Free Beloved Poison by E. S. Thomson Page B

had enjoyed walloping me through the wards when I was an apprentice! That evening, however, she was nowhere to be seen.
    ‘She’s out, sir,’ said the nurse. ‘She went down to the apof’cary a while ago and I ain’t seen her since.’
    ‘I was in the apothecary a while ago,’ I said. ‘I didn’t see her.’
    ‘That’s where she went.’
    ‘And where is she now, pray?’
    The woman shrugged. ‘’Oo knows, sir?’
    ‘Sweep the floors, can’t you?’ I said, suddenly irritated by her insolence. ‘I saw a rat earlier.’
    ‘I can catch it for you, if you like, sir,’ came the reply. ‘Dr Graves gives me a shillin’ for every half dozen.’
    I went up to the surgical ward. The night nurse was dozing on a chair in the corridor. Her mouth hung open, as brown as the inside of a tea pot. She reeked of gin, her nose bluish in the light from the lantern, the blood vessels on her face standing out against her sallow cheeks like red pin worms. I left her where she was. I knew her for a sharp-tongued gossiping ninny, and as much of a trollop as any of them. I was glad not to have her braying in my ear as I walked amongst the beds, though I’d be sure to give her chair a good kick as I walked past later.
    Most of the patients were drugged with laudanum and seemed to be sleeping. I checked Dr Bain’s amputee. Dr Bain had given instructions for the man’s wound to be dressed every day. New, clean lint and linen were to be used and the area washed out with a weak carbolic acid solution. The patient was still and quiet. I pulled back the dressings. The wound was clean, and there was no sign of suppuration, though it was too early to comment on the success of the operation. I would check again in the morning.
    The night nurse had not drawn the blinds and, for once, the moon was as bright as a new shilling. It shone full into the ward, painting the patients’ blankets silver. But even the moonlight could not impart glamour to the scene, and the place resembled an overcrowded churchyard: the beds the mounded graves, severed stumps projecting like the bony remains sometimes visible in the workhouse burial ground – a place where a good many of them would end up.
    I stood at the window. Below me, in the main courtyard, Edward VI’s shoulders were cloaked in silver. Beyond him, I could see the dim yellow squares of the apothecary windows. I wondered whether I had been rash to leave my father in the care of Will Quartermain. After all, before that day I had never met the man. Now I was entrusting him to look after my only relative. And yet there was something about the young architect that I had liked immediately. He did not try to prove himself a better man than I. He did not question my knowledge and authority. He made me laugh. His curiosity matched my own. I wondered whether he would prove so agreeable if he knew who I really was.
    On the opposite side of the square the eight tall windows of the Magdalene ward gleamed as black as onyx in the moonlight. I caught a movement at one of them. Was a patient out of bed? The night nurse should be on hand to prevent such wanderings. No doubt she was cackling with the rest of St Saviour’s midnight coven out in the corridor. I cupped my hand about the glass, pressing my nose to the cold pane. All at once a white face appeared, emerging from the darkness of the opposite ward the way a drowned corpse might rise up from the black depths of a mill pond. Mrs Magorian! Her small, round face stared down, the bottle-green ribbons on her bonnet hanging limp against her cheeks like strips of weed. Beside her, tall and slim, stood Mrs Catchpole.
    I clicked my tongue. What in heaven’s name were they doing on the wards so late at night? I had not noticed them when I had passed through the place not half an hour earlier, and it was far too late for a Bible reading. I knew that I should go over there directly and tell them to go, but I had no stomach for a pair of lady almoners that evening