Sawbones

by Catherine Johnson

  Ezra looked at her incredulously as the rain fell down his neck. Mr McAdam’s overcoat was too big, and icy raindrops ran down his spine through the gap at the collar, and made him shiver.

  “Oh, don’t make such a mopish face!” Loveday exclaimed. “I will teach you everything you need to know, and I have taken all the props I need from Mr Falcon’s.” She held up the bag.

  Ezra couldn’t say a word.

  “You will be fine, more than fine – I am sure you once told me there was a great deal of showmanship involved in being a good surgeon.” She began walking again before he could protest, leaving Ezra to watch helplessly as she hurried ahead through the crowds back to Soho.

  “Loveday Finch,” he said aloud, “what have you done?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Ottoman Embassy

  St James’s Square

  London

  November 1792

  Ezra had bitten down all of the nails on his right hand. Loveday assured him all would be well – she had drilled them for every waking hour of the past two days, and now Ezra could turn a red handkerchief into a blue one just about passably, and pick the card Mahmoud was thinking of two times out of three, although he suspected Mahmoud was being generous. Whether he could make a young girl vanish into thin air, as he was supposed to do this evening, was quite another matter altogether.

  It was just getting dark as he and Loveday neared the embassy building. Mahmoud had been ordered to remain at Great Windmill Street despite his protests, but as the embassy loomed ahead, five storeys high and the width of four regular townhouses at least, Ezra couldn’t help feeling that the prince’s casual imperiousness might have done their party some good. He shifted the heavy carpetbag of props from one hand to another and hoped that this evening he and Loveday might succeed in their endeavour. What were they after all, he told himself, other than rather extravagant couriers simply delivering post? Then he remembered that Mr Finch had been a courier, and he had ended up dead.

  “Come along,” Loveday whispered, and Ezra followed her across the square. He wondered what the master would make of this situation – his apprentice about to play a conjuror in front of an audience – then reminded himself that the Ezra McAdam of one month ago would have thought this utterly unbelievable too.

  “Are you dreaming?” Loveday said. “Only we have work to do and much of it depends on your wits being as sharp as my blade tonight.”

  Ezra took a deep breath and pulled on a pair of Mr Falcon’s white kid gloves. “I am ready, I promise.”

  “Now, should anyone ask, you are Ezekiel, and I am Lily.” She smiled. “And we will do justice by the dead, help a prince home and uncover a traitor. In the future they will sing songs about us in old Constantinople, I am certain of it!”

  Ezra nodded weakly. He wished he could have her confidence. The look on his face must have betrayed his doubts.

  “Think of it as a kind of amputation,” she said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Only if anything goes wrong it’s you and I who are for the chop.”

  “That didn’t help,” Ezra retorted as he shifted the heavy bag again and made for the tradesmen’s entrance. At least, he thought, it didn’t matter much to anyone whether he lived or died; given that, he may as well go down doing the very best he could.

  They were shown up to the ballroom on the first floor by a porter – not the same porter as last time, thank heavens, although Loveday had insisted that they would not be recognized with her hair dyed brown. The ballroom ran the length of the palatial building and was fitted out with mirrors and gold leaf. Everything sparkled. Ezra had never seen anything like it – there were candles enough to stock all the chandlers in London.

  “Shut your mouth, Ez,” Loveday laughed. “You look like a tourist outside St Paul’s.”

  Ezra unpacked their bag. He unfolded and hung up the black velvet backdrop, and Loveday assembled the special table and covered it with a floor-length cloth. At the side of the stage was a tall palm in a pot. Ezra moved it closer.

  “There are so many servants,” he said, looking around – they were mostly liveried men in cloth-of-gold waistcoats and last season’s periwigs. He wondered how many of them still had their tongues. “How on earth can we find out where the ambassador’s private office is, let alone get in? What if your gilt doesn’t work?”

  Loveday patted her pocket. “Mr Falcon swore by it, said it opened every door in the kingdom.”

  “I think this embassy counts as an outpost of the sultan’s.”

