Camille (10 page)

“It is not often we have visitors,” Dr.
Bennett said. “I believe I will fetch a bottle of port to go with
the fine meal.” After divulging the humiliating state of our social
life, he left the room in pursuit of wine.

“If you would trade those unflattering
trousers and that topper for dresses like you wore today, visitors
would be lined up at the front door,” Strider said without looking
up from his plate. A bit of food and the confident, cocky lad had
returned.

I plunged the fork into my stew. “Yes, that
is what I need. More attention like I received today.” I shoved a
potato chunk into my mouth only to discover, too late, that it was
still very hot. My eyes watered as I forced myself to chew and
swallow it.

He handed me my glass of water. “You found
some unwanted attention today, but it seems you’re hiding in boy’s
clothing to keep away wanted attention as well.”

His words stung mostly because they rang true
more than I liked to believe. “And what is wanted attention? A kiss
from Nathaniel Strider? I hardly think anything given out that
freely is anything worth wanting.”

He swallowed and leaned his face close to
mine. The scent of sandalwood soap radiated from his freshly washed
skin. The lines around his mouth deepened. “Tis the wanting that
makes a kiss worthwhile.” He looked at my lips and then dropped his
gaze to his plate. I sucked my bottom lip in between my teeth to
keep it from trembling.

I pretended to concentrate on my stew, but
every bite tasted like paper and stuck in my throat. I’d never sat
at a table to eat with a boy, and this was not just any boy. Every
inch of me reacted to his presence. If I closed my eyes, I’d be
able to visualize every detail of his face.

The silence verged on uncomfortable until he
spoke again. “I came near to tearing them apart with my ‘ands.” His
tone had fallen to a near whisper. He dropped his fork and
tightened his fingers into a fist. “I don’t know how it happened.
Through the din of the crowd, I heard this tiny scream. As small
and distant as it was, it was like thunder in my head.” He looked
up at me. Some of the blood had drained from his face making the
dark circles under his eyes more pronounced. “I knew it was you. I
don’t know how or why, but I knew it was you.”

I was torn between throwing myself into his
arms and racing from the room. Instead, I dropped my fork and
steadied my hands in my lap.

He stared down at his plate. His shoulders
relaxed slightly, but my heart still raced.

“I could feel every beat of my pulse as if my
veins had come to the surface. And there was this power, this rage.
It surged like a flood.”

It took all my courage to reach up and touch
his arm, but he pulled it away and shook his head. “Then I saw your
face”, he lifted his eyes again, “that incredible face. You looked
at me but you weren’t frightened. You even touched me. How could
she not be afraid, I asked myself?” The anguish in his expression
made my throat tighten. “Because you’d been telling me the bloody
truth all along.”

“Dr. Bennett is a brilliant scientist. He’ll
help you.” It was all I could think to say, but the words sounded
like childish prattle.

“Did I hear someone mention my name?” Dr.
Bennett returned with the bottle of port. He sat at the table
seemingly unaware of the tension now circulating the room. He
opened the bottle, and I decided I needed a glass as well.

“John, you will surely grow a hump on your
back the way you sit staring into that microscope day and
night.”

Dr. Bennett lifted his head and rubbed the
back of his neck with his hand. “You may be right, Cami. However, I
don’t think I’d make a good cathedral bell ringer. I really don’t
care for heights.” He reached for a new box of slides. “Our visitor
hasn’t woken yet. I’m sure he rarely gets a good night’s rest.”

“How do they survive?”

After laying the new slides out on parchment,
he began labeling each one. “Who’s that, Camille?”

“The poor. How do they get on without food in
their belly or a place to lay their heads?”

The sound of a throat clearing drew our
attention to the doorway. Strider stood there in Dr. Bennett’s
white shirt and trousers.

“Did you sleep well?” Dr. Bennett asked.

He nodded. “Like someone clobbered me over
the head.”

I smiled. “Come in, Mr. Strider. This is the
science lab.”

“Only if you promise to stop calling me Mr.
Strider. It’s Nathaniel.”

I motioned him inside. “Well then,
Nathaniel.”

