by Kim Wilkins
“Surely it’s not because of Doctor Flood?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I shouldn’t imagine so. I’d hate to believe he had so wide an influence.” He looked down at his filthy hands. “I must now crack open the coffin and remove the occupant. There may be a…bad smell. Perhaps you would like to walk a little further out near the cliffs for a half hour or so.”
How awful, Diary. What a dreadful circumstance to find oneself in, so openly confronted by the progress of the flesh. And poor Virgil having to work amongst it after being so ill! I allowed him to help me to my feet and, with the blanket around my shoulders like a shawl, I walked through the cemetery towards the cliff. I found a soft patch of grass beyond the last row of gravestones, and sat there with my back to Virgil. Without the shelter from the tree I felt the breeze coax my skin into gooseflesh. I did not mind, for it seems the sea is such a cleansing force, liberated and ever-moving, unlike the sickly cloying air of decay, which clings and settles.
I lay on my back to look at the stars, my hands over my belly. With a turn of my head to the right I could see the sea, with a turn to the left I could watch Virgil. I switched between them. The sea did the same thing it always did, advanced and retreated restfully. Virgil was involved in quite a different enterprise. He dropped a hook on a rope into the grave, braced it around the headstone and jerked it a few times. Stopped to rest. Did the same again. When the first shadow of the body emerged from the pit I turned away. When I next looked back he was folding the shroud and dropping it into the grave. The body was wrapped in a bag at the foot of the pit. He picked up the edges of the canvas sheets and tipped soil back on to the coffin. I watched him for a few minutes as he fetched his spade and began to work in earnest, refilling the grave.
It was then that something dark moved on the edge of my vision. I leaned my head back and peered into the gloom but saw nothing. I felt strangely disturbed, so I struggled to sit and searched the darkness again. My eyes were drawn to the tree where I had rested earlier. I had the distinct impression that something was slightly out of place, but I did not know why. I watched carefully, but could see nothing that could confirm my suspicion.
Once more I turned to Virgil, and it was only when my eyes left the area that something moved there. I gasped as I saw a figure, dressed in a dark cloak, forsake the shadows in which it was hidden and move into the pale moonlight.
“Virgil!” I called.
My husband turned to me and the figure disappeared back into darkness. I stood with some difficulty and moved towards Virgil. He saw me and dropped his spade, came to meet me between gravestones.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“I saw someone near the tree,” I said, pointing.
“Gette, there is nobody out here but us.” Even as he said this, he began to look around nervously, his dark eyes round with fear. It was then that I remembered the encounter he spoke of the night before he became very ill. How he had seen a cloaked figure who moved unnaturally through the graveyard, which Virgil had believed to be the spectre of one of the bodies he had pulled from its grave.
“Oh!” I said feigning relief. “Virgil, look. It was merely the shadow of that branch. See how it shifts as the wind moves it.” I pointed to a low branch on the tree. It did, indeed, cast a shifting shadow on the ground, but nothing like the figure I had just seen.
Virgil smiled fondly at me. “Gette, I should never have brought you out here. Graveyards at night always excite the darker criminals of the imagination.”
“Perhaps I shall sit close by while you finish your task,” I said. “But not under the tree. I’m afraid I’ve frightened myself too much for that.”
“I am only ten minutes away from finishing. You may stand near me as long as you promise not to peer too curiously at the grey canvas bag.”
“I shall stand with my back to you. Only let me stand with you.”
Indeed it was only a matter of minutes before he was finished. He put the body doubled over in the cart and we made our way back to the abbey. Virgil left the cart where he had found it and, with the body over his shoulder, approached the entrance to Flood’s rooms.
“I shall wait here,” I said.
“No. Come and wait inside. Flood insists that I bathe before I leave. I may be twenty minutes or more.”
“I don’t want to go down those stairs in the dark when I am so large with the child.” I could barely keep my eyes on Virgil’s face. Beneath the canvas, I believed I could make out the corner of an elbow, the curve of a thigh. Curiosity kept tempting my gaze to slip.
“Then sit upon the top stair. I shall hear you if you call me.”
Virgil descended into the darkness with his awful load and I sat on the top step, from the waist up above the ground, from the waist down below. Not that I have any waist to speak of at the moment really. Now that the task was over, now that Virgil had returned successfully to work, I allowed myself to feel a little more positive. Only the thought of the figure I had seen near the tree troubled me, and still does. Was it a man? If so, where had it disappeared to when I had called out to Virgil? Was it a ghost? If so, could it cause any harm to my husband other than frightening him back into a long illness?
But I must remember that it was dark, that I had been dozing on and off, that the location and the task we were about might have suggested such an imagined spectre to me. I simply should not believe otherwise.
One more thing happened last night on our way home, Virgil clean and in freshly laundered clothes (Flood, apparently, is quite obsessive about cleanliness). We walked up the path to our cottage and Virgil said this to me: “Gette, I want to tell you something, but you must promise me you will not think me raving or sick.”
I was surprised and a little afraid. “I will try to think the best of you always.”
