The Anatomist's Apprentice

by Tessa Harris

She had not. “You obviously haven’t been invited to one of her soirées, my good man,” jibed Lavington, making Thomas feel acutely aware of his social standing. “That story’s another time for the telling.”

  He poured a large glass of port and held it up to Thomas, who declined. He raised his glass in a toast. “To Captain Michael Farrell, the man who saved my life and left me with this reminder!” His hand stroked the gnarled scar tissue on his left cheek and his smile suddenly gave way to a scowl.

  Thomas did not pursue the matter. Nor did he discuss the captain’s case. His dining companion was becoming rapidly the worse for wear as he swigged down liberal gulps of vintage port. What information he had to impart to Lavington would best be delivered in the light of day with clear heads and more restrained tongues. He decided to draw the evening to a close, made his excuses, and, leaving the hall by the back entrance, ventured out into the moonlit night to breathe in the fresh air after the tobacco smoke of the dining room. He was just crossing the courtyard toward the gate when he heard someone call his name in a half whisper.

  “Dr. Silkstone.”

  Thomas looked up. A head was peering out of the window in the hayloft.

  “Will. Is that you?”

  He could see the boy put his finger to his lips, then disappear from view to reappear seconds later at the door.

  “What are you doing out this late?” asked Thomas as the boy walked furtively toward him.

  He shrugged and smiled. “I comes here to my secret place,” he confided. “Want to see it?” Taking Thomas by the hand, he tugged him toward the hayloft. The young doctor felt unsure, but allowed himself to be guided into the barn.

  A lantern burned on the ledge and Will picked it up and guided Thomas to a ladder that led up to the rafters.

  “Where are you taking me?” asked Thomas.

  “Promise you won’t tell,” Will said earnestly. “You’re the only grown-up to know.”

  Holding the lantern high, Will led the way up to the loft. Thomas followed, barely able to see in the dark. There was a narrow passage between the sheaves of hay and Will made his way through them until he stopped in the far corner.

  “Here, Dr. Silkstone,” he whispered.

  Thomas followed the dim glow of the lantern until he came to within a foot or two of the boy. It was then that he saw what Will had brought him to see: his collection. Buckles and buttons, pieces of broken plates and a rusty key: these were the treasures of a ten-year-old farm boy and Thomas felt honored that he should have been chosen to be privy to them.

  “Where did you find all these?” asked Thomas, feigning an interest in the worthless trinkets.

  “Around here, mostly. On the ground; in the garden,” replied the boy. His fingers settled upon one of two large, flat stones on the rafter.

  “And what are those?” enquired Thomas, slightly puzzled as to what attraction such ordinary-looking stones might hold.

  Will looked up. “These?” he queried, picking up one of the stones and stroking it lovingly. “These were in my sister’s pockets when they dragged her out of the lake,” he said. “They make me feel closer to her.”

  Thomas tried to hide his shock. “You must miss her,” he said gently. The boy chose to ignore this last question and instead turned his attention once more to his collection.

  “This is a locket I found in the garden. I think it must be Lady Lydia’s, ’tis so fair,” he said, holding the silver pendant up to the light of his lantern.

  It was then that Thomas began to feel uneasy. Taking such items, knowing to whom they belonged, could be deemed as theft. If Will’s collection was discovered, the young boy could risk a flogging or, even worse, imprisonment. He was just about to broach the matter with him when the light from Will’s lantern settled on a physick bottle.

  “Is it not fine, sir?” asked Will, seeing the doctor’s eyes gaze at the bottle.

  “Indeed,” replied Thomas. “And where did you find it?”

  Will frowned. “ ’Twas in the bottom of the apple barrel.”

  “Strange,” replied Thomas, trying to hide his amazement. “Do you know how it came to be there?”

  Will shook his head. “There was some medicine in it,” he volunteered. “I tasted some, but it weren’t nice.”

  Had there been sufficient light, Will would have seen his newfound friend turn pale at these last words. “You tasted some?” echoed Thomas.

