Ingenious pain by Andrew Miller (books for men to read .txt) 📕

Ross and lays it in the paper. 'If you have no objection, Reverend . . .' He wraps the heart, stows it in the bag.

'None, sir.' Dead hearts are not sacred. Let them search it. And he remembers, as he remembers so often, that other searching, Mary standing above James in his chamber in the house on Millionaya, glancing round at the sound of the Reverend's breathing as he stood, motionless in the doorway with the serving girl. Then, knowing he would not, could not interfere, Mary looking back at James, sleeping - drugged? - unbuttoning his shirt, uncovering his breast. The room was dark enough, one small candle by the window. And yet he did see something: her hand, seeming to wound James, yet leaving no mark, no more than had she dipped her hand through a skin of milk.

'Reverend?'

'Sir?'

'You are missing some fine things. Here now is the gall bladder.'

'I beg pardon. I was . . . recollecting. A memory of Dr Dyer. We were in Russia together.'

'You have mentioned it, sir. Several times. It is very natural you should think of him, sir, though memory tends a man to sentiment and sentiment, admirable in one of your calling, is a luxury in ours. You must think of these remains not as your former . . . not as a man you once knew, but as the raw material of a legitimate philosophical investigation.'

'A fleshly casket,' chimes Ross, whose breath throws out, astonishing through all the other smells in the place, the unmistakable odour of port and onions, 'containing conundrums.'

The Reverend stares at them. They have shed their coats, roUed their sleeves and are gored up to their elbows, like figures in some absurd Senecan tragedy. Ross takes the knife from Burke and goes round to James's head, cuts swiftly round the back by the hairline and, before the Reverend can guess his purpose, jerks the scalp away from the bones of the skull and lays it over the corpse's face in an obscene, bloody pile. A hot, acidy liquid floods the Reverend's throat. He swallows it and walks quickly out of the stable, across the yard and through the green door into the garden. He shuts the door behind him.

Ahead, the land rises in a smooth sweep to the edge of ancient woods. Sheep are grazing there and a boy is walking by the cool fringe of the wood. In his present mood it appears to the Reverend a delightful lie, but he is grateful for it. It serves him like the little painted screens Italian priests are said to hold before the eyes of condemned men to hide the approaching scaffold. He wonders how it is they gulled him, Burke and Ross, yet they seemed credible, men with reputations, letters. And he too was curious to see if James's body might be made to explain something of the mystery of his life. He had imagined something dry, respectful. Instead he has given his friend into the hands of butchers, lunatics. What lishe were to see it? She is about the house, doing God knows what, for he has never been sure how she passes her time. The other servants, from fearing her, now take a pride in having her among them. She helps them with their pains. She has, for example, the ability to calm a headache by simply pressing on the sufferer's face.

The door sounds on its hinges. He looks round. Mary is there, standing under the weather-stone, holding out a wooden box. Her coming out just then, as if drawn by the scent of his thinking of her, disturbs him. Worse, he sees there is blood on his fingers and he clasps his hands behind his back, asking: 'Is something the matter? Is there some trouble?'

She unfastens the catch on the box and opens the lid. He says: 'Ah, yes, the device.' He would like it for himself He, after all, brought it home from Petersburg with the rest of James's dunnage when James disappeared. They thought he was dead.

It is yours now, Mary.'

She looks at him a while, nods slowly, closes the box and goes back into the house.

There is a faint noise of sawing. When it stops, the Reverend returns to the stable, praying that it will be over, that Burke and Ross can be sent on their road. He will not have them inside. They may take water in a bucket from one of the rain-butts and wash in the yard. James they must patch up as decently as they can -vandals! Killick will coffin him. Tomorrow at noon they will bury him. Clarke is perhaps digging the grave even now, a spot by the wall next to Makin's orchard.

Tou have discovered something, gentlemen? Anything?' He tries to infuse his voice with disdain but it emerges weakly. An edge of petulance.

Burke looks up at him. A dozen flies are busy about the mouth of a bucket by the end of the table under James's opened head.

'Nothing,' says Burke, 'I could explain to one not acquainted with the art of anatomy.'

'But the heat, and the vermin . . . He was of your own profession. Surely you have done?'

Says Burke: 'You are exciting yourself, my dear Reverend. Come now. This closeness oppresses you. You are not easy. It were better you retire, yes, and avail yourself of some agreeable eccoprotic. Rhubarb, say.'

'Or pulp of colocynth,' says Ross, openly amused.

'Colocynth is good,' says Burke. 'Or a little of the root bark - euonymus atropurpureus. Should you have it by. A man of your physiognomy can never purge himself too frequently. You agree, Dr Ross?'

'A very cleansing measure, Dr Burke. I'm sure poor Dyer would have advised it.'

'We shall inform you of our findings.'

A speck of light on Burke's spectacles wavers in the air like an angry spark. The Reverend hesitates, then says: *I shall be in my study.' He shuffles out, too fatigued to feel much shame.

The yard glimmers: starlight on the backs