Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain (4 page)

A plate crashed against the floor. Richard turned from the bar, but not in time to tame the first of the evening's disruptions.

“A pound of yams? A pound of yams!” The screaming mariner had a scar that ran from jaw to ear and likely beyond,
concealed by tufts of lousy brown hair. He rose from his stool, legs uncertain, arms braced to fight.

“Coward!” The opponent had been to the King's Inn before and had a limp to show for it. “Fool!”

“I'll eat no more yams!” The first punch fell like a dead branch from a tree, inevitable but without force.

“None of that.” A third man rose, but Richard already stood between the fighters, his hand outstretched, palm raised.

“A shilling for the plate,” he said.

The night was young and the mariners not too drunk to reason. Richard closed his fingers over the handful of coins. The mariners glared at him, their stubbled chins defiant. In the old days, the early days, Gardenia quelled the fights. None would strike a woman, and one of her icy blue stares would silence even the meanest rogue.

Over the filth and demon rum came the scent of baked apple. Richard turned to the kitchen, to the haven where he knew the servant girl stood. The mariners, the foulmouthed men, could wait.

“Two helpings,” Clementius called after him. “Ask the girl to bring …”

“She'll not come out here!” Richard did not mean to raise his voice. He hadn't even realized how angry he was until that moment.

“Is this gratitude?” Clementius said. “I spend good money
for the latest research from France and Holland and Austria, to ensure your health. I sit here now, prepared —”

“Two helpings,” Richard said. “With cream.”

In the kitchen, he set his pitcher aside. Bowls of dried plums and West Indian molasses sat behind a plateful of softening butter and a halved loaf of bread. The servant girl picked baked sugar from the top of her apple crisp. Above her, the sheet of hand-blocked French wallpaper, which Gardenia had purchased at great expense from the booksellers, had blackened and begun to peel.

“Angel,” Richard said. Behind him, the bar hummed softly, far away. “My little angel.”

The servant girl turned, guilty smile radiant. “I didn't hear you, sir.”

He stepped closer and cupped her chin in his palm.

She contemplated him, raised two sticky fingers to trace the lines of his face. “You look tired,” she said.

He bent forward to kiss her, felt her thinness. He could lead a happy, balanced life with her by his side. He pulled her closer. His hand found her neckline, the soft, warm skin of her breast.

“The apple bake,” she said.

“It will wait.” Now that passion had woken, he could not bear to return to the tavern. He lifted the girl easily, pressed her back to the wall. “Angel,” he said, trousers dropping round his feet before he reached forward to push up her
skirts. He felt her thighs tense as she stretched her legs. He thought he heard her giggle. A skillet slipped to the floor. Hanging bunches of lavender and horehound struck the wall with the lovers' rhythm. “Angel!” he cried.

Hardly a minute had passed. A giddy minute. A wonderful minute. A minute in which Richard felt more pleasure than he had in months. He would come to the kitchen again, he decided. He would take refuge in the servant girl. He would hold her, stroke her, kiss her. His cheeks flushed, his breath came hot and quick. He listened to the screaming for a full breath before he realized that the voice belonged to Gardenia.

“Fiend!” she screeched. “Monster!”

Richard turned; the servant girl slid to the floor. Gardenia, red hair colored with vomit, glared at them. Her skin had hardened into numerous deep wrinkles, her lips hung slightly apart. She'd come for the baked apple, Richard realized. The smell had drawn her, a dumb beast to a heavenly trough. He hated her. Hated the hands worn raw from years of dishes, and the burns on her arms from the stove. He hated that she failed to sew and cook and clean. He hated her thickness, her rum-sweat odor.

“Adulterer!” she yelled. Unsteadily, she turned toward the tavern. The servant girl shrieked, her almond curls freed from the cap that had fallen to the floor only moments before.

“Gardenia.” Richard realized his wife would cause an uproar, provoking the men in the other room. But Gardenia had already pushed open the door.

“You will suffer for this!” she screamed over a chorus of derisive cries and catcalls. “Suffer till the end of your days.”

Richard raced to her side and placed a restraining hand on her shoulder “Come here,” he said. “Come down to the cellar.”

