The Amazing Dr. Darwin Read online

  The Amazing Dr. Darwin

  Charles Sheffield

  18th Century Europe: It is an age when superstition is beginning to give way to the force of human reason, and no man so fully embodies the spirit of the times as Dr. Erasmus Darwin. Thinker, healer, and explorer of the bizarre and the seemingly supernatural, no mystery can stand for long against Darwin’s enlightened analysis. And there are far more mysteries than history knows…

  For Erasmus Darwin’s world is filled with oddities that most cannot believe: from unknown beings lurking just outside the boundaries of civilization, to anomalies that even the greatest natural philosophers will be hard-pressed to explain, to mysterious deaths that give rise to fears of malevolent sorcery.

  And when the renowned Dr. Darwin is called upon to heal a man dying of an ailment that seems impossible, he has no idea that it is the beginning of a quest that will lead him to the darkest corners of Europe, and a stunning encounter with the most famous inhabitant of a certain Scottish loch…

  The Amazing Dr. Darwin

  by Charles Sheffield

  To Dutch, Sally, Patty, and Nancy— where this began.

  INTRODUCTION

  In these degenerate times when lawyers rule the world, most works of fiction are preceded by a nervous disclaimer that runs roughly as follows: “All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.”

  That cannot be considered one of the more exciting parts of the plot, and most people probably do not read it. The statement is there to discourage libel and defamation suits. I doubt that it helps. Like garlic against vampires, the disclaimer sounds comforting, but it never works when you really need it.

  In this book I faced a different problem. Erasmus Darwin was undeniably a living, breathing human being, but his accomplishments were so substantial and diverse that it is difficult to portray him in fiction without being accused of painting him larger than life.

  I do not think I have done that. If anything, I have understated the man. In breadth of interests, inventiveness, acquaintances (from King George III to Coleridge to James Watt to Ben Franklin), and human kindness, Darwin bestrode his age. He is arguably the greatest eighteenth century Englishman, a better candidate for that title than Chatham, Pitt the Younger, Pope, Sam Johnson, Marlborough, Priestley, Cavendish, or any other figure in the arts or sciences.

  The claim is a large one. In an appendix to this book I have sought to support it, and at the same time drawn a dividing line between the facts and the fiction of each story. If you, like me, tend to read a book from the back forward, be warned: Statements contained in the Appendix reveal plot elements of each story.

  On the other hand, if you are such a person, it is already too late. You will be reading this Introduction last of all. I hope that you enjoyed the stories.

  —Charles Sheffield

  THE DEVIL OF MALKIRK

  The spring evening was warm and still, and the sound of conversation carried far along the path from the open window of the house. It was enough to make the man walking the gravel surface hesitate, then turn his steps onto the lawn. He walked silently across the well trimmed grass to the bay window, stooped, and peered through a gap in the curtains. A few moments more, and he returned to the path and entered the open door of the house.

  Ignoring the servant waiting there, he turned left and went at once into the dining room. He looked steadily around him, while the conversation at the long table gradually died down.

  “Dr. Darwin?” His voice was gruff and formal.

  The eight men seated at dinner were silent for a moment, assessing the stranger. He was tall and gaunt, with a dark, sallow complexion. Long years of intense sunlight had stamped a permanent frown across his brow, and a slight, continuous trembling of his hands spoke of other legacies of foreign disease. He returned the stares in silence.

  After a few seconds one of the seated men pushed his chair back from the table.

  “I am Erasmus—Darwin.” The slight hesitation as he pronounced his name suggested a stammer more than any kind of contrived pause. “Who are you, and what is your business here?”

  The speaker had risen to his feet as he spoke. He stepped forward, and was revealed as grossly overweight, with heavy limbs and a fat, pockmarked face. He stood motionless, calmly awaiting the intruder’s reply.

