Paul Witcover - The Emperor of all Things

‘There, there, Mr Quare,’ she said as she cleaned the wound, seeming to have recovered from her earlier upset, as if caring for another was the best medicine for what had ailed her. ‘’Tis not so bad, after all. A nasty gash, to be sure, but not a deep one. You’ll not be needing a surgeon to sew it up. Here … Press the cloth to the wound, just there – that’s right. I’m going to fetch some clean cloths to make a bandage. I’ll just be a moment.’

And with that, she bustled out of the room.

Quare got to his feet and crossed to the table from which Mrs Puddinge had taken the wash basin. There was a fly-specked square of mirror hanging frameless on the wall above the table, and Quare now angled himself so as to be able to see his back reflected in the glass. Specifically, the area between his shoulder blades, where Aylesford said he had stabbed him as they lay in Clara’s bed.

The indirect light from the window, coupled with the awkward positioning necessary to see anything useful, defeated him. He groaned in frustration. But he could at least examine his shoulder. Lifting the cloth, he saw a long, shallow gash; a sluggish upwelling of blood accompanied the removal of pressure. No doubt there would be a scar, to go with the one that Grimalkin had given him. He had never imagined that a career in horology would mark him so. He thought of the grizzled old soldiers he had seen in taverns, swapping stories and matching scars over glasses of gin. At this rate, he would soon be joining them.

‘Mr Quare, come back to bed this instant.’

He turned to see Mrs Puddinge glaring at him from the door, her arms bearing enough cloths to swaddle a small army. ‘A man would have to be foolish indeed to reject that invitation,’ he replied rakishly.

She blushed again, but couldn’t suppress a smile. ‘Get along with you.’

Once he was seated on the edge of the bed, she tended to his shoulder with practised efficiency, first cleaning the wound again, then placing a folded cloth over it, which she secured with a long strip of cloth wound about his torso. He had intended to ask her to have a look between his shoulder blades, but, as it turned out, there was no need.

‘Merciful heavens!’ she cried out.

‘What is it?’

‘Why, another wound. A worse one. Much worse! Can you not feel it?’

‘No. Or rather, a slight discomfort only between my shoulder blades, like an annoying itch I cannot scratch.’

‘That would be the scab. Here, let me show you …’ She fetched the mirror down from the wall and returned to the bed, where she held it at such an angle as to give him the clear view he had been unable to acquire for himself.

What he saw both shocked and fascinated; it felt strangely removed from him, or he from it, as though he were looking at someone else’s body, or, as in a dream, gazing down at his own from a superior vantage like a ghost or angel. Nestled between his shoulder blades was a blood-crusted incision no more than an inch long. The skin to either side was as purple as the petals of a violet, yet also streaked with scarlet and yellow and a sickly, algal green. It was a wonder that his fight with Aylesford had not reopened the wound. A clammy sweat broke out on his skin, and he felt as if he’d swallowed a knot of writhing eels.

‘Are you all right, Mr Quare?’ Mrs Puddinge asked in concern at his sudden pallor.

He took a deep breath and looked away. ‘I’m well,’ he said, but the croak of his voice belied it. Obviously, Aylesford had failed to pierce his heart with his knife thrust in the dark. But even so, Quare felt sure that a wound such as this should have done more than merely itch. It seemed the sort of wound one might see upon a corpse. Yet there was not even a twinge of pain. His heart was beating strongly, rapidly, and his lungs had no difficulty drawing breath. He didn’t understand it.

‘I’m afraid that’s beyond my poor skills,’ said Mrs Puddinge, shaking her head. ‘You’ll need a surgeon to sew that up, you will.’

‘I’ll have it seen to at the guild hall,’ he promised; now that he wasn’t looking at the wound, he was able to think more clearly, though the nausea showed no sign of receding. ‘Can you just bind it up for now?’

‘I’ll try, but God help you if it opens again.’ She set to work. ‘This is older than the one on your shoulder,’ she observed as she twined a strip of cloth about his chest. ‘You must’ve got it at the Pig and Rooster, a craven blow from behind, in the midst of the brawl.’

‘No doubt,’ he said. Perhaps it was the sensation of her hands upon the skin of his back, but he began to feel the stirrings of memory; or, rather, it was as if his body remembered what his mind could not. He began to tremble.

‘There, there,’ Mrs Puddinge repeated. ‘Almost done …’

No, it was not memory. More like the way he had seemed, upon being shown the crusted wound, to separate from his own skin. So now did he see in his mind’s eye the stark tableau, lit by moonlight, of himself and Aylesford pressed close on Clara’s bed in a travesty of intimate congress. He seemed to feel the other man’s body cleaving to his own, his hand clamped over his mouth; saw, or imagined that he saw, the wide eyes of Clara gazing at them, and then her knowing smirk as she turned away into shadows and tangled bed-sheets.

He rose to his feet and rushed to the open window, arriving just in time to spew the contents of his stomach into the alley below. Ignoring Mrs Puddinge, who, after an initial exclamation, had hurried to stand at his side, one hand stroking his arm, her touch like sandpaper despite her kindly intent, he leaned forward, arms bracing himself on the sill, closed his eyes, and let the cool city air – carrying its quotidian stinks of coal smoke and river stench and the waste of animals and human beings, odours that had sickened him during his first days and weeks in London, but which were now as familiar as the smells of his own body, and as reassuring – play over his face and torso. He was alive, damn it. Despite Aylesford’s efforts. And he had work to do.

Taking a breath, he straightened and pulled away from Mrs Puddinge. ‘I’d better have a look at Aylesford’s room,’ he said.

‘Shouldn’t I call for a doctor, after all?’ she asked, concern in her voice and in her eyes.

He shook his head. ‘Please, Mrs P. I’ve no time to argue.’ He crossed the room and pulled a clean shirt from amidst the scattered pieces of clothing Aylesford had strewn about in the course of ransacking his trunk. ‘There is more at stake here than one man’s health. At any rate, as I told you, I’m perfectly well.’ He turned away from her and drew the shirt over his head with a grimace, but schooled his expression to equanimity when he faced her again. ‘Now, if you will lead the way …’

‘Perfectly well, he says,’ Mrs Puddinge muttered as she preceded him out of the room, down the still-empty landing and up to the fourth floor. ‘With a hole in his back and a shoulder sliced open like a side of roast beef.’ She stopped before a door, produced her ring of keys from somewhere beneath her apron, and glared up at him. ‘You’re not a well man, Mr Quare. Deny it all you like, but the longer you do, the worse price you’ll pay. Heed your stomach, sir. It’s wiser than you are.’

‘The door, if you please, Mrs P.’

Scowling, she fitted the key to the lock. ‘Why, it’s unlocked!’ She pushed the door open. ‘Here you go, then, Mr Quare. I hope you find enough to hang—’

She broke off, and Quare pushed past her into the room, his hand on the pommel of his sword.

The room was empty, which was no more than he had expected. But it was not simply empty of Aylesford – it was empty of all trace of the man.