Beloved Poison Read online

  ‘So, your father was one of Dr Magorian’s patients?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. My father was a stonemason. There was an accident, his leg was crushed and he was taken to St Saviour’s. Until today I had no idea what he had actually endured on the operating table.’ Will closed his eyes. ‘Perhaps the ordeal turned his mind – I would not be surprised – but his wound did not heal and he said he’d sooner die at home than in a stinking hospital bed. Apparently they were quite happy to let him go.’

  ‘The governors don’t like the patients to expire on the wards,’ I said. ‘It affects the subscriptions.’

  ‘Yes, well, he died a week later.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I had seen death by septicaemia and gangrene a hundred times and it was both brutal and wretched.

  ‘Thank you. I was just a boy, of course, but I remember it clearly. How could I forget? Afterwards we went to stay with my mother’s family in the West Country, though I always knew I’d come back to London. I’m not sure why – the place is far less pleasant than I remember it – colder, dirtier. More cruel.’ There was a moment’s silence. I found I could not disagree. Then, ‘And what about your father? What ails him?’

  ‘Mine?’ I blew out a thin plume of blue smoke, watching as it curled and eddied into a hazy question mark. ‘I don’t know. He’s been sleeping badly these last weeks but won’t say why.’

  ‘Have you asked?’

  ‘Yes, but he won’t tell me. Something is wrong, though.’ I leaned forward. I knew Will would not have any answers for me, but was simply sharing my troubles – ‘He goes out,’ I said. ‘At night. Two nights ago I followed him.’

  ‘Where to?’

  The story, as I told it then to Will, did not show me in the most positive light. Spying on my own father? I had told myself that I was staying up that night so that I might write up the prescription notes – a job I always found tiresome. But I knew I was waiting for him. I was sitting in the old wing-backed chair, Culpeper’s Herbal open on my lap, when I heard the scuttling of mice. Something must have made them run, and I was sitting too still and silent to disturb them. From behind me came the faint creak of the wooden stair. The embers in the grate flared briefly and a shadow leaped against the wall, a giant spindly-legged golem, poised as if to spring. I held my breath. The latch made a faint ‘clack’ in the darkness as the door opened . . . then closed.

  Peeping out of the window, I saw my father. He was walking towards a cloaked figure waiting beneath the archway that led through to the infirmary’s main gates. The two of them disappeared without even a word or a nod of greeting. I opened the door a little and sniffed the night air. Beneath the familiar reek of the tannery and the hospital latrines, I could distinguish the faint aroma of lemon geranium. Dr Hawkins, superintendent physician at Angel Meadow Asylum often smelled of lemon geranium. He said it reminded him of the warmth and brightness of India – a necessary antidote to the stinking squalor of the infirmary – though I found it hard to believe that the sun-baked hospitals of Calcutta were any less foetid than ours. Should I follow them? Why else had I been waiting?

  By the time I emerged from the infirmary gates my father and Dr Hawkins were already half-swallowed by the dark, and the rising fog. They walked briskly, heading north without once looking back, so they had not noticed me stealing through the shadows behind them. Soon, a towered and crenellated building, tall and dark as Newgate, rose up before us. I heard the dull rap of the doctor’s stick against the wooden panels of a door. A grimy smear of yellow lantern light flickered through the fog as the door opened, and then they were gone.

  The dark walls of Angel Meadow Asylum gave nothing away. The door they had entered was tightly locked, and no window looked out. I had tried to stay close as they hurried along, desperate to catch the odd word from their whispered conversation. Now, as I told the tale to Will, I wished once more that I had crept closer. Might I have discovered what terrors made my father so lean and fearful? What compulsion drove him to sneak out at night to attend someone, or something, inside that terrible Bedlam?

  The following morning I asked him myself. For a moment he looked at me, appalled. ‘You followed me?’

  ‘You and Dr Hawkins.’

  ‘And you heard us? You heard—’

  I hesitated. ‘I heard nothing.’ He sighed then, as if he had been holding his breath, the expression of horror on his face dissolving into relief. ‘But you must tell me,’ I said.

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘Then when?’

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘When?’

  Will was sitting forward in his chair, listening. His gaze was fixed upon me, his eyes grave. ‘And he would not say?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘He will not admit to being ill; he will not tell me what business he has with Dr Hawkins, and he is silent about whatever reason he has to go up to Angel Meadow at night. When I pressed him he said that it was better that I didn’t know. That hopefully I would never have to know.’