  “Jacob Pole, at your service,” said the stranger. Despite the warmth of the April evening he was wearing a grey scarf of knitted wool, which he tightened now around his neck. “Colonel Jacob Pole of Lichfield. You and I are far afield tonight, Dr. Darwin, but we are neighbors. My house is no more than two miles from yours. You provided medication once, to my wife and to my young daughter. As for my business, it is not of my choosing and I fear it may be a bad one. I am here to ask your urgent assistance on a medical matter at Bailey’s Farm, not half a mile from this house.”

  There was a chorus of protesting voices from the table. A thin-faced man who wore no wig stood up and stepped closer.

  “Colonel Pole, this is my house. I will forgive your entry to it uninvited and unannounced, since we understand that medical urgencies must banish formalities. But you interrupt more than a dinner among friends. I am Matthew Boulton, and tonight the Lunar Society meets here on serious matters. Mr. Priestley is visiting from Calne to tell of his latest researches on the new air. He is well begun, but by no means finished. Can your business wait an hour?”

  Jacob Pole stood up straighter than ever. “If disease could be made to wait, I would do the same. As it is…” He turned to Darwin again. “I am no more than a messenger here, one who happened to be dining with Will Bailey. I have come at the request of Dr. Monkton, to ask your immediate assistance.”

  There was another outcry from those still seated at the table. “Monkton! Monkton asking for assistance? Never heard of such a thing.”

  “Forget it, ’Rasmus! Sit back down and try this rhubarb pie.”

  “If it’s Monkton,” said a soberly dressed man on the right hand side of the table, “then the patient is as good as dead. He’s no doctor, he’s an executioner. Come on, Colonel Pole, take a glass of claret and sit down with us. We meet too infrequently to relish a disturbance.”

  Erasmus Darwin waved him to silence. “Steady, Josiah, I know your views of Dr. Monkton.” He turned full face to Pole, to show a countenance where the front teeth had long been lost from the full mouth. The jaw was jowly and in need of a razor. Only the eyes belied the impression of coarseness and past disease. They were grey and patient, with a look of deep sagacity and profound power of observation.

  “Forgive our jests,” he said. “This is an old issue here. Dr. Monkton has not been one to ask my advice on disease, no matter what the circumstance. What does he want now?”

  The outcry came again. “He’s a pompous old windbag.”

  “Killer Monkton—don’t let him lay a finger on you.”

  “I wouldn’t let him touch you, not if you want to live.”

  Pole had been staring furiously about him while the men at the table mocked Monkton’s medical skills. He ignored the glass held out toward him, and a scar across the left side of his forehead was showing a flush of red.

  “I might share your opinion of Dr. Monkton,” he said curtly. “However, I would extend that view to all doctors. They kill far more than they cure. As for you gentlemen, and Dr. Darwin here, if you all prefer your eating and drinking to the saving of life, I cannot change those priorities.”

  He turned to glare at Darwin. “My message is simple. I will give it and leave. Dr. Monkton asks me to say three things: that he has a man at Bailey’s Farm who is critically ill; that already the facies of death are showing; and
that he would like you”—he leaned forward to make it a matter between him and Darwin alone—“to come and see that patient. If you will not do it, I will go back and so inform Dr. Monkton.”

  “No.” Darwin sighed. “Colonel Pole, our rudeness to you was unforgivable, but there was a reason for it. These meetings of the Society are the high point of our month, and animal spirits sometimes drive us to exceed the proprieties. Give me a moment to call for my greatcoat and we will be on our way. My friends have told you their opinions of Dr. Monkton, and I must confess I am eager to see his patient. In my years of practice between here and Lichfield, Dr. Monkton and I have crossed paths many times—but never has he sought my advice on a medical matter. We are of very different schools, for both diagnosis and treatment.”

  He turned back to the group, silent now that their high spirits were damped. “Gentlemen, I am sorry to miss both the discussion and the companionship, but work calls.” He moved to Pole’s side. “Let us go. The last of the light is gone but the moon should be up. We will manage well without a lantern. If Death will not wait, then nor must we.”

