Beloved Poison (5 page)

‘No one knows. They say—’

‘They?’

‘Mrs Speedicut for one. And the man at the pie shop on Fishbait Lane, Mr Sorley from the chop house, the nurses – all the most rational and reliable of witnesses . . . They say the Abbot is only abroad when it’s dark and foggy – a shadow in a hood striding down St Saviour’s Street. No one knows who he was – perhaps one of the medieval monks of St Saviour’s who sold his soul to the Devil. They say he wanders the streets around the infirmary. If you see the Abbot, you don’t have long to live. Mrs Speedicut’s husband saw him—’

‘And died soon after?’

‘Apparently. But I would doubt the existence of “dear Mr Speedicut”, as much as I would doubt the existence of a ghostly abbot.’

‘Where did he see it?’

‘Heading into Wicke Street.’

‘Wicke Street!’ Will grinned. Wicke Street was infamous, even to an incomer like Will. ‘Perhaps he was looking for a trollop.’

‘The Abbot or Mr Speedicut?’

‘Both!’

We laughed. ‘I’m afraid I’m not much of a storyteller,’ I said. ‘There’s little call for ghostly tales at the apothecary – so my father says at any rate. He used to throw my penny bloods onto the fire. He does the same to Gabriel’s – that’s until I told the lad where to hide them.’

‘You just need to learn how to embellish,’ said Will. ‘That’s all.’

He climbed onto a tea chest and smoothed the building’s great pale stones with his hands. Painted corbels studded the seam between walls and ceiling, onto which were carved the wings and faces of angels.

‘This one is sad,’ said Will. He put up a finger, as though to brush a tear from its cheek. An ancient fleck of white paint drifted to the floor. ‘And that one is singing. See the lute below?’ The colours were faded but beautiful, ghostly against the dim diamonds of light that filtered through the harlequin windows.

He jumped down and came over to me. His face was suddenly serious as he put out his hand. ‘Thank you, Jem,’ he said. ‘Thank you for bringing me here, for showing me everything. For being my friend, despite the task I’m here to complete.’ His fingers were warm against my own, his grasp firm, reassuring.

We grinned at one another as we shook hands. ‘It’s a pleasure,’ I said. And I meant it too.

I turned to leave; the cold of the place was eating into my bones. But Will did not follow. ‘What’s this?’ He was pointing to a wooden panel, no more than eighteen inches square, that was embedded low in the wall beside the altar. It looked to be made of oak, and was dark and pitted with age. It had slipped a little in its casing, and behind it we could glimpse a dark, rectangular space. Other than a small cross-shaped hole cut into its centre, it was quite unmarked. I had never noticed it before. ‘May I?’ Without waiting for an answer, he hooked his finger into the cross and gave a tug. It lifted out easily.

Within was a cavity, dark and cobwebbed. I crouched down, and squinted inside. ‘There’s something in there,’ I said.

As I crouched in the dusty stillness of St Saviour’s derelict chapel, peering into the shadows of that dusty hole, an icy dread seemed to grip my heart. I could not account for it, though after the bustle and din of the infirmary the air of the place felt dead, its silence and shadows oppressed me, and its atmosphere was as cold as the grave. It was a building I rarely entered, and one in which I never lingered. But we had started now, and there was no going back. I stretched my hand into the cavity. Something wrinkled and papery shifted beneath my fingertips. Was it parchment? Dried flesh? I could not quite get a purchase on it, and it moved away from my grasp like a live thing recoiling from the light. But I was curious now, and I thrust my hand in further.

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.

T
he 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.’

‘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.’