by Kaite Welsh
Any retort I could have made was interrupted by the entrance of Moira Owen, Violet Cooper, and Caroline Carstairs, who all roomed together off the Royal Mile.
I looked at their smug, superior faces and swore that I would not attend a single meeting of their damned Morality Union. Like so many of my promises these days, it was another one I would be unable to keep.
I was rendering the optic nerve in precise pencil strokes when Alison leaned over.
“You’ve been to the slums,” she whispered. “How bad are they really?”
I looked at her, wondering how much knowledge she could handle. “About as bad as you’d imagine. Families sleeping eight to a room, children with bellies distended from malnutrition, and damp that seeps into your bones and doesn’t leave.”
“And hardly a mile away, we live in comfort.” Alison sighed in wonderment. “Well, relative comfort. I’m sure our landlady is gulling us with the amount of coal we’re allowed in our rooms.”
Hard as life in the Cowgate was, I wasn’t sure that even the most unrepentant wretch deserved Alison at her most well-meaning.
“If you want to take up philanthropy, you might start somewhere a little less bleak. Just until you get used to it,” I offered awkwardly.
“It’s the Morality Union,” she whispered. “We’re going on a rescue mission.”
The apprehension I felt for my friend was quickly replaced with a sinking feeling at the pit of my stomach.
“Who’s ‘we’? And who are you rescuing?” I had a horrible feeling I already knew the answer.
“Julia wants us to take some pamphlets about sexual immorality and hand them out outside brothels, to stop the men going in. We’re taking donations so we can give the women money for a bed for the night.”
“They already have a bed. You’ll be giving temperance society money to women who’ll spend it on gin. And frankly, I can’t blame them—even listening to Julia makes me want to take to the bottle.”
She frowned. “You can’t be saying you approve of such degradation?”
“Of course not! But causing a public disturbance in the slums is hardly the way to prevent it. For one thing, it isn’t safe. Tell me you’re bringing a chaperone with you.”
“Reverend Spinks is accompanying us.”
I wasn’t sure how that pious old duffer would be of any protection, unless it was letting him get pickpocketed first.
“When?”
“Tomorrow night, after lectures.”
“Is six o’clock a time traditionally known for vice and perversions of all natures?”
Alison blushed. “Reverend Spinks refused to accompany us any later. He said it’s too dangerous.”
For once, I agreed with him.
“I’m going with you. No, don’t argue—and I don’t care what Latymer says. She doesn’t have the monopoly on standing in the freezing cold making a fool of herself, and while I could give a tinker’s damn about her, you may as well have someone who knows her way out.”
The night was bitter as we made our way from the medical school down Forrest Road, toward a part of the city that only I was familiar with. I hoped at the very least that Julia had brought a map, although I doubted that the building we were seeking would be located on one.
In the distance, a tram clattered past, and we stepped gingerly over the rain-slicked cobbles. Greyfriars Kirk, unassuming in daylight or seen from the window of a safe, warm carriage, was gothic and eerie in the lamplight behind heavy iron gates that looked even more ominous than the graveyard it was protecting.
“James Ross says it’s haunted,” whispered Caroline Carstairs, and even I couldn’t resist a shiver.
“It’s a graveyard, of course it’s haunted!” Alison squeaked in mounting hysteria.
“Oh, don’t be so feeble, both of you!” Julia snapped. “You see dead bodies and severed limbs practically every day. The only difference here is six feet of loam and the level of decomposition. And James MacFarlane is sitting his second-year examinations for the third time, so I wouldn’t hold him up as the fount of all knowledge.”
I wondered who had been the unkind soul who had first leeched the romance out of Julia’s soul. God help the poor man who eventually married her.
Remembering that he was supposed to be our protector, Reverend Spinks pulled himself up to his full gawky height, in what I assumed was an attempt to look manly and reassuring.
