The Girl from Rawblood Read online

  The cave is full of moonlight. Juddering, shivering. Bars of silver scatter as if we’re underwater—across the cave entrance, Tom’s spiky head, his face, his ear, his shoulder, caught in moments of clarity. Light glances off the corner of the altar, chases across the walls. Shadows of far-above clouds scud across the white floor.

  “Oh,” I say. It is insane; it is beautiful.

  Slippery light plays about the altar stone. I squint. The white stone at the base, half in shadow. I edge closer to Tom. His cheek on mine. His voice warms the air. “Iris? You could tell me your secrets. They’d be safe. I wouldn’t ever, ever tell.”

  “What a shame,” I say with sympathy. “He’s touched in the head.” I punch him. To break the strangeness. He punches me back, hard.

  “All right. I suppose you won’t.” Tom’s finger slides lightly on my throat; it comes to rest in the notch of my collarbone. That punch didn’t work; the strangeness is everywhere. He says, “I do feel a bit… touched.” We shake, laughing, gripped tight to one another. I breathe the soft place under his ear.

  The moonlight plays about the cave. It glances over the pale stone at the foot of the altar. In the shifting light and dark, it could almost, almost be a very thin pale person, curled on the floor. Glimpses of things that could be bony fingers, spread wide, a bare skull peeping through baby-fine hair. The blink of a black, mad eye. The white stone uncurls. The white thing stands slowly upright. The cave goes dark.

  It’s all right, Tom is saying. The moon went in. Iris, it’s all right. But he’s wrong. The rock and the river, high and terrible. Beneath, stealthy sounds of someone coming. Padding soft across the sand, across the cave floor, coming closer in the dark. Desire.

  I seize Tom’s calloused, puzzled hand in mine. I drag him roughly up and go, bent double, stumbling. Something groans like stone collapsing. The cave shudders. Something cracks and bursts underfoot—the bottle? a white bone?—and flattens into crushed shards. The sound of the river rises, harsh and rusted. Tom calls out, and I pull him faster; we’re clattering and slipping in the dark. Something grazes my back. Light and thin like a finger. Traces the length of my spine. We’re out. Behind, in the cave, something moves.

  On the hill, I haul the clear night into my lungs and vomit. Tom is anxious, fond. I can’t answer him. His hand is on my brow; I shiver at his touch. The warmth that suffused our bones and flesh, which drew us together, is gone. What is he to me anyhow? I see with dreary clarity that everything lovely has been stripped from the world.

  “There was someone,” I say. “In there.” My breath is still too fast. The world tilts.

  “Iris,” he says. “I don’t think there was. My fault—I was telling tales. Trying to frighten you.” But he’s frightened now. I hear it. His hand is on my brow. “You’re very hot,” he says. “You’re ill… Iris…”

  Diseased.

  “Keep away,” I say. “You’ll die.”

  “Don’t shout,” Tom says. “And I doubt it.”

  “Don’t touch me.” I’m hot and cold by turns. The fever dream is all around. White shapes drift across the gauzy sky. I thought something horrible was in the cave. But the horrible thing is inside me. Here it is at last. Horror autotoxicus. The disease.

  At his window, in the poor, ill-lit room above the stables.

  Tom’s the same. The room is the same. The straw, the cloth we used to clean my boots—both lie in the corner by the door. Vague scents of gutter muck and a trace of liniment still touch the air. But nothing is as it was. The world is a slippery, raw place, stranger than I knew. No one’s laughing now.

  Tom’s puzzled. But he tries again. He trusts me. “Iris, you look bad. Let me…”

  He must be kept away. Even in my feverish state, I know the thing to say. It’s been waiting to be said between us all these years. “You were right before,” I tell him. “I’m getting too big for this. Too old to play with the stable boy.”

  I don’t wait to see his face. I go back across the roof, head ringing.

  In my room, I lock the door. I close the shutters. I lie in lavender-scented sheets and spin. I am cold, cold. Moonlight lies cold across the floor. The curtains are cold. The lines of the furniture are cold against the dark. Rawblood sighs around me.

