‘I’ll not stay, Hew,’ Meg whispered, ‘I’m tired.’ And indeed she seemed uneasy on her feet.
Hew hesitated. ‘You are kind,’ he demurred, ‘we shall drink a brief health, but my cousin awaits us; we must hurry home. Good day to you, mistress. God bless your child.’ The mother had rallied a little, and rose from the pillows to thank them.
‘Tis good of you, lass, to come out to help us. Look, and there’s blood on your fine Sunday clothes.’ She picked at the sleeve of Meg’s dress, and as she did so her eyes momentarily darkened.
Meg was alarmed. ‘Has the bleeding begun again? Are you unwell?’
Janet sounded far away. She closed her eyes and whispered, ‘Aye, quite well, I had forgotten, and remembered. Ah, tis nothing now, perhaps a dream.’
‘It’s you who look to be unwell, if we do not take you home,’ protested Hew. He took Meg by the arm, and felt her rest upon him. ‘You shall come again tomorrow, if you will.’
Henry Dyer lived for three days. And on the fourth, his brother Will compeared before the kirk and bargained long and hard to find a place for him below the cold earth of the kirkyard, nameless though the child remained in sight of God. And his mother Janet, closed within her bed, fell back without a tear upon the fresh-laid whiteness of the sheets.
Coming to Light
On the day Henry Dyer was born, Nicholas Colp regained consciousness. It was unwilling at first, dredging from dream into dream, but eventually he began to make sense of his feelings. He sensed he had been there a while, though he did not remember the place. The shape of the cot appeared welcome and comfortable, hugging him tight to its sides. The scents of the place, as sharp as turned milk, were familiar. He felt loose in the belly and heavy in limb, neither too hot nor too cold. In his throat he felt a thousand fissures filled with sand, cracked to the core, as if even the last drops of blood had drained to the surface and dried. There was no voice to cry out for water; no tongue to make the sound. He found it massed and spongelike in his mouth, but could not make it shape the words. Surely this was Hell.
But then Nicholas felt a hand upon his face. He felt it far away, as if his face was swathed in fleece. Someone tilted back his head to trickle a warm bitter fluid in drops down his throat. And the drops he felt evaporate like spittle on a griddle pan. They sizzled for a second and were gone. He wanted to sit up and seize the cruel wrist and its cup, to pour in a flood of cold water, and saturate and slake all the cracks of his throat and his thirst and its chasms and channels cut deep to the churn of his belly, but he knew he could not do those things. He could not lift his head from the grip; he could not hold his hands still, hold open his lips to pour in the drink, nor close his throat to swallow it. He did all that he could, and that was an effort; crusted and gritty, he opened his eyes.
‘I know you want more.’ The devil had set down the cup. ‘And trust me, you shall have it, but I cannot give it now. You see, until you are stronger, and able to swallow, we must take it drop by drop. If you can keep awake, you may gradually absorb a little more, and little by little, you will find yourself restored. Let me look at you.’
He moved a lantern closer to the head of the cot, and tucked a small piece of wadding round his thumb. Then he dipped the thumb into the bitter dark liquid and forced open the mouth once again, carefully wiping the root of the tongue. It brought a little relief to Nicholas, who was in any case still powerless to object. The doctor cupped his hands around his face.
‘I see you have no pain, which is promising,’ he said. ‘That is, of course, in part the power of the medicine, which has not worn off, and in part a result of the swelling, which deadens the feeling there to a degree. But nonetheless, if the jaw had been broken, I would expect you to notice considerable pain, which in your eyes and body set is not apparent. Therefore, I think we can safely conclude that the jaw was dislocated, and will return to normal sometime soon. Which, you see,’ he added cheerfully, ‘is the happiest of news for you, since a broken jawbone requires setting by the surgeon, a man of great enthusiasm unparalleled by skill, and frequently leads to decay of the part, and then death. We must take a look at the rest of you now, and feel for any lasting stiffness in the limbs. If we do not find it, we may indeed say that you are on your way, God willing, to the first stage of recovery. In short,’ he whispered, confident that no one else could hear, ‘you may be cured.’
