The Amazing Dr. Darwin

by Charles Sheffield

  “Ledyard said he will meet with us at the Lambeth Inn,” went on Darwin. “But I fear he may not have received our message from Norwich. The coach deliveries have been worse and worse. He warned me in his last letter that the inn offers bad food and worse beds. I hesitate to go to his home uninvited, until a personal meeting can supplement our correspondence.” He looked ahead, shielding his eyes from the driving rain with his free hand. “Take a look there, Jacob, and tell me if I am seeing true. Is that the Lambeth church ahead? If it is, then that will be Alderton Manor, on the rising ground behind the village, with Alderton Mill next to it. The flint pit should be just west of the mill.”

  Jacob Pole peered far ahead, his eyes seeming to pierce the mist of raindrops. After a few seconds he nodded vigorously.

  “I see all three. If that’s Alderton Manor, it’s big. I can count three wings, maybe four. But did you notice the horseman ahead of us? He’s coming this way, hugging the edge of the dike. See him, there between the water and the trees?”

  The rain was easing a little. Darwin frowned into the thinning drops. “I’m not sure. You know that your sight is better than mine for distances. Do you think that it might be Ledyard?”

  Pole had pulled a small spyglass from the leather travelling bag between his feet. He put it to his eye, cursing the movement of the sulky on the rough road surface.

  “I think not,” he said after a few moments. “Unless your friend Ledyard has taken to riding sidesaddle. Whoever it is, she’s riding fast. Must be on an emergency errand.”

  The two men watched in silence as the mounted figure approached. The woman rode a black stallion, at least seventeen hands high, controlling the big animal with no sign of effort. She pulled up quickly beside them on the roadside, with a clatter of hooves on the chalky surface.

  “Dr. Darwin?” she said, leaning far over in the saddle. They looked at her in surprise. As she reined in the animal she had swept back the hood of her riding cloak, to reveal an unruly mass of blond-red hair tightly curling about her head. Darwin recalled the Viking forays into East Anglia a thousand years earlier. Some evidence of their invasions remained. The woman was in her late twenties, with blue-grey eyes and a fair complexion. The set of her jaw removed any suggestion of the china doll hinted at by her other features.

  “I am he,” replied Darwin at last. “But you have the advantage of me, madam, since I find it hard to believe that you are James Ledyard, my only acquaintance in Lambeth.”

  “Thank God for that,” replied the blond woman mysteriously. “I am Alice Milner. Dr. Ledyard is busy on an urgent case at Alderton Manor.”

  “And he asked you to come and meet us for him?” asked Pole.

  “No. He told me not to,” the woman replied, shaking down her curls. “He told me to go and lie down and get some sleep. I had to sneak out of the back of the manor and saddle Samson myself.”

  “This is Colonel Pole,” said Darwin. He had caught the unspoken question in her look when Pole spoke to her. “We are travelling together. See now, if James Ledyard told you not to meet us, and suggested rest, then why are you here?”

  Alice Milner had turned her horse and was walking it alongside the sulky. The old mare, ignoring both the new arrival and the conversation, was proceeding at her own steady pace toward Lambeth. The woman shook the stallion’s reins.

  “Can you not go faster?” she asked, impatient at the plodding horse.

  Darwin regarded her shrewdly. “No,” he replied. He paused, waiting for her response. “At least, not without some reason.”

  The woman looked quickly back at the sulky. “You are Erasmus Darwin.” It was a statement, not a question. “According to Dr. Ledyard, you are perhaps the premier physician of Europe. Will it hasten your pace if I tell you that my fiancй, Philip Alderton, suffered a serious accident last night, and remains now in a grave condition at the manor?”

  Darwin and Pole exchanged a swift glance. “It would indeed,” said Darwin, “were it not clear from your manner that there is more than a simple accident involved in this. If it is my medical prowess that you seek, why did not Dr. Ledyard ask for it?”

  Behind them the sun was breaking through a rift in the rain clouds. It shone on the woman’s head, picking out the red-gold glints in her hair. She bit at her lower lip and stared straight ahead along the road to Lambeth.

