Unseemly Science

by Rod Duncan

  “Listen,” said Tulip. A notice was pinned to the wall next to her bed. She read out the title: “Rules for patients.” Below was a long list, with some words and phrases underlined. I scanned the regulations for clues.

  5. No tobacco – chewing, smoking or snuff.

  6. No spitting.

  7. Name badges to be worn at all times.

  8. Opium to be administered by medical staff only.

  “Then it’s a hospital,” said Tulip.

  “Not a hospital,” said the woman with the children. “A sanatorium.”

  Tulip shifted around, making the chain clank against the iron bed frame. “How do you know?”

  “I came last summer. But for a holiday. There was a camp for children from the city. We walked in the woods. It was... different. No prisoners. They told us the history of the place. Before anti-tubercular medicines, people with consumption came here.”

  “To die,” said a woman further up the row.

  Sunset came without sight or smell of food. Nor did we have lamps. There wasn’t much speaking. Just a few apologies when people had to move to use the chamber pot and ended up dragging the chain. And soothing words from the mother to her children, who were crying from hunger.

  Lying in the dark, panic churned in my stomach. I had examined our confinement from all angles but found no possibility of escape. The more I focussed on the problem, the faster and more disorganized my thoughts became until they were bouncing off each other, little more than a blur.

  In a moment of clarity, I realised what I was doing. I took a series of deep breaths then started to recite the thirteen times table in my mind. After one hundred and ninety-five I became lost, but the exercise had done its work. My thoughts had slowed. In an effort to divert them from my imprisonment, I focussed on the puzzle of Mrs Raike.

  It was only a few hours before that I had been reading through old volumes of the Derby Herald. Her organization had started twice. The first time seemed natural enough. Councillor Wallace Jones had been at the helm. They had made some mistakes in dealing with local businesses and ended up in a controversy that reached the front page. The second time had been very different. ‘Controlled’ was the word that came to mind. Unnaturally smooth. Mrs Raike had made her appearance and Wallace Jones had vanished from the scene.

  My thoughts were interrupted by the door banging open. A young constable entered with a tray, on which rested three loaves, a saucer of butter and some knives.

  “Why did you turn out the lamp?” he asked.

  He seemed taken aback when Tulip told him that no lights had been given us. But he left without offering help.

  It was Tulip also who organised the distribution of the food, tearing the bread into portions and making sure everyone had their share of the butter. I chose to eat my bread dry, though it proved hard to swallow. I also managed to end up with one of the butter knives, which I slid into my boot. The knife was too dull to be used as a weapon and would probably prove useless. But the act of stealing it comforted me. A taste of defiance. The illusion of control.

  After the others were asleep, I reached under my bed frame and dipped my finger in the butter I had hidden there. I greased the skin of my wrist and started to work the manacle, pulling first one side and then the other, feeling it bite into my flesh. Discomfort turned to pain. The pain became unbearable. But however hard I pulled, the iron would not slip over my hand.

  Chapter 11

  The tyrant has ever held law to be synonymous with justice.

  From Revolution

  Our gaolers were constables with no experience of prison work. That much was clear from the start. Just as it had been no one’s job to bring us lamps, we soon discovered that it was no one’s job to empty the chamber pots. We had to beg the man who came in the morning with our breakfast. He relented at last. Our chain was unlocked from the ring bolts in the floor and we were allowed to walk in procession, carrying the soiled and stinking porcelain out to the latrine hut to be emptied and rinsed.

  Everything about the prison was haphazard except the chain itself.

  With the arrival of the noon meal – more bread – we had another chance to make demands. This time it was for our water jugs to be re-filled and to be allowed a few minutes exercise in the spring sunshine.

  “How long will this go on?” Tulip whispered to me as we walked circles around the hut.

  “Till the treaty’s signed, I suppose.”

  “And then?”

  “They don’t want us in the Republic,” I said. “But I guess they’ll be shy of being seen to help the Kingdom. We’re an embarrassment. They’ll get rid of us as quietly and quickly as they can.”

  “And after that, home,” said Tulip. “Back to the Kingdom.” She stared at me for a moment, as one might assess a horse before placing a bet. “I never asked what you ran from to end up this side of the border. You don’t, do you?. Ask I mean. Not that sort of question. It’s private business.”

  “There’s not much private when you’ve slopped out the night soil together,” I said.

  She laughed. Such a joyful sound felt out of place.

  “I like you,” I said.

  “You might not have liked me in the Kingdom.”

  “Why not?”

  She did not answer.

  “I was born in a travelling show,” I told her. “Grew up there learning the bullet catcher’s trade.”

  “You surprise me.”

  “Travellers shouldn’t be so pleasant?”

  She blushed. “You seem too well spoken. Well educated. I thought...”

  “You can’t win an audience unless you understand them,” I said. “And you can’t do that unless you can think like them. My father taught me to read from an encyclopaedia. One page a day. He’d won it in a bet. The well-schooled speech I learned from others in the show.”

  “You make it sound idyllic.”

