Sawbones Read Free Page B

far-off places, Sweden and Russia and Turkey, and about the king of France, who in the midst of the revolution had tried, and failed, to escape his own country. Ezra bought a copy of
The Times
for Mr McAdam and tucked it under his arm.
    The shutters were up on the cloth warehouse, and the curtains were drawn upstairs. He knew the family would not be up yet, but Betsey would have cleaned the grates and laid the fires and would now be hard at work in the kitchen at the back of the house. Ezra slipped into Archer’s Mews and, seeing the candle lit, tapped on the kitchen window.
    Betsey’s surprised face popped up on the other side of the glass, but when she saw who it was she shook her head, frowning, and gestured for him to leave.
    “Betsey, please,” Ezra whispered urgently – she couldn’t hear him, he knew, but he dared not raise his voice. Betsey didn’t look convinced. “Please,” Ezra mouthed again.
    Then he heard the bolts being drawn back, and Betsey ushered him in. She looked disapproving, but there was something soft in her expression.
    To Ezra’s surprise Anna was there, sitting on a bench in the middle of the kitchen. When she saw Ezra she tried quickly to draw herself together and seem her normal, poised self, but Ezra could tell that she’d been crying. What was she doing awake so early?
    “Five minutes,” Betsey was saying. “Five minutes is all I’ll give the two of you, and when I come back he had best be on his way.” She turned to Ezra. “If Mr David finds you he’ll skin you quicker than ever your Mr McAdam could!” And she bustled from the kitchen, leaving Ezra and Anna alone.
    “Anna, what is it?”
    “Oh, Ezra,” she said. “David is to be married!” Ezra shook his head. He didn’t understand. Her brother to be married – surely that would be good news? But Anna looked away, her brow furrowed. “He is getting married and we are going away, to Holland.”
    “Holland!” Ezra stared at her. Was this what the argument had been about, last night? “But your shop—”
    “Mother will stay,” said Anna, with a hint of bitterness, though she kept her voice calm. “But she is sending me with David, to the Hague, to live with my cousins.” Her hands bunched in the cloth of her dress. She looked tired – perhaps she had not slept at all.
    Ezra felt a knot of pain in his chest. He would have said it was his heart breaking, but he knew, from the number of hearts he had seen in a variety of sections and cross-sections, that hearts were only pumps made flesh, and could not make you feel like this. “But surely, if you wanted to, you could stay?”
    “Do you think I don’t want to?” Anna cried. “Do you think I wouldn’t sooner stay here? I love London.” And perhaps he was only fooling himself, but the way she looked at him then allowed him to hope it was not only London she would miss. “But Mother insists. She says my prospects will be better in Holland.”
    Ezra had to look away. He knew what that meant. In Holland, Mrs St John was no doubt hoping, Anna would spend her time in the company of young men more suitable than a mulatto surgeon’s boy.
    “When?” he asked, hopelessly.
    “A week,” Anna whispered.
    There was the sound of a door slamming somewhere up in the St John house, and Anna jumped.
    “You have to go,” she said, and she looked close to tears again but Ezra knew she wouldn’t cry in front of him.
    Ezra wanted to weep too.
    He walked slowly home to Great Windmill Street. He would have to imagine a future without his oldest friend, Anna St John. She would be living a new life in Holland. Without him. He swallowed. He would have to immerse himself in work as throroughly as possible.
    Back at the house, Mrs Boscaven had breakfast on in the kitchen. Though he was chilled to the bone, Ezra couldn’t stomach the porridge she had made, and sipped his coffee with the maid, Ellen, and Mr McAdam’s valet and footman, Henry Toms.
    “I reckon,” Toms said,