On that rare note of triumph, Doctor Giles Locke stripped back the bedclothes from the cot and subjected his patient to the most chill and thorough scrutiny of those bodily parts to which, as Nicholas discovered, the feelings were more readily restored.
Nicholas tried hard to sleep, to regain the lost world of oblivion. Each time he closed his eyes, his tormentor appeared at his elbow to prod him awake, promising water, incessantly chattering, delivering dry little dribbles, snatching back the cup. Nicholas wondered what it was that he had done. It must be something bad, he thought, to merit his own private demon, score upon score of subtle indignities, torture so delicately cruel. But gradually, reluctantly, he found he did become more comfortable. And he began, if not to listen, to ease into the voice that droned around him. There was talk of a friend. What friend could he have? There was a girl would come tomorrow, which was grand, because the speaker lacked the time to play the nurse and to nourish and bathe him. Nicholas flinched. Could there be women in Hell? But for him, aye. He learned that he had been taken ill outside a dyer’s house – what did he there? – and he had a fever from a suppurating abscess in the thigh. The fever had raged for days, turning into lockjaw. Many times, he’d all but died. In the clutch of convulsions, he had damaged his face.
For days he had been there. What did he remember?
He remembered nothing. There was the sense of something dead, numb as the mass on his face, like probing his tongue in the raw mouth of memory, finding it toothless and vacant. Still it returned there, still there was nothing, but depth after depth of vacancy, loss.
‘Tomorrow you’ll be stronger, and each day you grow stronger will give us less time. You must tell him everything you know. I warn you, trust him as your friend. Hold nothing back. It is your only hope.’
And then at last he understood that Hell was yet to come. The forgotten place, freshly drawn, splintered and sheared into pain, and with it he found his voice.
Giles Locke was torn between fascination and frustration. For days, he had studied the patient, keeping all the while his own account, meticulously noted, in his careful hand. He charted the return to life and the restoration of the vital signs for three days in abeyance: first the quickening of the pulse and then the breath upon the glass and last the slight expansion in the lamplight of the fixed and glassy stare. One by one, and almost imperceptibly, the life signs had returned and Giles Locke had recorded them. He saw the flicker of the eyes below the lids return to dream. Return from where? Giles ached to question him. But Nicholas, of course, could not reply. He lay there helpless as a child. Come from the womb of death, he could not speak of that unknowing place. As medic, as philosopher, as man of God and sceptic, simply as a man, Giles yearned with all his soul to have a moment’s converse on the secrets of the grave. He knew it was hopeless. When Nicholas began to speak, he would already have forgotten it. There was everything, and nothing, to be learned.
Giles was an honest scholar, and he made the case notes full, though he knew they would never be read:
Colona conium maculatum in hortulo domestico coluit et radice equum convulsum pavit. Equus superavit.
A farm girl grew poison hemlock in the garden of her father’s house and fed the root to a horse suffering from convulsions. The horse survived.
Colona, a country lass. It was the wrong word, he knew, but he had not known how else to phrase it. He could not use her name. Pagana? Sanatrix? Magus perhaps? None of them seemed to describe her. She was something apart.
The horse survived a little lame, and had not succumbed to madness. A horse was not a man. But horses were hi
ghly strung creatures, sensitive to memory and ghosts. They had a sense, for certain, of the evil in a place. That the horse remained sane was a positive sign. He looked at Nicholas, who might never become whole again. Frustration gave place to pity. ‘Ah,’ he said quietly, ‘what could you tell us of death, when even that one comfort, at the last, has been denied to you? Drink a little more.’
