Free Beloved Poison by E. S. Thomson Page A

jar of burnt alum back onto the shelf.

     
    Gabriel fell asleep at my father’s feet, his mop of dark hair glinting in the firelight. Will slipped a cushion beneath his head and covered him with a blanket. The boy should have accompanied me on my final rounds later that evening, but I hadn’t the heart to bother him. I was tempted to go out to Angel Meadow there and then, and demand that Dr Hawkins tell me what was going on. But I did not want to be away from my father for long, and so I put the thought from my mind as best I could and went out to the wards.
    After the silence of the apothecary, the hospital was a pandemonium. The doctors had finished their rounds long ago, and the place was now the domain of Mrs Speedicut and her minions. I went from ward to ward, my lantern in my hand, the mutterings of the patients and the observations of the nurses as commonplace and boring as ever.
    ‘Oh yes, Mr Flock’art, he’s been purged reg’lar this past week. Feels all the better for it,’ and ‘Dr Catchpole do love his leeches sir. Worked wonders he has!’ and ‘Blue Pill, sir, same as usual.’
    Leeches! We went through thousands of them. Why, the previous year alone we had spent two hundred and fifty one pounds, nine shillings and sixpence on the things. ‘Where would St Saviour’s be without blood!’ Dr Graves had cried when I dared to object. As for Blue Pill . . . There was not a doctor in the place who could see it for what it was: mercury bound with chalk and as poisonous a substance as you might wish to find. It was used on the most persistently costive patients – which included pretty much all of them. I had fallen out with Dr Catchpole on the matter of its use on many occasions. Could they not see that a similar effect might be produced with psyllium husks or a bowl of stewed rhubarb? I had told Dr Catchpole the same that very morning. ‘Good lord, Mr Flockhart,’ he had bellowed across the ward. ‘I am a physician, not a gardener, and this is a hospital, not a pie shop!’ The patients themselves were no better. ‘Dr Catchpole says I must ’ave the calomel,’ one of them had remarked as Dr Catchpole turned away. Already he had the black teeth and copious saliva characteristic of mercury poisoning. ‘Dr Catchpole’s a proper doctor. I’ll not ’ave no fruit. And no seeds, neither!’ Dr Bain was the only man there who saw sense. Leeches and Blue Pill indeed. Some of them were still cupping too!
    There was nothing remarkable on any of the wards, which was just as well, as that evening my mind was elsewhere. All at once the ordered and predictable world of St Saviour’s seemed to be coming apart at the seams. I had not realised how unsettled it had made me feel. But what better remedy for disquiet than the routine of the evening ward rounds? I stalked between the beds, allowing the noise and stink of the place to wash over me like a soothing familiar balm. The reek of vomit and effluent took its effect upon my spirits almost immediately. Purged, for the moment, of any sense of regret that we would soon be obliged to leave the place, I paused at a window and flung it open. A cold blast of night air, laced with the whiff of the tannery and the brewhouse blew in from the east.
    ‘Please, sir,’ a voice quavered from beneath a mound of frayed blankets beside me. ‘No air, for pity’s sake! You’ll kill us all!’
    Out in the corridors the night nurses chatted and cackled. They were a different stock to the nurses who worked the wards during the day – less biddable, noisier and rougher in their manners and habits. They fell silent as I approached, but I knew they were a raucous lot when left to their own devices. In the wards, the inmates tossed and moaned, hunched beneath their blankets, coughing and farting in the gloom. Usually, I was accompanied about the infirmary by Mrs Speedicut. There was no need for her to come with me, but she insisted. She still remembered me as a child – how she