  “Yes, sir. Would you like to try, sir?” asked the young boy, uncorking the bottle and thrusting it under the doctor’s nose.

  Thomas detected no odor, but he could see there was still a little liquid left in the bottle. Somehow he would have to wrest it from the boy without arousing suspicion.

  “It is indeed a fine bottle and I am always in need of such vessels for my patients’ medicaments,” Thomas told his young companion.

  “You wish to keep it, sir?” asked Will, looking crestfallen.

  “It would be of great use to me,” Thomas told him, adding: “But of course I would not expect you to give it to me without some form of recompense.”

  “Sir?” queried the boy.

  Thomas had suddenly remembered the small bottle of smelling salts he kept in his pocket for emergencies. It was made of porcelain and was painted in bright colors. Surely this would be a fair exchange for the plain physick bottle?

  “ ’Tis pretty, sir,” said Will, smiling. “I thank you.”

  Thomas wanted to tell the boy that it was he who should be thanking him for possibly inadvertently providing the biggest breakthrough yet in this ghastly episode. Instead he merely thanked Will for showing him his collection, told him it would be “their secret,” and bade him find his way home to bed. Tomorrow he would set to work revealing the mysteries contained within the glass bottle he now held in his hand. Tomorrow, he told himself, he may even be one step further to uncovering Lord Crick’s murderer. Such a revelation would not come a moment too soon.

  Chapter 37

  A foreigner visiting the fair and esteemed city of Oxford on the morning of March 13, 1781, could have been forgiven for thinking he had stumbled across a fete, a carnival, or some such frivolous pleasure so beloved of the common horde. Booths had been set up outside the courthouse, selling everything from ribbons to cheap part-music scores. Hawkers jostled for position on the pavement, filling the air with their cries. “Ripe peascods,” and “Hot spiced gingerbread!” they called.

  Taking advantage of the crowd that had gathered, knife grinders and even tooth drawers vied for business among those who thronged the length and breadth of Broad Street on that sunny March morning.

  Gowned undergraduates rubbed shoulders with nostrum mongers and tradesmen, while even ladies and gentlemen of refinement seemed drawn into the melee, caught up in a steaming stew of intrigue and accusation.

  At the heart of all this excitement and fevered activity was the fate of one man. His name was not known to most of those who gathered outside the assizes. It mattered not. He was simply called “the Irishman.”

  Folklore had already given him a familiar sobriquet and hearsay had already sentenced him. It was clear that he was guilty of the crime of which he stood accused. His trial was merely a formality. The talk in the taverns was of “the Irish murderer.” The talk on the street was of a hanging.

  Thomas had feared such a scene outside the courtroom. That was why he had persuaded Lydia and James Lavington to take a coach to the back entrance of the assizes, so that they would be able to enter unnoticed by the massing crowd. Francis Crick had sent his apologies. He had been struck down by a fever but would make the journey to Oxford as soon as his health permitted.

  Lydia had borne her public humiliation with great dignity. Each day since her husband’s arrest she had been aware that the character of the man she once loved was being torn to shreds, as hounds would kill a fox. Now that the day of the trial had arrived, however, Thomas knew that the sight of this great throng, all baying for his blood, would be too much for her
to bear.

  Slipping unseen into the courtroom, Thomas made sure that Lavington and Lydia were safely inside. The lawyer seemed to know what he was doing. When Thomas had enquired if he would be called as an expert witness, the lawyer had assured him that he would if deemed necessary, although he had in his possession a written transcript of his testimony at the inquest, which may, he said, suffice.

  Outside at the front entrance the rabble was kept at bay by two peace constables, but their raucous shouts and rantings could easily be heard inside. Lydia looked pale and forlorn. She sat at the front of the court, just behind Lavington’s table, nervously playing with her fan.

  “I shall return later this afternoon, my lady,” Thomas assured her. “But I need to do more experiments.” She nodded but looked at him blankly, not really aware of what he was saying. He had told neither her, nor Lavington for that matter, about the bottle Will had found. He did not want to raise false hopes, so he slipped away as quietly as he had come and made his way toward the Anatomy School at Christ Church.