He kept the patient alive by touching and talking, insistent he should not relapse into that dark unconsciousness. For his physical recovery, these hours were critical. Giles had seldom seen a patient in so weak a state from lack of food and water. It was like a wasting sickness, where the body gave in gladly at the last and closed itself to sleep. And Nicholas was frail. The muscles in his legs were growing weak and withered. It would be many days, if not weeks, before the man would be able to stand. He might be crippled then. He might be mad. And mad as he was, they might carry him too broken to resist towards his final fate. Could God be so cruel as to insist upon the last, most vengeful manner of his death? He suspected it. Nonetheless, he talked to the patient with a bright and cheerful urgency, forcing him awake. At times he saw the spark of understanding in the eyes, as the buzz of his converse was shaped into words. And then he saw the painful stricture of the neck, the tremor of his lips, and heard him cry. It came dry and sorrowful, scarcely a sound, a pitiful rasp from the back of the throat.
The term began in three days’ time, and until then, Hew counted himself free to go where he would in the town. No one raised objection to his going. On one of several visits to inquire about his friend, he discovered the physician was prepared at last to countenance a little gentle questioning. Nicholas, Giles warned, must try to speak gradually, holding the jaw still for fear of further dislocations, and avoiding sudden movements, that would push it out of joint. With this advice, he tactfully withdrew. He regretted the absence of Meg. The constant supervision of the patient had begun to tell on him, and in term would prove impossible. God willing, she would come and come alone. He had devised a system of manoeuvres for the limbs, to stimulate the worn and wasted parts, which he was hoping Meg might implement, and which he sensed her brother might impede.
Hew sat by the bedside, talking quietly. He touched upon their boyhood years. He retold his recent travels and adventures overseas. Once or twice, he almost raised a smile.
‘And now I have taken your place, until you are recovered, and walk the self-same halls where once we played as boys. Again, I will sleep in your blankets and read from your books. I’m sharing with your friend Robert Black.’
Nicholas stirred a little. ‘Has the term begun?’
‘Not yet. It starts on Thursday. Nicholas,’ Hew went on seriously, ‘Robert found some papers in your room. Do you know what they were?’
He did not blanch but answered simply, ‘Yes.’
‘He took the papers to the coroner. After you were taken from the dyer’s house. He thought you were dead.’
There was a long pause, during which Nicholas stared straight ahead. At last he gave a small sigh, which Hew could not read. Resignation, perhaps? He thought almost relief. ‘He did right,’ Nicholas said quietly.
Hew swallowed. ‘You know that these papers, in the light of the boy’s death, incriminate you?’
‘I understand.’
‘Did you kill him?’
‘No.’
‘Did you kill the dyer?’
There was a catch to the quietness, almost a sob.
Hew said, ‘Why did you go to his house?’
‘To plead for Tom. He thought the dyer would denounce him in the kirk, for his relationship with Katrin. So I went to talk to him. He was not there.’
‘You did not, I suppose, see someone else there? Katrin?’
‘Katrin? Why? What would she be doing there? I saw her at the drover’s house.’
‘Then did you see a man there, wearing green?’
‘I have no recollection. I am told that I was found there. I do not remember it.’
Hew changed his track. ‘But you remember how we found the boy? How did you know where to look?’
Giles had returned to the room with a basin of water. He set down the bowl quietly and waited by the door. Nicholas half closed his eyes and whispered. ‘I did not know. But we were searching for some cloth. He was limp inside the cloth. I saw the blue wool trapped inside the closet, and I thought it was the cloth. He fell into my arms. You saw him. He was dead.’
‘Were you aware that Alexander sometimes slept in the shop?’
‘It was never mentioned.’
‘Under the counter, according to Tom. You visited the dyer to make a case for Tom.’ He returned to the same questions, hoping to discover truths in his confusion. ‘Tom was not the murderer. How did you know?’
Nicholas appeared surprised. ‘In truth, I did not know it. In my heart, I felt it, when I spoke to him.’
‘A poor enough defence. Who killed him, then?’ continued Hew.
‘I suppose it was his uncle, in a fit of temper. I cannot think that he intended it.’
‘No,’ Hew accepted. ‘Suppose he came into the shop that night, perhaps to make some final preparations for the market, and found Alexander there, asleep below the counter. They had words, and then the uncle struck and killed him, with the shuttle of the loom. But where was Tom? His master thought him fast asleep inside the closet bed. If he had killed his nephew, the bed was the last place he would hide the body.’
