Beloved Poison Read online

  The object I drew out was dusty and mildewed, and blotched with dark rust-coloured stains. It smelled of time and decay, sour, like old books and parchments. The light from the chapel’s stained glass window blushed red upon it, and upon my hands, as if the thing itself radiated a bloody glow.

  ‘What is it?’ Will’s voice was a whisper, though he could see as well as I what it was that we had found. No more than six inches long and three inches wide, it was a coffin, small and dirty, the signs of the knife that had created it visible in crude hack-marks at its edges. I could feel something moving within, and it was all I could do not to drop the thing onto the floor in horror. What did it signify? Were there more of them hidden in that dark, forgotten space? I stooped down, and slid my hand back into the opening.

  Chapter Two

  The herb drying room was a small, woody attic in the roof space above the infirmary’s abandoned chapel. Warm and fragrant, away from the noise and stink of the wards and more private than the apothecary, it was my favourite place. Its gabled window looked out across the crooked rooftops of the city to the stubby panopticon of Angel Meadow Asylum, the dome of St Paul’s and the possibility of countryside far beyond. Or one could forgo the view and look down into the infirmary’s central courtyard. I looked down now, and saw Dr Magorian and Dr Graves walking towards the operating theatre. The infirmary clock indicated that we had twenty minutes until it was two o’clock.

  I put our finds on the table, lining them up side by side. ‘Six,’ I said. ‘All more or less the same size but crudely manufactured.’ I pointed to the smallest. It had a dusty, cobwebby look. ‘This must have been the first. It’s dirtier than the others, the execution is clumsier, and the whole thing held together more crudely with glue and paper.’

  ‘No doubt the maker got better at it with practice.’

  ‘Or they started to use a template. Perhaps, after the first, it became clear that many more would be required.’ The thought made me uneasy.

  ‘Required for what?’ said Will.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But consider the location: the chapel, the altar – this is a ritual. A ritual that took place time and again.’

  ‘But why six times? What’s the significance of that? Is there something – some event or happening – that occurs six times?’

  ‘Nothing that I can think of. Perhaps there was meant to be more. Perhaps someone, or something, brought the practice to an end.’

  ‘Perhaps the maker died.’

  ‘Or an objective was achieved.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What’s inside?’ said Will.

  ‘We’re due in the operating theatre in ten minutes.’

  ‘So, we have ten minutes to look. What are you afraid of?’

  I shivered. I did not know why – there was no door or window open, no draught blowing over me. And yet somehow his words filled me with disquiet. What are you afraid of? Was I afraid? If I had known what secrets we were to uncover, I would have answered with confidence. Yes, I am afraid. I am afraid for myself, and for all those who are dear to me. I would have acted upon my instincts and told Will Quartermain to leave, to find another commission, another Master, anything just so long as he was away from us, and the evil that lay hidden might remain where it was – lost, forgotten, undisturbed. But I said nothing.

  I used a scalpel to slit the paper that sealed the boxes closed. One by one we took off the lids.

  Inside each was a handful of dried flowers. Beneath them, a bundle of dirty rags swaddled a tiny human form. They had an ancient, frayed look and the faint musty smell of mouldering cloth. I took one out and laid it on the work bench. The bindings were made of coarse cotton, torn into thin strips and wrapped around and around, until the object beneath was no more than a formless kidney-shaped package. They were stained a dark blackish-brown. To me, the colour was unmistakable.

  ‘Blood,’ I said.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’ve worked at St Saviour’s all my life. I know dried blood when I see it.’ I took up the smallest of the bundles. Beneath the binding I could feel something hard, almost bony. I began to unwrap it.

  ‘What is it?’ whispered Will. ‘Is it . . . Is it a baby? A foetus?’

  I knew it wasn’t that. It was too hard to the touch, and I had seen enough dead babies, enough foetuses and aborted matter to know. I pulled the last fold away, and put the thing on the table.

