A Corruption of Blood

by Ambrose Parry

  Its resolution had brought forth an unlikely hero too. As the carriage began to move once again, Raven placed a hand on Gideon’s shoulder.

  ‘Several times I have heard you call yourself a coward. What you did for me today took great courage.’

  ‘You do me more credit than I am due,’ Gideon replied. ‘Part of me reasoned he would shoot the one he did not wish to fight hand-to-hand. Another part of me did not believe Wilson could bring himself to kill someone he had watched growing up. And so it proved, for he did not fire.’

  ‘What matters is that you threw yourself in front of a loaded pistol. You are a better man than you permit yourself to believe, Gideon. A stronger man than your father made you believe.’

  Gideon offered an apologetic smile, as though he was not ready to accept this.

  ‘I am remiss in not having thanked you for getting me out of jail.’

  ‘In truth it was Sarah who demonstrated the source of the arsenic.’

  ‘I have heard much about her. Eugenie wrote to me in prison, and I gather my sister was rather impressed by her too. Is it true she used to be a housemaid?’

  ‘It is true, yes.’

  ‘I am sorry not to have expressed my thanks to you both sooner, but in truth I was not feeling much gratitude or good will towards anybody. Following my release, I learned about the squalid discovery at Bonnington Mills, and I was aware what fate my father had intended for my child. I went to Todd. I knew that as my father’s physician he must have played a part. He confirmed what I feared. He delivered the child at some hovel in the Cowgate. I had a son, but the boy had been given away. Todd said he believed the woman found good homes for such children. I suppose a lot of people believed that. Or told themselves they did.’

  Raven thought of the comfort Eugenie clung to.

  ‘It is true that some – many – of the babies were given away,’ Raven told him. ‘Or sold, to be more accurate. Your child might yet survive. Though you will never know with whom, and thus never find him.’

  Gideon nodded. ‘I have made my peace with that,’ he said. ‘Better for him that he be brought up by someone more fitting. I had a lot of time in jail to think about how I had lived my life, and found little I was proud of. I ruin everything.’

  Raven could see now that Gideon had truly changed. The humility he witnessed in the jail cell had not been a sham.

  ‘You told me you successfully managed the plantation’s recovery. Was that a lie?’

  ‘No. The lie was what my father told people. It was hard work and I made mistakes, but I truly gave myself to it, perhaps the first time I have ever done so. I liked the people I was working with. We were making progress.’

  ‘So you do not ruin everything.’

  Gideon scoffed. ‘It was but one small corner of my father’s domain. When McLevy showed me to the gate at Calton Jail, he told me: “Congratulations, you have your freedom back.” I found myself asking what kind of freedom I truly had. All my life I have been burdened not only by my father’s expectations but by the knowledge that one day I would have to take on his mantle. Amelia was right. I am not fit for any of it.’

  He put his head back and sighed. He did not merely look chastened. He looked tired, older.

  ‘Amelia,’ he said, as though all of his cares could be distilled into one word.

  The carriage slowed at a crossroads. They were approaching Salisbury Road and Raven could hear the sound of an approaching carriage, voices of people on the street. Edinburgh quietly getting on with itself, heedless of other people’s dramas.

  Gideon turned to face him.

  ‘You were once my tutor, Raven, and I did not have the sense to pay attention to what you were trying to teach me. But I will listen if you will grant your wisdom now.’

  Raven doubted he had much wisdom to impart, though he kept this to himself. He was wishing the professor were here: hoping he would be well enough to dispense more wisdom for years to come, whether Raven wished to hear it or not.

  ‘My father deserved to die for what he did,’ Gideon said. ‘I do not wish to lose my sister too. But that is not for me to decide, is it?’

  Raven knew what he was asking, and realised that in this instance, he did have wisdom, or at least experience.

  He recalled the sound of water slapping the sides of a boat, saw a body wrapped in sailcloth. His father, dead at Raven’s hand that his mother might live. As he hefted the dead weight, he had shouldered a kind of manhood, though he was a mere twelve years old.

