SIXTEEN

arah picked up the shirt, pinching a small amount of the filthy material between the tip of her index finger and thumb. She wished she had a pair of tongs for the job. It looked like Raven had been washing floors or cleaning the grate with it.

As if.

The thin cotton of the garment, which she presumed had at one point been white, was now grey in colour and streaked with dirt. There were dark splotches on both sleeves that she recognised as blood. One of the sleeves was attempting to part company from the rest of the garment, a tear at the seam having been ineptly repaired at some point.

‘I hope he can stitch wounds better than that,’ she mused as she dropped the offensive item into a basket by the door. The notion brought to mind the nasty cut on Raven’s cheek, about which she suspected he was being less than truthful. He claimed he had been randomly set upon, but her instinct was that he must have played some part in precipitating the attack. She recognised something restless in him. Ambitious and driven, yes, but not at peace with himself.

He struck her as impetuous, desperate to prove himself, though to whom would be an interesting question. Since he got here, he had been trying too hard to look like he was in control, over-compensating for the fear that he was in over his head. Recalling her own first steps and missteps as a housemaid, Sarah well understood how difficult it could be when you were new to a situation. However, her sympathy was limited by the fact that his was a privileged problem to have. She would have loved to be negotiating his new situation rather than that of a domestic servant, who could be cast out onto the street for speaking out of turn.

Sarah had come into service here at Queen Street following the deaths of her parents, the local minister finding this position for her as he was an old friend of Dr Simpson. Her premature departure from the parish school had no doubt been a relief to her schoolmaster, who was becoming increasingly wearied by her arguments regarding her exclusion from subjects deemed suited only to boys, such as Classics and mathematics. He was convinced that her grasp of reading, writing and arithmetic was sufficient for a girl of her station, insisting that knitting and sewing would be of more use to her and would open up the possibility of industrial work in the future. As though a factory job or work in a mill should be the culmination of all her ambition. If one was capable of carrying out a task or learning a body of knowledge, then why should it matter whether one be male or female? Her fury at this injustice had cooled little since.

She turned to take in the rest of the room, wondering what other horrors might be lurking there. To be fair it was not as messy as Mina’s chaotic fiefdom but it was far from tidy. Open books and papers were scattered across the small writing desk in one corner, spilling onto the floor in a wide circle. A black coat – mucky cuffs, threadbare around the collar – was hanging from the back of a chair and muddy boots had trailed clumps of dirt across the carpet from doorway to fireplace. Sarah sighed. This was going to take a bit of time to sort out.

In order to see more of the carpet so that she could put some tea leaves down and sweep it, she decided to start at the desk, or at least the floor surrounding the desk. As she stooped to pick up some of the discarded papers she found herself next to the battered trunk that had followed Raven from his previous accommodation. It was open, some of the papers having landed inside. The trunk mostly contained books, presumably not deemed of immediate necessity, as there were plenty of those piled elsewhere.

She recalled his high-handed conduct on the morning of his first clinic.

Do you think a man has time to read fiction when he is training to be a doctor?

Evidently, he had time to read fiction once, for there were several piled up inside the box. She picked up the topmost one, The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray. Beneath it was The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, and below that three works by Walter Scott.

Sarah turned the Thackeray book in her hand. She was sure Mina had a copy. She opened it, noting that the inside of the cover had been proprietorially inscribed with a handwritten name: Thomas Cunningham. A gift? A theft? Sarah examined the Cooper, noting the same name inside. Second-hand, then. A job lot, purchased from a fellow student.

She gathered up the papers and attempted to order them. Some dealt with what looked like injuries sustained during childbirth, others concerning a procedure known as a craniotomy, the illustrations for which she was sure she must be misreading. Sarah winced and picked up another, which turned out to be a letter. Upon discovering this, she turned it over and put it back down, but not without observing that it was from Raven’s mother, and more intriguingly that she had addressed him neither as Will nor William.

She smiled at this discovery, moving the letter to one side so that it did not get lost among the piles of notes. That was when she encountered an open journal, her eyes drawn by the contrast between two pages. On one side were dense paragraphs of Raven’s neat handwriting, a cursory glance at which revealed them to be detailing the procedure for administering ether. On the opposite folio, there were but two words in impatiently scrawled capitals:

EVIE POISONED?

Sarah heard the tread of footsteps too late. She had been seen.

‘What the devil do you think you’re doing?’ Raven asked. He snatched the journal from where it lay upon the desk, slamming it closed with a force that caused several of the papers she had gathered to drift from their piles. He seemed disproportionate in his vehemence, making her wonder at the significance of whatever he feared she might have read.

‘There is no need for temper,’ she responded, keeping her voice even in the hope that it would calm his ire. A complaint from the professor’s apprentice would give Mrs Lyndsay all the reason she needed to curtail Sarah’s clinic duties. ‘I am merely attempting to tidy up.’

‘You were not merely tidying up, you were going through my private things, which I will not tolerate. There is nothing among these papers that concerns you, and still less that you would even understand.’

Despite the precariousness of her situation, Sarah could not prevent Raven’s words from raising her hackles. She knew she should retreat, but an uncontainable instinct urged her to advance instead. She could just about tolerate bowing and scraping to the upstairs patients, but not to this scruffy youth.

‘Who is Evie?’ she asked.

He seemed flabbergasted, which had the unintended effect of spiking his bluster by putting him on the back foot.

‘She is . . . no business of yours.’

Sarah decided to press her advantage. ‘How did you really get that cut on your face, Wilberforce?’

His eyes flashed, but she could see a hint of anxiety beneath the outrage. Raven had secrets, and that was the real reason for this display of indignation.

‘You read a letter from my mother?’

‘I would not so intrude. I merely saw the addressee. I have heard Mrs Simpson address you as William several times and you’ve never corrected her. Why would that be? Does Dr Simpson know your real name is Wilberforce?’

Raven’s face flushed. ‘You would do well to remember your position. You seem to forget that you are a servant. What kind of house is this where such behaviour is not reined in?’

Sarah gazed down at the trunk and then to her basket. ‘Are you used to greater deference from those below stairs, sir?’ she enquired.

He did not answer. He looked worried now more than angry. He was afraid of what she might know, and he was right to be. It appeared there was someone in the household with an even more tenuous grip upon his position than she had.

‘Who is Thomas Cunningham?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Yes you do. He was the previous owner of the second-hand books in your trunk. Mrs Simpson said your late father was a lawyer in St Andrews, but I’d wager you’re no higher born than I am.’

She lifted up the soiled and threadbare shirt from the laundry basket.

‘There is little you can conceal from the woman who does your laundry.’

Raven looked at the shirt, his indignation spent, his demeanour meek, even vulnerable. It was as though her seeing the state of the garment was a greater trespass than the reading of his notes.

‘What are you doing with that?’ he asked meekly.

‘Your shirt is soiled. It needs to be cleaned and is in sorry need of repair. I was going to soak the stains out of it and stitch the hole in the shoulder seam.’

Raven took a step towards her, fire returning to his eyes.

‘I will thank you not to touch my things,’ he said.

Sarah held his gaze.

‘As you wish.’

She dropped the shirt onto the floor, turned on her heel and left the room.