  * * *

  The road that led to Bailey’s Farm was flanked by twin lines of hedgerow. It had been an early spring, and the moonlit white of flowering hawthorn set parallel lines to mark the road ahead. The two men walked side by side, Darwin glancing across from time to time at the other’s gloomy profile.

  “You appear to have no great regard for the medical profession,” he said at last. “Though you bear marks of illness yourself.”

  Jacob Pole shrugged his shoulders and did not speak.

  “But yet you are a friend of Dr. Monkton?” continued Darwin.

  Pole turned a frowning face toward him. “I most certainly am not. As I told you, I am no more than a messenger for him, one who happened to be at the farm.” He hesitated. “If you press the point—as you seem determined to do—I will admit that I am no friend to any doctor. Men put more blind faith in witless surgeons than they do in the Lord Himself.”

  “And with more reason,” said Darwin softly.

  Pole did not seem to hear. “Blind faith,” he went on. “And against all logic. When you pay a man money to cut off your arm, it’s no surprise that he tells you an arm must come off to save your life. In twenty years of service to the country, I am appalled when I think how many limbs have come off for no reason more than a doctor’s whim.”

  “And on that score, Colonel Pole,” said Darwin tartly, “your twenty years of service must also have told you that it would take a thousand of the worst doctors to match the limb-lopping effects of even the least energetic of generals. Look to the ills of your own profession.”

  There was an angry silence and both men paced faster along the moonlit road.

  The farm stood well back, a hundred yards from the main highway to Lichfield. The path to it was a gloomy avenue of tall elms and by the time they were halfway along it they could see a tall figure standing in the doorway and peering out toward them. As they came closer he leaned back inside to pick up a lantern and strode to meet them.

  “Dr. Darwin, I fear you are none too soon.” The speaker’s voice was full and resonant, like that of a singer or a practiced clergyman, but there was no warmth or welcome in it.

  Darwin nodded. “Colonel Pole tells me that the situation looks grave. I have my medical chest with me back at Matthew Boulton’s house. If there are drugs or dressings needed, Dr. Monkton, they can be brought here in a few minutes.”

  “I think it may already be too late for that.” They had reached the door, and Monkton paused there. He was broad shouldered, with a long neck and a red, bony face. His expression was dignified and severe. “By the time Colonel Pole left here, the man was already sunk to unconsciousness. Earlier this evening there was delirium, and utterances that were peculiar indeed. I have no great hopes for him.”

  “He is one of Bailey’s farmworkers?”

  “He is not. He is a stranger, taken ill on the road near here. The woman with him came for help to the farm. Fortunately I was already here, attending to Father Bailey’s rheumatics.” He shrugged. “That is a hopeless case, of course, in a man of his age.”

  “Mm. Perhaps.” Darwin sounded unconvinced, but he did not press it. “It was curiously opportune that you were here. So tell me, Dr. Monkton, just what is this stranger’s condition?”

  “Desperate. You will see it for yourself,” he went on at Darwin’s audible grunt of dissatisfaction. “He lies on a cot at the back of the scullery.”

  “Alone? Surely not?”

  “No. His companion is with him. I explained to her that his condition is grave, and she seemed to comprehend well enough for one of her station.” He set the lantern on a side table in the entrance and took a great pinch of snuff from a decorated ivory box. “Neither one of them showed much sign of learning. They are poor workers from the North, on their way to London to seek employment. She seemed more afraid of me than worried about her man’s condition.”

  “So I ask again, what is that condition?” Darwin’s voice showed his exasperation. “It would be better for you to give me your assessment out of their hearing—though I gather that he is hearing little enough.”

  “He hears nothing, not if lightning were to strike this house. His condition, in summary: the eyes deep-set in the head, closed, the whites only showing in the ball; the countenance, dull and grey; skin, rough and dry to the touch; before he became delirious he complained that he was feeling bilious.”

  “There was vomiting?”

  “No, but he spoke of the feeling. And of pain in the chest. His muscle tone was poor and I detected weakened irritability.”

