“Has he—gone?”
“No.” Monkton looked puzzled. “He still breathes, and it somehow seems to have eased. I—I thought… Well, he’s quiet now. Would you go and find the woman, and see where that hot water has got to? I would also like to cup him.”
Pole was peering at the man’s face. “He seems a lot better. He’s not shaking the way he was. What will you do next?’
“Well, the cupping, he certainly needs to be bled.” Monkton coughed. “Then I think another plaster, of mustard, Burgundy pitch, and pigeon dung. And perhaps an enema of antimony and rock salt, and possibly wormwood bitters.”
“Sweet Christ.” Pole shook his head and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Not for me. I’d rather be costive for a week. I’ll go fetch his woman.”
“And that was it?” Darwin was seated comfortably in front of the empty fireplace, a dish of dried plums and figs on his lap. Jacob Pole stood by the window, looking moodily out into the night and glancing occasionally at Will Bailey. The farmer was slumped back in an armchair, snoring and snorting and now and then jerking back for a few moments of consciousness.
“That’s as I recall it—and I listened hard.” Pole shrugged. “I don’t know what happened after I left the room, of course, but Dr. Monkton says the man was peaceful and unconscious until he too left. The woman stayed.”
Darwin picked up a fig and frowned at it. “I have no desire to further lower your opinion of my profession, but now that he is gone I must say that Dr. Monkton’s powers of observation are not impressive to me. You looked close at that man’s face, you say. And as a soldier you presumably have seen men die?”
“Aye. And women and children, sad to say.” Pole looked at him morosely. “What’s that to do with it?”
Darwin sighed. “Nothing, it seems, according to you and my colleague, Dr. Monkton. Think, sir, think of that room you were in. Think of the smell of it.”
“The tobacco? You already remarked on that, and I recall no other.”
“Exactly. So ask yourself of the smell that was not there. A man lies dying, eh? He displays the classic Hippocratic facies of death, as Dr. Monkton described it—displays them so exactly that it is as though they were copied from a text. So. But where was the smell of mortal disease? You know that smell?”
Pole turned suddenly. “There was none. Damme, I knew there was something odd about that room. I know that smell all too well—sweet, like the charnel house. Now why the blazes didn’t Dr. Monkton remark it? He must encounter it all the time.”
Darwin shrugged his heavy shoulders and chewed on another wrinkled plum. “Dr. Monkton has gone beyond the point in his profession where his reputation calls for exact observation. It comes to all of us at last. ‘Man, proud man, drest in a little brief authority, most ignorant of what he’s most assured.’ Aye, there’s some of that in all of us, you and me, too. But let us go, if you will, a little further. The man gripped your wrists and you held his shoulders. There was delirium, you have told me that, in his voice. But what was the feel of him?”
Pole paced back and forth along the room, his skinny frame stooped in concentration. He finally stopped and glared at Will Bailey. “Pity you’ve no potion to stop him snoring. I can’t hear myself think. A man can’t fix his mind around anything with that noise. Let’s see now, what was the feel of him.”
He held his hands out before him. “I held him so, and he gripped at my wrists thus. Dirty hands, with long black nails.”
“And their warmth? Carry your mind back to them.”
“No, not hot. He wasn’t fevered, not at all. But not cold, either. But…” Pole paused and bit his lip. “Something else. The Dutch have my guts, his hands were soft. Black and dirty, but not rough, the way you’d expect for a farmer or a tinker. His hands didn’t match his clothes at all.”
“I conjectured it so.” Darwin spat a plum stone into the empty fireplace. “Will you allow me to carry one step further?”
“More yet? Damme, to my mind we’ve enough mystery already. What now?”
“You have seen the world in your army service. You have been aboard a fighting ship and know its usual cargo. Did anything strike you as strange about our dying friend’s story?”
“The ship, one of King Philip’s galleons, sunk off the coast of Scotland two hundred years ago.” Pole licked at his chapped lips and a new light filled his eyes. “With a load of bullion on board it.”
“Exactly. A wreck in Loch Malkirk, we deduce, and bearing gold. Now, Colonel Pole, have you ever been involved in a search for treasure?”
Before Pole could answer there was a noise like a hissing wood fire from the other armchair. It was Will Bailey, awake again and shaking with laughter.
“Ever been involved in a hunt for treasure, Jacob! There’s a good one for me to tell yer wife.” He went into another fit of merriment. “Should I tell the Doctor, Jacob?”
He turned to Darwin. “There was never a man born under the sun who followed treasure harder. He had me at it, too—diving for pearls off Sarawak, and trawling for old silver off the Bermudas’ reefs.” He lay back, croaking with laughter. “Tell ’im, Jacob, you tell ’im all about it.”
Pole peered at him in the dim light. “Will Bailey, you’re a shapeless mass of pox-ridden pig’s muck. Tell him about yourself, instead of talking about me. Who ate the poultice off the black dog’s back, eh? Who married the chimney sweep, and who hanged the monkey?”
“So you have found treasure before?” interjected Darwin, and Pole turned his attention back to the doctor.
“Not a shillings-worth, though I’ve sought it hard enough, along with fat Will there. I’ve searched, aye, and I’ve even hunted bullion out on the Main, in sunk Spanish galleons; but I’ve never found enough to pay a minute’s rent on a Turkish privy. What of it, then?”
“Consider our wrecked galleon, resting for two hundred years off the coast of Scotland. How would it have got there? Spanish galleons were not in the habit of sailing the Scottish coast—still less at a time when England and Spain were at war.”
“The Armada!” said Bailey. “He’s saying yon ship must have been part of the Spanish Armada, come to invade England.”
“The Armada indeed. Defeated by Drake and the English fleet, afraid to face a straight journey home to Cadiz through the English Channel, eh? Driven to try for a run the long way, around the north coast of Scotland, with a creep down past Ireland. Many of the galleons tried that.”
Pole nodded. “It fits. But—”
“Aye, speak your but.” Darwin’s eyes were alight with pleasure. “What is your but?”
“But a ship of the Armada had no reason to carry bullion. If anything, she’d have been stripped of valuables in case she went down in battle.”
“Exactly!” Darwin slapped his fat thigh. “Yet against all logic we find sunk bullion in Loch Malkirk. One more factor, then I’ll await your comment: you and I both live fifteen miles from here, and I at least am an infrequent visitor; yet I was called on to help Dr. Monkton—who has never before called me in for advice or comment on anything. Ergo, someone knew my whereabouts tonight, and someone persuaded Monkton to send for me. Who? Who asked you to fetch me from Matthew Boulton’s house?”
Pole frowned. “Why, he did.” He pointed at Will Bailey.
“Nay, but the woman told me you and Monkton asked for that.” Bailey looked baffled. “Only she didn’t know the way, and had to get on back in there with her man. That’s when I asked you to do it—I thought you knew all about it.”