The Wages of Sin

by Kaite Welsh

  “Miss Gilchrist? A word.”

  His tone chilled me, and I wanted nothing more than to follow my classmates out. I lingered reluctantly by the lectern as he gathered his things.

  “You are skating on very thin ice,” he said in a low voice. I felt dizzy with fear that he would tell someone—the dean, my family, anyone—about my whereabouts the night before, that he knew the thoughts that plagued me. But he continued, and his next words fell like ice water over me. “Professor Chalmers would be more than within his rights to ask for your immediate removal from the university, as would I.”

  I stared at him dumbly. I had forgotten that Elisabeth told me he and her husband were friends. Clearly, I thought bitterly, they had a lot in common.

  “I merely reported what I saw,” I said quietly, refusing to break his cold gaze.

  “You see an awful lot of things, don’t you, Miss Gilchrist?” he murmured, and I knew in that moment that he had felt the heat of my gaze on him in the boxing ring, seen me watch him with thoughts that had nothing whatsoever to do with my studies, or the crime I had accused him of.

  He pulled back, and the spell was broken.

  “I suggest that you reflect on your recent behavior and tell Mrs. Chalmers that you were mistaken, apologizing profusely for the upset you have caused. However, if you prefer, I can go to the dean right now and inform him of every detail of your history and activities since matriculating here, including your whereabouts last night. And if that isn’t enough to get you expelled, please do not think I am above inventing a few new ones.”

  “Don’t you dare throw my past back in my face,” I spat. “Elisabeth Chalmers has a right to know where her husband goes at night. You know the dangers he’s exposing her to!”

  “I know a damn sight more than you do about where Randall Chalmers goes of an evening,” he growled. “The evidence of one’s own eyes can be misinterpreted, whether the scene is a back alley or a library in a town house.”

  I felt my cheeks flame as the meaning of his words hit home.

  “You have no idea what you’re dealing with here. You play doctor a few nights a week in the slums and you think you know what that life is like? You have no idea to what evils poverty and desperation can lead a person.”

  “I know that they are not confined to the slums,” I choked out. “I know that vice and deprivation can lurk beneath even the most sophisticated of facades. And I know how men band together to protect one another, no matter their class.”

  His expression softened to something not unlike sympathy. “I know. And for what it’s worth, Miss Gilchrist, I wish that you did not. I appreciate that I have given you no cause to do so, but I’m asking you to trust me.”

  Perhaps it was the pity in his eyes or the repeat of his earlier threat, but I hated him in that moment.

  “I will not lie about what I saw, Professor,” I said, fighting for composure. “I won’t dare mention it again, but I won’t apologize for telling the truth. Elisabeth will thank me for it.”

  “Elisabeth won’t leave her room!” he burst out. “Randall says she won’t admit him, and the servants keep bringing her food that she won’t touch. She’s in danger of making herself ill, and all because you had to rush to tell her the latest sordid scandal you think you’ve uncovered.” He sighed. “You’ve a vivid imagination, I’ll give you that, Miss Gilchrist. But perhaps fewer penny dreadfuls and a little more common sense wouldn’t go amiss. You’re here to study medicine, not to save the world’s women from the clutches of mustachio-twirling villains in top hats.”

  “This is all a joke to you, isn’t it?” I ground out. “And you’re right—it’s ridiculous. To think that a woman deserves to know that her husband is intimate with streetwalkers, that another woman’s life is worth enough for her death to be investigated. And that I should delude myself into thinking that I put the past behind me when I left London, only for you to keep dragging it before my eyes every time I threaten to step out of line! I’ll keep my mouth shut, Professor. You haven’t left me with much choice. But do not think for one moment that I will ever trust you.”

