Sawbones

by Catherine Johnson

  A voice rang out, “Stop!”

  “You!” Ezra cried. The boy, Mahmoud, the prince of wherever, looking distinctly less prince-like even than that night in the graveyard. “In my room! In my bed!”

  “I am sorry. I had not meant to hurt you.”

  Ezra sat down, rubbing his forehead where the door had smashed into it.

  “I cannot be too careful, and I was doing no harm. There was no one here. No one at all,” he said in his strange imperious tone. He was staring longingly at the half a loaf that was stuck, crust side down, into Ezra’s pocket.

  Ezra took it out and held it up. “You may have this, on account that you tell me what you are doing in my bed.”

  The boy nodded and fell upon the loaf as if he were a wolf and it were a lamb.

  Perhaps Ezra was dreaming. He would not have put it past Miss Loveday Finch to have staged this charade for her own amusement. He looked around his old room, half expecting her to jump out from under the bed.

  “I am here because I know your house and it was empty,” said Mahmoud. As he spoke he picked at any crumbs that had fallen onto the bed. “There is no other reason. I could not go back to school, and I have not yet endeavoured to exchange the stones for currency. As soon as that is done I will leave this city. But at present ​I must admit I am afraid to go out. Nowhere is safe for me any more.”

  “Does Loved— does Miss Finch know you are here?”

  “I think it is better that she does not. It is too dangerous,” said Mahmoud, looking momentarily nervous. “In any case it is none of her business.”

  “Not her business!” Ezra stared at him in frustration. “She risked a spell in a lock-up for you, as did I!”

  “It would not have helped anyone if I had stayed around and got myself caught. And, as I see, you escaped.” The boy shrugged. “So no harm was done.”

  Ezra thought him completely self-regarding.

  “You are spoilt and ill mannered. She has only tried to help you, to find out who killed her father and why.”

  “You do not understand, Mr Ezra McAdam. That is your name, I think?” Mahmoud spoke as if he sat cross-legged on a silk cushion in fine robes, not on the floor of an unheated bedroom of an empty house in London; as if he were a grown man, not a young boy. “There are forces moving against me here in this city. I do not wish to see any more die.” He nodded. “You have both done me good turns and the house of Othman thanks you – because of you they think I am dead; they think I am the boy you anatomized.”

  “So that’s it!” The gunman’s questions began to make sense. No wonder he had been more interested in the drowned boy than the tongueless man. “They? Do you mean Mr Ahmat? Is he your countryman?”

  “I do not know anyone by that name.”

  “Mr Ahmat. The man who killed my master, Mr McAdam. He works at the embassy, it was reported in The Times. I believe he also shot the man with no tongue,” Ezra added.

  At this, Mahmoud looked daggers at him. “The man’s name was Abd. I had known him since I was a child. He was a good friend.”

  “Friend? I hardly think the removal of a tongue—”

  Mahmoud interrupted. “He had no tongue because of some slight that occurred in his youth. It should not have happened. If I were sultan…”

  He wiped his eye; he looked suddenly vulnerable. “Abd was my bodyguard.” Mahmoud coughed, sat up straight and was a prince again. He went on. “And I can tell you the name of Abd’s killer. I was there, in hiding when the toad’s mother who calls himself a friend of the empire despatched him. Abd who was nothing but good. Abd who was kind…”

  “Who was it, then? Is he still here in London, at the embassy?”

  “I do not care what happens to that snake in human form. God will punish him, in this life or the next.”

  “Mahmoud, listen. You’re quite sure you don’t know an Ahmat? Tall fellow, pointed beard?”

  “Not Ahmat, no. But Abd’s killer was tall and bearded. Well dressed.”

  “I swear it’s the same man!” Ezra sat up.

  Mahmoud spat into the fire. “There is more than one source of evil in this world. Abd went to fetch the rubies. For me. Instead poor Abd met his death. He will be at peace now.”

  “And you have no wish for justice?” Ezra leant forward, curious.

