Dark Waters (10 page)

‘Can you hear me? Are you in pain?'

A hand was supporting the back of Lysistrata's head, while another was at her wrist, feeling the pulse.

Her eyes came open and she became aware of the man's face, handsome and grave, floating just above hers.

‘Good, you are conscious,' said Luke Fidelis. ‘No, don't try to speak just yet. I am a doctor and I live in this house here. If you will permit me I shall have you carried inside where we may see if you are hurt.'

He beckoned to some men in the knot of people who had emerged from the nearby shops and were gawping at the fallen woman.

‘Joseph Williamson, and you other men, come here and help me take her inside. She may be seriously injured so we must act with the utmost gentleness. That's it, you must support her with your hands, so don't be shy. Does anybody know who she is? No, thank you, Mr Bryant, we shall take her into Mr Lorris's premises, rather than yours, I think, since it is where I live and keep my medicines. And by the way, did I not see your apprentice Abraham in that mob? I was at the window and observed them pass, with the very serious consequences we now see. The boy should be ashamed of himself, Mr Bryant, and I hope you will deal with him severely.'

The scenes I have sketched were described to me by an excited Luke Fidelis in considerable detail. This was later that same evening, with a jug of punch on the table between us, at the Gamecock, the inn kept by Mrs Fitzpatrick on Stoney Gate. After our earlier discussion about Destercore's lists, Fidelis had left me at my office and gone home to his rooms at the top of Lorris's house and workshop. A few moments later he glimpsed Miss Plumb from his window, ‘the most enchanting young woman you ever saw', standing alone in the street and giving all the indications of distress. His tenderness towards this sight gave way to alarm as the street emptied of shoppers and the mob bore down on her.

‘I almost threw myself down the stairs, Titus, but was unable to reach her before they did. When we brought her inside I found bruises and shock, but nothing broken.'

‘And who is she? What brings her here?'

‘She says very little about herself. But she is not passing through merely in a day. Her intention was to look for a place in which to stay.'

‘There's not much chance of that this week.'

‘Not in the public inns. But she has had wonderful luck because the Lorrises have an empty room, and they have taken her in. The room is not normally let but they are charitable people and, after I'd explained Miss Plumb's predicament, they were very glad to allow her to have it.'

‘So, you persuaded them.'

Luke gave me the laconic smile that I had noticed he sometimes assumed when talking about attractive women.

‘I did act as her advocate in the matter, yes.'

‘You fancy her?'

Fidelis pursed his lips, to show he deprecated my turn of phrase, and shook his head.

‘She is above fancy. She is a goddess of beauty, Titus, an angel to the angels. I think she may be my guiding star.'

I refilled our glasses from the jug of punch and raised mine.

‘Let's drink to her, then. She has obviously made a mighty impression. To your guiding star.'

We drank and, at that moment, the ample figure of the landlady appeared beside our booth.

‘Dr Fidelis, may I interrupt?' said Mrs Fitzpatrick. ‘One of our guests who's in town on election business has been taken ill in his room. A bad way he's in, sir. Would you be kind enough to take a look?'

Fidelis again raised his glass to his lips, tipped back his head and swallowed the drink. Then without the slightest sign of objection he stood and picked up the leather bag containing his professional equipment.

‘Please excuse me for a few minutes, Titus.'

The landlady took the doctor across the room to the door which led up to the ailing guest.

I looked around. The room was as busy and loud as I had ever seen it, with laughter, argument, anecdote and singing, with card players' calls and the clinking of money, glass and pewter. I noticed for the first time that my old nemesis Ephraim Grimshaw was sitting on the other side of the room. Dressed in a bulging red-and-silver-threaded waistcoat and a blue coat edged with golden piping, he was talking closely and earnestly with two men from outside the town, while referring to a document lying on the table between them. Grimshaw was one of the most powerful of Preston's twenty-four burgesses, our ruling council, by and from whom the mayor and two bailiffs are chosen each year. All of these men were strong for the Tories, and had contributed large funds to the coffers of Fazackerley and Shuttleworth in the fight against the Whigs, and London, and the schemes and machinations of Robin Walpole. Grimshaw had served more than one term as bailiff but he had relinquished that office last year, having fixed his eyes on a bid for the mayoralty that would next year preside over our most splendid civic occasion, the Preston Guild. To be guild mayor was the height of ambition for any politician in Preston, and for Grimshaw the coming election for a man to succeed the incumbent mayor, the corn merchant William Biggs, would be his one and only shot at the prize. Guilds are twenty years apart and even if he lived until 1762 he'd be far too old for the job by then.