  “You concentrate on your technique,” Loveday snapped. “Remember, big arm movements – you’re wearing a mask so your body has to do the work for you –” she waved her arms – “like this, sweeping and fluid. And say everything loud and slow and important.”

  For the first time, Ezra heard a hint of tension in her voice. He nodded.

  “We have been over everything many times,” he reassured her, laying a hand gently on her arm. He wished he felt as certain as he sounded.

  He stood back and looked at their stage. By the time the guests came in it would be darker, and the flickering candlelight might just be enough to hide any flaws in the trick.

  A servant led them away to a small dressing room just as the first guests arrived. Ezra walked quickly, trying to hide the side of his face with the scar in case Mr Ahmat was around, but, as Loveday said, it wasn’t just his scar that marked him out. Ahmat was unlikely to be fool enough not to recognize him.

  “I asked about the ambassador,” Loveday told him when they had closed the door on their dressing room. “His office is down the corridor by the front door.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this, Loveday?” Ezra said. “I mean, we could just slip the letters under the ambassador’s door and leave it to good luck?”

  “Good luck?” She shook her head. “We are here now.We have to try our best, for Mahmoud. And remember, my name is Lily.”

  “Lily.” Ezra took his mask and hat and left her to change. He pulled the hat down low and made his way back to the ballroom, where he kept himself in the shadows by the side of the stage. A string quartet was playing as the audience came in, high-society London in dresses and coats that would pay Mrs Boscaven’s wages for a whole year. Ezra had never seen so many of the well-to-do in one place in all his life – no wonder, he thought, they had not been able to gain entry simply by asking. Most of the talk was in diplomat’s French, and Ezra could only understand snatches of it – mostly trivia concerning horses or cards.

  Ezra caught sight of the man he presumed was the ambassador wearing a turban higher than all the other turbans in the room, with a red crown and a sort of billowing white rim that framed his face. He wore a floor-length robe not dissimilar to the one Ezra had seen hanging on the back of Mr Finch’s door, brightly coloured in rich reds and blues, and shining in the candlelight. He was talking to some elderly bewigged English men when someone caught his sleeve and whispered something in his ear, a thin man, wearing a strange combination of European and Turkish dress, a turban with a high-collared, close-fitting frock-coat. Ezra recognized him straight away, and it was like a blow to the chest.

  Mr Ahmat, his master’s murderer.

  It was him, the very man Ezra had last seen in the museum at Great Windmill Street when he had just shot the master. Ezra wished he had Loveday’s rapier; he pictured himself crossing the ballroom floor and pinning him to the wall. Making him confess, making him tell the whole room what he had done – two men dead and another hung because of him, and two more poisoned – five deaths in all. And yet Ahmat was more ordinary-looking than Ezra remembered. He might have been oddly dressed, but his face was composed, even personable, his small greying beard neatly trimmed. Ezra would never have guessed this was a man who could shoot another in cold blood. How could you be responsible for so much evil and look as if none of it touched you? Ezra thought. He could feel himself shaking with anger at the injustice of it all. He took slow, deep breaths, trying to compose him
self. He must put the loathsome man out of his mind, as much as that was possible. He could not let himself be undone by him, not now.

  “I saw him,” Ezra said. “The murderer.” He was back in the dressing room, where Loveday had transformed herself, with the aid of Mr McAdam’s best bed linen, into something she said approximated a Delphic Oracle – albeit a Delphic Oracle with a rapier in the folds of her toga.

  “You are sure he didn’t see you?” Loveday asked.

  Ezra shook his head and put on his mask. It was hot and he could only see the world in two small, round portholes.

  Loveday took his hand and squeezed it and they walked into the ballroom together and climbed up on the stage.

  “Slowly, calmly,” she whispered.

  Ezra squeezed her hand in return then turned and faced the crowd, and swallowed hard. There were so many of them, all looking expectantly at him. He shut his eyes and remembered the master at that last lecture at Bart’s. The way he had caught everyone’s eye, the way he spoke, commanding and direct and confident.

  Ezra let go of Loveday’s hand; he scanned the audience from one side of the hall to the other. “Gentlemen!” he said, and the crowd quietened. He had their attention. So far, so good. At the edge of his vision he could see Loveday throwing wild shapes, cutting the air with her rapier.