  “He does not want a second opinion,” she said at last. “But it is more than that. James Ledyard told me that you are opposed to all superstitions and religious dogmas, heathen or Christian. I rode here to implore you to apply that philosophy to Alderton Manor, and to the village of Lambeth. I cannot persuade them from their pre-Christian mysteries. The simplest accident will lead to a month of talk about the Alderton Pit.”

  Darwin had watched her closely as she spoke, noting the frown on her forehead and the hesitation when she mentioned Alderton. He shook the rein he was holding, and the old mare picked up her speed a fraction.

  “If I am to help you,” he said. “I will need the full story—not the fragments that you are throwing to us. Give all to us, root and branch. For instance, you lack the Norfolk accent, and I would place you from the West Country. Devon, perhaps, or Cornwall. Yet there is Dane in your appearance, not Celt. How do you come to be here in Lambeth, and what is the accident you spoke of? Remember, I cannot resolve a mystery without facts. I am no magician.”

  His manner was abrupt, and there was a slight stammer on some of his consonants. Yet his manner was friendly, with a sunny smile—slightly lessened in effectiveness by the lack of front teeth. Alice Milner smiled in return, and nodded her head ruefully.

  “I hope for miracles,” she said. “But I have no right to expect them. Let me begin at the very beginning.”

  She pulled her hood forward to protect her from the rain, which was coming again in another heavy shower.

  “You are quite right, I was born in Norfolk but not raised here. My parents live now in Plymouth, but we have our roots in East Anglia. Three years ago, I left the West Country and went to study the Asian cultures in London.” She grimaced. “From Papa’s reaction, one might think I had gone to sell my body to some of London’s gambling bucks. He became inured to the idea after a year or two, the more so when I met and was wooed by Philip Alderton. My parents in their usual fashion checked Philip’s family background when I wrote about him, and were much relieved to learn that the Aldertons have lived in Lambeth with mill and manor since the Conquest. Had father checked more than stability and prosperity, he might have been less sanguine.”

  “I have heard nothing of Philip Alderton,” said Darwin. “As Ledyard has described it to me in his letters, Charles Alderton is the head of the house, and the flint pit is on Alderton land. Is Philip his son?”

  “His nephew. Charles Alderton died two months ago, without issue, and Philip inherited this estate as the closest living relative. That death has added to the superstitions in Lambeth. Uncle Charles died alone, in Alderton Pit. James Ledyard says it was a normal enough death, of some kind of seizure, but the villagers rumor otherwise. The landlord of the Lambeth Inn—you will meet him shortly—is full of a strange tale of the Alderton’s family doom, that goes back for more than a hundred years. The innkeeper claims that Charles Alderton is merely the latest victim.”

  “Every old family has its tales of disaster,” said Darwin. “It is no more than a consequence of record-keeping. Misfortunes will befall any line in ten generations, and you should be surprised if there were no family skeletons. So Philip came here to claim his inheritance, did he, and you came with him. What do your parents think of that?”

  “They do not approve. They think me forward and imprudent. But I arrived here only last week. Philip’s departure from London on the occasion of Charles Alderton’s death was sudden. I stayed on at Dowgate Stairs and continued my studies, until Philip sent me a letter urging my presence here.”

  They were approaching the village, a huddle of poor houses standing around a common. A
handsome old church and a Tudor inn stood opposite each other in the center, the sacred facing the profane. Past the village, the ground rose gently in a low hill. At its crest stood the manor, and slightly to the north of it on a second slope the sweeps of the mill turned slowly in the northern breeze. Alice Milner stared ahead at the peaceful prospect. Her nose wrinkled in disgust.

  “I must say the life of a Lambeth rustic has little appeal to me—although Philip has been extolling the virtues of his position as lord of the manor since my arrival. He insists that my interest in antiquities should imply an interest in Alderton, since the manor, mill and flint pit are all of great age. The heating of the manor certainly bears him out. It is a drafty icebox.”

  Her tone was light, but there was a thin tremble in her voice that made Darwin look hard at her hands and face.

  “Perhaps you should be riding in the coach, madam. Jacob or I can take the stallion. I believe that you are much in need of food and rest.”