  I turned on my heel and strode out into the corridor, taking great pleasure in slamming the door behind me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The absence of Elisabeth from my life gnawed away at me. She wasn’t the first friend I’d lost this past year, but her loss hit the hardest. I had meant to protect her, but in the end I had pushed her further away. I hoped fervently that she would at least heed my advice and stay out of Randall’s bed—and that he would let her. University life was miserable—neither he nor Merchiston would so much as look at me, and without the will to fight Julia’s froideur, I found myself spending days barely speaking a word, even to Alison. When I arrived home, my throat felt rusty with lack of use and even Aunt Emily’s sermonizing was welcome. Society, it seemed, was as harsh on those who sympathized with fallen women as on those who fell. With Fiona’s warning ringing in my ears and Merchiston’s repeated threats of expulsion hanging over me, I was forced to put my investigations on hold.

  Although my aunt made inquiries after Elisabeth that I rebuffed with clumsy excuses, she made no attempt to hide her delight at having me home every evening, barring those I spent at the infirmary. She made a point of telling me that she had mentioned Miles in a letter to my mother, and that the response had been approving. Should a happy event come to pass, she pointed out, my parents would have to come to Scotland to meet my betrothed. I smiled sweetly at him through dinner all the next night, feeling myself blossom under my aunt’s warm gaze, but in bed that night I felt disgusted with myself, with my craven desire to win the respect of people who not six months ago had labeled me wicked. I was like a cur, I thought, slinking back to the man who kicked it just because he threw it a few scraps and scratched behind its ears on occasion.

  I no longer ventured outside the permitted areas of home, university, and infirmary. Weeks went by without my speaking Lucy’s name aloud and I forced thoughts of her to the back of my mind during waking hours, only to have her resurface in my dreams. Although Randall Chalmers never called on me now, I prepared obsessively before every lecture in order that I might impress him if he did. Merchiston’s grudging respect for my abilities continued, and even Williamson was forced to compliment me after a particularly exact dissection. The threat of ending my first term in failure and ignominy receded, and as I made my way to the clinic on another damp and freezing night, I was exhausted but happy.

  By the time I was whisked down to the Cowgate in my uncle’s carriage, my blood was singing. I felt like I could have stayed in the lecture theater all night, scribbling notes until my hands cramped and examining diagrams until my vision blurred. If I had been on my way home for an evening of bridge and sermons, I might have cried from frustration—instead, I practically bounded out of the carriage and into the clinic. Packed to the rafters with the sick, the inebriated, and the clearly unwashed, I found the stuff of my studies take shape, word made flesh, and as I was set to work, I found myself smiling.

  Despite my surroundings, despite the unfeminine labor of intellectual exertion, what would really have appalled Aunt Emily was how physical the business of doctoring was. I heaved a large woman onto a bed, held a scrawny but aggressive girl of ten or so still as Fiona cleaned her cuts and scrapes, and helped her set a broken bone with a crack I wasn’t sure I would ever get used to. I dashed from room to room, carrying bottles and bandages and bedpans—moving considerably more carefully when the latter were full—and even though the fire in the waiting room grate was as sickly as some of the patients, I felt myself sweat through my undergarments.

  The clinic was quiet for the first time all evening. Matilda Campbell sat by the fire knitting as a nurse darned some sheets. There was a pot of tea on Fiona’s desk along with some shortbread and the whole thing was touchingly domestic.

  Fiona reached for the tea with a sigh of relief.

  “Help yourself to milk and sugar, a
nd as much of Tillie’s baking as you can manage. You’ve earned them.”

  I glowed at the praise and accepted the offering. Perched on an upturned crate and drinking stewed tea from a chipped mug—“Like a navvy,” I could hear my mother say—I enjoyed the companionable silence as Fiona frowned over some papers and Matilda’s needles clacked. Better this than a drawing room full of whatever my family would call polite company. Better this than anything I could imagine. I could take Julia’s sniping and my aunt’s disapproval if I knew my life would one day always be like this.

  “How many years before you graduate again, Sarah?” Matilda asked.

  “She wants to steal you away from general practice.” Fiona laughed. “Don’t let her—sometimes I wonder why I ever gave it up!”

  “Because you’re a martyr, same as the rest of us. I can’t even picture you in a nice light study treating well-bred ladies for their anemia. Thank God for us you saw sense.”

  “You had a private practice?” Somehow I had never thought of Fiona having a life away from the clinic, or the clinic without Fiona.

