Bone China Read online

  Indulgence, one colleague had said many years before; Ernest forgot his name now. At the time, talk of phthisis had meant as little to him as it did to the other physicians. Whoever the fellow was, he had been convinced that the disease was brought on by pampering – the sufferer was consumed, as it were, by their own consumption. And this was … interesting. For Ernest could not deny that he had always given his wife whatever his pocket would stretch to. Then there was Kitty with her rage for gowns and gimcracks, no matter how exposed the new fashions left her skin. And Francis was a baby, the desired heir born so long after the girls; of course he was petted.

  Ernest clenched his teeth, swallowed hard. It was an answer, but not the one he wanted: that his love had killed them.

  He thought of Mopsy reclining on the soft pillows of her bed. He had fed her dainties, trying to coax her back to health, pulled a swansdown coverlet over her narrow shoulders. He should not have plumped those cushions for her. He should have laid her on a rock.

  And that was what the convicts were going to get: a short, sharp shock. Something to force the blood out of its current erroneous patterns and start it flowing naturally again. No one could accuse him of overindulging them. They would live more as nature intended and by God, he would make the treatment work.

  Work – yes, work! That was the greatest protection against the blue devils, those low spirits that plagued him. He should not have allowed himself to become distracted by the past. Eagerly, he scooped the letters up from the floor and began to crack their seals. His enquiries to nearby towns and villages had been met with welcome. It seemed there were any number of local grocers and butchers who felt they could help him supply a nourishing but digestible diet to his patients; and many carpenters in need of work ready to construct huts. His plan to erect a dam for safety from the tide was confirmed as feasible. He would have to tell Louise …

  While he read, Pompey nudged the half-closed door open with his nose and trotted in. The little scamp saw the scattered correspondence on the floor as a game; he began to paw through it. Ernest paid him little heed – the letters were dirty and crumpled anyhow and could endure a few more scuffs.

  But after some minutes had passed, the dog’s shuffling noises seemed to change. There was a rasp. Teeth against material. Ernest threw his current letter on the desk and leaned back in his chair.

  ‘What have you got there then, old chap?’

  Pompey wagged his tail proudly, as if he had exposed a great treasure. In fact, it was a cloth-bound volume of folklore Ernest had picked up from a stall in Falmouth.

  ‘Ah, yes.’

  Leaning down, he patted the dog on the head and retrieved the book from his mouth. Two medical cases at once. He never had been one to do things by halves.

  The book was undamaged and only slightly damp from Pompey’s attentions. Ernest gave the pages a cursory flick, finding more amusement here than in the medical journal. The rot people came up with! Bucca in the coves, Knockers in the mines. But one could almost understand how the stories had formed, in the days before medical knowledge. He knew there were healing properties in the soft, fresh air that entered the caves – an ignorant person might well attribute such powers to magical creatures. He must not scoff at these ideas. Treating his patient’s theories with derision would only alienate her – he needed this book to understand her way of thinking before he could change it with the force of his own mind.

  And perhaps at heart the two maladies he was tackling were not so very different. Some had observed a correlation between the consumptive’s health and their state of mind, after all. Emotional well-being could stay the disease’s ravaging hand …

  He let his own hands droop, lowering the book onto his lap, and stared at them. Ink-stained, paper-cut. Marked with the many ways in which he had tried to divert his attention away from that mourning ring pinching on his right hand. No, he thought wearily, such a theory could not be sound. For his wife had been light of foot and quick to smile, his son a babbler of the happiest kind. They had been more like the creatures in these foolish fairy stories than people inclined to melancholy.

  He threw the volume to the floor, narrowly avoiding Pompey.

  No, if it was misery that laid a person vulnerable to phthisis … It would have taken him by now. Him and Louise, both.

  Chapter 19

  Louise had been dreading their arrival. The terrible pallor and sunken cheeks, the eyes that glittered like sunlight upon the ocean. Worst of all, the cough. Sometimes she awoke at night, thinking she had heard that dreadful tearing sound in Kitty’s throat, only to find herself alone.