You didn't have to be Nostradamus to guess what Grimshaw was doing tonight. In order to get his fellow Tory burgesses to hang the heavy gold chain around his neck at the next mayoral election he needed to anchor them securely in his debt. One way of doing this was by spending more freely than those on the Tory side in the election. The two out-of-towners he was drinking with tonight looked like brothers, and their document looked like a deed. Grimshaw was probably negotiating some land deal, no doubt highly advantageous to the brothers, in which the currency exchanged was not just money, but their votes.

There was a small commotion near the door and I saw that a group wearing Whig ribbons in their hats had burst in. They bullied their way into possession of the largest table in the room and began baiting Grimshaw and any other Tories in the room, singing anti-Jacobite songs and calling healths to King George, Lord Derby and Sir Harry Hoghton. After a while Grimshaw decided withdrawal was his best tactic. He rose, bowed to his co-conspirators and shuffled past the Whigs' table, to a barrage of whistles and insults. At the door he turned and shook his fist at the room in general.

‘Ruffians!' he shouted before he left. ‘Outrage and disgrace!'

A few minutes later Fidelis returned, interrupting my enjoyment of these activities.

‘Titus, I think you should come and take a look, as coroner, at this man upstairs.'

‘Why?' I said. ‘Is the fellow dead?'

‘He will be soon.'

As we entered the inner passageway, from which the stairs led upwards, a door swung open and a servant emerged carrying a tray laden with plates of roast meat. Fidelis caught the kitchen door before it closed behind the man and, without explanation, darted inside. He came out a few moments later carrying a small earthenware jar with a cork stopper.

‘Come on,' he said, ‘he's up here.'

*   *   *

The room was small, with space for a single pallet bed, a wooden chair and a narrow table on which a candle burned and smoked. Rhythmical groans mixed up with a rasping sound came from the bed, as the sick man struggled for his breath. The smell in the room was repellent, a rancid mix of sweat, faeces and vomit.

I could just make the sick man out in the gloom, a restless, recumbent form under the blankets. Fidelis returned to the door and called loudly for more light.

‘Who is he?' I asked.

‘Man named Allcroft, a farmer from Gregson. He's also got a good lot of land on the Fylde.'

The fertile, flat country known as the Fylde, which lay to our north-west, provided vast quantities of produce for Preston's market, meaning that Allcroft was likely a prosperous yeoman. At some point he must have acquired from the corporation the freedom of Preston, and a right to vote, which I presumed he had come to town to exercise in the election.

A serving girl came to the door with two oil lamps. Fidelis gestured her to bring them inside but she shook her head, and handed the lamps through the door to him. Once they were brought in, the detail of the room was revealed: the writing table with a jug on it and the remains of a meal, the tangled heaps of clothing and towels on the floor, the soiled bedclothes, the full chamber pot lying amid spillage and spattered vomit. Allcroft was lying on his back, wearing a linen nightcap saturated with sweat. His upturned face was fixed in an expression of horror, as if he could see a vision of hell burned into the ceiling. His throat pulsed and his mouth worked open and shut. It produced a single, hoarse request.

‘Drink! Water! Anything!'

I reached for the jug, but Fidelis stopped me. He took the jug himself and sniffed it.

‘That's beer. We'll leave it where it is.'

He called the servant back and asked her to bring up some cold milk with a raw egg beaten into it and a clean spoon. Then he pulled the chair to the bedside and sat down, taking his patient's wrist between finger and thumb.

The egg and milk arrived, though the girl would still not enter the sickroom. I took the jug and spoon and brought them to Fidelis.

‘Did you recognize her?' I asked in a whisper.

‘Who?'

‘The girl. That was Maggie Satterthwaite, formerly of the Ferry Inn.'

He merely grunted, having more pressing matters to think about. Then he gripped the jug between his knees, lifted Allcroft's head, dipped the spoon into the mixture and put it between his patient's lips, carefully tipping the liquid onto the tongue.

