The Lazarus Curse Read online

  By ten o’clock, washed and packed, Thomas had joined Lydia for breakfast in the morning room. Its dimensions were not too grand, but the fact that the servants still hovered by the sideboard meant that they could not talk freely unless they lowered their voices.

  “Your patient seemed in remarkably good spirits,” said Lydia, her voice slightly stilted, as she sipped a dish of tea. She had already called in on Sir Montagu to bid him farewell and had found him sitting up in bed eating porridge.

  “Yes,” agreed Thomas. “I am very pleased with his progress.” Doctors Brotherton and Biglow had excused themselves, both citing urgent cases that needed their attention, so the lawyer’s care had been left in the hands of Dr. Fairweather. Despite the physician’s poor showing as an assistant at the operating table, Thomas was confident in his ability to administer to Sir Montagu over the next few days until he could return himself in person.

  Seated opposite Lydia at the small, round table, he smiled as a plate of eggs and bacon was set before him. This was what he relished; this was what he so missed: the domesticity of it all, of being able to look at the face of the woman he loved over the breakfast table each morning and to discuss their plans for the coming day. And in this setting, in this moment, he dared to dream. A great rush of warmth suddenly engulfed him.

  “Do you think . . . ?” he began. She returned his gaze with a look that so captivated him, it made him forget what he was about to say. She cleared her throat pointedly and he sharpened his eye on her once more. “You were going to tell me something when the other surgeon arrived yesterday.”

  He noted the expression of surprise on her face. Slowly she lowered her dish into its saucer, as if trying to play for time, before she met his gaze once more.

  “I have reason to believe that Sir Montagu might relent,” she told him.

  Thomas’s eyes opened wide and, without thinking, he grasped her hand. Her head darted toward a servant and he withdrew it immediately.

  “What gives you cause?” he urged, trying to suppress his excitement.

  Lydia straightened her back and leaned forward slightly. Her voice lowered to a whisper. “He told me how very grateful he was to you,” she murmured.

  Thomas seemed a little disappointed. “And no more?”

  Lydia’s lips quivered. “Now is not the time,” she told him, glancing at the servant who approached to clear her tea bowl. “I will tell you presently,” she added with an intriguing smile.

  The return journey proved almost as treacherous as the outgoing. Eliza joined Thomas and Lydia and together they were jounced around bends and jostled over rutted tracks until Boughton’s boundary finally came into view.

  The young anatomist remained tense throughout. Although the surgery on Sir Montagu had gone as well as he could have anticipated, his mind was still deeply troubled by events in London. He had made little progress with the cataloguing of the specimens and was no closer to finding Matthew Bartlett’s murderer.

  A few minutes later and the carriage was rattling through the gates at the southeastern corner of the estate, near Plover’s Lake. Looking out of the window, Lydia spied Nicholas Lupton on his horse as he rode down the track from his house to meet the main drive through the estate. As he pulled up to allow the party to pass, Lydia knocked on the ceiling with a stick to signal the driver to halt.

  “What goes on?” asked a puzzled Thomas.

  “I want you to meet the new estate manager,” replied Lydia, grabbing the handle on the carriage window to open it. She put her head out and signaled. Lupton urged his horse nearer until he had drawn level.

  “Good morning, Mr. Lupton,” greeted Lydia cheerfully.

  Lupton doffed his hat. “Good morning, your ladyship,” he replied with a smile.

  Thomas leaned forward in his seat. He did not understand why Lydia felt it necessary to introduce them, let alone at this particular juncture.

  “Dr. Thomas Silkstone, I would like you to meet Mr. Nicholas Lupton, Boughton’s new estate manager,” said Lydia proudly.

  Thomas managed a thin smile, but Lupton went further.

  “I am honored to meet you, sir. I have heard so much about you.”

  Thomas acknowledged the greeting with a considered nod. “You must not believe everything you hear, sir,” he replied. There was an awkward pause as Lupton considered how to react, until Thomas came to his aid. “I hope you are settling in well, Mr. Lupton,” he said.

  Lupton nodded and slithered a sideways smile toward Lydia.