T
HE SERVANT GIRL
discovered the body. She'd gone down to the cellar for a pint of cream, she said later, though Richard suspected that she'd thought to beg Gardenia's forgiveness. Her scream, a mix of rending fear and surprise, brought him to the cellar with Doctor Clementius Steenwycks at his heels along with a stumbling group of drunken mariners.

“What is it?” Richard said, before his eyes adjusted to the dimness. Above his casks of pear and juniper wine hung thick clouds of smoke. The floor was covered with soot, so slippery that he nearly lost his balance — nearly tumbled into the fatty remains of his wife: a leg, stocking intact; a thumb; two fingers, one with a wedding band; and a few strands of hair.

“By God,” Richard said. The darkness did not conceal
his disgust. He raised a trembling hand to his shoulder, pressed it over his heart. “Gardenia!”

“I've only read of such things,” Clementius said. He breathed deeply, despite the foul stench, and turned to push the nearest mariner aside. “Away with you! All of you!”

The men might have persisted, might have forced their way into the room, had not their leader, a weathered sailor with a gut that had braved the fiercest storms, vomited. Those behind him retreated, a rush of uncertain feet and laughter from the men too far back to have seen the remains.

“Don't touch a thing!” Clementius commanded. He stepped into the room. “Bring a lantern!” he cried to the servant girl, who still crouched by the door, tears blinding her to the sight, perhaps even the stench of the room.

“Fetch it now!” Clementius said. The girl looked at Richard, who stared vacantly at his wife's one intact shoe. The flesh of Gardenia's foot still gave form to the cloth and the bronze buckle remained tightly fastened.

“She was drinking when I left her. She had a flask in one hand and a tankard of ale in the other. She was alive.” Hands clasped, Richard might have fallen to his knees, save for the slime that covered the floor and reminded him of his dignity.

“A fiery death!” the doctor said. The tail of his night
robe swung as he shifted his weight, surveying the dim room. “And yet — the wooden barrels are intact. And the blanket.” He ran a finger over the wall behind him where a mucuslike substance had begun to congeal.

“'Tis the curse of her family,” Richard said, both hands now covering his tearstained cheeks. “Her father died in flames, and his father before him. The bedchamber caught fire. A curse. We are cursed!”

The doctor sniffed his fingers and held them aloft so that the dim light from the kitchen fire could illuminate them. “It's as I've read,” he said. “Exactly as I've read.”

“I loved her,” Richard added. “Loved her with all my heart.”

The bright light of a lamp, held aloft from somewhere in the kitchen and approaching rapidly, filled the room and confirmed that the slimy matter coating the floor and stone walls had a dull yellow cast.

Richard jumped back, nearly colliding with the doctor, who had turned to order the servant girl forward.

But the approaching figure was not the servant girl. Leading a half-dozen sailors, the constable stood twice as wide as the expected party, his shirt and slacks stuck fast to his skin, drenched by the night's driving rain.

“Richard Shaftsbury?” The constable's eyes found the innkeeper and never once turned to Gardenia's sole remaining leg, a fact that suggested that the lawman had been
apprised of the situation and knew better than to stare directly at the dead woman. Behind the constable, the sailors leaned forward to watch the arrest. “You can come with me peacefully, or I shall be obliged to use force.”

Lamplight drew his face in shadowed lines, and Richard, eyes locked with the constable's, believed he saw the outline of iron bars.

“I've done nothing,” he said. But he did not resist when the constable took his shoulder and led him to the stairway.

Upstairs in the kitchen, the servant girl — perhaps hoping for an explanation, perhaps the answer to an unasked question — watched Richard as the constable charged an unthinkable crime: murder. Even the sailors remained silent.

“I must have the corpse,” the doctor whispered before the constable yanked Richard away. “Promise me the corpse.”

“What little remains,” Richard said over his shoulder. “If it is mine to give.”

“Your innocence is assured,” the doctor said firmly. “Only science can explain the night's happening.”