  I think of Tom’s stutter, which comes when he’s unnerved. The dark line of his brow like a swallow in flight. These things are what they are, but they are now also something else. Lightly, I touch the notch of my collarbone—my flesh remembers his finger resting there. Horror autotoxicus is woken by strong feeling. I hadn’t understood. I have broken the Rules. I have risked our lives.

  The fever is very high now. The world whitens and broadens until everything is a flat, white soup. White shapes dance before my eyes. I seem to hear a gong somewhere. The white is deep and welcoming, and I sink in. By the time they break down the door, I don’t know names or anything else. Cold, cold.

  CHARLES DANFORTH

  3 October 1881

  I first laid eyes on Alonso the day we laid knives to our cadavers. Memory has played a curious trick in the intervening twenty years, for I recall it as if it were a tintype; the image is inert and dull colored—perhaps because the memory lives in my intellect and understanding, rather than in my eyes.

  There was no horror in that room. I was put in mind of York Minster, which I have seen once, and the cool effigies that lie there in the sanctified air. The corpses were washed and bound in cheesecloth. There was little in the waxy figures before us to revolt. They lay like brides, each on their bier, the white forms barred by a little sunshine that strayed through the high windows of that echoing hall.

  We set to work, with the stentorian tones of the lecturer in our ears. We began on a leg. The shape, the roundness of the calf, the muscles preserved so tight and solid beneath the waxy skin—there is a peculiar pleasure to it. The knife went in; the dermis and layers of muscle were revealed like a flower, petal by petal. There were such colors and shapes; I had not known. The muscle is a rich, purpled red, encased in marbled flesh the color of a baked salmon. The sinews and tendons are white with a yellowish tinge. The component parts lie tight together in symmetry, as if designed by a master craftsman, bound and run through by the lacework of corded vessels. The graceful long saphenous vein, from which other veins branch like winter trees against the sky. The rippling surface of the gastrocnemius muscle.

  I was bemused by the vomiting and the distress that was engendered in my fellows. Unclothed, these forms retained their modesty. They were not awesome but simply the carcasses of men, sloughed away when need for them was done. The corpses were strongly preserved in formaldehyde; their flesh bore little relation to that of a living being. There could be no kinship to oneself: I could not think There but for grace go I or One day I shall lie thus. Perhaps I should have thought these things. Perhaps I was too sure and young to truly understand the condition of these cold figures, which submitted to the outrage of our knives.

  Afterward, we sought the Lamb and Flag like hounds. Those of our party were seized by hilarity, commensurate to their previous unease. These young men shed their fear and talked loudly and bravely. Beer went down, and so did gin. Faces grew rosier, lips wetter, eyes brighter; their memories of the blood and the bones and the delicate layers of subcutaneous flesh were transmuted, and the company waxed lewd.

  Presently, we were increased by a party fresh released from their lectures at Pall Mall East, and there was further frantic passage to and fro between tables and bar; we were busy as rats in an old cheese loft. One Irish gentleman whose name I cannot now summon besought me in plaintive accents to lay bets for the bare-knuckle fight in the yard later.

  “For we have not enough entries, Danforth, for a book, and it is Murchison, you know, fighting against a Black, and the Black is sure enough to win.”

  I demurred, for I have always abhorred and avoided all forms of gaming and vio
lence; here, the two were promised to be mingled in fine anarchy. My finances were somewhat straitened anyhow. I could not have paid my shot. He would not relent, however, and shouted that not for nothing were we drinking in the “Buckets of Blood” (for this was the casual name given to the establishment in which we sat). We were to see a little fisticuffs and make up a book, so that he may buy ribbons for his little sister after all! The mention of ribbons had the happy effect of diverting his talk, and he began then to describe a house he had patronized the night before, with entertainments I would not believe, he assured me. He began to tell me a tale of a pair of little twins, as perfect as they could be, who would do something with a live snake, but as he went on, his urgency and his consonants would not ally together with the drink he had taken. His breath carried an odor of halibut and sorrow. It was no trouble to get away now, and presently, I saw him collapsed on a settle, mouth open, forelock damp, sleeping like a child.

