A Debutante in Disguise

by Eleanor Webster

  There was no ‘Miss Barton’. There was the child, Lettuce, and the adult, Dr Hatfield, but no ‘Miss Barton’. Of course, she’d pretended. She’d attended the theatre, balls, dances and other outings to appease her mother while in London.

  She’d conversed politely about nothing or, more frequently, allowed her brain to wander while keeping a smile plastered to her face. But all that had been an act, no more real that Garrick’s theatrical performances.

  Casting her gardening tools aside, she went inside. Briefly, she stood in Miss Barton’s immaculate drawing room, staring at its empty shelves and nondescript furnishings. It struck her that this house, this drawing room, was but a stage set. It felt uncomfortable, an alien landscape.

  ‘I can’t stay here.’ Turning on her heel, she ran up the stairs, her dress half-undone before she’d even reached her room. Tearing it off, she threw it on to the bed. Then she pulled on her trousers, shirt and jacket, pushed her spectacles higher on to her nose and grabbed her wig.

  She needed her books. Even if she could no longer practise, she needed to immerse herself in their pages. She needed to feel that pulse of interest, to connect research with experience, present with past.

  For a moment, she stopped, staring at herself in the looking glass. Why had she even bothered with her costume, her disguise? The play was over. Done. The curtain had fallen.

  But people are creatures of habit. She’d never entered the doctor’s house as a female and even now adhered to that self-imposed edict.

  Shrugging, she turned from the glass, hurrying down the stairway and across the small gunnel separating the two homes. She pushed open the back door, stepping down the narrow corridor and into the drawing room, now modified as a study.

  Pausing on the threshold, she inhaled the dusty air, perfumed with old leather, ink and paper. She looked at the tall shelves. They lined all four walls, reaching floor to ceiling. As a child, she’d dreamed of a house with its every wall lined with books.

  She went to them now. She touched each spine, running her fingers across the dry leather and embossed title as though greeting a friend.

  How could years of effort be wiped out by one single person in a single night? Tears stung. She rubbed them away. For some reason, it hurt even more because it was Tony—Lord Anthony. She had experienced feelings for him that no other man had inspired. She’d allowed him liberties—Moreover, an odd, foolish, ludicrous part of her had believed even last night that he would understand—that she could make him understand—

  Damn. Pulling at the powdered wig, she threw it to the floor, kicking it so that it flew across the wood like a moth-eaten rat. Her hopes, her dreams, lay tumbled about her like a jumble of children’s blocks.

  If only she could break something, throw something, kick or stomp like a child might.

  Or if he would listen? If she could explain and prove to him her knowledge. Did he think she came up with this plan on an impulse to trick the British public or earn a few shillings or potatoes? This was the result of long hours of planning and dreaming. It was the result of sacrifice, determination and days of reading, writing, studying and dissecting bodies, the flesh already rotting from the bones.

  This life was her own personal miracle.

  A furious pounding on the outside door interrupted her thoughts. She heard Sarah’s brisk footsteps. She heard the whine of hinges and a murmur of voices. Usually, she would have been at the door, doctor’s bag in hand. But she stilled her movement. This was no longer her life—could not be her life. Even if she were prepared to risk her own disgrace, she could not expose her mother, her brother or Flo to scandal.

  Sarah entered, closing the door behind her.

  ‘Yes?’ Letty asked dully.

  ‘It’s Mr Jamison. His youngest boy has fallen and is lying on the ground. He is screaming and can’t feel his arm.’

  ‘Cedric?’ She remembered the lad swinging on the fence, with his wide smile and freckled face.

  ‘Will you go?’ Sarah asked.

  Letty felt the urge, the energy, the momentum pulse through her limbs. She bent towards her bag, then stopped.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said.

  ‘But you can’t leave the lad.’

  ‘Lord Anthony says he will expose me. I cannot allow that. My brother and Flo would be implicated. There would be scandal. It would kill my mother. You know it.’

