he girl on the table in front of Raven looked fourteen at the most, and plainly terrified.he girl on the table in front of Raven looked fourteen at the most, and plainly terrified.
‘Lynsey Clegg. Been living on the streets for months,’ Mrs Stevenson had told him earlier. ‘Thrown out by her father when it was discovered she was pregnant, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was responsible for her condition too.’
Mrs Stevenson did not say what her grounds were for believing this. She didn’t make such accusations lightly, however, and Raven had come to learn that she made it her business to find out as much as possible about the women who passed under her roof.
Lynsey was slight, about four and a half feet tall with a skinny frame that spoke of years of malnourishment. It would have been impossible for her to disguise her condition long past the quickening.
‘The child is breach,’ Ziegler observed quietly. ‘I anticipate problems delivering the head.’
He kept his words out of the girl’s hearing, but Raven did not imagine she would have picked up much anyway. She was nearly hysterical from the pain and her growing panic.
‘She is not built for this. She has such a narrow pelvis. She is but a child.’
‘Ether?’ Raven suggested, the word emerging before he could question himself.
Ziegler merely nodded.
The contrast was, as always, astonishing. The girl went from torment to easeful sleep in a matter of minutes, and remained oblivious of the violent manoeuvres Ziegler was necessarily inflicting upon her. Despite all of this Raven could not help but think about Mrs Graseby. He remained ignorant as to what had gone wrong, what had caused her adverse reaction and why it had proven fatal after she appeared to rally. But then, such ignorance was the very reason he should not have been administering ether unsupervised.
Ziegler brought forth a baby girl and handed her to a nurse while he delivered the placenta. Raven hoped the infant would see more than fourteen years before she was giving birth too. The mother started to come around, her oblivion one last sleep before waking up in a new world.
Having swaddled the child, the nurse held her out towards her mother. The girl simply looked afraid of it.
At that point, they were interrupted by Mrs Stevenson, hastening towards them down a corridor and calling out as she ran: ‘Dr Ziegler! You are needed urgently. You too, Mr Raven.’
In the lobby of Milton House, just inside the door, a young woman lay writhing upon a cot, while alongside her stood a burly fellow, clutching his hat nervously.
‘He carried her here,’ Mrs Stevenson informed them.
‘They wanted to call for a doctor,’ the man said, ‘but I suggested I fetch her here, as that would be quicker. We came from just along the street.’
‘Who is she?’ Ziegler asked.
‘Her name is Kitty. That’s all I know.’
There was a smell of brick dust about the man, and he had the rough hands of a labourer.
‘And who are you?’
The man paused, mulling it over before venturing his name.
‘Mitchell, sir. Donald Mitchell.’
Ziegler examined the woman, as much as she would allow. She was squirming in pain, sweating and incoherent. He asked her some questions, but it was as though she was not in control of her faculties. Ziegler looked again at the man who brought her in.
‘What can you tell us? What did you see? What do you know of her?’
Again, he seemed reluctant to answer. Raven reckoned he knew why.
‘Were you with her, sir?’ he asked pointedly, so that the man could make no mistake as to his meaning.
He eyed Raven with surprise, but the surprise of one who has been caught out.
‘I was with another,’ he admitted. ‘Across the landing. We heard her cry out like the very devil was about her. I kicked in the door because I feared she was being attacked, then when we discovered her ill, as I say, I opted to bring her here directly.’
Raven contrasted this with his own conduct, sneaking away so that he was not seen. He liked to think it would have been different had Evie not already been dead, but had no doubt that Mitchell was a stronger man than he, in many ways.
They wheeled Kitty to a room where they had better light, though at this hour that was not saying much. She seemed to pass out momentarily, which allowed Ziegler an opportunity to put his hands about her.
‘She’s pregnant. Past the quickening.’
The calm did not last. As soon as her eyes opened again, her body buckled and twisted on the bed as though indeed the devil was not merely about her, but inside her. Raven watched her contort herself and felt sure he was witnessing what had happened to Evie before he got there that night.
‘Did you take a draft or a pill?’ he asked her. ‘Did you seek to rid yourself of what grows in your womb?’
Her eyes fixed on his long enough for him to believe she had heard the question, but she offered no word of answer.
‘She wouldn’t tell you if she had,’ said Mrs Stevenson. ‘For fear.’
‘We are here only to help you, Kitty,’ he insisted. ‘Please, if you took something, let us know.’
At that point, the convulsions worsened as though Raven’s words had angered the demon that possessed her. Her limbs became rigid, her head thrown back.
Ziegler tried to dose her with some laudanum but her jaw was clamped shut. Her convulsions continued unabated and it was clear they were powerless to intervene.
‘There is nothing we can do,’ he said quietly. ‘You should leave now, Raven. Go home and rest, for this all begins again tomorrow.’
‘I would stay,’ Raven replied. ‘If there is nothing else anyone can do, then this much I can offer.’
Ziegler looked upon him curiously for a moment, then nodded by way of acquiescence.
Raven sat with her for the next few hours, watching her tormented mercilessly, her body pulled around as if she was trying to escape her very being. Though she barely seemed aware he was there, he would not let her endure these throes alone as Evie had.
Even the end was not a gentle fading, but a final, brutal jolt.
Raven remained still alongside her, his heart anxious that she might resume her agonies. After a short time, he tested for a pulse and found none.
‘She has passed?’ Ziegler said, appearing in the doorway. He had absented himself upon Raven’s insistence, but Raven wondered whether he had ever been far.
‘Indeed. I will tell Mitchell.’
Ziegler looked apologetic. ‘He left some time ago. It was mercy enough for him to bring her here.’
‘Did he tell you anything else? From where he brought her, at least?’
‘No. He did not wait long. I don’t think he knew her.’
‘Then have we any means of knowing who she was?’
‘Not unless someone comes to claim her remains.’
Raven thought of Evie, hauled down the stairs wrapped in a soiled shroud and slung onto a cart.
No funeral, no mourners, no headstone.
‘I never knew her surname,’ he said.
‘Mitchell didn’t give us it.’