  Darwin grunted skeptically, causing Monkton to look at him in a condescending way.

  “Perhaps you are unfamiliar with von Haller’s work on this, Dr. Darwin? I personally find it to be most convincing. At any rate, soon after I came to him the delirium began.”

  “And what of his pulse?” Darwin’s face showed his concentration. “And was there fever?”

  Monkton hesitated for a moment, as though unsure what to answer. “There was no fever,” he said at last. “And I do not think that the pulse was elevated in rate.”

  “Huh.” Darwin pursed his full lips. “No fever, no rapid pulse—and yet delirium.” He turned to the other man. “Colonel Pole, did you also see this?”

  “I did indeed.” Pole nodded vigorously. “Look here, I know it may be the custom of the medical profession to talk about symptoms until the patient is past saving—but don’t you think you should see the man for yourself, while he’s alive?”

  “I do.” Darwin smiled, unperturbed by the other’s gruff manner. “But first I wanted all the facts I can get. Facts are important, Colonel, the fulcrum of diagnosis. Would you prefer me to rush in and operate, another arm or leg gone? Or discuss the man’s impending death in the presence of his wife or daughter? That is not a physician’s role, the addition of new misery beyond disease itself. But lead the way, Dr. Monkton, I am ready now to see your patient.”

  Jacob Pole frowned as he followed the other two men back through the interior of the old farmhouse. His expression showed mingled irritation and respect. “You sawbones are all the same,” he muttered. “You have an answer for everything except a man’s illness.”

  The inside of the farmhouse was dimly lit. A single oil lamp stood in the middle of the long and chilly corridor that led to the scullery and kitchen. The floor was uneven stone flags and the high shelves carried preserved and wrinkled apples, their acid smell pleasant and surprising.

  Monkton opened the door to the scullery, stepped inside, and grunted at the darkness there. “This is a nuisance. I told her to stay here with him, but she has gone off somewhere and allowed the lamp to go out. Colonel Pole, would you bring the lantern from the corridor?”

  While Pole went back for it Darwin stood motionless in the doorway, sniffing the air in the dark room. When there was light Monkton looked around and gave a cry
of astonishment.

  “Why, he’s not here. He was lying on that cot in the corner.”

  “Maybe he died, and they moved him?” suggested Pole.

  “No, they wouldn’t do that,” said Monkton, but for the first time his voice was uncertain. “Surely they would not move him without my permission?”

  “Looks as though they did, though,” said Pole. “We can settle that easily enough.”

  He threw back his head. “Willy, where are you?”

  The shout echoed through the whole house. After a few seconds there was an answering cry from upstairs.

  “What’s wrong, Jacob? Do you need help there?”

  “No. Has anybody been down here from upstairs, Willy? While I was gone, I mean.”

  “No. I didn’t want to risk the sickness.”

  “That sounds right,” grunted Pole. “Brave old Willy, hiding upstairs with his pipe and flagon.”

  “Has anyone downstairs been using tobacco?” asked Darwin quietly.

  “What?” Pole stared at him. “Tobacco?”

  “Use your nose, man. Sniff the air in here.” Darwin was prowling forward. “There’s been a pipe alight here in the past quarter of an hour. Do you smell it now? I somehow doubt that it was the man’s wife that was smoking it.”

  He walked forward to the cot itself and laid a plump hand flat upon it. “Quite cold. So here we are, but we find no dead man, and no dying man. Dr. Monkton, in your opinion how long did the stranger have to live?”

  “Not long.” Monkton cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Not more than an hour or two, I would judge.”

  “Within an hour of final sacrament, and then gone,” grunted Darwin. He shook his head and sat on the edge of the cot. “So now what? I don’t think we’ll find him easily, and we have all three sacrificed an evening to this already. If you are willing to waste a few more minutes, I’d much like to hear what the patient said when he became delirious. What do you say, gentlemen? May we discuss it?”