  ‘Oh, miss—’

  ‘Tell Arnold to fetch Jeffers.’

  Just then they heard a knock on the study door. By habit, Letty bent to the floor, grabbing the wig and pulling it quickly over her red hair.

  ‘Doctor?’ Mr Jamison entered. Sweat beaded on his forehead, his cheeks were red and his breath laboured. He held his cap between large hands, twisting the cloth.

  ‘Yes?’ Letty said, stepping forward and deepening her voice. ‘I understand Cedric is hurt?’

  ‘Please, sir. I don’t have much money, but we’re got a great apple crop and I’ll give you all I can. But the lad is screaming that much, it’s a wonder you can’t hear him from here. He fell out of the apple tree, just close to your stable.’

  ‘It is his arm?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But he is still conscious?’

  ‘Aye, he is that and screaming to beat the band,’ Mr Jamison said.

  ‘Believe it or not, that is a good sign. I can’t go myself, but I can send for Jeffers,’ she said.

  ‘No! Please, sir. Come yourself. You know Dr Jeffers don’t come out for simple folk.’

  Letty hesitated. She glanced down, unable to look the man in the eye, as she rubbed her damp hands against the cloth of her trousers. The material rustled. ‘Really, I can’t.’

  ‘Is it the money? I can borrow summat from my brother. I hate to see the lad in that much pain. And his mother will be that upset it will turn her milk. I’m sure of it. We were coming into town when the axel broke. While I was fixing it, he went and shimmied up a tree, as lads will.’

  Mr Jamison paused as though out of breath. In the room’s sudden quiet, she thought she heard the child’s scream. ‘I can pay for Dr Jeffers,’ she said.

  ‘But it will take Jeffers an hour at least to get here and his shoulder looks that odd.’

  ‘You said he can’t feel his fingers?’

  ‘That what he said. And he’s screaming that much. I ain’t heard nothing like it.’

  ‘He is close, you say?’ Letty said, glancing about the small study as though expecting to be watched, even in this private place.

  ‘Just down the lane.’

  She paced to the window. If the boy’s fingers were numb, his circulation might be impacted and the limb would die. And if the limb died, so would the boy.

  ‘Very well,’ she said, turning sharply and peering through her lenses at the man’s worried face. Since when had she been paralysed by fear?

  ‘I will come.’

  She would not have her last act as a doctor to be one of cowardice.

  Chapter Ten

  Grabbing the doctor’s bag, she followed Mr Jamison through the front door and past the fresh fragrant growth of the herb garden.

  ‘I don’t hear him.’ Mr Jamison looked at her, his red face suddenly pale. ‘I think the silence is worse than the screams.’

  Together, they hurried down the uneven paving stones, through the gate and past the stable, almost running down the rutted road.

  They came upon the horse first, a large, angular, stalwart beast. Beside the animal, she saw the cart, newly repaired and freshly filled with hay.

  ‘There he be,’ Jamison said.

  The boy lay under the apple tree, a small, crumpled, silent form, one arm out flung and oddly angled.

  ‘Cedric!’ Letty ran to him.

  Kneeling beside him, she checked for his pulse. It was strong, thank God.

 
Her touch revived him and his eyes flickered open, brightly blue in his frighteningly white face. His tears had made long white lines through the grime and still clung, pendulous, to his lashes.

  ‘Hurts,’ he managed to say.

  ‘You had a fall, but we are going to look after you. I am just going to feel your arms and legs for breaks. Let me know if anything really hurts.’

  ‘My shoulder.’

  ‘I know. I want to see if any limbs are broken.’

  Carefully, she ran her fingers down his legs and arms, feeling for abnormal swelling or angles through the roughness of the cloth. But his legs and arms felt sturdy. She could not find any areas of swelling or, thankfully, any bones which had broken through the skin.

  She met the boy’s worried gaze, talking, as she always did, in calm steadying tones. ‘No broken bones. But I think your shoulder is dislocated.’

  ‘Is that bad, sir?’ Mr Jamison asked.

