The Curious Case Of The Clockwork Man (33 page)

He looked down at the cactus. “It’s a weapon?”

“Yes,” said Hare. “You must be very, very careful with it. Carry it with you at all times and never allow it into the hands of your enemies.”

“Allow me to demonstrate,” Burke said, picking up the cactus. He held it like a pistol. “Strangely comfortable in the hand,” he noted. “Slightly yielding to the grip yet solid and a good weight. You see this nodule here? Give that a tweak and the cactus immediately goes into a defensive state. Inside, juices are coagulating, forming sharp, venomous spines, and doing so in an instant. Now, I’ll just—” He aimed the cactus at the opposite wall and pressed the trigger nodule. There came a sound—
phut!
—and a number of spines suddenly appeared in the wall, their arrival announced with a soft thud.

“Great heavens!” Burton exclaimed. He crossed the room and counted the projectiles. They had embedded themselves in the wallpaper perilously close to where a treasured framed miniature of his mother and father hung. There were seven, each about three inches long, each gleaming wetly. He reached up to pull one out.

“Don’t touch!” Gregory Hare cried. “They’re coated with a tremendously potent resin. One drop of it on your skin and you’ll fall unconscious in an instant and won’t recover your wits for three hours!”

“Bloody hell!”

“The venom will become harmless in five minutes or so.”

“The cactus has reloaded already,” Burke said, waving the pistol. “For as long as it’s in a defensive state, it’ll produce spines continuously. You could fire this thing for hours on end and never run out of ammunition! However—” he pinched the activation nodule “—There. It’s dormant now. No chance of accidentally shooting you in the leg. Not that I would. I’m cautious by nature, aren’t I, Mr. Hare?”

“Very cautious, Mr. Burke.”

“Take it, Captain,” Burke said. “It’s yours. Be sure to soak this end, with the roots, in water for a couple of hours each week.”

Burton returned to his visitors and took the proffered weapon. It felt strange, alive—which, he reminded himself, it was.

“If you’ll pardon me raising what I’m sure is a sensitive subject,” Burke said, “you’ve been responsible for a few deaths since taking on your current role. We understand why those deaths occurred and we fully support you.”

Gregory Hare nodded his agreement. “Even in the case of Sir Charles Babbage,” he said. “An execution which some might say was unprovoked.”

Burton swallowed. “I must confess,” he said, quietly, “I have asked myself over and over whether my action was justified. Did I commit murder that day?”

“No!” Burke and Hare chorused.

“I was delirious with malaria. I wasn’t in a fit state to judge.”

“You judged correctly. We’d been following Babbage and his work for some time. He was what we in our business classify as ‘a developing threat.’”

“This spine-shooter will ease the moral burden of your role, Captain Burton,” Hare added. “You can simply render your opponents insensible, then call us. We will remove them to a place of safekeeping where they’ll be interrogated and, ultimately, if possible, rehabilitated.”

“That sounds strangely ominous.”

Neither of his visitors answered.

The clock began to chime eleven.

“Rabbit-ticklers!” Pox murmured.

Burton slipped the cactus gun into his pocket.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” he said. “I daresay this pistol, peculiar as it is, will prove most useful. Now, to business: you have the papers?”

“Yes,” Burke answered.

“They will pass examination?”

“Even the most rigorous,” Hare replied.

“Then if you’d care to step into my dressing room, I’ll make you up and fit you out with clothing more suited to asylum inspectors.”

Hare gave an audible gulp and glanced at Burke.

Burke cleared his throat and looked first to the right, then to the left, then at Hare, and finally at Burton.

“I thought—” he mumbled. “I thought we might go like this.”

Burton gave a bark of laughter. “Trust me, chaps, if you step into Bedlam dressed like that, there’s every chance that you’ll never step out again!”

Bethlem Royal Hospital.

First it was a priory, erected by the sisters and brethren of the Order of the Star of Bethlehem in the year 1247.

Then it became a hospital in 1337.

Twenty years later it started to treat the insane, if “treat” is the appropriate word for what amounted to restraint and torture.

In the 1600s it gained the nickname “Bedlam,” which was soon a part of everyday language, invoked to suggest uproar, confusion, and madness.

