The Resurrectionist of Caligo

by Wendy Trimboli

  Upper stories leaned in over the street, with a sliver of sky visible above. Doxies swished their canary and vermillion frocks from doorways. Though seedy, the district had a touch more class than Roger’s haunts on Goatmonger Street.

  “That one.” Ada pulled his coat and pointed. A faded clapboard sign read Eglantine’s Den of Delights. “Ask for Miss Estella. She’ll take you up, like the regular gent you ain’t.”

  “What of you, Ghostofmary? Don’t you want to see your ma?”

  Ada shook her thick mop of hair. “She don’t want me here. I’ll wait outside.” She climbed onto the lid of a rain barrel set back in an alcove. Concealed in shadow, she again looked more ghost than girl.

  Roger hid his instrument case – a knife roll he’d once nicked from the royal kitchens – under his coat. With a last glance at Ada, he straightened his posture and entered the bawdyhouse. Inside, he found a drawing room upholstered in dingy red velvet. The air smelled musky and feminine. A few girls slouched in threadbare chairs, heels kicked up to show off their calves, and one of them plucked an out-of-tune harp. Half a dozen bored faces tracked Roger’s movements. He hoped they didn’t care he was dressed for a funeral.

  “Is there a Miss Estella?” He forced a confidence into his voice that came out with an awkward shrillness. “I understand I’m expected.”

  The harp twanged as the woman abruptly stood. “Come with me, sir. If you’re here about the two-for-one, we shan’t disappoint.” A rougher accent seeped through her posh diction. She was tall, with broad shoulders and a pinched waist under a plum-colored taffeta gown. Her dark hair hung in stiff curls to her shoulders like loosed springs. “Weathersby?” Estella asked, lighting a candle from the gas font.

  “Aye, miss.” Roger noticed lines under her face-powder, suggesting she wasn’t quite the lily-fresh girl as advertised by the cut of her dress.

  “Tell me you didn’t bring the mudlark.” She led him up winding spiral stairs.

  “She’s waiting outside. Out of sight.”

  “Good. Some patrons here have certain tastes. We don’t want them getting the wrong idea about that one.”

  They ascended to the third floor and walked the length of a low hallway to the final door.

  “Thank you for agreeing to come, doctor. We rarely get your type here. The bleeding-heart eager to break the law on our account, that is. Since the queen passed her ban, most doctors we see are the ones ribboning their maypole.”

  Roger forced a smile and passed a hand over the roll of medical instruments hidden in his coat. “First do no harm, as they say.”

  Estella tapped on the door. “Celeste, it’s that man you were waiting for.” She nudged Roger into the room and slid in behind him.

  The chamber was small but cozy. A canopy bed with dark red curtains took up most of the floor. Roger had expected to find an invalid tucked under a coverlet. Instead he faced a woman of about thirty years with hair black as a mourning veil. She wore only a blue corset and a frill of lace undergarments, and sat in a wingback chair before a tiny lit fireplace. At first glance she seemed healthy enough, but as Roger approached he noticed her jaundiced skin, her knobby elbows, and the dark bruises under her eyes,

  “You should be wrapped in a warm blanket, lying in bed,” he insisted.

  She glanced up from the book in her hands. “Oh doctor, come to stuff my mind with platitudes, and my bosom with thy antidotes, root out instead the wormwood of thine own rotten blood. I know how thou cravest the whip.”

  Roger stood awkwardly before her, wishing for an outfit more professional than these afflictions. At least he wasn’t wearing his bloodstained shirt. And anyway, plenty of physicians wore black. “Is that a quote from a novel, miss?”

  “A play, Dr Weathersby. The Whipping Mistress of Whipperton to be precise, by Myrcnia’s own eminent playwright Richard Salston. You haven’t read it, I take it.” She flashed pearly teeth, made whiter by the sallow skin she tried to conceal under powder.

  “I’ve… heard the name in conversation, miss. Celeste, is it?”

  “And how did you manage to win over my little Adelaide, Mr Weathersby?” Celeste lay her book down and motioned that he sit on the bed near her. “Just what kind of friend do you profess to be?” She took Roger’s face in her hand and looked straight into his eyes, as if daring him to look away, which he did.

  “She’s worried about her ma,” he managed. “And what with the rumors, I couldn’t rightly blame her either.”

