The Essex Serpent(78)

He ought to have had the finest surgeon in Europe attending him, not me: my skills are modest at best (in fact, he has been in the habit of mocking them since we were students together). My hands shook each time I picked up the instruments; they rattled on the tray, and I knew he’d see I was afraid. He asked me to unbind the bandages so that he could examine the wound and issue instructions before entering hypnosis, and though I cannot imagine the suffering he endured as the cloth was drawn back from the flesh he did nothing more than bite down upon his lip and turn very white. I lifted back the flap of his palm and he surveyed the broken tendons as if they’d only been those of one of the cadavers we once cut and stitched. He told me which stitches I should use to bring the two ends of the tendons together, and ensure the sheath remained intact – how I must not cause the tension in the skin of his palm to strain once the wound was closed. Then he began to whisper beneath his breath to himself, which brought him comfort: he recited scraps of poetry, and the names of chemicals, and listed all the bones of the human body. Then at last his eyes rolled towards the door, and he smiled, as if he had seen an old friend come through, and he fell into a trance.

I betrayed him. I gave him my promise and knew that I would break it. I waited a few moments, and lightly touched the flesh of his hand, and satisfied that he was more or less insensate I summoned a nurse and we administered the anaesthetic.

I operated for more than two hours. I will not bore you with details of the surgery, only say with shame that I gave it my best, and it was not enough. No-one ever matched him for the minuteness of his skill, and for his courage: if he could only have attended to it himself I believe in a year’s time no-one would know how badly he’d been injured. I closed the wound, and he was brought round, and when he felt the soreness of the tube in his throat he knew at once what I had done, and I think he might have throttled me then, if he could.

He remained in hospital for two days, refusing all visitors. He insisted on having the dressings removed, so that he could examine my work. My stitching was no better than a blind child’s, he said, but at least I had kept the site clean, and there was no sign of infection. When he was well enough to go home I went with him to his rooms on Pentonville Road, and it was then that we found your letter on the doormat.

Let me tell you: where the knife failed, you have succeeded. He is shattered – you have turned out all his lights! You have broken all his windows!

Three weeks have passed and there has been no good news. The tendons that give movement to his index and middle fingers have shortened significantly, and they are crooked towards the palm, giving the appearance of a hook. Perhaps he might regain a greater scope of movement if he were prepared to do the exercises he ought, but he has lost hope. You cut something out of him. He is absent. He has no resolve. I’ve seen it before in the eyes of dogs whose masters broke their spirit young.

Your second letter was a kind one, certainly, but don’t you know him well enough to keep your pity to yourself?

I won’t write again unless he asks me.

He can’t write. He can’t hold a pen.

Yours sincerely,





GEORGE SPENCER





IV

THESE LAST TIMES OF REBELLION





SEPTEMBER





1


Autumn’s kind to Aldwinter: thick sun aslant on the common forgives a multitude of sins. The dog-roses have gone over to crimson hips, and children stain their hands green breaking walnuts open. Skeins of geese unravel over the estuary, and cobwebs dress the gorse in silk.

For all that, things aren’t as they ought to be. World’s End sinks into the marsh and there’s fungus growing in the empty grate. The quay is quiet: better to risk a lean winter than set sail on polluted waters. Rumours come from Point Clear and St Osyth, from Wivenhoe and Brightlingsea: the beast in the Blackwater was seen by a fisherman at tide’s turn one night and he went clean out of his wits; a child was found half-drowned with a grey-black mark on her belly; a dog’s been cast up on the saltings with its head all awry. Now and then a half-hearted watchman sets a fire by Leviathan and makes a mark in the logbook, but never lasts the night.

No sign yet of Naomi Banks. It’s never said that she must’ve gone down one night to the marsh and there encountered the serpent, but it’s generally assumed. Banks lets his fishing-nets tangle and his red sails moulder and is banned from the White Hare for putting the wind up his fellow drinkers. ‘Coming ready or not!’ he bellows from the doorstep, and keels into the street.

Up in his rooms on the Pentoville Road, Luke’s hand knits together well enough. Spencer winds and unwinds the dressing, and admires his own needlework, and sees the crooking inward of the fingers; meanwhile Luke looks placidly out over the wet street and says nothing. He has memorised Cora’s first letter from its first word to her signature: How could you – how could you? Her second goes unanswered for all her contrition.

Martha writes to Spencer. Edward Burton and his mother are to lose their home, she says – the rent has become intolerable. Not all the laundry and bright rag rugs in London will keep the wolf from the door. Has anything been done? Has Charles anything to report? When can she bring good news? Spencer detects an urgency there between the lines, and puts it down to her tender heart, her good hard conscience. But he has nothing to report, and cannot think how to reply.