The Wages of Sin

by Kaite Welsh

  And Paul Beresford would have won a second time, destroying my life as well as my virtue. I fought the temptation for the thousandth time, forced the thoughts back into the tiny corner of my mind where I kept them locked away. I had thought I was beyond these wicked thoughts, thought the craving for self-destruction that had taken hold of me in the months following my attack had been banished by hard work and long hours. Now I wondered if that little voice in my mind could ever be quieted. And as I drifted into a fitful, broken sleep, I knew that Lucy had not tried to take her own life.

  And I knew that I would not have blamed her if she had.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur.”

  As the vicar droned on, I struggled to stay awake, regretting the previous night’s decision to study until the wee small hours. I at least felt a little closer to understanding Professor Merchiston’s subject. Materia Medica, the study of the properties of drugs, was fascinating, but the pace of study was so fast that I was constantly in fear of getting left behind. It was some small consolation that I was not the only one who felt that way—even the normally unflappable Julia was beginning to look pressured as the intensity of our workload grew.

  The men at least had the option of letting off a little steam in their free time—although they were nowhere near as decadent as their predecessors a decade ago had been, overheard conversations in the corridors always seemed to include discussions of that night at the music hall, or this trip to a particular bawdy house. I suspected many of them exaggerated their escapades, but although I didn’t envy them their pursuits, it rankled that they had an outlet for their energies while we had only sewing and paying calls.

  Still, although I felt exhausted, I was also exhilarated. I had never worked so hard in my life—not in the schoolroom, where my governess was more concerned about my posture than the date of the Battle of Hastings, and not at school, where my passion for learning was considered rather odd. I may have heartily disliked most of my fellow students, but at least I had something in common with them.

  I felt a sharp kick to my ankle—Aunt Emily had noticed my inattention, and I tried to focus on the sermon. At home, I had always found staring down at my prayer book to be the easiest option, especially if I had gone to the trouble of secreting a novel in there before the service, but Aunt Emily watched me like a hawk, and I knew that I would end up reciting half the service back at her over luncheon, if only to prove that I had been listening.

  As we left the church, I caught a glimpse of a familiar face, and, making mumbled excuses to my aunt and uncle that I would be chided for later on, pushed my way through the throng of people as politely as I could until I reached Fiona Leadbetter.

  “I didn’t expect to see you here,” I said with delight.

  “I’m afraid my motives are rather more capitalist than Christian,” she said in a low voice. “The vicar has a substantial fund to aid the deserving poor, and I was hoping he might be persuaded to donate some of it to the infirmary.”

  “Do you really think he would approve?”

  She sighed with barely concealed irritation, and I realized how wan she looked. “I have to try, Sarah.”

  I bit my lip. “Is the infirmary really so poor?”

  “We’re getting by, but barely. Honestly, if it wasn’t for your help twice a week, then I don’t know how we would cope with the influx of patients we see every day. We can’t afford to bring on any more nurses, and there certainly isn’t enough money for another doctor. I’m dividing my time between seeing patients and charming philanthropists, and most nights I don’t see my bed until the clock has chimed one in the morning.”

  “Physician, heal thyself,” I warned affectionately. “If you fall ill, all hell will break loose.”

  She flashed me a tired but grateful smile. “It’s nice to see my work appreciated. Heaven knows our patients don’t see it that way a lot of the time.”

  She was right—days where the doctors were not spat at, cursed at, propositioned, or threatened with physical violence were few and far between.

  I put my hand on her arm. “Fiona, you’re doing such good work. Your patients may not say as much, but if you weren’t there, then they’d be far worse off.”

  “But there are so many people we’re not reaching, Sarah.” She sounded defeated, something I wasn’t used to coming from her. I was alarmed.

  Before I could reassure her, I saw my aunt making her way over to us with a face hard as iron.

  “Sarah, could you please gather your things? Your uncle and I would prefer to have luncheon while it’s still warm.” Her tone was icy, but I refused to dispense with formalities.

  “Aunt Emily, this is Fiona Leadbetter.” I left her title off, knowing that it would only provoke her to use it. “She runs the Saint Giles’s Infirmary, and does all manner of good works. Fiona, Mrs. Hugh Fitzherbert, my aunt.”

  The two women acknowledged each other with a friendly nod, but Fiona was no keener to meet my aunt than my aunt was to meet her. No wonder, given the amount of grumbling I did when I was at the infirmary.

  “Aunt Emily is most influential in the Edinburgh Christian Women’s Association,” I explained pointedly. “They help all manner of good causes—why, just last month they helped fund a missionary expedition to the Gold Coast of Africa!”

  Fiona’s expression thawed, as she realized why I was so keen to make the introduction.

  “Mrs. Fitzherbert, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Your niece is quite charming, and practically indispensable. It really is good of her to give her time to help the unfortunate.”

  “My niece is far too accommodating for her own good,” Aunt Emily replied. “I hope you’re not getting too used to her, Miss Leadbetter. We do still hold out some hope that she might fulfill her duty as a good Christian woman.”