  As the sun fell, the light grew orange and straightened its beams through the casements. Without, ladies had begun to show themselves in the street, fresh from their couches, to take the evening air. Through the rippled glass, there could be seen gloved hands and the pale silk of dresses. They did not linger by the house, and I cannot blame them for it. I imagine our hullabaloo could be heard perfectly well as far as Covent Garden.

  One man alone I observed, who sat quiet and played with a penny on the rim of his glass, producing a tuneful sound, never loud enough to attract notice, but so that the gathering became accustomed to the gentle noise running beneath the babble. I thought he had arrived with the others only that minute, then I thought I had seen him in the hall that morning.

  This man was sallow and vast. His hair stood up at the back of his neck like the ruff of a bird. His linen was ragged at the collars and stained with ink, which also covered his hands like blemishes. He hunched in the settle chair like a crouching beast; he was fixed on his task, which he performed with movements that were precise and small. The great fingers manipulated the penny with a dexterity that confounded the eye, ran supple and light around the dirty rim. An image, a memory perhaps, arose unbidden to the surface of my mind: of him holding a knife, face solemn in the dim air.

  No, I thought, he had not, after all, been with us this morning, for I was sure I would have noted him. I shook my head to clear it of the heavy punch fumes and moved closer under the cover of the shrieks. One bright spark had donned the tavern madam’s bonnet and was discoursing in a theatrical voice on her “pullets” and “spiced wares” for sale. This was enough distraction for the company, who rocked with laughter.

  As I moved my stool, I was clumsy and made a business of it. The wooden legs screeched on the flags; the penny man lifted his eye to mine. It was that of a blackbird, bright and deep. Like a glimpse of the bottom of a well. His finger sent the coin singing once more around the rim.

  “They hear it,” he said, “but they do not mark it. It is a constant; they have accustomed themselves. But if I increase the pitch so”—he poured ale into the glass, and it sang out higher—“and so on, eventually, the glass will shatter. That, they will note. There will be a great fussing with cloths and restitution and a new glass, as if it were a surprise. But the warning has been sounding”—he made the glass sing again—“all along. Do you understand?”

  “I do not, I confess.” I was held by the lights that moved in his eyes.

  “It is so that death sits beside us every day, until it is forced upon our notice. Until the vessel breaks open and life flows out, we must be blind and deaf to its presence, or we could not conduct our carnival as we do.”

  He gestured at the youth who entertained the company. That individual was now bright red. The bonnet lay askew over one eye, and he had begun a series of high kicks, as the Parisian dancing girls do. The penny man regarded this with kindness, but absently, as if it were an effort by a child to imagine a giraffe when they have not seen one.

  He went on, “But there are some who choose to listen to the song of mortality, which underlies it, lies beneath everything—the long note beneath the cacophony. For those who can hear death, whistling always, underneath, who do not fear him, but see his part in the music”—he grasped my arm as if in sympathy—“for them, it is a vocation of the loneliest, and the highest order.”

  We looked on one another. The finger turned, and the glass whistled its distress. The pitch soared and enclosed us in its sphere.

  “It will break,” I said.

  “Ah. Not it,” he said. “Not yet.”

  I offered him my hand, then, and told him my name.

  The memories of one’s youth are potent. Twenty years—but our talk, the sensations are there, as fresh as if preserved in aspic. How will it be when I am confronted with the man? I expect to find Alonso changed; I expect to find him the same.

  Somehow, I think his years in Italy will not have altered him too much; he was always of a Mediterranean temperament. Ludicrous, but I am somewhat shy at the thought of our meeting. We meant so much to one another then.

  I am eager for the journey to pass, which it is doing slowly. The rather circuitous and testing two thirty-five from Paddington! I cannot see the point of it—stop, start, stop, start—and no one gets on or off for the better part of three hours. We call at station after station, vacant in the sunshine. Box: no living soul. Nailsea: similarly deserted. And so on.

