‘You’ll have to lean forward so I can rinse your hair.’
It was a female voice that spoke. Raven lurched upright and opened his good eye. The housemaid Sarah was standing in front of him, holding a large ewer in both hands.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he asked, thrusting his hands down to cover himself.
She smirked. ‘Helping you get cleaned up,’ she said. ‘No need to be bashful. I’m as much nurse as housemaid in this place, so whatever you’ve got, I’ve seen it before.’
Raven hadn’t the will to do anything but submit, though he kept one hand in place.
Sarah was very gentle, perhaps because of his obvious injuries – he seemed to have bruising from sternum to pubic bone. She smelled of tea and lavender and freshly laundered linen. Clean smells, healthy smells. New Town smells.
His hair was duly rinsed, after which Sarah offered to help him get out of the tub.
‘I’m not an invalid,’ he objected, a little more harshly than the girl deserved.
She gathered up his clothes. ‘I’ve left a nightshirt on the bed for you,’ she said, leaving him to perform the last of his ablutions alone.
When he did attempt to stand, he was almost toppled by a sudden onset of vertigo. He sat down again and waited for the spinning to stop. Given the impression he had made on the household staff thus far, he did not wish to be found prostrate on the floor with his arse in the air.
Rising more cautiously, he managed to get himself dried and into bed before Sarah entered again, this time carrying a tray.
‘Beef tea, bread and butter.’
She put the tray down and took a small tin from her pocket.
‘I’m going to put some salve on your wound. It’s looking a bit red.’
Without waiting for his consent, she began applying some strange-smelling ointment to his cheek. With her eyes intent upon the work of her hands, he allowed himself to gaze upon her face: the freckles on her nose, the curl of her lashes.
For a moment he pictured Evie before him, dressed like that, a housemaid in the New Town. He could not sustain the image though, and it was rapidly replaced by his memory of her contorted body.
Another deid hoor.
As Sarah put the liniment tin back in her pocket and bent to pick up his wet towel, Raven hoped she appreciated how fortunate she was.
EIGHT
Raven looked at frost on the room’s tiny window and was instantly transported to a freezing cold day they had spent together in her room, sharing a dry loaf and washing it down with wine, only leaving her bed to use the privy. It was not the physical intimacies that echoed now, but the warmth of friendship, of being in the company of someone with whom he could let the hours drift. He recalled how he had talked about his ambitions, and his promises to help her as soon as he was in a position of any influence.
He had caught her staring at him, that inscrutable look upon her face. It felt good to be stared at by her, to be the subject of her fascination, though he had no notion what she was thinking, what observations and secrets she was keeping to herself. Perhaps she heard such promises all the time. When he spoke this way, Evie seemed to accept that he was sincere, but that wasn’t the same as believing him.
‘You’re always looking to take up cudgels for a noble cause, aren’t you, Will?’ she had said, lying with her head propped up on one hand, gently stroking his back with the other. She sounded amused but sympathetic. ‘Always in search of a battle to fight.’
His instinct was to deny it, as people always do when someone has shown that they know them better than they find comfortable. However, to Evie such a denial would be as good as an admission, so he said nothing.
‘Was there a particular one you lost, that you’re ever after trying to make up for?’
‘No,’ he had replied, grateful he had his back to her. His answer was the truth, yet nonetheless a deliberate deceit.
Sometimes it was a fight you won that proved hardest to bear.
Raven got out of bed and examined his face in the mirror above the washstand. He was pleased to discover that he could open both eyes. He gently prodded along his cheek, which was coloured by purple bruising that extended almost to his chin. The wound remained tender but looked clean, without any signs of impending infection around the stitches. The salve that Sarah applied appeared to have been quite effective. If it was a remedy of her own making, she should patent it, he thought. Or perhaps he could, once he had qualified and could put his imprimatur upon the product as an Edinburgh doctor. He would ask her about it later. Obtaining the patent on a popular new medicine could prove highly lucrative, especially if it actually worked.
He recalled his conversation with Simpson the day before regarding the search for an alternative to ether. The alleviation of all pain and suffering was certainly a lofty ambition, but Raven doubted if such a thing was possible, even with an unwearied will and a passionate desire or whatever pieties Simpson had been spouting. However, anything that offered a way out of his chronic penury was worth pursuing, particularly with Flint’s debt to be considered. Simpson would find him a willing participant in whatever experiments he proposed.
His bags had arrived from Mrs Cherry’s, a clean shirt and trousers making him look and feel instantly more respectable. His clothes from yesterday seemed to have disappeared. He wondered if the butler had burned them.
Raven rubbed a hand across his chin. At nineteen years old, his face was not quick to bristle, but stubble was beginning to form a shadow as he hadn’t shaved in two days. He had never pictured himself with a beard, but looking at Henry’s needlework, it struck him that growing whiskers may prove a necessity, as they would cover up the scar.
He descended to the dining room, finding it empty, though the fire had been lit and the table laid, suggesting he would not have long to wait for breakfast. It was a large room dominated by an expansive table and a mahogany sideboard. A richly patterned paper decorated the walls and a pair of heavy brocade curtains in a complementary colour hung either side of the windows. A cage containing a large grey parrot was situated before the glass, presumably so that the bird could enjoy a view of the street and the gardens beyond. The parrot’s interest was primarily taken right then by a Raven, which it was eyeing with the same mixture of curiosity and distrust as its housemate Jarvis.
On top of the sideboard a selection of serving dishes were waiting to be filled. Raven picked up a pepper shaker, turning it upside down to look for a hallmark. This resulted in a streak of pepper spilling onto the sideboard which he hurriedly swept up in his hand and then sprinkled onto the carpet. The parrot squawked loudly, as though in rebuke.
Placing the shaker carefully back down, he noticed that one of the sideboard doors was ajar, and he bent to satisfy his curiosity. As well as a stack of crockery and a large soup tureen, he spied several piles of papers with barely legible notes scribbled upon them, as though scrawled in a hurry. More intriguingly he also observed a selection of glass bottles containing a variety of clear liquids. These were labelled in a contrastingly precise hand, though some of them were