‘Mr Allcroft, I'm Dr Fidelis,' he said as he applied the spoon again. ‘I'm here to help you. Can you speak?'

Allcroft's assent was little better than a croak.

‘When did you first feel this coming over you?' went on Fidelis gently, now leaving the spoon in the milk and feeling Allcroft's pulse once more.

‘Afternoon,' came the struggling reply. ‘Ate my dinner. Went out. Felt queer, very. Vomited. Worse and worse. Came back.'

‘How long after you'd eaten did you feel ill? Half an hour, an hour, two hours?'

‘Don't know. Hour. Two. Three. Who cares? Give me a drink for pity's sake.'

‘This is milk and beaten egg,' Fidelis told him, giving him more of it, then gesturing towards the table on which stood a soup plate with the congealed remains of some hotpot and potatoes.

‘Is this all that you ate today?'

Allcroft seemed unable to answer in words, but he moved his head and momentarily closed his eyes in a way that indicated it was. Fidelis stood up and handed the milk jug to me.

‘Would you nurse him for me, Titus?'

Gingerly I approached and sat down beside the bed.

‘How dangerous is this, Luke?' I whispered. ‘Surely there is contagion!'

My friend's reply was low and level.

‘Possibly. But I don't think so. Just continue with the milk, a little at a time, on the tongue.'

Allcroft still lay with his mouth open, fetching his breath in rapid intervals. I copied my friend's earlier action, putting my hand under Allcroft's neck and raising his head to receive the drink. His flesh was clammy, as were his hair and cap, and I could smell the foulness of his breath.

As I got down to my task, Fidelis was busying himself behind me. Hearing the clink of metal on chinaware, I looked round and saw him bent over the table, scraping the leftover meal from the plate, and into the jar that he'd got from the kitchen. He closed the jar, then taking a small sampling bottle and a funnel from his medical bag, picked up the jug of beer and filled the bottle from it. Pressing home the stopper, he took writing materials from the table drawer and scrawled a few words and figures on a sheet of paper, which he then wafted in the air to dry the ink, before folding it.

‘Titus,' he said, ‘for a lawyer, you nurse the sick well enough, but now it's time for you to leave off.'

He handed me the paper.

‘Will you go to the apothecary and ask him to make up this preparation and send it round here at once? Make clear that it is needed urgently.'

When I had tucked the paper into my pocket Fidelis handed me the bottle and jar.

‘And will you take these to your house and keep them safe? I fancy it is the food that has poisoned this man, but it may have been the drink. Don't let anyone open them.'

‘Of course. And you will stay here?'

Fidelis nodded towards the bed.

‘I had better. No one else will come near.'

*   *   *

The street door of Thomas Wilson's apothecary shop was locked, but a faint light showed from a back room. I rapped at the window and Wilson himself came out to open to me, a man of about fifty wearing a cap and slippers, and holding a candlestick. When I handed over Fidelis's paper, and passed on his instructions, the apothecary accepted the commission without complaint. The hour was late, but no one successfully plies the druggist's trade unless he is willing to return to his mortar and his scales at the snap of a doctor's fingers, any time of the day or night. Wilson was regarded as one of our best apothecaries, if not always as the best of our men. He had spent years in London, where he learned his trade under the most capable masters, before returning to his home town with a wife and sufficient capital to open the shop on Church Gate.

He swung round and headed back to his inner sanctum with rapid, shuffling steps. I followed, shutting the door. As in all apothecaries', the air had a pungency like no other shop: a faint, dry, organic rankness mixed with something mineral, sharp though sweet. Wilson had slipped behind the counter and through the door on the other side, and there I joined him. The inner room contained a stool, a bench with pen and ink, and an open ledger in which Wilson had been writing. Above it hung a shelf holding his brass scales and other instruments for milling, measuring, heating and pouring, while the surrounding walls were lined with shelf upon shelf of labelled bottles and jars containing liquids, powders, crystals and roots – the raw materials of all medicine. Wilson had already placed his candle on the bench. Now he sat on the stool, pushed the ledger to one side and opened the paper, bending to examine it in the candlelight. His lips fluttered as he read the prescription.