  “To think she hasn’t knifed you yet.” Celeste released him with a laugh. “But you’ve seen the dark. I can tell. You know why a mother should be concerned for her only child.”

  “Aye, miss.”

  “And if you’re here to merely play pretend doctor, I shall not be amused.” She attempted to push herself upright but ended up slumped against the wing of the chair.

  Reminded of his own mother’s illness, Roger rallied to focus on the ailing woman before him. He removed his mute’s frockcoat, hoping he looked more like a medical man in just his waistcoat. “I work at a top institution. You’ve heard of Eldridge’s College. Do I have your leave to perform an external exam?”

  “You’re the first man to ever ask permission.” Celeste bit her lip as she sized him up. “Estella will be chaperoning. But yes, I’m ready. How do you want me, doctor?”

  “I’m but a surgeon,” Roger said, then clamped his mouth shut before he could add “in training.” He rolled up his shirtsleeves. Why had he expected a living patient to be as inert and malleable as his uncomplaining cadavers? He’d handled corpses who had died of every imaginable ailment, many with signs of venereal disease and the treatments that came too little, too late. Now he could feel his confidence waning.

  “I could lie on the bed, love.”

  “No!” Roger shoved away the unhelpful image of her writhing on the coverlet. “I mean… the chair is fine.”

  Estella brought a basin of warm water. Roger added a slosh of gin from his flask – it made things smell cleaner – then washed his hands.

  “I’ll start with a palpation. Sorry for the cold hands.” He crouched before Celeste’s petticoat-covered knees and tried to remember his medical texts. “Tell me of your symptoms. When did they begin?”

  “Fevers. Chills.” Celeste uncrossed her legs. “A month ago, though it was slight at the start. I thought I’d caught the Ibnovan disease from a gent, but that fades in a few weeks. Then, the cramping started last week, like jellied eels slithering about my belly. Don’t tell me I’m with child. I’ve had one. I know.”

  “I see.” Roger held his breath as he ran his fingers down her cheeks and throat, searching for the telltale lumps of syphilis and finding none.

  She undid her corset so he could check her abdomen – her stomach felt too firm, and as he moved his fingers across, there was a dip, and then another, like soft pit marks in a hardened cheese. She winced and bit into the upholstery to muffle a shriek. As his fingers pressed into one of those strange divots, he tried recalling Hemon’s Studies of Medical Phenomena and Their Surgical Treatments, but couldn’t think of a passage to fit this symptom – a hard and soft belly.

  Her eyes, like her skin, seemed yellow, and her gums pale. He had no scope for auscultation, but when he pressed his ear to her back he could hear her shallow breaths. The weak pulse in her wrist proved difficult to find and stuttered rapidly under his fingertips. Roger tried to think of what to say next and remembered the questions the doctor had asked at his own mother’s bedside.

  “Has your daily regimen changed in the last month? Eating habits, perhaps? Medicaments?”

  Celeste shook her head. “Not as such. We always use the sheepgut sleeves with the gentlemen, as the law requires. Although a client of mine gave me some fancy wine, a morelle mauvingnon. But we finished that off weeks ago.”

  “We?” Roger asked. “You and Estella? Is she sick as well?”

  “Of course we both drank it,” Estella spoke up. “We always share our s
poils. But there’s nothing wrong with me, doctor, if you’d like a peek…” Her voice trailed off seductively.

  A mushroom wine seemed an expensive gift for anyone who was neither a toff nor an overpriced salon girl. Roger associated the stuff with royal religious rites, and one bottle of it cost as much as a carriage. He hardly saw the point of drinking it. Still, it was strange.

  “Your humors do appear out of balance.” Roger repeated the diplomatic phrasing physicians used to tell patients something was definitely wrong. He thought back to the stiffs he’d encountered on his slab, bellies slit and gaping. “I’ll wager it’s gallstones or the like.”

  Suddenly Celeste grabbed Roger’s hair with a painful, throaty moan.

  “Miss!” Roger struggled to hold her wrists. “Miss, are you all right?”

  “Another spasm.” Celeste released him. She lay back in her chair, heaving. “They come and go, these past few days. If you’d been a regular customer, I’d have twisted your giblets.”