  Before us, lay a tiny doll. At least, ‘doll’ is perhaps the best way to describe it though it was hardly such a thing at all, and one would never show it to a child. It appeared to be made from a small piece of kindling, a shard of wood no more than four inches long and an inch and a half wide. It had been rudely shaped; the corners ground away by rubbing them against a rough surface – stone, perhaps, rather than a file, or a carpenter’s tool, as the abrasions were clumsy and ragged. The ‘face’ was white, as though daubed with flour or chalk, and into this someone had gouged two misshapen eye holes. The dab of black ink that had been applied to each socket had leeched into the surrounding wood, so that the eyes had a grotesque lopsided appearance. Half an inch down from these, a crude gash did office as a mouth, and below this a clumsy nick on either side gave the thing the semblance of a neck. It had neither arms nor legs, but from the ‘neck’ down had been tightly bound, wrapped like a bobbin on a loom, in coarse greyish yarn. The whole impression was of a tiny swaddled baby.

  Will swallowed. ‘What devilry is this?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I peered at the thing through my magnifying glass. Its eyes drew me even as they repelled me. What tool had been used here? A bodkin? Too fine. A knitting needle? Too blunt. The slim end of a finger-saw? The point of a surgical hook? The tip of a short-bladed amputation knife?

  One by one we unwrapped the bundles. Each was the same – the same tattered and bloody bandages, the same repulsive black-eyed doll, the same scattering of desiccated petals.

  ‘These are mostly rose petals,’ said Will, poking the rustling fragments with a pencil. He picked one up. It was as dry as dead skin.

  ‘I think these are petals from a black rose,’ I said. I examined one through the glass. ‘No rose in nature is truly black, but there are some exceptionally dark red varieties, fed with ink, that purport to be so.’

  ‘How contrived,’ said Will. ‘D’you know anything about the language of flowers?’

  But I had already been thinking about that pastime of the vain and idle, and had been trying to recall the meanings attributed to various flowers. Eliza Magorian, the Great Surgeon’s daughter, had been schooled by her mother in these obscure codes of middle-class sentiment, and she had once insisted on giving me a lesson. Drifting through the physic garden, she had made me an eccentric posy of purple-tufted lavender and fuzzy-stemmed borage.

  ‘Lavender for devotion, starflower for courage.’ Then, wrapped in a handkerchief to prevent its poison from touching my skin, she had given me the beautiful white and yellow flower of the bloodroot. ‘Celandine,’ she said. ‘A symbol of the pleasures yet to come.’ She had not smiled as she spoke, but had looked me directly in the eyes, so that I was almost sure that she knew my secret; almost sure that she was speaking about me, about both of us.

  Almost sure.

  Now, I reached across the table for my tweezers. Between their pointed tips I plucked up a small, fist-shaped seed capsule. ‘This is rue.’ I pinched at a withered shred of vegetation. ‘Here are the flowers that go with it.’

  ‘Rue,’ said Will. ‘Even I know what that means.’

  ‘Regret,’ I said, ‘is what it means. What it is is a herb that promotes menstruation and uterine contractions. The oil is a known abortifacient.’

  ‘The taking of a life before it is even born,’ said Will. ‘The law would call it murder.’

  ‘The law is made by men for their own ends,’ I replied. ‘Besides, I doubt these flowers are the fragments of a misplaced prescription.’
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br />   ‘Can you identify any of the others?’

  ‘Hops,’ I said, pointing to a browny-green cone. ‘We use hops to improve the appetite and promote sleep, and as a liver tonic. In the language of flowers it signifies injustice.’

  I picked up a small, hard, triangular nub. ‘Artemisia absinthium,’ I said. ‘Also a medicinal herb. There’s undoubtedly meaning here, but why go to such lengths? Why bother with meaning if the flowers are hidden? What use is a message if it’s so obscure, and so secret? And was there more than one person involved? A language, even if it’s the language of flowers, is meant to be spoken to others.’

  ‘So what’s artemis absinthum?’ said Will.

  ‘Artemisia absinthium,’ I said. ‘Also known as wormwood.’