  ‘And Dr Hawkins has said nothing?’

  ‘He would not break a confidence.’

  ‘Then you can do nothing but care for your father and be patient, and hope for the best.’ Will took up the sack of coffins. ‘I was going to suggest that we showed these to him—’

  I shook my head. ‘I think not. He is not . . . not what he was.’

  ‘It might take his mind off his troubles.’

  ‘I fear it would only add to them,’ I said. ‘Hops, wormwood, rue . . . The only place where all three might be found is the apothecary.’

  ‘But anyone at St Saviour’s might have access to that place. And what of the black rose?’

  ‘I don’t know. But there’s something else too. You recall the material they’re made from—’

  ‘Thick board, covered in a fine, grey-coloured fabric.’

  ‘I didn’t mention it earlier,’ I said. ‘But I recognised it instantly.’ Even as I spoke I wondered at the wisdom of sharing what I knew. Will was right, anyone with regular access to St Saviour’s might be able to procure any of the materials that had gone into the making of those six small coffins. Was it absurd to be concerned that those materials pointed to the apothecary? In reality they were no more than a collection of poorly executed boxes, foolish totems that may well have been made and hidden away by a child, their significance at best random, and most likely meaningless. And yet I knew, in my heart, that these were spurious arguments. ‘That grey-coloured material, Will,’ I said. ‘The stuff used to construct those coffins, it comes from the apothecary too.’

  Gabriel was surrounded by an explosion of chalk dust, senna leaves and cochineal powder. There was a sticky pool of glycerine oozing from beneath one of the ward ledgers, and iron tonic was splattered down his apron front and across the apothecary table. The air reeked of sulphur, and I could see a broken bottle of the stuff beside his feet. The prescription ledger stood open in the middle of the table. I reached out and closed it, running my hand over its dull, grey-green binding.

  ‘Look,’ I said to Will. ‘You see? It is the same.’

  ‘See what?’ said Gabriel. ‘Same as what? I ain’t done nothing to that ledger, Mr Jem. Them stains were already there!’

  ‘Where’s my father?’ I said, looking round for him.

  ‘Dr Hawkins came,’ Gabriel wiped his nose on his sleeve. ‘I don’t know where they went. I’ve been on my own for ages.’ He blinked at us, his gaze lingering on the sack I held, his expression wary. ‘What you got there?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. I put the sack onto the table. ‘Can’t you clear up as you work?’ I said. ‘My father hates this mess.’

  ‘He ain’t here to say anything,’ replied Gabriel.

  ‘Have you taken the medicines up to the wards?’

  ‘I ain’t had time.’ Gabriel sounded tearful. ‘And Mrs Speedicut came. She said she’d be back later.’ He looked up at the clock fearfully. ‘It’s almost time!’

  As Gabriel spoke there came a thump at t
he door. I turned, expecting it to crash open, and a furious Mrs Speedicut to burst in – she hated it when we were tardy with the ward rounds. Nothing happened. I clicked my tongue. Could the woman not just come in, like everyone else, and say what she had to say? I marched across the apothecary and flung open the door.

  On the ground, not two steps from the threshold, lay my father. All at once Gabriel was clinging to my arm, crying; Will was kneeling beside me as I pressed my fingers to my father’s neck. The pulse was no more than a flicker. ‘Father!’ I said. ‘Father!’

  ‘Jem.’ Will’s voice was calm. He laid his hand on my shoulder. ‘I’ll help you to carry him.’

  We laid my father on a blanket before the fire. Between us, Will and I removed his coat. When I saw what lay beneath, I could not help but draw back.

  ‘Blood!’ said Will.

  ‘Who did this?’ I whispered.

  My father’s eyes flickered open. ‘Nathaniel?’

  His mind was wandering. ‘Uncle Nathaniel has gone,’ I said. ‘It’s Jem.’

  We had no family, my father and I. My mother had no relations; my father one brother, a surgeon on board an East Indiaman. I met him only once, when I was no more than eight years old – a tall thin stranger who looked just like my father, but for his neat brown beard and his weathered face. ‘Are you a pirate?’ I had asked, my imagination excited by his nautical appearance, his tales of wild weather and strange cargos.