  “And I’d have deserved it,” said Roger to lighten the mood. “If you don’t mind me saying, you seem rather high class for Will-o’-the-Wisp Lane.”

  Celeste gave a wan smile and laid a hand on Roger’s shoulder. “Don’t think I was always to be found in such a rum district as this. Oh no. Not to boast, but I once played the courtesan in Dame Angeline’s famous salon. Sometimes we put on saucy renditions of Salston in our underclothes. The officers and gentlemen couldn’t get enough.”

  “I imagine not.” Roger’s face burned, and he prayed she couldn’t tell in the meager light. That Angeline again. “Seems a popular place.”

  Celeste wistfully tugged the ends of her hair. “Many friends found marriages to fulfill their contracts with Dame Angeline. I was engaged – that was enough for the contract – but Ada’s untimely arrival ended that. Estella here didn’t pass the salon’s physical, though back then she turned far more gentlemen’s heads with her looks than I. Still does.”

  A tear streaked Estella’s cheek. “My poor chaffinch. The years have not been kind to either of us.”

  Celeste sighed and stroked Roger’s hair. He started warming in stiff and decidedly awkward places, and delicately removed her hand. “Please, I’m determined to stay professional.”

  “As if a little pleasure could ruin a man.” She dropped her hand into her lap. “Gallstones, you said? Is there treatment for that?”

  Roger hesitated. He knew of some surgeries performed, but they’d been experimental and risky. Although gallstones seemed like a reasonable guess, he wasn’t certain. He couldn’t entirely rule out the pox based on her strange symptoms, or even arsenic poisoning. This was impossible; he made a worthless “doctor.” He sighed inwardly. Corpses were simple to diagnose – cutting them open revealed their secrets. But Celeste was a living woman with a daughter, and he had to figure out what ailed her, before she ended up like his own mother, dead and buried.

  “You’ll at least bleed me,” she said. “There’s something inside me that must be let out.”

  “Of course.” Roger rose and washed his hands. “That’s a surgeon’s bread and butter.”

  He prepared his fleam and basin, then tied a ribbon around Celeste’s upper arm to find the vein. When he nicked her skin, instead of a bright red spurt, thick black blood dribbled down her forearm.

  “Is something the matter?” she asked.

  “You may want to take more fluids.” He’d never seen anything like her blood, not even in a corpse. It looked like licorice syrup.

  This just added to an already confusing list of possible illnesses: the pox due to her stomach pains, dropsy for her distended stomach, jaundice from her yellowish skin. Or it could be the green sickness, brought about by a lack of iron in the diet. Poison. Cancer. An internal infection. One ailment he could rule out for certain was consumption. His mother had died of it, but Celeste wasn’t coughing or spitting blood. Still, nothing added up.

  He poured the blood from the basin into an empty chemist’s vial, to examine later.

  As he rinsed his fleam, he offered Celeste instructions, not knowing if they’d do any good. “For now, eat nothing you don’t prepare yourself. No face-powder or rouge, in case metals are leeching through the skin. Drink water from a different pump than usual. Stay in bed and avoid cold drafts. I’ve brought no medicaments today, but tomorrow I’ll return with a treatment.” That would give him time to take a closer look at the blood at Eldridge’s College.

  “How fortunate Ada dragged you here, Dr Weathersby,” said Estella as Roger dressed to depart. “If surgery doesn’t pan out, you might consider a change of career. You seem to have very good hands.” She winked. “Some wealthy woman might gladly pay to lie back and let you do the work.”

  Roger flushed and turned to Celeste. “Shouldn’t I send Ada up to see you?”

  Celeste gravely shook her head. “The girl should not be here at night. I’ll meet her in the morning, if I’m up for a walk.”

  Roger exited through the back and found Ada’s alcove, but she no longer perched on the barrel. He searched a side alley used by coalmen, then checked in the windows of Eglantine’s Den of Delights. There was no sign of her.

  “Ada? Ada!” He was afraid to say her name too loud.

  A gent in a tall hat and well-cut coat stood in front of the brothel, peering up at a tiny ornamental balcony on the side of the building.

  “Come down, little cat,” the man crooned. “Good kittens get the cream.”

  Roger froze, overcome with revulsion. A huddled figure, barely more than a bundle of clothes, was visible between the balcony rails. Ghostofmary.