  Alice Milner took a deep breath and sat up straighter in the saddle. “No, I can manage well enough until we reach the inn.” She looked at Darwin with new interest. “As you surmise, I am not feeling well. There was little sleep for me last night because of worry, and no food yet this morning. Even so, I would have sworn that my fatigue was well concealed.”

  Jacob Pole gave a harsh bark of laughter. He lifted his head clear of the leather cloak. “From me, my dear, and from most people. But don’t hope to hide anything from Erasmus. He can spot disease where any other would see nothing. He will see it in the way that you walk or eat or speak—or in nothing at all, if you are merely sitting. I remember the case of the Countess of Northesk, when she came this year desperately ill to Lichfield—”

  “Now, Jacob,” interrupted Darwin. “This is no time for your cock-and-bull stories of medical practice. Miss Milner has yet to tell us of her fiancй’s accident, and we will soon be at the inn.” He turned to her. “If you are not too weary, my dear, pray continue with your account. I doubt that there will be privacy for discussion in the public rooms of the inn.”

  She nodded. “Especially in Lambeth. The Alderton’s family business is everyone’s business here. Let me continue.

  “As you will see if you ride the countryside, the mill ahead of us is the only one for a good distance. Since this is mainly wheat country, the wheels are very busy, and several villages come to this estate for their grinding. Just before I arrived here, Philip had asked Bretherton—he is the chief servant at the manor—why the mill is worked only to sunset. I should add that although Philip was born at the manor, he has not lived there since he was a small child, and he is not familiar with local habits. Bretherton told him that no one from the village will work the mill after dark. They fear the place.”

  “Do they, indeed.” Darwin clicked his tongue softly, making the old mare prick up her ears. “Now you intrigue me. It must be a strong superstition, if it will stand between a Norfolk villager and his pocketbook. Is this a new fancy, acquired with the death of Charles Alderton near the mill?”

  “Not at all. It goes back many years—many generations, if Bretherton and the villagers can be believed. As a result of it, Philip had to turn away grain from a big farm in Blakeney, just two days ago. Without night work, there was no way the mill could grind the corn by the time it was needed. The mill produces good revenues for the manor. As you might imagine, Philip became very angry. Yesterday, he declared that he would run the mill at night himself, to prove that the fears of the villagers were ridiculous. I didn’t care for his idea, but he scoffed at my worries. There happened to be a good easterly wind, and the mill is perfectly placed to catch one. At sunset, he went down to the mill with one of the newer servants from the manor, Tom Barton. Philip offered him a guinea for the night’s work. Barton had not been long enough at the manor to be steeped in the tales of the mill and the pit, and he had a reputation for greed.”

  “Had a reputation?” Darwin reacted to the odd choice of tense.

  Their companion was silent for a moment, looking away from them across the canal. The rain was moving north, to the sea beyond the gentle hill slopes ahead, and the summer air was wonderfully clear. Ripples of wind moved across the ripe wheat, field after field shaking the droplets from their laden heads.

  “Yes,” she said at last. “Tom Barton and Philip were found this morning in the Alderton Pit, by the villagers arriving for work at the mill. Barton was dead. Philip was badly injured and unconscious from loss of blood. Both men had terrible wounds.”

  The flowering poppies showed like specks of venous blood in the gold of the corn fields. The air was suddenly colder as the sun went behind a lingering rain cloud.

  “Old Hezekiah Prescott was in the group that found them,” said Alice. “He went back to spread the word around the village. The Lambeth Immortal has come back.”

  * * *

  They had come to the mean houses that marked the edge of the village. Young children ran to meet the coach, and followed it at a respectful distance as Alice led the way to the courtyard of the inn and dismounted.

  Darwin swung down from the sulky with an agility surprising for his bulk and looked about him keenly. The Lambeth Inn had retained its basic Tudor beams and plaster, but some rash hand had added a styleless scullery and washhouse to the rear, marring the whole structure. Across the common, the church loomed surprisingly large. In the Norfolk pattern, it was built of fragments of hard flint imbedded in grey mortar. Farther up the hill stood Alderton Manor, as big as all the houses of the village together, and behind it Alderton Mill.

