The Red Plague Affair

Chapter Twenty-One A Curative Method

Tarshingale was very still, his eyes half-lidded, his long legs tucked out of sight underneath the desk. There was a commotion in the hall outside – some manner of screaming and cursing, very usual for King’s this time of evening. Perhaps a patient requiring bleeding, or some other dreadful necessity. The surgical wells would be full of howling, with those patients fortunate enough to swoon under the assault of medical treatment the only exception.

Finally, Tarshie stirred. “The implications,” he murmured. “The implications.”

For Science? Or for suffering? Clare decided on an answer that was equally applicable to both. “Troubling, yes. And deep.”

Vance had subsided into his own chair, watching Clare as he laid forth the bare facts of the case, then judicious applications of his own observations. He occasionally stroked his fair moustache with one fingertip, and Clare caught sight of an irregular inkstain on the criminal mentath’s thumb. The mix of dust and paper, the haze of Tarshingale’s living heat warring with the cold stone exhalation of the walls, the tang of carbolic and the effluvia of surgical practice, all was as it should be. Even the ghost of Valentinelli’s cologne.

So why did he feel so… unnerved?

Something is amiss here.

“A rubescent miasma.” Tarshingale nodded, as if wrapping up a long internal conversation. “A very bloody illness, this is. A red film over the ocularis orbatis. Hmm.”

Clare’s body grew cold all over. “Tarshie, old chap—”

“Archibald, for the love of God, address me as Edmund if you feel the need to be familiar,” Tarshingale snapped, irritably. “Pray do not address me as the other.”

“A prickly character,” Vance interjected. “You were at school together?”

“Two years ahead.” Tarshingale rose, pushing his chair back with a weary sigh. The laboured rasp of his breathing evened out. “And he was insufferable even then.”

“Pot calling kettle, I’m sure.” Vance’s tone bordered on the edge of insouciant. “You are not surprised at Mr Clare’s tidings, sir. And I detect a breath of sweetness in the still air of this charming hutch, which is quite out of place.”

“Quite so.” Tarshingale did not take offence. “I am afraid I must tell you something very disturbing, Archibald. As your friend has no doubt deduced, this contagion has already arrived at King’s.” He took a deep breath, pushing his shoulders back, and his surgical coat rippled, dried blood flaking from the rough fabric. “We had four sufferers this afternoon. Three died within hours, and the fourth… well.”

“Dear God.” Clare’s lips were numb. “You are the foremost advocate of the Pathogenic Theory, Edmund. Do tell me you have some idea of how to combat this bad bit of business.”

“No way that does not involve quite a long bit of trial and error.” Tarshingale seemed to age in the space of a few moments, deep lines graving his face, and Clare noted with no little trepidation that a faint blush had arrived on the doctor’s scrape-shaven cheeks. “Come. He is a drover, our fourth patient, and quite hardy. If he is still alive, we may well have a chance.”

“Damn it all,” Clare breathed.

The ward was full of moaning, shrieking sufferers. It was almost as deadly-chaotic as Bedlam, and Clare’s infrequent visits to that hell of noise and stench were always more than enough to convince him he never wished to practise the art of Medicine.

The patient – a heavyset, balding Spitalfields drover, carried across Londinium by two of his worried fellows who had left him and a fistful of pence in Tarshingale’s care because of Edmund’s reputation as a Charity Worker – lay in a sodden lump of blood and other matter, including the foul-sweet pus from burst boils. His empty gaze, filmed with already-clotting red, was fixed on the distant shadowy ceiling, and the indentured orderly responsible for heaving the corpse onto a barrow blinked blearily at the arrival of August Personages, well dressed and obviously healthy, in this pit.

“Joseph Camling.” Edmund reached the bedside, and his work-roughened hand covered the staring, bloody orbs. He held the eyelids, waiting until the dead gaze could be for ever veiled. “Do you recall your History, Archibald?”

“I recall rather everything. I am a mentath.” Clare glanced at Valentinelli, whose attention was fixed on Vance, for all he seemed to be taking no notice of the criminal mentath, whose long fastidious nose was wrinkled most unbecomingly. “Edmund—”

“Some two hundred years ago. You would have had Tattersall for those lectures, I believe.” Edmund took his hand away, gazing upon the drover’s dead face with a peculiar expression. “My organ of Memory is rather large; though I despise phrenologomancy with a passion as unscientific it is rather useful to be measured at least once. I digress, though. I recall—”

“Tattersall. Lecture one hundred and fifty-three.” The blood was draining from Clare’s face, he could feel it. There was a disturbing tickle in his throat, as well. A cough caught, or perhaps merely his digestion – excellent as any mentath’s, really – was beginning to turn against him. There was, he reflected, very little that could unseat a logician’s stomach. But this threatened to. “The plague. But there is no—”

“Nine of the twelve symptoms overlap. It is foolish to discount some things simply because you cannot compass their existence.” Tarshingale drew himself up. It was his usual, pedantic, insufferable moment of lecturing. “It came to my attention that this was remarkably similar. I spent the afternoon pillaging an excellent library or two, combing for accounts of the Dark Plague and its effects.”

A warehouse hard by the Black Wark. A perfect place for research, but… Clare’s faculties raced, and he almost staggered. Vance’s hand closed about his elbow, and the art professor steadied him most handily.

“I say, old chap, what is it?” Did Clare’s nemesis actually look… yes, he did. It seemed impossible to credit.

Francis Vance looked concerned.

“Ludovico.” Clare shook free of his fellow mentath’s grasp. Tarshingale’s mouth was a thin line of disapproval, since he had been interrupted before he could gain his stride. “Hurry, man. Fetch Harthell and the carriage. We haven’t a moment to lose.”

The Neapolitan, to give him credit, did not hesitate, merely vanished into the throng of indentured orderlies.

Edmund’s nostrils flared. “Really, Archibald—”

It was Francis Vance who stepped in now. “Very well. I believe now is the moment for a rather bruising carriage ride. Shall the good physicker be coming along, old chap?”

“Bermondsey.” Clare found himself actually wringing his hands, and almost shouting to be heard over the sudden jarring noise of the ward, intruding on his consciousness. “A plague pit. Of course. We may find the original source of the contamination, and a method or means of stopping it.”

Vance stepped forward, as if to shake hands with Tarshingale. Whose pride had been touched now, and roundly, too.

“I am no physicker, sir, I am a doctor of Medicine, and I shall thank you to—”

“Very good.” Vance’s grip was bruising on Edmund’s arm, and the doctor of Medicine gasped aloud as the mentath’s fingers found a nerve-bundle and pressed home, unerringly. “Dear Archibald requires your services, sir, and we shall do our best to send you home in your original condition when he has no further use of you.”

“Do be careful!” I sound like an old maiden auntie. How Miss Bannon would laugh. His collar was uncomfortably close, but Clare did not stop to loosen it. “Come. A Curative Method, Edmund? Tell me every particular while we hurry for the carriage. It may not be necessary for you to leave King’s.” He paused, and a rather horrible, unavoidable deduction surfaced. “I rather think,” he continued soberly, settling his hat upon his balding head, “that you shall be needed here very badly, and sooner than you think.”