Will Starling by Ian Weir Read Free Book Online Page A

sturdy Belgian make. Jemmy remained mercifully unconscious, and partway through the proceedings the Turnkey joined him, turning pale and dropping with a thud. Guards and prisoners had gathered like geese in the doorway to watch, for a chirurgical procedure was a rare treat, almost as good as a hanging — even better, in a way, considering as the conclusion wasn’t so foregone.
    The drilling took several minutes. A T-shaped handle was turned clockwise, once the drill-blade was placed against the skull. The blade was conical, the width of a shilling at the top, with depth-guards to stop it from delving too deep and damaging the brain. It was tricky, though — skulls come in varying thicknesses, and it’s ever so easy to drill just that fraction too far. Once the hole had been drilled, relieving the pressure, Mr Comrie raised the depressed edges of the fracture, fishing out with his forceps stray slivers of bone, shockingly white against a brain as pink as blossoms. Then he screwed into place the coin — hammered wafer-flat by a blacksmith I’d found in Paternoster Lane — and sewed the flaps of scalp back over. A wonder with needle and thread, was Mr Comrie; he sewed like a seamstress.
    Finally the wound was dressed and wrapped. Jemmy Cheese lay in waxen pallor.
    â€œIf he awakens, he’ll want water,” Mr Comrie said, straightening. “Don’t give him too much.”
    â€œA half-a-crown,” said Edward Cheshire. “In his head .”
    I swear he was mentally marking the spot, with an eye to retrieving it should his brother hop the twig. But of course the coin had been ruined. With a muttered execration, he left the room.
    Mr Comrie left as well, and the spectators dispersed, leaving me alone with Meg and Jemmy Cheese. She sat still and silent by the cot, in slanting light from the window. Shadows haggarded her face, and I realized that she was younger than I had been supposing. She was not much older than I was myself: nineteen years. I can tell you that with certainty, since they kept records at the Foundling Hospital — though I couldn’t tell you who my father might have been, or where my mother went after she bundled me up and left, or what name I had been born with.
    â€œI’ll come back this evening,” I said, gathering up the instruments. “I’ll bring a healing essence — you can use it when you change his dressing.”
    My organ of compassion had been stirred. I am also a shameless little show pony, as you have surely begun to guess, and I proceeded to trot out my knowledge of physick.
    â€œIt is rectified spirits of wine, with tincture of lavender and oil of origanum. Very efficacious” — another word magpied from Sam Johnson — “and stimulatorious of the healing processes. I will mix it for you beforehand, missus, having a modest expertise in the pothecary line, picked up along the way.”
    Meg Nancarrow had forgotten I ever existed. Her dark hair had fallen forward, curtaining her face.
    I tried again. “He’ll awaken. You’ll see. I’ve seen men brought back who were ten times further gone — seen it often and again, on the Peninsula with Wellington. We saved men with musket balls in their brainpan. ‘We’ meaning Mr Comrie,” I added, “myself being strictly speaking only his assistant. However valuable I may have proved, as he kindly said on several occasions. Being kind, Mr Comrie. Very kind indeed, despite appearances.”
    I once saw a hot-air balloon rising up from Vauxhall Gardens, as a breathless crowd looked on. It began with great promise, but sprang a leak as it cleared the trees and commenced losing altitude almost immediately. After sagging onward for a bit, it gave up and subsided into a gorse thicket, where it ended up sideways and tangled, with aeronauts limping and plucking out thistles. I had that feeling now.
    Meg was speaking. “I won’t let the