Chapter 16
Roland felt oddly at ease in the aftermath of the Holy Comfort Church picnic, and it certainly wasn’t because of the church or the picnic.
Perhaps speaking plainly with Mae Casper had been a catharsis of a sort, even if it was certainly still falling short of the ultimate relief to be found in that particular matter.
Either way, he found himself in a better mood and in significantly less pain at the site of his bullet graze as he started his day at the Clerkenwell Clinic the following morning.
It was likely unrelated that Dr. Ravi had the day off.
Certainly unrelated.
“Did you sleep here again?” he asked little Winston, who had been recruited into helping the Quaker marms plate their porridge. “If you don’t have the pox by now, you’re not going to get it.”
“I know,” Winston replied with a frown. “Dr. Bethel says I’m a mule.”
“Immune,” corrected one of the Quaker ladies.
“Well, maybe both,” Roland replied, tossing her a wink and grinning at the way she blushed. He stepped aside and let her usher Winston out of the room, laden with steaming bowls, to go up the stairs.
He emerged from the kitchenette to find Mae Casper pulling her apron on, her hair still visible in its crown braid with tiny little curls sprinkled around her brow before she tamed them under the wrap of her hair band.
She looked up, blinking those dark eyes in surprise, and gave a soft little curve of the lips.
“Well,” she said. “You’re here early today. ”
“Couldn’t sleep,” he replied, leaning against the arch that separated the two rooms and crossing his arms loosely in front of him. “I’ve always been an early riser.”
“That’s surprising,” she replied, wrapping the apron strings twice around her waist and starting the process of knotting it in the front. “Your vocation goes into the wee hours most nights, doesn’t it?”
He flashed a smile. “It does. It always has, since I carried a link torch as a lad. I still like the mornings just fine.”
“Hm,” she said, drawing the long scrap of white fabric that would hide all those lovely little curls from him out of the pocket of her apron. “I suppose I do too.”
“Now, the evenings,” he said, tilting his head to the side as he fished the little golden duck out of his pocket and flipped it over his knuckles. “Those are for more demanding things, like family dinners.”
She narrowed her eyes as she wove the cloth around her hair, watching the glint of the duck as it danced over his fingers. “Yes,” she agreed. “I suspect Aristotle serves an impressive banquet spread of an evening.”
He hesitated, surprise flickering over his face, and then allowed himself to laugh, snatching the duck up before it could fall to the floor. “He does, in fact,” he said, grinning at her in earnest now. “Are you suggesting he host your father and brother when I take them up on their offer?”
“When is such an aggressive word,” she returned, knotting the band at the nape of her neck. “Shouldn’t it be if?”
“No,” he said. “It shouldn’t.”
“It seems odd to me,” she replied, unable to stifle a smile even while disagreeing, “to facilitate a dinner between our two families when we’ve never so much as shared a meal between ourselves, Mr. Reed.”
“Do not call me Mr. Reed,” he reminded her. “Are you asking me to dinner?”
“I am not,” she said. “Roland. Would you mind collecting the empty bottles from the kitchenette? They should be dry from their washing last night, and we need to re-supply the witch hazel.”
He grinned, watching the way she spun on her heel, tossing him one more look over the shoulder as she sauntered away, hips swinging.
Empty bottles indeed.
He wondered how the quality of the dinners at the public house across the road were. Should he take her there or bring the food here?
He pondered this as he executed her little task, stopping only once to hide the little golden duckling amongst her supplies, to surprise her later. He wedged it into the center of a spool of stitching thread so it would emerge when she picked it up.
Stitches were the one guaranteed treatment on any given day.
As he walked a crate of bottles out of the kitchen, he saw Winston being walked back in, arms laden with witch hazel twigs, steered by the Quakers again.
“But I don’t want to cook witch water,” he was whining. “I want to make sunshine drink or run errands or help the doctress put bones back together.”
“Desire doth not plough the field,” the woman chided.
“What does that mean?” Winston cried, wobbling and stomping as he was led to his task. “I wish I did have the pox after all.”
“Another field,” the woman intoned with a chuckle. “Unploughed.”
Waiting for the boiling and decocting of the witch hazel gave him time to relabel the empty bottles in the storeroom and rinse out the funnels, which had grown rather dusty since their last use.