The 1700s saw it opening its doors to the public to allow them to point and laugh at the antics of the lunatics.

By the mid-1800s, measures had been taken to improve conditions at the hospital, the principal one being its transference to new premises.

It didn’t take long for the huge new edifice to become a larger version of what it had been before: a dark, brutal, malodorous, deafening, perilous, and squalid hellhole.

Sir Richard Francis Burton was standing in the midst of it.

The director of the hospital was a pale-faced man of average height and build. He possessed widely set brown eyes, closely cropped grey hair, and a small clipped mustache. Every few moments, a nervous tic distorted his mouth and pulled his head down to the right, causing him to grunt loudly. His name was Dr. Henry Monroe.

Accompanied by two male assistants, who wore suspiciously stained leather aprons, he’d guided Burton, Burke, and Hare through the north, east, and south wings of the hospital and they were now proceeding through a sequence of locked doors into the west. The inspection had so far taken four hours. Four hours of screaming, wailing, roaring, moaning, babbling, snarling, hissing, sobbing, blaspheming, begging, threatening, despairing, cacophonous insanity.

Burton felt that his own faculties might break down beneath the foul stench and unending barrage of mania, and when he looked at his companions, he saw that the normally phlegmatic Burke and Hare were both showing signs of distress, too.

“Keep a grip,” he whispered into Hare’s ear. “The person we’re looking for has to be in this wing. We’ll not have to endure this pandemonium for too much longer.”

Hare looked at him balefully, leaned close, and said in a low tone: “It’s not the noise, Captain. It’s this—this
suit
you’ve squeezed me into. Most unbecoming! Were it not for the cravat, which thank goodness you allowed me to wear, I would hardly feel myself at all!”

Monroe unlocked the final door in the gloomy passage leading from the south wing to the west. He turned to face his three visitors and, raising his voice above the clamour from beyond the portal, said, for the umpteenth time: “Quite honestly, gentlemen, I don’t comprehend why this inspection is—
ugh!
—necessary. The last was less than a year ago and it found everything to be above board and thoroughly shipshape. In fact, significant improvements in the establishment were noted.”

Burton, who was wearing a brown wig and long false beard, answered: “As I said before, it’s simply a formality. Paperwork was lost in a small fire and we are obliged to replace it. To do so we have to repeat the inspection. I grant you it’s inconvenient, but it’s also unavoidable.”

“Don’t misunderstand—I’m not trying to avoid it,” Monroe objected. “There’s nothing to hide. As a matter of fact, I’m very proud of the work we do here and am happy to show it off. It’s simply that you seem to be rather more needlessly thorough than your predecessors and anything that disturbs the normal routine of the hospital is, well, rather—
ugh!
—unsettling for the inmates.”

“We’re just following governmental regulations, Doctor.”

“Be that as it may, I’d like you to put it on record that I’m scrupulous in my duties, that the hospital offers its patients a very high standard of care, and that such interruptions are potentially damaging.”

“I shall be sure to do so.”

Somewhat mollified, Monroe smiled, grimaced, jerked his head down to the right, and said: “
Ugh!
You’ll find fewer patients in this part of the establishment. However, I should warn you that those unfortunates who reside in these wards are the most seriously disturbed and can be exceedingly violent, so please refrain from making eye contact with them. It’s also the reason why we don’t have a communal hall here, just individual rooms.”

He led his visitors into a filthy cell-lined corridor, where the section’s head nurse greeted them with a bob. Monroe’s two assistants moved along the passage, sliding open viewing hatches. Burton, Burke, and Hare walked from door to door, peering through into the bare square cubicles, trying hard to ignore the abominations that blasted their eyes and assaulted their ears from within.

This went on for corridor after corridor, each one presenting them with more nurses, more cells, more degradation, and more horrors.

Burton walked with his arms folded tightly across his chest, clamping his hands against his ribs to hide the fact that they were shaking.

They came to corridor nine on floor four.

Doctor Monroe introduced another nurse to Burton: “This is Sister Camberwick. She oversees this section. Sister, these gentlemen are from the Department. Inspectors Cribbins, Faithfull, and—
ugh!
—Skylark.”