  ‘Would you like it if I were?’ My uncle’s eyes had twinkled. My father’s never did.

  ‘Yes!’ I cried.

  ‘Well then, so I shall be!’ He slapped the table top. ‘Nathaniel Flockhart, Cap’n o’ the Bloody Hand, forced to roam the seven seas for ever and a day.’

  ‘Why?’ I had asked, jumping up and down beside him. ‘Why, “forever”?’

  ‘Why?’ He lowered his voice to a whisper, and leaned close. ‘Because o’ the curse o’ the Flockharts, that’s why, my lad!’

  I thought he was going to wink, but he didn’t. I thought he would give me a grin, but he didn’t do that, either. In the silence that followed, I laughed, and looked at my father. But my father was not laughing.

  My uncle left that afternoon. He never returned. I wondered why my father chose to remember him now.

  We pulled off his shirt. The crooks of his arms were bandaged; the bandages too were soaked with blood. ‘Jem?’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘Don’t speak of this to anyone.’

  I was prepared to say anything to keep him calm. To excite him, to stir his pulse now, might be fatal. I nodded.

  He closed his eyes. ‘Good. Now, let me sleep.’

  I unwrapped the bandages. Beneath, at the bend of each elbow, was a hole. Blood oozed out, the way a leech bite seeps long after the leech has been removed. And yet I could not detect the characteristic three-sided bite of the leech, nor the tell-tale cut of venesection. It was as though he had been punctured, and the blood drawn off.

  ‘He’s been drained,’ whispered Gabriel, his eyes wide with horror. ‘Drained of blood.’

  ‘But who, or what, would do such a thing?’ said Will.

  I was about to speak, when I noticed something amongst the folds of my father’s discarded shirt. It was bright, almost luminous, against the white cotton. I held it up between finger and thumb: a single yellow rose petal.

  ‘Dr Hawkins,’ said Gabriel. ‘He always wears a rose. But he’s kind. He’d not do this.’

  ‘Whatever happened here was by consent, Gabriel,’ I said. ‘See how tranquil he is? How at peace? If this had been the work of a fiend he would most likely be in a state of terror.’

  ‘A fiend?’ whispered Gabriel. ‘At St Saviour’s?’

  ‘You read too many penny bloods,’ I said. Poor boy. He would be little use to me amongst the powders and pills that evening. But there were tasks he could do, and I knew the familiar would be comforting. I patted his head. ‘Make us some tea, Gabriel, there’s a good lad.’

  I bandaged my father’s arms once more and dressed him in a clean nightshirt. I made him comfortable beneath a blanket in his chair beside the fire. Behind me, I could hear Will sweeping up the mess. He worked with Gabriel, setting bottles in their rightful place, clearing up spilt tinctures and powders, following the lad’s instructions to keep his mind occupied. ‘Where does this go, Gabriel?’ and ‘Can you show me how to tidy these away?’ But I saw the boy peep in the sack where the coffins were hidden, and his cheeks turned paler still. ‘The work of a fiend,’ he whispered. His hands trembled as he placed the jar of burnt alum back onto the shelf.

  Gabriel fell asleep at my father’s feet, his mop of dark hair glinting in the firelight. Will slipped a cushion beneath his head and covered him with a blanket. The boy should have accompanied me on my final rounds later that evening, but I hadn’t the heart to bother him. I was tempted to go out to Angel Meadow there and then, and demand that Dr Hawkins tell me what was going on. But I did not want to be away from my father for long, and so I put the thought from my mind as best I could and went out to the wards.

  After the silence of the apothecary, the hospital was a pandemonium. The doctors had finished their rounds long ago, and the place was now the domain of Mrs Speedicut and her minions. I went from ward to ward, my lantern in my hand, the mutterings of the patients and the observations of the nurses as commonplace and boring as ever.

  ‘Oh yes, Mr Flock’art, he’s been purged reg’lar this past week. Feels all the better for it,’ and ‘Dr Catchpole do love his leeches sir. Worked wonders he has!’ and ‘Blue Pill, sir, same as usual.’

