A Stranger in the Garden (5 page)

Through it all, Darwin seemed not at all afraid, only sad. He reached over Charles’s trembling fingers and unscrewed the bottle.

“Drink the laudanum,” he said. “It will all be better soon.”

With Darwin’s help, Charles managed to open his mouth and shake the dark liquid down his unwilling throat. Everything was coming apart. Everything.

Charles woke in an unfamiliar bed. A balding old man was bending over him. He was a bit more spry than Darwin, and he peered at Charles through his wire-rimmed glasses with mild curiosity.

“I am Dr. Gully,” he said. “Do you remember being brought here?”

Charles shook his head.

“Mr. Darwin seems to think you have the nervous dyspepsia caused by some sort of parasite.”

Charles didn’t say anything as Dr. Gully pulled back the coverlet briskly.

“Remove your shirt, please. I would like to palpate your abdomen.”

Charles did so slowly. Sometimes it took the Grue a little longer to wake, and Charles suspected that if they’d been drugged a long time—for he didn’t remember getting here or how long it had taken—that he might be sluggish.

His sides were hollow, but his stomach was bloated, like a pregnant woman just beginning to show. The Grue curled there. Charles had worn such clothing that the Grue could not be seen, but now his presence was plainly visible.

Gully pressed on the spot tentatively. “That is more than a mere parasite, son.”

Charles shrank from his touch. Not only was it painful, but the Grue was awake and felt the hands on Charles’s skin. The Grue swam toward the hands, as if he would burst from Charles’s skin. Charles cried out with the pain before the Grue silenced him. Gully stepped back, adjusting his glasses in disbelief.

But the Grue could not break free of the prison of flesh. Both he and Charles knew this.

Corinna had been right. Without magic, without blood, the Grue was vulnerable.

“Have you any family?” Dr. Gully asked.

“No.”

Gully pulled out a strange device, a scope of some sort, and looked into Charles’s eyes. He inhaled a bit sharply, but otherwise gave no sign of what he’d seen. He touched the skin at Charles’s throat, testing his pulses.

“I must consult my partners before I can offer you the proper course of treatment,” he finally said. He folded up his instruments and replaced them in his black leather medical satchel. “I may bring them in to observe you. Are you amenable to that?”

Charles nodded. He had no other choice.

Gully departed. Someone came to feed Charles a fishy broth, which he regurgitated not long after the nurse left. The stench was abominable.

The next person who comes into this room will be utterly consumed,
the Grue threatened.

Charles just settled himself back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. He thought of Catherine. For once, the Grue couldn’t take his memories away, painful as they were. Something had changed.

It was well after sunset, from what he could judge, when Dr. Gully returned with a girl, perhaps fifteen or sixteen, and a thin gentleman with elegant mustaches and a monocle perched on his angular cheekbone.

“This is Francine Lark and Nigel Gaylord. They will assist me in developing your treatment regimen,” Gully said.

The doctor pulled back the coverlet again but did not lift Charles’s shirt in Francine’s presence. The bulge of the Grue was obvious, though.

Nigel unwound a long golden chain from his palm. An arrow-shaped pendulum swung at its end. Charles recognized this sort of thing from the charlatans who used to practice under the Vaunting Bridge. Mesmerists.

His lip curled.

“Rest easy, sir,” Gaylord said. “And watch the pendulum swing in the candlelight.”

Francine moved closer on his other side. He turned his head to look at her. She licked her lips nervously.

“Is this your idea of magic?” the Grue growled through his lips. It seemed that even when the Grue had control of nothing else, he still had Charles’s tongue.

Her eyes widened and she backed up a step.

Dr. Gully’s voice was firm on the other side of the bed. “Look toward the pendulum, Mr. Waddingly. Francine is here to assist only. There is no magic involved here. Only the fine art of healing.”

Charles looked back at the pendulum unwillingly. Gaylord’s eyes were blank, his posture unyielding. The only thing that moved was the pendulum, swinging in a golden arc between his fingers.

Charles followed the fan of light until he was lost in it.

He woke again to hear himself screaming Catherine’s name in a hoarse voice.

Gaylord cupped the pendulum with one hand and it disappeared inside his palm again.

Both he and Francine stared at him as if they wanted to say something but couldn’t quite form the words.

“What did I tell you?” Charles asked.

“Of a strange place called New London where a group of men called the Architects found you. And a Museum of Unnatural History”—here Gully looked at him over the rim of his glasses with raised brows—“and a being who possessed you . . .”

“You think I’m mad,” Charles croaked.

Gully shook his head. “Francine is a clairvoyant. She can see into matters of the realms beyond this one in ways most of us cannot. I think you believe that you are from this New London. I know that something untoward has infected you. Beyond that, it is not for me to judge.”

Charles thought he had never met a wiser man.

“And Darwin?” Charles asked. “What does he think of this? And where is he?”

“Mr. Darwin guessed your condition admirably,” Gully said. “Right now, he is taking his own cure, which I developed for him long ago.”

Charles nodded.

Nigel peered at him through his monocle, and it made Charles oddly uncomfortable. It reminded him of something. Rackham. The dirty little hexshop owner from whom he had stolen the soul jar. His mouth tightened against the tears that threatened. Rackham had not been the first nor the last. Why his death of any of them should affect him so, Charles had no idea.

“You are feeling things,” Francine said. “Human emotions. This is good. You must allow yourself to have them.”

The Grue laughed and twisted in his belly until Charles cried out. “How about my insatiable lust for your flesh?” he snarled.

Charles clapped his hands over his mouth. They were so thin the bones seemed to rattle within them.

Her eyes widened a little, but she was growing accustomed to him. “That is the parasite within you talking. I know its voice. We will rid you of it.”

He bit his fingers against the Grue’s retort almost until they bled.

“He cannot withstand the full walking cure,” Nigel said. “But the rest of it, we should most certainly do.”

“Tincture of wormwood and oak gall?” Gully asked.

Gaylord looked at Charles again. “And the merest speck of hemlock. Followed by syrup of ipecac of course. We do not want to poison
him
.”

“Poison?” Charles whispered.

But they were not really talking to him. They bent their heads together and whispered. Even his senses, once so finely tuned by the Grue, could make out none of it.

Finally, Dr. Gully turned and said, “We shall leave you now. To take advantage of the most healing energies, we will begin the treatment at dawn.”

Francine gave him a sad, knowing look as they departed.

It was a strange thing to realize how much he wanted to live when he had thus far been so bent on dying.

The Grue had been listening. He warned Charles:
You cannot remove me. I am part of you now. If you let them do this, you will die.

Perhaps,
Charles thought.
But you will die too.

It wasn’t the magic he needed to get rid of. It was the Grue. His first mistake had been in believing the Grue’s power could make magic more palatable. His greatest mistake was in believing the Grue could take it all away, and that when it was gone, his guilt over his memories would be gone too.

Now that everything would be taken, Charles found himself terribly guilty and bitter. What had happened to New London because of his foolishness? Would he ever know?

He remembered Vespa’s face as the Creeping Waste swirled over their heads. He hadn’t cared about the Heart. He’d cared about hurting her, because she’d had something he hadn’t. A father who loved her to distraction, who loved her so much that he had smothered her, trying to hide her gifts. No siblings to worry with. Being pampered and petted and spoiled.