The Blood: What secrets lie aboard? (Jem Flockhart Book 3) Read online

  But John Aberlady had never wanted to run an institution like St Saviour’s; indeed, he had laughed at me for working amongst what he considered to be the most tedious and pedestrian of cases.

  ‘Syphilis, childbirth, constipation, tumours, kidney stones? Oh no, Jem,’ he used to say. ‘That’s not for me. I’ll take what limited resources the Blood has to offer over your handsome salary and luxurious accommodation any day of the week. D’you know what I came across yesterday? D’you know what a fellow brought me? He’d just arrived on a clipper from West Africa and after two days in the most excruciating pain pulled this out of the privy.’ He’d held up a jar of spirits containing a gigantic worm – pale and segmented, and as thin as a shoe lace. ‘It’s six yards long,’ he’d said. ‘Straight out of the fellow’s guts. What do you make of that? Have you ever seen anything like it?’

  I’d had to admit that indeed I had not – and that I hoped never to again.

  Dr Sackville led us forward, beneath dark beams of seasoned oak burnished with the patina of a half-century of pipe smoke, cooking fumes, and gunpowder, the touch of hands and the bump of oily heads.

  ‘The operating theatre is down there,’ he said. He gestured to the back of the ship, where a door stood open on a dark room illuminated by a glazed hole cut in the deck above. I saw an operating table of pale scrubbed deal, the dark familiar shape of the blood box at its foot, but the rest of the room was in shadow.

  ‘It was once the ward room, for the officers, of course,’ said Dr Sackville. ‘The cabins for the officers were on either side here, and are now occupied by our physicians and surgeons.’

  ‘They stay on board?’ said Will, clearly appalled that anyone would choose to reside in such a place.

  ‘Only occasionally. But they each have a space down here in which to work – to write, to keep their books and papers. To sleep in, if needs be.’

  ‘Including Aberlady?’

  ‘Mr Aberlady has his apothecary in the poop cabin, as you saw. His living quarters are below that, and in addition to that he kept lodgings ashore, though he never seemed to go there. As he is – or should be – here all the time, we could not expect him to be accommodated in what is little more than a hutch. But for those who are not here all the time—’

  ‘Dr Cole? Dr Antrobus?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘And what about Dr Rennie? Jem – Mr Flockhart – said he lived on board.’

  ‘Dr Rennie is a different matter,’ said Dr Sackville. ‘Dr Rennie lives down below.’

  ‘Below what?’

  ‘Below everything, sir. This is the top ward, below us are the middle and lower wards, and below those is where Dr Rennie makes his home.’

  To our right, where Dr Sackville had pointed, another set of steep stairs led down to the middle and lower wards. A dim flickering light was visible below, and the sounds of sickness drifted up to us. That there might be somewhere lower still in which a man lived clearly horrified Will.

  ‘Such a place would be below the waterline, would it not?’ he whispered. ‘And therefore quite blind?’

  ‘Indeed,’ replied Dr Sackville.

  We passed between the beds, the men hiding their dice and cards, pretending to be asleep. They had done much the same at St Saviour’s, though that place had been better lit, and such misdemeanours far easier to see and prevent. I saw a rat scamper across a man’s bedding – Will saw it too and he blanched. Dr Sackville was talking to me about his cases – a docker who’d had his leg amputated after an accident at the warehouses on Pennington Street, two sailors who had arrived suffering from yellow fever, a man who had started his journey in Tobago, and whose condition defied diagnosis.

  ‘It looks like yaws, but the sores are rather different, the suppuration almost gangrenous. He is in the lower deck. Will you take a look?’

  I glanced at Will. Even in the dim light I could see that he was looking queasy. ‘I think we should be on our way, sir,’ I said.

  Dr Sackville smirked. ‘Not what you’re used to, eh? I suppose you’re all cough drops and lavender water these days.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose I am.’

  ‘A prettier view of the world than the one we have here, sir. Perhaps you should be grateful, and leave places like this to those who have the stomach for them.’

