Soon enough, through the door they heard the screams that heralded another birth, the familiar opening melody of a harsh, unsettling song.
* * *
*
Later that afternoon, Ahlers, Howard, and St. André returned to Howard’s offices, where Ahlers undertook an examination of the fourteenth rabbit to be delivered from Mary Toft: a head, a torso, and both hind legs, along with a collection of viscera. “Strange,” Ahlers said, seated on a tall stool before Howard’s operating table, the rabbit parts spread out on a bloodstained cloth before him, prodding at the little pile of intestine with the tip of a knife blade. “I am no veterinarian,” he said, “but this seems like a longer amount of intestine than ought to belong to even an adult rabbit. Perhaps twice as much, even.”
“An unusual aspect of the phenomenon throughout the series of pregnancies has been an unpredictability in the number of components,” said John, who stood behind Ahlers, next to St. André. “Only rarely have we seen a rabbit with a full complement of parts in their correct number, even if those parts are torn asunder. Either there will be too many legs, or not enough, or no head, or some other irregularity. As if the making of offspring requires a kind of instinctive knowing, of the body rather than the mind; and in her instance the knowledge required to bring such creatures into existence is misremembered, or not entire.”
“There is more about this that occasions my interest,” said Ahlers. With a nimbleness of fingers that belied his age, he speared one of the thin, translucent ropes of rabbit gut with the knife tip, lifted it high so that it uncoiled, and stretched it out on the table as straight as it could go. “Pellets,” he said, indicating with the knife. “Here, here, and here. Feces.”
“Not ordinary feces, but meconium, certainly,” said St. André, looking over Ahlers’s shoulder and peering at the intestine. “Every mammalian fetus produces a modicum of solid waste in the womb; there is no reason for these to differ, monstrous as they might be.”
Ahlers sliced through the intestine with a quick stroke of the knife; then, using the blunt side of the blade, he squeezed one of the pellets free. “Not dark enough for that,” he said. “Meconium is almost black. This is lighter. Not viscous enough, either: this is solid. To my eye it seems to be derived from digested plant matter. Curious, don’t you think?”
“Since the creatures this woman births appear to have the size and physical features of adult rabbits,” said John, “it seems reasonable to conclude that their digestive systems would behave as those of adults. Perhaps some preternatural reconfiguration of the patient’s digestive organs allows the fetuses to be delivered solid food, a portion of that which she consumes daily.”
“A fine and credible conjecture,” said Nathanael.
“Perhaps,” said Ahlers, seeming to consider. “Let us move on to another interesting feature. Look at this hind leg, which we delivered detached from the torso, which followed on later. The severing here—it isn’t ragged, as one might expect if the rabbit had been torn apart within the woman during its birthing. It’s clean: a nearly level plane. Almost as if done with a knife.”
“I’ve observed the shearing effect with a few of the other births as well,” said Nathanael, as John looked at him in perplexity.
Ahlers turned on his stool to look up at Nathanael. “Shearing effect?”
“Yes—we, John and I, conjecture that as the rabbit passes from the Fallopian tube into the uterus prior to delivery, its parts are often sheared neatly away from each other, killing it in the process. Crispin Walsh was the first to observe the audible sound of the rabbits being ripped apart inside the woman: I myself have since confirmed it. The regularity of the separation is, we believe, due to the fact that the fetuses are more malleable when passing into the uterus—they must be, in order to make their way there in the first place—and become less so once they arrive.”
“That is a most bold claim, Nathanael; I would hazard that such physiological anomalies are unheard of, in all the literature.”
“Boldness is warranted, I think: extraordinary evidence requires extraordinary claims. You are bound to accept the initial premise, unless you choose to disregard your own direct observations. You delivered this rabbit with your own hands, just as John and I delivered the thirteen rabbits previous; you examined her breasts, and found that one of them produced milk.”
“A thin liquid substance,” Cyriacus said, “watery, and not much of it, but…milk, I suppose.”
“It could be nothing else,” said Nathanael. “To continue: if you accept the premise, then you are bound to consider all conclusions that can plausibly proceed from that premise. We must not deny the evidence supplied by our own eyes; we must not delude ourselves in a futile attempt to cling to what is familiar, and comforting. Don’t you agree, John?”
“Yes,” John said quietly.
Ahlers put down the knife and rubbed his eyes. “How bizarre all this is,” he said. “Here is what I propose. John, I would like to take this rabbit that, as Nathanael correctly points out, I delivered myself, back to London, along with two other of the specimens you’ve preserved in spirits: one from the first set of five, and one from the second set. I might be able to observe some kind of change in these creatures over time. And I might be able to shed more light on this once I can consult my library.”
He stood. “I’ll leave on tomorrow morning’s stagecoach bound for London. I will report my findings to the king, and return if he judges it necessary. But it is difficult to see how all this will end: given the increasing amount of discussion that this case is occasioning among medical circles in London, and the heated nature of that discussion, those with a close association with it might find themselves in a place that is likely unexpected.”
Cyriacus gripped John’s right hand in both of his, and looked directly into his eyes. “Take care, friend.”