He wandered in and surveyed the room with
curiosity. The oddities on the back wall caught his attention, and
he headed straight to them. The jar containing a preserved pig
fetus seemed of particular interest. He lifted it and shook it,
watching the rubbery specimen bounce off the walls of the jar.

“Is that a microscope?” Strider asked as he
walked to where Dr. Bennett sat. “I’ve seen one of those in a
book.”

Dr. Bennett scooted back. “Have a look.
You’ll be astonished at what you see.”

Strider approached the brass instrument as if
it might explode.

“Just place your eye over the eyepiece like
this.” Dr. Bennett modeled the technique.

Strider hovered over the scope and slammed
his eye on it before jumping back with a hand over the squinting
eye. “That bloody thing is dangerous.”

I moved to the microscope. “You may be the
first person in England to injure himself on a microscope.”

Strider lowered his face to mine and lifted
the eyelid open with his fingers. “Do I still ‘ave an eye?”

I laughed. “Still there.”

He straightened with a sigh. “Too bad. I hear
girls take a liking to a man with an eye patch.”

“Yes, when the eye was lost in some wildly
romantic fashion like a sword fight or pistol duel. Not from
smacking it on the eyepiece of a microscope. And you hardly need
any more help with the ladies,” I added. “Now watch.” I lowered my
face slowly over the microscope and adjusted the light. I glanced
up at Dr. Bennett. “Are these…?”

Dr. Bennett nodded. “And they have multiplied
at an astounding rate.”

The shape of Strider’s cells had changed
dramatically since the last time I’d looked. Strider moved his face
closer. “Give me another chance. I think my eye has recovered.” The
lines framing his mouth acted like parentheses around his disarming
smile. Everything about him standing here in the austere atmosphere
of the lab was engaging. His presence lit the room more than any
dose of sunlight and beneath the warmth of his gaze, his cells were
mutating into something straight from hell.

Strider looked through the scope not knowing
he was looking at his own cells. Most likely, not even knowing he
had such things as cells. He pressed his face there a few moments
and looked up. “All I see is black.”

“It takes time,” I assured him. “It took me
several weeks to see anything at all.”

Dr. Bennett’s eyes widened. “I never realized
that.”

“That’s because I lied.”

“Well, you’re very practiced at deception
then, Cami. I had no idea.” Dr. Bennett removed the slide we’d been
looking at and replaced it with a new one. Then he reached for a
piece of paper on the shelf above his head. “After breakfast, I
wonder if you two can take a trip to the apothecary’s shop. I’ve
assembled a list of things I need for my study.”

“Certainly. That is if you don’t mind,
Nathaniel?”

Strider snapped to attention. “Forgive me, I
didn’t hear anything after the word breakfast.”

“Coming up,” I said and headed to the
kitchen.

# # #

Nathaniel Strider may have been experienced
in the art of robbing corpses and seducing women, but it was clear
he’d experienced little else in his life.

“Look at those!” Strider headed straight for
the colorful array of show globes along the apothecary’s counter.
He began to remove the stopper of a tall one filled with a creamy
blue liquid, but I grabbed his arm to stop him.

“I’m sure they’re not meant for
touching.”

He moved instantly on to a new toy, the
scale. He pushed one side down then the other as Mr. Jameson came
out from the back room.

“Please do not touch that. I have just had it
calibrated.” Mr. Jameson’s shaggy blonde moustache twitched angrily
as he spoke. He adjusted his eyeglasses and peered closely at
Strider.

Strider dropped his hands and pushed them in
his pockets. Mr. Jameson sneered at him for another moment then
turned his attention to me. “Miss Kennecott, good morning to you.
Is this lad with you?”

“Good morning, Mr. Jameson. Yes, this is
Nathaniel Strider, a friend of mine.”

Strider nodded to the man who returned the
acknowledgement with a suspicious glare.

My hand jutted forward. “I have a list from
Dr. Bennett.”

He unfolded the list and read it. “Some of
these are unusual requests. I’m not sure if I have an iron or brass
spring lancet. It says here no silver lancets, and those I know I
have. The glass flint cup with rubber suction, I may have in
back.”