  Look out at the city on a clear day. The number of spires that prick the heavens would make even an infidel think that London is a city of God. And yet there are more brothels here than any other type of business, some of them cheek by jowl with the grandest addresses in the land. These are fine places, where rich and powerful gentlemen wait in warm drawing rooms, their hats and coats kept safe by liveried footmen, and where whatever might be needed by way of an aphrodisiac – oysters, champagne, truffles – is brought forth on silver plates by girls, bare breasted and as beautiful as Salomé herself. There are no signs of the pox here – those girls are kept hidden until their symptoms pass. Or they are sent away to make a living in less select houses, ones that lie further east and closer to the river, houses where the lamps stink of whale grease, and the air inside is hot and damp with panted breath and hired sighs. In these places the light is kept dim – to save on oil, of course, but so that the lank hair of the girls might be mistaken for a healthful sheen, and the bruises and sores beneath their face paint cannot be seen. The smell here is as rich and briny as the Thames, for there is no musk and rose water to smother it.

  Still closer to the water, the girls work alone. Outside, braced against a wall, torn stockings slipping down over thighs mottled with smoke smuts and bruises. I meet Mary down there, on the waterfront. I watch what she does, how she goes with others because of their money and their promises. But they don’t mean it. They never will.

  I am different, though.

  Chapter Two

  I steered Will westwards, towards Deadman’s Basin. The buildings that faced the water reared over us, the sun vanishing behind a bank of brownish cloud and turning the light as muddy as a glass of Thames water. The tide was on the turn, and we could hear the suck and slap as it left the foreshore. Mud larks would be out before long – already I could see a group of them gathered at the riverside, their clothes and limbs as brown as the sludge they raked through.

  ‘Is it possible that there’s a perfectly innocent explanation for Aberlady’s absence?’ said Will. ‘Perhaps he’s simply been called away to his family—’

  ‘He has no family.’

  ‘Perhaps he couldn’t bear it on board any longer. I’d not blame anyone for that. Could he have lost interest in the work altogether? Certainly his apothecary looked neglected. What are his interests? Does he have a physic garden?’

  ‘No,’ I said. In fact, Aberlady had always shown less interest in medicinal plants than I. There were a number of occasions when he had come up to the physic garden at St Saviour’s – he had admired it, especially the poison beds – though how I had managed to grow so much in the dirty London climate was of no interest to him. ‘Aberlady is more interested in the exotic,’ I said. ‘Venoms, toxic parasites, tropical diseases. He’s well-known among the sailors and dock workers – he’s treated many of them himself on board the Blood, or at the Seaman’s Dispensary. They bring him things – for a fee, of course.’

  ‘What things?’ said Will.

  ‘For his “collection”. Insects and parasites, mostly. Sometimes bottled, sometimes live. Snakes and spiders too, as well as frogs and beetles.’

  Aberlady had brought a number of his creatures up to St Saviour’s – a small, brown spider, all the way from Australia, a box of tiny harlequin-coloured Amazonian frogs or a pair of gleaming, jet-black scorpions from Chile. He had brought snakes too – including the two he still possessed, and which were now housed in his room on board the Blood. Although we often tried poisons on ourselves, the venom of spiders and snakes was a different matter, and we were cautious, as well as respectful, of the power our fellow creatures exerted over life and death. The
re was every chance that a herb might cure in small quantities and kill in large ones, but the potential for physic offered by venom was far more subtle and elusive. Dogs, of course, provided the best subjects for our inquiries. I had never liked the practice, but how else might we understand the workings of the poisons we tested? And so I had joined John Aberlady in his experiments, and I had watched dogs die from the bites of snakes, spiders and scorpions. Whether they lived or not, we had observed the dogs as they suffered. Afterwards we dissected them, and noted the state of their internal organs.

  ‘Aberlady is a man of infinite curiosity,’ I said now. ‘He is drawn to the macabre, and the exotic. He sees physic, in its current form, as medieval in its limitations and vision. The standard practices of medical men – bleeding, sedating and purging – he sees as worthless. There are a growing number, myself included, who agree with him. As for traditional physic, “nothing but leaves, leeches and toadstools, Jem,” he used to say. “Has nothing changed since Culpeper?”’

