"Yes, she's fair," he said, low and kindly. "But don't take hurt, there's many of them are. I'll show you a selection as will take your breath away. Don't plump for one before you've even seen the field. Blood! So late as we are, our lord commander will likely cut it off for you!"
But when they climbed the Biter's side ten minutes later and not unfearfully it was a surly company who greeted them, and cursed them on account that they were not Slack Dickie. He had not come on board as promised, and when he did they had missed that morning's tide. Will lay in his blanket later, aware of grumbling from forward that was loud and hardly sober. They'd missed their time on shore, they'd missed their fun, they'd missed their ladies of the night.
And what have I missed, Will asked himself interminably. I have missed her.
Fourteen
The woman who had had the teeth had been a beauty in her time. The women of her household were generous in this consensus, sharing delight in the subtle malice inherent in the position. Their mistress had been a beauty, and had married well an older, solid man. But even before her teeth had begun to fall away to rottenness she had lost the bloom of youth her time, indeed, had almost passed. If she was old, her man was older, and if she was vain, her husband was yet worse. He had taken her because when young she had been beautiful, and he had agreed to her idea of desperate surgery because his need for female loveliness was greater than her own. The women of the household, watching and waiting since the operation, were gleeful at their own hypocrisy.
At first, it seemed, the teeth had taken well. Milady Mistress Amelia Wimbarton had suffered bravely in the process of extraction, fortified by far less drink than Cecily but immeasurably more determination. Cecily had been crying even before Marcus Dennett had produced his instruments, and had had a paroxysm of screaming when Mistress Wimbarton had pulled back her lips for one last view of them in situ. She had had, indeed, a flash of doubt that so characterless a girl, and one so unattractive in her squawking selfishness should be the donor, as if her teeth might be as inferior as she herself appeared. The other one, the beauty with the hair and figure, was a far more likely maid, but Dennett spoke darkly of problems with her gums (that could, however, be overcome if Cecily's did not take, or broke as he extracted them). What's more the clincher the chosen ones were in fact superior in their whiteness and their shape. They also, measured with his callipers, were the perfect size.
The operation was fast, brutal, and extremely bloody. Cecily was tied into a heavy oaken chair, because she just would not be still, and Mistress Wimbarton sat beside her, unfettered, and at a three-foot distance. She had only women present, except for the surgeon, because it was not at all the place for men (who would likely faint, as Dorothy, her best woman, rather grimly jested), and least of all for Wimbarton, who claimed he should be there to hold her hand, and whom she suspected most deeply of a black and shameful interest in the sight. The pair had had no children, despite her good wide hips, but she had miscarried once, a long, long time before, and her husband had had a morbid and (she thought) unnatural fascination for the details. That experience, incidentally, had taught her about natural agony. She took only two large glasses of brandy before Dennett set on, and was confident it would be enough. In all twelve minutes that he took, she uttered not a single cry.
It took twelve minutes, and two of the younger women fainted, while the dark-haired girl started a sobbing fit until the surgeon clouted her, then later vomited in a corner and had to be released outside. The surgeon himself went deadly pale at times, and produced so much sweat that it blinded all three of them promiscuously by running off his face, and caused him to put his spike and pliers down quite frequently because he lost his grip. He had pulled teeth before a thousand times, which much was obvious, but no one except himself knew this was his first time at a full extraction. Each time he got a stubborn one, and had to jerk and twist and tug, he found himself wondering what the next step would be, if it refused point blank to leave its home. He heard bone splinter once, and to his horror it was in the buyer's mouth, and he saw small shards drop on her bloody tongue, and he caught her eyes, which were opaque with agony, and she did not so much as groan. Dear Jesus, Marcus Dennett caught himself at thinking: today I earn my bread. The smell was evil, also, in the hag's mouth (as he thought her), and he realised he should have charged her husband more.
Twelve minutes of exhausting work, and anxiety in case it all went wrong. The method was tried and tested although not by him; he'd had instruction of a Scotchman he had beat at cards and who could not pay in cash with satisfaction far from guaranteed.
For best results you did it tooth for tooth, first one from the buyer's mouth to make the hole, then the corresponding one torn from the seller, but torn more carefully so as not to damage it. For the first few, Dennett found this relativity difficult, for speed was of the essence but inflicting greater pain on the buyer by greater haste was not a good idea, and nor was appearing to be more delicate with the seller, despite the fact that fast extraction could end in disaster if a tooth should crack or crumble. The order of attack was crucial, as he had been told not once but several times by his instructor: the front teeth were the easiest to come by, not having the deep and complicated roots of side and back ones, but complications could outweigh advantages. If you took the front ones first it made a passageway, or access, for the rest, and gave you room to lever and to wrench the reluctant biters at the back. But some schools said experience showed the operation could only be successful if the giver's tooth was plugged immediately into the socket of the receiver, the very instant that this socket should come clear. Therefore, if one took out teeth and put them to one side for later, the holes would close in the recipient, or would reject the new teeth completely, just never tighten round them for a grip of permanency. Further, one could fail to match them, take the wrong tooth for the wrong hole, or become entirely befuddled.
From his own experience, Dennett knew some of the other problems. Some tooth sockets produced blood in gushes, some mouths filled so full and swiftly one could see no holes at all. Then there was dropping, swallowing, jaw-clenching for the pain, even (so the Scotchman claimed) the fear that one of the surgeon's victims (he used the word, but gave a hoot to soften it) should drown on her own blood. Or his, as some men were vain enough to try it, it appeared; more normally it was a woman, often at her man's insistence. The mountebank, steeped in sweat and fear and gore, had to juggle all this in his mind for this long twelve minutes of his life, buoyed only by the thought that he was making sixty pounds from it, except that only thirty had been paid, with the residue collectable when the new teeth had stayed firm and splendid in Mistress Wimbarton's physog for a week. Oh yes, and ten pounds of the sixty went to the maid for her part in the jollity; although Dennett had his own ideas of that. He'd brought the two maids here by a long arrangement with the gentleman, he'd persuaded them there was no alternative save starve or sell their bodies to some villains that he knew lived locally, and he'd figured that with luck he'd end up with a customer exceeding satisfied, and one undamaged Deb to make a living on her back for him, being a surpassing beauty. Cecily's ten pounds would be paid in drink to ease her pain and pap to pass her gums and serve as food a neat arrangement he had not even told her of wherefore her loss soon afterwards from the copse was hardly loss at all, although Deborah had irked him with her going. If Milady's teeth held as they ought to do, no concern he would collect the second thirty pounds. If they did not, though, he would have to find the spares, or forgo that vastly sum of money. Or run, and lose goodwill from Chester Wimbarton, a magistrate and man of great importance locally. Still, he'd done the operation with great care, he thought, and skill. They should hold.