Bone China Read online

  Louise motioned with her hand. ‘That will be all, Creeda.’

  Creeda curtseyed and retreated with a foreboding expression.

  Louise poured herself more tea, but she could not shake her feeling of discomfort. To think of something malignant, trying to hurt dear Pompey! It was just another of the unfortunate maid’s many delusions, of course, and yet she kept remembering the way Pompey had stared up at the cliff and barked. How the land had cracked without rain, without warning.

  If Harry had not been there …

  ‘I must beg your congratulations this morning, my dear,’ Papa said as he bit into his muffin. ‘Aside from our rogue Harry, the men slept soundly last night. I have observed an increase in vigour since the pipes were introduced.’

  She was able to give the first genuine smile of the morning. ‘I am glad to hear it! They were an excellent notion, Papa.’ Absent-mindedly, she picked a crumb off her own muffin and offered it to Pompey. ‘But what of Tim and Michael? I fear they fare rather worse than the others.’

  Papa held up a finger. ‘Yes, but that is because the disease is more advanced in them. It has had longer to grab a hold. Do not fret, I have a plan for them too, which we shall implement later today. It came to me last night, as I slept. Possibly at the same time that canine imp you are rewarding was attempting to kill my patients.’

  How pleasant it was to hear him jest again. Were it not for the empty chairs at the breakfast table, she could almost convince herself they were back in old times.

  ‘Do you truly think we will manage to heal them, Papa?’

  ‘I do,’ he replied emphatically. ‘I can feel … Oh, you will laugh at me, no doubt.’ He shook his head, but a smile still played about his lips. ‘I know this is right, Louise. Our fate, our calling, our purpose. After all we have suffered, this is what we were meant for. God is with us … and your dear mother.’

  His last words made her tea bowl rattle against its saucer. Looking into his face, she saw his eyes were ablaze with zeal.

  ‘I do not say this to upset you. But I feel her, Louise, guiding me.’

  Absurdly, Louise felt a spurt of jealousy. It was she who needed Mama’s guidance. And she had felt nothing – save the great crater her mother had left behind.

  ‘We do it all in Mama’s name,’ she said, as steadily as she could manage. ‘She would be proud of you. Very proud. I know it.’

  He looked down at the tablecloth. ‘I fear I have alarmed you. Do I sound extremely fanciful?’

  They had prayed for help from heaven. If it had come, she should be grateful. And she must bear in mind that Papa had been nursing late at night. Weariness could be a kind of fever. She knew all too well that when all you saw for hours was sickness and death, your musings could take the strangest turns.

  In the distance she could hear Creeda washing up pans, and the steady beat of the sea. Was it her imagination, or had the breakfast set grown? There seemed to be more blue and white patterns, more Nancarrow Bone China. As if Creeda’s past were slowly spreading across their table.

  She reached out and took her father’s hand. ‘What will we do, Papa? What shall we do after we find the cure?’

  ‘Oh, Louise.’ He blew out his breath. His features grew rapt. ‘Once I have slayed this demon … What shall I not do?’

  Chapter 25

  Ernest was not used to being repelled by his patients. He had attended on countless deathbeds, births and post-mortems. But since they had shaved Michael’s beard, the man’s head appeared uncannily small upon the pillow. The neck supporting it was swanlike, the shoulders beneath steep and sloping. Put together, his body looked less than human.

  A damned stupid thing to say, of course. It was human. When he scarified that narrow, heaving chest, it would bleed like any normal person.

  ‘Water,’ Michael gasped.

  ‘I have only this milk for the present,’ he said, pressing the pewter cup into Michael’s slender hand. He noticed the fingernails, curved and misshapen. ‘Miss Pinecroft shall fetch more drinking water down to us.’

  ‘Water,’ Michael repeated.

  Such a thirst.

  ‘Yes, my good man, it is the water that will cure you. Fine English salt water. None of these gentle, mawkish Italian climates for us but something bracing, more invigorating.’

  He began to unpack the cupping set from its mahogany box, the glass jars rattling and chinking. Did they remember the last flesh they had disfigured? That sweet, young skin. Francis did not bawl in protest, as any other infant would do. The poor child could not draw breath enough to scream.