  Would it be different, from the chest of a man? More guttural, perhaps. If Louise had her choice, she would have gone the length of her life without finding out. But here she was, shortly after dawn, dressed and waiting for Papa by the front door. If he did not cower in the presence of the disease, neither would she.

  She was well prepared as usual, with paper for observations, one pencil in hand and a spare tucked behind her ear, underneath her cap. But Papa arrived unshaven, his stock loosely tied. Smudges beneath the eyes suggested he had not slept well – or he had spent the night poring over medical treatises again. ‘They have come. I saw the carts go down, from the window,’ he told her. ‘Let us meet them.’

  Louise hoisted up a smile. ‘Do we need to take anything with us?’

  ‘Only your notebook for this preliminary inspection, and I see you have that to hand. Did you change the water in the leech jar this morning?’

  ‘Yes, Papa.’

  ‘Good.’ He nodded. ‘Good. We will have need of them later.’

  A stiff March wind charged over the clifftop and flattened the grass. Already signs of spring were showing: the gorse and rosebay willowherb coming into bud, and strands of cow parsley emerging from the hedgerows. The sky had yet to follow suit. Currently, it was a veil of dirty gauze, devoid of any blue.

  The track steepened and Louise took hold of Papa’s arm. His kerseymere sleeve felt damp to her touch, as if he had sweated through it. Her chest tightened another notch.

  There was so much at stake. Both of them knew, yet neither would speak of it; just as they did not voice their dread of the memories these men would inspire. Louise had to compromise all her understanding and support into the pressure she applied to her father’s arm.

  She could still picture the blankness that had swallowed his face when, after ten years of patronage, Lord Redfern had sent for another man to attend upon his gout. How on the street, the next day, a lady in a poke bonnet had whispered to her companion, ‘A fine physician, upon my word, unable to keep his own family alive!’ and they had both pretended not to hear.

  Sea mist welled up as they descended to the beach, its thickness clouding her spectacles and muffling the relentless pound of the surf.

  ‘Be careful,’ Papa warned. ‘The stone will be wet underfoot.’ He took her hand. His glove had already turned clammy and cold, disturbingly like the palm of an invalid.

  Together they negotiated the pebbles and rocks, jumping down to the sandy part of the beach, which sucked at their shoes as they walked. Dark shapes were apparent up ahead.

  Disembodied male voices floated down the beach. Louise tensed her shoulders, braced for the sound of a cough.

  ‘Courage,’ Papa whispered. ‘Have courage.’

  She could only nod.

  The wind made a scouring sound as it blew through the cave. As they walked past its mouth, Louise turned her head to look inside. She had always been tall and well built, but the cave made her feel small, humble beyond measure. She could not shake the feeling that there was a vast presence inside looking back.

  They had arranged for some wooden huts to be constructed and a small dam to keep the waters back at high tide. Moisture dripped from somewhere, echoing as it hit the surface of a pool.

  ‘Ah, it is the surgeon from Bodmin.’ Papa was looking straight ahead and accelerated his pace, tugging Louise along with him. He sound
ed all business once more. ‘Make haste, my dear, I must speak with him.’

  The man was standing beside a wagon heaped with cane chairs, pots, pans and bales of straw. One glimpse told her he was not cut from the same cloth as her father – she had not supposed a gaol surgeon would be. He wore a bent three-cornered hat and his own rat-coloured hair was tied up in ribbon beneath. Slung around his waist was a sword belt and tarnished scabbard. Louise wondered if his charges had ever given him occasion to use it.

  ‘We’re just glad to be rid of ’em,’ he was saying in a tired, deep voice to the driver of the wagon. ‘Infection will spread through a gaol quicker than crawlers. And o’course there’s no hospital hereabouts as will take a contagious disease. ’Tis contagious – I don’t care what they say.’

  ‘Let us hope this will be a second chance for them. A reclamation,’ her father called. The man turned confusedly. Papa removed his hat and bowed. ‘Mr Jeffries, I presume?’

  ‘Aye. Dr Pinecroft, is it?’ He gave an awkward imitation of the doctor’s obeisance. ‘Well, ’tis a novel concept ee’ve got, I’ll give ee that. Although we’ve miners enough coughing up their lungs in this district, I doubt they’d see the sense in living underground.’