* * *
*
“I find myself relieved that our friend Mr. Ahlers chose not to remain for much longer,” said Nathanael at dinner the following afternoon. “John, as this enterprise proceeds we must be sure to choose our associates with care. In particular, given its extraordinary novelty, we must beware the company of those who wrap themselves too tightly in the mantle of their expertise.”
Alice had made a sweet veal pie for dinner, stuffed with forcemeat, potatoes, raisins, currants, candied citron, and lemon peel, covered with a feather-light puff pastry crust. She meditatively chewed a forkful of food, taking quiet pleasure in her own work; then she said, “I can only speak for myself, but I quite enjoy the company of experts. For instance: if there is a thing I do not know, and I am lucky enough to befriend an expert in the subject, then I might exchange words with her, and when our conversation ends, I will know a thing I once did not.”
“Would that the trusting of experts were so simple, and so seemingly wise,” said St. André after a mirthful chuckle. “But in some cases the expert can become corrupted by the very process by which he acquires his expertise—thus, he becomes shackled to orthodoxy, and will defend it against any challenges at all cost. Such a man can be identified because of his strenuous attempts to look the part—he may have fine clothes, or may repeatedly inform you of his long and august-sounding title—but to the wise man, such attempts merely betray his insecurity, his ossified state of mind.”
“Oh, goodness, I see the peril, now that you’ve pointed it out,” said Alice. “If by misfortune I am to cross paths with one of these pernicious people who knows entirely too much about the field he has chosen to spend his life studying, how can I best avoid him, and seek out someone who knows much less?”
“Seek the man who wears his learning lightly, who does not take an undue pride in his knowledge,” said St. André, as Zachary glanced across the table at Laurence and risked the flash of a half smile. “Seek the man who prizes not mere quantities of specialized knowledge, but versatility, ima
gination, an openness to new possibilities. The man of vast learning is ever to be preferred over the man whose body of knowledge is miles deep, but only inches wide.”
“I don’t agree,” Zachary said quietly.
Nathanael turned to look at Zachary. “Who speaks?” he said, as if it was somehow not quite clear to him who was speaking.
“I don’t agree,” Zachary repeated, a little more loudly. “If I were to agree, there would be no point in me being an apprentice. If expertise matters little, or if the man who calls himself an expert poses some sort of danger to society, then it seems that every man would be entitled to call himself a surgeon, regardless of whether he’d practiced for years. Surely you do not believe that yourself, sir? You have your own titles, which proclaim you as an expert. You speak of the king with familiarity, while the rest of us here cannot: his title in your mouth gives your own presence weight.”
“Ah, see,” said Nathanael, “I adopt the use of titles bestowed upon me by others because I know the social custom—they are a burden I am forced to bear, and it is true that on occasion they can convince others to listen when I speak. I would be foolish not to take advantage of that when necessary. But I am wise enough to know that in a moment of crisis my titles are worthless, mere conventions: I cannot cure a dying patient merely by declaring my titles.” He turned to John. “Is this not so?”
“I would love to know what my husband thinks about this matter,” said Alice, her gaze swiveling to John.
He was paying studious attention to the remains of veal pie on his plate, pushing pieces of potato aimlessly with his fork, leaving curving tracks through the sauce. “One might see it one way or the other way, depending on circumstances,” he said. “Sometimes an expert’s opinion might be wanted; sometimes not. Too much knowledge can sometimes be a problem when just enough will do.”
Nathanael nodded; Alice and Zachary frowned.
* * *
*
Later, after the meal was finished, Nathanael, Laurence, and Zachary said their goodbyes and went up to their rooms. John had a feeling that he was expected to remain behind, though the events of the past few weeks had slowly eroded his trust in his own intuition—he no longer believed he could reliably look at faces and interpret the thoughts that lay behind them, or comprehend the secret messages that sometimes lay in the silences between supposedly innocent words. And he was tired.
He sat in the chair at the head of the dining table, slumping, half drowsing, waiting, chasing the ragged fluttering fragments of his own thoughts, and then Alice sat down and took his hand in hers, gently rubbing the pad of her thumb against his palm, rhythmically, back and forth. The simple, familiar gesture brought back years of memories of a mind that had once been in harmony with his, and unexpectedly, he felt himself on the edge of sobbing.
He clenched his teeth and looked into his wife’s eyes, fearing she would spy the watery shine of his own, but she did not—or if she did, she chose not to acknowledge it.
“If you think I’m going to play the agreeable mate,” she said quietly, still gliding her thumb across his palm, “eager to accept all her dear husband’s pronouncements on the state of the universe without question, I suggest you think again. I’ve given my honest opinion on this, and I haven’t changed my mind. I can’t imagine what would make me do so.”
“I would expect no less,” said John.
“I see a glimpse of the wise man I married, then. But I want for your happiness—the strings of my heart are too knotted together with yours by now for me to ever desire otherwise. And short of disowning my own convictions—which you know I will not—I do not know what action to take.
“My love,” she said, “you tear me in two.”
“Even a fortnight ago I was so sure of my path,” said John. “But now I can no longer distinguish up from down.”