  Nauseous, Ernest passed a hand over his face. Blue devils. It did not do to dwell upon the past.

  ‘Water.’

  The most powerful element. He had seen it this morning as he descended from the cliff: gunmetal grey, rippling like a horse’s flank. If he concentrated, he could hear it even now, sucking greedily at the sand. One had to listen closely in this cave. To hear the secrets hidden in its depths.

  ‘Water,’ Michael pleaded.

  Creeda spoke of banishing fairies with water. She also claimed that was how the miners freed their china clay from the slurry, by bombarding it with water.

  But water was not enough. He must have fire, too.

  He polished his chosen jar and heated it above the lantern flame. Light swam in the glass, liquid amber. Ernest would have appreciated the beauty, if his mind was not set on the next stage.

  He approached Michael with the scarifying knife and the heated glass. Sure enough, when he nicked the lily-white skin of the man’s chest, it dribbled blood. Ernest exhaled, strangely relieved. What had he truly expected to see?

  He placed the rim of the jar over the cut, fencing it in. Michael twitched and clenched his jaw. The hiss that came from his skin echoed the one issuing from between his teeth.

  The sound was always the worst part. That and the smell. One could not help but think of pork skin, bubbling over a roasting jack.

  Ernest watched the blister form with a vague feeling of dismay. Perhaps it was the dim light, but the sight he had seen a thousand times suddenly appeared brutish, primitive in the extreme. Was this medicine? Healing?

  He recalled the days of observing chirurgical procedures at the hospital. Sawdust and an insufficient box to catch the washes of blood. Patients with handkerchiefs draped over their faces, as if in preparation for a shroud. So few survived. The chasm between mankind’s advancements and the infernal cunning of illness felt wider than ever.

  It would take a revolution to overcome phthisis. An entirely new way of thinking, like the men who had dared to open their minds and believe the world was not flat. His own brain was capable of such a leap. It must be. He could feel so much potential, burning within him.

  Michael’s moaning pulled his thoughts back to the present. That pitiful, sparrow-like breast was surely too frail to endure more blisters. There was a gentler method of drawing bad humours from the chest. He would insert a seton and let the skin weep.

  Michael continued to beg for water. Ernest ignored him and began to fumble in his satchel for the necessary equipment.

  Wind gusted into the cave, bouncing from rock to rock. The lamps flickered. It sounded like the dead whispering.

  ‘Water.’

  ‘Damn it, man!’ he burst out. ‘I have none. Be patient.’

  Ernest tipped up his satchel and cast the contents on the ground. There was the needle and a spool of silk thread. It would be best to start with silk and move up to the bulkier India rubber in a few days’ time.

  ‘Lie back, Michael. The water is coming.’

  Ordinarily, he would need to feel the position of the patient’s ribs to ascertain the correct placement. There was no need for that here. Each one of Michael’s bones stood out prominently. When Ernest threaded the silk cords through the skin, they seemed to become part of the man, moving when he breathed, burrowing ever deeper. Somehow, that simple, bloodless sight was the most revolting Ernest had beheld in h
is career.

  ‘I am hoping for a discharge,’ he explained as he finished. ‘Once that begins, we will—’

  ‘Blast your eyes!’

  The shout that cut him off was followed by a scuffling. Someone whooped.

  ‘Just try it, old man.’ The responder was surely Harry, his voice vaunting and full of disdain.

  ‘I’ll knock your bleedin’ head off!’

  There was a crash.

  Cursing, Ernest abandoned his work and left Michael’s hut.

  He had the sensation of walking into a country fair. Seth and Harry were wrestling in the ashes of the fire circle like common louts. Tim lay on his back, propped up by his elbows, looking on, whilst Chao smoked and cheered from the sidelines.

  ‘Look sharp,’ he said around his pipe stem, ‘here comes the doctor! You’ll be for it now!’

  But the men did not stop.

  Ernest’s temper flared. Did his authority mean nothing, even to these men he had rescued from incarceration? He clenched his jaw – felt like a patient biting down upon the strap. ‘Gentlemen! Come, come. You are not in gaol now.’

