The Indigo Ghosts

by Alys Clare

  ‘Do you want me to stay, Doctor T?’ Ned asked as I rolled up my sleeves and stared down at the body waiting for me on the trestle.

  ‘No, Ned, thanks – nothing else I need from you just now.’

  He looked disappointed. ‘I’ve already taken the horse and cart back to the coroner’s yard,’ he said. He was looking at me, an appeal in his brown eyes.

  ‘Would you like to stay?’ I asked.

  He nodded eagerly. ‘Yes!’

  ‘It’s not pleasant work,’ I warned him. ‘I shall be examining every part of the body, searching out its secrets, determining how this man lived and, more importantly from the coroner’s point of view, how he died. I may have to cut into him. Will you be able to witness these tasks, do you think, without fainting or bringing up your breakfast?’

  Ned grinned. ‘Reckon so, Doctor T. My father butchers pigs.’

  ‘But this was a man, Ned,’ I said gently. ‘He lived, breathed, loved, hated, laughed and cried just as you and I do.’

  He swallowed. ‘Willing to give it a try, Doctor, with your leave.’

  ‘Very well, then, Ned. I will tell you what I’m doing as I do it, what I conclude, if anything, and why. The instant you feel you’ve had enough, take yourself off and I will think none the worse of you. All right?’

  ‘All right!’ echoed my new apprentice, with what, under the circumstances, I considered admirable eagerness.

  ‘Then we shall begin. This is the body of a man of advanced years who has had a very hard life and, latterly at least, nowhere near enough to eat. He suffered from scurvy – see the swollen gums and the missing teeth? He—’

  ‘How d’you know he was old?’ Ned asked.

  ‘Mainly from the state of his bones, his joints and his teeth. He’d have—’

  ‘He’d have walked with a stoop and maybe a limp, like my old grandfather,’ Ned put in.

  ‘Yes, quite.’ I had spotted something: the corpse was missing most of its clothes, but there was a wide leather belt around his shrivelled hips and it had saved at least that part of his flesh and the organs that lay beneath it from the hunger of the crabs and the fish. I unbuckled the belt and opened up the lower abdomen. I heard Ned give a couple of dry retches, but he controlled himself.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ he asked presently. He was leaning over my shoulder.

  I pointed. ‘This.’ There was a sheet of muscle in which there was a stoma – a hole – through which a fist-sized piece of flesh bulged. ‘It’s a hernia.’

  ‘Was it how he died?’

  ‘No, hernias are hardly ever fatal. Many men have hernias – women too – and they are particularly common amongst sailors because they have to do so much heavy manual work.’

  ‘Hauling on ropes and sails and anchors and that,’ Ned remarked vaguely. He didn’t sound like a lad with experience of the sea.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So this old gaffer was a sailor.’

  ‘In all likelihood, yes.’

  I was thinking. Ned, astute lad that he was, seemed to realize and ceased his questions.

  The old man had been one of the fugitives on the Falco: that seemed beyond doubt, given his blue hand and arm and the place where he’d washed up. Had he died on the journey? On the very last part of it, perhaps, when those poor suffering men had almost made it. He’d have been full of hope, this old man, aware that the Falco was close to England now and confident he’d see his home again. But something had happened to him; he had taken sick, I guessed, because I could find no more sign of marks of violence on what remained of him now than I’d been able to spot down by the river when he was covered in mud. So, he’d fallen ill, his companions had tried to help him – Come on, old friend, I imagined them saying, trying to encourage him, nearly home now! Just a little while longer, hold fast! – but to no avail. He’d died, and the others had little choice but to chuck him overboard since they’d already put one body in the barrel and there would have been no room for a second. How had they managed that? They’d have waited until night, no doubt, but a ship never sleeps and they’d have run a grave risk of being seen. But they were almost home by then – maybe they’d decided that it was worth the risk not to be holed up with a corpse, and reckoned they stood a chance of getting ashore somehow if they’d had to leap off the ship.

  They waited till England – Devon – was in sight.

  Then I remembered the dead young doctor, Ashleigh Winterbourn Snell, and how Captain Zeke said the poor man had waited till he could see his homeland before leaping over the side because he wanted to lie in English waters, off an English shore.

