Sawbones

by Catherine Johnson

  “Yes, by a very kind young man at the Algerian coffee shop on Swallow Street. His name was George. I had to promise to teach him how to turn a red handkerchief blue.”

  “How can you trust him?”

  “He had kind eyes, and he said my hair was beautiful. I trust him as much as I trusted you, anyway. And I copied out a translation – which took me a whole candle – and sent it to Great Windmill Street, but you were not there.”

  “No.” Ezra looked away.

  “But listen –” Loveday ploughed on regardless – “I have great news! Important news. And you must come with me. Now!”

  Ezra thought later that if he had been wide awake he would have argued with her, but still on the edge of sleep he merely jumped up, brushed the crumbs from his lap and let her help him off with his apron and pull him out into the street.

  “Where are we going?” he asked. “I have to be back for the afternoon lecture. And you must refrain from calling me McAdam – Dr James has waved a hand and made it so, apparently.”

  “What should I call you, then?” she asked.

  “Ezra will do well enough. After this morning I am not sure I deserve any surname at all.”

  “Don’t be such a misery,” Miss Finch said and sped up, running in between the traffic on Ludgate Hill and by St Paul’s Cathedral. She was right. He bit his tongue, but then another thought made him pull her to a stop, just by the junction with Fleet Street. “Miss Finch, please.”

  “Call me Loveday.” She stopped and turned to face him. “I think you know me well enough by now.”

  “Where are we going?” He lowered his voice. “Because if it is to dig up yet another body, I will not be part of this enterprise.”

  “Do you think me quite mad?” she exclaimed.

  “Sometimes, yes, I think I do!” The two of them stared at each other, stubbornly, at the side of the road. “Whatever you might have found,” he said, “there is no point any more. I am in no mood.”

  She rolled her eyes. “So change your mood, sir, and come along.”

  “I am not an automaton!” He raised his voice to be heard above the traffic. “I killed a young woman on the table this morning. I have never done that, yet.” He paused. “You cannot know what that is like.”

  “Perhaps not. But you deal with life and death every day, and I don’t doubt, if the poor girl was on your table, that you were her very last hope.”

  The traffic swirled east and west and north and south. Cries for apples and pears, nuts and hot pies rang out around them.

  Loveday said, more gently this time, “If you want to be a good surgeon, this will happen again – is that not so?”

  “Of course.”

  “So I am taking your mind off one worry and asking you to replace it with another. Is that so bad?” She grinned at him. “I have found out something, which, in the run of things, may greatly improve your situation, and, in doing so, improve mine own.” She took her bag from under her cloak and pulled something out.

  “This is the lead shot that killed your master,” she declared triumphantly. “There are some advantages – only a few, mind – to being a girl. I sweet-talked the coroner into letting me see it and palmed it while he was too afraid or surprised to quarrel with me. I am not sure which.”

  Ezra tried to speak but she went on.

  “I am certain that you could prove it is of a piece with the shot that killed our tongueless friend, whose name, Mahmoud tells me, was Abd.” She passed it to him and he felt the weight of it drop into his hand. “From Mr Ahmat’s gun, no doubt.”

  “This little thing is the cause of all of my misfortune?” Ezra turned it over in his hand.

  “Oh no,” Loveday said. “I think you will find your misfortune rests just as heavily on the shoulders of Dr James McAdam of Edinburgh, or your Mr Lashley.”

  “He is not mine, I assure you,” Ezra said, turning the lead pellet over in his hand and marvelling that such a small thing could do so much damage. “But how do you expect me to be able to prove that this comes from the same gun as the shot that killed the tongueless cadaver? That pellet is boxed up with the museum collection. Even if I could locate it, I have no laboratory to work in; the ones at the hospital are next to useless.”

  “Aha!” Loveday took the lead pellet back and snapped it into her bag. “That’s exactly what I thought. You need to get back to Great Windmill Street, the proof is there. If we could get at the truth of your master’s will and find for certain what he left you it would help, wouldn’t it?” She took Ezra’s hand and led him through the arch into the Middle Temple. “Here!” She spread her arms. “More lawyers than bedbugs in a sailors’ boarding house! More importantly, your master’s lawyer, Mr Robert Harkaway. I have been talking to Franny, his maid of all work, who lights the fires and brings her lawyer master hot tea and sees all. You cannot give up, Ezra – we cannot – not now! Would your Mr McAdam have wanted that?”