  Ezra turned the red handkerchief blue and then back to red as if it were nothing. “Ladies! Behold, the wonders of the universe will now be revealed! Before your very eyes I will make this beautiful young lady –” they were hanging on his words – “vanish!”

  There was a ripple of applause. Inside the mask he felt a trickle of sweat roll down his face.

  “Lily, the table.” He took her hand and she climbed up onto the table.

  “Your blade!” She threw the rapier down to Ezra and he caught it in his gloved hand – it nicked the fabric, and the crowd were lucky not to catch him wincing. If the gloves had not been kid, she would have drawn blood.

  Loveday stood quite still on the table, her face icy pale as if she truly imagined her own end was close. She was a good actress.

  Ezra swished the blade. His near miss had given him an idea.

  During anatomy lectures students often pleaded regret and surprise at the lack of blood; blood always got the most attention, the best response. He remembered Mr Lashley once nicking the femoral artery and causing a veritable fountain of the stuff.

  Ezra paused, took the rapier in his right hand, held up his left. He passed the blade between the fore and middle fingers, cutting through the kid and into his own flesh. It stung a short sharp pain, but he continued to hold up his left hand so the crowd could watch as the glove, once white, stained red. They gasped. “Ladies and gentlemen, my blade is true!”

  Ezra smiled behind his mask. He felt his confidence growing. Perhaps he enjoyed taking risks more than he imagined.

  Loveday twitched; she hadn’t expected it either. Good, Ezra thought.

  While they were still surprised, he cut the ribbon that held up the curtain, and a month’s salary’s worth of black silk velvet dropped down in front of Loveday. Ezra realized he was shaking and gripped the sword more tightly. The trick would work, he told himself. They would not be discovered. They would not be set upon by armed guards. They would not be killed.

  Not yet.

  Ezra pointed the rapier out into the crowd. He would have liked to linger on Mr Ahmat for a few seconds longer, but instead he whirled round and slashed the fabric into ribbons. This was actually most satisfying, and the blade was so sharp the velvet rained down like soft black soot.

  Loveday was gone. The crowd didn’t quite burst into applause and Ezra knew what they were thinking: she was under the table. He lifted the cloth with the blade, slowly, just slow enough to give her time to vanish through a slit in the backdrop, shed her toga, tie an old white apron of Ellen’s over her black mourning dress and break into the ambassador’s office.

  Ezra lifted the tablecloth higher, higher, then switched it off completely. She had gone. He was alone on the stage.

  The crowd applauded. Ezra bowed low. His hand hurt, but he had enjoyed it. Now he felt the mask slipping, though, and he had to leave the stage crabwise to avoid it falling off completely.

  The string quartet was setting up again, and struck up a tune Ezra recognized, by Mozart. He resisted the urge to remove the mask, bundled up Loveday’s toga and headed back to the dressing room. But in his haste he found himself in a corridor that he’d never seen before, lined with doors.

  He couldn’t think which way he’d come. He dropped the mask just as a man came out of the room nearest to him. Ezra was scrabbling around on the floor when he came close, and he could see from the man’s brown leather slippers, backless in the Ottoman style, that he was a servant.

  Ezra stood up and smiled at him. “Excuse me. I am lost, I’m afraid. I was looking for the dressing room?”

  The man looked at him blankly.

  “I am the magician,” Ezra said. “Magician?” He put down Loveday’s toga and the mask and turned the red handkerchief blue. The man smiled but made no sound.

  “Conjuror?” Ezra spoke slowly.

  The man opened his mouth. He had no tongue. Ezra tried not to look unsettled.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll find it. Thank you.” Ezra picked up his things and shuffled back the way he had come as quickly as he could.

  He turned another corner, mask in hand, when he saw two more men, walking towards him from the other end of the corridor. One was another servant, dressed in the same Turkish livery. The other, severe in his dark frock-coat, was Ahmat. His master’s killer. Ezra jammed on his mask and ducked into a doorway, his heart hammering louder than hoofbeats on stone.

