Wasp (5 page)

‘Are you a surgeon?’

He grins. ‘Fixing people is what I do. Broken people. Like you. Now, hold out your arms. Good. Pull up your skirts. No, don’t go coy, I’m not some cully with stiff breeches and a shilling in his pocket.’

Beth lifts her hem. Bug bites pepper both wrists and ankles. Baldy unslings a canvas pouch from his shoulder. Taking out a vial he dabs foul-smelling paste on the sores. ‘These can’t be allowed to fester.’

‘What difference does it make?’ she says. ‘I didn’t ask to be brought here.’

‘No, you didn’t,’ he concedes, ‘and if you’re so keen to go back to where you came from you can be returned with little trouble. So far, all you’ve cost us is a purse of coins and some inconvenience. You’ll have the rest of this night to dwell on it.’

He stoppers the vial and returns it to the pouch. ‘You are running with lice. I shall have to shave you. All of you. Do you understand?’

‘Shave me?’

‘Yes. It won’t hurt, and the hair will grow back clean. Afterwards I shall give you something to make you sleep and a good clean bed. Kingfisher, you are finished here for the night.’

The dark man nods and leaves by the mirror door.

Baldy lays down a large square of canvas and fetches a table littered with ceramic bottles and strips of linen. ‘Stand there,’ he said, gesturing at the canvas. ‘We won’t tarry.’

Bethany waits on the square while Baldy loosens her gown’s fastenings and lets it drop around her ankles. His touch is delicate, almost ticklish.

‘Please don’t.’

‘I’m a doctor. You mustn’t forget it.’

‘Then why do this in here? Why must I stand and face a hundred reflections of myself when a plain room would serve as well?’

‘This is a glasshouse, my little seed. You need to watch yourself grow and blossom. To believe it you must see it happen. This is where we start. Hold still.’

He takes up a pair of shears and begins to cut her hair. A blizzard of matted chestnut wafts onto the canvas as the blades work around her head. ‘Lean this way,’ he encourages. ‘Now that. Turn around, yes, very good.’

In the Comfort Home she had been stripped and beaten. She’d had her hair pulled until she thought it would come out by the roots. Every nook of her body had been violated in one horrible way or another, yet this is somehow worse. The gentle smiles, the soft
snip-snip
of sharpened metal.

Finally he puts down the shears, picks up a bowl and brush, and soaps the top of her head. She squeals when she sees the open razor. ‘Close your eyes if you wish,’ he says. ‘I promise you shall hardly feel it.’

She shivers at the first touch of metal against her scalp. But he’s as light as a fly. She opens her eyes, aware of his closeness, his smell. She eyes the stitching on his leather vest, the stubble along his forearms as they move.

He wipes the razor on a strip of linen, snaps closed the blade and sets it down on the table. From one of the small porcelain bottles, he pours something onto a soft cloth and rubs it into Beth’s head. A warm flush spreads across her skin and a curious herbal smell fills her nostrils.

‘Did you get this from a Wise Woman?’ she asks.

‘Old Bobbo down at the apothecary, more like,’ Baldy laughs. ‘He’s no woman and definitely isn’t wise, but he gets his stock directly from his own herb garden. He mixes and bottles the preparations and he sells them on. Much better than the rat poison you get off some of these hawkers.’

‘My skin is tingling.’

‘Good. That means it’s working. Now we’ll get your underarms and crotch done. Lift up.’

Beth raises both arms. Baldy picks up the razor and works on her armpits. When he applies the soap brush between her legs her muscles clench.

‘Don’t worry, Kitten. It’s not that kind of touch.’

She tries to relax. It’s hopeless. She’s trembling from her toes to her teeth. Baldy squeezes her hand. ‘A minute more, I promise.’ Eyes close. She feels the wet warmth, the kiss of the bristles, the razor’s gentle scratch. Then a soft towel and more ointment.

‘What about your courses?’

‘My what?’

‘Your monthly time.’

‘I don’t have any.’

‘How long since you did?’

‘A while, I think.’

‘You were with child?’

‘I lost it. As best I can remember I’ve been dry since.’

‘Did it happen at the Comfort Home?’

‘No, before.’

Baldy soaks scraps of linen in another concoction and ties them over the raw patches of skin. ‘Don’t take them off,’ he warns, ‘no matter how much they sting.’

