Raven fixed him with an ungrateful glare.
‘The ether doesn’t always seem to work anyway,’ Henry told him, tugging the cat-gut tight on the second loop. ‘Syme has just about given up on it, and with someone dying of the stuff recently, I think that will nail down the lid.’
‘Someone died of it?’
‘Yes. Down in England somewhere. Coroner said it was a direct result of the ether but Simpson continues to champion it.’ Henry paused in what he was doing. ‘You can ask the man about it yourself when you start your apprenticeship with him in the morning.’
Henry continued with his needlework, his head bent low over Raven’s face. He was close enough that Raven could smell the beer on his breath. Nonetheless, his hand was steady, and Raven got used to a rhythm of penetration and tug. No stitch was any less painful than its predecessor, but nor were any of them more painful than the ache in his ribs.
Henry stepped back to examine his handiwork. ‘Not bad,’ he declared. ‘Maybe I should conduct all my surgery after a bellyful at Aitken’s.’
Henry soaked a piece of lint in cold water and applied it to the wound. The coolness of the material was surprisingly soothing, the only pleasant sensation Raven had felt since his last swallow of ale.
‘I can’t send you back into the arms of Mrs Cherry looking like that,’ Henry said. ‘I’ll give you a dose of laudanum and put you in my bed. I’ll sleep on the floor for what’s left of the night.’
‘I’m indebted, Henry, truly. But please don’t allude to Mrs Cherry’s arms again. In my current state, the image is liable to make me spew.’
Henry fixed him with one of his scrutinising stares, but there was mischief in his tone.
‘You know she provides extra services for a small additional fee, don’t you?’ he said. ‘I gather many of her young lodgers have sought comfort in those arms. She’s a widow and needs the money. There’s no shame in it. I mean, between the scar and the droopy eye, you may have to begin revising your standards.’
Henry led Raven to his bed, where he lay down delicately. He hurt in more places simultaneously than he had ever hurt in individually. His face was full of cat-gut and, joking aside, he really might have to alter his expectations with regard to his marriage prospects. But it could all have been so much worse. He was still alive, and tomorrow was a new beginning.
‘Right,’ said Henry, ‘let’s get you that laudanum. And if you are going to be sick, please remember that I’m on the floor beside you and aim for my feet rather than my head.’
FOUR
She had taken some trouble over the laying of the fire, ensuring that there was a plentiful mound of coal piled in the grate. The fire was lit winter and summer to ensure the comfort of the patients the doctor saw here, but it was a particularly cold day and it was taking some time for the air in the room to thaw. A small amount of ice had formed on the inside of the window beside the doctor’s desk, a delicate pattern of fern-like fronds that disappeared when she breathed on it. She wiped the resulting moisture away with a cloth and took a moment to admire the view. On a clear day such as this you could see all the way to Fife. At least that is what she had been told. She had never ventured much beyond the outskirts of Edinburgh herself.
The desk beside the window was piled high with books and manuscripts that Sarah had to clean around without disturbing. She had over time perfected her technique, a skill acquired through painful trial and error and the rescuing of errant scraps of paper from the fireplace.
The room had not always seemed so welcoming. When she first came into Dr Simpson’s service, she had been quite terrified by what confronted her in here. Against one wall stood a tall cabinet upon several shelves of which sat jars of anatomical specimens: all manner of human organs immersed in yellowing fluid. More troubling still was that many of them were damaged, diseased or malformed, as though their very presence was not unsettling enough.
In time she had come to be fascinated by all of it, even the jar that contained two tiny babes, face-to-face, joined together along the length of the breastbone. When she had first seen it, Sarah had been gripped by questions regarding where such a thing had come from and how it had been procured. She also wondered about the propriety of keeping such a specimen, preserving what was quite clearly human remains instead of burying them. Was it right that such a thing be displayed? Was it somehow wrong to look at it?
Beneath the shelves was a cupboard housing the doctor’s teaching materials for his midwifery class. Sarah was unsure whether exploration of the cupboard’s contents was permitted, but as it had not been specifically prohibited she had indulged her curiosity on the few occasions when time allowed. It contained an odd collection of pelvic bones and obstetric instruments, the use of which she could only guess at. There were forceps, of course, with which Sarah was familiar, but there were other more mysterious implements, labelled as cephalotribes, cranioclasts and perforators. Their names alone suggested something brutal and Sarah could not imagine what place they had in the delivery of a child.
In keeping with its curator, there was a distinct want of method in the organisation of the study in general and of the library in particular, which Sarah would have remedied had she the time to do so. Books seemed to be randomly allocated a position on the shelf. For instance, there was a red-leather-bound compendium of Shakespeare sandwiched between the family Bible and the Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia, and she recalled how a list of the family’s pets had for some reason been inscribed within the cover.
Her finger reverentially touched each spine in turn as she read the titles: Paley’s Natural Theology, The Anatomy and Physiology of the Human Body, Adam’s Antiquities, Syme’s Principles of Surgery. Then Jarvis popped his head round the door.
‘Miss Grindlay is calling for you,’ he said, rolling his eyes as he withdrew.
Sarah allowed the tips of her fingers to linger for a few more moments on the spines of the leather-bound volumes. It was one of the great frustrations of her position: ready access to an eclectic collection of books but very limited opportunities to read them. Her hand came to rest on a book she had not seen before. She removed it from the shelf and slipped it into her pocket.
As she left the room and headed for the stairs she became caught up in a storm of newsprint precipitating from the upper floors. The doctor was evidently on his way down. He liked to read the daily papers – the Scotsman and the Caledonian Mercury – in their entirety before getting out of bed, and thought it entertaining to drop them over the banister on his way down the stairs. This was much appreciated by the two elder children, David and Walter, who liked to ball up the paper and throw it at each other and the staff; less so by Jarvis who had to clear it all away. Sarah manoeuvred her way around falling newspaper, excitable children and grumbling butler and ascended the stairs.
She entered Aunt Mina’s room on the third floor and was confronted by the usual chaos. The entire contents of Miss Mina Grindlay’s wardrobe appeared to have been scattered about the room, dresses and petticoats strewn over every available surface, bed, chair and floor. Mina herself was still in her nightclothes, holding up a dress in front of the mirror before discarding it with all the others.
‘There you are, Sarah. Where on earth have you been?’
Sarah assumed the question to be rhetorical and so remained silent. Mina seemed to be continually frustrated at Sarah having to perform other duties around the house, oblivious to the fact that, being the only housemaid, if she didn’t lay the fires, bring the tea, clean the rooms and serve