  “For a few years. Only a handful of patients deigned to be treated by a woman, so I closed up shop and moved somewhere more enlightened.”

  “Somewhere less picky, you mean.”

  Fiona shrugged. “Once you see the conditions people live in, how do you go back? I had a little money and the floor of this building was for sale. God knows it doesn’t look it on some days, but we’ve done good here.”

  “What Fiona isn’t saying is that she renovated everything herself,” Matilda interjected. “Painted the walls, cleared out the rubble and the rats—she even tried to install the gas lamps herself!”

  “In retrospect, that wasn’t my cleverest idea.” Fiona held up a finger with a scar I had never noticed before. “I barely passed chemistry by the skin of my teeth, but even then I should have known not to stand quite so close to the lamps with an open flame. Singed a perfectly good apron as well.”

  I had never lit a gas lamp in my life, nor had I worn an apron until I stepped foot in the clinic. The idea of marching into the slums, armed only with a medical degree and gumption felt like something out of a fairy tale. But I knew how it felt to have your eyes opened to the ugliness of some people’s lives and I wondered if I could ever be content with rich patients and a simple life.

  It felt like the past four years of my life had been spent trying to get to where I was—studying medicine, with all the wonders of the human body unfolding with every textbook page. Then for a while, all I had cared about was escaping the looks and muffled laughter that had surrounded me like a fog. I had wished so hard for this moment that I had barely considered what would come next. For the first time in so long, I felt that I had a future.

  “I hadn’t thought,” I said. “I wanted to be a doctor, but I’m wondering if I ever really knew what that meant. There are so many options—surgery, general practice, epidemiology, obstetrics . . .”

  “I recommend anesthesia,” Matilda said, stretching. “The patients are far less bother.”

  “Only if you get the mask on in time,” Fiona added sweetly. “Otherwise you wind up with a black eye, chloroform everywhere, and a patient limping halfway out of the door.”

  Matilda scowled. Revenge for the gas-lamp story, I imagined. “Once, Fiona. That happened once. And I personally thought my black eye made me look rather rakish, even though my poor husband did get a scolding from the neighbors.”

  “You’re married?” I was intrigued. “All my aunt ever says is that no man would marry a lady doctor and that I’m ruining my prospects for good.”

  “You’d be wise to listen,” Fiona said. “Euan Campbell is one in a million—even the ones that like a bit of spark in their women grow tired of empty beds and cold mutton for dinner every time there’s an emergency.”

  She splashed some more tea into her cup angrily, and Matilda caught my eye, a quick shake of her head, warning me not to ask any questions.

  “I promise I’ll stay a spinster and come and work here as soon as I’m qualified,” I said lightly, trying to hide how badly I wanted it. Here was the camaraderie I had hoped to find with my fellow students, here was medicine in all its messy, urgent glory.

  “Maybe by then we’ll be able to afford to pay you.” Matilda grinned. “God knows we’ve enough work for three more doctors.”

  “Which is why we should get the niece of our benefactor cleaned up and home in time for supper.” Fiona handed me a damp cloth, and I dabbed ineffectually at hands covered in another person’s grime. By the time Calhoun arrived, I was sitting in the waiting room demurely, playing the part of a perfect lady.

  I hugged Fiona impulsively. “He didn’t deserve you, whoever he was,” I whispered. She blushed, taken aback by my fierce affection. I wondered who had been the last person to show her any genuine kindness and why it was that someone who gave everything she had to strangers got so little in return from her friends.

  As the horses trotted out of the Cowgate, I looked back to see Fiona standing half in shadows and lost in thought.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  In the end, it took Aurora Greene and her refuge for penitent fallen women to jolt me out of the rut I had fallen into.

  The reformatory, a looming building not far from the queen’s palace at Holyrood, stood behind high walls that looked as though they belonged outside a prison. I wanted nothing more than to linger in the relative safety of the carriage, but my aunt scowled at my slowness and prodded my foot with the ferrule of her umbrella.

  “Don’t dawdle, Sarah!”

