closed, Robert would remain a hospital administrator and a member in good standing of society. He did not share his brother’s fierce attachment to the school for its own sake. To take Barton’s work and research from him would be to pull him up by the roots. His body might live on, but his spirit would die. Clearly, Robert had the upper hand.

  Which was why Barton had hitherto chosen to leave things unsettled.

  But if creditors were about to seize the collection, this was something that absolutely must be prevented.

  Unfortunately, Barton was helpless where many of the rudiments of daily life were concerned. He had no idea even how to begin protecting the collection.

  “When did you hear this?”

  “Several days ago,” said Edward. “It felt too rough-and-ready to repeat, and in any case these were only my deductions from Mr. Hume’s vague remarks, so I was uncertain whether to tell you.”

  “Bring the claret from the kitchen. And tell Nelly she may take the evening off.”

  Edward disappeared into the kitchen.

  “Edward!” Barton called after him. “Add a few drops of laudanum to that claret!”

  “Do you have a toothache?” called Edward.

  “I fear I shall not sleep otherwise.”

  “Just a little, then. Or it will p
oison you.”

  “I am a surgeon, I know the appropriate dosage.”

  He drained the cup that was brought to him in a single draught. “I shall think on the matter of my brother,” he said with a sigh. “It has been a difficult day. You must be weary. To bed with you.”

  His two pupils said goodnight and went upstairs. Barton leaned back in his chair.

  Charlie was curled around his feet, tail wagging. Barton recalled Nigel’s comment: His leg will never heal now. When the two constables had entered, he had used the dog to provide an excuse for the goriness of his hands. “I have treated you most unkindly, Charlie,” he murmured, but the dog only wagged his tail harder.

  Then the lazy old animal got to his feet. Bess had arrived. The gate outside cannot have been properly shut. Without even a look in Charlie’s direction, Bess made straight for the bucket, but it was empty. Barton shooed her out and, while he was up, took a turn through the preparation room.

  It was the exotic animals that caught the eye first: seal, panther, mongoose, crocodile… . But more important and certainly more numerous were the preparations that lined the shelves, systematically divided into groups. Some were dry, some wet; all used colour to indicate the organ or area of interest.

  The collection was the result of twenty years of dedication to dissecting and preparing specimens. However, the most important and valuable items were all on display in the room at Robert’s house that served as his cabinet of curiosities: Barton’s wet preparation of the olfactory nerve, for example, with which he had proved that the first of the twelve nerve pairs extending from the brain-stem went to the nose. How he had laboured in its creation!

  His brother had made off with other fruits of his research. Barton had revealed the interior structure of the testes by injecting mercury into a cadaver’s vas deferens and then opening it to reveal the intricate maze of vessels within. It had been Barton, too, whose vivisection of a dog had shown that fat was absorbed not by the veins but by the lymphatic vessels. These results had all been published under Robert’s name. Barton had received recognition only as a coldhearted vivisectionist.