“I see,” said Alice.
“With my own eyes I’ve witnessed the thing you call some kind of lie, again and again,” said John. “Participated in it, firsthand. It cannot be a trick.”
Alice said nothing.
John shook his head and wiped his free hand across his face as Alice gripped his other hand tighter. “Am I leading the way forward, or being pushed forward from behind?” he said. “In all honesty, I no longer know.”
“Believe me, if I could solve this for you, I would. I can’t think of what to say that I haven’t already said.”
“I may have received a quiet warning yesterday, from a man who believed me a lost cause. But who thought he might offer it anyway. Perhaps only to salve his own conscience.”
“There is something on your face,” Alice said, wiping at John’s cheek with a maternal roughness; John did not ask what it was, and Alice did not say.
He bowed his head as if in silent prayer, his eyes closed, and Alice turned her hand over and caressed his cheek with the backs of her fingers; then he stood. “I need sleep,” he said. “And perhaps tomorrow all this will start to come clear. Perhaps a hint of the last destination carved into a signpost, if not a glimpse of the end of the road itself.”
He kissed her on the cheek and, exhausted, rose and went upstairs, his climb as slow as if his shoes were weighted with lead.
| CHAPTER XIII.
THE KING AND THE THREE IMPOSTORS.
By Monday, November 21, 1726, everyone in Godalming knew, or believed they knew, the details of Mary Toft’s condition; everyone knew the reason for the influx of well-heeled Londoners into the village, crammed two or more to a room in the full-up Silver Hart, lodging in every spare accommodation in the town they could find.
Everyone knew someone who knew someone who’d seen the blackamoor passing through town that fateful September night, though one had to keep in mind that the details of his appearance and demeanor had probably become embellished in the retelling—certainly, he could not have been seven feet tall, which indicated that Rufus Richardson, the weaver who had openly claimed to have seen the fellow with his own eyes, was either an outright liar or a poor judge of size. Six feet was far more plausible—larger than many, but certainly not a giant.
Most people agreed on the coach pulled by six horses with shining black coats from which he alit when it stopped in front of the Toft house, sometime after midnight (though another detail of the story that had obviously been exaggerated into ridiculousness was the nature of the outerwear he wore—it was probably not a fur coat long enough to sweep the ground, sewn together from the pelts of three dozen rabbits, their heads left intact, the eyes of some of them roving wildly as if the creatures were possessed by nightmare). Most people also agreed that he strode up to the Toft house and rapped on the door with the ease of familiarity; Richardson, again, said that the black had stood outside the house and serenaded its occupants with an ominous melody performed on a theorbo, which seemed like an ordinary lute in his enormous hands. This was self-evident embroidery. A mere knock on the door would have been enough to summon Mary, who boarded the coach with the black fellow and left for parts unknown, returning to her husband late the following morning, babbling with her head addled, a small silken bag clutched in her hand that held a dozen golden coins, minted in a foreign nation. Supposedly she had not spoken an intelligible word since, and began to give birth to animals soon after, one or two clawing themselves free from her each morning as soon as she awoke: rabbits, mice, and cats, but mostly rabbits.
Just as everyone knew someone who knew someone who had seen the blackamoor abscond with Mary Toft, everyone also knew that the tale of the blackamoor was probably false—when one person relayed it to another, which by this point was happening quite regularly, it was with the understanding, decorously left implicit (because why would one insult one’s audience by spelling this out?), that this was what other people were saying about Mary’s condition, and that telling the story was meant to clarify the state of mind of Godalming’s citizens in general, no
t necessarily to make specific, true claims about events that had occurred in the life of one specific woman. It did not cause confusion or disquiet, this simultaneous knowing and not knowing, believing and not believing. Indeed, it was quite possible for a man to hear Rufus Richardson spin a wild story, of an ebony giant whose head was wreathed in a cloud of mist illuminated by flickering sparks, and judge it categorically false; then that man might tell the same story himself—minus the silly facetious details—and believe it true in his own mind as he was doing the telling; then, alone in his bed at night, he would think to himself that the only place one could come across a black person in Godalming was in one’s dreams, or in the illustrations of books.
It was also possible (and perhaps this pointed to the genuinely miraculous nature of the Toft case) to hold that Toft’s condition arose as a result of her encounter with the mysterious black man, and also hold that one of the rabbits she had birthed hosted the spirit of her miscarried son—though, again, that story had been embroidered through retelling as well, and the belief that the rabbit invested with her son’s soul had developed a rudimentary ability to speak, and could tell you the day of your death if you asked, was laughable. For those who observed it from a distance, the Toft case acted as a kind of vortex that drew facts and falsehoods into it and stirred them together, so that all things were true and none were true. And if considering the case might give one the feeling that the ground was unsteady beneath one’s feet, that the world was filled with fog, then it also challenged one’s long-held preconceptions of the world’s true nature, and opened one’s mind up to myriad possibilities previously left unconsidered. For this reason—some might have said, if asked—it was wonderful.
Mary Toft; or, the Rabbit Queen Page 13