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

  ‘What was he doing?’

  ‘Just watching.’

  ‘Can you describe him?’

  ‘No. I mean, no more than what you can see here.’

  ‘Medium height, half-respectable clothing, dark coat and a hat not unlike yours. What of his face?’

  ‘It was in the shadows. Besides, he was too far away.’

  I stared at that figure. The way his shoulders sloped, his height and slenderness, the angle of his hat, the sharp lines of the face. After all, Will had captured me perfectly in only a few strokes, why might he not do the same with a stranger?

  ‘What is it?’ said Will. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Though I’m almost certain that it’s John Aberlady.’

  Chapter Five

  It was almost seven o’clock by the time we got back to the apothecary. Gabriel was not alone, and he and his companion were reclining in front of the stove with their feet on a footstool. The air was filled with pipe smoke. I had cautioned him against tobacco at so young an age, but he was convinced it would give him a more manly voice. The October fogs had settled on his chest and he hoped the tobacco would aid in the warding off of winter chills and the production of sputum. As if to demonstrate the efficacy of the stuff, his fellow smoker gave a great hawking cough, and jettisoned a bolus of brown phlegm through the open door of the stove. It bubbled like toffee on the hot coals.

  ‘Ah, Mrs Speedicut, what a pleasure,’ said Will. ‘I see you’re not at Angel Meadow this evening.’

  ‘Nah!’ Mrs Speedicut clamped her teeth – the few she had left – about the stem of her pipe. The smoke curled upwards from it in an ochre-coloured plume. More of the stuff trickled from her nostrils. ‘I’ve left.’

  ‘Left?’ I said. ‘But why, madam? And when?’

  ‘Just now.’ She shook her head. ‘That Angel Meadow ain’t no hospital! That ain’t a place for them what’s sick. Sick means sores and coughs and broken limbs. It’s worms and scratchin’s and the pox – there’s none o’ that sort o’ thing hardly at all at Angel Meadow!’

  ‘It’s an asylum, madam,’ I said. ‘A place where we might offer care and sanctuary to the mad. It is their minds that are troubled, not their bodies. You knew that when you went there.’

  ‘Ain’t the same,’ she muttered. ‘Them up there, they ain’t proper sick.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  She sat up and put her pipe on the hearth. ‘Well, sir—’

  Sir, I thought. That’s not a good sign. ‘No,’ I said.

  Her face sagged. ‘But you don’t know what I were about to suggest!’

  ‘You were about to suggest coming here to work.’

  ‘No,’ said Will. ‘Definitely no.’

  Mrs Speedicut sank back. ‘I will die in the streets,’ she said. ‘You’re all I got! What would your dear father say if he were to hear you treating me with such cruelty?’ Tears filled her beady eyes and she covered her face with her apron. The sight would have been quite affecting had it not been for the fact that I could see her peeping craftily out at me from around the edge of it.

  I surveyed the apothecary. I had expected turmoil, but the place was surprisingly neat. The pills I had left unfinished had been cut, rolled, silvered and left to dry; the lozenges too had been cut and dried and put into boxes; the condenser had been cleaned and a fresh batch of St John’s Wort gleamed red-orange in a flask at its side. The workbench was scrubbed, the floor swept, the jars gleaming, the windows cleaned. Mrs Speedicut had made a lot of effort in her attempt to persuade me of her value.

  In fact, I was fully aware of her worth, for I had known her all my life. She had worked at St Saviour’s for as long as I could remember – had known my father and my mother. I knew her for a drunken, lazy slattern, and yet she was loyal, and she could keep a secret when she had to – she had kept mine all her life. Moreover she could clean – or at least, she could effectively coerce others to do it – and knew how to deal with people who were even lazier than herself. She had picked up plenty of knowledge about physic over the years too.

  ‘I have a job for you,’ I said. ‘Though it’s not here.’

  She looked up at me, her expression wary. ‘Oh?’

  ‘We were up at the Blood today.’

  ‘That floating flea pit?’

  ‘The very one. They need a matron.’

  ‘The Blood,’ whispered Gabriel. ‘I’ve heard such things about that place. Such things as you wouldn’t believe.’