He found himself whistling while he worked, and reflected that it wasn’t entirely unlike setting up and breaking down the Vixen outside operating hours as he listened to the hum of patients and students entering and exiting outside.
When Ezra’s voice joined the thrum, he made a mental note to pull him aside later and go over that folio of information that Abraham Murphy had given to the ladies at the church picnic.
There were a fair few names and particulars in there that would be of great interest to the journalist, as they had been to Roland himself.
He had a mind to go through it with Dr. Casper as well. He might have some insight into the establishment dynasts within.
When he poked his head out an hour or two later to check on that witch hazel, he was surprised to see the coroner, Mr. Richards, standing in the entryway with a trio of men, two young and one old, who looked a little disoriented to be standing there.
“Mr. Richards?” he said, pushing his hair behind his ears and striding forward. “I didn’t expect to see you this side of the city. Are you looking for me?”
“Oh, Mr. Reed!” said the neat little man, looking relieved. “I was looking for Miss Casper, actually. Is she here?”
He nodded, but before he could offer to retrieve her, she emerged of her own accord and shouted a greeting across the room, parting from a man who appeared to have three fingers on his left hand tightly bound together, who winced at her back as she went.
“Ah, Miss Casper,” he said, turning from Roland entirely and brightening.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your work, but I thought in this instance you’d consider it worthwhile.
I wanted to introduce you to the family Rutherford, of Seven Dials.
It was their mother whose cause of death you diagnosed the other day. The lady with the bruised leg.”
“Oh,” she said, coming up short, her shoulder brushing Roland’s. She looked a little startled, perhaps even embarrassed, blinking from one man to the next. “I am so sorry for your loss.”
“We was very confused,” said the eldest man, who must have been the deceased’s husband.
“Milk leg didn’t even occur to us, given her most recent baby is this grown fellow standing here to my side.
We’ve been in a state trying to figure why the Lord took her from us, and you finally gave us an answer, miss. We came to thank you.”
She paused, taking in a little clogged breath that made Roland startle and look down at her in concern. She blinked, touching the corners of her eyes, and gave a shaky laugh. “Oh!” she said. “I thought you’d come to shout at me for disrespecting the dead.”
“Oh, no, madam!” the younger of the two sons exclaimed.
“We requested it! Mum was hale as a prize mare. It didn’t make any sense at all.
We had to know why. And we wanted to come and ask if we two should be so worried about our own legs and such, or our wives’, seeing as it harmed our own blood in this way. ”
She took a moment, tilting her head in consideration. “What sort of work did your mother do?” she asked. “You say she was quite hale, but was she active?”
The men glanced at each other. “Active as such,” the husband answered. “She was a laundress for many a year, but the daughters-in-law do most of the scrubbing and hanging now, and she would sit and darn. She also had taken a fancy to cheese making and liked her churn.”
Mae nodded. “She likely sat quite a lot, then, even if her top half was busy?”
The three nodded.
“Some blood sticks together easier than others,” she said with a little shrug.
“It’s important to make sure the legs get movement and exercise to move the blood around inside so it can’t sit still long enough to form a dangerous ball.
It can happen to men, certainly, and is especially dangerous right after childbirth, as it sounds like you know. Good habits should keep you safe.”
They looked relieved, the father even offering a little smile to Mae.
“We put her to rest at St. Sebastian’s, ’round Seven Dials, once we could tell her what happened to her,” he said. “You are welcome to visit her any time. She’d like you very well, you know. She’s a good listener.”
“I shall endeavor to visit,” Mae said, and sounded like she truly meant it.
Roland could only watch all of this unfold, marveling a little at its strangeness.
The three shook her hand, each one with as much respect as they’d likely show any aristocrat doctor, not minding at all that she was talc-dusted or that her skin was so much darker than theirs.
When Mr. Richards followed up with a handshake of his own, he did so with both hands cupping hers and a firm grip to go with his smile.
“You only ever hear of families protesting the rite of autopsy,” he said softly, “but there are many who request it, believe it or not. Many people want to know why their loved one is no longer here. I could use your help when this happens, Miss Casper. I could use your help often.”
“You will have it,” she assured him, her voice gone a bit wobbly in humility.