Sister Camberwick bobbed and said, “Good afternoon, sirs. I think you’ll find everything to your satisfaction.”

The examination of corridor nine followed the same pattern as those before until, at its end, Burton turned to Monroe and said, “Doctor, I’m aware that we’re imposing upon your time. May I suggest that we hasten matters?”

“Certainly. That would be most welcome. How so?”

“In addition to completing this tour of inspection, we need to conduct private interviews with selected members of your staff—”

“That wasn’t required last time!” Monroe objected. “I can assure you that working conditions here are absolutely—
ugh!
—”

Burton held up a hand to stop him. “Quite so! Quite so! It’s nothing more than a formality, I assure you, but one that must be observed in order to complete the paperwork and leave you in peace.”

Bismillah! Peace! Here? In this
Jahannam!

Monroe ran his tongue across his lips, shrugged, and gave a curt nod. “Oh, very well, very well. Whatever you say. How should we proceed?”

“I suggest you continue the inspection with Mr. Faithfull and Mr. Skylark. In the meantime, I’ll remain here to interview Sister Camberwick and her nurses. It should be enough to fulfill the terms of the inspection. Once done, a sister can escort me to your office. My colleagues and I will then take our leave and, I assure you, we’ll draft a most favourable report. I think it fair to predict that you’ll not be bothered by us again.”

The doctor heaved a sigh, gave a smile, and suffered a facial spasm.

A few minutes later, Burton was seated in a small office, alone with Sister Camberwick. The door was closed, muffling the screams and curses from the cells.

“Would you care for a cup of tea, Mr. Cribbins?”

“No thank you, Sister. Please sit and relax. This is merely a routine procedure, there’s nothing to be nervous about.”

“I’m not nervous,” she said. She sat down and adjusted her bonnet. “After working in an asylum, one ceases to feel nerves.”

“I should think that’s a great advantage.”

“It is.”

“When did you start here?”

“At the beginning of the year. Early February.”

She glanced into his eyes then looked down at her skirts and straightened them.

“And before that?”

She blinked rapidly. “I served in the Crimea, and, when the war was over, in workhouses.”

“The Crimea. You must have seen great suffering.”

He moved his chair closer to hers and in a low, melodious, and rhythmic tone, recited:

“Lo! in that house of misery
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.
And slow, as in a dream of bliss,
The speechless sufferer turns to kiss
Her shadow, as it falls
Upon the darkening walls.
As if a door in heaven should be
Opened, and then closed suddenly,
The vision came and went,
The light shone was spent.
On England’s annals, through the long
Hereafter of her speech and song,
That light its rays shall cast
From portals of the past.
A lady with a lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good,
Heroic womanhood.”

Sister Camberwick’s lower lip trembled.

“‘Santa Filomena’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,” Burton murmured. “Look at me, Sister.”

She looked. Her eyes slid away, returned, held.

Burton began to rock back and forth very slightly, almost imperceptibly.

“It is fine work you have done.”

She leaned forward to better hear him.

“And it is fine work you continue to do.”

She seemed transfixed by the deep, soothing quality of his voice, and, unaware that she was doing it, she began to sway, keeping in time with his own movement.

“For the purposes of this interview,” he said, in almost a whisper, “it is important that you relax. This exercise will help. I want you to breathe with me. Feel the air entering your right lung. In. Out. Now breathe into your left. In. Out. Slowly, slowly.”

Gently and patiently he guided her through a Sufi meditation technique, watching as her attention centred on him to the exclusion of all else. He softly issued instructions, taking her from a cycle of two breaths to a cycle of four, subduing her mind through the complexity of the exercise until she was entirely under his control.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Patricia Camberwick,” she answered.

“And behind that? The other name? The one that you’ve been forbidden to use?”

“Florence Nightingale.”

“Tell me about the circumstances that led to your presence here, Miss Nightingale.”

“I—I can’t—I can’t remember.”

“I know. The memory has been blocked. What occurred to you happened while you were enslaved by a mesmeric influence. Can you feel that blockage, like a wall in your mind?”