  Perhaps this old man’s shipmates thought he would prefer that, too. It was the only thing they could do for him, and bearing in mind where he’d been found, they had achieved their purpose.

  I became aware of Ned, becoming restless at my long silence. I stirred myself back into the present moment.

  ‘Anything you want to ask, Ned?’ I said.

  ‘Well, yes, Doctor T.’ Unknowingly echoing the words of the other lad, who’d come to fetch the Buckland body, he pointed at the corpse’s one remaining hand and said, ‘Why is his skin blue?’

  I picked up the dead hand and examined it. ‘I have no idea.’ I hesitated to tell him of the other bodies who also showed staining of the hands and forearms, then I thought, why not? ‘The other bodies here have the same distinctive feature,’ I said. ‘Come, I’ll show you.’

  I went to stand between the two earlier bodies, the remains found in the barrel and the Buckland youth. I folded back the covering cloths and pointed to their hands. ‘See?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ned said breathed. ‘They look like they’ve had their hands in a pan of blackberries.’

  I bent closer. He was right. I recalled blackberry picking with Celia when we were young, how our protestations that we’d hardly eaten any fruit were shown for the fibs they were by the blueish markings round our mouths. And when we tried to sneak a spoonful or two of the jam bubbling away on the stove, frantically blowing on it to cool it enough to gobble down before anyone saw us, we always gave ourselves away by the stains on our hands and our clothes.

  ‘They do, don’t they?’ I agreed.

  ‘Blackberry season’s over,’ Ned observed.

  ‘Yes,’ I murmured.

  So whatever had stained these men’s flesh so deeply must have been something else …

  The day seemed already to have been interminable, and as I wearily climbed up the steps from the crypt – Ned had already gone – I realized dully that it wasn’t over yet, for I still had to report to Theo and, before I turned for home, I ought to check on the sick man in the lodging house.

  Theo was in his office, looking as exhausted as I felt. He was alone, although a couple of his agents were talking quietly in the front office.

  ‘Jarman Hodge not back?’ I asked.

  He made an elaborate show of searching, then said, ‘No.’

  ‘I’ve examined the latest body,’ I said, pretending I hadn’t noticed the sarcasm.

  ‘And, much to your surprise and joy, you found a tightly-rolled piece of paper shoved up his arse covered in writing and telling you who he was, who his two dead companions were, not to mention the young man with the dog bite who I allowed to vanish from under my very nose, where they came from, why they came to Devon and what they were up to lurking about at the houses of Sir Thomas Drake and Sir Richard Hawkins.’

  ‘Sadly, no. There was nothing up his arse other than what you’d expect to find there.’

  He looked at me, the angry frustration very evident in his eyes. ‘No, of course there wasn’t,’ he said, and to my relief he was no longer yelling at me. ‘Sorry, Gabe. None of this is your fault.’

  ‘Nor yours.’

  He shrugged. Then: ‘What did you discover? Anything helpful?’

  Briefly I summarized my findings. ‘The blue stained hands – hand, rather, as one had gone – make it fairly certain he was one of the Falco fugitives,’ I con
cluded, ‘and, since he was probably even older than the man found in the barrel, I’d say he was lucky to have survived for as long as he did.’

  ‘You reckon they shoved him over the side when land was in sight?’

  ‘Well, it’s one explanation.’

  ‘If they’d waited till the Falco docked in Plymouth,’ he went on, and I had the impression that he was speaking his thoughts aloud, ‘they’d have had to carry him off the ship, which I suppose would have been very difficult, given they were trying not to be seen, so heaving him into the sea was a better bet.’

  ‘I believe you’re right,’ I said. ‘They had to abandon the little female corpse when they left, probably for the same reason, yet it must have been valuable to them because they took the great risk of breaking into your house to take it back.’

  ‘Dear God, Gabe, this is a bugger of a business!’ Theo exclaimed. Then, abruptly standing up, he waved a hand at me. ‘Go home. Eat. Talk to that lovely sister of yours. Have a few measures of fine wine and a large glass of brandy. Sleep, and in the morning, come and tell me how on earth I am to find my way through it all.’