  ‘What things?’ said Will.

  ‘About the doctors. They cut a man’s leg off for the fun of it.’

  ‘That Virginian shag of Mrs Speedicut’s must be affecting your brain,’ I said. I reached for the coffee pot. It was still hot, the brew within dark and bitter as wormwood. It had been there since the morning – since before I had received Aberlady’s letter, before we had walked down to the Blood, before we had pulled a corpse from the city’s most poisonous waters. I poured two cups, and took mine to the workbench, ready to set out everything I needed for the next day.

  I had hardy put my cup down when the door burst open. The bell danced on its spring so that we all jumped as if the Devil himself had stabbed us with his toasting fork. A girl stood before us. Her face, streaked with tears, was pale beneath a layer of dirt. Her skirt hung in damp rags against her thin ankles, her boots huge and loose upon her feet.

  ‘Do come in,’ said Will calmly.

  She backed away from him, looking from Will to Gabriel to Mrs Speedicut, her eyes wide beneath a tangle of yellow hair, a look of fear and confusion on her small pinched face. And then she saw me, my blemished face rendered all the more fearful by the light from the open stove. She raised her hand and pointed. ‘The mask,’ she said. ‘The red mask!’

  The girl stood gaping at me. ‘What is it?’ I said. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Who is she?’ said Will.

  ‘She’s Pestle Jenny, of course.’ The front of the girl’s skirt was shiny from where she held the mortar against it; her right hand calloused at the root of her thumb from gripping the pestle – I remembered the blisters that had to be endured before the skin grew hard and the job became easier. I took the girl by the shoulders. An aura of liquorice and burdock clung to her still, despite her race through the darkling streets.

  ‘Jenny,’ I said gently. ‘I’m Mr Jem – Jem Flockhart. I’m Mr Aberlady’s friend. Did he send you? What’s happened?’

  Pestle Jenny opened her mouth, and then closed it again without saying anything. She began to shake, her eyes wide.

  ‘Shock, ain’t it?’ said Mrs Speedicut. ‘The girl can’t speak.’

  ‘I can see that,’ I replied.

  ‘Where’s she come from anyway?’

  ‘From the Blood.’

  ‘And you want me to go there? To be matron at a place what scares the wits out of hardened street children—’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Speedicut, I do,’ I said. ‘I would like you to present yourself at the Blood at six o’clock tomorrow morning offering yourself on my recommendation for the position of matron. I’m sure they’ll be delighted to accept you.’ I was pulling on my boots as I spoke. The night would be a long one, I was certain. ‘This evening you can stay here. Give the girl broth, tea, whatever you think fit.’ I wrinkled my nose. ‘Perhaps you might give her a bath too.’ I put my hand on the girl’s shoulder and gestured to Gabriel to come closer. ‘Gabriel, can you spare some clothes, a warm blanket, some kindness?’

  ‘Boys’ clothes, Mr Jem?’

  I hesitated. Then, ‘Why not? We have nothing else.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Never mind “but”, just do as I say. And then tomorrow, whilst Mrs Speedicut is out and whether I am back or not, you will employ her about the apothecary. She is to assist you in any way she can.’

  I looked down at Pestle Jenny. I had seen it once before, that shivering silence. It was years ago now, a child from Prior’s Rents who had watched his father beat
his mother to death with a flat iron. Neighbours had heard the screams, and when they broke the door down they found the walls splattered with the woman’s brains. The man, half-insensible with drink, was crouched beside her body trying to force a gin bottle between her lips. On the bed two babies lolled in filth, and in the corner stood a six-year-old boy. His eyes were staring but unfocused, his mouth open, as if he were watching the scene play over and over in his head.

  They had brought him to St Saviour’s but there was little we could do for him, for apart from lice and worms and hunger there was nothing physically wrong. He had stayed on the women’s ward at first, but the sight of them seemed to remind him of his mother and made him cry. He was sent by Dr Graves to the men’s ward instead, but that reminded him of his father and made him scream. In the end he was sent to Angel Meadow Asylum, and from there to the Hospital for Destitute Children. For ten days he said not a word. I went to see him some time later and was told that he had disappeared. One morning he had woken up, asked where his baby brother and sister were, and then run away. London is not a place for friendless children and I had often wondered what had become of him. And now here was Pestle Jenny – silent, shaking, gaping at the unknown horror that was etched upon her mind.