  As Great Tom tolled the tenth hour, the constables opened the court’s heavy porticos and allowed those at the front of the queue to enter, albeit in a completely disorderly fashion. The same painted paphians and trollops who had been present at the young earl’s inquest now came to see the trial of the man accused of his murder.

  Dressed in their frills and furbelows, they looked as though they were on an evening outing to some shilling gallery. In they swarmed, settling themselves down with baskets of food and drink, bringing their salacious banter into a court of law as if it were some bawdy music hall.

  Next into this rowdy scene came the jurors—twelve men of good standing in the community. Some seemed quite intimidated by the throng, but most were simply bemused.

  The star of this unseemly show did not disappoint. Farrell had ordered that his best blue silk brocade waistcoat be brought to his cell, together with his satin breeches. “They have come to see the trial of a gentleman and a gentleman they shall see,” he had told a tearful Lydia on one of her recent visits.

  Mr. Justice de Quincy had seen it all before in his fifty long years at the bench. He had witnessed many a medical man give evidence, but few were as unimpressive as the two who came before him on that first day of the hearing. Dr. Siddall, who was sweating profusely, conceded that he had shied away from an autopsy, but be assured, he told the judge, had he received any inclination that foul play might have been afoot, he would have risked his own life to uncover the truth. Mr. Walton was no less adamant in his devotion to duty. Had he suspected poison, he would of course have performed a postmortem.

  In light of the inquest into Lord Crick’s death, however, both men seemed to have acquired an in-depth knowledge of toxicology, even going so far as to conduct their own experiments on live animals.

  “I favor laurel water as the poison used,” surmised Dr. Siddall in the witness stand, deliberately ignoring Thomas’s findings. To this end, the doctor had fed half a pint to a greyhound, a pint and a half to an aged mare, and an ounce to a cat. “The greyhound died in convulsions in thirty seconds,” he told the court, “but it took the mare fifteen minutes and the cat just three,” he added almost gleefully.

  “There was also the question of the smell, my lord,” recalled Mr. Walton. “The smell described by the maidservant Hannah as the smell of bitter almonds.”

  “Did you smell such a smell around the deceased?” enquired the judge.

  “No,” admitted the surgeon, but that was of little consequence, he assured Mr. de Quincy. “The corpse was so noxious it masked all other smells.”

  On such evidence, both men were, they said, drawn to the conclusion that Lord Crick had been poisoned by the introduction of laurel water to his physick.

  Back in Professor Hascher’s laboratory, Thomas was working on the physick bottle when his mind turned to Hannah Lovelock’s kitchen. Never had he seen such an array of potions and possets outside a hospital. What if one of those gallipots or gug-lets contained a poison—a herb or toxic weed perhaps? What was it that Will had said about the herb his mother used on his own wound? It worked miracles? He cast his memory back to the leaf that had been stuck on the front of the jar to identify it. What was it Hannah had said as she dressed his wound? “ ’Tis only a common weed.”

  Walking over to the dusty shelves Thomas scanned the various bottles and jars of dried herbs that Professor Hascher kept mainly for preserving. After a few moments he stumbled across the very thing for which he searched: a jar containing what appeared to be the exact same leaf. Taking the vessel out, he carefully poured some of its contents into a phial. He then repeated the same test that he had performed so many times in the last month, mixing a little of the ingredient with the medicine that the apothecary had prescribed the hapless young nobleman.

  One hour later he had his answer. “Digitalis purpurea,” he said out loud, as if wanting to share his discovery with anyone or anything that might be listening. Could it be that the common purple foxglove was responsible for Lord Crick’s demise?

  Now that he knew there was digitalis present in the medicine, he could test for it in the earl’s stomach tissue. But there was a problem. Fearful of damaging the specimen unnecessarily in transit, he had left it at Boughton Hall. He must return, and as soon as possible. He was not due to be called to the witness stand until the following day. There was still time for him to prove once and for all what had killed Lord Crick.

