Only when he saw the man on the horse at the street end of the alley did he realize that he had picked up a fist-sized stone, and almost without volition his arm drew back to fling it with all his remaining strength.
But, “Michael!” the man called softly in a familiar voice, and Crawford dropped the stone.
“My God,” he gasped haltingly, limping forward with wincing haste, “you’ve got to … get me out of here! They think …”
“I know what they think,” said Apple ton, swinging down out of the saddle. “Can you—” he began, but then he looked at Crawford more closely. “Good heavens, are you shot?”
“Just my hand.” Crawford now looked at it for the first time, and his pupils contracted with shock. The index and little fingers looked flayed, but his ring finger was gone, along with his wedding ring, leaving only a ragged, glistening stump from which blood was falling rapidly to make bright red spots on the dirt and the toes of his boots.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered, suddenly wobbly on his legs. “Jesus, man, look what …”
His eyes unfocussed, but before he could fall, Appleton stepped forward and slapped him across the face twice, forehand and backhand. “Faint later,” he said harshly. “Right now you’ve got to ride or die. Tourniquet that as soon as you’re beyond pursuit—there’s fifty pounds and a note in the saddlebag, but it seems that what you’ll need soonest is the string I tied around them. Foresightful of me to have used it, eh?”
Voices could be heard shouting on the far side of the wall, and somewhere hooves were knocking on cobblestones. Appleton gave the ashen Crawford a leg up into the saddle, clearly half expecting him to tumble right back to the ground on the other side of the horse.
But Crawford took the reins in his right hand, kicked his boots into the stirrups, pushed his heels down to be able to grip the horse, and, when Appleton gave the horse a loud slap across the thigh, he hunched forward as his mount sprang away west down the broad Hastings street in the morning sunlight. He clamped his teeth on the stump of his missing finger and worked very hard at not being violently sick.
Only the highest chimney-pots still glowed in the reddening sunlight as the stagecoach lurched and lunged its slow way up the crowded length of Borough High Street in London, and when it stopped in front of an inn near the new Marshalsea Prison, Crawford was the first passenger to alight from the carriage.
In a back corner of a Brighton tavern at midmorning he had tied a clean cloth around his finger-stump and then drenched it in brandy before gingerly pulling on a pair of gloves. Now, after more riding and no rest and finally, after abandoning the exhausted horse, six straight hours jammed between two fat women in the London coach, he was obviously fevered—his hand was throbbing like a blacksmith’s bellows, and his breathing was hotly metallic and echoing in his head.
He had used some of Appleton’s money to buy clothes and a new leather portmanteau to carry them in, and though it was light luggage compared to what he had left behind in the Hastings hotel room, he had to repress a groan when he picked it up from where the coachman had casually set it down.
As he walked away up High Street he stayed in the shadows under the overhanging second stories of the old half-timbered houses, for he was nervous about all the prisons around him. Ahead of him to the left, on the Thames bank, stood the burned-out ruin of the famous Clink, and behind him, just south of the new prison where the stage had stopped, was the King’s Bench Prison. Why the hell, he thought peevishly, didn’t Appleton think of the alarming nature of this area, and send me somewhere else?
The Borough’s many sewage ditches always smelled horrible, but after this hot summer day the fumes seemed to hint at some sort of cloacal fermentation, and he worried about compounding his fever in the bad air. At least it was medical students he was going to stay with.
The street was clogged with homeward-bound costermonger carts, every one of which seemed to have a dog riding on top, but soon he could see, over them, the arch of London Bridge—and remembering the instructions in Appleton’s note, he turned right down the last street before the bridge. He turned right again at the next corner, and found himself, as the note had said, on Dean Street. He walked down to the narrow house that was number eight—it was right across the street from a Baptist chapel, another dubious omen—and obediently rattled the doorknocker. A headache had begun behind his eyes, and he was sweating heavily under his coat.
As he waited on the cobblestones, he mentally reviewed Appleton’s note. “Pretend to be a Medical Student,” Appleton had written. “You’re a bit old, but there are older. Be frankish about your Navy experience, for you could have been a Dresser to a Naval Surgeon without getting any Credentials, but be vague about questions touching on whose Lectures you are attending. It’s unlikely that you will be recognized, but of course don’t talk about Obstetrics. Henry Stephens will not press you for Answers once he knows that you are a Friend of mine, Nor will he let others do so.”
The door was pulled open by a sturdy young man who was shorter than Crawford. Crawford thought he looked more like a laborer than a medical student. His reddish-brown hair had obviously been pushed back from his forehead only a moment before.
“Yes?” the young man said.
“Is,” said Crawford hoarsely, “uh, Henry Stephens at home?”
“Not at the moment. Can I be of any help?”
“Well … a friend of his told me I might be able to get a room here.” Crawford leaned against the doorframe and tried not to pant. “Help pay for the joint sitting room, I think it was.” His voice was hollow and rasping from his screaming this morning.
“Oh.” The young man stared at him for a moment, then swung the door open. “Uh, do come in. Tyrrell moved out a week ago, I guess you heard, and we could use the help. You’re,” he said dubiously, “another medical student?”
“That’s right.” Crawford stepped forward into the warmth and lamplight, and sank into a chair and began pulling off his gloves. “My name is—” Belatedly he wondered what name to give. His mind was a blank—all he could remember was that in the note Appleton had said Be frankish. “—Michael Frankish.”
The young man seemed to find the name plausible. He held out his hand. “I’m John Keats—currently a student at Guy’s Hospital, right around the corner. Are you at Guy’s?”
“Uh, no, I’m at … St. Thomas’s.” He was pleased with himself for having remembered the name of the hospital across the street from Guy’s.
Keats noticed the dark bandage on the stump of Crawford’s finger then, and it seemed to upset him. “What—your finger! What happened?”
A little flustered, Crawford said, “Oh, it—had to be amputated. Gangrene.”
Keats stared at him anxiously for a moment. “I gather you had a rough trip,” he ventured finally as he closed the door. “Would a glass of wine sit well?”
“Sit like corn upon the head of Solomon,” said Crawford, too tired to bother with making sense. “Yes,” he added, seeing Keats’s bewildered look. “What area of medicine are you studying?” he went on hastily, speaking more loudly as Keats went into the next room.
“Surgical and apothecary,” came the answer. A moment later Keats reappeared with a half-full bottle and two glasses. “I’m going to the Apothecaries’ Hall this Thursday to take the examinations, though I won’t be able to practice until the thirty-first of October.”