  “They must be a religious lot,” remarked Jacob Pole. “That church would hold everybody in the village ten times over.”

  Darwin nodded. “It would. All the villages along this part of the coast had many more people when the ports were open. The silting has closed all of them over the past century. Good for the cockles, maybe, but bad for most businesses.”

  “That’s true for the mill, too,” added Alice Milner. “Philip says they would never have built a post mill the size of that one, for a village the size of this.” She handed the stallion’s reins to the ostler and led the way inside the inn. “I expect we’ll be eating lunch here. May I suggest that you let me order for you? I know what to avoid.”

  The main room was dominated by the huge fireplace at the far end, empty now for the summer, and by the line of serving hatches leading through to the kitchen. The landlord stood on the opposite side, by the long oak table. He was red-cheeked and at least as fat as Darwin.

  “Now then, Willy,” Alice said to him in a determined voice. “We’d like lunch, and we don’t want any swill, like the pie you offered me two days ago. We’ll have coddled eggs, fresh bread, cold pork and beer—and I want to see the joint and carve it myself.”

  The landlord was not at all put out by the hard words. “I’ll have it for you presently, Miss Milner,” he said cheerfully, and went back into the kitchen.

  Jacob Pole looked at Willy’s waddling form as the innkeeper went through the doorway. “There can’t be much wrong with the cooking, if he can get to that size. He’d hold you in a tug-of-war, Erasmus, and there aren’t many that can.”

  “You should see his wife,” said Alice. “She would make two of him.”

  “Pity we’re not in Persia, or Araby,” said Pole absently. He seemed to be lost in thought, but his eye was on Alice. “I could have sold her for a fortune there. The fatter the better, as far as your Arabs are concerned.”

  “And since when are women chattels,” began Alice angrily. “I admit, it was once that way here, but now—”

  “Don’t get excited, my dear,” interrupted Darwin. “And you, Jacob, stop it. This is not the time. It’s just Jacob’s idea of a joke,” he explained, turning to Alice. “He has a lie for every country of the globe. Now, can we hear more of the events at Alderton Manor, or do you prefer not to discuss them here?”

  “Willy Lister has the longest tongue in the village, and the b
iggest ears. Best wait,” she said, as the landlord returned carrying a huge tray on which stood a loin of pork, warm fresh bread, and a stone pitcher of beer.

  “Eggs’ll be a minute or two. Have to be goose eggs, if you don’t mind,” he said. “Hens haven’t been laying for the past couple of days, something’s upset ’em.” He seemed ready to say more, then looked at Alice, ducked his head to avoid meeting her eyes, and hurried back to the kitchen.

  “See what I told you?” she said angrily, while he was still in earshot. “Mindless, superstitious rubbish, and he’s one of the worst for spreading it.”

  “But it’s not to be dismissed completely on that account,” said a voice from the door. The man who entered and walked forward to the table was in his middle thirties, short and slightly built. His legs were slightly bowed, and Darwin’s practiced eye discerned a slight limp, well disguised.

  The newcomer swept off his woollen cap and held out his hand to Darwin.

  “Welcome to Lambeth. I’m honored to meet you and sorry I was not here when you arrived. And this must be Colonel Pole. James Ledyard, at your service.”

  “How did you know which one was I, sir?” asked Pole curiously.

  “He watched me, watching his walk,” said Darwin, with an appreciative nod. “Correct, Dr. Ledyard?”

  The other’s appearance was slightly sinister. He was wigless, and wore his grey-streaked black hair long and swept back, revealing a pale, bony forehead. The mouth was full and red, with canines that extended beyond the incisors. His smile was friendly, but oddly disquieting.

  “And what did you decide about me, Dr. Darwin?” he asked.

  “Little enough.” Darwin shrugged. “You suffered from rickets as a child, but not too badly. You are experienced in weapons-handling—in the Seven Years’ War, perhaps, although you must have been a mere child for most of it. At some time in your life you suffered a broken patella—as I did myself. Very painful, was it not?”