He turns back to the table, picks up a glass bottle and hands it to her. ‘Splash this around the inside of your mouth twice a day. Make sure you spit it out. Don’t swallow any or you’ll give yourself a belly ache.’

A clean garment is pressed into her other hand along with a linen cap. She tugs it over her bare head and knots it under her chin. Her fingers are shaking. The garment is a plain smock but kind to her skin when she slips it on. When she’s finished, Baldy turns her to face one of the mirrors.

‘Look there. What do you see? No, don’t be afraid.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You’ve come this far, Kitten. Tell me what you observe.’

She cracks open an eye. ‘Something ugly. A gargoyle.’

‘That will change. The House of Masques works a special kind of magic.’ He grins. ‘Soon you will forget you ever laid eyes on the starved, beaten creature reflected in that looking-glass.’

Beth backs away. ‘I don’t believe your smiles. I’ve seen them before. In the other place. Heard the sweet words. Felt the slash across my face. A wet towel. Or a strip of my own soiled linen. Afterwards I’d sometimes hear the man who beat me talking in the passage outside. About sons or daughters, about his home and what he planned to do for the harvest festival. I was an interruption between the gin jug and the fireside hearth. A bit of filthy business that had to be dealt with before he took to his warm bed.’

She fingers the smock. ‘Every Sunday after service he brought back a parson who pressed a handkerchief to his nose while he prayed for me, the lost sheep. You never saw a blessing spat out so quickly, or a man so pale about the gills. I thought he could help me. I slipped him a note scribbled on the corner of a page of Scripture with a sliver of burned candlewick. He took it to my captor and I had to sit in the dark for a week. So don’t go grinning at me, doctor man. I doubt you’re even a real surgeon.’

Baldy regards her for a moment. ‘Bed for you now, I think,’ he says. ‘You’ve earned your rest. I shan’t torment you any more tonight.’

The Dream World

Nightingale sits on the bed, pomander caught in her slack hands. Any interruption and the fingers will snatch tight on the drawstrings. No scent tickles out to delight the nostrils. It is full of the dream makers, and she takes it everywhere.

She had returned to the House earlier than expected. An awkward Assignment. Some city buck come of age and wanting to make a mark. He walked fast and talked faster, eager legs tangling in his walking stick. At dinner he spat food over the tablecloth. Twice he dropped his fork into his quail. Then he knocked over his wine, most ending up on his cream breeches. His wits unravelled and the evening threatened to do likewise. He stared at his feet when she delivered the Touch, his formerly proud face threatening to collapse in on itself. She was trained never to show disdain, always to keep her tone moderate and her expression interested.

‘I saved my allowance for months for this,’ he said. ‘I fear I’ve become something of an oaf.’

‘Don’t be concerned, sir,’ she said, delivering a smile. An oaf was exactly what he’d been but he brightened at her warmth, knowing nothing of the frost behind it.

Nightingale checks her face in the looking-glass. Powder and rouge have survived the night, though her eyes show too much red. Her client’s choice of club was fog-thick with smouldering tobacco.

She examines both hands, flexes her fingers inside the velvet gloves. Stains darken the material. Clumsy. The marks smell of bitter fruit.

She opens the dresser drawer and finds a plain cotton pair that will serve the night. Keeping gloves in her room is a privilege Nightingale guards. The fresh pot of hand salve the Fixer has provided sits next to a vial of scent.

Everything is in its proper place. She can’t suffer another mistake. Squeezing both eyes closed she peels off the soiled gloves and lets them drop onto the rug. Working by touch she applies salve into her hands and wrists. Her nails will need clipping soon.

She fumbles for the cotton gloves. Too quickly. Her fingers catch in a seam and one of the gloves tumbles into her lap. She scrabbles in the folds of her house gown. Nothing. Colours have begun to burst behind her eyes. What if it’s slipped under the dresser? She will have to get down on hands and knees and grope for it.

Stupid, stupid.

There, by the leg of the chair. Fingers snatch it up, burrow inside. She is safe. Long, deep breaths. Let the panic pass. In the looking-glass, her now opened eyes are still red-tinged. She touches the polished silver key which hangs pendant-like around her neck. Clients often enquire about it. She tells them it belongs to a chest full of her mother’s things. A sentimental trinket with no real value. The box it fits belongs on a waist-high shelf beside her bed. Above her pillows a crucifix is nailed to the wall. She often muses over which is the darker vice.