  ‘The hangman is not punished for executing the guilty,’ he told Gideon. ‘As far as McLevy knows, your father died of dysentery and the suspicion of poisoning has been cleared. No one need know anything else. The question is, can you forgive your sister for what she would have done to you?’

  Gideon swallowed so that his words were not choked.

  ‘There is nothing to forgive. She has delivered us both.’

  Raven glanced out of the window. They were passing the Royal Infirmary on the right-hand side, the university to their left. It was where he had first encountered Gideon. Contrary to Henry’s joke, Raven now knew that Gideon had not chosen his parents well at all.

  Raven calculated that they would be at Queen Street in fifteen minutes. Before they arrived, there was something Gideon ought to know. A decision he needed to take.

  ‘The summerhouse,’ Raven said. ‘Where Wilson knew you would be. Eugenie told me you retreated there as a child. It was where you went with Christina, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. We used to meet there, where we knew we would not be disturbed. That was where we dreamt our foolish dreams, of being together somewhere far from all of this.’

  Then it struck him, as Raven intended it should.

  ‘How do you know her name?’

  ‘Because she lives yet. Your father lied.’

  Gideon sat straighter, a sudden anxiety upon his face as though he did not dare believe it lest he be crushed again.

  ‘She is a housemaid at 52 Queen Street, where we are bound. However, you should know that some of what your father said was true. She was forced into prostitution. She became ill and was admitted to the Lock Hospital. But there she was noticed by Professor Simpson and given a position in his house.’

  Gideon’s eyes filled. ‘She lives yet?’

  ‘I tell you this now because before we reach our destination, you must decide whether you wish to see her.’

  Gideon was incredulous. ‘Of course I wish to—’

  ‘She has been through a great deal,’ Raven interrupted. ‘She does not know you have returned from Tobago, nor do I imagine she has any expectation that you would seek her out. I would not see her hurt further by impossible dreams.’

  Raven watched the implications pass over Gideon’s features like a shadow.

  ‘I understand. It would not be fair to raise hopes of something that cannot be met. I have a mountain to climb in proving myself to Edinburgh society, and I can only imagine how it would be received should I be associating with a housemaid, one about whom sordid rumours are bound to spread.’

  ‘I once faced the same dilemma,’ Raven told him. ‘And the stakes are far higher for you.’

  Gideon said nothing throughout the remainder of the journey, deep in contemplation as he gazed from the carriage.

  Then, as the brougham turned on to Queen Street, he broke his silence.

  ‘Do you regret it? Do you think about her still?’

  Unbidden, Raven’s mind pictured Sarah in a thousand ways, but it also summoned a memory of the blow he had suffered in the moment he learned she had married.

  ‘Every day,’ he answered. ‘But that is the burden you must bear, the sacrifice you have to make.’

  Gideon nodded. He looked resolved but not resigned. Perhaps for the first time, there was a calm about him.

  SIXTY-ONE

  he little chapel was warm, the sun slanting through the stained-glass windows, tiny jewels of colour illuminating the polished stone floor
.

  Sarah was grateful that they were here for a wedding and not a funeral, despite her reservations about the marriage itself. Dr Simpson had ignored his summons from the grim reaper and, although still weak, was gaining in strength every day. Not as rapidly as he would like, of course. And whether the truce between himself and Syme would last was anyone’s guess.

  Sarah looked at Raven, resplendent in his new suit. Not one borrowed from the professor, for once. He looked handsome, distinguished, respectable. And he looked happy. For all his doubts she knew that he had made the correct decision. They both had.

  Over the past few weeks there had been many choices to make, none of them straightforward; none a simple choice between right and wrong. The hardest had concerned Christina and what the outcome of all this meant for her. The girl had been gushingly grateful for everything that Sarah had done, but she felt awkward receiving Christina’s thanks because of what else had been denied her.