  Reluctantly, I stepped out into the gray afternoon, a light drizzle of rain misting the air. I doubted that the place looked welcoming even at the height of summer and felt a flicker of annoyance at my own sense of foreboding. That far-off rumble of thunder was the Scottish weather in all its inclemency, not some ominous harbinger of what I would find behind those walls.

  Professor Merchiston was right: I was acting like the heroine of a Gothic novel.

  I traced my finger over the engraved plaque as Aunt Emily rang the visitors’ bell with vigor.

  “Don’t dirty your gloves,” she snapped, yanking my hand back.

  I mumbled my apologies as the heavy wooden door creaked open, revealing a sullen-looking girl of about sixteen in a housemaid’s uniform.

  “We have an appointment with Miss Hartigan,” Aunt Emily informed her crisply. She turned wordlessly and walked across the courtyard to the house, leaving us to scurry after her. From the way she eyed me, I could tell she assumed I was the latest inhabitant of Saint Catherine’s Home for Girls.

  Inside. the hallway was dark and musty, gas lamps illuminating samplers with religious messages and dire warnings. She led us through poky passages and paused before a door marked MISS GRISELDA HARTIGAN, MATRON.

  Miss Griselda Hartigan, matron, was a woman of middling height whose fading golden hair was scraped back into a bun of impressive severity. She looked as though she might have been almost pretty, once, but when she smiled to greet us, it didn’t reach her eyes.

  “Mrs. Fitzherbert.” She nodded. “Thank you for taking an interest in our girls.” Her gaze flickered to me, and I felt her appraise me as she must have done countless other ruined girls. “And this must be Miss Gilchrist.”

  I nodded mutely, suddenly scared that if I opened my mouth she would detect the stain of sin in my speech and I would find myself an inmate, not a visitor.

  “It is so kind of you to devote your time to the less fortunate. I’m sure that you will be a most beneficial influence on my charges.”

  Aunt Emily’s expression conveyed doubt that I would ever be a beneficial influence on anyone, but she remained silent.

  “I hope I can be of some comfort,” I said weakly.

  Miss Hartigan arched an eyebrow. “Comfort? Miss Gilchrist, comfort is the last thing these girls need. Hard work, plain food, and sermons will help put them back on the path.”

 
; Beside me, Aunt Emily was nodding her agreement vigorously, and I wondered if I was going to be subjected to gruel for supper from now on.

  I pulled out my Bible from my reticule. “I should have said that I hope I can be of service, Miss Hartigan,” I apologized.

  “We’ll see” was all that the dragon had to say to that. “I must warn you though, these are not the type of girls you are used to associating with. Despite all our best efforts, some of them can be rather coarse.”

  “I volunteer my time at the Saint Giles’s Infirmary on the Cowgate,” I offered. “I doubt they can be worse.”

  Her eyes widened and her polite smile tensed. “I see,” she said, giving me a searching look. “Well then, I’m sure you know what you’re about. Dr. Leadbetter has been most generous with her medical attention. I had no idea we were to have another doctor in our midst.” She didn’t seem happy about it. “Now, I must give you the tour of our little establishment.” She swept ahead of us, mistress of her domain, and we were forced to scurry after her.

  I was reminded, incongruously, of Ruby McAllister’s lodgings. Although the paintings on the wall showed biblical scenes rather than lewd drawings, and the walls were whitewashed instead of covered in damask drapes, something about the mixture of fear and resentment in the girls’ eyes as she swept past, the proprietorial way she pointed out this or that inmate’s defects, reminded me of the way the brothel keeper had reduced her girls to a charming smile or an ample bosom. I wondered how many of them had escaped a place like Ruby’s, and if they had noticed the parallels too.

  For all Miss Hartigan’s sermonizing, I knew that some of them at least would end up there or somewhere like it, or on the streets if they were even less fortunate. In their position, would I have chosen sin and a pretty dress over salvation and a shapeless gray pinafore? We passed a scared-looking child blacking the grate, who trembled when we drew too close, and I wondered what on earth such a young thing had done to warrant confinement here. As she turned to drop a shaky curtsy, I saw that she had a board around her neck with LIAR written in copperplate letters.