  ‘And was he right?’

  I shrugged. ‘Most physic these days relies on mercury and opium and ignores Culpeper altogether. Hardly an improvement—’

  ‘What about cleanliness?’ muttered Will, looking about him at the dark sooty walls and sticky, refuse-strewn pavement. ‘All this filth can’t possibly be good for us.’ He wiped his hands on his handkerchief again. ‘So what does Aberlady suggest? Where does he hope to make his contribution?’

  ‘Where? Throughout the world!’

  ‘A man of modest ambitions, clearly.’

  ‘He said that trade across the globe, the opening up of the colonies, had given us access to new poisons, new parasites and diseases – but perhaps new cures too. The people of India, Australia, South America have the same right to life and health as anyone—’

  ‘Admirable sentiments,’ said Will.

  ‘—and as the most progressive, rational and scientific nation in the world it behoves us to help them.’

  ‘And yet he chose not to work amongst the people whose lives and health you say meant so much to him, but elected to remain in London.’

  ‘All the world passes through London.’

  ‘And if he should make any discoveries, then who would benefit?’

  ‘Everyone,’ I said. ‘From London it would reach the world in no time.’

  ‘Eventually, perhaps,’ Will replied. ‘But surely the first person to benefit would be John Aberlady, and the whole world would also know about that.’

  There was something else, too, something I had suspected about John Aberlady for a long time, and which I feared might now be affecting his mind and behaviour. I had never been able to prove it, not for sure, for men with Aberlady’s penchant were notoriously devious individuals. And yet I was certain, almost certain, that he was an opium eater. I had not seen him for a while. He had either got the better of his addiction, or it had got the better of him. Reading his letter, and hearing of his disappearance, I was inclined to fear the worst. But I said nothing of this, and Will was still talking.

  ‘Men change, Jem. Time and experience make all of us different to what we were, or to what we once hoped to be. What’s he been doing these last few years? Where has it led him?’

  ‘I don’t know—’

  ‘Perhaps you don’t know what he’s been doing because you don’t know him. Not any more.’

  ‘But I do know him. He is kind, generous, hard working. His work matters more to him than anything in the world. Of course I know him—’

  ‘Do you?’ He didn’t look at me as he spoke. ‘We all have our secrets, Jem. You of all people know that.’

  We turned up a narrow passage, Tulip’s Entry, which lay between two tall buildings, opposite a flight of slippery stairs leading down to the water’s edge. Underfoot the crooked flagstones were green with age and damp, the sky overhead visible between black sooty walls in a ribbon of dirty grey. Despite its decayed appearance it was clear that the passage was in constant use as a thoroughfare, for I could see a dark smear on the wall from the rub of greasy shoulders. A criss-cross of black scratches on the brickwork at the corner told where men had stood out of the wind to strike a match for their pipes. Tulip’s Basin was on the left. A narrow canal, crossed by a wooden bridge and filled with sluggish water, oozed from the Basin into the Thames.

  I held out my arms. ‘Your commission, Will. Drink it in.’

  The basin itself was some forty feet long and sixty feet wide, lined with dark stones and filled to the brim with black water. Low buildings of crumbling stone and ancient wood clustered at the sides like mushrooms. Parts of the place reminded me of St Saviour’s Infirmary – the stone was the same, as was the sodden, decayed look of the place – and I found the comparison unsettling. Had we really treated the sick in buildings not much more salubrious than these? At the time, I had been used to it. Now, the similarity appalled me. Most of the buildings here, however, were in far worse condition. A group of low sheds, now green with moss and slime, had been built out onto the water. The lock gates that led out into the canal were huge and black, colonised by weeds and patched with moist, brightly coloured excrescences. At the head of the basin a conduit dribbled a thin stream of dark liquid into the pool. Behind it, crouched before the warehouse that towered at its back, an ancient boarded-up villa peered sightlessly – I had no idea what purpose it had once served, though it was far older than the surrounding buildings.

