Beloved Poison

by E. S. Thomson

  ‘But it has perhaps not served your patients well,’ said Dr Bain. ‘Will you not help us to see whether we can improve a man’s chance of surviving the knife?’ He lowered his voice. ‘Come on, Richard! Experiment and inquiry is the life blood of our profession. What seems right may well be wrong. We must test alternative ways of doing things, no matter how absurd they may seem. Change is good. We cannot fear it or we must give up!’

  Dr Graves looked up at the students. They had heard every word. Not one of them was smiling now. Nor could they bring themselves to look at Dr Graves. He turned around on his heel, peering up into the galleries, searching for someone, anyone, who might meet his gaze. ‘What, no laughter now, gentlemen?’ he shouted, ‘No questions as to why or how this theory has been arrived at?’

  The students looked down at their hands. Dr Graves took a step backward. But one of his boots had become tangled in the folds of the smock he had flung to the ground and all at once he lost his balance. He made a desperate bid to stay upright by grabbing hold of the table upon which rested Dr Magorian’s surgical cutlery, and then, with a great clatter, down he went, to sprawl upon the sawdust amongst a confusion of knives, saws, hooks and clamps. A mass of sugar lumps spilled from his pockets onto the floor.

  There was a moment of appalled silence, and then a great shout of laughter erupted from the audience. ‘Silence!’ bellowed Dr Magorian.

  Dr Bain went to pull Dr Graves up off the ground, but the man staggered to his feet unaided. Sawdust covered his coat and trousers. His face was almost purple with rage, and in his hand he gripped a long curved boning knife.

  Will clutched my arm. ‘The knife!’ he whispered.

  ‘This is a hospital. Men hold knives all the time here.’ I saw no reason for hysteria, despite the heated exchange taking place before us.

  Dr Graves was panting hard; his hair was awry and his voice trembled with fury. He pointed the boning knife at Dr Bain. ‘You!’ he shouted. ‘It’s always you! You could just as well have presented your absurd ideas in private but no, you must have an audience. You are a maverick, sir, and you jeopardise the gravitas of our profession with your persistent nonconformity!’

  ‘Dr Graves—’

  ‘And when I do not choose to follow your lead in these clownish activities, you see fit to scoff at me beneath the gaze of my students. What professionalism, what courteousness is there in that?’ Sugar crunched beneath his heels. ‘Dr Magorian,’ he cried, ‘you asked me to assist you, and I would be honoured to do so. But I will not do so if you continue to allow our noble profession to be ridiculed by this man.’ His knuckles turned white as he jabbed the knife in the direction of Dr Bain. ‘He will be asking you to wear your nightcap next!’

  ‘An excellent idea, sir,’ said Dr Bain.

  Dr Graves made a choking sound. The students hooted. ‘Gentlemen, will you be quiet!’ shouted Dr Magorian. He motioned to me to pick up the utensils that lay scattered in the sawdust.

  The uproar continued, but Dr Graves had now fallen silent. He was holding the knife tightly, his fingers wrapped around the top of the blade, so that his hand was cut and bleeding, though he appeared not to have noticed.

  ‘Look, sir,’ I murmured, hoping to help him save face, even a little. ‘You’ve cut your hand. You can’t possibly operate without first attending to this.’

  I took the knife from him and pressed my handkerchief against the wound. Dr Graves gaped at me. His eyes were vacant, his face slack and defeated. He looked different, somehow. I stared at him. Something cold and hard, something dark, and filled with hatred seemed to be stirring at the back of his blank, glazed eyes. He blinked, and cocked his head as though he were listening, listening to a voice deep within himself that he had not understood before. Then he turned, and stumbled out of the operating theatre. The door crashed closed behind him. No one followed. No one spoke. I had been acquainted with Dr Graves for years, and yet, at that moment, I realised that I did not know him at all.

  But the spectacle was set to continue, and the next moment the door opposite burst open and a pair of orderlies marched in. Between them they carried a stretcher, upon which was strapped a tall thin man of about fifty years. He lay still as he was carried forth, but on apprehending his two white-clad surgeons and possibly thinking he had arrived early at the celestial gates, all at once he burst into violent activity.

