Will Starling (2 page)

1

8th April, 1816

(Twenty-three days earlier)

The day had begun splendidly for Dionysus Atherton, though not so well for Ronald Peake.

Peake had a go at dying game. He tottered unassisted up the steps, and reaching the scaffold he raised his head and cried in quavering defiance to the multitude: “Soon I shall know the Great Secret!” But his nerve broke on the last syllable, and after that it was dunghill all the way, which was as much as anyone expected. Peake was a weedy little man, a poisoner. He took to caterwauling as Mr Langley the hangman tied up the halter and put on the white hood, and with his last uninterrupted breath was heard to cry out for his mother — which was dunghill as it gets, considering as his Ma was the one he poisoned. Then all words were gone with a hempen thud, and a great roar went up from the twenty thousand who had gathered outside Newgate Prison on this clear bright April morning.

Dionysus Atherton consulted his timepiece, and made a note: the subject dropped at one minute past eight.

The subject was now jerking like a fish on a line, since Mr Langley had not dropped him far, just the customary six inches. The rate of strangulation would depend upon several factors, none of which favoured Ronald Peake, whose weight — so Atherton had estimated with his practised eye — was no more than eight stone. Worse, Peake had no friends to offer financial encouragement, without which Mr Langley would not have waxed the rope. In the death cell Peake had broken down and admitted poisoning his mother, an elderly widow with whom he had lived throughout his adult life, on the grounds that she fed him slop. This revelation was detailed in his Last Dying Confession. Such a document was a time-honoured tradition at hangings, hastily printed on broadsheet and hawked about for a penny. The Revd Dr Cotton, spiritual adviser to the inmates of Newgate, was widely believed to be the source of the information, for which printers would pay handsomely.

At 8.04 the jerking ceased momentarily, before resuming with greater vigour.

Atherton stood in the very thickest of the crush. Here in the shadow of the gallows he was wedged in on all sides, which made it awkward to negotiate pencil and notebook. He might have bought a place in a shop window opposite, or upon a nearby balcony, amongst the young swells and the well-fed family groupings. There he might have observed unmolested, with keen scientific detachment. But that wouldn't prime the vital juices like standing with the throng. And nothing stirred the blood quite like a hanging.

“There is such life in it.”

He had spoken aloud.

“Well, not f'much longer, ducks. But ent 'ee 'avin' a go! Dancing all the way to the churchyard, that one — 'ats off, there, you in front!”

A slattern, wedged by his elbow. Arched on tiptoes for a better glimpse, and eyeing him slantways.

“One of them scribblers, are you? Penny-a-line feller?”

Atherton chuckled by way of reply.

“No, then? No, you don't look the sort. Grubby little buggers, most of 'em. Wotcher doing then, 'andsome?”

“I am extending the range of human possibility.”

She would have been quite fetching in her prime, with all her teeth and the dew of her youth upon her. Even now — two-and-twenty, at the least — she retained a cheerful fuckability. Her name, Atherton decided, should be Blossom.

“I got a room,” said Blossom. “Not far. Extend something else f'yez, if you like.”

Peake gave a twitch after some moments of dangling like an empty sack, and resumed thrashing. He was given up for dead at 8.12, and again at 8.17 and 8.33. All movement finally ceased at 8.48, and death was pronounced at two minutes past nine. But when the moment had actually come — or whether indeed it had come yet at all, as they cut him down and loaded him onto the cart — could not be said with certainty. Death's mechanism remained a mystery, despite all the advancements of Science. Dionysus Atherton knew that as well as any man in London. It was almost as great as the Mystery of what might come after.

*

Blossom's room was in Seacoal Lane, but they stopped in an alley nearby. It stank of piss and worse, but it was relatively private, and Blossom was duly encouraged onto her knees. Morning sun beamed in a warm shaft through the buildings as she tugged Atherton's breeches down about his thighs. There was nothing like it, he thought: sunlight upon his face, and an April breeze playing gently about the nethers, as Blossom bobbed briskly. Spreading his arms, he imagined himself upon a balcony in Rome, blessing multitudes.

Afterwards he gave her half a guinea. Whatever else he may have been, he was never mean with his purse. It wanted four minutes of ten when he arrived at Bowell and Son, in the warren of streets behind St Bart's Hospital. The sign above the door showed a painted coffin.