  Cedric said nothing, his eyes wide with fear and pain.

  ‘Painful but fixable. Much better than a break. I will adjust it. Mr Jamison, you will need to help and, Cedric, you will have to be brave.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the boy muttered, nodding his head and then wincing with the motion.

  Inhaling, Letty gave herself a moment to think, to run through the procedure in her mind. She had done it several times at Guy’s, but that was some time ago and she had never manipulated a child’s bones. They were smaller and would require less force.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Ready?’

  Mr Jamison nodded and, taking the boy’s arm, she raised it. The boy groaned. ‘Hold his arm upwards,’ she directed.

  The man did so, his large ham hands shaking.

  ‘Good,’ Letty said. ‘You are doing fine.’

  With care, she took a tie from her bag, winding it about the lad’s torso so that she could better exert pressure on the blade. Then with a swift firm movement, she twisted.

  The boy screamed. It was an awful sound more like a wounded animal than human. For a moment, she feared the movement had not worked. Then the blade fit into place. Cedric’s body relaxed and the awful high-pitched scream lessened into muffled sobs while tears still ran from his eyes.

  ‘You were so brave. That was the worst of it, I promise,’ she said, nodding to Mr Jamison to lower the arm.

  ‘Dr Hatfield!’

  The two words blasted at her. The voice so startled her that Letty lost her balance, sitting inelegantly on her bottom.

  ‘Lord Anthony,’ she gasped.

  He sat mounted on a black beast of a horse directly behind her, more like a rider of the apocalypse than human form.

  ‘What do you think you are doing?’ He did not shout, but the fury lacing his tone made it worse than a thousand bellows.

  ‘I—I am helping—’

  ‘Torturing, more like. I heard his scream.’

  She could feel his anger. It emanated from him with a physical force. Standing awkwardly, Letty tried to collect her scattered wits. She pulled herself to her full height, squaring her shoulders and jutting out her jaw. ‘And he is not screaming now, if you noticed.’

  ‘He is helping my lad, sir—’ Mr Jamison started. ‘I mean, my lord.’

  ‘I did not ask you.’ Lord Anthony swung down from his mount, his movements awkward.

  ‘There is no cause to be rude to Mr Jamison,’ Letty said. ‘Besides, we should go—go elsewhere for this discussion.’

  ‘You are lecturing me on manners?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘I think you might have concerns of greater import than whether I am sufficiently respectful, given your situation.’

  ‘That’s just it. Can we go inside to talk?’

  ‘So now you ask for my discretion?’ he mocked. ‘If you are so proud of yourself, why wouldn’t you want all and sundry to know? And why the hell did you not follow my direction? I told you to stop this nonsense. Did you not hear me earlier? Did I not make myself clear?’

  ‘You were quite clear.’

  ‘Then why are you disobeying my orders?’

  ‘Because I am not your servant. I do not answer to you,’ she snapped.

  ‘You will answer to me. I will not have you flout the law of this land or make a mockery of its rules.’

  ‘I took an oath.’

  ‘A person that does not exist took an oath—’

  ‘Tony—’ She looked again towards the farmer.

  ‘I told you I could not go along with this masquerade. I warned you. Not if you continued to practise and put others at risk. You should never have started this nonsense in the first place.’

  ‘And I would not have done if I did not live in a backward society that fails to recognise my abilities because I am female. And, by the way, I have never put anyone at risk and I exist. A name or the lack of a name does not equate to non-existence.’

  ‘I am not interested in a philosophic discussion.’

  ‘Then are you interested in fact? I helped this boy. I relieved his pain. It does not matter who I am. What matters is my skill and my knowledge.’

  ‘You are a fraud.’

  The words hung in the silence. Anger and fury fired through her.

  ‘I—am—no—fraud!’ She ground the words out, pushing each syllable through clenched teeth. ‘Come! Come here if you are so certain I am a fraud!’

