Scarlet Widow (2 page)

‘I give you – the Wooden Rat!’ he exclaimed, and whipped the cloth away.

Standing on the bench, staring at Beatrice with beady black eyes, was a large brindled rat. Beatrice squealed and jumped back, holding her apron up to her face. She was terrified of rats. Only two weeks ago, when visiting her friend Lucy in Cock Lane, they had heard screaming from her baby brother Rufus. They had rushed into his nursery to find out what was wrong and discovered that a huge grey rat had climbed into his crib and was biting at his face.

‘Don’t be frightened, Bea!’ said her father. ‘This fellow can do you no harm at all!’ With that, he picked up the rat and knocked it against the side of the workbench. It was completely rigid, and it made a tapping sound as if it were carved out of solid mahogany.

Beatrice still stayed well back, frowning. ‘Is it real?’ she asked. ‘It has fur, and whiskers, and real teeth!’

‘It is quite real, my darling! I trapped it myself in the water butt in the garden!’

‘So what did you do to it? How did you make it all woody like that?’

‘Aha! First of all, I put it to sleep by placing it inside a glass flagon and extracting all the air, so that it could no longer breathe. Then, when it had expired, I gently simmered its body for two days in this linseed oil. After that, I removed it from the oil, and drained it, and washed it, and allowed it to cool, and here it is, completely harmless, a plaything instead of a pest!’

‘It’s
horrible
,’ said Beatrice. ‘I wouldn’t want to play with it!’

‘Very well, yes, I can understand that, Bea, it’s a rat. I chose it for my first experiment because it was vermin. But one could equally turn kittens or puppies or baby rabbits into wooden toys and they would be far more charming.’

‘No, they wouldn’t! How can you say that? Kittens and puppies and baby rabbits? That would be so
cruel
!’

Her father looked taken aback. ‘One would only use unwanted animals, Bea, and strays. What would happen to them otherwise? Either they would starve or they would be tied in a sack and thrown into the river. At least the animals chosen for this treatment would pass away painlessly, and after they had passed away they would continue to bring pleasure and amusement to any child who owned them, for years to come.

‘Here,’ said her father, holding out the rat. ‘Feel it, stroke it. It won’t bite you.’

Beatrice reluctantly prodded the rat with her fingertip. It felt completely hard and its fur was sharp and bristly, like a scrubbing-brush.

‘It’s
horrible
,’ she insisted.

‘Well, yes, that’s as may be. It’s a rat, after all. But it’s a rat that looks exactly as it did when it was alive –
exactly
– and that’s another use for this treatment. Taxidermy.’

Beatrice shook her head to show her father that she didn’t know what ‘taxidermy’ was. She was only twelve, after all.

‘Taxidermy is when you stuff dead animals and mount them, so that people can put them on display. You know, like stags’ heads, and parrots, and fish in glass cases.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Beatrice. ‘There’s that stuffed greyhound, isn’t there, outside Shephard’s Coffee House? That always used to frighten me. I used to think it might suddenly come alive and chase after me.’

Her father smiled. ‘Yes, but wouldn’t you agree that it’s a very queer-looking greyhound indeed? All lopsided, with a crooked tail, and a very silly grin. That’s because it takes tremendous skill and anatomical knowledge to restore a dead animal’s natural shape and features, and very few taxidermists have the ability to do that.

‘This way, however,’ he said, and held up his solidified rat, ‘
this
way, any creature will look exactly as it did when it was living and breathing.’

He paused, and then he said, ‘Perhaps one day one might be able to do the same with people. You know, if you had lost a loved one...’

‘
Papa
,’ Beatrice admonished him.

‘No, of course,’ said her father. ‘It was just a thought.’ He turned the solidified rat this way and that, then set it down on his workbench. ‘You really don’t like this, then? I thought perhaps you might.’

Beatrice emphatically shook her head.

‘Well, you’re much more like your mother than me,’ her father told her. He put his arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her hair. ‘Your mother wouldn’t hurt a bottle-bee.’

They went back outside, into the herb garden, and her father locked the outbuilding door behind him. As they walked back towards the kitchen door, they heard her mother coughing again, more persistently this time. When they went inside, they found her leaning over the sink and wiping her mouth with a handkerchief.

