“I thought you might like to see a castle,” he says.
Tall, turreted Hylton Castle stands halfway between Sunderland and Washington, its neighbour to the west, Henry tells Gustine, who sits up very straight in the carriage, her eyes wide, her mouth half-open. She has never in her life seen a building so grand. Though Sunderland has grown famous for its Iron Bridge, and Washington infamous as the family seat of the first American president, Hylton Castle must not be denied its fair share of glory. Erected by our venerable William de Hylton sometime during the reign of Henry V, the fortress served its purpose up through the Border Wars, when it fell into disuse and was employed as a barn by a local farmer. The family took it up again in the seventeenth century, adding two Georgian wings in the next hundred years, replacing the battlement machicolations with modern pediment windows, and bricking in the roof troughs formerly used for the pouring of boiling oil. Upon the death of the last Hylton baron in 1746, the estate passed to a nephew, who promptly sold it to one Mrs. Bowes of Streatlam and Gibside (who, though she never lived there, added a loggia and a long row of low Gothic buildings), after which the place was leased to Simon Temple, who improved it with gardens and pleasure grounds, then to Mr. Thomas Wade, who has it now, and is once more letting it fall to ruin.
The castle’s fame came from the legend of the Cauld Lad, the spirit of a young servant slain by an especially brutal lord, who haunted Hylton Castle’s kitchens, washing dishes if dishes were left undone, scattering plates and food if the staff proved itself too industrious. He was an odd sort of ghost, far more home-economical than malevolent, and at length was propitiated away completely with a little set of green clothes. Here’s a cloak and here’s a hood, he was heard to say before he vanished, the Cauld Lad will do no more good.
“An honest-to-God castle, just like the one where King William lives and King George and Queen Caroline!” Gustine shouts over her shoulder, leaping from the carriage. “It’s bigger than the Corn Exchange on High Street.”
“See those three crenellated towers in the center and the old carved coats of arms over the door?” Henry says, catching up with their picnic lunch. “That’s the original castle. But the two wings, north and south, were obviously added early last century; you can tell because they are very symmetrical and tidy. And look at the statues of those warriors with pikes fixed atop the towers!” Henry chuckles at the grotesquery of his forefathers’ taste. “They are supposed to be keeping you out, I suppose.”
“Am I not supposed to be here?” Gustine asks worriedly.
Henry shakes his head. “You have every right to be here.”
“Whose are all these?” She points to the clutter of crests surrounding the Hylton Moses with horns. Henry tries to remember what his uncle told him on his first visit, almost a year ago. The rampant lion belongs to the Percy family, the three parrots to the Lumleys; the Eure of Witton, he seems to remember, has the shield with three shells. The Wassyngton (or Washington) family is represented too (a Hylton married into the clan), with their three stars and two crossbars, which was to become the pattern for the American flag. Gustine won’t recognize any of the names, and he doubts if she any idea in which direction America lies.
“Those crests belong to a gaggle of rich noblemen,” he tells her. “Locals and their in-laws.”
“Can we go into the house?” she asks timidly.
He would not hesitate to ask for a tour were his companion Audrey or Mrs. Clanny, but to introduce an East End urchin into a manor home? Henry hesitates. No, that is really going too far. “I don’t believe visitors are allowed inside,” he lies.
“Well, we can see in, at least,” she says. Around back, the shutters to the first story of both wings stand open, and if Henry would give her a boost, she could just make out some of the rich and elaborate furnishings. Well, what could be the harm in that? Setting down the picnic basket, he makes a stirrup out of his hands, and raises her above the sill. Gustine could never have begun to imagine the opulence inside. Not even her peeps into the Bridge Inn dining room have prepared her.
“Look, baby,” she says, holding up the child in her arms. “There’s a woman’s bedroom, painted pink with a white and gold ceiling. It has dainty little chairs, dunked in gold, with dark pink cushions. Look, there’s a clock just like the one we make at the pottery! And there in the corner, a bed dressed as if ready to march down the aisle, all turned out in white silk and damask and panels of illusion. Dr. Chiver,” she calls down, “I bet only one woman sleeps in that bed, and it looks like it could hold eight, while another forty or so could spread out on the floor. Move down one.”
