A Corruption of Blood

by Ambrose Parry

  As he approached the nearest of the outbuildings, he spied Gideon just inside. He had his back to the door, but there was no doubt who Raven was looking at; nor who he was listening to. He could hear Sir Ainsley’s voice angrily berating his son: ‘Did you think some enchantment had rendered you invisible as you stood there with your arms folded and that sour look of childish pique writ so vividly upon your countenance? I saw you plain as day from the stage, and if I saw you, then so did everyone else.’

  ‘I thought their eyes would have been on you, father. That, after all, was the purpose of the evening, was it not?’

  Raven saw a hand reach out and strike Gideon about the head, Sir Ainsley briefly leaning into view as he put his weight behind it. In observing this act of violence, Raven was made conscious of the disparity in their statures. Gideon was shorter, slighter, and seemed to shrink further in the face of his father’s ire.

  ‘You would make a show of your disrespect before all those people, when I have seen to it throughout your life that you should want for nothing. You seem determined to fail as though to spite me.’

  Gideon’s voice sounded halting, fearful. There was a trace of defiance in it, but it was a dim ember of a fire long since doused.

  ‘I should have thought you happy to see me fail. You have told me often enough that I am destined to do so. That I will never be worthy of the name that has been conferred upon me.’

  ‘I have handed you every advantage, granted you boundless opportunity, only to watch you squander all that was within your grasp through your feckless indolence. You are living proof that some are born to fail regardless of how straight and clear their path to success. I hate to consider that such weakness must have come from your mother, but as the years go on, I have to concede that this must be the case. It could not have come from me!’

  ‘My mother’s only weakness was her blindness to what you are. But in time the scales fell, and that was why she—’

  Ainsley lashed out again with a long and powerful arm. The open-handed blow struck Gideon across the jaw, the report of it enough to make Raven’s teeth rattle.

  ‘Do not speak of her! It is my consolation that she did not live to witness your manifold disgraces.’

  Gideon put a hand to his mouth, wiping away a smear of blood.

  ‘I will speak of her, for I am her son, as I am your heir.’

  ‘You are an inconvenient remnant. A parasite, a leech, and I will no longer fund your dissolute ways. It is decided. I have spoken to Admiral Whitelaw, and soon we will see whether the Navy can make a man of you where I have failed. I hope you enjoyed your voyage home from Tobago, for you will be seeing a great deal more of the ocean from here on in.’

  ‘I will not go.’

  ‘Then you will starve, for I will not give you another penny.’

  NINE

  here had been a finality to Sir Ainsley’s tone that warned Raven to leave. He slipped away on quiet feet, anxious not to be seen. Neither of them would forgive a witness to such an exchange, however inadvertent.

  Raven walked swiftly in the direction of the house, eager to gain some distance from the stables. Eugenie had not been able to specify where they might meet, so he would have to walk a circuit and hope to encounter her coming in the other direction, or perhaps she would be waiting for him somewhere out of sight of the lawn.

  Raven was excited to hear footsteps as he approached the corner of the house. He quickened his pace in impatient anticipation and all but bounded around the edge of the building, where he found himself face to stern face with Dr Cameron Todd.

  ‘I would speak with you privately, Dr Raven,’ Todd said, his voice quietly imperative, that of a man who did not expect argument.

  ‘Of course.’

  He had chosen his moment well. They were alone, unseen, just as he and Eugenie had intended for each other. Raven wondered if the man’s eyes had left him the entire evening.

  Dr Todd looked him up and down, as though only just noticing his attire.

  ‘What are you wearing?’ he asked with mild bemusement.

  ‘It is an old suit of Dr Simpson’s,’ Raven replied, thinking it might as well be rags.

  ‘It is not a good fit,’ Todd observed, redundantly. He paused, as though his previous thoughts had been shunted, but when he spoke again it was clear that they had not. ‘A good fit is important, is it not? Standing in another man’s clothes, one cannot help but feel an impostor. In this world, one ought to have a strong sense of what one is rightly cut out for, whether that be clothes, or . . .’

  He allowed his words to trail off. If he was being invited to respond, Raven did not see any advantage in doing so. Nothing he said would alter the man’s purpose here.

  ‘I am aware you have taken an interest in my daughter. And that you have sought to conceal this from me, engaging in clandestine rendezvous.’

  It was folly to deny it. The only dignity here was in honesty.

  ‘I meant no disrespect to you, sir. Your daughter and I spoke when I visited your house some weeks back and found that we enjoyed a rapport.’

  ‘Yes. I recall Eugenie being particularly indecorous on that occasion. Am I to deduce that you admire such a quality in a young woman, or that it was merely something you were prepared to overlook?’

  ‘On that occasion, sir, you assured me her lack of decorum was aimed at you, not me. But either way, I prefer it to obsequiousness.’

  Todd took a moment to consider this. He had, once again, that look of having found what he expected.

  ‘I am hearing of your intention to set up your own practice.’

  Raven was unsighted by this change of subject. Why was he waiting before bringing down the axe? Unless he considered his message sent.

  ‘Indeed,’ Raven replied, too unbalanced to offer anything more.