  Mahmoud smiled. “You are a clever man. Miss Finch told me all about you. A doctor of some kind, she said.” Ezra nodded. Mahmoud continued, “You know the path the blood takes around the body. You know how the heart works, how the sinews under our skin move and flex. But you do not understand that in this world, on this earth, there is no such thing as justice?”

  “I don’t believe that,” Ezra declared. “I don’t believe that we should take our lot and struggle on to gain – what? – our reward once we are dead. This world should be fair. No kings, no emperors.”

  “No sultans?” Mahmoud smirked.

  “No sultans.” Ezra tried not to get angry. “Mahmoud, I was born a slave.”

  Mahmoud nodded. “Slaves are a fact of life. Abd, he was a good slave.”

  “No! I do not believe that. Who says which man is a slave?”

  “God, of course. Don’t Christians believe that too?”

  “I don’t. No one man should belong to another. No man should have that power. That is wrong.” Ezra scowled. He got up and riddled the fire with the poker. “I care who killed Mr McAdam. My life has been thrown into chaos because of your stupid empire.”

  “The Empire is not stupid!” Mahmoud squared up to Ezra, fists up.

  Ezra looked at him, a scrap of humanity dancing back and forth in front of the fire, filthy as a night soil man, his fists on a level with Ezra’s shoulder. He was a little boy in danger, far from home. Ezra knew that feeling. He sighed.

  “Mahmoud, we should not fight, you and I. I apologize for slighting the Ottoman Empire. But I promise I will bring Mr McAdam’s killer to justice. And Abd’s, too.”

  The prince sat down slowly. Ezra sat down next to him. The light of the flames glowed on the boy’s pale face.

  “Do you think Abd knew his killer? Did he tell you who he was meeting?” Ezra asked. “Well, obviously, not with words…”

  Mahmoud hugged his knees. “Abd used the language that our servants use at court. Though not so much these days.”

  “The servants have their own language?”

  “Yes, Ixarette. It enables you to speak without words, without sounds. The sultan does not like to be disturbed, so the servants speak with their hands, see?” Mahmoud spelt out what Ezra imagined were words with his fingers in the air. He sighed. “I have had enough of this place,” he said, pulling his knees closer to his chest, and for once he seemed his age. “I want to go home.”

  “I see that,” Ezra murmured. “Back to everything you know.”

  The boy looked at him, blinked. “Yes, that is it.” He nodded. “Exactly.”

  The church at St Anne’s struck for seven, and Ezra stood up. He had to be at Bart’s in half an hour.

  “Well,” he said gently, “I’d like nothing more than to go back to my home, too, but that’s impossible. What’s more, I have a job of work. I am sorry, you will have to excuse me.”

  “You won’t tell anyone I am here?” the boy said. “Please?” He looked at Ezra. His eyes were glistening.

  Ezra promised he wouldn’t, then paused at the door, watching for a moment as Mahmoud pulled his rags about his feet. He was just a boy, alone in a city with no family and no friends.

  Ezra searched in Mrs Boscaven’s linen cupboard and found an old blanket. He took it back down to Mahmoud but he was already deep asleep. Ezra carefully and quietly tucked the boy in and slipped away.

  As soon as Ezra turned towards Holborn he could feel the cold working its way into his bones. He remembered one Christmas Mrs Boscaven had knitted him a pair of gloves. He shoved his hands deep into his coat pockets and felt something. A packet? He pulled it out. Loveday’s letter.

  By the
time he’d reached St Giles Ezra had walked into a laundrywoman and two hot pie sellers, who’d all cursed him in a variety of different accents.

  “Watch your step, lad!” a carter yelled as he stepped out into the road.

  He did not notice.

  For Miss Finch’s letter was riveting – far more gripping than one of the latest Gothic novels, and just as far-fetched.

  Ezra arrived at St Bartholomew’s out of breath, running with sweat and half an hour late. Mr Lashley was waiting, apron on, regarding the morning’s cadaver as if it were a piece of mutton that was too stringy for the pot – poking it in the thigh, the arm, the stomach. Ezra swallowed. He looked at the thing that had been a man and silently apologized to it on Mr Lashley’s behalf.

