This New and Poisonous Air (12 page)

THE HOSPITAL, CALLED ST. JOHN’S OF JERUSALEM, was a Byzantine affair, and I was happy we did not have to walk its halls. I could hear the pained moaning well enough from
its windows and pitied the penniless men and women who were forced to convalesce there. Alain kept watch near the carriage, fidgeting nervously in his auburn suit while I approached the ancient gate of the adjoining burial yard and attempted conversation with the gravedigger, a tall man with a sandy face who sat smoking a reed pipe on one of the larger stones. The rusted metal of the gate peeled away like tree bark beneath my fingers, and the digger took his own time answering my inquiries. He said the men who filched the yard weren’t called bodysnatchers; they’d been dubbed Resurrection Men.

“Like Christ himself?” I asked, not without humor.

“Doctors must have somethin’ to study upon, ma’am,” he continued. “Fresh bodies are hard to come by these days. Sometimes, if they are not given readily, they must be taken. We never use stolen goods here at St. John’s though. You can tell your ladies at the garden society that.” And from this protestation, I realized that St. John’s was quite likely mining its own fresh graves. The digger was not a digger at all but a Resurrection Man. He went on to tell me that sometimes these Resurrection Men were also interested in fully decomposed bodies that were no longer wearing their flesh. “These,” he said, “are sold to country churches desperate for bones to fill their reliquaries. Imagine the jaw of some John Doe being touted as a vestige of John the Baptist—only nobody better ask about his gold tooth.” He laughed, and I excused myself quickly thereafter, marking my map as I walked.

Our hired carriage carried us further into Cripplesgate, and I began to count the small cemeteries that could be seen from the street, stopping when I’d reached twenty. How could there be so many? The poor were prone to death, but also apparently prone to exhibiting that mortality. There seemed a graveyard on every block. And all the
while, Alain recounted the details of a party he’d attended thrown by a countess. Apparently cave-aged cheese had been served.

I happened to catch sight of what may have been a woman or a young boy standing at the fence of one narrow, desolate yard. The urchin’s gender was obscure because the figure’s hair had been tonsured as is often done in preparation for the receiving of some religious rite. More than that, the clothes were not clothes precisely, but what I can only describe as a colorless shroud. When the creature saw my face, it put its hands on the bars of the graveyard fence and watched intensely. I tapped on the carriage ceiling, indicating that the driver should stop. I refused to listen to Alain’s complaints as I hurried across the street to the fence. The closer I came to the poor wretch, the more its gender seemed to dissolve until I was looking at nothing more than a mask with the semblance of features hovering above a fluttering drape. It was a human face, yes, but somehow like the lower animals, too. The creature had pressed its body against the railing and seemed to require my help. Perhaps it had been hurt and was searching for kindness. “My dear,” I whispered to it. “My dear, shall I let you out of there? There must be a gate ’round the other side.” But Alain was already at my back, pulling me. “Miriam, hurry. Don’t be foolish. We’re in Cripplesgate, for God’s sake.” He was looking at the creature behind the fence in horror. I found myself unable to glance back as he rushed me toward the carriage. I did not want to see how the poor thing would watch us go.

Inside the safety of our vehicle, Alain was unable to control the features of his normally composed and handsome face. His full set of teeth shown in his mouth. His eyes were half-sunk into his head, and I could see the shape
of his skull beneath his skin. “What were you
thinking
? ” he whispered, as the carriage bucked to a start.

“I wanted to see if that child needed my assistance,” I replied.

“Child? ” he said. “Miriam, that was not a child. It was a lunatic of some variety I have never encountered before. This is the last time. Truly the last. I’m finished.”

I tried to take Alain’s hand and felt his pulse clanging in his wrist. “I’m sorry, dear. Sorry for frightening you,” I said.

“Aren’t
you
ever frightened?” he asked, pulling away from me. “Don’t you have that capacity?”

I INTENDED TO BEGIN MY SURVEY of the plague pits today, many of which remain unmarked and date far back into our city’s history. It is possible to locate such pits by doing careful research and speaking with the locals of various unpleasant neighborhoods. Bones, buried quite near the surface, are often unearthed by some interested dog. The plague pits inhabit enormous tracts of land—famous examples being Black Ditch and the Pardoner’s Yard. There is a deep history of such pits going back to the first iteration of the plague in 658 when the Saxons perished by the thousands. I knew Mrs. Hill would be pleased if I located a few of the pits because a plaque could be erected. Also, such a difficult endeavor might take my mind temporarily off Alain. He had not made contact after the events in Cripplesgate, and could I truly blame him?

In the end, I did not go out. I sat in my parlor with the drapes shut tight, and thought about the figure at the fence. Who had it been or what? I tried to sketch it on a piece of
paper but ended up tearing a hole in the sheet. A theory, known as Animism, had been recently put forth by spiritualists who believed that objects possess their own kind of life and, hence, volition. I wondered if what we’d seen had not been a person at all, but some piece of the burial yard itself, stepping forth to investigate me, the investigator. Perhaps I was not mother of the dead, but mother of the yards—the grass and the stone, coffin wood and statuary. I tried to put the thought aside as foolishness. The graveyards were not my children, and I was not their surrogate. What would Alain make of such considerations?

THIS EVENING I WITNESSED a torchlit night funeral of the sort still customary for suicides. Very few parishioners were in attendance. I did not go to the grave of the girl (for it was a girl who had taken her life), but rather sat on a marble bench and watched the procession. Her coffin came on a humble haymaker’s cart decked with dyed ostrich plumes. A man played a dirge on a flute and another carried a portrait draped in black muslin. The face in the painting, presumably the girl’s, was surprisingly like the face of the urchin I’d seen in Cripplesgate. It was a poorly executed likeness, an oversimplification of features done in oil, and yet it seemed to reach out to me—yet another object possessed with life. Animism again? I considered what it meant that suicides must be buried under cover of night, such a thing seemed foolish and cruel. Lines of poetry I’d memorized in childhood returned:
When he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars. And he will make the face of Heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.
And
what were the stars but bright gas and rock—monuments dangling from the firmament? I raised my head and tried to remember a prayer to say for the girl.

