Sawbones

by Catherine Johnson

  There, laid on a table covered in a winding sheet, was a body. It wasn’t a cell – it was a mortuary.

  “We did for him this morning,” the warder said.

  “He’s dead!” Ezra exclaimed. “But there was no trial! I was never called as witness…”

  “I hear as he confessed – well, not with words, exactly, of course. Signed something, he did. And there’s no point them keep taking up space when they’re guilty.” Harries began to unwind the sheet. “There you go – and if you, you know, want to do a bit of anatomizing on him now, like, feel free. The bugger deserves everything he gets.”

  The face of the hanged man on the table was bloated, its eyes bulging. A thick red rope burn ran under its chin and around the neck.

  But it wasn’t the man who’d killed the master.

  “Was this the man called Ahmat? You are sure?” Ezra said at last.

  “Oh yes. The Turks what brought him in told the magistrate so. The fella couldn’t speak a word of English,” Harries said, smiling. “In fact, he didn’t say much at all – look.”

  Harries opened the man’s mouth. It was a mess, a bloody pulpy mess – he’d had his tongue cut out, but it must have been recently.

  This short, square man had nothing in common with the slight, narrow-faced gunman who had called himself Ahmat – or his towering accomplice, for that matter. Ezra stepped forward, unravelled the sheet further and pulled out the man’s right arm. Perhaps he would have a tattoo like Abd; perhaps this was some poor sod who worked for the harem or the embassy – but there was nothing there. On his left arm was a sailor’s tattoo, as he’d seen on many cadavers washed up in the Thames.

  Ezra checked the body over completely. As well as the removal of the tongue, the man had suffered a blow to the head, possibly at or around the same time.

  Whoever did this had probably got some poor drink-sotten cove out of a tavern, coshed him, cut out his tongue so he couldn’t speak and given him to the magistrates as Ahmat.

  “The fellows that turned him in, do you know who they were?” Ezra asked.

  Harries shrugged. “Grand, I can tell you that – from the embassy, I heard. Turned in one of their own, they did, on account of how he did in poor Mr McAdam, the best surgeon in London.”

  Ezra nodded to Harries. “Thank you.” He handed him one of the silver pieces. The warder looked disappointed that he wasn’t going to get to see any anatomizing, but Ezra was sure this body would have nothing to show him. Besides, he had no time to waste – Mr Ahmat was still out in the city, and by the sound of it safe in the embassy. Mahmoud was not safe.

  Coldbath Fields was less than a quarter-mile from Clerkenwell Green. Ezra covered the distance in minutes, and knocked hard on the door of Mrs Gurney’s townhouse.

  No one came. He knocked again. This time the maid opened the door, the look on her face one of irritation.

  “They are all out!” She began to close the door.

  “No, wait. Perhaps you could take a message? For Miss Finch?”

  The maid shook her head. “Miss Finch has left.”

  “Left?” Ezra felt fear grip his heart. Had Ahmat come for her already? “When? Is she still in London?”

  “Mrs Gurney said that some gentlemen come looking for her and she did a flit. Left her rent, though, she did.”

  “What men? Do you know what they looked like?”

  The maid rolled her eyes. “I said as it wasn’t me. If you want to take it up with Mrs Gurney…”

  “No, no.” Ezra stepped back and the door shut hard. He looked around. What if something had already happened to Loveday? Why had he been such a petulant idiot and walked away?

  Ezra kicked a stone out into the road. He liked to think of himself like the young French surgeons, rational, sober, but sometimes he could be as much a creature of wilfulness as Miss Finch.

  Ezra had reached Holborn before he realized he had no idea where he was going. He wasn’t thinking; his mind was fogged up with worry and something else. Dread. He scanned every face on the street, terrified he’d walk into Oleg or Ahmat. He had to find somewhere safe. The city was a blur of people and movement – where could he go? There was only one answer, the only place that had ever been home: Great Windmill Street.

  Ezra made his way in through Ham Yard as he had done early that morning. He was careful to make sure no one was watching as he slipped inside the lecture room and then into the house. He called out to Mahmoud, who appeared at the top of the stairs looking cleaner and better dressed than earlier, clutching a whole pie in one hand. He was smiling, too.