  “You are late! The body is here and you are not! Perhaps I should divest you of your apprenticeship and give it to this chap here.” He picked up the cadaver’s right arm and waved it. “I’d be your apprentice in a trice, Mr Lashley!” He made the cadaver speak in a stupid, high-pitched voice. “And I’d never be late or kill your patients when they came to me for help, oh no!”

  Ezra kept his eyes on the floor. He wondered how a grown man could amuse himself like a novice medical student, but he said only, “Sorry, sir.”

  “You had better be!” Lashley said. “Students are here. Chop chop, apron on, instruments in order. Now!”

  Ezra checked and lined up his master’s old knives while the students filed in and sat down. His mind was not on them, though. He was imagining telling the master everything that Loveday had written in her letter: how she had discovered her father was acting as a courier for the valide sultan, how she had found the name of the bank account Mr Finch had opened under a false name in order to deposit the fee for carrying the rubies – and how the letter from her father to Mr Falcon, who knew nothing of the scheme, had contained an apology for keeping it secret from him. Loveday had found out that her father had been worried someone was following them even before they’d left Turkey, and she had deduced the performance at the embassy was to be when the jewels were to be handed over to Abd, the tongueless man, to take to Mahmoud. But Abd had never turned up, and Mr Finch had been murdered. Someone at the embassy was clearly acting with the Russians. And Loveday wrote that she had seen the reports in the newspapers: Ahmat was in prison awaiting trial, locked up and, no doubt, heading for the hangman. But, Loveday warned, there had to be someone else, still working at the embassy, still set on overthrowing the sultan and deposing Mahmoud’s family. Loveday wrote that she was certain she was being followed.

  A few weeks ago Ezra would have dismissed such ideas as fanciful. But now, with an Ottoman prince in hiding in an empty house, he suspected she was telling the truth.

  Meanwhile, Loveday proposed finding out exactly who was following her. Her plan, which involved breaking into the embassy, was as outlandish and colourful as her hair. Ezra remembered the last time they’d tried to get in – it was impossible. But Loveday had no comprehension of the word. Ezra smiled thinking about it.

  “Boy! The number two flesh knife!” Lashley barked.

  Ezra jolted out of his reverie. He was at work. On the anatomizing table the corpse lay open like a strange flower.

  “And why in heaven’s name are you grinning like an idiot?”

  Ezra passed the knife but missed Lashley’s hand. The knife clattered onto the floor, singing off the straw-​covered stone flags and echoing around the lecture theatre.

  Ezra quickly retrieved it. “Mr Lashley,” he said quietly, “I think you’ll find the master used this knife for removing the lungs and heart, not—”

  “If you would keep your comments to yourself, boy.” Lashley turned back to the cadaver, and Ezra winced as the surgeon butchered the lungs and then the heart, tearing one of the ventricles open as he tried to remove it in one piece.

  There was some sniggering at the back of the class. Ezra put the heart into a dish while Mr Lashley pointed out the main arteries.

  “Ezra, prepare the heart to show the chambers,” Lashley ordered.

  “I’m afraid I can’t, sir. It’s not intact – the right ventricle…”

  Ezra could hear some more laughing.

  Lashley was getting angry, and his voice was rising. “I said, don’t argue with me, boy!”

  “But…”

  Someone in the crowd called out, “I say, what a mess.”

  “That’s it!” Lashley yelled. “Lecture over. All of you, OUT!” He turned to Ezra. “And you! You might have forgotten, but I am your master now.”

  “I am sorry, sir. I was simply—”

  “Simply nothing! You are too damned clever for your own good. You think you know everything but you are a boy. You hear me? A boy! I should sell you to the West Indies, then you would know hard work. You can leave this post and you can leave my house. If there are any of your possessions left here, know this: I will burn them all.”

  There was silence. It was as if the whole room was holding its breath.

  Ezra picked up the flesh knife, wiped it carefully and put it back in its place on the instrument table, in order. His hand was shaking. “Mr Lashley,” he said coolly, “thank you for letting me go. Working for you has made these last few weeks since Mr McAdam’s death intolerable. Sir, I pity your students, but more than that I pity your patients.” Ezra turned to the medical students, none of whom had moved from their seats. The silence was so thick you could have cut it with one of the knives lined up neatly on the bench.

