Heaven's Bones (25 page)

The man moved toward Barnett, raising his stick.

“Get away at once, you blackguard,” he said in a low, dangerous voice.

“Filthy bastard,” retorted Barnett, but his knife was out of reach and his right hand useless anyway, and there was a look in the man's eye that made him quail.

“You 'ave the use of her, then, and be damned to you both,” he spat. With the man's sharp eye upon him he made his way to the gate of Miller's Court, wincing as the bones of his insulted hand ground against each other.

When he was gone, the dark figure turned to Marta.

“You're hurt,” he said, his voice concerned. He had the faintest trace of a foreign accent, a little like the sailors that shipped in from Russia.

He held out a gloved hand, and Marta hesitated. The man simply waited patiently until she reached out and took it, feeling his fingers warm beneath the soft leather.

Holding onto his hand, she levered herself upright. Pain flared in her knee and lower leg, and she cried out, staggering against him. He did not recoil but supported her, his grip strong on her arm.

“Your knee might be dislocated,” he said. She stared at him, uncomprehending.

“Your knee is out at the joint,” he amended, “and your bone might be broken.”

She almost wept. Last month a woman she sometimes shared quarters with had broken her fingers and wrist bones in a mangle, working double shifts at a laundry, and lay screaming, then moaning on her filthy bed while her injuries festered. Finally someone had bundled her away to the Charity Hospital; she was dead, for all Marta knew. There was no easy way with broken bones.

“I can help you,” said the stranger. She looked up at him. His dark, shadowed eyes glinted wide. “A good friend of mine is a
physician, and works in the area; I'll take you to him.” He urged her gently toward the street, where a yellow fog was beginning to rise.

“You're very kind, sir … but I can't pay.” Maybe she could find the midwife to patch her up for the promise of payment next week. Surely by Sunday she'd be fit to go back on the game.

He took more of her weight, so he was almost carrying her.

“Nonsense, my girl. He takes only charity cases these days, and wouldn't take your money if you offered. He'll fix you up in no time, Doctor Robarts will.”

“If you're sure, sir.” She was too tired, in too much pain to resist, and confused now, with the thick sallow fog swirling thick about her. How had it come, all of a sudden?

All she could offer was between her legs, and that got her by when times were hard. But maybe her rescuer would make no such demands, at least not yet.

“Not to worry, my dear. Quite the gentleman, Doctor Robarts is.”

“The Gentleman …” Something chimed warningly in the back of Marta's mind. Maybe it was a story she'd heard as a child, or a snatch of an old song—something about the Gentleman.

But that was childish nonsense, and when the stranger picked her up and carried her bodily into the fog it was such a relief that all protest was driven from her mind, and she only hummed distractedly—

“That's a lovely tune, my dear,” said her rescuer, smiling over the top of her head.

When he was eleven years old, Henry Thorpe was chasing his cousin Bernard Huxley, who had robbed him of his kite and run ahead, taunting him in the time-immemorial manner of schoolboys the world over. Over the downs they ran, and Henry, caught between annoyance and the delight of the chase, drew closer and closer to the laughing Bernie, reaching out to seize him and tumble him down.

But his foot hit a stone and he fell, and as he hit the ground and rolled he felt a sickening crack in his shin. Bernard stopped and turned, a catcall on his lips and froze at the sight of his face. He let go the string, the kite swooping forgotten to the ground, and ran back to Henry.

He was lucky, the apothecary said. A clean break with no green-stick fracture, nothing lodged in the flesh where it would become infected; no danger of losing the leg. But he must remain still in bed, his leg splinted and stretched immobile before him, and so he stayed for a month, while the soft green days of summer passed one by one as he watched through his window, and a remorseful Bernard brought him insects and minnows in jars, and stories of wars with the village children over tree forts and solitary days spent fishing.

One day, when his backside was sore from laying still and his leg itched fiercely under its wrappings, a sparrow came to the
windowsill—his mother had opened it that morning to let the breeze in. It pecked at a shadow, then looked straight at him, cocking its small striped head, its yellow-rimmed eyes reproachful. The next day he begged his mother to leave some breadcrumbs on the windowsill and two sparrows came that day, pecking at the food and ruffling themselves up with delight. When they dived away his heart longed for that kind of freedom; broken legs wouldn't matter if he had wings.