  Seth jabbed at Harry’s throat. The already bruised young man fell back, clutching his neck and gasping. Seth scrambled to his feet and spat.

  ‘You keep your hands off my food. Got it?’

  Blood trickled from the corner of Harry’s mouth.

  Ernest seized Seth by the collar.

  ‘What have you done? What kind of imbecilic, degenerate …’ He pushed the man from him, disgusted. ‘Is this sport to you? Is it?’ He looked from one startled face to the next, hardly able to credit the depth of their stupidity. ‘I am trying to save lives! Night after night I spend tending to you in this … hole in the ground! And all you want to do is punch the remaining life out of each other!’

  Seth’s stubborn old mouth set into a line. ‘He drank my milk.’

  Ernest raised his eyes to heaven. ‘Good God! And that is reason enough to kill the man! What do you lack? Do you think I could not supply you with whole pints of milk?’

  Harry scowled. Though his left hand remained on his throat, he managed to struggle up to a sitting position. ‘I didn’t crib it.’ His voice sounded like raked coals. ‘You’re losing your wits, you old coot.’

  Only the strength of Ernest’s glare stopped Seth from going for him again. Instead, he picked up a pewter cup and waved it in Harry’s direction. ‘What do you call that, then? Just upped and went on its own, did it?’

  ‘Why the hell would I want your milk? Like the doctor said, there’s plenty to go around.’

  ‘Then stop filching it!’

  ‘Now listen.’ Ernest inhaled deeply through his nose. ‘This must cease. For shame! Are you men, or a squabbling parcel of old maids?’

  ‘But all us, Doctor!’ Seth whined. ‘We’ve all had cups go empty.’ He pointed a dirty finger at Harry. ‘’Cept him. Old Jack Sneak there.’

  Harry sneered. ‘I an’t sneaking your milk, dotard. If I wanted aught, you’d know about it. I could baste you easier than taking a piss. There’s only one milksop here, and I’m staring right at him.’

  ‘Why, you bleedin’—’

  Seth launched himself forward. Ernest leapt at the same time, grabbing the back of the old man’s shirt. But then a sound rent the air. Something high, crystal and sharp.

  Chao clapped his hands over his ears.

  Seth and Ernest fell to the ground, puppets with their strings cut.

  ‘What …’ Harry gasped. ‘What the hell is that?’

  Ernest felt the ringing in his teeth. He fought his way out from beneath the old man’s bony frame. Everyone was frozen, entranced.

  Somehow the noise was as familiar to him as a well-loved voice. He knew he had heard it before, heard it in his dreams.

  Cautiously, he rose to his feet. ‘I think it is coming from Michael’s hut.’

  To his astonishment, the men shrank back. Chao bit his pipe and began to shuffle towards his own wooden home. For all their puff, they were cowards. What had they to fear?

  He followed it.

  Distantly, he was aware of Harry dogging his steps, the harsh grate as he cleared his throat.

  The ringing swelled. As he crossed the threshold into Michael’s hut, it nestled in the base of his skull. What could it be? There was nothing remarkable here. The space was as Ernest had left it: partially lit with shadows darting like minnows about the walls. Only …

  He frowned, puzzled. There was a change. The cupping set.

  It was packed neatly away into its box.

  Each jar shivered gently within the velvet lining of the chest. The lid remained thrown back, as if to display their tiny spasms.

  A memory stirred with the sound. That was where he had heard it before: on the streets of Bristol. A performer begging coin, running the wet tips of his fingers over glass rims to release their song.

  But there was no entertainer here. Only the cursed figure of Michael in the corner, confined to his bed, his skin sunk down on the trellis of his bones.

  Ernest looked from the chest to the bed and back again, certain he would comprehend shortly. But all that came to him was a nervous twitch in the throat.

  There was no conceivable way Michael could have risen and packed all the jars.

  ‘Devil fetch me.’ Harry lurked in the doorway, his eyes circular. Both men stared at the trembling cupping set together, in the profound manner they would watch over a corpse. ‘Doctor, how can …’

  ‘The wind,’ he said shortly. He used that explanation to shield himself as he stepped forward and firmly closed the mahogany lid. ‘Simply, the effect of the wind, blowing around the glass.’