  Chapter 38

  Hannah Lovelock eased off her husband’s hob-nailed boots in front of a dwindling fire. Normally he would have scolded her for not tossing another log on it, but he seemed gleefully preoccupied with other matters that evening. The couple were due to travel to Oxford in two days’ time to give evidence at the trial and Jacob had seen his wife in conversation with the local butcher, who had been among the rabble at the court that day.

  “So, what did ’e say?” asked Jacob as she grasped the tongue of his boot.

  “Who?” she queried, knowing full well to whom her husband referred.

  “Sam Bowmaker, ’course.” He was smiling mischievously. “I saw you lapping up his words like a cat with cream.”

  Hannah thought for a moment as she pulled off his right boot first.

  “He said them doctors had been telling the court what they thought.”

  “And?” His breath smelt stale and unpleasant and Hannah turned her face away.

  “They said they thought it was the laurel water what did it.”

  “Laurel water, aye?” He paused thoughtfully. “And did they point the finger?”

  “No.” She did not elaborate.

  Lovelock sat back in the chair and let his wife pull the final boot off. “Looks like the captain’s in the shit, then, don’t it?” He smiled wryly.

  Later that night, when Hannah was sure her son was abed and her husband was dozing after his ale by the fire, she sneaked out of the house and across the courtyard to the apple store. From her apron pocket she took out a piece of tallow candle, secured it into a holder, then struck a flint and lit it. She knew that what she sought would be difficult to find, but plunging her arm into the deep barrel, she felt the cold, smooth skins that were so fragrant and enticing.

  It was in there somewhere. Down, down she delved, deeper and deeper, until the tips of her toes were no longer on the ground and her body was doubled over, swinging from the barrel neck. Suddenly her palms hit the wooden bottom, but as soon as she cleared a space, the apples descended again, filling it once more, making her search almost impossible. It was in there. She knew it was, but perhaps she needed to return in the daylight, when she could see what she was doing and not have to rely simply on touch, like some blind woman groping helplessly in the sweet-smelling dark.

  Hannah tipped herself backward so that both feet now touched the ground and recovered her composure. Smoothing her hair and her apron, she retrieved the candle holder and snuffed out the ineffectual flame. She then made her way bac
k toward the door. She had almost reached the threshold when she sensed that someone, or something, was lurking in the shadows.

  “Is this what you seek, Hannah?” came a voice from out of the blackness.

  She gasped and turned to see a figure emerge, holding up the elusive physick bottle that she had hidden in the apple barrel. She recognized the voice instantly.

  “Dr. Silkstone. You frightened me,” she told him as he emerged into the pool of moonlight that fell on the threshold.

  “Is it not time you told the truth, Hannah?” asked Thomas, still holding up the bottle so that it was level with her eyes, which were wide with terror.

  “I ... I don’t know what you mean, sir.” She was backing away from him like a frightened animal.

  The young doctor moved toward her and for the first time she could see his face quite clearly. His countenance was not threatening, but he was frowning. “A man’s life is at stake, Hannah. You must tell me all you know.”

  “What’s this?” asked Jacob Lovelock as his wife stood at the doorway of their home, accompanied by Thomas. “You sick or something?”

  “May we come in?” asked Thomas earnestly.

  Lovelock nodded and bade him sit down. Hannah seated herself opposite, by now her shoulders heaving in deep sobs. Her breath was ragged and her words rasped like a file on metal. “Forgive me,” she pleaded. “Please forgive me... .”

  “What be the meaning of this?” shouted Lovelock above his wife’s strangled protestations.

  “Do you have any strong liquor in the house?” asked Thomas.

  Lovelock looked bemused, then pointed to a jug on the table, half filled with ale. The doctor poured some into a tankard and eased it up to Hannah’s lips. “Drink this,” he urged her, hoping it would calm her.

  She sipped it slowly at first, then began to swallow great gulps until she had downed the whole tankard. A stream of ale trickled down the side of her mouth and she wiped it away with the back of her hand.

  “What ails the woman, Doctor?” questioned her anxious husband.