  “It was the way it was. I had nothing to compare it to. Until the Duke of Northampton saw me one day. Decided I’d make a diverting plaything. He dropped backhanders to some officials so the law court would award me as payment for a debt that never really existed. That’s what I ran from.”

  “Oh,” she said, her expression blank.

  “Why did you cross the border?” I asked

  “I’m a bad person,” she said. “But you can’t run from that.”

  The manacles were rubbing our wrists sore by the time we filed back into the hut. I asked for them to be loosened a notch. This request was refused.

  It was after the evening meal that one of the constables stepped into the hut holding a slip of paper. We had been given a lamp at last. He angled the paper to its light and read: “Elizabeth Barnabus?”

  “Here,” I said.

  Flourishing a key, he marched to my bedside and unlocked me. Where other guards had stared unabashed, this one would not meet my gaze. Perhaps he had not found it so easy to cast civility aside.

  “Out,” he said.

  It was the first moment when I could have tried to escape. If he hadn’t been following quite so closely, I could have slammed the door between us and run. The mere thought of it set my heart to a double time beat. Not that I could have got far.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “Walk,” he said, shoving my shoulder in case the instruction had been unclear.

  The sun had just set and the windows of the huts were dark, except for the men’s hut and one other at the very end of the row.

  “I’m to be tried?”

  No answer.

  “I want to see a lawyer.”

  “Walk,” he said again.

  We approached the last hut. He pushed me towards the door. When I climbed the steps he did not follow.

  From the outside the hut had looked identical to all the others. But inside it had been furnished as an office with desks instead of beds and box files instead of chamber pots. At the end of the room stood a man wearing a homburg and a long tailed jacket. Even befo
re he turned, I knew him. He was an agent of the International Patent Office and our paths had crossed before.

  I spoke his name. “John Farthing.”

  “Elizabeth.”

  “If you had something to do with this, I’ll–...”

  “No,” he said, cutting in before I could embarrass myself with an impotent threat. “The Patent Office has no jurisdiction here.”

  “Yet, it’s to blame.”

  He knew what I meant by that and I saw in his expression that my words had stung. It had been an agent of the Patent Office who had accepted a bribe and set in train my family’s bankruptcy and my own indentured servitude to a lecherous aristocrat. But for that man, I would not be living in exile.

  “I’ve offered before to help you seek justice,” he said. “I could still try.”

  “We both know it wouldn’t work.”

  “If you change your mind, all you have to do is send word. I’m based at the High Pavement office in Nottingham. They’ll always know how to contact me.”

  He sat down and gestured to the chair opposite. “Please.”

  “I’d rather stand,” I said. “It’s a luxury – being unchained.”

  Discomforted, he got to his feet again.

  “How did you find me here so quickly?” I asked.

  “Your name is on a list. Any legal action concerning you and I’m informed.”

  “You are informed?”

  “Is there anything you need? Anything I can get for you?”

  “Why am I on a watch list? I thought you were done with me.”

  “Must you be like this every time we meet?”

  “Why am I on your list?”

  “You ask that now?”

  “It might be our last chance to talk. Once the treaty’s signed, I’ll be shipped off to the Kingdom. I might be rather busy after that. The Duke will have special work for me, don’t you think?”

  John Farthing slammed his palm against the desk making the lamp jump. “Enough!” I had never seen him so angry. But just as quickly, he had his emotion bottled and corked. “If there was anything I could do. Anything...”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I want you fairly treated. Are they feeding you?”

  “Bread and water.”

  “This we can change. There should be fruit or vegetables at least. I’ll speak to the commander. Do you have enough warmth? Can I bring you anything?”

  “A set of lock picks?”

  “You are proud, Elizabeth. Do you think yourself so well provided that you can throw back in my face all kindness?”

  He didn’t deserve my taunts. In part of my mind, I knew that. He was a man who would always do his duty. He had helped me in the past – when my needs had run in parallel with his narrow loyalty. But he was first and last a servant of the Patent Office, an institution I detested.

  I knew no way of letting go my anger. And thus our meetings seemed always to run this way. Yet once it was over, I would be led back to the hut and chained. I massaged my left wrist where the shackle had left a bruise.

  I lifted my foot and flexed it. An idea began to form.

  “Would you turn your back for a moment?” I asked.

  “I’d happily see you escape. But there are guards outside. Not that I doubt your capacity. But–...”

  “I’m not going to run,” I said. “I just want to adjust my underwear. There is no privacy when I’m with the others.”

  “Oh. I’m... I’m sorry. I thought...”

  “I can trust you not to look?”

  “Of course.” He turned to face the window.

  Choosing a chair near the wall, where I would not be seen from outside, I sat and began unlacing my boots.

  Agents of the Patent Office were sworn to poverty and celibacy. Detached from loves and possessions, they were supposed to exercise their powers with priest-like detachment. Bawdy cartoons and music hall jokes told a different story. But John Farthing, I judged to be without feelings in those areas. He might tell lies in the course of his work. But he would not sneak a look at a lady undressing.

