Alex Grecian - The Yard

“Because I have to help. Dancing helps make people happy.”

“You want to be of use? Is that it?”

“Helping, yes.”

“Henry … May I call you Henry? Henry, you were once very good to me. You showed me a small but significant kindness when I came to the morgue, or rather to where the morgue used to be. My wife had only just passed of consumption, and I was very sad. Do you remember that?”

“I remember the dead people.”

“Yes, one of them was my Catherine.”

“That was a bad place. The people had no room. There was no room for dancing there.”

“I agree with you. The dead are in a new place now, a place where I help their families find them and perhaps find some justice, too.”

“That’s good. I do remember you. Your lady wanted a flower.”

Kingsley smiled. “Yes, you gave her a sprig of ivy and you covered her with a blanket.”

“That made you happy.”

“It did.”

Kingsley cleared his throat, unsure of how to proceed. Henry Mayhew was a large man, but his mind was that of a child. Kingsley wanted to make him an offer, but he wasn’t sure if Mayhew would understand what was being given, and he wasn’t even sure it was a good idea to make the offer in the first place.

He opened his mouth to speak and was interrupted by a gunshot somewhere behind them. Henry jumped and clung to the wall. Kingsley spun around and held up the lantern, but could see nothing. Two more shots echoed through the workhouse and Kingsley turned again. He took Henry by the elbow and guided him down the hall as quickly as they could move.

Kingsley was holding his black bag and his lantern in the same hand, and the bag was causing the lantern to swing back and forth, creating treacherous shadows and knocking the bag back into his ribs with each step. He had just come to the conclusion that he didn’t need to guide Henry Mayhew down the hall and could free that hand up to carry one thing or the other when he tripped over something and dropped the lantern.

The something he had tripped over hollered and he realized it was a man, sprawled out on the floor. Kingsley reached for the lantern, which was miraculously still lit.

“You should be in your room,” he said. “There’s a madman on the loose here.”

“Heh. Yeah, there’s a lot of madmen on the loose here, mister. One of ’em got me already.”

Kingsley held the lantern up and let the pale light wash over the man on the floor. He was young and burly and unkempt, and lying in a small pool of black liquid that Kingsley took to be blood.

“What’s happened?” he said. He was already on one knee in front of the young man, his black bag open. He rummaged through it, setting one thing after another on the floor between them.

“Mad bloke stabbed me with a scissors and ran off. The policeman gave chase after helpin’ me a bit. After a while, everybody sort of wandered off and left me here to bleed. Don’t blame ’em. Not too interestin’ to watch a man bleed after the first few minutes.”

“That policeman is my friend. Was he all right? Was he stabbed, too?”

“Don’t think so. I was tryin’ to help him out, what got me stabbed.”

Kingsley washed out the puncture wound and dressed it.

“The wound is deep,” he said, “but you haven’t lost too much blood.”

“You a doctor?”

“You’d better hope I am.”

“How bad is it?”

“You’re lucky inasmuch as the instrument used, the shears used to stab you, seem to have been reasonably clean of dirt or rust, so that may help with your recovery. And it was sharp enough that you may avoid getting lockjaw.”

“Lockjaw?”

“Yes. A dull weapon may sometimes bruise a nerve and cause excruciating death. We call this lockjaw.”

“But I ain’t gonna get that?”

“We’ll know soon enough. It’s imperative that we get you back to my hospital so I can dress that wound properly. It needs a poultice. For now, the detective did a good job of stanching the blood and this wrap will keep it from bleeding too badly.”

“You gonna leave me here?”

“Certainly not. Let’s get you to your feet.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“The injury wasn’t to your legs. You can stand and walk.”

“Mister doctor?” Henry said. “I can carry him.”

Henry bent and lifted the injured man as if he were an empty suit. The man yelped and sucked in a quick lungful of air.

“Careful with him, Henry. I’d like to keep this one alive.”

Henry nodded and stood waiting. The man put his uninjured arm around Henry’s thick neck while Kingsley repacked his bag. He lifted the bag and the lantern and, with a nod to Henry, turned and led the way down the hall, this time with renewed purpose. There was an injured man relying on him to find a way out of the workhouse.

In moments they came to a low door. The door was bolted and the bolt had been padlocked. It was the first true door Kingsley had seen since they’d entered Hobgate, since the entrances to the men’s rooms were nothing but open holes in the walls.

“If this isn’t an exit, we’ve reached a dead end,” he said. “So I’m going to assume for the sake of sanity that it’s an exit. But I’m afraid we’ll have to turn back anyway.”

Without a word, Henry set the injured man down and grabbed the bolt with both hands. He braced his feet against the jamb on either side of the door and pulled. There was a low groaning noise that reverberated through the walls and down the hallway behind them.

“I think it’s too strong for you,” Kingsley said.

Henry looked at him and grinned. He tensed his shoulders, set his feet again, and heaved backward, his entire upper body pitched out into the hall so that he was nearly horizontal with the floor. The bolt wrenched away from the door with a terrific rasp and a crack and a shower of splinters.

Henry stumbled, but didn’t fall. He tossed the fractured bolt into the darkness behind them and stopped to pick the injured man back up. Kingsley threw the door open and smiled at the grey-filtered sunlight and the spattering rain outside.

“Look what you did,” he said. He turned, blocking the exit. He wanted to say the thing he’d come here to say before he lost his nerve. “Henry, I’d like to put you to work.”

“I’m at the workhouse already and I don’t like it.”

“No, I don’t see how anyone could like it here. But I don’t mean the workhouse. I mean that I’d like you to come to my laboratory. There are things I could have you do there.”

“Would I dance?”

“If you wanted to. But there are more substantial things you could do, too. You showed respect for the dead on that day I visited you. That kind of respect isn’t something I see in most people.”

“Can they sleep at your laboratory? The dead, I mean. Can they sleep? There wasn’t enough room for them at the morgue place and they couldn’t rest.”

Kingsley remembered the short tables and the breeze moving through the open shed where the bodies were stored. He remembered the cold, pale legs hanging down in the central aisle, moving in the wind, running in place.

“Yes, there’s room for them to rest now.”

“I’ll look at it.”

“Good. I can’t pay you much. My current assistant is my daughter and she takes no salary, but I’d like to find something else for her to do. I’m not sure it’s a good place for her to be anymore.”

He realized he was speaking to someone who didn’t understand and wouldn’t care. He chuckled.

“Anyway,” he said, “I’ll bring you round the place and you can decide for yourself. I think having you there might be good for us both.”

“You should do it,” the injured man said. “Can’t be any worse ’n this place.”