He chuckles and carries her over a few feet so that she might see into the next room. The bottom of her shift brushes his face lightly.
“This room is completely different,” she informs him. “It’s part of the old castle. Look, dearest,” she again addresses the child, “there are long red and blue carpets on the wall with cone-headed women on them, and in their laps are deer—no, what do you call those white animals with the horn? In the middle of their heads?”
“Unicorns,” Henry replies, straining a bit to support her.
“Yes, unicorns are on the carpets, and there’s a fireplace five times as big as Mill Street’s, with lions guarding it. But don’t worry, they’re not real. There’s a long table, as long as the room almost, and dark heavy chairs. I can’t imagine only one family eats at that. …”
“It’s probably the old banquet hall,” Henry tells her. The foot in his hands is so small, even in its heavy boot, it might be a little girl’s. It strains against his fingers, pushing up onto tiptoe.
“Move down one,” she laughs, kicking him lightly with her free foot. “Baby and I want to see.”
Henry is surprised at himself. He, too, is laughing like a jackanapes, hopping down a few feet so that they might spy into another window. The mid-afternoon sun has played magician with Gustine’s worn-out shift, making the sheer fabric nigh invisible. He colours a bit at his proximity to her straining slender leg, so close that he might shut his eyes and rest his cheek upon it. She is barely more than a girl, but the things she must do to her lover, to have him begging for her on the street … Henry pushes these thoughts away. She is utterly unlike the mocking, bawdy whores of Sunder-land, which makes her all the more dangerous; a man might forget for a minute what she is, and be lost forever.
“Hullo there, you!” a strange voice shouts. Henry starts up, letting Gustine’s foot slip from his hands. About thirty yards away, coming around the corner of the building, is an old man carrying a rake. He is dressed in brown homespun like a groundskeeper and wears a wide-brimmed felt hat to shade his face.
“Who ayr ye and where ayr ye from?” calls the groundskeeper, keeping his distance.
“Dr. Chiver of Sunderland and a friend,” replies Henry. “We’re up for a picnic.”
“Take yer picnic elsewhere, m’good man. Mr. Wade wants no visitors from a plague town.” The groundskeeper swings around his rake and leans upon it meaningfully. “When we care to die o’ cholery morbus, we’ll be sure t’let you know.”
“We are not infected,” Henry says indignantly.
“P’raps not. But we’ve our orders. No chances to be taken.”
To be considered a contaminant by Mr. Wade, who knows as much about disease and suffering as he does about the making of headcheese? The doctor expects prejudice from the ignorant poor, but the wealthy should know better.
“Come on, Dr. Chiver,” Gustine says lightly, trying to hide her growing apprehension. “Let’s take our basket down the road a bit.”
“’Ope you got no cholery on the wall there.” The groundskeeper gingerly prods the structure with his rake.
Gustine presses the baby closer and drags a fuming Henry back to the carriage. He lashes the horses, driving them half a mile up the road, until Gustine points out a naked linden tree where a patch of pea-coloured moss looks more or less inviting. If she cranes, she can still see the ca
stle just over the rolling hill, small and white like a lost bone button.
“I apologize for that,” Henry frowns as he spreads the yellow plaid lap robe and unpacks the picnic of cold chicken, artichokes, and sherry (being servantless, Henry’d had to plan the meal himself). “If I’d had any idea we’d be received in such an ill-bred manner, I never would have come.”
“It’s all right,” replies Gustine.
“No.” Henry shakes his head. “It was greatly embarrassing.”
“I’m just so happy to have had a chance to see it,” Gustine says, far more at peace with embarrassment than he. “I never knew there were such homes in the world.” And Gustine is honestly happy. She does not covet that house like she did Audrey’s jewelry set last Monday night outside the Theatre Royale; for the smallest twist of fate could have clasped that necklace around her throat or screwed those earrings onto her lobes, but only an upside-down world could tuck her into the pink room’s fairy tale bed. “Thank you for thinking to bring me here.”