  A pale face under a mop of black hair appeared. “Go rot in the sewer with the other filth-rats!” she shrieked.

  “I’m here, Ghost,” Roger shouted. “Thought the goblins got you.” The gentleman glared.

  “I ain’t coming down.”

  Roger held out his hands. “I’ll catch you.”

  “Bet you couldn’t catch the pox from an open sore,” she snarled, but then stepped over the rail.

  Roger caught Ada and held her to his chest. “Your mother loves you, Ghost,” he whispered in her ear. “I’ll return tomorrow with medicaments. I promise you. I’m going to do all I can to heal her.”

  She slapped his face and squirmed out of his grasp. “A pox on the cat man, and on you too, sack-’em-up!” She sprinted into the darkness.

  The gentleman looked Roger over and winked. “Bad luck. But I could show you a house with the most nubile tartlets.”

  Roger didn’t wait to hear more. He fled in the direction Ada had gone, searching the shadows for her. By the time he emerged from the tangled alleys onto a wider gaslit street, he had given up hope of catching her. So much for keeping an eye on the girl. He didn’t like her sleeping in a mausoleum while human monsters prowled Greyanchor at night. The Strangler was just one of a dozen potential threats – a young girl could fetch a good price, alive or not. Even his garret would be safer. But he could hardly blame Ada for not trusting him.

  Roger dismissed the idea of sleep. He made for the medical district and arrived out of breath at the back entrance of Eldridge’s College of Barber-Surgeons. He pulled the bell, hopping impatiently in the freezing dark. At last the door creaked, and Dr Eldridge peered out.

  “It’s early for you to be poking your nose in here, lad.” Dr Eldridge eyed Roger’s mute clothes without comment. “Not even midnight yet. Have you brought me another lovely stiff?”

  “Sorry to come ’round empty-handed, doctor. Not that I didn’t try. I’d hoped to borrow some instruments, a microscope, maybe glance at your medical journals, if you’ll pardon the intrusion. Need to get a leg up on my studying.” In truth he needed to diagnose Celeste, but without embroiling the old physician in his illegal house call to a prostitute.

  Dr Eldridge gestured for Roger to follow him into one of the dissection rooms. “I keep a Darby model in the cabinet here.” After some rummaging, Dr Eldridge produced a wooden
case. “I don’t like students getting their fingerprints on it, so I trust you’ll keep its existence to yourself.”

  Dr Eldridge’s hands faltered as he tried to assemble the brass pieces, so Roger took over for him, screwing the stand into the wooden base. Three cylindrical lenses composed the brass pillar, and a swivel mirror caught lamplight to illuminate a specimen – just what Roger needed.

  “There’s a box of glass slides in the cabinet, and anything else you might need.” Dr Eldridge gave Roger’s shoulder a paternal squeeze. “I’ll be in my study shuffling papers. After hours is the only time anyone leaves me alone. If you’re still here in the morning, and you give the lecture hall a good scrub, I could use an assistant for my female anatomization lecture.”

  “With pleasure.” Roger had hoped Dr Eldridge might ask him. His assistants did all the hands-on dissection work – much preferable to sneaking in with the medical students and auditing the class while hiding in the back.

  Once alone, Roger pulled the vial of Celeste’s blood from his pocket. Dabbing a handkerchief in gin, he cleaned a row of glass plates. Then, recalling how he used pigments to dye the organs and vessels in cadavers to make the structures easier to see, he mixed a droplet of carmine solution with a smear of Celeste’s blood on the glass plate.

  Though he’d prepared plenty of slides for Dr Eldridge’s laboratory classes, Roger had never looked through a microscope. When he lowered his face to the eyepiece, he saw a jumbled mess of shapes in varying shades of red. Roger knew blood contained disc-shaped red cells, called corpuscles, floating in a yellowish brine. White globules, believed to be a form of pus, might be glimpsed among the more numerous red cells. If only he knew how to tell what he was looking at.

  A thought struck him. He needed another blood sample for comparison. Preparing his fleam, he slit the pad of one finger and let his blood – a fresh brilliant red – flow onto a slide. Again he mixed it with carmine and smeared the droplet thin. Examining his blood under the scope proved equally fruitless. This collection of pink shapes looked different, but he still couldn’t tell how to distinguish the healthy blood from bad.