  For a moment, there was silence between us. I heard Will swallow. Then: ‘“The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood.” Revelations, chapter eight—’

  ‘Quite so,’ I said. ‘But in the language of flowers, wormwood means “bitter sorrow”. My father planted wormwood on my mother’s grave – at first, anyway. But nothing else would grow – it poisons the earth, you know – so I took it out. There are daffodils there now.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Will.

  I could tell that he was puzzled by my matter-of-fact tone. But my mother’s death had changed my life forever in the most unexpected way. I could not resolve my feelings of sorrow and perplexity, and time had done little to appease me. All my life I had hidden these emotions from my father. I could easily hide them from Will as well. ‘It’s also a herb,’ I said. ‘For worms.’

  ‘And the black rose? Is that a remedy?’

  ‘The black rose?’ The withered petals were as droplets of dried blood on the work bench. ‘The black rose means death.’

  The lower operating theatre was as noisy as a cock pit. Wooden balconies, buffed to a dull shine by cuffs and elbows, circled the walls from sawdust to skylight. They were crowded with medical students, row upon row. These galleries were accessed by almost vertical staircases, up which still more of them climbed, and the walls were alive with chattering faces and flapping coat tails. Dr Magorian pointed Will to a chair overlooking the operating table. I sat down beside him. There was no better view in the house.

  Two o’clock was Dr Magorian’s favourite operating time – the light was not too bright and not too dull – though his audience had often been to the alehouse at lunchtime and the place was sometimes less than gentlemanly. Dr Graves and Dr Magorian stood in their shirt sleeves. Against the wall hung their operating coats. I heard Will take a sharp breath at the sight. ‘My God!’ he whispered. I saw his fingers tighten around the neck of the sack he held, and into which we had put the six small coffins. I took it from him and put it beneath my chair. I did not want him to crush them when he fainted.

  ‘Dr Graves has performed ninety-nine operations in that coat,’ I said. ‘Today is the coat’s centenary.’

  ‘An auspicious day,’ said Will, weakly.

  Stiff with old gore, Dr Graves’s coat had a thick, inflexible appearance, and a sinister ruddy-coloured patina like waxed mahogany. Dr Magorian’s was worse, being as dark and lustreless as a black pudding. No one knew how many times he had worn it to amputate. It was said that he had stopped counting when he reached two hundred, but that had been some years ago now.

  At that moment the door swung open and Dr Bain appeared carrying an enamelled bucket. He was dressed in white from head to foot.

  ‘Avast there, Dr Bain!’ cried Dr Graves. He tittered. ‘Have you come to scrub the decks again?’ The students laughed.

  ‘What in heaven’s name are you wearing, man?’ said Dr Magorian.

  ‘It’s his nightshirt,’ said Dr Graves. ‘Are you playing Wee Willie Winkie?’ The students laughed again, louder this time.

  ‘What’s going on?’ whispered Will. He had perked up, now that something dramatic was afoot, and he was watching Dr Graves and Dr Bain with interest.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Where Dr Bain is to be found, Dr Graves is never far behind – usually with a criticism or a caustic remark.’

  ‘I met Dr Graves at the governors’ meeting, when the demolition of the hospital was decided upon. He appeared . . . well,’ Will hesitated. ‘I don’t wish to sound disrespectful—’

  ‘Oh, you don’t need to be diplomatic with me,’ I said. ‘At least, not where Dr Graves is concerned. He appeared resistant to change. Any kind of change. Is that what you wanted to say?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Will. ‘Though his master, Dr Magorian, was equally vocal. Look at his face!’ Dr Graves’s smile was now a grimace, his teeth bared like an angry dog. ‘Is he frightened, d’you think? Frightened of change? Or perhaps frightened of appearing foolish when confronted with circumstances he does not understand—’

  ‘It’s easy to ridicule what appears new and peculiar,’ I said. ‘Easier than learning how to think differently.’

  ‘I agree,’ whispered Will. ‘And yet it’s Dr Bain who intrigues me. He’s standing before a crowd of medical students wearing what does indeed look like a nightshirt. Does he enjoy provoking his colleagues?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ I said. Indeed, now I thought about it, it was hard to think who Dr Bain had not provoked at some time or other. Not ten days earlier he had riled Dr Magorian by daring to disagree about the merits of pus in a wound. (‘There is nothing laudable about pus, sir!’)