‘Tom was with his lass.’
‘Tom swears that Strachan did not know that. It will be hard to prove. Did he wear a green cloak?’
‘No. Perhaps. I do not know. Alexander wore a green cloak,’ Nicholas said dreamily.
Giles begin to frown upon them both as Hew persisted. ‘A moment more, one question still. When was the last time you saw Alexander?’
‘The last time,’ his friend replied simply.
‘Yes, as you say. But the last time you saw him alive?’
‘I saw him at his lesson the day before he died. I looked over his work. He was not well prepared.’
‘Did you reprimand him?’
‘No, in truth not. Or not then.’
‘But that was the last time you saw him?’
Nicholas sighed. ‘His uncle spoke with me before I left. He was his brother’s instrument, a brutal and unhappy one. I told him his expectations could not be met, and we parted on less than good terms. I had set Alexander his task and left him to finish it. However he appeared at college after dark, and begged to speak with me. I was sharp with him, and told him to go home. But there was something in his look that made me call him back. I thought perhaps that he had deeper troubles than I’d realised, or perhaps it was his uncle. The man is loathsome. And so I agreed to walk to the shore, intending to offer him counsel. Whereupon he came very meekly, thanked me for my time, and did not speak again until we reached the sands. I recall, the night was clear. We walked for a while, and I spoke to him about the university. I said I would explain to his father that I thought him too young, which was no fault of his, and that he might attend the grammar school a term or two and then matriculate next year. And as I was explaining this, I glanced at his face and realised that he had not heard a word of it, but he was staring out to sea, his cheeks aflame. I was vexed, and thought to remonstrate, when suddenly he burst out with a wild impassioned crying. He said that he loved me, all his thoughts and hopes and prayers were placed in me, that the thought of me coloured his studies, his daylight, his dreams, that I was by turns both gentle and cold to him, cruel, he suggested. He could no longer bear it; I toyed with his heart.’
Hew felt a growing uneasiness. ‘Had you not known?’
Nicholas had given it thought. He said carefully. ‘I don’t think I had known, not then. But looking back, the signs were there.’
‘And so you were forced to repel him.’ He was leading his witness, he knew. He wanted to discount the alternative quickly. ‘You cast him aside from you, sent him away.’
There was a long pause before Nicholas answered. ‘I sent him home, yes. I dealt with him gently. I told him I was moved by his affections, I cared for him, and wanted what was right for him. That it was not proper that he should express himself in this way to me, but I could see his loneliness, and excused him. I said that we would speak of it again, in calmer tones, he should not be distressed. And because . . .’ his voice had dropped low, ‘he was so very desolate. I sought to comfort him. I saw it had begun to rain, darkening the sand. The drops on his hair were like dew. And I kissed him lightly on the hair. I kissed him on the head, and told him not to fret, and sent him home. And when I next saw him, the place I had kissed was splintered and cracked, and all of his dampened bright hair was made heavy with blood.’
He closed his eyes. Giles took Hew by the arm. ‘Enough. He’s exhausted.’ For a moment more, he fussed around the bed and made his patient comfortable. Nicholas appeared to be asleep. ‘Come into the other room,’ Giles said. ‘We’re finished here.’
At first they did not speak of it. Giles asked politely, ‘How do you find your room in the college? You’re settled, I hope?’
‘It feels strange to be back there,’ said Hew. ‘The place has changed. And for the worse, I think. Shall I see you at the examinations on Thursday?’
‘That is a pertinent question. I had this morning a most cordial communication from your principal, who has assured me that my presence, contrary to statute, is not required on that occasion. It is, he writes, a mere formality, which need not prey upon my conscience or my time, preoccupied as I must be with preparation for the term. Now is that not considerate?’
‘Uncommonly.’
‘As I thought. Therefore rest assured that you will see me there. It shows promise of diversion.’
‘I fear it. Giles, do you think that Nicholas will live? Ah, do not answer that!’
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