  “Her ladyship has made me feel most at home at Boughton,” he said.

  Thomas noted the manner in which the estate manager looked at her and the way that Lydia returned his look. He detected a certain intimacy between them and he was not comfortable with what he saw. It seemed as if some invisible electric current sparked between them and it was surely the reason why Lydia’s ardor toward him had cooled. Nevertheless he nodded politely, masking his discomfort, and within a moment or two the carriage had set off once more, back to the hall.

  Richard ran to greet his mother as soon as he saw her coming up the steps, despite Nurse Pring’s protests. He buried his face in Lydia’s skirts and she held him close.

  “Yes, I am back, my sweet, and I bring a dear friend with me,” she said.

  The boy looked over to Thomas, his eyes traveling up and down his body.

  “You remember Dr. Silkstone? He helped make your arm better?”

  Thomas bent low and smiled. “Hello, Richard,” he greeted. “How you have grown!”

  Yet still the child remained looking quizzically, until finally he shook his head. “No, Mamma. I don’t recall him,” he replied, then taking Lydia’s hand, he asked: “Can I go riding with Mr. Lupton today?”

  The slight was unintentional, but Thomas found it deeply wounding. He had been absent a long time. Too long. Worse still, it seemed that this estate manager, this Mr. Lupton, had slipped into his shoes. He had wormed his way certainly into the young earl’s affections, and perhaps Lydia’s, too.

  Before she replied to her son, Lydia shot Thomas a chastened look that also seemed to contain an apology, but it was too late. Upstairs in his room, he made up his mind. He would return to London later that day.

  Chapter 49

  Phibbah had lingered seven days before she gave up the fight. A few hours before she expired, Patience found the girl delirious with fever, shouting out all manner of obscenities and curses and claiming there was an obeah on her. She spoke of a great black bird swooping down, pecking at her eyes, and she jerked and jolted her body to avoid its attack. Her own arms flapped wildly and, no matter how she tried, Patience could not calm her. She had called Venus, who had managed to pour some medicine down her gullet. Within a few minutes she was calm. Within a few more, she was dead.

  They covered her body in a bedsheet and Venus ordered that it be left on the floor of the garret until Mr. Roberts could deal with it. Then she went to inform her mistress. Entering Cordelia Carfax’s chamber, she found her standing by her window, looking out onto the gardens.

  “Phibbah is dead, missa,” she said, bowing her head as she curtsied.

  Without turning from the window, Cordelia Carfax was silent for a moment. A victory had been scored; a small one, granted, but a victory nonetheless. “Good,” she finally replied. “Make the necessary arrangements.”

  Thomas returned to Hollen Street two days later, exhausted after his arduous trip back from Oxfordshire. He was looking forward to sleeping in his own bed and seeing Dr. Carruthers once more. Perhaps he was imagining it, but it felt a good deal less wintry in London. Most of the snow was gone and the wind had lessened. Thoughts of resuming his cataloguing and taking up the reins once again in the search for Matthew Bartlett’s murderer flew around in his head like the pigeons at St. Paul’s. They were present, but for the moment they could wait until he had settled back in. He had certainly not anticipated what happened next.

  As he stepped out of the carriage to walk over t
o the front stairs of his home, he felt someone tap him on the shoulder. He turned to see a man, small and round, dressed in the black garb of the legal profession, standing beside him.

  “Dr. Silkstone?” he asked, his face as void of expression as a blank piece of parchment.

  “Yes,” replied Thomas, with the uncertainty of a man taken by surprise.

  “Dr. Thomas Silkstone?”

  “I am he.”

  Moving forward a pace, the man brought his arm up. He was holding a scroll in his hand and touched Thomas with it lightly on the shoulder.

  “Then, sir, I serve you with this summons to appear before the Westminster magistrate, charged with the kidnap of the slave Jeremiah Taylor, property of one Mr. Josiah Dalrymple, resident of Jamaica.”

  For a moment Thomas simply stared at the scroll as it rested on his shoulder. He then lifted his gaze to the little man, who remained motionless, like some strange automaton. Finally he reached up for it and with a fervor that registered shock on the little man’s hitherto blank face, he snatched the summons from him with a smile.