  Gabriel put his arm around the girl’s shoulders, and steered her towards the warmth of the stove. Mrs Speedicut jammed the poker in and levered the coals into life. She turned to Gabriel. ‘Bring the poor little thing over ’ere,’ she said, the poker gripped in her fist. ‘I’ll make ’er some tea.’ She pointed it at the table. ‘And there’s some o’ that pie left—’

  Pestle Jenny gazed at the poker’s smoking metal tip, her face frozen in terror. She made a curious, high-pitched screaming sound, and dropped to the floor in a faint.

  Outside a thick fog had crept up from the river. We both had a lantern, though they made little difference, for the fog absorbed the light like blotting paper. How Pestle Jenny had found her way to us I could not imagine. I hoped for the best as I took Will’s arm and plunged forward.

  ‘Perhaps the fog will lift,’ I said. ‘I think it seems to be thinning out.’

  ‘It’s a harvest moon tonight,’ muttered Will, pulling his scarf over his mouth. ‘Would you believe it? I might as well have a sack over my head, as I can’t see a thing!’

  We turned left, and then right. Dim lights here and there told where a street lamp glowed, or a lantern shone outside a public house. Underfoot the ground felt soft and wet – the usual mush of ordure and refuse – and on either side of us were walls, dark and hardly visible through the fog, though we could touch their cold stones with our fingertips. And then there were those smells again – spices, coffee and Madeira from the warehouses, stale beer, sweat and rancid tallow from the lodging houses and the people crammed inside. Beneath this, always present, was the stink of the river: damp, rotting weed, effluent. We could hear the sound of voices – singing, and shouting from inside a public house. From up ahead came the gentle creak of timbers and ropes, the suck and slap of water and the rhythmic clang of a loose rope striking a bell. Bowsprits and sterns reared before us, rope and rigging glistening with moisture, ghostly in the dark. The moon appeared, visible in a dim, veiled light as the fog thinned and billowed. I had sensed that it was drawing out – did I not know the city’s vaporous moods as well as I knew my own? – and in that instant the Blood loomed into view. We were closer to her than I had imagined, and our lanterns shone dully onto the wet timbers of her great black belly.

  The windows were shuttered, the body of the ship quite dark. At the stern, however, we could see lights moving, and as we drew closer we heard the splash of oars and the sound of activity upon the river. Beneath the apothecary windows, on the Thames itself, small crafts moved back and forth, men with boathooks raking and jabbing at the waters. An orderly was on his knees on the jetty at the water’s edge – I recognised him from the Blood earlier that day, a bulky, blank-faced man with roughly tattooed forearms and what looked like a bite out of his left ear. Beside him stood a sailor, a rope in his hands. Both were in their shirt sleeves, despite the cold of the night. Dr Sackville was standing beside them. His shoulders were more bowed than ever, as if he were weighted down with sorrow.

  As we approached he turned towards us. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘How fortuitous.’

  ‘Pestle Jenny came for us,’ I said. ‘I assume on your orders, sir—’

  ‘Mine? Not at all. But it is just as well you’re here.’ He shook his head. ‘I should have expected it. I am not without experience of such things—’

  ‘Expected what?’ I said. ‘What’s happened? Is it Aberlady?’ I looked up at the apothecary windows. Behind the veil of fog and darkness I could see that there was a lamp aglow inside. I saw too that the window gaped wide.

  ‘He jumped,’ said Dr Sackville. ‘Jumped from the apothecary window into the Thames.’

  The orderly with the clipped ear cried out. ‘They have him! Dr Sackville, sir, they have him.’ The man plunged off the jetty and into a boat, bending to help another man – a lighterman or bargeman, I could not say – drag something cumbersome out of the water. I heard their breathing grow heavy, grunting with effort as they hauled the thing aboard.