  ‘How fascinating,’ said Will. ‘And what d’you think is happening here?’

  ‘I think Dr Bain is out to make Dr Graves appear a fool.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. Though I admit that at first glance, the odds would seem to be the other way around.’

  Before us, Dr Bain was holding up his hands for silence. When he spoke, his voice was low, but clear. ‘I have a suggestion, sir, if you will hear me.’

  Dr Magorian, perhaps able to read the situation better than Dr Graves, waved a gracious hand. ‘Proceed, Dr Bain.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about dirt.’

  ‘Dirt?’ Dr Graves gave a bark of derision, as if the subject were irrelevant. ‘Ha!’

  ‘Dirt, sir,’ said Dr Bain. ‘Put simply, dirt must be avoided. Especially when there’s an open wound.’

  ‘Well, I’d no more rub dirt into an open wound than you,’ said Dr Graves. ‘Nor would any doctor. Not even the young gentlemen of the audience would do that!’ There was a murmur of laughter.

  ‘Neither would I expect them to,’ said Dr Bain. ‘But there is dirt which we can see, and there is dirt which we cannot see. I advise that we must try to see dirt at all times, so that we know where it is. Only then can we avoid it. To wear these dark old coats is to hide it. To wear a white coat is to make it plain to see.’

  ‘But you look like a baker,’ cried Dr Graves. ‘Or a half-dressed lunatic!’

  ‘A baker wears white because he is dressed in old sacks. And it also happens to hide the fact that he is covered in flour. You wear a black frock coat because you are a gentleman, and also to hide the fact that you are covered in—’

  ‘Blood,’ interrupted Dr Graves. ‘Of course!’

  ‘No!’ cried Dr Bain. ‘When it flows through the veins, then it is blood. When it has left the place where it is meant to be, then it is dirt. But we must see the dirt! For this reason I urge you to put away your operating coat, and wear one of these.’

  ‘Excellent logic,’ murmured Will.

  ‘Rational, yes,’ I replied. ‘But I think it would take more than a white smock to show where the dirt lies.’

  But Dr Bain was speaking again. ‘I’m aware, Dr Graves, that you’re about to undertake your one hundredth surgical procedure in that coat. But the greater the degree of cleanliness, the greater likelihood that suppuration of the wound can be avoided.’ At this point Dr Bain produced from his bucket a brass spray pump. I recognised it as the one I used
in the small glasshouse at the physic garden. He turned to Dr Magorian. ‘I have made up a 2 per cent solution of pine tar oil. If you will permit me, sir, I would like to mist the site of the operation during the procedure. Miasma, sir. Need I say more? The miasma too contains dirt, I am sure of it. It must be cleansed from the area!’

  ‘Good.’ I nodded, impressed by his thinking.

  ‘What!’ cried Dr Graves. ‘Are we to be sprayed like aphids on a rose bush?’ He looked about, expecting to be supported by the mirth of the students, but now they were silent. Dr Magorian, the great man, was about to speak.

  ‘Miasma?’ he said, raising a shaggy eyebrow. He sniffed deeply. ‘I must agree that the river is at its worst today.’

  ‘If we can prevent the miasma from entering the wound then the likelihood of suppuration is sure to be reduced still further,’ said Dr Bain.

  ‘We close the doors,’ said Dr Graves witheringly. ‘The miasma is kept out that way.’

  ‘But we always close the doors,’ said Dr Bain. ‘And yet the place still stinks, and the patients still die.’

  ‘Miasma,’ repeated Dr Magorian. He stroked his chin, and waited for the silence to deepen. ‘It is a curse upon us. I am willing to try your ideas, Dr Bain.’

  A student leaped forward to help Dr Magorian out of his famous blood-blackened coat and into the white linen smock. Dr Bain held out the other. ‘Dr Graves?’

  Dr Graves snatched hold of the smock and dashed it to the ground. ‘No!’ he snapped. ‘I am a surgeon, and a gentleman, and I will wear the coat that has served me well for so long.’