  He came round the desk and slapped me quite hard on the shoulder. He looked tired, defeated, and I sympathized. ‘Take your own advice and do the same,’ I urged him. Then I added quietly, ‘They are dead, Theo, or most of them surely are. They failed in whatever they planned to do at the grand residences of Thomas Drake and Richard Hawkins, and in truth I fail to see how the thin, enfeebled, emaciated remains of the group can possibly pose much of a threat to well-defended houses with gangs of servants no doubt ready and willing to defend the master and his family with any weapon that comes to hand. One fugitive was shot, remember, and one had dogs set on him.’

  Theo gave a long, gusty sigh. ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right,’ he said. ‘But all the same …’ He didn’t explain his misgivings, which was probably just as well if either of us was to have any hope of sleeping that night.

  He came out to the yard to see me off and we bade each other good evening. As I rode away, I couldn’t help wondering what had prompted that remark of his … but all the same.

  It was exactly how I felt too.

  I had to face the fact that I was sorry for those poor men, as undoubtedly was Theo. More than that: I was egging them on, hoping they’d find what they sought, achieve whatever desperate mission had brought them here at such a high physical and emotional cost.

  I sighed.

  It had always been a faint hope. Now, surely, it was an impossible one.

  I had forgotten about the old man in the lodging house.

  I hesitated. Hal’s head was turned in the direction of home, and I battled with my conscience. Would an early morning visit serve as well? No it wouldn’t, for fevers usually rise in the evening and the thin woman who ran the lodging house might be alarmed if the old man became delirious, especially if her other lodgers started to complain.

  So with great reluctance Hal and I rode down to Plymouth.

  It was as well that I had decided to go, for the old man’s fever had indeed risen alarmingly and he was lost in his own interior world, and a frightening place it seemed to be.

  The woman had brought cold water and cloths and had been bathing his face, chest and hands until, realizing what she was doing, he had screamed at her and pushed her away. ‘Told me to be gone,’ she confided to me indignantly, ‘and I won’t soil my mouth with what he called me.’

  ‘He is not himself,’ I said, wringing out the cloth. ‘In his right mind, I am sure he would only have words of gratitude.’

  She looked at me doubtfully. ‘I’m not at all sure about that, Doctor,’ she said. ‘He’s a man who mistrusts and dislikes women, if ever I met one.’

  Perhaps she was right, I reflected, for even in his disorientated state, the man seemed to shrink away from the sound of her voice.

  ‘Leave him to me,’ I said to her. ‘I’ll come and find you when I go.’

  She didn’t need telling twice, slipping away quickly before I could change my mind.

  I sat beside the old man, repeatedly rinsing out the cloth and bathing him. He twisted and turned in the bed, his face distorted by some strong emotion, and presently he began speaking. At first the words were almost inaudible – and could well have been in a foreign tongue – but then the volume increased until he was shouting and other lodgers down on the lower floors were banging on their ceilings and yelling their disapproval.

  ‘Hush,’ I soothed him, ‘be still, rest.’

  He turned his head and stared right at me. ‘They would not tell us!’ he cried. ‘We tried all our arts, we put their colleagues to the fire before their eyes, we threatened them with the same fate, but they did not break!’

  Horrified, I wondered what terrible visions he was seeing. I hoped fervently they were nothing but the products of his delirium. I put the cloth back on his forehead, and for a moment his face relaxed. Then, suddenly furious, he shouted, ‘They fled before us, and although we set off in swift pursuit, still those devils evade us!’ His voice cracked and broke. I poured water, holding the cup to his lips while he sipped. ‘We must find them,’ he whispered.

  And just before profound sleep abruptly took him, his black eyes fixed on mine and he gave me a look of such malevolence that it was all I could do not to pull away.

  It was late when I finally reached home. My mind was full of what had just happened and I urgently wanted to talk to Celia. She was in the kitchen, sitting at the table while Sallie prepared vegetables for supper, and she looked up as I came in.