  Ezra shook his head, reeling from all she had told him. Perhaps there was something to be said for the irrepressible Miss Loveday Finch after all.

  The sun squeezed through the winter cloud as they came through the arch into the Fountain Court of the Middle Temple. Neither of them looked out of place in their mourning blacks as the lawyers and lawyers’ clerks scurried between buildings carrying bundles of paper tied in bright pinkish-red tape.

  “Miss Finch…”

  She made a face at him.

  “Loveday, then,” Ezra sighed. “What do you imagine this lawyer will do? Show us Mr McAdam’s will?”

  “Well, we won’t know until we ask him, will we?” She led him up some steps and knocked on a black painted door.

  A young man opened it and told them Mr Harkaway was busy. “Tell him Mr Ezra McAdam is here to see him,” Loveday instructed. “Tell him that we will wait.” Ezra followed her inside.

  “My name is McWilliam now,” Ezra hissed, but Loveday shushed him.

  “It was your name, and you should have kept it. If I were you I would have done.”

  “I did not fancy my chances facing Dr James in court,” said Ezra.

  “I would cut him down,” Loveday whispered back.

  Ezra almost smiled. “There are subtleties to life, Miss Finch!”

  “With some people,” she retorted, “and I don’t doubt your Dr James is one of them, subtlety gets you absolutely nowhere.”

  Inside, the office was unbearably hot. Ezra took off his overcoat but Loveday kept her cloak on, and Ezra could see her face was rapidly turning almost as red as her hair.

  He was about to suggest she removed it when the clerk came back.

  “Mr Harkaway will see you now.”

  The lawyer’s office was just as warm, and painted all over brown, so it felt rather like entering the den of a small animal – appropriately so, because when Mr Harkaway looked up Ezra thought he resembled nothing so much as a badger given human form.

  “Mr McAdam?”

  Ezra leant forward, his hand out to shake the lawyer’s, but Mr Harkaway merely stopped writing and looked first Loveday and then Ezra up and down.

  “Is this concerning Mr William McAdam? You are family?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “Which is it, boy? I am busy.”

  “Mr McAdam was my master, sir,” Ezra ventured, “and your client. I believe he made a will.”

  “Indeed.” Mr Harkaway nodded.

  “We don’t believe it was read,” Ezra said.

  “Or referred to,” Loveday added.

  Mr Harkaway sat up. “So you are not family, then.”

  “No,” said Ezra uncertainly.

  “He was as good as! The master was like his father,” Loveday put in. “Might have adopted him.”

  Ezra nudged her to shut her up.

  “Like and was are two unrelated words,” Mr Harkaway said, “just as you and Mr McAdam are not related. And so I am unable, by law, to show you the will.”

  “Please, sir! Is there no way…?”
r />   “There is no way. Good day to you both.”

  “How can we see it, then? Tell us that?” Ezra tried not to sound desperate.

  The man’s tone had become frosty. “I said, good day.”

  Loveday suddenly opened her cloak and took out the rapier that was hanging at her waist.

  “What on earth are you doing, Loveday?” cried Ezra. “Put it away!”

  “Crean! Help, Crean!” Harkaway was calling for his clerk, who bustled in. “These two are mad! A girl with a sword and a mulatto with a scar. Call the watch, Crean. Call the watch!”

  Ezra put his hand firmly on the blade. “No need, Mr Harkaway. I am sorry for my companion.” He shot Loveday a look. “We are leaving. Now.”

  Ezra took the blade and bundled her out into the Fountain Court.

  “I don’t know what you think you were doing!” he hissed.

  “I was helping! I was getting him to show us the will! Give me my blade back.”

  “No! You could have had us locked up. Again!” Ezra paused to try and calm himself. “I think, Miss Finch, you read too many novels. One doesn’t go barging into lawyers’ offices with a sword.”

