Louise hovered on the beach, a tureen of gruel growing steadily heavier in her arms. Surf licked at the heels of her boots as it rolled onto the sun-warmed sand. Standing here, the hole in the cliff face was nothing but a gaping void. It seemed absurd to imagine that people, living breathing people, would dwell within.
She found herself wanting just one more minute. Another moment in the fresh air, where the waves masked the sound of retching and coughs. It was not like her to fall prey to such weakness. She was flustered, that was all. Hard work would set her right. Heaving up the tureen, she took a deep breath and marched across the sand.
A volley of choking greeted her at the mouth of the cave. No men sat together swapping stories by the fire pit.
Only old Seth limped up to her, bowl in hand. ‘You’re a sight for sore eyes.’ His voice was like gravel. ‘Starvin’, I am.’
Hurriedly, she set the tureen down. ‘Please, help yourself. Where is Dr Pinecroft?’
He shrugged, more interested in the gruel. She noticed the marked way in which he favoured his left leg as he moved. This was a new and alarming development. Could it be that the disorder had spread to his hip?
‘What of the other men? Do they keep to their beds? It sounds as if someone is very unwell.’
Seth ignored her, lifted the lid from the tureen and scooped his bowl in. Tattoos marked his stringy arms, their ink faded and creased. It was as he removed a brimming bowl and began to rummage in his pocket for a spoon that Louise noticed something else winding between the black patterns.
The same red mark she had seen upon Harry, weaving across the skin like crimson thread.
‘Come here—’ she began, but a cry cut her off.
‘They’ve got me! They got me!’
She ran. It was not easy on the damp, stony surface. She tripped and stumbled, splashing through the shallow rock pool, but her urgency was not misplaced. As she drew nearer to Chao’s hut, she heard Papa’s voice.
‘Hold still, man!’
The door stood ajar and both Chao and Michael were lying on their backs while her father knelt between them.
He made no endeavour to conceal the anguish on his face. ‘Louise! Thank God that you are come. Something has happened, something strange, I cannot . . .’
‘They marked me!’ Chao choked. ‘I saw them come in the night and do it.’
Papa extended a hand to restrain him. It was covered in dried blood.
‘Whatever does he mean?’ she asked.
‘This mark . . . It is on Michael too.’ Papa shook his head. His hair had come loose from its ribbon tie and fell chaotically about his face. ‘I changed his silk setons for ones of India rubber, and when it was done I saw . . . Well, come and see for yourself.’
Releasing Chao, he crawled from the narrow space between the patients to the door of the hut. Louise helped him to stand.
‘I have never seen anything like it,’ he confided. ‘In all my years of physic, I never . . .’ He broke off, coughed.
Her blood turned cold.
‘Sit there, Papa, on that rock there. You are exhausted. I should have been here with you, caring for them.’
He let her push him down, but continued to gesture while he coughed. ‘The mark . . .’
‘Very well, I will go and look at it.’
She had to hitch her skirts up and fight her way into the cramped hut. The smell was indescribable. Both men appeared to have soiled themselves. Scarlet trickled down the side of Chao’s face.
‘Miss!’ He tried to sit upright. ‘Miss, look what they did to me!’
His shirt was unfastened at the neck. A mass of blotches were spread over the skin. Chao pulled the material up to show his stomach. It was covered in the same wild red scribble as Seth’s arm.
‘Their little feet,’ he gasped, rubies bubbling from his lips. ‘Like blades. They danced on me. Danced.’
The image was appalling. She reached for a cloth and carefully wiped the blood from his mouth.
‘What do you mean, Chao?’
‘I saw them,’ he insisted.
‘Saw what?’
His lips trembled beneath her cloth. ‘The things that live underground.’
Next to her, Michael spluttered painfully. The man was in a terrible state. Papa had exchanged the silk setons under his ribs for bulky rubber ones that tortured the skin. Pus was draining down the tubes unchecked. She did her best to clear it, but it swelled up anew from underneath. At least there were no blotches or scrawls near the wound. Yet Papa said he had seen something . . .
Awkwardly, she assessed the rest of his visible skin. There. That wobbling line, paler and pinkish, traced on his feet.
‘Things that live under the ground,’ she murmured as the realisation broke.
Papa was wrong to say he had seen nothing like this. He had seen something exactly like it, although less severe.
‘Papa!’ She struggled up and through the narrow door. ‘Papa, I know what it is.’
He was still sitting on the rock, elbows propped on his knees, eyes fixed on the ground.
‘Worms, Papa!’ she cried triumphantly. ‘It is just an infestation of worms.’
He stared at her in astonishment. All at once, something seemed to break, and his mouth fell open.
‘Papa?’
‘Worms. My darling girl. Of course! Worms.’
He began to laugh. There was something terrible in that laugh. Bitter.
No matter how hard she attempted to smile, her cheeks would not obey.
‘Damp, moist conditions,’ she explained quietly. ‘The diarrhoea that accompanies the malady. It is an ideal environment for the hookworm to thrive.’
He had taught her that himself.
She remembered each and every lesson. A younger man, with no grey streaking his hair, sweeping her into his arms and sitting her upon his lap to explain what he was reading. The smell of him, sharp and clean, and the rumble of his voice as she laid her head against his chest.
Papa had survived the consumption, yet somehow she was losing him all the same.
‘What would you recommend?’ She pressed him. ‘Rue and alum? Santonica clysters?’
‘Yes . . . all of that. We must endeavour to keep everything clean. Bring a jar of burnt alum and some rosemary, would you? I will . . .’ He waved one hand vacantly, ‘. . . fumigate.’
‘Yes, Papa.’
He hung his rumpled head.
A broken man. That was what one of the apothecaries back in Bristol had whispered, after it happened. She had never believed them until this moment, would not have dreamed Papa capable of making an error, let alone one so amateur. Every surety in her life seemed to be crumbling away.
‘They were right,’ he told the ground. ‘Even gouty old Redfern. They were right, and I was not. How blind I have been. How damnably proud.’
‘I do not understand—’
‘They said this disease was beyond my ability, and they were correct. I am a gentleman’s physician, no pioneer. I should have confined myself to leg ulcers, quinsy and gout.’
‘No. That is untrue. You have not slept—’
‘I doubt I will sleep again. God!’ He slapped his hand against the rock, making her jump. ‘It was to be our purpose, Louise! The one thing to make sense of it all. I was so sure . . .’ He stared towards the back of the cave. She saw the muscles in his jaw clenching and releasing. ‘We suffered, but I thought we were called . . . There was a reason . . .’
He trailed off into silence. The wind whistled through the rocks.
‘Papa,’ she said urgently. ‘What are you staring at? Papa! Look at me!’
He did. And now she wished he would not. Being held by his gaze was like being held in the grip of a fever.
‘Worms, Louise. I failed to detect something as simple as worms.’ He laughed again, a horrible, gasping sound. ‘When I think of your mother . . . of little Francis. What else might I have missed?’