“Ladies, rest assured that there is nothing to fear. The kirkyard is sacred ground where no ghost would dare to tread. If, ah, in fact the dead walked, which they most assuredly do not. The only spirits you need fear are the ones served in that godless establishment.” He nodded at the public house that backed onto the kirk, rowdy already. As a gaggle of patrons entered, I caught a strong whiff of tobacco and stale beer. A few jeered mild obscenities, but one, a man in a green gabardine coat, merely sipped his ale and stared at us. I shuddered.
“Perhaps we should hand out some pamphlets here?” Edith suggested.
“I hardly think that appropriate,” Reverend Spinks stammered, as though he were not leading us directly toward vice and depredation as it was.
“Might not be appropriate, but it would be warm,” Alison grumbled.
“We have to make sacrifices for the cause, Thornhill,” Julia replied crisply, burrowing her hands in Edith’s muff nonetheless.
Candlemaker Row seemed twice as long when one was on foot in the dark, and we found ourselves lapsing into uncharacteristic silence, huddled close together and walking briskly, our breath ghosting into the frigid air. Feeble or not, even Julia practically scurried past the other kirkyard entrance until we reached the Grassmarket. When she turned purposefully away from the Cowgate and into a familiar wynd, my heart sank.
We were going to Ruby McAllister’s.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A man stood silhouetted at the mouth of the wynd, a top hat casting a long shadow in the dim light, his coat fluttering in the breeze.
“What d’we have here, then? It’s a dreich night to be standing outside—why don’t you lassies come inside and I’ll see if I can warm you up?”
“Excuse me, sir, do you realize what sort of establishment this is?” Julia demanded, in a voice that sounded painfully unsuited to her surroundings.
He laughed. “Well, I was hoping it was a bawdy house, aye. I’m sure there are lassies in there who can explain it to you, miss.”
“Sir, the women within those walls are desperate. They’re starving, addicted to laudanum or worse; some of them have many other mouths to feed. They deserve better than to be degraded by you! Have mercy on them and leave for the night.”
“Out of my way, lassie, I came here looking for female company friendlier than yours.”
He pushed past, brushing off the pamphlet that Julia waved at him and trampling it under foot.
“These women are living in poverty, and you have corrupted them!” The door slammed behind him and she muffled a scream of frustration with her glove. I was unsettled to realize that I recognized the feeling. Perhaps she and I were not as dissimilar as we both wanted to believe.
“They’re no’ living in poverty, hen, and those kind gentlemen are the reason why.”
Ruby McAllister, dressed top to toe in cheap finery, stood in the doorway with a thunderous expression. Candlelight glinted off diamonds that were about as real as her teeth, and inside we heard music and laughter. It sounded like a raucous dinner party, not a den of iniquity, and my companions were all craning their necks, eager to get a glimpse of sin.
“Are you the proprietress of this establishment, madam?” Reverend Spinks asked.
“It’s mah house, if that’s what y’mean.”
Julia pushed in front of the hapless cleric. “We are the Edinburgh Women Students’ Morality Union, and—”
She jerked her thumb up the wynd. “University’s that way, hen.”
“Oh, we know exactly where we are, madam. And we’d like to speak to your girls.”
“They’re a little busy, I’m afraid.”
“We want to help them, to assist them out of the depths to which they have fallen,” Julia said, sounding a little less sure of herself.
“Oh, aye? Did you bring blankets? Food? Medicine? Anything they could actually use? You cannae feed a bairn on morals.”
“I said we should have brought something,” I muttered to Alison.
Ruby McAllister must have had ears like a bat, because she looked straight in my direction and her eyes hardened.
“Well, if it isn’t the crusading Miss soon-to-be-Dr. Gilchrist. I should ha’ ken you’d be behind this. So quick to blame everyone else for the world’s ills, but you never look closer to home, do you? Just because someone has a fine coat and a full purse doesn’t mean they can be trusted.”