  She was so pale that my own preoccupations flew out of my head.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

  Sallie did her imitation of a hen fluffing up its feathers in outrage. ‘Well may you ask, Doctor Taverner!’ she said in tones of outrage. She hardly ever calls me by my name, so I knew something grave had happened. ‘Poor Mistress Celia here was—’

  But Celia, looking up at her with a particularly sweet smile, said, ‘It’s all right, Sallie dear, I’ll tell him.’ She stood up, went over to Sallie and briefly hugged her, then said to me, ‘Come into the parlour, Gabe. The fire’s going well in there, and I can’t seem to get warm.’ She drew a thick wool shawl around her shoulders and led the way, and I followed. I could still hear Sallie muttering indignantly as we crossed the hall.

  ‘I had a visitor,’ Celia said as we sat down; she, I noticed, had drawn her chair right up to the hearth. ‘I was upstairs in your study – I’ll tell you about that later, somehow it doesn’t seem terribly important at the moment – and Sallie came up to tell me someone had called, and it was Black Carlotta, and when I said you weren’t at home she spoke to me instead.’ She paused, and her face grew even paler.

  ‘What did she want?’ I asked, then, before she could answer, ‘Did she scare you? She’s a little weird, I’ll admit, but you know that, you’ve already met her, but she—’

  ‘No, she didn’t scare me, Gabe,’ Celia replied. ‘And when she revealed what she had come to tell me – us – I had the impression she was as frightened as I was.’

  I left my chair and went to crouch in front of her, taking her cold hands between mine. ‘What did she tell you?’

  ‘She said we’re in danger. Something very powerful and very evil from far away and long ago has been disturbed – woken up, she said – and it’s threatening us. But there’s another power too, a protective power, and it’s a woman, or it comes from a woman – oh, I don’t know, I didn’t understand, and she – Black Carlotta – just said it came from the female principle, whatever that means.’

  And I remembered what Jonathan Carew had said about the second, conflicting force that he had sensed in the Falco’s dark, cramped hold: The other power, very much to my amazement, seemed to be a protective spirit.

  ‘I have no more idea than you,’ I said, ‘although this is not the first I’ve heard of two opposing forces.’

  ‘But I do have an idea,’ Celia said in a
very small voice. Clutching my hands convulsively, she whispered, ‘I think I may be going mad, Gabe, because I do not believe such things exist, and I have always held that the rational mind must hold firm in the face of the illusions that our imagination generates, but – but I saw her.’

  I returned her tight hold on my hands. ‘You are not going mad,’ I told her firmly. ‘You are one of the sanest people I know.’ She smiled faintly. ‘And what you saw – if indeed you did see anything – is likely to have been the result of the fear that Black Carlotta had just brought into the house.’

  She thought about that. To my relief, for she has strong hands, she relaxed her grip a little.

  ‘Well, I thought I saw something,’ she said. ‘Just for the briefest time, I had a flashing series of images of a very small, dark-skinned woman with pure silver hair, and she was dressed all in white.’

  I met her wide, alarmed eyes. We stared at each other for a tense moment.

  Then she said, a slight tremor in her voice, ‘You recognize her from the description, do you not?’

  ‘I – possibly.’

  She clicked her tongue in annoyance. ‘Of course you do, Gabe, you must do! I recognized her, and I only had what you told me to go on!’

  So, very reluctantly, I said, ‘Yes. It sounds as if whatever you saw – if you saw it – was some sort of vision of the body we found on the Falco.’

  ‘Nailed through the throat to a rib in the side of the hold, if I remember correctly,’ Celia said.

  ‘Er – yes.’

  There was quite a long silence. My knees were cramped from crouching, so I returned to my chair.

  Then Celia said – and to my relief she sounded almost her normal self – ‘There’s one thing I do not understand.’

  I laughed shortly. ‘Just one?’

  She ignored that. ‘If we are correct in assuming this little figure in white is the good, protective force – the one stemming from the female principle, as Black Carlotta would have it – then perhaps that is the reason that the fugitives took her on board the Falco with them, and went back for her when they had to leave her behind and she ended up in Theo’s cellar. Because she protected them!’ she added impatiently when I didn’t instantly reply.