  Sarah had told Christina that none of the babies found at Bonnington Mills had a birthmark. Christina took this as proof that her child had been given to a loving family, that he would be looked after. Fortunately, that much was true. Her son’s future was assured in ways beyond Christina’s imaginings. He would be brought up to want for nothing, by someone who loved him. But she would never know where or by whom.

  That was a choice she and Raven had made together and a burden they would both have to carry from now on. They had reasoned that telling Christina the whole truth would only bring pain, because nothing could be proven. If it came down to the word of Amelia Bettencourt against a housemaid and former prostitute, there would be no contest. The only other person who could testify to the truth about Matthew was Dr Todd, but to do so would require him to publicly reveal his involvement with the baby-farmer, and quite possibly his daughter’s secret too.

  That was the genius of Amelia’s plan. Absolutely none of it could be verified. It was difficult enough to prove murder with arsenic, and that was a detectable poison. The manchineels left no trace, far less any means of demonstrating how they had been administered or by whom.

  Sarah, little as she could condone Amelia’s actions, was nonetheless admiring of her cunning and determination. The lengths she was prepared to go to. If women were to progress in this world, they would need more like her. To take down a bigger, more powerful enemy, you had to use underhand strategies. Sometimes you had to fight dirty.

  Upon the altar, the minister said the final words: ‘I now pronounce you husband and wife.’

  Sarah felt her eyes moisten as Gideon and Christina kissed.

  She had seldom seen two people look so happy.

  Soon enough, she would have to watch Raven and Eugenie stand before a minister too. She did not believe she would feel the same joy that day. Sarah had previously believed that she and Raven having lain together changed nothing, but if that was true, why did she think about it every day? And why, despite knowing how wrong it would be, did she feel so absolutely certain that she wanted it to happen again? That it would happen again.

  Raven leaned closer to her on the pew.

  ‘I would not have thought someone could look so pleased after giving up a fortune.’

  Gideon had renounced his inheritance and his title, letting them pass to the next male heir. He had given up status and fortune to be with the woman he loved. But he had also come to an accommodation with his sister. He would retain the plantation in Tobago that he so loved. He and Christina would begin their journey there today. They would have a life together, far from all that they wished to leave behind.

  ‘He’s hardly destitute,’ Sarah replied.

  Raven rolled his eyes. ‘Where is your sense of romance?’

  Sarah would have to concede that she did not see how else the whole sorry episode could have ended, what different conclusion might have been more fitting. McLevy was satisfied that the baby-farmer had been dealt with. He maintained that his enquiries were ongoing as to who had killed Mrs King, but Sarah wondered if that truly meant anything. Privately McLevy admitted that the perpetrator had merely saved the hangman a job. Justice had been served; the punishment fitted the crime, even though it had not been officially sanctioned.

  As far as the authorities were concerned, Sir Ainsley Douglas had died of dysentery, carrying the worst of his secrets to the grave. And it was a grave he would be turning in if he knew that the child of his scorned son and a lowly housemaid would ultimately command his fortune.

  Of the other main players, Gideon and Christina were married and about to start a new life together; Amelia had a child she would love, and Gideon’s son would inherit all.

  Perhaps it was the best that could be hoped for.

  *

  The wedding breakfast had been set out on tables on the lawn before the summerhouse. There was an elaborate selection of food: salmon, lobster and ham, as well as fruit jellies, blancmange and wedding cake. Sarah stood a little distance away as she watched Raven and Eugenie fill their plates.

  ‘They look happy,’ a voice said.

  Sarah turned to see Amelia standing beside her. She had not been aware of her approach, but she was learning that stealth was very much to be expected of the woman. This was the first they had seen of each other since that evening at St Andrew Square, and there was a palpable tension between them. Amelia was now a woman of power and property, but Sarah knew her secrets. Which one was consequently the greater threat to the other remained unclear.

  ‘Gideon and Christina,’ Amelia clarified, signalling that she knew it was not the bride and groom who had caught Sarah’s attention.