  “I am most grateful to the court and to your good self, sir,” said Thomas, bowing his head graciously.

  The court official, his expression now altered to reveal his surprise at this defendant’s reaction, returned the bow. It was not often that he came across one so grateful for his visit.

  “I bid you good day, sir,” he said, turning and walking off down the street.

  “A good day, yes,” repeated Thomas to himself, opening his front door. So, the gauntlet had been thrown down and he had picked it up with relish. The opportunity was great, but so, too, was the legal challenge. Here was his chance to clarify the law of England, to establish a right to freedom of all slaves on English soil once and for all. He would visit Granville Sharp at the very next opportunity.

  At Hubert Izzard’s anatomy school that evening all was quiet. The students had left, the beadle had mopped the floor clean of blood and discharged all the entrails and soft tissues into the street drain. So now the anatomist found himself alone in his office awaiting the next delivery for tomorrow’s public dissection. It came on time.

  As soon as the porter had laid it on the table in the theatre and been paid for his pains, Izzard casually lifted the hessian. A pubescent Negro girl, he noted. He drew the sackcloth back further to inspect the breasts. Interesting, he thought to himself, for a girl so painfully thin, how many small pimples dotted the area around her nipples. He counted a dozen in the areola. A smile hovered on his lips. Could it be that the girl was either pregnant or recently so? The answer to his question came swiftly and without a cut being made. He had not realized it at first, but this time the corpse had come accompanied.

  Cordelia Carfax had been watching him and now emerged from the doorway, swathed in a cloak. Pulling down her hood, she revealed an expression of smugness on her face, like a cat that had snagged a mouse, and was now depositing it at its master’s feet.

  Izzard’s eyes widened at the sight of her. “Cordelia! But you should not be here!” he blurted, flinging the hessian back over the corpse and striding over to her. Arms enfolding her, he tried to turn her away from the cadaver, but she ignored him, pushing him aside. Eagerly she made her way over to the dissecting table.

  “This one is special,” she told him, her footsteps quickening as she approached. For a moment she paused, considering the cloth-covered mound, her eyes sharp as hooks. Then she stepped forward and, touching the hessian lightly, she said: “This one was bearing the child that I could never give my husband. This one tried to kill me.” Snatching at the covering, she peeled it back once more and allowed herself a moment to gloat. As she studied the cadaver, her eyes lit up. She said nothing, but turned to Izzard with a strange smile on her face, as if she was relishing a triumph. Her victory was complete.

  Chapter 50

  “Dalrymple is taking me to court!” cried Thomas, brandishing the writ he had been served only a few hours before.

  Granville Sharp, not a man to express his emotions in such a demonstrable way, nodded but showed no more sentiment. “That is good news,” he replied. He was sitting reading a folio as Thomas strode into his study. “It is high time the law was clarified. Please sit, Dr. Silkstone.”

  The young anatomist’s head was reeling. It was crammed with facts that Dr. Carruthers had imparted about a famous case just ten years previously, involving a very similar situation, when an American slave named James Somersett escaped from his master while visiting England.

  “The court found in his favor. I have precedence on my side, do I not, Mr. Sharp?” said Thomas, settling himself by the fire.

  Sharp rose and, walking over to a brandy decanter on a small table nearby, poured out a large glass. He was not a qualified lawyer, but was well-versed in the vagaries of the law, having brought cases on behalf of the disadvantaged in society.

  “Many hailed the ruling as a victory for freedom,” he conceded, handing Thomas the glass, “but Lord Justice Mansfield’s judgment did not expressly say that slaves become free when they set foot on English soil.”

  Thomas thought for a moment, then took a large gulp of brandy. “So I will have a real fight on my hands?”

  Sharp shrugged. “I am afraid so, Dr. Silkstone. Mansfield’s judgment is silent as to what a slave’s status is in England.”

  Shaking his head, Thomas realized that his enthusiasm for his summons might be misplaced. In his mind’s eye he saw the Carfax household and the cruelty and the machinations that blighted its every turn. He drained his glass and set it down with a dull thud on the table.