  Little went to waste in London, and if there had ever been anything of value dumped in Tulip’s Basin it would have been culled from those dirty waters long ago. What remained was a stinking mush of effluent, rubble and dead things – from where we stood I could see the matted flanks of a dog and the pale, curved ribs of another, smaller animal. The stink of the place was abominable. I turned up my collar, and thrust my hands into my pockets as a thin rain began to fall.

  Will stared out, his expression stony. The sounds from the main thoroughfare, and from the river, were muted, the air curiously still and quiet for all that we were standing in the very heart of the city’s most unquiet streets.

  ‘How long since the place was used? Ten, twelve years?’

  ‘At least.’

  ‘Dear God, Jem,’ he said, suddenly vehement, ‘is there a fouler and more pestilent place in all of London? Where did the fellow die?’

  ‘Over there.’ I pointed to a sagging hovel, little more than a pile of stones, with a crooked black chimney. The door was missing, and inside we could see only fallen masonry. ‘The boatyard was owned by his father, and grandfather. I came with a prescription once. It looked little different here even when Dick Tulip was alive.’

  ‘Why didn’t they live in that old villa?’

  ‘Dick owned the cottages and the yard. I don’t know who owned the villa. Didn’t your master tell you?’

  Will pulled out a sheaf of paper from this pocket and flicked through it. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The place has been tied up in chancery for years as Dick Tulip died intestate. The villa was sold to the East India Company by—’ he squinted at the paper. ‘Callard estates. Plantation owners.’ He shrugged, and stuffed the papers back out of sight. ‘It seems nothing could happen until Tulip’s property had passed through the courts. Now that’s happened the Company have possession of the whole basin. They’re keen for a new warehouse as soon as possible, and I am the lucky man who has the job of surveying the area and demolishing the whole lot. I have designed a warehouse already. It can easily be modified to fit what space we have.’

  He sighed as he opened his bag and pulled out his notebook and pencil. ‘I wish I didn’t always get the demolition jobs,’ he said. ‘They are unutterably nasty – there’s always something horrible underground. You recall my work at St Saviour’s?’

  I did. Will had been tasked with emptying the infirmary’s ancient and overflowing graveyard – the memory of it still haunted us both.

  ‘Still,’ he said. ‘Now that we’re here I might as well take a proper look at th
e place.’

  I stood against the wall and took out my pipe while Will skirted the edge of the basin. I watched him peering up at the buildings and scribbling down his observations. He rummaged for his theodolite, set it down on a rotten post embedded into the stones at the waterside, and squinted into it. He dug at the stonework of Dick’s hovel with his knife.

  ‘I’m surprised it’s still standing,’ he said. His voice echoed strangely, as if he were standing at the bottom of a well. ‘This stonework is as soft as pastry.’

  ‘What about that dribble of water?’ I said, pointing to the trickling pipe. ‘It looks persistent.’

  ‘It can easily be culverted.’ He sat on a capstan beneath one of the old sheds and began to sketch.

  The sun came out, shining a brief beam of gold against the dark, forgotten walls. The day was cloudy. Rain threatened, and the light had taken on a peculiar colour, tarnished and brassy as it glanced off the water. Without the sun it had looked almost solid, like a slab of wet tar, but its oily surface was now iridescent with colour, the light illuminating whatever debris lay beneath.

  Had the sun not come out I would not have noticed anything. Weeks might have passed, the waters lying undisturbed until the building work proper was scheduled to start. But the sun did come out. And as I stood there with my gaze fixed upon those dark and murky waters I saw something that turned my skin cold.

  ‘How deep is this basin?’ My voice was sharp, urgent.

  Will looked up. ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Shall we find out?’ I sprang over to the lock gates. A windlass, coated with thick black grease, glinted with the first drops of rain. I tugged at the handle. I had not expected it to move, and yet move it did, with a deep groan, and the scream of ancient gears.

  I could open the gates no more than a few inches. The water sprayed out in a filthy arc, splattering against the muddy floor of the canal and racing down towards the Thames.