  Leeches! We went through thousands of them. Why, the previous year alone we had spent two hundred and fifty one pounds, nine shillings and sixpence on the things. ‘Where would St Saviour’s be without blood!’ Dr Graves had cried when I dared to object. As for Blue Pill . . . There was not a doctor in the place who could see it for what it was: mercury bound with chalk and as poisonous a substance as you might wish to find. It was used on the most persistently costive patients – which included pretty much all of them. I had fallen out with Dr Catchpole on the matter of its use on many occasions. Could they not see that a similar effect might be produced with psyllium husks or a bowl of stewed rhubarb? I had told Dr Catchpole the same that very morning. ‘Good lord, Mr Flockhart,’ he had bellowed across the ward. ‘I am a physician, not a gardener, and this is a hospital, not a pie shop!’ The patients themselves were no better. ‘Dr Catchpole says I must ’ave the calomel,’ one of them had remarked as Dr Catchpole turned away. Already he had the black teeth and copious saliva characteristic of mercury poisoning. ‘Dr Catchpole’s a proper doctor. I’ll not ’ave no fruit. And no seeds, neither!’ Dr Bain was the only man there who saw sense. Leeches and Blue Pill indeed. Some of them were still cupping too!

  There was nothing remarkable on any of the wards, which was just as well, as that evening my mind was elsewhere. All at once the ordered and predictable world of St Saviour’s seemed to be coming apart at the seams. I had not realised how unsettled it had made me feel. But what better remedy for disquiet than the routine of the evening ward rounds? I stalked between the beds, allowing the noise and stink of the place to wash over me like a soothing familiar balm. The reek of vomit and effluent took its effect upon my spirits almost immediately. Purged, for the moment, of any sense of regret that we would soon be obliged to leave the place, I paused at a window and flung it open. A cold blast of night air, laced with the whiff of the tannery and the brewhouse blew in from the east.

  ‘Please, sir,’ a voice quavered from beneath a mound of frayed blankets beside me. ‘No air, for pity’s sake! You’ll kill us all!’

  Out in the corridors the night nurses chatted and cackled. They were a different stock to the nurses who worked the wards during the day – less biddable, noisier and rougher in their manners and habits. They fell silent as I approached, but I knew they were a raucous lot when left to their own devices. In the wards, the inmates
tossed and moaned, hunched beneath their blankets, coughing and farting in the gloom. Usually, I was accompanied about the infirmary by Mrs Speedicut. There was no need for her to come with me, but she insisted. She still remembered me as a child – how she had enjoyed walloping me through the wards when I was an apprentice! That evening, however, she was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘She’s out, sir,’ said the nurse. ‘She went down to the apof’cary a while ago and I ain’t seen her since.’

  ‘I was in the apothecary a while ago,’ I said. ‘I didn’t see her.’

  ‘That’s where she went.’

  ‘And where is she now, pray?’

  The woman shrugged. ‘’Oo knows, sir?’

  ‘Sweep the floors, can’t you?’ I said, suddenly irritated by her insolence. ‘I saw a rat earlier.’

  ‘I can catch it for you, if you like, sir,’ came the reply. ‘Dr Graves gives me a shillin’ for every half dozen.’

  I went up to the surgical ward. The night nurse was dozing on a chair in the corridor. Her mouth hung open, as brown as the inside of a tea pot. She reeked of gin, her nose bluish in the light from the lantern, the blood vessels on her face standing out against her sallow cheeks like red pin worms. I left her where she was. I knew her for a sharp-tongued gossiping ninny, and as much of a trollop as any of them. I was glad not to have her braying in my ear as I walked amongst the beds, though I’d be sure to give her chair a good kick as I walked past later.

  Most of the patients were drugged with laudanum and seemed to be sleeping. I checked Dr Bain’s amputee. Dr Bain had given instructions for the man’s wound to be dressed every day. New, clean lint and linen were to be used and the area washed out with a weak carbolic acid solution. The patient was still and quiet. I pulled back the dressings. The wound was clean, and there was no sign of suppuration, though it was too early to comment on the success of the operation. I would check again in the morning.

  The night nurse had not drawn the blinds and, for once, the moon was as bright as a new shilling. It shone full into the ward, painting the patients’ blankets silver. But even the moonlight could not impart glamour to the scene, and the place resembled an overcrowded churchyard: the beds the mounded graves, severed stumps projecting like the bony remains sometimes visible in the workhouse burial ground – a place where a good many of them would end up.