Other clients don’t notice the key. It’s one more shiny bauble amidst a glittering spray of jewellery. Clothes shed, it lies naked against her throat. She’s always conscious of that smooth, cool metal, feeling it move with each breath.

She has not always possessed the key. The Fixer would have given it to her sooner had she demanded, otherwise it remained tucked away in his bag of potions. Winning his trust had proved a bitter task.

Indeed, Nightingale has never used the key. It’s symbolic, a talisman to convince herself she’s in charge of her own fate. The box itself is unlocked. No maid would find anything of value inside.

Sometimes Nightingale imagines touching the box. In these daydreams her hands are perfect, and her bare fingers trace the grain of the wood, smooth and firm under her skin. A flick of the wrist and the box will open. No one is there to stop her. She can take what is inside and return to the go-away place. But if she does, the Fixer can never bring her back.

This is my purgatory,
she thinks.
God willing it never turns into hell.

What she needs to keep the horrors away is in the pomander. A pinch. A sprinkling. Barely enough to register a taste. When empty, the Fixer takes her pomander and an hour later, perhaps two, hands it back. A voiceless transaction.

There was a time when the dream makers drew the skin across her bones, tightened her mouth to a gash and put darkness under her eyes. Shapes and colours swirled in her mind. Distinct memories were rare. Everything else was a stew of brandy, music, bodies and, always, laughter. Fights had broken out over her, she recalled. Men had been badly injured. A single sentence from her father.

‘No bastard will get its fingers in our pot.’

The Fixer demanded she break the dream makers’ hold, no matter the cost. Nightingale had endured it for him and for the life she’d birthed. No child would call her mother while she was
dirty.
She suffered the sickness that stretched hours into eternities, the convulsions, the foulness. The thing that kept her head out of Bedlam was the Fixer’s lips mouthing the promise that if she could do it he would return her daughter. Yet when she hauled herself partway out of that dark tunnel he had changed his mind.

‘You don’t deserve to be a mother,’ he told her. ‘At best you might open a crack in the clouds where your head abides. But you need more than a crack to raise a child. You’ve done well to get this far, but not well enough. Prove to me you’re capable and then perhaps we’ll talk.’

‘Haven’t I been through enough?’

‘No. What if you’re lying glassy-eyed and she’s bawling through want of food or a clean behind? What if an ember tumbles from the hearth while she’s lying squirming on the rug? You can’t look after yourself, let alone a baby. This House is the only life you have. It’s as potent a drug to you as anything you swallow, and no place for an innocent.’

The dream makers were waiting to soothe the blow. To Nightingale they were sweet medicine, yet she had not entirely fallen back into the tunnel. The Fixer’s crumbs were enough to keep the hunger away. The poisoned light filled her up, made her walk and talk, but she would go no further.

I must prove I’m worthy,
became her mantra.

Her injured heart warned against the guiles of men yet perversely this made her more sought after in her House Assignments. The ice girl from whom everyone hoped to chisel secrets.

She had convinced her Sisters that she wore gloves around the House because of sensitive skin. A cheap and easy lie. Once, when the poisons in her mind swirled the wrong way, she saw the satin curl and turn black. Ripping off the gloves, Nightingale found her hands charred into crone-sticks. She screamed herself into insensibility. Eloise, arms pregnant with laundry, found her collapsed across the dresser. She ran to fetch the Fixer who came with the medicine and changed the colours of the world.

Another time she cut herself when a brandy glass broke in her grasp. A shard sliced through the material of her glove. The Fixer said it had to come off if he was to treat her. ‘You can throw a tantrum if you like,’ he told her, ‘but if you do I shall leave you to bleed and they can bury you in those gloves.’

Nightingale had struggled to no effect. The Fixer removed her glove with a long blade. When he touched her bare fingers she thought she would faint. The cut was not as deep as he feared and once he’d stopped the bleeding he bathed her skin. ‘Beautiful,’ he declared, ‘like a dove wing. So pale and pretty.’ But she would not believe it.

She knew what she owed the doctor and the dark man. She had been scrutinised and somewhere within her fevered bones was revealed the shade of what she might become. In the Fixer lay something the dream makers could never have granted. He opened the door in her head and let the real world back in. She ought to have hated him for that, but through the hard weeks of near madness he was there, not with comforting words but challenging, daring, provoking. As he wiped clean her sodden face his eyes filled her world. ‘Now you must decide whether to live or die. Show me if I have wasted my time.’