  “A duelling rapier. My father’s,” corrected Loveday, who was not chastised in the least. “And how else do you think I got the coroner to show me the shot that killed your master?”

  “You threatened him, too?”

  “Only a little.”

  Ezra fumed. “I am going back to St Bartholomew’s,” he informed her. “I have a position with Lashley – just. I may not like it, but he gives me a bed to sleep in. I will not have you lose my only security chasing a dream.” He began to walk away.

  “All I have now is dreams!” Loveday called after him. “Wait till you read the letter! It is all there!” Ezra kept walking. She shouted again, “And you have my duelling piece!”

  Ezra turned back. He handed her the rapier carefully, by the handle. It had begun to rain, the drops so cold and hard they almost felt like hail.

  “Miss Finch,” he said, “I have lost my master and my home. I have no doubt that the Ottoman Empire is somehow responsible, although heaven knows what your father was doing acting as some kind of courier for precious jewels. But you and I, we are powerless. People have died – this is not a game! I do not see that one person armed with her father’s duelling rapier could possibly do a thing about it, and I will not be involved in illegalities of any kind ever again!” Ezra felt himself shaking with rage. The girl was an idiot. “Don’t you realize the consequences if we are caught? Do you know what we just did?”

  Ezra turned away. He could not look at her any more. He wanted his old life back, a life where Mrs Boscaven brewed hot coffee and the master made him shred the veins from skin while barking Greek verbs at him all night. Loveday Finch blinked at him. She had no idea at all.

  “I have had enough, Miss Finch. You can keep your money.” His words fell as hard and cold as the rain. “Hear this: I do not wish to see you, or hear a word about your plots and schemes, ever again.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mr Leonard Lashley’s Residence

  Brunswick Square

  Bloomsbury

  London

  November 1792

  Ezra lay in his bed shivering. It was so cold that ice had formed on the inside of the window. He had been at Lashley’s only one week but it seemed like a hundred years. On the bed closest to the fire, Evans, the footman, snored loudly.

  Ezra rolled himself tighter in his blankets, shut his eyes again and prayed he would sleep. He had too many thoughts swirling around his head. He wondered if there was a nerve, like an artery that supplied the brain with blood, perhaps – that maybe he had over-stimulated it with too much thinking. Even though he’d sworn to have nothing more to do with Miss Loveday Finch, even though he had spent the last four days doing his best to keep her from his mind, he couldn’t help thinking that if she was right, someone needed to act. He had never come across a girl so rash. It must be the theatrical background.

  He breathed hot moist air into his cupped hands to warm them. Anna would have told him to keep his head down and work hard; that, in time, things would work themselves out, including – though he was beginning to doubt it – Mr McAdam’s will. But even if the will was found, he would hardly have his place at Great Windmill Street back, not if the house was sold.

  Anna, sensible and rational in all things, would say it didn’t matter. She would tell him he was the same person whatever name he wore. He tried to call her face to mind, her long hair, her brown eyes, but it wouldn’t come. He was forgetting her… Did that mean she was forgetting him?

  He missed their long, rational discussions on life and death and religion. He missed her. But how on earth would Anna ever find him with a new name and a new home? Loveday had tracked him down at Bart’s, but how would Anna do the same from Holland? If she did find a way to write to him, it would be to his old address. Ezra had to inform her – let her know where he was.

  He would take his new address to Betsey at the cloth warehouse. That was the least he could do, then when Anna came looking for him she would know where he was. He sat up, pulling the blankets with him.

  It was still dark, half past five, but if he left now he would get back to Bart’s in time to ready the operating theatre for another of Mr Lashley’s woeful lectures.

  Ezra dressed and made it to Soho before the church clock had begun to strike six. Perhaps it was still much too early. He looked up at the shuttered cloth warehouse – no sign of Betsey. He left a note and decided to make a quick detour to Great Windmill Street. He promised himself he would only stop a moment. Just to look.

