The House of Whispers Page 14

  Louise’s throat tightened. ‘I do not mean to marry,’ she managed eventually. ‘Would you please pass the tinderbox?’

  And of course it was true. Her views of future happiness had never depended on a husband, unless he was a doctor she could assist like Papa. But there was something rather awful in having the choice taken from her. To have I will not marry changed to I may not.

  Creeda handed her the tinderbox. Young as they were, her hands had a sandpaper roughness to them. ‘Don’t be so sure, miss. I can tell these things.’ She nodded, looking much older than her years. ‘Aye. I wouldn’t give up hope. There may well be a man in your future, yet.’

  Louise remembered poor Papa, the vulnerability on his face as he presented her with the tea set.

  ‘My place is here,’ she said shortly. ‘And I do not consider this an appropriate topic of conversation for a maid and her mistress.’

  Creeda gave a slow smile and set about her work.

  Chapter 18

  Cowards. The lot of them: measly, self-serving cowards.

  He turned the pages of the medical journal faster and faster, sending a pile of letters neatly addressed to Dr Ernest Pinecroft sliding to the floor. No matter how hungrily his eyes scanned the print there was nothing, nothing, nothing. With a cry of frustration he reached the last page and slammed his hand down upon the desk. Another quarter of the year passed, and no one dared publish on phthisis.

  He began to pace the small room he had devoted to his work, at the far end of the west wing. Astonishing, how quickly a new house could fall into disarray. Strewn across the floor were the stock ties he had torn from his neck at the end of each day. Books lay splayed open on every available surface and his pipes were tipping their burnt-out ashes into his inkwell. There was a tumbler, somewhere, hidden in this chaos, but since he could not locate it quickly, he took a small nip of brandy straight from the decanter. As he wiped his lips, he noticed for the first time the incongruity between the heavy oak-wood desk he had removed from Bristol by water and the elegant blue-and-white paper decorating the house. A large masculine smear across something female and delicate, like tobacco staining an evening gown. Well, what did it signify? She would never see it.

  He threw himself down on his chair, still cradling the decanter. His wife would have known the words to put him in a better mood. She had been there, leaning over his shoulder, whispering in his ear, for more than a score of years. Now she was silent, just like his peers.

  It had never been fashionable to devote oneself to the study of phthisis. Foolhardy, his friends would say, for everyone knew the disease was incurable. But Ernest could not accept that damning statement, and it enraged him that others would swallow such dross. What kind of a healer simply threw up his hands and said there was nothing to be done? He swirled the brandy around its decanter, watching the light play upon the liquid. ‘All diseases began as incurable,’ he muttered.

  And that was another thing. If consumptives were doomed from birth, unable to be saved, how was it he had incurred such scorn? You could not, in good sense, brand a disease as unbeatable and simultaneously blame a man for not being able to treat it. But that was what had happened to him, all the same.

  The light reflected off the glass and caught on the mourning ring adorning his smallest finger. Her hair, plaited with that of the two children. He could scarcely tell one from the other. Letters were engraved beneath the glass: L for Louisa, C for Catherine and F for Francis, but this felt like a falsehood. Catherine had been Kitty from birth and Louisa, his dearest wife, he had always called Mopsy.

  That was what she resembled: a mopsy, a pretty child. Always slender and fine boned. So innocent with the roses in her cheeks and the sparkle of her eyes, and yet mischief would suddenly possess her elfin face. He sighed, set the decanter down precariously on the desk. He should have noticed from the start. But he was young then, he had not even completed his studies when the discovery of little Louise necessitated their marriage. He saw only Mopsy’s enchantment, not that she was what others would call the ‘consumptive type’.

  Was that it? A certain type of person, selected by the disease with almost religious predestination? There could be no doubt that Kitty and Francis resembled their mother, whereas Louise was the spit of him, a feminine version of him, save for her mother’s blue eyes, which blinked owlishly behind her spectacles. He riffled through the papers and found again the list of prisoners en route from Bodmin gaol. Men ranging from their mid-twenties to sixty years of age, serving hard labour for their crimes. Their existence rather belied the theory. He would be a good deal surprised if these ruffians and vagabonds resembled his dainty wife in any shape or form.

  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 sounded 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.