  ‘Dr Simpson speaks highly of you. His association will be beneficial.’

  ‘Most certainly. I could not ask for better.’

  ‘As a physician-accoucheur, being a married man would be beneficial also, would it not?’

  Raven felt a rushing in his ears, his mind racing to take in what he was hearing. Once again, it had not been a change of subject. He stared blankly, quite unable to respond, partly from fear that he might have misinterpreted.

  Dr Todd looked at him with uncertainty for the first time.

  ‘Are these your intentions by Eugenie, or have I drawn a false conclusion?’

  Raven found his voice. ‘These are my intentions. I was not expecting to find you receptive to them. I thought we were about to have a very different conversation.’

  The first hint of a smile played upon Todd’s lips.

  ‘I would caution both of us that the question of whether Eugenie is receptive has yet to be broached,’ he said.

  ‘I would make no assumptions in that regard. But I am delighted that you should consider our match an appropriate one.’

  Dr Todd wore an unexpectedly arch look.

  ‘Do not thank me too soon, Dr Raven. As a father, Eugenie has often given me pause. I would be remiss if I did not disclose that she is not without . . . complications. But for that reason, I do believe you and she are a good fit. I therefore wish you well.’

  Dr Todd ended their exchange with a curt nod and retreated in the direction he had arrived, leaving Raven to stand with his head spinning, wishing there was some independent witness to confirm what had just transpired. The vertiginous feeling was not entirely rooted in incredulity. All at once he was confronted with a possibility that had hitherto been abstract.

  As he steadied himself, Sarah came to mind unbidden. For the first time he felt an unexpected sense of disloyalty in his pursuit of Eugenie. He realised that this was also the moment to ask himself whether he was truly reconciled to letting her go.

  And then finally he saw Eugenie emerge from a doorway at the rear of the house, and all doubts dispersed. He saw within his grasp a future that he and Sarah could not share. It was a future he hoped Eug
enie might be satisfied with, but one he knew Sarah would not.

  He hastened towards her, but she remained where she was. As he drew closer, he saw that she was beckoning him to follow her inside.

  She led him down a wood-panelled corridor and beneath the vaulted gallery of the entrance hall. Raven sensed movement above and glanced up. He saw Mansfield, the provost, ducking out of sight as though concerned at being seen. Perhaps he was not the only one sneaking inside for a secret assignation.

  Eugenie pushed open a door and led Raven into a grand drawing room hung on three sides with paintings, many of them portraits: Sir Ainsley’s relatives and forebears.

  ‘What kept you?’ she asked.

  He was about to answer when he was distracted by a section of the wall unexpectedly swinging out and revealing itself to be a concealed door. A housemaid, dressed in a black uniform and cap, stepped through. Upon seeing the pair of them, she immediately vanished back the way she had come. Eugenie had her back to the door, and the maid was gone before she could even turn around.

  Raven noticed the maid had bowed her head and shielded her eyes with her hand as soon as she noticed guests, as though the mere sight of them would dazzle her. He knew it was for fear it would be regarded as insolent to meet their gaze. This was the practice in some households, where servants were even required to turn their backs when members of the household passed them on the stairs. Raven had only caught a glimpse of the maid, but she seemed familiar. He assumed he had seen her out on the lawn, and yet he felt that he recalled her from somewhere else. Perhaps she had previously worked at another house he had visited, on duty with the professor.

  ‘Where did she appear from?’ Raven asked.

  Eugenie laughed in a way that was uncharacteristically girlish. For a moment he was able to picture her here as a child, playing with Amelia.

  ‘There are servants’ passages so that the staff may come and go unseen. Let me show you.’

  Eugenie pressed the panel in a practised way and it unlatched, gently swinging out from the wall. She proceeded into a narrow passage and glanced back with a conspiratorially inviting look. He realised they had never been alone together unseen.

  Raven stepped inside and glanced back and forth. He saw light spilling in further along, only for it to be shut off as the housemaid exited and closed another door behind her. The only light now was from the drawing room, barely enough for them to see each other.

  Raven felt close to Eugenie in a way he had not experienced on any of their walks together. He would have attributed this to the conversation he had just had with her father, but that could only account for his own feelings, and he got the sense that Eugenie felt it too. Neither of them had spoken since they stepped into the passage, yet something profound and complex was being communicated between them, something older than language.

  He leaned closer and found her already turning her face upwards to his. They met in a kiss that began delicately, then quickly became something deeper, mutually urgent as they pressed their bodies close.

  Raven broke away, mindful that if he did not, things might go very far, very fast.

  ‘I have longed to do that since the moment I caught sight of you in the crowd tonight,’ Eugenie said. ‘I had not expected to see you here.’

  ‘Your delight was not tempered by the sight of this old suit?’

  ‘I will not lie, it is not flattering. But that is not chief among my reasons for wishing to see you out of it.’ As she said this, she placed her fingers between the fastenings of his shirt, touching the skin of his chest beneath. ‘I thought we would never get the chance to be alone,’ she continued. ‘I am sure my father has been watching you all evening. I fear he suspects.’

  ‘He does not merely suspect,’ Raven told her. ‘He knows. He accosted me not five minutes ago. He told me he was aware I had taken an interest in his daughter.’