  ‘Stand back!’ someone shouted as the boat came to the waterside. Out of the shadows came other lumpen forms – more orderlies from the Blood, and sailors from nearby ships and drinking dens. They started forward as the burden pulled from the filthy water was manhandled onto the jetty. A body, fully clothed and soaking wet, is a difficult burden to manage, and my poor friend’s head banged horribly against the edge of the boat. They dragged him onto a tarpaulin, and stood back, those who had come from nearby ships to offer help, or lanterns, melting away into the night once they saw what had become of him.

  At any other time it would have been possible to leap from the apothecary window onto the gunwale of the neighbouring vessel, a square rigged Indiaman that had recently been unloaded and was awaiting repairs. Perhaps that had been Aberlady’s intention, though how he thought he might have made such a leap on that particular night was a mystery, for the ebbing tide had swung the ships apart, and there was a gap of some twenty-five feet between the two. The Blood rode high in the water, her ancient ballast hardly enough to keep her upright, and the distance between the apothecary window and the waters below was considerable. The body of John Aberlady, rimmed with crimson from a gash that seeped at his temple, lay like refuse beside the ship’s hull, his limbs awry, his neck twisted and his mouth slack. There is no dignity in death, no matter what anyone says.

  I bent down and touched my fingers to his head. I felt something hard – the shards of his skull – and beneath this something pulpy and wet. The angle of his head made it clear that his neck had broken. His face was pale, his eyes, now closed, were ringed with dark skin. He had always been slim, but I could see clearly that he was now quite wasted, his flesh fallen away to almost nothing, his cheekbones sharp as blades in his face. If only his letter had not been delayed, might things have turned out differently? Will put his hand on my shoulder.

  ‘What drove him to do such a thing?’ I whispered.

  I was looking down at Aberlady as I spoke. He was without a coat, his right sleeve undone and loose at the wrist. It bore a crimson taint, I could see that much even in the feeble glow from my lantern, though the Thames had washed most of it away, leaching the red stain pink. The wet cotton clung to his flesh like a second skin. I peeled it back. On the outside of his upper arm was a terrible wound, red and suppurating. I felt someone standing beside us and I looked up. Dr Sackville’s face betrayed nothing as he stared down at the apothecary’s corpse.

  ‘Did anyone see him jump?’ I said.

  Dr Sackville nodded. ‘I saw him,’ he said. ‘He must have struck his head on something as he entered the water for he was alive when he leaped. That barge, perhaps? I cannot think what.’ For a moment he closed his eyes as if in prayer. Then, ‘The fellow had not been himsel
f for some time, Mr Flockhart. I was quite aware of that. But to take his own life?’

  ‘Perhaps he did not intend such a thing at all,’ said Will.

  ‘You think he thought to swim ashore?’ said Dr Sackville, his voice rising angrily. ‘Or that he expected to leap such a distance? Or perhaps you think he fell whilst taking the air?’

  ‘I have no idea, sir,’ said Will.

  ‘How was it that you came to see him jump?’ I said.

  ‘He returned from wherever he had been this past week a couple of hours ago. I had to rebuke the fellow for his unauthorised absence – Dr Birdwhistle was determined to tell the governors. They would not stand for it, you know, and we had been thrown onto our resources to manage without him—’

  ‘And how did he seem?’

  ‘Agitated. Almost wild.’

  ‘How did he respond to your reprimand?’

  ‘He told me to go to Hell. Then he laughed, and said “But what am I thinking? For I am already there and you are the Devil come to gloat upon my sins.” ’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then he slammed the apothecary door in my face, and locked it.’

  ‘And he was alone in there?’

  ‘Well that’s the thing of it. I thought he was alone when he went in there – apart from Pestle Jenny, of course – and yet he was not, he couldn’t have been, for a few moments later I heard two voices. Raised voices. I heard them quite distinctly.’

  ‘It was not Aberlady and Pestle Jenny?’

  ‘Aberlady was one of them, the other . . . I have no idea who it was. But it certainly wasn’t his grinding boy.’

  ‘Might this other person have already been in there?’

  ‘It’s quite possible.’

  ‘Is there another way in to the apothecary?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What were they saying?’

  ‘They were arguing. There was no doubt about it, for I could hear quite clearly. “It’s no use. You must do it,” said the other person.’