  “But that still does not mean they can be murdered to order. English law does protect them on that score, surely?” he said, rising.

  “Indeed, but . . .” Sharp was confused by Thomas’s sudden change of direction.

  “Then I suggest we pay another visit to the Crown Inn,” he replied. “I am convinced that there lies the key to why so many have appeared on Hubert Izzard’s dissecting table.”

  They waited until eleven o’clock, then took Sharp’s carriage to the inn. It was shortly after midnight when they were deposited nearby. This time the campaigner had brought with him a young whippet of a boy. “My messenger,” he announced. “In case we need to call the constables.” He smiled reassuringly, but his foresight only served to unsettle Thomas.

  Not wishing to draw attention to themselves, they walked a hundred yards or so to the alley. The doors of the inn were locked and they crept past them and stationed themselves by the small window once more.

  The obeah-man was there again. He sat cross-legged in front of the fire, eating what looked like bread and cheese. The boy, meanwhile, set to work on the lock at the side entrance. It did not take him long to pick it, and soon he was opening the door into a passageway. At its end lay the obeah-man’s lair.

  When he heard the door creak open on its hinges, the old man lifted his head, then let out a muffled cry as he saw Thomas and Sharp walk in. In the half light they could see his face more clearly now, and, noting their shocked expressions, he seemed to be ashamed of himself and held up his hands to cover his face.

  “We mean you no harm, sir,” Thomas said calmly. “We would ask you some questions.”

  Scrambling awkwardly to his feet, the obeah-man appeared to concur and Thomas and Sharp drew closer, but then he suddenly snatched the snake from around his scrawny neck, and pointed it at them.

  “You die!” he grunted, as the snake’s tongue shot toward Sharp’s face.

  Undeterred, Thomas stepped forward and grabbed the serpent with his bare hands.

  “Silkstone!” called Sharp, horrified.

  Holding the creature close to his own face, Thomas inspected it as, obviously angered, it hissed at him.

  “There is no need to fear, Mr. Sharp,” he said. “I recognize this creature from the expedition’s specimens brought back from Jamaica. It is neither venomous nor a constrictor. At the very most it will give you a h
armless nip.”

  Thomas flung the snake to the ground and it slithered off into the shadows, sending the chickens squawking and flapping into a frenzy.

  “So tell us, old man, what do you do with the slaves who come to you looking for freedom?” asked Thomas. He was advancing on the priest so that he was forced to slump onto his chair.

  Narrowing his eyes, he seemed confused by the question. He shook his head. “I no kill slaves,” he protested. “They go sleep, then wake up free.” His tongue flapped inside his mouth and a spool of saliva hung down.

  Sharp frowned crossly. “He talks gibberish, Silkstone.”

  Thomas raised a hand. “Perhaps not,” he replied calmly.

  Bending down so that he faced the man in all his hideousness, he said, “Where do they wake up free?”

  The obeah-man tittered. “In Africa, of course,” he said, nodding his head.

  “What? The man’s a demented idiot!” cried Sharp, but Thomas silenced him.

  “It may not be as mad a notion as it sounds,” he told him, wagging his finger. “The Quakers talk of freedom and to many of the slaves that is synonymous with their homeland.” He looked about the cobweb-covered shelves. “What do you give them, old man, these slaves who would be free?”

  The obeah-man hobbled over to the large glass jar that took pride of place on his shelf and heaved it down. Thomas moved forward and prized off the lid. Bending over the jar’s neck, he sniffed at the contents, then delved into it, pulling out a handful of leaves. Holding them to the light, he inspected them closely, then began to shake his head. The distinctive leaves were familiar to him.

  “What is it, Silkstone?” asked Sharp anxiously.

  “If I am not very much mistaken, sir, these are from the branched calalue, a poisonous plant that seems to kill anyone who drinks it. In reality, however, it only slows down all the vital organs so that those who drink it have the appearance of being dead.”

  A look of concern scudded across Sharp’s face. “And then?”