  ‘Calm down, man,’ roared Dr Magorian. ‘Do you not recognise me?’ He kicked the blood box around the operating table until it stood below the place where the patient’s hip would be once he was in position. The patient was now wild eyed. He had been dosed with opium and alcohol, but he had caught sight of the table of knives and fear at what was about to happen seemed to have rendered useless all attempts to stupefy him.

  There was a cry of ‘hats off’ so that those at the topmost standings could see. The patient gave a muffled gurgle. Dr Bain offered him a leather strap to grip between his jaws, and this he did, an involuntary moaning sound coming from behind his clenched teeth. The orderlies – burly men with hairless heads and giant hands – lashed the man’s body to the operating table with thick, buckled straps. One of Dr Bain’s dressers donned Graves’s discarded nightshirt and took hold of the pine tar spray. Another eager student sprang down from the standings to man the pump in the bucket. Dr Magorian picked up a knife. A saw waited its turn. Beside me, Will was now as limp as a rag doll. He moaned faintly.

  ‘Sniff this,’ I said. I passed him a handkerchief. Hidden in it was a bottle of salts.

  Will buried his face in the linen folds. ‘Oh!’ His head snapped back, his eyes streaming.

  ‘Easy now,’ I whispered.

  ‘Oh!’ cried Will again. ‘Oh!’ His voice echoed round the theatre.

  ‘Mr Quartermain, if you could restrain yourself,’ said Dr Magorian. He leaned forward.

  ‘Mist!’ cried Dr Bain. The students began working the pump and the aphid spray.

  I saw the flash of the blade as the white flesh parted and a crimson flood poured onto the operating table. The students craned their necks to see. Dr Magorian’s voice boomed out instructions, drowning out the dreadful muted screams of the patient, which soon evaporated into a whimper as the man lost consciousness with pain and fear.

  Dr Magorian clamped the knife between his teeth like a pirate and plunged his fingers into the wound. The patient’s blood stained his lips and cheek; his hands were coated in the stuff, his new white smock soaked from the waist. There was a glimpse of bone and gristle and red glistening tissue. There came the sound of the saw, and the thunk of Dr Bain’s boot as he kicked the blood box forward, the better to catch the thick streams of scarlet that dripped over the lip of the operating table.

  Will’s face was as white as a corpse. Would he attempt an undignified exit, or simply crash sideways off his chair onto the floor? The first time I had witnessed an operation I had brought salts in my handkerchief and a pin in my pocket, just in case. I would not have had any of the medical men think I could not bear it. In the event I had not needed them – after all, was not blood and pain a woman’s lot? Beside me, Will began to sway. I put my arm about his shoulders but he shook me off and staggered to his feet. He took one step in the general direction of the door, and then collapsed, dropping to the ground like a wet sack, recumbent in the bloody sawdust at Dr Magorian’s feet.

  ‘Get rid of him,’ snarled the surgeon, his boning knife still clenched between his teeth.

  I seized hold of Will’s legs and dragged him aside. ‘Mr Quartermain,’ I hissed. ‘Will!’ I jammed my salts beneath his nostrils. And all the while came the rhythmic rasp of the saw and the faint psst . . . psst . . . psst . . . of Dr Bain’s spray pump.

  Then it was over. Dr Bain held the leg as it was finally severed, flinging it aside into the sawdust. Dr Magorian knotted the arteries, stitched the flaps of skin and removed the tourniquet. He stepped back from the table. ‘Time, gentlemen?’

  ‘Sixty-two seconds, sir,’ cried a voice. T
here was a cheer. Dr Magorian acknowledged the enthusiasm of the crowd with a wave of his bloodied hand, though I could see he was disappointed. He had hoped for less than fifty-five seconds. Still, the extra seven might easily be blamed on Dr Bain.

  I dragged Will to his feet and slung his arm about my shoulders. Like a pair of drunkards we lurched out of the operating theatre and into the courtyard.

  ‘Breathe!’ I ordered.

  ‘When I close my eyes I can still see it,’ he cried, gulping down air. ‘I can hear it. The screams! The saw! Oh!’

  ‘Then don’t close them,’ I said. ‘Don’t think of it.’

  ‘I can think of nothing else. So much blood!’ He slipped from my grasp, sinking down until he was on all fours, his head lowered, and his stove-pipe hat rolling in the dust. I picked it up. There was a blob of red-stained sawdust on the rim. I wiped it off with my cuff. ‘Keep your head down and it will pass,’ I said.