“You don’t seem to have a problem relieving them of their purse,” Julia said, her confidence returning. “How much do you make off these poor wretches?”
Ruby looked at Julia coldly.
“I ken your type, miss. You’re no’ interested in saving my girls; you’re only interested in protecting your own reputation.”
“If one gentleman heard us and thought better of his actions—”
“You haven’t changed their minds, all you’ve done is lost us a night’s takings and put my girls one day closer to the streets. Never mind, lass. Maybe they’ll get lucky and have two men at once.”
In the stunned silence that followed, a figure came and stood behind Ruby. I recognized the slim young man from my last visit—the one I had heard “entertaining” another gentleman.
“Shame on you!” Julia shouted. “Using women to sate your base desires! You’re no better than an animal! Those women have families, do you ever think about that?”
I tugged at her sleeve. “Julia, he isn’t visiting any of the girls. He works there.”
Her breath huffed out into the icy air as she laughed. “Since when did brothels have footmen?”
“The more exclusive establishments do.” Jamie smirked. “But this isnae one of them and I’m no’ a footman, hen. Dinnae worry, your virtue is safe wi’ me. You’ve got more to fear from some of the drabs upstairs—they’ll take anyone who can pay, and you look like you’ve got money, aye?”
Julia stumbled back, openmouthed with shock and anger.
“How dare he?” she snarled. “That filthy sodomite. I should call a policeman.”
“We’d better go,” Edith suggested, looking miserable.
Julia shook off her friend’s arm. “I won’t be frightened off. Let him see that some of us have standards.”
She straightened up, gathering what was left of her pamphlets, and turned toward the sound of footsteps. I had seen that smile before, on a stuffed shark in the Natural History Museum.
She banged on the window with her fist so hard I thought she would smash the glass.
The red velvet curtains twitched, and the painted face of a woman no older than us peered out.
Julia held up a pamphlet and called to her. “You don’t have to do this! We can get you a bed for the night! If your madam won’t let you leave, we’ll call a policeman.”
The woman let out a cry and vanished behind the curtain.
Julia turned back to us triumphantly.
“You terrified her!” I snapped. “If the police come, they’ll arrest everyone.”
“At least it will spare her one night of this.”
“As if she’ll get treated any better in a prison cell!”
She glared back mulishly. “Maybe I taught her the error of her ways.”
The door opened again, and we were confronted with a furious Ruby.
“That did the trick, hen. We’ve all repented and we’ll spend the evening in quiet contemplation, with maybe a wee bit of backgammon. Now piss off before some of these gents take a fancy to you.”
Defeated, we trudged back up to the bridge and civilization. Some of the men had spilled out of the public house and were making their inebriated way down to the brothels. The man who had been watching us earlier was among them, leaning against the wall in a casual pose. I wondered how long he had been standing there as he ducked away from my gaze.
“Tell me, Gilchrist, are you acquainted with every madam in the city?” Julia asked nastily.
I sighed. “She brings her girls to the infirmary sometimes. More to the point, how did you even know how to find a brothel in the first place?”
“I heard some of the men talking when I was waiting to go into the lecture theater.”
“The lecturers?” I asked. Had Merchiston been boasting of his conquests to his colleagues?
“Of course not,” Julia sounded appalled. “As though any respectable member of the medical establishment would be seen in such a place!” For all her progressive leanings, sometimes my nemesis could be bewilderingly naïve. “It was some of the third-year students. Anthony Hardy and his unevolved cronies.”
Reverend Spinks cleared his throat awkwardly, clearly uncomfortable with the concept that even idiotic dregs like Hardy could have evolved at all. Frankly, I struggled to imagine Hardy as being any part of a divine plan.