T
HE WEEKLY
G
AZETTE
reported Gardenia Shaftsbury's grotesque death on the front page beneath the headline “His Bowells shall be Removed and Burnt,” a punishment which the writer decided fitting for the crime. Not every one agreed, though most all of New York had
an opinion. Some felt that Richard should be drawn and quartered; others felt he should hang. Very few knew about Doctor Clementius Steenwyck's investigation, or that the doctor adamantly maintained that Richard was not guilty.

The day of the trial dawned clouded and cold. Hoarfrost covered the cobblestones and icicles hung like blades from the boughs of the trees along Broadway. Only a small crowd amassed before the courthouse. Trials held less interest than executions, and that morning the weather encouraged many to remain beside fires. Most came merely to socialize and would disperse long before the proceedings finished.

Inside the Supreme Court of Judicature, the jury had assembled — men with grim faces and questioning eyes. The eldest, a white-haired man in a knee-length jacket, chewed a slab of smoked beef, which perfumed the room with hickory. The youngest, still red from a rigorous scrubbing, looked to be no more than eighteen. The magistrate had not yet entered, but the witnesses sat ready: the servant girl, four mariners, the constable, and Doctor Clementius Steenwycks.

Richard waited, as all accused men before him, across from the magistrate's bench. Long nights in prison had worn on the innkeeper, his clothing dusty and torn, his face gaunt, his eyes wild beneath unruly brows. He clasped his hands across his lap and looked neither to the left, where a guard ensured he would not escape, nor the right, where
the doctor sat, as he'd promised, with a leather case thick with files.

When the magistrate entered, Richard stood. The clerk read the charge.

“The prisoner has submitted a written defense?” the magistrate asked, though he held the answer to this question, a single sheet of paper, between the fingers of his left hand.

Richard nodded, and the judge turned to examine the paper. One of the jurors nervously tapped the wooden bench, but otherwise the room remained silent.

“The hand is illegible,” the magistrate declared at last, his eyebrows meeting to form a single dark line that crossed his pale forehead.

Richard examined the floor, which had discolored where the rains leaked through the ceiling. The court was not sealed. At any moment justice might escape, pounding through the alleys, the taverns, the inns, just as his illiterate heart now pounded, the beats so loud he could hear them echo. “I —” he began.

“Silence!” The magistrate lifted his palm. “We will hear from the first witness.”

The constable stood, borrowed jacket pulling tight over his shoulders. He related the crime as it had been told him: Richard and Gardenia had fought. She'd run screaming through the tavern before her husband captured her and
threw her into the cellar with force enough that the men in the tavern could hear the bones crack. The smell of burned flesh brought the men to the crime scene, where they beheld Richard bent over his wife's scant remains, an evil grin commanding his lips.

“And you witnessed these events?” the magistrate said.

“No, sir. But I have examined the —”

“Very good,” the magistrate said. “You may sit down.” He called each of the four sailors in turn, their testimony touching upon the number of drinks consumed that evening as well as the moment they'd first heard screams — two declaring that the sound had come early in the evening, and one admitting that he'd heard no screams. The fourth said the screams came after the remains had been discovered and that the wronged wife haunted the tavern.

Richard rested his face between uncertain hands. His knees, pressed together and exposed to the jury and judge, had locked.

The servant girl stood. She wore a dark gray gown, much finer than any she'd worn to the tavern. Her cheeks retained their crime-night pallor, but her lips shown red and plump. Kissable. Richard might have forgotten that he sat accused of murder had not distress commanded his thoughts. She spoke one-word answers to the magistrate's questions: Were you working the night of the crime? Yes.
Did you witness the murder? No. Do you believe Richard Shaftsbury innocent? Silence, then, “No, sir. I shan't return to the King's Inn, ever.”

Richard raised a shaking hand to his heart, and the magistrate dismissed the girl with a wave.

Doctor Clementius Steenwycks now stood. He'd donned a smart frock coat for the occasion, and even the magistrate looked shoddy by comparison. The doctor's angular chin, which most people had dismissed as odd or severe, now looked authoritative, undeniable, strong. The doctor waved a finely trained hand, and his words filled the courtroom with confident calm. He spoke eloquent words, long words: alcohol saturation makes one flammable … fat causes the body to burn … intemperance … evidence from scientific journals … a case in the south of France.