Peake was in the cellar, he was informed, the cart from Newgate having arrived some minutes earlier.

“How many minutes?”

The undertaker consulted his own timepiece. “Seven.”

At 9.49 the clatter of hooves had been heard in the yard without, and at 9.51 the Subject had been unloaded. Yes, Mr Bowell assured the surgeon, these times were exact, Mr Bowell's timepiece being an instrument of great precision. It had been passed down from his grandfather to his father, both highly punctilious men, as was the present Mr Bowell.

Atherton frowned. The corpse cut down at 9.02, and in the cart by 9.04. Then another forty-five minutes before its arrival here, not half a mile away?

“Teeming humanity, Mr Atherton. The welter of the living. The cart must negotiate the crowd as it leaves the Event.”

The undertaker gave a sigh, expressive of the ultimate futility of all mortal endeavour. His was a gaunt face with a blunt jaw and high cheek-bones, curiously reminiscent of a coffin. One wondered if he was born that way, or whether this was related to the phenomenon — well-known, though not Scientifically authenticated — by which owners came to resemble their dogs.

“Does Mr Atherton wish to view the Subject?”

He did, though he misliked those forty-five minutes. The delay would make no difference in the present case, since he intended no procedure upon this particular corpse beyond dissection — the customary carving-up in the reeking, shrieking charnel house at St Thomas's Hospital. But there were other procedures — there was One, in particular — for which he was gathering data and laying his plans. And forty-five minutes could well pose an obstacle, should he attempt it upon a corpse from the Newgate gallows.

“I will send my man round this evening to collect it,” he said. “Keep it here for me 'til then.”

The undertaker inclined his coffin-shaped head. This was no trouble; and even if it were, trouble would be gladly taken on Mr Atherton's behalf. Mr Atherton had always been kind, very generous indeed. There was a twitching of the cheeks, followed by a painstaking elevation of the corners of the mouth, as though Mr Bowell's smile were an outcome achieved via levers and pulleys.

“And how is the boy?” asked Atherton.

The smile creaked into an expression of regret.

“The apprentice, you mean? Still amongst the living, Mr Atherton. Still with us in this vale of tears. But he declines.”

 

The boy's name was Isaac Bliss. He was crouched over a work-bench as they came down the stairs, his back bowed like a barrel hoop.

The workshop was a cellar room, dank and smelling of sawdust, with planks of wood stacked against one wall and a coffin taking shape upon a trestle. Light struggled in from one small window opening onto the yard; on sunny days, dust-motes would dance before Isaac. Nothing danced behind him, for behind was the room where the Subjects were laid out for preparation. Isaac could feel them at his back, as he worked; just there, on the other side of the wall, staring sightless at the roof beams. Sometimes when old timbers creaked he imagined it the sound of necks rotating, as they turned their faces towards him.
Plink-plink
went pennies, falling from eyelids.

“You have a visitor, Bliss,” said Mr Bowell.

Isaac turned, but didn't straighten. Isaac never straightened. Because of this he had come cheap from the Foundling Hospital in Lamb's Conduit Fields, bent foundlings being available at a discount.

“It's the medical gentleman. Come to visit you again, of the goodness of his heart.”

“Hello, young Isaac,” said Atherton. Smiling, for they were chums. He had noticed the boy some weeks ago, and come back several times to visit.

Isaac recoiled — as best a boy may do, whose back is bowed like a barrel hoop.

“Get away,” he said.

“Bliss!” exclaimed the undertaker.

“You lied to me, Mr Bowell. 'Ee's not a doctor — 'ee's a
surgeon
!”

He said the word as if it might summon the Fiend.

Mr Bowell's mouth turned down dramatically. The expression came naturally, and did not require mechanical assistance. “Who told you such a thing?”

There was movement at the top of the stairs. Thos Bowell the Younger peered down: a spotty youth of sixteen, trying not to look like a young viper with nothing better to do than to torment defective apprentices.

His progenitor continued to glower. “This gentleman is your benefactor, Bliss. You have your Place because of this gentleman!”