  Ezra passed the bakery on the corner where Archer Street met Rupert Street and he greeted the baker’s boy, who, pleased to see a friendly face again, sold him a hot tuppenny loaf for a penny. Ezra held it close and tore bits off as he walked, popping the hot bread into his mouth and savouring the warm, soft deliciousness that tasted of home.

  As he turned into Great Windmill Street he heard Mrs Perino’s cockerel, and he knew this had been a bad idea. He felt such a longing, not only for Mr McAdam, but for his old life, that his throat felt tight, and there was a feeling in his chest as if someone had punched a hole in his sternum and plucked out his heart.

  Ezra looked through the letter flap. The hall was empty. Letters piled up like a miniature snowdrift. Who knew what might be there? Oh, there would be Loveday’s letter – the one that, if she were here, she would defend as containing the answers to absolutely everything. But perhaps there was something else there, maybe even something from Anna. He sighed. The door was locked. He looked through the basement window into the lifeless kitchen below – perhaps he could get in there? At that moment a cart trundled down the street, and Ezra stepped back. Someone might see. He would to all intents and purposes appear as any common ken cracker. He had to be careful.

  He broke off another piece of bread, went around the back of the house to Ham Yard and helped himself to a drink at the water pump. He wanted that post – he just had to find a way in. Ezra looked at the glass-roofed lecture theatre, especially built, the most up to date in London, now empty and unused. What a waste.

  Then he noticed the door. It seemed jammed into place rather than snugly closed. Something was wrong – had someone broken in already?

  Even in the early morning half-light he was sure of it. He pressed the handle, but it was still bolted from the inside. Then he realized one of the panels had been knocked out and replaced – it moved easily, and Ezra reached in and slid the bolt. The door opened.

  The floor was swept clean, the benches piled up against one wall. The dark wooden table, the one the master had had made specially, was still in place in the centre of the room. Ezra checked the yard – no one was looking. He stepped inside.

  He ran his hand along the table and shut his eyes. He imagined himself here less than a month ago, assisting the master, the room packed with students. A sound from the m
ain house jolted him out of his dream. Was someone in there? He tried the door that led through to the hallway and it opened easily.

  “Who’s there?” Ezra shouted up into the house. No reply. It was probably no more than a pigeon flapping in through an open window, he told himself. He should leave, get back to the cloth warehouse and go to work. After he had collected his post.

  In the hall, the large oval mirror was still turned, mourning wise, to face the wall. He turned it back and regarded himself, then took up the post and went into the master’s office to sift through it. A thought struck him as he took in the shuttered windows, the master’s chair covered with a dust sheet and another over his desk. Dr James’s wish to clear the house of furniture as quickly as possible had obviously not been met. Ezra smiled. He was glad to think that the man hadn’t had everything his own way.

  Most of the post was for Dr James or the master. There was nothing from Anna, but he recognized Loveday’s letter straight away, untidy, like its sender, almost bursting open. He couldn’t bring himself to sit at the master’s desk, but he leant against the wall and was about to start reading when a noise came from upstairs, from the museum. A definite creak, and not a pigeon or a rat; it was too loud. Ezra put the letter down and listened – there, again. He stepped back into the hall and took the stairs two at a time, bursting through into the museum, empty now except for a few chests of drawers.

  The door to his own bedroom at the far end moved almost imperceptibly. Ezra looked round. He had no weapon and there was nothing to hand.

  Perhaps if he went down to look in the kitchen? No! Whoever it was might have gone by then. He stuffed the remains of the loaf in his jacket pocket and made his way down the length of what had been the museum. Ezra knew every floorboard, which creaked and which didn’t; he made it to his bedroom door in silence.

  Gingerly, he pushed it open. Inside, the curtains were drawn but there was a small fire in the hearth and, balanced on top, Mrs Boscaven’s kettle.

  “What the devil…?”

  But he could see no one. The bed was obviously being slept in, an untidy mess of blankets and rugs piled in a heap, but there was not a soul in sight. At the same moment that Ezra realized whoever it was must be behind the door, it was pushed hard into his face. He staggered backwards in pain, then righted himself, lifted the poker and readied to strike, imagining Oleg, the man who’d wrecked the museum and who, as far as Ezra knew, was still at large.