  ‘Yes. Yes, they do,’ Sarah replied. Caught on the back foot and struggling for something to say, she echoed Raven’s recent words. ‘I would not have thought someone could look so content after giving up a fortune.’

  ‘He surprised us all,’ Amelia replied. ‘And I admire him in a way I never thought I could. But please remember that he got what he wanted from the accommodation. Gideon exercised a choice, one that we women do not enjoy.’

  Amelia then made play of gazing towards where Raven stood, underlining that she had caught Sarah staring.

  ‘You love him, don’t you?’

  Sarah looked at Amelia, trying to fathom a response. Amelia was still dressed in black: mourning her late husband but inviting people to assume it was for her father. An affectation hiding the truth.

  ‘He loves Eugenie.’

  ‘Not an answer to my question.’

  ‘She will be a better wife to Raven than I ever could. She can give him things that I cannot.’

  ‘What manner of things could a woman of your gifts fail to provide?’

  Sarah glanced at Eugenie as she answered.

  ‘Children. The willingness to put all of his ambitions first. The sacrifice of allowing my own aspirations to wither.’

  Amelia said nothing for a moment as she took this in. She appeared to be considering Sarah’s words carefully.

  ‘What next for you then, Miss Fisher?’

  ‘Work and study,’ she replied. ‘I will continue to work for Dr Simpson but plan to take a course of lectures to make up for the deficiencies in my education.’

  ‘Deficiencies?’

  ‘I had a parish-school education: a girl’s parish-school education. Many of the things I require to know were never taught to me – Latin, Greek, natural philosophy, chemistry.’

  ‘How will you manage both?’

  ‘I’ll make use of bits and pieces of time,’ she said. ‘“Do not wait for ideal circumstances to arise, act as though they are already here.”’

  She smiled, realising she was quoting Simpson, reciting his own philosophy. And she would need to do all of that. The lecture course she was referring to extended over a period of four years. It was a considerable commitment but one that she was prepared to make.

  ‘It will be expensive,’ Amelia stated. She paused for a moment then said, ‘I could perhaps assist.’

  Was thi
s payment in kind for Sarah maintaining her silence? She could not say, but if Amelia wanted to make amends of a financial kind, then Sarah had no shortage of suggestions.

  ‘I have the funds to pay for my own education,’ Sarah replied. ‘But there are plenty who do not. You are someone with the means to pay for the education of many women like me.’

  ‘Like you?’

  ‘Women with ambitions to study as men do, those of us who are not content with sewing, knitting and making bread.’

  Amelia smiled, nodding her approval; and, Sarah inferred, her assent.

  ‘We will need more than a few fortunate individuals,’ Sarah continued. ‘We will need a battalion. For the more of us there are, the more of us there will be.’

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  n writing any historical novel, the fun is in weaving true elements into a wider fiction, leaving the reader wondering which parts of the story really happened and which are the products of our combined imaginations.

  Sir Ainsley’s infectious diseases ordinance was based on legislation enacted in 1864 – the Contagious Diseases Act – whereby women suspected of being prostitutes could be arrested and subjected to intimate examinations in an attempt to contain the spread of venereal disease. No provision within the act was made to prevent men from consorting with sex workers.

  Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to obtain a medical degree (1849) and the first woman to be registered with the UK General Medical Council (1858). She graduated from Geneva Medical College in New York before travelling to Europe to extend her training and experience. She developed an eye infection while working in the maternity hospital in Paris and lost the sight in her left eye. On her return to America she experienced difficulty in setting up in practice. When she could not secure a position as a doctor in any hospital or dispensary, she set up her own. With her sister Emily she opened the New York Infirmary for Women and Children in 1857.

  Unfortunately, infanticide and baby-farming were not uncommon in the nineteenth century. There are several women whose crimes were amalgamated into our version, including Amelia Dyer, who strangled her victims with dressmaker’s tape and disposed of dozens of them in a canal, and Edinburgh’s Jessie King, who was the last woman to be executed in the city in 1889.