  The fury energised her. She could feel it in the wild thump of her heart, her quickened breath and the heat in her cheeks. She pushed past him, brushing against the black magnificence of his horse, beyond the bewildered Mr Jamison, the waiting cart and grazing cart horse.

  She went through her gate where Arnold stood, his kindly face lined with worry.

  ‘Look after His Lordship’s horse,’ she directed.

  Then she strode up the uneven path and through the long grasses which brushed against her trousers, filling the air with fragrance. She opened the doctor’s back door with such force that it banged against the wall.

  Still without pause, she went into the dark coolness of the corridor and through to the front room. She did not stop until she was again surrounded by her books and papers and filled with that swift surge of familiarity and home coming.

  ‘Here!’ she said. ‘Look here! And tell me if I am a fraud.’

  * * *

  Tony stared. Huge wooden bookshelves covered every wall from floor boards to ceiling. Books lined the shelves, huge tomes and smaller volumes, old and new. Their embossed titles glinted. A desk stood in the centre of the room, also piled high with books, journals and papers. Beside the desk, more volumes were stacked in huge toppling towers.

  He stepped forward. He touched the shelves, running his fingers across the dry leather of the spines. The books were meticulously arranged in alphabetical order. There were volumes from Greek and Roman times, obscure treaties and familiar texts from Rogerius Salernitanus, and Andreas Vesalius. There were newer works, Treling and Pott, as well as huge bound copies of medical journals.

  Admiration flickered, but he tamped it down. ‘So, you have an extensive library. That doesn’t mean you can set yourself up as a doctor. Reading about—about an operation does not mean you can perform it.’

  ‘I recognise that,’ she said, going to the desk and yanking open the drawer with such angry energy he feared it would spill its contents on to the floor.

  ‘This display of emotion serves no purpose. You could have retired “Dr Hatfield” with dignity if you had followed my direction. Now it is entirely likely that Jamison will tell everyone.’

  She paused, standing straight and placing her hands at her waist. ‘Do you practise being pompous or does it come naturally? Anyway, if Mr Jamison does speak, whose fault is that?’

  ‘Yours because you chose to ignore me. Yours because you chose to start this enterprise and thought b
ooks, interest and the desire to help could take the place of training and knowledge.’

  But he recognised his own culpability, at least in speaking so openly in front of Jamison. He’d allowed fury and emotion to overwhelm good sense and restraint.

  The boy’s scream had done it—those cries had catapulted him down a rabbit hole of memory.

  It hadn’t given him that awful disengaged feeling—that peculiar numbness—he’d experienced previously. He hadn’t seen mud or bodies. Instead, he’d remembered—or thought he remembered—although, truthfully, he still was unsure if it was a real memory or nightmare.

  As he’d exited the inn’s courtyard, he heard Cedric’s scream. He remembered the boy’s cry. He remembered spurring his horse forward. He remembered a flash of fear, frustration and a driving, overwhelming need to do something.

  Then he’d seen Letty bending over the boy. He’d seen the movement of her arm or elbow pulling upwards.

  And in that moment, images had flashed before his mind’s eye, snippets and snatches, disconnected and disjointed. There’d been a lad on the battlefield. He remembered him. He was sure he remembered him. He could picture his face. The lad had looked too young to be a soldier with his blond hair and stubbly chin. He could not yet grow a full beard.

  He’d lain on the ground with wide blue eyes and a bayonet sticking out from his gut.

  Tony remembered crawling over to the boy. George was dead. The mud from the heavy rains on the day previous made movement slow as his knees and hands sank foot deep into the wet dirt. He could feel the sun, but could not see it. Everything was shrouded with swirls of mist and the air tasted of gunpowder.

  At first, he could not see the boy, but could only hear his screams. Then he saw the lad’s crumpled form with the bayonet projecting from his intestines.

  The boy had stopped screaming at his approach and almost smiled. ‘Help. Please, sir, please. Take it out! Take it out!’

  So Tony had.

  ‘Cedric was in pain. What would you have me do?’ Letty asked, her firm strong tones interrupted his reverie.