  My cheeks flushed. Fiona, to her credit, did not betray her feelings but merely nodded her assent. Suddenly, I wanted to be anywhere but here. The colliding of my two worlds left my palms sweating through my gloves and my head aching. Luckily, my aunt had no intention of wasting any more time in idle chitchat to a woman she clearly found undesirable.

  In the carriage, she fixed her cold gray gaze on me.

  “I do hope, Sarah,” she admonished, “that you are not mixing with those elements of society that are better left alone.” In Aunt Emily’s world, this was practically everybody except the vicar, but I was wise enough not to say so.

  “I promise, Aunt Emily, the clinic only administers to the most deserving poor.”

  “It’s not the patients who concern me, Sarah. I know that you have this ridiculous notion of becoming a doctor, but I hope that you will come to your senses soon enough, and I know that your family feel the same way.”

  That got my attention. “You’ve heard from Mother?”

  “Of course I’ve heard from her,” she said. “Do you really think that my sister and I don’t write to each other?”

  I wouldn’t know, being banned from writing to mine, but I was wiser than to say so.

  “Did she . . . does she ask after me?”

  “Of course she does, you silly child. She’s your mother. It’s not as though she threw you on the streets to starve—although many women would have done just that,” she added. “She left you in the care of relatives who love you and can be counted on to provide a good, Christian example for you.”

  “How is she?” I begged, my words stumbling over themselves. “And Father? How’s Gertie? Is she looking forward to her first season?’

  There was an awkward pause. “Under the circumstances, they deemed it wisest not to present Gertrude next May,” Aunt Emily replied. “She will be staying on at finishing school for another year.”

  So, not content with ruining my own reputation, I had risked Gertie’s future happiness as well. We ha
d been planning her debut for years, and now she would have to wait even longer, while her friends all took their place in society. How she must hate me.

  By the time we had returned home, the rain had once again begun lashing down on the cobbled streets. I was grateful to get inside to the fire, even if the warmth would be accompanied by my aunt’s moralizing. She was bad enough at the best of times, but Sundays meant her eagle eyes watching me as I prayed for salvation until my throat was raw. As I divested myself of my damp coat and hat, I eyed the parlor anxiously. Initially, I had been confined to my room on Sundays and told to think about my wickedness, but my aunt had quickly realized that leaving me unsupervised surrounded by books had only one effect.

  Feeling her eyes on me, I meekly walked into the parlor and deliberately took the most uncomfortable chair. She nodded approvingly, as though physical discomfort and good posture were proof of my commitment to moral rectitude. Taking the Bible from the bookshelf—it was, I suspected, the only book there that she had ever opened—she handed it to me.

  “Romans 6:13 today, Sarah.”

  I didn’t even need to look at the page. I had this verse memorized by heart.

  “‘Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness.’”

  I wondered if the cause of this wickedness was sitting stiffly in a parlor, choking out the words that denounced him as a sinner. Somehow I doubted it, and the injustice of it all twisted inside me. I kept my eyes lowered and my voice level and penitent. I had learned all too well what fighting against my punishment got me.

  As I came to the end of the passage, we were called into luncheon, and I added a silent prayer of thanks for my temporary reprieve. It was the first heartfelt prayer I had offered up all day.

  “Dr. Radcliffe is coming on Wednesday,” my uncle said. “I expect you to be home promptly.”

  I looked up, startled. “Are you unwell, Uncle?”

  “He isn’t here for me,” he replied curtly. When I glanced at Aunt Emily, he sighed irritably. “It was a condition of your father’s that you be . . . kept an eye on. We don’t want a repeat of the incident in London, now—do we?”

  I knew why Dr. Radcliffe had been called. I could imagine the questions he would ask, the sensation of his cold, prying fingers against my skin. He would be just like our family doctor, who had birthed me and treated my colic and finally condemned me to life under constant supervision.

  It had been Dr. Waters who had examined me after the party, confirming my father’s fears in hushed tones. “An act of congress,” he had called it through pursed lips. Had I been lucid enough to speak I would have used another word entirely, but Father had doused me with Mother’s laudanum after my screams had threatened to wake up the entire household. I had been able to do little else but lie limply on my sheets as a man’s hands parted my legs for the second time that night and cold fingers probed sensitive flesh while my parents waited outside.

  In a way, that examination was worst of all. Dr. Waters had never liked me, had been horrified when I announced my intention of becoming a doctor, and had not bothered to be gentle in his ministrations. He had branded me a hysteric, driven to wanton acts by my unhealthy fascination with medicine, and prescribed a stay at a sanatorium in the countryside until the extent of my ruin could be established. I was to have no access to books and “this foolish nonsense about doctoring” was to be abandoned permanently. I had the society gossipmongers to thank for escaping the latter fate, at least.

  And I was to go through it all again, it seemed, now that I was permitted to leave the constant supervision of my aunt. Just in case I had slipped my chaperones and—what? Spread my legs for one of my professors? Bedded a male student? Or perhaps one of the miscreants who lingered outside the clinic catcalling the female physicians had caught my eye. I schooled my expression into the kind of bland obedience they wanted. “I won’t be late, Uncle. It is very kind of you to be so concerned with my health.”