  “Miss Finch is here. We have been waiting for you all day.”

  Loveday appeared next to Mahmoud on the landing and Ezra felt the tension in his bones ebb away.

  “Thank heavens! I went to the house – the maid told me some men—”

  “I thought they might come after me. So I am wearing my travelling habit. She lifted up the skirts of her dress and they positively clanked. She grinned. “I remember Pa saying it’s always best to carry money close. I suppose he was talking about the rubies, too. Come in, there’s dinner.”

  Ezra followed them into the master’s office to find a picnic laid out on one of the dust sheets.

  Mahmoud sat down cross-legged on the floor, finished his pie and took another. He and Loveday assured Ezra that this was the Turkish fashion and so most apt.

  Ezra watched them share a joke about a dog, a fox and a three-legged milking stool, and he wished he could be that easy with people, especially when lives were in danger.

  He went to the window and looked out through a hole in the shutter. Out in the street, life went on as normal. Assassins were only notable by their absence.

  “What is up with you, Ezra McWhatsit?” Loveday said, brushing the crumbs off her dress. “Mahmoud and I have put the world to rights while you look out of the window with a face as long as Friday.”

  “Sorry, I was distracted,” Ezra said. “I was thinking how there can never be justice in this whole matter. I saw the man they hanged today for my master’s murder – the man they think is Ahmat – and it was not him. That means we are still in danger.”

  Mahmoud wiped his mouth. “I would simply tell the magistrates they have made a mistake.”

  Ezra sighed. “They laughed me out of their offices. I am just a surgeon’s apprentice. No one would believe me.”

  “The word of a servant is never worth as much as that of a man of substance,” said Mahmoud. “That is the way of things.”

  Ezra scowled. Loveday gave him a sharp look and unwrapped a parcel of three small seed cakes.

  “Cake, see?”

  But Ezra was not to be distracted. “Mahmoud, you may not care who lives or dies, but I guarantee this Ahmat and his Russian friend are working to unpick your beloved empire.”

  Mahmoud nodded slowly. “This Ahmat is a dog. Perhaps if I could see the ambassador himself…”

  “Surely he would believe you,” Loveday said. “The son of the sultan.”

  “I am not supposed to be here,” Mahmoud reminded her. “He would call me an impostor. It would go badly for my grandmother, too, if I was found out.”

  They were all quiet for a long while. Mahmoud ate up every last crumb until the dust sheet was perfectly and completely clean. Loveday ruffled his hair as if to apologize for not having any more food, and Ezra saw the street boy again, not the sultan.

  Ezra sat up. “There is only one answer. Mahmoud must leave as soon as possible, sell the jewels, use the money and get away before he is hunted down.”

  “But then your Ahmat would still be at the embassy, dripping poison,” said Mahmoud.

  Ezra looked at him, surprised, but could see by his thoughtful frown that he was in earnest. It seemed the boy was more willing to take Ahmat seriously when he was considered a threat to his precious empire.

  “I know,” said Loveday. “We can take a letter signed by you, Mahmoud. We could take it straight to the ambassador.”


  Ezra looked at her. “We went to the embassy, remember? They wouldn’t even let us through the door!”

  Mahmoud nodded at Loveday. “Yes. You must find a way. I will write two letters. One will be for my grandmother, the valide sultan. You must hide it in the diplomatic post. She will know I am safe and coming home. And then for the ambassador I will write another letter, about this Ahmat – revealing the name of the snake, the turncoat – which you will leave on the ambassador’s desk. Only once that is done will I go.”

  Ezra made up a bed for Loveday in Mrs Boscaven’s room. Mahmoud insisted on sleeping on the floor on the top landing, ready for fight or flight. Curled up in a ball, Mahmoud looked less like a sultan, Ezra thought, more like a cat – but Ezra could hardly blame him for his vigilance. Now that Loveday was being hunted too, the threat that surrounded them seemed more real and present than ever.

  Before Ezra fell asleep he looked around his empty room and made a small prayer to remember Mr McAdam. Then he blew out his candle stub and prayed for some protection – for Loveday, for Mahmoud and for himself.