  At last, Will rose to his feet. ‘Well,’ he said faintly, ‘perhaps I didn’t acquit myself too badly, all things considered.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘Though there is some ignominy attached to fainting at the surgeon’s feet and being hauled aside like a Smithfield carcass.’

  We grinned at one another, though I could see he was still shaken. ‘But I’m new to the business of blood and bones, so you must excuse me.’

  ‘You’ll have to grow a stronger stomach if you’re to exhume the contents of the graveyard.’

  ‘I’d rather we didn’t talk about that at the moment.’

  I steered him towards a bench in a patch of sunlight against the wall of the women’s surgical ward. ‘Here,’ I said. I took a poke of eucalyptus drops from my pocket. A powerful blend I made myself out of sugar, lime, eucalyptus and peppermint. ‘Take a piece. It helps, believe me.’

  We sat side by side in silence, the watery sun warming our faces.

  ‘The operation was . . . interesting,’ said Will after a moment. He wiped his eyes, which were watering from the eucalyptus. Across the courtyard Dr Bain and Dr Magorian had emerged from the operating theatre. They were surrounded by students. ‘He seemed very emotional.’

  I remembered Dr Graves’s face as he stumbled from the operating theatre and I could not answer.

  ‘And Dr Magorian?’ Will buffed the nap of his hat with his coat cuff. ‘I was surprised he wore the smock. Had he not done so things would have turned out differently. Your friend Dr Bain took a gamble.’

  ‘Dr Magorian is very highly regarded,’ I said. ‘Though if you ask me he cares for little but lopping off limbs as fast as he can. The cheers of his students and the obsequiousness of his colleagues are as important as the air he breathes. If Dr Bain’s idea works then Dr Magorian will share equally in the glory. If it fails, he will say he was merely pandering to the whim of a colleague.’

  ‘Ah, reputation. Often a man’s most prized possession.’

  ‘It is certainly Dr Magorian’s. His reputation and his wife – upon whom he dotes with a sugary fondness. His daughter, though—’ I stopped. I had said too much already. And yet, how good it felt to talk.

  ‘Yes?’ said Will. He put his hat back on. ‘Does he not dote upon her too?’

  I shoved my hands into my pockets. How much I longed to say and how little I was able to explain. I thought of Dr Magorian standing beside the operating table, his face yellow against the grey cobweb of his hair, his pale eyes plunged into shadows on either side of his proud, beaked nose. He looked dried out and cadaverous. And yet his hands were strong, the long bony fingers powerful from years of gripping limbs and holding down screaming patients, from wielding knives and saws. And I thought too of Eliza. Her hands were small and soft, but tanned like a gypsy’s from being outdoors in the garden.

  Eliza loved to be outside. When she was little she had been allowed to play beside me while I worked in the physic garden. I planted and pruned and gathered; Eliza flitted in and out of the herbs like Titania, the rank weeds of the poison beds dancing about her.

  ‘Come out of there,’ I would say as she pranced amongst the nodding purple purses of wolfsbane. ‘If you so much as touch the leaves of the wolfsbane you will die.’

  ‘Like this?’ the little minx had cried, and she flung a handful of leaves into the air. A moment later she gasped, and coughed, and then sunk out of sight beneath the thick foliage.

  I remembered bounding forward amongst the herbs. At twelve years old I was already tall and strong, and I picked her up and carried her out of the poison bed. I knew the game well enough, and enjoyed it as much as she. The leaves she had tossed were plantain and dandelion and had been hidden in the pocket of her apron (she knew better than to touch the wolfsbane). She lay limp in my arms, but I could see her eyelids fluttering, and her mouth curved in a smile. All at once she sprang back into life. She threw her arms about my neck and kissed my cheek. ‘Can you make me a mask, like yours?’ Her voice that day was close, her breath warm, and sweet from the mint leaves she had nibbled. She put her hands to my face, over my birthmark. ‘Let me take it from you,’ she said. ‘I know it makes you sad, but I would be glad of such a disguise.’

  ‘Why would you hide such a pretty face?’ I had asked.

  ‘So that no one will know me,’ she replied. ‘Who I am, and where I come from can be my secret.’