  There is great pleasure in a new diary. (Although this resembles more a ledger that clerks write in. I prefer it so; there is more space to a page.) The paper is smooth and virgin. It smells unaccountably, but not unpleasantly, of turpentine. The cover has a soft shine and a pleasing stiffness to the boards. I am a great believer in clinical observation. I have a row of ledgers on the shelf by the window at Marylebone Lane, containing records of cases of particular interest or anything I think may be suitable for publication. I keep a small brown moleskin notebook in which I jot down any little thing that occurs to me. However, in my haste this morning—for I did not rest well and rose late—I left my own, familiar diary on the nightstand. I can picture the book where it sits, the green cover worn soft and stained a little with bromide, propped in front of my Sunday collar studs, to the left of my tooth powder. Bereft! I had intended this ledger for proper observation and records, not for my own maunderings; it will have to serve for both.

  Reading this over, the knowledge is forced upon me that I have left behind also the tooth powder. D--n.

  Once more, we slow. Where in heavens do we halt now? Minety. Deserted. As deserted as the Mary Celeste.

  I neglected to bring reading matter. My wrinkled railway timetable invites me to purchase an “invisible peruke.” I am asked to consider whether I would not like to acquire, for the sum of twenty shillings, an illustrated compendium of British moths. I am offered Parr’s Life Pills, which “clear from the body all hurtful impurities, promote appetite, aid digestion, purify the blood, and keep the bowels regular.”

  This is famous news. I can retire from my profession.

  Upon my return, I must put my mind to finding new lodgings. Mrs. Healey’s conscience is as stiff and unworkable as her knees. I pay the woman thirty shillings a week for food and board! If I were sensible, I would buy out some country practitioner, find a wife, and spend the remainder of my years tending to small farmers, landed gentry, and the cottage hospital.

  Yes, by rights, I should go out of the town, be rural and comfortable. And yet, I know I will not but will merely pass from one Mrs. Healey to another. Why does London hold me so? Very well. Let me diagnose.

  It is not a reasoned thing but a series of impressions. The bite of the fog, the bawling of the street peddler, early on a January morning, the smell and bustle of the wharf—these things thrill my blood in the way that the first drink affects those addicted to spirituous liquors. The straining limbs of the thin mud larks, the shouts of the Covent Garden sellers, the basso prof
undo calls of the bargemen to one another—they are elixir to me.

  Perhaps these sights and sounds have a greater value, in that they remind me how far I have come from my beginnings. If I could, I would excise Grimstock from the face of England, even from remembrance. I cannot put enough distance between myself and That Place. The place of my birth: a small village in Lancashire where folk still leave saucers of milk outside their doors on Samhain. Were He not everywhere, I would say that God does not know Grimstock. Where bare living is scratched from the hard, black land, where the wind moans and cuts your face. The people die young and bitter. It is a place that chills the heart and mind.

  Not long. Two hours, a little more. I feel the beginning of an appetite. Travel is a great strain on the person. It produces fatigue, the migraine, or nausea; in me, it also produces hunger. With Alonso, I will have days of good wine and good food. For myself, I am content with a simple life, but it does not mean that I hold such things in contempt. Yes, it will be a pleasant respite from Mrs. Healey’s tender mercies. I recall some trick of Alonso’s cook, most successful, with juniper berries and a teal duck.

  I will try to compose myself for sleep now, so as to be alert for my arrival. If rest eludes me, I shall watch the fields pass until dusk falls and be content.

  Later

  Rawblood

  I disembarked at Exeter in a state of confusion, having fallen into a deep sleep. My bewilderment drew comment from a robust country child who stood on the platform, throwing stones at the sky. I regret to say that his observations earned him a sharp clip on the ear. While taking careful inventory of my belongings, I was tapped on the shoulder and saw that Shakes was there to greet me. I would not have thought he still lived; to me, he looked old when I was young. But the eyes of youth see nothing as it is.