  The next morning Ezra went out to fetch some breakfast, making sure no one saw him as he left. As he made his way down the street he was wrestling with the problem of how to get inside the Ottoman Embassy unseen. Then he realized he had walked past the St John shop without thinking of Anna once. He turned back. The sign creaked in the breeze. She was in another country, across a sea. Ezra felt a little sad, but that was all. He was glad she wasn’t here to see what had happened. She would not approve at all, she would have told him to go to the authorities or forget everything. He would not. The man who shot his master must not walk away. He knew this was the right thing to do. He was certain.

  Ezra sped up towards the baker’s. His friends would be waiting for breakfast.

  When he returned, Loveday had gone, left early, taken her sword. “Mahmoud! You shouldn’t have let her go!”

  Mahmoud tore off a piece of the loaf Ezra had bought. “You were gone for quite a long time. How could I stop her? She said she had an idea.”

  Ezra raked his hair with his hands. “She didn’t say what she was doing? Where she was going?”

  Mahmoud shrugged. “She said not to worry, she had her rapier, and she promised she would be back before dark.”

  Ezra swore. She would be eyeballing the embassy – she would be seen. She was hardly the sort of girl who faded into the background.

  The church bell at St Anne’s chimed for nine o’clock. He would give her until twelve, he decided, and then go after her.

  All morning Ezra felt as if he were walking on needles. He imagined Loveday thinking she, alone with her sword, could take on the massed Russian cavalry and the combined ranks of the Ottoman Janissary force. Ezra had read about the Janissaries, the Ottoman palace guard, who were, it was said, the fiercest fighting brigade the world over. Or perhaps, Ezra thought, Loveday had gone back to Mr Falcon’s lodgings and was going through his things, looking for something that might count as proof of Ahmat’s guilt. He remembered how they had first met, Loveday running for her life from a gang of resurrection men. Was she fleeing again now? he thought. Or perhaps it was already over; perhaps they had already put a bullet through her, like the master.

  Ezra could not settle, whether to sweep the floor in the kitchen or to read one of the master’s books, half of which were still on the shelves, half of which had been packed away in boxes. He took up the post when the postman called and put it on the master’s desk, as if in some small compartment of his brain he imagined Mr McAdam coming in from a morning lecture and wanting his letters, neat and tidy, with Mrs Boscaven in the basement brewing coffee, even Toms sulking in the yard.

  It was still only eleven. Mahmoud had written his letters and sealed them with the master’s wax. He had also, in his most imperious voice, instructed Ezra to discover which was the best jeweller’s to which to take the gemstones, and Ezra had promised that as soon as he knew Miss Finch was safe he would see to it. As for the letters, Ezra couldn’t imagine how he would even enter the Ottoman Embassy, let alone discover the ambassador’s office and his personal post. It was impossible. He would tell Loveday, as soon as she set foot in the house, that it couldn’t be done. But then what could?

  Ezra sighed and piled the post up in date order, the newest at the bottom. He sieved out the ones that were for Dr James McAdam, and the thought of putting them straight onto the fire made him forget Loveday for a moment. The honourable thing would be to re-address them and send them on to Edinburgh, but he reckoned on owing Dr James McAdam barely any honour at all. In fact, if there was to be any accounting of honour, he imagined Dr James’s ledger ran into the red for sure. He held the first letter in his hand, wondering if it might even be a crime to open other people’s mail. Then he remembered the feeling of walking out of Mr Lashley’s lecture, and tore it open.

  It was a begging letter from an orphanage concerned with transporting homeless London children to new homes in the north of England, where, it said, the opportunities for hard work in the new-built cotton mills mean idle hands no longer turn to crime.

  Ezra had heard of children being taken from the streets to work for a pittance a hundred miles away. It did not sound like his idea of charity. He screwed the letter into a ball and threw it into the fireplace for kindling.

  He opened another letter, and this one stopped him dead.