  He grunted and went back to his plate, not noticing the way my grip tightened around my butter knife until my knuckles blanched. If I could, I would have driven it through his heart right there in the dining room, the blunt curve slicing neatly through his left ventricle.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Medical students swarmed en masse across the courtyard to lectures and tutorials, but I hung back in the shadows until I was sure they had gone. Then, pulling my scarf higher, to hide my face, I crossed the street and made for the Grassmarket. It was hard not to feel as though I was Persephone descending into the Underworld, leaving the misty Edinburgh morning behind me. I wondered if I was doing the right thing.

  As I came to the Grassmarket, desperately hoping that no one from the infirmary would spy me, I caught sight of a boy of no more than ten, slouched against the wall, looking disinterested in anything but the bottle in his hand. His eyes flickered lazily over me as I approached, no doubt sizing me up as a possible mark for pickpocketing. He didn’t reek of alcohol yet, and when he spoke, his words were not slurred. He’d do for my purpose.

  “Wha d’ye want?” he snarled.

  I handed him a folded piece of paper.

  “I need you to take this message to one of the porters at the medical school on Bristo Square,” I said. “I’ll give you a shilling if you do—but only,” I added hastily, “when you’ve done it. It won’t take you ten minutes, a strapping young lad like you.” He didn’t look as though he believed my flattery, and I couldn’t blame him—he was scrawny, and if he didn’t have rickets, it was only a matter of time. He probably wouldn’t survive his fifteenth birthday. Still, off he scampered, giving me time to collect my thoughts before I made my way to Ruby’s establishment.

  I rapped smartly on the door, unsure if anyone would even be awake to answer—presumably, since so much of their work took place in the evenings, these women would be given to lying in later than one would normally expect. The door was opened by a young girl who, despite the fact that she was fully dressed, was sleepy-eyed and not entirely coherent. As I inquired after the proprietress—amending my language when I was met with a blank stare—I realized two things. One, that the girl could not be more than fourteen years old, and two, that she was drunk.

  “I’m nae meant to let anyone in, miss,” she slurred uncertainly. “Missus Ruby said so.”

  “Oh, but she didn’t mean me,” I lied. “I’m a friend of hers. A doctor.”

  It was the last word that gained me entrance, much to my surprise. I had expected disbelief or scorn, but she blithely ushered me in and asked in exaggeratedly polite tones if I would care for some tea. I found myself once again sitting awkwardly in the parlor, trying to find somewhere to rest my gaze other than on the lewd artwork on the wall. I tried crossing to the bookcase, but a brief perusal of one volume left me blushing with embarrassment, if rather better informed about certain acts than I wished to be.

  Hurried steps alerted me to Ruby’s arrival, and she began speaking before she was in the room.

  “Doctor, I wasn’t expecting to see you so . . .” She trailed off. “Miss Gilchrist,” she said uncertainly. “I’m no’ sure what it is you’re wanting, hen, but I don’t think I can help you.”

  “The porter at the university said that you collected Lucy’s body. I wondered if I might attend the funeral.” She looked at me oddly. I prayed it had not yet taken place. I could, with luck, persuade the police surgeon to pay a visit to the undertakers, but an exhumation would be completely out of the question.

  “You’re too late,” she snapped, and I felt the last shreds of hope leave me. Lucy’s final resting place would be in an unmarked pauper’s grave, with no ceremony to reflect on her passing. I wasn’t entirely sure what the protocol was for a streetwalker’s funeral, but I had wanted it to be attended. I wanted Lucy to be mourned, for her death—natural or not—to be
acknowledged in a world that had ignored her in life.

  “Then can you at least tell me a little about her,” I pleaded. “It’s foolish, I know, but to meet her so briefly in life and to see her like that . . . I promise, I’ll never darken your door again.”

  This seemed to mollify her, and she nodded slowly. Her hand in the small of my back shoved me out into the hall, where the child from earlier stood mouth agape, the promised cup of tea in her hands, spilling the liquid onto the floor.

  “If you want to talk, you can pay for the privilege,” she snarled. “Bessie, we’ll be in the Last Drop if anyone calls for me. No’ the bailiffs, mind. If they call, what do we say?”

  “I’ve no’ heard of ye, and I dinnae ken who y’are,” the girl recited in a monotone.

  We sat in the public house and Ruby ordered gin for both of us. She didn’t object when I pushed my smeared glass across the table toward her.

  “When did Lucy come to you?” I asked, fighting to conceal my eagerness. I didn’t want to frighten her off, not before I’d extracted every scrap of information I could from her.

  “About six months ago,” she conceded.

  “Did she say where she’d been living? Was she at another house?”

  “She didnae say and I didnae ask.”

  This was worse than making conversation with Aunt Emily’s lady’s maid. “Did Lucy have any regular . . . .ah . . . callers?” I asked, feeling my cheeks burn. “Anyone who seemed especially fond of her?”

  “They were all fond o’ Lucy,” Ruby mused, picking her teeth. They seemed a little too big for her mouth, and I realized they were probably false and designed for someone else. “She had spirit, ye ken? If she didnae take a fancy to you, you knew it.”