The House Of Smoke Read Online Free PDF Page B

others and then took a fourth glass for himself.
    I lifted the liquid to my nose and smelled it. In the workhouse I had learned that meals and drinks with a bad odour were best avoided if you didn’t want to spend the rest of the week in the privy. The best I could discern was that it contained some sort of alcohol. ‘What spirit is this?’
    ‘Whisky,’ answered Miss Breed, back in Scottish guise. ‘Now dunny be a stookie, git it doon ya neck.’
    I sank most of it like a dose of medicine.
    ‘
Aqua vitae
,’ added the professor, contentedly sniffing his own drink, ‘Latin for “water of life”. It’s also a term applied to distilled alcohol, one Gaelic distillers use for whisky. Mixed with water, or other substances, it can have transformative effects on the body’s physiology.’
    I wasn’t quite sure what he meant, but I was thirsty enough to drain the glass.
    ‘For example,’ he continued, ‘your brain is now telling you that you have almost quenched your thirst. That’s a good feeling, isn’t it?’
    I nodded. He was right about that. It had been some time since I had drunk anything and my morning exercises had left me somewhat parched.
    He looked pleased. ‘A little more?’
    I held out my glass. This time he was less generous in his measure. He resealed the decanter and returned it to its holder as I drank. ‘You are currently relaxing in the assured knowledge that you are rehydrating. That is because water comprises an enormous amount of the human body – more than half, possibly as much as three quarters.’
    I couldn’t see how that could be, but I emptied the glass again.
    ‘Better?’
    ‘Yes, I suppose I am almost, what’s the word,
rehydrated
?’
    ‘Very good.’ He smiled, then leaned forwards and studied my face. ‘Your pupils have already dilated. I suspect you are feeling light-headed and a little weak?’
    I had not noticed the sensation until he mentioned it, but again, he was correct.
    Moriarty reached out and took the glass from me. ‘I’ll take this from you. It’s expensive and I’d hate you to break it. You see, I have given you a sedative and you are now in the process of losing consciousness.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘The drink contained a sweet toxic honey called rhododendron nectar. It lowers your blood pressure to the point that you become dizzy and pass out. It’s a crude form of anaesthetic.’
    I made a clumsy move for the door.
    Gunn slapped an arm across my chest. I tried to lift my hands to fight him, but my limbs felt numb. I stumbled off my seat.
    ‘Don’t fight it,’ said Moriarty. ‘You’ll sleep now. When you awake, we will be at our destination.’
    The sedative sewed my eyes together. In the blackness, our carriage rose from the ground. Horses galloped into clouds. The air became thin and cold. We were high in the night sky and beneath us everything was turning black. Gradually, images floated up at me.
    A tavern. Bawdy men clinking ale tankards, playing cards, arguing over winnings. Coarse women laughing and flaunting themselves. The noise was deafening.
    Then suddenly silence; people moved apart. A woman collapsed. Screamed in pain, her face twisted by the agony. Men were laughing at her. Some of the women pulled at her clothes. There was blood. Blood everywhere.
    It was my birth.
    In that sedated nightmare I heard my mother’s screams. Saw her eyes become fixed and dead. Watched her corpse carried from the tavern to a wagon. Heard it rumble over the cobbles, off to the pauper’s pit where rotting strangers were piled high upon each other then all were mounded in earth. I heard my own infantile screams.
    And a voice from the present not the past: ‘Wake up! Wake up! C’mon now.’
    The raggedy errand-boy-come-woman slapped my face.
    My eyes blinked open.
    A lantern swung.
    ‘He’s coming round,’ she said to someone.
    ‘Get him out of the carriage.’ Moriarty sounded far, far away.
    ‘Watch his head,’ the girl warned.
    Strong hands slid me