  It was from Mr Harkaway. He read it twice, three times, then once more. He could scarcely believe it. Mr Harkaway was disputing Dr James’s actions. Dr James McAdam had no right, Mr Harkaway had written, to the estate of his uncle, and he should come into the office, the letter said, to be present at the reading of the will. Though not an executor, Mr McAdam, you are welcome to attend. However, your actions in trying to sell off the museum collection and the estate may be seen as illegal.

  Ezra gave three inner cheers for the unsmiling Mr Harkaway. He kissed the letter, thanked heaven and all its inhabitants and went through the rest of the pile of Dr James’s mail like a tornado in a wheatfield.

  He discovered the will had not even been read, and although it did not say who the executors were, it gave a date and a time for the reading: four weeks after the master’s death. December the first. Only three days away. Ezra whooped with joy and danced round the room. He would not have been forgotten! Dr James was a blackguard and Lashley a fool – as he himself had been – to imagine they had any control over his life. He would swear on his life there would be tools, and perhaps one or two books, that would come to him, and with tools he could do anything. He could set up a small practice – well, perhaps a very small one, above a shop somewhere, in town. It would be a start.

  Suddenly he realized Mahmoud was standing in the doorway watching him.

  “What,” said the boy, his tone at once curious and accusing, “are you doing?”

  “Nothing.” Ezra straightened up, tucked the letters back in a pile. “A bit of good news, Mahmoud, that’s all,” he said, feeling a little guilty at his own happiness when Mahmoud’s situation was still so uncertain. The first of December – he said the date over and over to himself in case he might forget. But Ezra felt suddenly so lit up with joy he might have hovered a good few inches off the floor.

  “That is good for you,” Mahmoud said, without much interest. “I have finished my writing and Miss Finch has not returned.”

  “Ah,” Ezra said, and in a moment his joy was swept away by the reminder of Loveday’s absence. “Miss Finch – I should see if she is outside the embassy, or perhaps at Mr Falcon’s lodgings.”

  “It has been hours,” Mahmoud said. “I would not want any harm to come to Miss Finch.”

  “Neither would I,” Ezra agreed. “I just hope she hasn’t started waving that damned blade of hers around and got herself arrested.”

  It had begun to rain. Ezra took the master’s second-best winter coat, which was still on the hook by the front door, snuck out of Ham Yard and turned towards St Martin’s
Lane. The coat still smelt, comfortingly, of the master’s tobacco and snuff. He stuck his hands deep inside the pockets and ran all the way down the slippery mud-spattered streets.

  Ezra couldn’t remember the number of Mr Falcon’s boarding house, but he knew it was next to an inn called the Hogget. He turned his collar up – and ran slap-bang into a young girl clad all in black and in possession of a large carpetbag. The girl let loose a torrent of curses and burnt the air bluer than a summer sky.

  Ezra would know those curses anywhere. “Loveday!” It was her, although her hair – well, the hair he could see escaping under her hat – was a deep muddy brown, the colour of the swill that raced down the centre of the street. “It is you!”

  “Shh!” she hissed. “For heaven’s sake, Ezra, I am in disguise. I have a plan. Come on, back to yours, and hurry – I don’t want my hair to run. It took all morning and close to a vat of walnut oil pomade to do this!”

  “We were worried. You shouldn’t have left like that!” Ezra protested as he joined her at a jog. “I thought you were about to attack the Ottomans and the Russians single-handed.”

  “I am not an idiot, you know,” Loveday said, racing on.

  Ezra ran to catch up. “You should have told me your plans. You are in danger. They are looking for you!”

  She turned around. The rain was cockling the edges of her hat. “They will be looking for a redhead. This is important, Ezra! We need to help Mahmoud, to deliver his letters. And avenge my father and your master – I can think of no worthier or more noble cause for which to dye my hair.”

  “But Loveday, we tried to get into the embassy, remember? They wouldn’t even let us through the door.”

  “Ah, that is what you think.” Now she was smiling. “Mr Falcon was due to play the Ottoman Embassy party, but unfortunately he has passed away. However, this morning, after I dyed my hair, I went to see his agent. The good news is, he has replaced one magic act with another: The Amazing Masked Magician Ezekiel – that’s you, by the way – and his Mystic Muse.” She bowed. “Me, of course.”