Her gratitude embarrasses him, and he is happy to have the food as a distraction. Self-consciously, he arranges a plate for each of them and pours two glasses of tawny Jerez oloroso.
“No thank you,” says Gustine, passing him her glass. “I don’t drink.”
“In your profession—?” Henry says, then breaks off. “Forgive me, I just assumed.”
“My mother died of drink when I was twelve,” says Gustine with little emotion. “I have no desire to follow her.” She eyes the chicken hungrily but pauses before the gray-green thistle. “What is this?”
“It’s an artichoke,” he answers with some surprise. “Haven’t you ever tried one?”
“I’ve never even seen one.” She examines it as if it were the rarest ostrich egg. “How do you eat it?”
Her sense of wonderment, he decides, that’s her charm. Peeling an outer leaf for her and one for himself, he demonstrates how to scrape away the meat. “Drag it between your teeth like this,” he says. “Go ahead. Try it.”
Gustine closes her eyes and draws the spade-shaped leaf over her bottom teeth. She keeps her eyes shut for a very long time, savouring this taste as new as an invitation, as new as a castle. “It tastes like spring,” she says.
“It’s delicate.”
“Is the whole thing like this? It would take a long time to eat.”
“Don’t be impatient.” He smiles. “It’s a food you have to work for.”
The girl nods and bites into another leaf. “I’m trying not to worry that it’s wasteful.”
“The best things are,” Henry laughs. “But we’ll cheat a little.” He plucks the sharp leaves like a lover prognosticating over a flower and, then, drawing his knife, cuts the choke away from the heart. “Eat this,” he says. “It makes it all worthwhile.”
Gustine could not feel more like a princess. Her castle lies over the hill, her prince feeds her a rare and secretive fruit. On her lap, her baby coos happily, reaching up to take the food from her mouth. She lets him gum a little piece of the light green bottom.
“Gustine,” Henry interrupts her reverie. “Why didn’t you tell me this child was yours?”
Gustine pauses over her baby’s dancing legs. The time for confession is upon her, but she dreads it. She takes a peep at the doctor’s sombre face, the same face she watched through the crack in the floor lean hungrily over Fos. The truth is she doesn’t know herself what made her hesitate the other night, when he provided her the perfect opportunity to solicit his help.
“I need to change the baby’s nappie.” She evades his question, untying the other rough cambric diaper from around her throat where she’s worn it as a neckerchief. “Excuse us.”
Henry watches her bend over the child, shake out the soiled diaper, and deftly tie it into a knot. She removes the rough cambric scarf from her neck and slips it under the baby’s chapped bum.
“I spoke to you honestly of his importance to Science,” he chides. “Why did you lie to me?”
“I have my own sort of science,” she says, slowly. “I was going to tell you today.”
He hates the sort of overcharged talk she uses to recount her first sight of him, words like Salvation and Special Gift used in conjunction with fanciful descriptions of seeing through clothes. But as silly as he finds her outpourings, it is difficult to ignore another’s appreciation of one’s own worth, or pretend disinterest in the effect one makes without being aware. For whatever misguided reasons, she did fortunately light upon the right surgeon. Henry believes, as she does, that of all the doctors in this benighted down, he is the only person to whom she might have turned.
“The cadaver under the bridge, the woman in your lodging house, they were only bribes to secure my help?”
“I thought it was a fair exchange: what you want for what I want.”
“What is it that you want?” he asks cautiously.
“Life for my son.”
She says it so simply and with such complete confidence in his abilities, Henry is momentarily at a loss for words. Life for her son, as if she desired him to make change for a crown or pick her an apple. Henry reads in her face the same implacability her customers find when they seek to leave without paying. “Gustine,” Henry shakes his head, “there are medical limitations—”
“Watch this,” she interrupts, digging her fingers under the baby’s ribs, tickling him mercilessly. The child wriggles, and as he squeals with laughter, his blue packet of heart spasms up and out, leaping into his neck. It appears not properly anchored in the chest, but freewheeling, like Aristotle’s wandering womb. “It happens when he cries as well,” says Gustine, pulling down his gown. “Joy. Pain. You can read everything he is feeling by the beating of his tiny heart. He can’t survive so wide open. You must help him.”