  ‘But the cases are not similar in any respect.’ A touch of heat from Papa. ‘The mineworkers are sweltering in galleries, inhaling nothing but dust. My patients here will have pure air, clean surroundings, gentle exercise and a nourishing diet.’

  Louise cleared her throat.

  ‘Ah, forgive me. Mr Jeffries, my daughter, Miss Pinecroft.’ She curtseyed. The man looked somewhat taken aback, but sketched another bow. ‘A capable nurse. She is fully conversant with my theories.’

  ‘Vis medicatrix naturae.’ She smiled. ‘The healing power of nature.’

  ‘Almost, my dear. Strictly speaking, that is the body’s natural ability to heal itself, which we also hope to capitalise upon. Given their condition in life, it is likely that these men will be sturdier and more resilient than the patients we are used to.’

  Mr Jeffries raised his eyebrows in her direction. ‘I daresay they will, miss.’

  She did not allow her smile to waver. It irked her how everyone, save for her father, envisioned her as too delicate to countenance a group of criminals. No doubt they would prove uncouth. But she had wiped streams of blood from her own mother’s mouth, watched the life fade from Francis’s big blue eyes. After all that, did Mr Jeffries really think a few curse words were likely to undo her?

  ‘I believe,’ she said brightly, ‘that these men have agreed to participate in the trial on the understanding that their crimes will be pardoned, should the treatment prove efficacious.’

  ‘Just so, my dear. An extra inducement for us to succeed. Lives will not only be saved, but changed.’

  Mr Jeffries grimaced. ‘I suppose ee’d better meet ’em, then.’

  It would not do to take Papa’s hand now, so Louise clasped both of hers before her stomach and inhaled a deep draught of salt air. She might not be afraid of the men, but she could not be quite so confident about the disease. It had been many months since she stood vis-à-vis with the wraith of consumption. This time, she would not let it win.

  Five men of varied height were lined up beside the shore, iron gyves fastened around their ankles. There was little need for that restraint. All were skeletal figures incapable of flight and their fetters only served to chafe their painfully bony joints, rubbing the flesh raw. One, on the far left, she took for a man of Eastern descent, but it was difficult to distinguish the colour of either hair or skin while both were heavily engrained with dirt. Louise took off her spectacles, rubbed them with her handkerchief and reapplied them. A tall, bearded man shivered before her in the morning mist. He wore ragged, filthy clothing, despite his illness. Small wonder he showed no signs of improvement at the gaol. She was glad she had sewn so many new shirts against their arrival.

  ‘You have records of their height and weight, Mr Jeffries? They were not included in the correspondence.’

  ‘I do, sir. I’ll send them on.’

  ‘Good.’ Papa rested his chin upon his hand. ‘Louise, write down my observations as we inspect them.’

  The first man, who gave his name as Seth, was older than the others and troubled with a squint. Louise could not be sure whether or not he was leering at her. In her estimation, he had contracted consumption quite recently; the flaccid, wasted muscles of his calves were the only hallmarks of the disease.

  Papa looked at what she wrote and nodded.

  ‘Won’t keep me down, Doctor,’ Seth averred through feeble vocal cords. ‘Got through the Seven Years’ War, I’ll be damned if this makes the end of me.’

  Papa patted his shoulder and declared that he had the right spirit.

  Michael, the heavily bearded man, they could not view with the same degree of composure. Fever was written in every line of his body. Sweat plastered the shirt to his narrow chest, which looked all the thinner because of his height. In his prime, Louise supposed he had been sturdy, the kind of man used to manual labour. Now he did not seem to know where he was. Gently, Papa placed an ear against his chest to listen to the lungs.

  He did not dictate anything to her this time – she based her notes on the dark expression that clouded his face.

  Third in line was the youngest, perhaps five-and-twenty, going by the name of Harry. He was at what Papa generally termed the ‘dazzling’ stage. Hectic colour flooded his cheeks. He was willowy, rather than emaciated, and his green eyes sparkled like emeralds. She could not take her eyes from them.