  Ahmat was talking, not with words but with the Ixarette, the sign language Mahmoud had told him about. They were coming this way; they would pass him in an instant. Why were they here – surely the function was not over yet – and what were they saying? Was Loveday discovered? Had she found her way into the office, or had she been seen? Was Ahmat sounding the silent alarm among the servants right now, a warning that some girl was breaking into the ambassador’s office? Then surely it was better if Ahmat was here, dealing with him, Ezra thought. He could buy Loveday some precious time. He took off his mask and stepped into the light so he could be seen.

  “Mr Ahmat,” Ezra declared bravely, his hand on Loveday’s blade. “An amazing recovery for a man hung for murder.”

  Ahmat clapped his hands and the servant ran away down the corridor, not once looking back.

  “Who are you?” The man’s face was sour. He looked Ezra up and down. “Ah, I know! The McAdam boy. I see. Perhaps you think you are doing your dead master some kind of service by threatening me? I’m afraid you’ll find Mr Ahmat is dead. That is not my name.” He bowed a little. “I also think you are very stupid in your choice of weapon. I long ago exchanged the blade for the gun. So much cleaner and more modern, don’t you think?”

  Ezra was sure Ahmat couldn’t have a gun on him, the coat was too close. He took a step forward, sword out. The man backed away. Ezra felt suddenly stronger, braver, than ever before – he’d never in his life been anywhere near a fight, but the same spirit he’d felt on stage seemed to course through his body. He felt as if he could do anything. He pressed the tip of the blade against Ahmat’s collarbone. The man did not flinch.

  Anger flared up inside Ezra. “You have killed my master,” he said fiercely, “and countless others. You would betray your own countrymen…”

  Mr Ahmat moved the blade away from his neck with one hand, and with the other opened the door behind him.

  “As I remarked, a stupid boy,” he said, and stepped back into a stateroom where a vast portrait of a man whom Ezra presumed was the sultan hung over the fireplace.

  Ezra threw down the toga and the mask and strode after him.

  “I know you are plotting with the Russians. I have seen you with him, with Oleg. You want a war, your own co
untry overthrown.”

  “You over-dramatize. I would simply rather a sultan of my choosing, a sultan who kept his place,” Ahmat replied, still backing away. “And if the Russians can help us achieve that, then so be it.”

  “I will tell!” Ezra cried. “I will tell the ambassador you are in league with your empire’s enemies. I will tell the sultan himself!”

  The man gave a thin laugh. “How do you propose that feat, young man? Magic? And who would believe a dead surgeon’s slave?” As he spoke he felt along the massive wooden table for a drawer and pulled.

  “I am not a slave!” Ezra leapt forward onto the table and almost slipped on the polished surface. He righted himself just as Ahmat tried another drawer – Ezra could see he was having trouble, but there might be a gun in there, or another weapon. Ezra did not want to die. It was kill or be killed.

  He jabbed the blade down across the man’s chest, but Ahmat stood firm. “Do you expect me to crumple? To lie down and give up? You are used to dead bodies, I think, and they are not known for fighting back.”

  Ezra turned the sword handle over in his hand. The man was right. He was sweating, even in the fireless room. Ahmat leant forward, grinning.

  “You have not the stomach for it, do you? You can carve the meat but you can’t kill the sheep.”

  Ezra gripped the blade tighter and drew back, ready to lunge downwards and into the man’s heart. He had sliced flesh so many times in his life, uncovered ribcages, sawn off the top of skulls. Eviscerated boys and girls, men and women. But a living man, a living, breathing man, even one as worthless as this, who had killed his master, who would cause more death and heartbreak if left alive – he could not do it. He wiped the sweat from his face, and in that moment, Ahmat picked up a glass paperweight from the table and slammed it hard against Ezra’s shin. The pain exploded in his leg and he lost his balance and fell sideways off the table, blade still tight in his hand.

  Ahmat pulled open yet another drawer and took out a gun, which he pointed straight at Ezra.

  Though the pain in Ezra’s leg was great, he stared back at Ahmat as the gunman squeezed the trigger – he would not die a coward.