True enough. Discovering that Isaac was even more defective than he had supposed, the undertaker had been set to send him back to the Foundling Hospital. But Atherton, upon noticing the boy, had intervened, offering to reimburse Mr Bowell for Isaac's keep, with a little bit extra to offset inconvenience. Now he dropped to one knee, regarding Isaac earnestly. “I want to help you,” he said.

“I know what you want.”

“Does the pain grow worse?”

“There ent no pain,” swore Isaac, clenching himself against it.

“Is it harder to breathe?”

“Never.”

The curvature of the spine had been more pronounced each time Atherton had come. Today there was a rattling in the lungs. Isaac's eyes were huge and hollow.

“I'm fine, sir. Right as rain. So please go an' 'elp someone else.”

He was twelve years old. Isaac Bliss was the name he had been given at the Foundling Hospital, where they were famous for the whimsicality of their naming. Isaac's only friend there had been Augustus Rectitude; the two of them had been daily cowed by a girl called Janet Friendly.

“Let me listen to your lungs.”

“No,” said Isaac, shrinking further.

“I won't hurt you.”

“You're not to put me there,” the boy burst out. “Not on one of them shelves you 'ave!”

“What shelves?”

“The ones you've got in the locked room at that 'ouse of yours, full of 'orrors! The little lamb with two 'eads, and the baby crorkindill, and them other things without they even got names, all twisted in jars!”

Bowell the Younger still hovered atop the stairs. Atherton shot him a look that had pure murder in it. But his face was mild as he turned back to poor Isaac.

“There is no such room in my house, and no such shelf, and no such intention of mine,” he said. “You have my word upon it, as your friend.”

He spoke with earnest intensity, holding Isaac with his gaze. He had blue, blue eyes, did Dionysus Atherton. The bluest eyes that ever yet existed.

“I'll tell you something else,” he said. “Nature is a most cunning physician. I've seen fellows sink much lower than you — many of them, Isaac, and they were given up for lost — who awoke one fine morning and rose to their feet and snapped their fingers at the doctor. I've seen it often and again — snapped their fingers at him, exclaiming ‘A fig, sir, for your powders and your potions!'”

He leaned in close, and lowered his voice. Isaac's whole world was the blue of those eyes.

“It is my private opinion, young Isaac, that you may outlive the lot of us. And so I ask you for a favour, friend to friend. On the day of my funeral — and may it be many years from now — on the day of my funeral, you must pause for a little moment, as you hear the procession pass by. You must say, to whosoever might be close to hand: ‘There passes a man whom I knew in my youth. He did his best, and helped where he could, and I pray God will pardon the rest.' And then, young Isaac — this is most important of all — you must raise your hand in my honour, and snap your fingers.”

It would have warmed every cockle of your heart if you'd been there to see, cos a flicker of actual hope had kindled in Isaac's eyes. This was Atherton's gift, one of so very many. He could summon such powers of reassurance that you could not help but believe him. And for the span of a slow spreading smile — in the pure blue radiance of the moment — I swear that Dionysus Atherton believed himself.

He slipped the boy a sixpence.

“There,” exclaimed Mr Bowell. “Now, Bliss — what do you say to your benefactor?”

Bent like a barrel hoop, Isaac twisted his head to look up at the surgeon. A tremulous smile tugged. He raised one spindly arm, and snapped his fingers.

Atherton clapped his hands in delight. “Well done, young Isaac!”

Outside, he paused for a private word with Bowell the Younger, explaining what he would do to vipers who tormented defectives — the description would wake Young Thos up six nights running, with the gibbering meemies — after which he gave an extra guinea to the undertaker.

“Treat Isaac well,” he said quietly. “Do you understand me, Mr Bowell? The scoliosis is grievously advanced, and there is nothing to be done. But he is a human creature, and deserves your consideration. Do not work him over-hard. Make sure he has sufficient food, and a blanket at night. And send me word directly, when he fails.”

*

And you may say to Your Umble Narrator: How do you know? Were you there on that day to witness? At the hanging, or at Bowell's, or in that alley near Seacoal Lane where Blossom bobbed and Dionysus Atherton imagined himself exalted? Were you inside the man's head, to hear his inmost thoughts and share the deepest intimations of his heart?