THIS EVENING I PUT ON my warmest cape and hood and ventured out to investigate one of the only private burial yards in the city. Such yards were outlawed early on in our history due to their tendency to spread bubonic plague. I’d come across information concerning the private yard by way of a Quaker woman who’d served as nanny to the daughter of the Earl of Dartmouth. The daughter had fallen on hard times and the Quaker had been dismissed from her position—the Earl blaming her for his daughter’s misfortunes. I believe the Quaker felt vindicated in revealing the Earl’s private yard to me, also whispering there was a rumor circulating that the ground was still accepting fresh bodies—a highly illegal act according to city ordinance.

I’d given up on the idea of asking permission to view the yard, as I was sure I’d be refused. Instead, I decided to visit the Earl of Dartmouth’s property under the cover of night. It was only when I passed through his thankfully unlocked back gate that I realized there was some sort of celebration going on at the stone manor house which sat high on an ivied hill. Chinese lanterns spilled red light from the back veranda, and the chatter of guests came to me on the cold evening breeze. I did not concern myself with the social event, as my business was with the burial site, which appeared to be an ample distance from the party so that no one would notice or bother my investigation.

The small gated yard contained a sepulcher braced by an iron latticework and topped with a weather-stained
angel. Two funerary urns sat on either side of the narrow door. There were no markers or plaques, only the bone-white house and its silent seraphim. I took out my map and pencil, making careful note of the yard’s distance from Dartmouth manor, and it was then that I heard the sound—the faint and glittering series of chords, rising and falling, not like an ocean this time, but a secret pond in far-off woods. The music came not from the party but from the earth. I did not trust my ears. Could it be that I had not imagined the song of the dead in Gramercy Park? Once again I found my edges dissolving, and I lowered my body toward the earth.

I could not help myself from forcing my fingers into the dirt, pulling back first the layer of grass and then the soil, finally digging with both hands until, not more than a few feet beneath the surface, I came into contact with the lid of a box. It was a decorative piece—the sort of container a dowry is often kept in. Bright tulips had been painted on the lid, and it had clearly not been made for burial, but to sit proudly on some girl’s shelf. As I pulled the box from the earth, the music intensified and grew more beautiful—full of longing. Without thinking I unfastened the latch, opening the box and throwing back the lid. There, a small body lay in a partial state of decomposition, the whole of it resting on a silver hand-stitched pillow. The singing—which had once again enfolded me inside its dream—told me that the little fellow was not restful, had not been respected. And just as I was about to close the lid and take the poor dear with me to find some minister who might properly inter him, I heard voices from the veranda, a cheerful laughter that floated down the hill. The voices of a man and a woman eclipsed the song of the dead child, growing louder and louder until the pair was standing at the gate to the private yard. It was Alain in a dapper suit
and a young girl wearing a bow in her hair. What horror did I feel in seeing him? I was still half-dissolved by the music, my hair hanging down. My hands were covered in soil, my dress streaked in grass. When the girl saw what I had pulled from the earth, she put her small hand to her mouth, forcing her fingers tight against her lips and began backing away, eyes shining with terror until she broke into a run. And Alain was left staring through the bars of the fence. Face as white as ivory. He was statue. No, a child’s plaything.

“You have to help,” I said, gesturing at the dowry box. “This body needs us.”

He held his hand to his chest, sinking slowly against the gate, eyes of stone, flesh of stone. For him, I was not a woman haunted by spirits of the yard; I was the thing that haunts—that which lingers along winding paths and in the shadows of monuments. I could not bear for him to see me like that. I wanted life, yet death wanted me more. I gathered the box and lid into my arms and hurried from the yard, leaving Alain forever this time.

I SIT IN MY PARLOR, the dowry box near my chair. I’ve gone through the
Times
twice searching for listings of infant mortality. There is nothing. No record of the dear’s existence. It is difficult to concentrate. I can hear the yards—from Clerkenwell to Cripplesgate—a longing body made of loving sound. Victoria and her London are but a brittle boat of dreams floating on that dark, luxurious ocean. I lay my head against one velvet wing of my chair. I feel myself diving beneath the cold waves—so perfectly submerged. Fantastically alive.

SHE BEGAN TO WAIT in the snow-swept square, the same place where village sheep pastured during summer months, and she thought she could smell the memory of them—damp wool and grassy dung. She tried hard not to make a game of pretending to
be
a sheep, knowing that would only make her look more like a child. She wore a piece of red fabric tied at her throat, having heard it was a sign. The men took the older girls who did this, gave them work. Following example, she lowered her eyes, glanced up again—a ship signaling. Death had swept out of the cities on the backs of rats and fleas. First came the rash, then the cough, an unseen guest knocking. Finally, a spread of boils. The body became a cauldron set upon a fire. Some said the arrival of the death would be signaled by a riderless horse, gaunt and gray, that would wander into the square and eat from dead winter grass. Others thought a voice would issue from the ground—listing the names of those set to die.

In the end though, cloaked riders had come and told them to prepare. The riders remained mounted, wearing leather masks that covered their mouths and noses, making it look like they had muzzles. The King’s Dogs, she called them to herself. And the Dogs spoke roughly, saying the village would sicken, they’d fill all their graves and hurt for more. “Dig plenty of holes while you’re still healthy,” said one of the Dogs. “And don’t any of you go accepting travelers into your homes. Tell them all to move along. People who come on the roads carry boils.”