I had not scanned the list when Dr. Bennett
handed it to me. As Mr. Jameson read it, a bitter taste rose in my
throat. Deep down I assumed blood samples would be needed, but I’d
pushed the vile thought out of my mind. Strider, still enamored
with the devices on display, had apparently no idea that the top
two items on the list were for bloodletting.

“Now, these other items I have.” Mr. Jameson
pulled a large wooden chest with tiny drawers out from under the
counter. Strider leaned in to get a closer view. A new aroma
emanated with the opening of each drawer as the apothecary pulled
out the grains he required. Several of the elements required the
mortar and pestle before they were weighed and filled into labeled
bottles.

“I’ll check for the phlebotomy instruments in
back.”

Phlebotomy. Even the word made me
lightheaded. I sat on the bench to wait but could not convince my
companion to do the same. He played with a pill sorter, which I
decided he couldn’t damage. I closed my eyes for a moment and
opened them to see him sliding something into his pocket.

The bench nearly turned over as I jumped off
it and flew to his side. I held out my hand without a word.
Reluctantly, he retrieved the stolen bottle from his pocket. “Not
that he would miss it. The place is filled with ‘em.”

He strolled to the end of the counter and
lifted his hand to touch the next instrument. “What’s this for?” he
asked.

“It’s a pill silverer,” I said. My answer
took a moment to register. “Christ! Don’t touch that!”

He lifted his hands up in the air as if he’d
been caught stealing. Now he scowled at me. “When I was seven, my
mum sent me to a school run by nuns. Sister Collins was as wide as
she was tall. She was so sour, I was convinced that she drank acid
from a rusty iron cup at tea time.”

“Your point?” I asked.

“I’d rather be standing ‘ere with her right
now.”

“Forgive me,” I felt a blush of humiliation
rise in my cheeks. “I’m not usually such a shrew. I guess I’m not
used to having a companion on my errands.” I looked at the shiny
brass dome on the pill silverer. “Especially a companion who must
stay far away from silver.” I added.

“I don’t understand.”

“Silver is poison to you now. It would be
safer for you to reach your hand into a scalding pot of oil then
touch the silver powder in that bowl.”

He looked at me in disbelief, but within
moments, the spirit had drained from his expression.

Mr. Jameson returned with the instruments
requested. I paid and we left the apothecary. Strider had not
touched or stolen anything else. At least not that I knew of. I
didn’t need to look at him to sense that his mood had darkened.

Sunlight streamed from the crystal sky. “Tis
a nice enough day. Let’s take an excursion to Covent Garden. I’ve a
few coins left, and we could buy some pears.”

My suggestion lightened his step. “I ‘aven’t
been to the Garden in a long while.” He smiled down at me. “Least
not with someone who had coins in their pocket.”

“But I’ll bet that didn’t stop you from
tasting the fruit on the stands.”

He shrugged. “Having the money to buy things
is really just a formality.” Something up ahead caught his
attention. A young shoe-black was crouched behind his box pressed
against the wall of a building staring up at a tall, well-dressed
man whose boot he’d apparently just shined.

The man lifted his foot and stuck it in the
lad’s face. “I’ll not give you anything. My dog could do a better
job cleaning my boots with his tongue,” the man snarled.

Strider stopped suddenly, and the man backed
up into him. He turned around and shoved Strider. “Out of my
way!”

I stepped back, my heart racing as I waited
for Strider’s reaction. His body stiffened, but he kept his tightly
clenched fists down to his side. “Sorry, mate,” he said through
clenched teeth.

The man squinted at Strider’s face before
finally having the good sense to turn and leave, but not without
nearly falling headlong over the shoe-black’s box in his urgency to
depart. I moved closer to Strider. Heat radiated off of him.

I placed a hand on his arm. It pulsed with
power. “Strider,” I whispered. “Nathaniel.”

His breathing slowed and his gaze softened as
his eyes met mine. He leaned forward and handed the boy a
sovereign. The shoe-black’s eyes widened as he peered at the
treasure on his palm. Strider reached down and patted the boy’s
cap.

We resumed our walk. “How did you--”

“I didn’t survive this long on the streets by
only stealing from dead people. Besides, that bloke deserved to be
separated from his sovereign. The way I look at it, he’s lucky
that’s all I took from him.”