‘Nancy, that cough sounds worse,’ said Clement.

She pumped water into the sink to wash away the spit that she had coughed up. ‘I’m all right, Clement. It’s this summer cold, that’s all. You know how weak my chest is. Are you ready for your breakfast, Bea? What did papa have to show you?’

‘It was a rat turned into wood. It was
ugh
.’

‘A real rat?’

Beatrice sat down at the kitchen table and her mother brought her over a bowl of porridge.

‘Bea didn’t care for it much,’ said her father. ‘But I’m trying to find a way for people to preserve living creatures exactly as they are, forever.’

‘Is that possible?’ asked Nancy. ‘I didn’t think that anything could last forever.’

Clement stayed in the doorway, watching her, without saying anything. Beatrice glanced up at him as she ate her porridge and she couldn’t understand why he looked so concerned.

After a few moments he said, ‘I had better finish dressing, my dear, and open up the shop. I will have customers beating at the door before I know it.’

‘I’ll make you some tea,’ said Nancy, and coughed, and then coughed some more.

*

Beatrice was woken up in the early hours of the morning by her mother’s coughing. Through her bedroom wall she heard her father talking to her, and the creaking of their bed, and then she saw a light outside her room as he went downstairs. She heard the pump squeaking in the kitchen as he drew her some water.

She climbed out of bed and cautiously opened her door and went across the landing to her parents’ chamber. Her mother was sitting up in bed, propped up by pillows. She looked deathly white and was pressing a handkerchief to her mouth. She was obviously about to say something, but then she started coughing again. Beatrice came around the bed and stood patiently next to her until she had stopped.

‘Don’t come too close to me, Bea,’ said her mother, wiping her mouth. ‘I don’t want you to catch whatever it is that ails me.’

Even though her mother had scrunched up her handkerchief into her fist, Beatrice couldn’t help noticing that it was spotted with pink.

‘Mama, I should go for the doctor.’

‘There’s no need for that. Your father is making me up a mixture to ease my cough. I need sleep more than anything else.’

She coughed again, and this time she retched into her handkerchief, and it was flooded red with blood.

‘Papa!’ called Beatrice, in a panic. ‘
Papa
!’

She heard her father hurrying up the stairs. He came into the chamber in his long white nightgown and gently moved her to one side so that he could sit on the bed next to her mother. She coughed again and sprayed his nightgown with speckles of blood.

‘Bea, please bring me a cloth,’ said her father. ‘Anything will do. You’ll find some in the bottom drawer there.’

Beatrice pulled open the drawer and took out a small linen tablecloth, which he unfolded with a shake and gave to her mother. She coughed some more, holding the cloth over her mouth, but she brought up no more blood, only pink-streaked sputum. Her father held her shoulders as she sat struggling for breath, her chest rising and falling with a sharp crackling sound.

‘How do you feel now?’ he asked her after a while, and she nodded, although her eyes kept darting around the room as if she couldn’t understand what she was doing there.

He turned to Beatrice and said, ‘Bea, there’s a cup of water on the kitchen table, as well as a green glass bottle. Would you please bring them up here? And a spoon, too.’

When Beatrice had climbed back up the stairs, carrying the cup and bottle, her father helped her mother to sip a little water. After that, he gave her two spoonfuls of the emerald-green medicine that he had prepared. ‘There, my dearest. Betony water and lungwort, mixed with a little honey. That should ease the rheum on your lungs. Try to get some sleep now. You should feel much better in the morning.’

He helped her to lie down and turn on her side, and he drew the pale yellow blanket up to her neck. The chamber was warm and stuffy, but she was shivering and perspiring and her teeth were chattering.

He took Beatrice back to her room. ‘She is so much
worse
,’ said Beatrice, worriedly, looking across the corridor at her mother lying in bed. ‘This morning she said it was only a cold. Why is she coughing up blood?’

‘I believe she may have the consumption,’ said her father. ‘Let us pray not, but we will see how she feels in a few hours’ time. The physic I have given her should help.’

‘Will we have to take her to the hospital?’

Her father said, ‘St Thomas’s? No. I can treat her here at home just as well as any of the doctors in that cesspit. But before you go back to sleep, Bea, do ask God to take care of her, won’t you, and make her well again?’