“Because I am perfectly sober – and will continue in that manner – and yet I learned something tonight which seems rather to belong to the twilight world I inhabit when I am ill or dazed.”
“What is it?”
“Doctor Flood is over three hundred years old.”
“That cannot be.”
“And yet it is so.”
I thought about Flood, about the old skin, the unnaturally limber joints. And it did indeed seem possible. “How do you know?”
“He told me.”
“Perhaps he lied.”
“He told me how Cornelius Agrippa himself gave him the ruby ring he wears on his right hand. I said, ‘That is not possible. Agrippa died in fifteen thirty-five.’ He replied, ‘And yet, he and I were born in the same year. Am I not rather more of a magician than he ever was?’”
“Virgil, it’s a lie. No man lives for such a long time.”
“What motive does Flood have to lie to me?”
“His own amusement. Virgil, do not think upon it.”
He fell silent. We were now at the entrance to our cottage. Dawn was scarce an hour away. Already streaks of daylight glimmered near the horizon. Virgil opened the door and I went in ahead of him. We prepared ourselves for bed and soon lay in each other’s arms, our faded drapes drawn against the coming sunlight. I was very nearly asleep when Virgil said, “Do you believe in redemption?”
“I do not know, Virgil.”
“Do you believe that God can forgive me?”
“A God who would not forgive you would not be good company for eternity.”
He turned on his side. “I have tried to believe in nothing, but I find myself always drawn back to the spirit.” He tapped his chest. “I believe it is in here.” He touched my own chest. “And in here.”
When framed in such a way, I believed it too. “Perhaps you are right, Virgil.”
“I hope that my spirit is worth saving,” he said.
“I know it would be. It is a beautiful spirit.”
“But a spirit can be eroded. Perhaps I need divine help.”
“Then call upon a guardian angel before you go to work.”
“
Perhaps I shall,” he said yawning, settling once again beneath the covers. “Disbelief is a young man’s toy, whose power cannot last long when love and desire form his mind.”
“Sleep well, Virgil,” I said. And, for the first time in over a year, I prayed. It suddenly seemed like the right thing to do –
Virgil just returned and I can hear him now, whistling a melancholy tune in the front garden. All smiles now, Diary. I can’t let him see me worrying. It seems that Flood requires him to work again tonight, and the next night, and the next, and so forth. He has been without specimens for too long. I shall be surprised to find there are still bodies enough left in Solgreve cemetery, for all that it is the most enormous cemetery I have ever seen. I care not. We shall have money for the child, that is all it signifies.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Sunday, 13th July 1794
Another long silence from me, not that anyone other than myself is taking note. This time I have a joyous excuse – yes, my little boy Henri, now just over a week old and my one, true blessing in this awful life.
I had heard such horrid tales about Childbirth, but Henri, perhaps sensing I was not equipped to deal with such trauma, appeared in an easy and straightforward manner only two hours after my first birth pang. Though the midwife did not greatly approve, Virgil was with me to welcome his son into this world, and feels such a connection with the tiny thing that I could almost grow jealous, were I not so tired all the time.
No, it was rather the emotional pain than the physical pain for which I was unprepared. I could not have imagined the sea of feeling into which I have been plunged, where just the clutch of his little hand is enough to make me sob, just the texture of his milky skin causes a great weight of Fear to press upon my chest. I give him up to Virgil often, for I feel I have been flayed, and all my most delicate tissue is exposed to the stings and barbs of the world. Handing Henri over to my husband allows me to put my skin back on for a few moments, though my empty arms crave him while he is apart from me.
In fact, I sometimes feel a strange resentment towards the little creature, simply because I now have so much to lose. I know this must all sound as though I find him unpleasant, and not at all a joy. But this truth is born of love, and it is the truth.
I named him after my father. Perhaps that was a strange thing to do. I still have not told Virgil about my parents’ death, and the greater the distance of time between the event and the present, the greater my reluctance to tell him. Now I risk angering Virgil for keeping it a secret so long, or causing him to feel that I have no faith in his fortitude (I do not, I confess, have any such faith). So this is how I have dealt with it. And had it been a little girl, she would have been called Anne after my mother. Their names are all I have left of my parents now.
But of course, it was not a girl, and I knew it would not be, for Flood predicted it. Flood, who I am to thank for returning us to a decent kind of life, for now we have food in our bellies, and coal and real wax candles and wine. I have bought a new dress – nothing extravagant, you understand – because my body has changed so much in the past months. I know some women try their old clothes after having a child and find them too small. Mine are rather all too large. Because of my huge belly it was hard to see how thin I had grown, but now it is quite evident that I am gaunt and bony. I shall endeavour to fatten up, though it is too late for poor Henri – my breast milk simply does not flow sufficiently to keep him fed. We must buy goat’s milk from the village every morning instead.