  I knew people looked at me with pity and disgust, but Eliza never did. For that alone, I would always love her. Now, I put my hand to my crimson face, touching it where she had touched it. Will was watching me, waiting for my answer, but my thoughts were my own, and they were precious. I would not share them with anyone.

  We sat for a while, watching as the students gradually dispersed. I saw Dr Graves skulking in the shadows beneath the archway that led through to the mortuary. He scowled as Dr Bain moved off, surrounded by his students and dressers. Some of those young men were Dr Graves’s students. Dr Bain’s laugh echoed from the walls. The students laughed with him. They were all off to Sorley’s for ale and chops before the afternoon lecture – which was to be given by Dr Graves. There would be some rowdiness in the lecture theatre that afternoon.

  ‘Oh, no,’ murmured Will. ‘Here he comes.’

  Dr Magorian was walking towards us. He had changed his shirt and wore his frock coat and hat once more. Apart from a spot of dried blood on his cheek one would never have guessed that he had just cut a man’s leg off. I stood up as he approached. No doubt he was looking for an apology, though from what I had seen it was he who should be apologising to Will – forcing a layman to watch an amputation . . . ‘Sir—’ I began.

  Dr Magorian held up a hand. Instinctively, I fell silent. He looked down at Will. ‘Don’t get up, Mr Quartermain,’ he said, though Will had made no attempt to do so. From behind his back Dr Magorian drew out the sack containing the six small coffins. In the drama and kerfuffle of the operating theatre, I had forgotten all about them. ‘You left this, I believe?’ said Dr Magorian after a moment.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Yes.’ I put out my hand to take hold of it, but the doctor snatched it away. He held it, swinging gently, just out of my reach. Had he looked inside? I had tied the top with string, but it might be undone, or severed, quite easily. I squinted up at him, but his face was deep in shadow, and the sun behind him hurt my eyes.

  Later, I often wondered what would have happened if Mrs Magorian had not appeared at that moment. Would her husband have asked me what was inside the sack? No doubt had he seen them, he would have kept them for himself. Perhaps he would have thrown those wicked-looking objects onto the fire, and everything that happened would not have taken place at all. But such questions serve no purpose. The past cannot be altered, no matter how much we might wish for it, and the fact remains that, at that moment, Mrs Magorian came out of the apothecary. She saw her husband, and scampered over to him directly, her small frame childlike.

  ‘So you operated today, my dear?’ Her tiny fingers dusted imaginary motes off the great man’s shoulders. ‘Such an hon
our for the students. And the man, will he live? But of course he will! Another life saved! They must be so grateful.’

  ‘Now, my love,’ Dr Magorian tossed me the sack, so that he might take hold of his wife’s hands. He kissed her fingers and smiled down at her. ‘You oughtn’t to spend so much time here, you know. It’s not good for your health.’

  ‘Oh, but I want to!’ she cried. ‘It’s where you are. And the lady almoners do such good work. Oh, and cook says she has pheasant for dinner. I have asked her to make it with oysters, the way you like it.’

  Dr Magorian stroked her cheek. ‘Well, poppet,’ he said. ‘I will be sure to come home early, then.’

  ‘Eliza is with us now too,’ said Mrs Magorian, simpering up at him. ‘She is quite a tonic on the wards, Dr Bain says.’

  Dr Magorian looked over at his daughter, who had followed her mother and was standing a few feet away. His face was impassive. Eliza did not meet his gaze.

  Chapter Three

  I took Will to Sorley’s. The place was full of medical students, as usual, but we found a booth in the corner and settled ourselves in. I ordered chops and a glass of porter each, for I could see Will needed something to thicken his blood. I was not very hungry, and pushed the food about while Will ate. In the end I called Sorley’s dog over and fed the creature what I had left.

  ‘What is it, Jem?’ said Will.

  ‘Not much,’ I said. The sack containing the coffins lay on the table beside us. The crude, lumpen bulk of the thing unsettled me, so I turned my back on it, stretched out my legs towards the fire and pulled out my pipe. On the other side of the room Dr Bain was talking to a group of students. Every now and then there would be a burst of laughter. I felt sure they were talking about the day’s events, about Dr Graves as much as about the rationale behind Dr Bain’s experiment. But when I thought of Dr Graves’s face as he left the operating theatre I could see no cause for laughter.