  Harry remained silent.

  Self-conscious, Ernest placed the chest under his arm. ‘This has been a damnable waste of a morning, Harry. Brawling and conjuring tricks do nothing for your condition. Go on, back to your hut with you. Oblige me by resting.’

  Harry stroked a contusion on his cheek, thinking still. Ernest saw that his words had not convinced him. The man was no dupe.

  ‘Didn’t think the wind could make that kind of noise,’ he said suspiciously.

  ‘What else could it possibly be?’

  But even as he scoffed, Ernest felt the motion, quivering in his armpit. He heard a drone, muffled yet certainly there, ringing on and on beneath the mahogany lid.

  *

  Last night Louise had negotiated the dark veins of the cave, holding Harry’s hand. She knew full well that they led out to another beach on the other side of the cliff. Yet as she approached the entrance to their little underground colony, she experienced the same uncomfortable sensation as always. There was the umbra: its depth, its immensity. She could almost imagine it reaching out and dragging her in, a pit ready to swallow her whole.

  Placing her buckets of water on the sand, she pulled down her cuffs and scrubbed at the salt freckling her spectacles. Pipe bowls glowed in the darkness.

  She loitered on the edge of the cave, reluctant to enter into that smog. The men had seemed pleased to receive tobacco, never mind what was mixed with it, but Louise hated the stuff. The way it clung to her skin, even her hair.

  ‘Louise? Is that you?’

  Taking a deep breath of fresh air to see her through, she stepped inside the cave.

  Chao and Seth sat together on a rock, smoking and talking in whispers. Her father stood apart from them, jacket removed, his hands upon his hips. This morning’s poise and confidence had deserted him. She did not like the tight knit of his brow, or the way he ran a hand through his hair. In Bristol, he had usually worn a wig, but the sea winds made that impractical here. Now he tied his hair back with a single black ribbon. It had a natural curl, which was not helped by his habit of rumpling it when perplexed. The wayward locks made him look rather frantic, not at all like the polished physician that had attended upon Lord Redfern.

  ‘Papa?’

  ‘Oh, it is you. Good. Michael has been calling for water incessantly.�
��

  ‘The buckets are just outside.’

  ‘And I see you also brought the balsam and wound water for Harry’s nose.’

  ‘I did.’

  He turned from her, began to dig through the contents of his satchel. ‘I have cupped Michael and inserted a seton. Tim will require a similar treatment. His fever ravings … the delirium … I have left him insisting that a hag sat on his chest and rode him all night. I cannot for the life of me begin to—’ He jerked his head up, like Pompey when he scented a rabbit. ‘What did you say?’

  She frowned. ‘Nothing, Papa.’

  ‘Nothing?’ He glanced furtively towards the back of the cave. ‘Listen … There! Do you really not hear that?’

  Louise closed her eyes and stretched her senses. There were layers of sound – the wind whooping softly, and the constant hum of the waves. Somewhere, distantly, water falling in its own slow, repetitive beat.

  ‘I can hear a drip,’ she offered.

  Papa shook himself. ‘Very well, very well. I must have imagined it. This morning has been testing, to say the least. See to Harry, if you please.’

  She was loath to leave her father so distraught, but she knew disobeying his orders would only vex him more. Collecting her supplies, she made her way to Harry’s hut.

  The young man was sitting at the entrance, spine straight against the wooden wall. It was impossible to view him without a flush of gratitude. He had certainly taken a knocking for Pompey. The damage appeared even more alarming than it had last night; brown and purple mantled his face, blooming up to his eyebrows. He looked like a prizefighter.

  ‘Good morning, Harry. How are you?’

  ‘Tolerable.’ A squashed voice, struggling through cartilage. It made her wince. ‘And you, Louise?’

  A good turn did not warrant the familiar use of her Christian name. ‘My name is Miss Pinecroft,’ she replied stiffly.

  Rather than offending him, her pride made him smile. She noticed a missing tooth, high up towards the back. Had that shaken loose last night?

  ‘Haughty as you like. And here’s me, having lost my good looks for your dog’s sake.’