  “Thank you for visiting me,” I said, slipping off my boots and lifting skirt and petticoat.

  “Thank you for... for agreeing to see me,” he said, somewhat flustered by the situation.

  “I do appreciate your concern.”

  “It’s good to hear that.”

  I unrolled my right stocking and stretched the bare leg out in front of me, working the foot up and down, feeling the Achilles tendon moving out and in.

  “Why does the Patent Office still watch me?” I asked.

  “It’s... nothing. Nothing to concern you.” Still that fluster in his voice. He was hiding something – and with an uncharacteristic lack of finesse. “The case of Florence May... it’s yet to be closed. That is all.”

  I peeled my left stocking half way down leaving my thigh bare but two layers over my lower leg. Then I doubled it again so that my calf and ankle were loosely covered by four layers of material.

  “I saw her hanged,” I said, trying not to let the horror of that day into my mind. For I needed to have my wits sharp.

  “There was uhm... in Florence May’s possession... an item that remains undiscovered,” he said.

  “A machine?”

  “An artefact. It was in... that is to say, it belonged to... to her father. We cannot close the case until it’s recovered.”

  I pulled the stocking from my right leg up over the layers of stocking that now covered my left ankle, and then up all the way to my thigh. Thus it held the bunched material tight.

  “Two patent crimes in the same family?” I asked, testing my freedom of movement by stretching the foot up and down again.

  “A... a coincidence.”

  “What artefact?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “It’s not for you to question me.” His voice was strained.

  “But a coincidence? You trust coincidences? Two patent crimes in one household?”

  “It’s not so strange,” he said. “Not from a bullet catcher. The only people more trouble are alchemists.”

  Trouble. As the daughter of bullet catchers, that is what I would always be in the eyes of the Patent Office.

  I had my boots on, and was lacing the left one carefully to hide the bottom of my artificially thickened ankle.

  “May I look now?” he asked.

  I stood and brushed down my skirts. “Yes.”

  He turned, but kept his gaze lowered. First the young guard had not met my eyes. Now it was John Farthing. Good, I thought. Let them feel shame for what they have done.

  “This is goodbye then,” I said, and stepped towards him, hand extended.

  He took it and at last looked at me straight. The intensity in his expression took me aback. “Goodbye, Elizabeth,” he said.

  It was as I turned to go that I caught sight of myself reflected in the black mirror of the window. And behind me, a perfect reflection of the chair in which I had been adjusting my stockings.

  I turned and marched to the door.

  The young constable was waiting for me outside. We marched back in the light of a thin moon. Somewhere in the forest an owl shrieked.

  John Farthing had been watching me. He had seen everything – my preparation to escape, my stockings, my bare thighs. In the darkness, I blushed with anger.

  The constable pushed me up the steps into the women’s hut, where the lamp had been turned low. One of the women put a finger to her lips. The children were asleep.

  “Arm,” instructed the constable.

  “My wrist’s sore,” I whispered, pulling back my cuff to show the bruise.

  “Other hand then.”

  “Can’t you put it on my ankle?”

  He looked down. I saw him swallow. No rules covered this, I guessed. Under the uniform, he was a young man. Not waiting for his answer, I sat on the edge of the bed and lifted my skirt a few inches, making sure
to keep my bare right leg out of his view.

  He knelt. “Thank you,” I whispered. Then even quieter: “Please look away as you put it on.”

  He did so. I felt his hand encircling my padded ankle and the pressure of his shoulder against my knee. I flexed my foot, making the tendon stand. The iron clipped into place. Then he was out of the hut, as fast as he could move without running.

  Tulip gave me a look that said she knew I was up to something. But it wasn’t until the lamp was out and the sounds of sleep breathing could be heard on either side of us that she reached across the gap between the beds and touched me on the shoulder.

  I shifted my head closer to hers.

  “Seducing the guards?” she whispered.

  I pulled back the blanket to reveal my leg. I had already worked the two stockings off from under the iron, which consequently hung loose. But not loose enough to slip over the heel. I held up the bunched stockings so that a splash of moonlight touched them. Tulip nodded slowly as understanding came to her.

  From under the bed, I took the remains of the butter, now fluffy with dust. She watched as I greased the skin then started trying to slip the shackle. It slid, becoming tighter the closer it got to the heel. The more I pushed the harder the other side of the metal loop pressed into the top of my foot. When I could no longer bear the pain I pulled it back onto my ankle, tears pricked at the corners of my eyes.

  I lay back, breathing hard.

  Tulip slipped out of her bed and knelt next to me. “You were almost there,” she breathed.

  I shook my head.

  “How much do you want to escape?”

  She pulled the nearest jug across the floorboards. I watched as she half- filled a wash bowl. Then gently, ever so gently, she guided my foot into the water.

  I gasped at the sudden cold.

  She shuffled back to the head of the bed. “Your foot’s swollen,” she whispered. “Wait now. It’ll go down.”

  I closed my eyes. “Even if this works, - I can’t get you out.”

  “I know,” she said.