I have not seen Virgil touch his laudanum for over a month, though he protested loudly when I offered to dispose of it. “Who knows when we may need it,” he argued, “for it has medicinal properties.” I suppose I must trust him. I have, however, memorised to which particular point of the bottle the laudanum is filled. I check daily, and it has not changed. For that, I am grateful. I am sure that as soon as Henri is a little older, we shall be able to leave Solgreve behind and return to a good – though still simple – life elsewhere. I shall not allow my son to have a grave-robber for a father.
Friday, 1st August 1794
Today Henri is four weeks old. He is sleeping at the moment, in an old cradle which Virgil brought back from the village and fixed and painted. Virgil sits beside him, gazing upon him as lovingly as any angel ever gazed upon a poor sinner here on earth. I often see him in such a posture, and it warms ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****
***** **wish we could afford a proper physician. But Mr Edghill, the surgeon, will have to do for now. He says that Henri is not robust as a child his age should be, but attributes that solely to my not eating enough during pregnancy. It merely means that he may be a little prone to illnesses until he is more grown, but Mr Edghill assured me it would have no lasting ill-effects. He is such a dear thing, my Henri, with his tiny fingers and his perfect nose. I know it is far too early to tell, but I think he will resemble my family rather than Virgil’s.
Virgil has worked every night this week. He says that Flood talks about coming very close to a kind of breakthrough, and his need for specimens is overwhelming. I asked Virgil where Flood stores all these bodies.
“What do you mean, Gette?”
“He has only limited space in his chambers.”
“He disposes of them in the poor’s hole. Or rather, he pays someone to do so.”
I suddenly had an idea. “Could you not do that job? Surely it would be less disturbing.”
“Oh, far more disturbing, Gette.”
“For what reason?”
“Sometimes they are…unrecognisable when he has finished experimenting with them.”
“And so who fulfils that task?”
“I believe it is the Reverend.”
The Reverend! What kind of a man of the cloth would perform such a task? The sooner we are out of this village, the better. Henri began grizzling at this point and so I had no opportunity to ask further questions. Indeed, having to fulfil the role of a mother – softness and sweet love – means I necessarily cannot worry myself with Virgil’s affairs. My son deserves for me to ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****
******* was sitting in his customary position beside Henri’s cradle, but I could not help noticing that he seemed rather less contented than he usually is about such an occupation. Virgil is so transparent to me, and always has been. Perhaps this is why I fell in love with him. He has scarcely entertained a thought than it immediately appears on his countenance. And this morning, the way he gazed upon Henri was too melancholy, as though the love he felt were causing him despair rather than joy.
I put down my darning and went to Virgil’s side, rested my hand on his shoulder. “Are you troubled, my love?” I asked.
“No,” he answered quickly, forcing a smile.
I knew he was in turmoil, and the fact that he lied about it immediately alerted me to its cause. This, Diary, was guilt. I had not checked the level of the laudanum in weeks, for it had not moved and Virgil seemed so very capable and mature. As soon as I could do so without arousing suspicion, I went to the bedroom. On Virgil’s side of the bed, tucked away, almost behind a small table, I found his Decanter. It was full to the brim, which meant that he had drunk the remains and refilled it – I could never even guess how many times. I could not believe that I hadn’t noticed. I have been tired. I have been involved in being a mother which means I am sometimes awake half the night and asleep at odd hours during the day. He had taken advantage of my inattention to renew his habit.
No, I should not say “taken advantage” for it implies that Virgil deliberately sets out to cause me pain. He does not. He simply can do no better for he is weak: weaker than I, because I am a mother and cannot afford the luxury of weakness. It seems that much is made of the idea that men are stronger than women. Perhaps this may be so if only physical ability is considered, but beyond that there is little evidence to support
the conclusion.
Thursday, 4th September 1794
An unexpected letter arrived this morning. Virgil took delivery of it at the front door. I heard him call out, “Gette, that cur Edward Snowe has written!” I was feeding Henri at the time so I did not spend a second thought upon it, until a few moments later when Virgil entered the bedroom and held the letter out to me, unopened.
“Yes, Virgil, I heard you. Edward has written.”
Virgil’s hand shook, a tiny movement. “It is addressed only to you.”
I reached for the letter, apprehensive. What could Edward possibly want to say only to me? Now Virgil watched me closely. I thought about how Edward had kissed me, and how I had been so vain as to allow him express his desire. Guilt rolled into my stomach. For if Edward made mention of those things, how was I to keep it from Virgil? If I hid the letter, he would be suspicious and mistrustful. Yet if I showed him the letter he would know.
Virgil took Henri from me, and I quickly opened and scanned the letter.
Bootham, 3rd September
Dear Georgette,
I have now set up practice in York and I am living here permanently. I know that Virgil will not want to see me again, but I wrote this short note to inform you of my new address, and to offer you my services if ever you need them. I should be delighted to see you again, and if matters become unbearable for you up in Solgreve, you are most welcome to contact me.
Your friend, EDWARD SNOWE
“He has moved to York,” I said, dropping the letter on the bed with feigned carelessness, yet hoping that Virgil would not pick it up. Of course, he did pick it up.
“May I read it?”
“Certainly.”
He did so, then returned his attention to me. “What does he mean ‘if matters become unbearable?’”