“Let me see him,” Henry says doubtfully, holding out his arms for the small bundle, which Gustine happily hands over. He is unnerved by her expectant, too eager eyes and seeks refuge in case history. “Was the father in any of his parts, deformed?” he asks.
Gustine blushes deeply. “I know nothing of his father.”
“Your pregnancy then,” he backtracks quickly. “Did your routine change, did you see or do anything that might have affected the fetus?”
“I did nothing unusual,” Gustine answers, shaking her head. “I went to the pottery, I put on the dress. I ate bread and butter like always. And a little fish when I could get it.”
“But something must have happened to you,” Henry insists, knowing there must certainly be a scientific explanation for this child’s deformity. “Did you fall? Did you have a bad scare?”
“There was one thing …” Gustine begins but stops herself.
“What?”
“It’s nothing I’ve ever said out loud.”
“Everything is important,” says Henry, mesmerized by the rhythmic beating in his lap. The child coos, contentedly oblivious.
She is loathe to say it, for she knows how it will sound: silly, childish, stupid to one so educated as himself. Thirteen hours of pushing and moaning in the straw of the common room; Pink fell asleep, the midwife fretted about sending for a doctor, only the Eye never budged from where she knelt between Gustine’s legs. She stared and stared and would not take her gaze from that hole.
“He was given the evil eye,” she says at last.
“If you are not going to be serious,” Henry says, a little exasperated.
But the girl insists, “That was it. I’m sure of it. And she will finish him off if I ever give her the opportunity.”
“Gustine, I can’t help you if you won’t at least try to be scientific.” Henry holds the child out to her, but Gustine shakes her head.
“There is no science to explain how he makes you feel,” she says softly. “Hold him closer. Don’t you see? You fit.”
Reluctantly, Henry returns the child to the hollow of his chest, feeling, oddly, the power of her words. Back in Edinburgh, he met an army surgeon whose patient’s stom
ach was made visible through an old war wound. For years, this doctor fed his patient different foods on a string, then charted how each was dissolved, and thereby plumbed the secrets of digestion. What might Henry’s career become, given the opportunity to study the heart in that way? Might he not far outstrip Galen (who would haunt the gladiator ring, waiting his chance to observe the torn chests of fallen champions), and advance Science by decades, without recourse to vivisection or the stain of the graveyard?
The heart is the beginning of life, the sun of the microcosm, even as the sun in his turn is the heart of the world, thinks Henry, remembering the words of William Harvey. He looks from the child into the trusting eyes of the mother. She does not realize that she has laid a choice in his arms. He might turn away from this sun, might live by night as he has done since first arriving in Surgeons’ Square, a stunted, shrinking thief and a murderer; or—dare he dream it?—give his talents over to something beyond the grave; become the nurturer of new life instead of a carrion-feeder upon the dead. He might chart patterns of growth as opposed to decay; learn how we live as opposed to how we die. The heart is the beginning of life, thinks Henry, staring down at the babe in his arms. You could be my new beginning.
“I will do what I can for him, Gustine,” he says at last. “But you realize he must remain with me.”
“With you?” This she had not anticipated. “Certainly he can live with me while you treat him.”
“How do you expect him to survive growing up in the East End?” Henry feels he must speak directly. “Suppose he’s not killed by the next fever that sweeps through—how long do you think it will be before he is brutalized by one of the other children there? Can you protect him every hour of the day? Especially when you are working two jobs? He’s not a normal child. He is special.”
“I know he is special,” Gustine says. “That’s why we came to you.”
“Then trust me.” Henry cradles the baby, staring down into his bright blue eyes. “Ever since I left Edinburgh, I have been searching for something that might recall me to life. I longed to leave death behind, but I knew no other way. Now I have found this child, and with a single visible beat, his heart can teach me more than all the cadavers in Sunderland.”