  He addressed the room. “I would advise any medical student who wishes to advance their knowledge of human anatomy to get to a better school and a better teacher than this.”

  As he took off his apron the silence broke in a wave of applause. The students were on their feet, stamping, clapping. Through the tumultuous noise, Ezra could even make out some Bravos and a couple of Hear, hears.

  Lashley’s face was redder than the chest cavity of the open cadaver.

  His heart pounding heavily in his own chest, Ezra hung up his apron and put on his jacket. Then he swung out through the theatre doors and into the courtyard of St Bartholomew’s.

  The sky was clear and the sounds of the cattle in the market at Smithfield sounded almost pastoral. Ezra thought on Mr Lashley, furious as an ox about to enter the abattoir, and felt much better than he had in a very long time.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Coldbath Fields House of Correction

  Coldbath Fields

  Clerkenwell

  London

  November 1792

  Ezra stood in front of the prison gates and rang the bell. Behind the crumbling red brick wall he could hear the inmates, and the sounds did nothing to change his opinion that the dead were often infinitely less terrifying than the living.

  He had cleared out of Brunswick Square in minutes. He had few possessions apart from the clothes he stood up in and his leather apron, which he’d rolled up and carried over his shoulder. Earlier this morning he had also owned a good coat and an illustrated book on anatomy the master had presented to him last Christmas, but he had pawned both in exchange for the three silver coins he now turned over and over in his pocket, where they rested against the pages of Miss Finch’s letter.

  Ezra wished he hadn’t yelled at her and told her he wanted nothing to do with her again. Her theories were outrageous, but, together with everything he’d seen and what Mahmoud had told him, they all made sense. He’d wasted time playing the good apprentice in Lashley’s service when he should have attended Mr Falcon’s post-mortem. He would have bet his three silver coins that Mr Falcon’s heart would have looked as shrivelled as Mr Finch’s.

  After the trip to the pawnbroker Ezra had gone to the magistrate’s office in the hope of explaining that Mr Ahmat, who had shot his master, was also responsible for the deaths of two conjurors and was in fact part of something bigger. He had been laughed out of the office.

  Ezra recalled the faces of the gunman and his accomplice and cursed. He n
eeded proof; he needed to be certain that whoever was responsible for Abd’s death had also had Mr Finch and Mr Falcon poisoned. Was Ahmat acting alone? There was one way to find out, Ezra had decided: go straight to the source, talk to Ahmat in person. After all, he was in prison now, safely locked up, awaiting the hangman. Ezra wasn’t foolish enough to think he would tell all, but perhaps he could get the man to give something away.

  After a long wait, a tall man, rather in need of a good shave, shuffled out of the gatehouse. Ezra hesitated. This could not be as bad as the Fortune of War, he told himself, and stepped forward.

  “Excuse me, sir!’

  The man squinted at him. “Don’t I know you?” he said. “I do, I do! That scar.” He pointed at Ezra’s face. “I’d remember a phiz like that any day of the week. You’s that surgeon’s boy, ain’t you? Best thing my wife ever done for me, get me a ticket to one of his lectures.” The man whistled, remembering. “Damnedest thing, to see inside a body, how it works, all blood an’ bones! You are him, ain’t you? Bad news your master’s death was – well, we got the cove that done it, that we did.”

  “Yes—”

  The man cut in. “Don’t tell me.” He began to turn the lock and open the gate. “That’s why you’re here, to see the man what done your master in.” He waved Ezra in. “The pleasure,” he said, “is entirely mine.”

  Ezra didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t thought it would be so simple to get in. He followed the warder – “My name’s Harries” – round the outside of the crumbling prison walls to a door that led down underneath the mass of the building.

  Harries kept on talking as they descended the stone steps, but Ezra wasn’t listening. He was too busy going over in his head what to ask, how to approach this – but all his questions went out of his head when Mr Harries opened the door.