  Eugenie gasped. ‘We are discovered! And yet you defy him.’

  She sounded both worried and pleased. And though she did not say so, Raven inferred that she was prepared to defy her father too. He smiled, recalling Dr Todd’s words. She is not without complications.

  ‘I have no need to defy him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He did not seek me out to warn me off.’

  There was absolute silence in the dim passage. Raven could not even hear Eugenie breathing, realised that she was holding her breath.

  ‘I had not hoped or planned to do this so soon, but . . .’

  He did not get to make his proposal. She was already kissing him again. He took that as a yes.

  TEN

  Rotterdam, two days earlier

  re you going to eat that?’

  Robert’s enquiry interrupted Sarah’s contemplation of the rain battering against the windows of the inn.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she admitted, pushing her plate towards him. ‘You can have it if you like.’

  Robert speared the sausage with his fork and began chopping it up and shovelling it into his mouth.

  Sarah was happy to abandon her meal. The odd-looking sausages that had been served to her revealed themselves upon closer inspection to contain intestines rather than meat. It brought to mind the tripe her grandmother would boil in milk, claiming it had healing properties for something or other. She could no longer remember what boiled sheep’s stomach was supposed to cure. What did linger, what she could recall without effort, was the appalling smell of the stuff as it cooked. In truth she had been disinclined to eat much since leaving Grafenberg. What she found there had suppressed more than her appetite.

  The thought of her grandmother induced a deep sadness, as it always did. She had been the village howdie – healer and wise woman – and Sarah missed her. She was loved and respected, providing care and compassion in addition to herbal remedies. Perhaps Sarah was wrong to aspire to more than that. What was good enough for her grandmother was surely good enough for her too.

  She felt foolish. She had pursued Elizabeth Blackwell seeking vindication for her ambitions, a route map to a summit drawn by someone who had already made the climb. Instead she had found the foothills littered with corpses, her ambitions revealed as naive and deluded.

  What did that leave her with? What was she supposed to do now? She wished to return to Edinburgh but was no longer sure she wanted what awaited her there. Should she just accept the role she had been assigned, the role that she had fallen into? She had done it thus far because she told herself it was the beginning of something else. Now that she knew otherwise, could she be happy spending her days as a doctor’s assistant when she had envisioned so much more for herself?

  ‘Back to Auld Reekie tomorrow,’ Robert said, wiping his mouth on an already heavily stained napkin.

  ‘How I yearn for my own bed,’ Mina said in a plaintive tone.

  ‘Anyone would think we have been setting up camp in the wilderness, Mina, rather than staying in the best hotels the Continent has to offer.’

  ‘As you well know, Robert, one of the joys of travelling is the renewed appreciation it engenders for hearth and home.’

  Sarah traced the route of a raindrop on the window with her finger, leaving a long trail in the condensation on the glass.

  Auld Reekie.

  Edinburgh.

  Queen Street.

  Home.

  For the first time Sarah was no longer sure she could call it that.

  ELEVEN

  here is an unfamiliar air about you,’ said Henry. ‘Something strange and disturbing.’

  They were hurrying across the North Bridge on their way to the police office, where the police surgeon was to carry out his post-mortem examination of the baby found in Leith.

  ‘Strange and disturbing? What are you talking about?’ Raven asked. ‘There is nothing wrong with me. I am perfectly content.’

  ‘Precisely,’ Henry replied. ‘What has become of my glowering and combustible companion? Who is this doppelganger that has taken his place?
’

  ‘Perhaps he has gone to Selkirk to await you,’ Raven said.

  He knew that Henry was considering quitting the city and taking up a post as a medical practitioner in the Borders, believing that the pace of life there might suit him. Raven had been vocally sceptical about this, arguing that Henry could do more good staying where he was. This had been neither selfless nor objective advice. Henry was a close and valued friend, Raven’s better angel who had helped him suppress what Henry called his ‘perverse appetite for mayhem’.

  ‘You won’t let this go, will you?’ Henry replied. ‘Or rather, perhaps you will not let me go. Are you so afraid of the mischief you might become embroiled in without me being here to hold you back?’

  ‘You don’t have to worry yourself on my account. I now have a strong incentive to rein in the less reputable aspects of my character.’

  Henry’s eyes widened. ‘Is that so? A strong incentive, you say.’ He rubbed his chin in mock contemplation. ‘Could this perchance have anything to do with a woman?’

  Raven grabbed his friend’s arm. ‘I can assure you that this is quite serious. We have reached an understanding.’

  Henry stared at him for a moment, taking in what had just been said. A grin spread across his face.

  ‘Congratulations. An announcement may be a bit premature though.’

  ‘Premature? How so?’

  ‘Well, she’s still in mourning, is she not?’

  It took Raven a moment to realise his friend’s mistake.

  ‘It’s not Sarah.’

  Henry stopped in his tracks.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I just assumed . . .’

  ‘Sarah and I are friends. No more than that.’

  Henry looked at him for a little longer than was strictly comfortable, then resumed walking.

  ‘Well, who is this secret woman that I know nothing about?’