Beatrice nodded and hugged him. His beard prickled her cheek and she thought of the rat, with its bristly fur, and then she thought of what her father had said about preserving people. She could see her mother staring at the candle beside her bed, her beautiful mother with her dark curls spread out across the pillow. She didn’t want to think about losing her, or what would happen to her if she died.

Her mother started coughing again and so her father kissed Beatrice on the forehead and went back to his chamber, and closed the door.

Beatrice climbed back into bed and lay there for a long time with her eyes open. It was hard to say a prayer, with her mother continually coughing, let alone sleep. When she did eventually doze off she dreamed that she walked into the parlour to find her mother sitting by the window, holding up her embroidery hoop. As she approached her, however, she saw that her needle was poised but her hands were motionless.

‘Mama,’ she heard herself saying, in a blurry voice. ‘Mama!’

But her mother didn’t answer, or even turn to look at her. Before she was halfway across the parlour, Beatrice realized that her mother was dead and that her father had turned her into wood.

*

Three weeks later, Beatrice awoke one morning and the house was silent.

Her mother had been coughing and coughing almost continuously for days and nights on end, but now she seemed to have stopped. Outside, on Giltspur Street, it was warm and windy. She could see waste paper flying past her upstairs window and hear the muffled cacophony of street peddlers shouting and cartwheels grinding on the cobbles. Inside, however, the air was stifling and there was no sound at all.

She drew back her blankets and went across to her parents’ room. Her father was kneeling on the floor beside the bed, his head bowed, holding her mother’s hand. Her mother was lying on the pillow with her eyes closed, perfectly still, not breathing.

‘Papa?’ Beatrice whispered.

Her father turned to her, and she had never seen anybody’s face look so stricken.

‘Mama is with God now, Bea,’ he told her. ‘From now on, it’s just you and me, with nobody to care for us but ourselves.’

The day of Nancy Bannister’s funeral was warm, but gloomy, with low grey cloud. Before the service she lay on view in the parlour, dressed in a white woollen shroud with her head resting on a white woollen pillow, as required by the Burial in Woollens Act.

Beatrice approached the coffin with her father holding her hand. Without a word he lifted the flannel that covered her mother’s face. Beatrice pressed her hand over her mouth. She could scarcely believe that this figure was her mother. Her face was the colour of ivory, and her eyes were as deep and dark as two inkwells.

‘Don’t be alarmed, Bea,’ said her father. ‘Your mother is in heaven now, smiling and laughing. This is nothing more than the body that bore her suffering for her.’

The coffin was carried from the parlour into the street outside, where a hearse drawn by two black horses was waiting to take it the short distance to St James’s Church in Clerkenwell Close. A silent procession set off, led by the balding young parson, the parson’s mute, and a feather-man with a tray of black ostrich feathers balanced on his head. It began to feel like rain.

In the church, in a high, sing-song voice the balding young parson extolled Nancy’s virtues as a wife and a mother and then commended her soul to God. The church echoed so that it sounded as if three parsons were all talking at once. The bell was rung six times, as was customary for a woman. Afterwards, the bearers took Nancy’s coffin down to the crypt to join more than two hundred others from St James’s parish who slept together in the darkness.

The rain didn’t start to patter down until the funeral guests had returned to the house, and then it began to dribble down the windows like tears. Nancy’s sisters, Jane and Felicity, served tea and cinnamon cake, while Clement handed round glasses of port wine. His hand trembled as he did so, and his face was so ashen with grief that he looked ill.

‘Now you shall have to be the lady of the house, young Beatrice,’ said her Aunt Felicity. ‘No more schooling at Mrs Tutchin’s, I imagine.’

‘Not a bit of it,’ said Clement. ‘Bea shall carry on with her classes, just as before.’

‘But, Clement! How on earth will you
manage
? You don’t look at all well, if you don’t mind my saying so! I don’t want to be back here before Christmas for another funeral!’

Clement shook his head. ‘Every young girl needs French, and mathematics, and logic, as well as cookery and plain-work. But Bea shall help me with the business, too. She has always shown a great aptitude for mixing medications, ever since she was old enough to hold a spoon. She preferred it to baking biscuits with her mother. One day, you mark my words, she will be London’s first and most celebrated female apothecary.’