  Mr Jeffries called the following man Tim. He was too exhausted to speak even his own name. Illness had drained the skin; he appeared to be made entirely of bruised wax. No hair remained upon his head, and although this was hardly the fault of the disease, it served to make his impression all the more pitiful.

  Papa gave her a single shake of the head.

  Chao was the last man. Perhaps he had always been slender, but even beside the other patients he seemed outrageously thin. Had he tried, he could simply have slipped his feet through the gyves and walked away.

  Papa greeted him kindly, like the rest. ‘And how long have you been afflicted with this complaint, my good man?’

  Chao opened his mouth to answer. What emerged was a cough.

  She heard the fluid in it. Hacking, scraping, hurting her own throat with its force. Her pencil pushed through the damp paper. She was back in Bristol, spoon-feeding fennel root and ginger in water that refused to stay down.

  Papa turned his head away and looked out to sea. His hands were balled into fists.

  It was a marvel they had come so far today without hearing this. But the reprieve had not helped, had not enabled Louise to prepare herself. The emotions were every bit as acute as she had feared.

  Ignorant people always fancied that ghosts appeared as shrouded ghouls. Anyone who had suffered loss could tell them differently. Sounds and smells haunted with more persistence, dragged you backwards in a way that nothing else could.

  Chao spat a glob of blood onto the sand. The same colour of scarlet-red, no matter who the sufferer. For a moment Louise stared at it, transfixed.

  ‘Rest yourself.’ Papa returned his attention to the man, his face set in a perfect mask of cordiality. ‘There will be time enough to discuss this later. We must settle you in, procure you some refreshment.’

  He put a hand on Chao’s shoulder. Only Louise saw the tremor in it. She had no doubt that Papa felt exactly as she did, but he was forced to prove himself, lest he lose all professional reputation, along with his family. After what he had endured! How was that possibly just?

  If you put a string under that amount of tension, it would be sure to break.

  She might break, if Chao coughed again.

  The surf rushed in, bubbling around their feet, and washed the blood away.

  Chapter 20

  As a bachelor and a medical student, Ernest had spent the night in som
e unsavoury situations, to say the least. But as the sun touched the horizon and began to bleed across the sea in streaks of crimson and gold, it occurred to him that he had never slept in a place as strange as this before.

  The lanterns were burning low. All the twinkles and shimmers that had crossed the cavern walls during daylight had fizzled out. Now long shadows scurried over rocks and human faces alike, seeking dips and hollows. Such gaps were not wanting in these unfortunate men. The deep eye-sockets, the sucked-in cheeks – each were perfect wells for the darkness to spill into. His current patient, a man named Tim with no hair, seemed transformed into a gargoyle.

  ‘Today has been a great exertion,’ he told the man, as he settled him on his straw pallet. ‘And your previous conditions were uncommonly draining. Tomorrow, we shall help you regain your strength. Light, nourishing victuals and equally light exercise.’

  Tim moved his head on the pillow, which was probably all the acquiescence he was going to get. Considering the fellow had not been able to swallow his broth supper, it was a wonder he possessed the energy to keep his eyes open.

  If that blasted surgeon from Bodmin, Mr Jeffries, were here, Ernest would string him up. What did he mean by sending him such woeful specimens? Beggars could not be choosers, but he had hoped a fellow practitioner of medicine would comprehend his need for patients not yet completely ravaged by the disease. And while Ernest would not expect prisoners to be treated softly, he was appalled that the men’s health had been neglected to such an extent in the gaol. They were not, after all, murderers.

  Thankfully, he had taken Louise’s advice and made the caves a little more comfortable for them. If the phthisis was caused by overindulgence, at least Bodmin gaol proved that spartan conditions were definitely not its cure.

  He left the door to the wooden hut open so that he would hear any sound of Tim’s distress during the night. He did not anticipate much sleep, but he was used to that. Often, in the early hours of the morning, he would lie awake and hear Louise crossing her own room, fetching a book or going to her escritoire. Neither of them had regained the trick of undisturbed slumber after those long nights of caring for their family.