In our humiliation, the whole plan seemed so tawdry—the patronizing efforts of rich women who wanted to save lives but tithed only what society dictated to charity. It was the same everywhere—the Salvationists in their uniforms with shiny buttons marched singing down only the poorest streets. The Temperance League published scathing articles about the demon drink that parted workingmen from their wages, and I had been taught from birth that ladies submitted to their husbands’ attentions only as a duty—female desire was aberrant and restricted to the slums, whose inhabitants lived more like beasts than men. Why were we so desperate to believe that anything separated the people in drawing rooms from the people in the slums other than sheer luck?
I followed the others back to the medical school, where the reverend chose the opportunity to give us a sermon. When my uncle’s carriage arrived, it was a blessed relief.
When I alighted at my uncle’s house, bright electric lights spilling onto the pavement as the butler opened the door, I felt the tug of guilt catch at my throat. I was no better than the wretches huddled under the Cowgate’s arches, and neither was Julia. Fortune may not have smiled on me lately, but at least it hadn’t abandoned me completely. As the housemaid took my coat, I forced a smile onto my face, ready to spin my relatives a yarn about the wholesome evening I had spent. Fire crackled in the grate, the tea from the pot was scalding, but as I played the role of virtuous niece, I felt the evening’s damp and desperation settle in my bones.
The others were probably sound asleep, I thought, as I peeled off my undergarments in the privacy of my room, safe in the knowledge that they had fought the good fight, imagining vainly that their protests might have planted a seed of lingering doubt in the mind of a gentleman or whore. They were so innocent. They were so lucky. They hadn’t turned away a frightened, desperate girl. They didn’t have a woman’s death on their conscience, her blood on their hands. They were little girls dressed in their teacher’s clothes, playing with women’s lives as they once played with their dolls, ignorant that all the sermonizing in the world wouldn’t save the soul of someone with a malnourished body.
Prostitution was the final resting place for a girl of unclean virtue, the place that lay in wait should we fall through the cracks of civilized society. I knew that was why my uncle permitted me to assist at the infirmary, to remind me weekly of the fate that would have befallen me had they not consented to take me in. And the gas lamps on the streets illuminated other unfortunates, ones who didn’t have a bed for the night, who might have gone gladly to Ruby McAllister’s house of ill repute rather than shiver under rags before the Scottish winter claimed them. It wasn’t a choice I ever wanted to make, a choice no one should have to. But I knew it wasn’t the look in her gentleman’s eyes tonight that had made the girl at the window flinch away from us in shame.
The last trickle of laudanum hidden away behind my books would have soothed my battered nerves and sore muscles, left me docile and malleable just like everyone wanted, ready to pour into whatever mold they chose. My relatives could shape me into the perfect wife and mother, Julia could shape me into another soldier for her army—even Fiona wanted to keep my attention firmly inside the clinic walls, like blinders on a horse.
But as I looked at its hiding place, I forced myself to think about Lucy’s body on the dissecting table and all the steps that had led her there. The distance between us had never seemed so precarious. If I wanted to rectify the damage I had done, I needed my wits about me.
We were a subdued group the next morning. Julia sat silent and sullen, glaring at her botany textbook during a chemistry lab, and on the other side of the room, Edith’s eyes were red and swollen. Probably she had been blamed for the night’s debacle through her bosom friend’s convoluted logic.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Alison murmured as our test tube frothed over dangerously. “That place was ghastly. Will you think me awful if I stick to general practice when I graduate, instead of ministering to the great unwashed with you?”
I smiled fondly, having never once imagined the comfort-loving Alison Thornhill as an angel of mercy in the slums. “The problem with the great unwashed is—well, you can imagine. And frankly, I’ll be surprised if I make it through this term, let alone graduate. I didn’t even look at my Materia Medica notes last night, and you know how Merchiston likes picking on me.”
I dabbed fruitlessly at the spilled chemicals with my handkerchief, wondering if the fabric was supposed to dissolve like that.
“Oh, he’s like that with everyone—he always looks as though you’ve spoiled his favorite pen. I much prefer Professor Chalmers; he’s much more jolly. Do you think the solution is supposed to be doing that?”