Finally the day came when the apothecary pronounced the bones knitted together enough for him to hobble about, and he was allowed to come downstairs, to venture to the front doorstep, and finally, gloriously, to sit outside on the grass, the injured leg still propped in front of him, and feel the breeze on his body and the sun on his face.

He'd walk until his leg was too sore to bear it, Bernard with him, and then he'd sit while the mending leg throbbed, and watch the birds swoop and flutter in the grass and the trees. He watched how the sparrows and finches fluttered from perch to perch with their short, efficient wings, and how the rooks and hawks soared on the updrafts, pinions spread to catch the rising air.

For the rest of his life he would associate watching birds with the ache in his leg and a crick in his neck, the breeze on his face and the sound of Bernie Huxley calling to him from across the meadow.

Nowadays, the only memory of the broken leg of his 12th summer was the faint ache of it when the weather was rainy and he had walked all day.

That and the birds.

The surgeon was quietly hilarious at the idea of a “lady doctor” interfering in police business.

“Matter of expertise,” he said. “The girl's been torn up some, but was it murder or did she do it herself?”

“Herself?”

“Matter of a street abortion. I can make my guess, but I don't treat women as a general practice—not live ones, at least. I asked McPherson to send down one of his students, and I'm told to expect a Doctor Sophia Huxley. Don't know if it's the man's idea of a joke, but he's not a humorous type, for the most part.”

Artemis nodded at Dr. Huxley when she appeared. The surgeon just grunted at her. She was on the short side, with thick brown hair pulled back from her face, which was a little too cat-shaped for beauty.

He had seen her before, he knew. Perhaps he'd passed her in the hospital corridors and taken her for a Nightingale.

She winced at the smell but didn't comment on it, placing her bag carefully on the counter and bending to her examination.

To Artemis' amusement, the surgeon pulled out a meat pie and peered over her shoulder, chewing reflectively.

Artemis, leaning against the white-tiled wall, had to admit a grudging respect for the man's intestinal fortitude. The smell of
decay was pervasive and although he was used to dreadful sights and worse smells, he would never have attempted to take his supper in the dissection room.

The girl—or Dr. Huxley, he should say—went deathly pale when she lifted the sheet that covered the deceased. The dead girl had been in the water a few days, and the fish had gone to work on her face and extremities. Artemis watched as Dr. Huxley tightened her jaw and composed herself.

That's the way, girl, he thought. But don't take a deep breath while you're at it.

She eased the deceased's knees up and looked closely at the damage, lifting sloughed tissue aside carefully with her speculum. There was no sound but the mastication of a meat pie during her examination. Artemis studied Dr. Huxley's face and the way she held it, careful to show no emotion.

Finally Dr. Huxley lowered the dead girl's legs and replaced the sheet. She went to the sink in the corner and spoke over her shoulder while she washed her hands over and over with harsh yellow soap.

“She tried to abort herself,” she said. “With a blunt knife, the kind you'd find in a tavern or a chop house, or maybe a common kitchen. It didn't work, but she did enough damage that sepsis set in.”

She shook her hands and dried them on her coat, avoiding the mortuary's linens.

“Must've hurt like hell,” she continued in her clear, clipped voice. “You think she was a jumper?”

“Like as not,” said Artemis. “And you've seen this sort of injury before?”

She nodded. “Too often.”

She wrapped her speculum in a length of linen and repacked her bag.

“Thank you for your assistance, Doctor Huxley,” said Artemis, looking pointedly at the surgeon.

Jolted, he swallowed the last of the pie.

“Yes, thank you,” he said thickly. “Mind you, only confirms what I thought, but it's nice to be able to amuse yourself, isn't it, miss?”

She opened her mouth, shut it, and took her bag in hand.

“Gentlemen,” she said with a nod, and left the room.

Artemis caught up with her near the back entrance, where supplies were brought in. The bag was on the floor and she leaned back against the stained plaster wall, breathing heavily. She looked quite green.

“Sit, and get your head between your knees,” he said, holding her elbow.

She flashed him a venomous glance but did as he said, arranging her skirts decorously around her ankles as she sat. As she bent forward he placed the wet towel he'd grabbed from the mortuary on the back of her neck. She flinched but didn't resist it.

He sat silently with her until her breathing steadied.

“Your first pulled from the river, isn't it?” he said presently.

She started to nod but stopped, keeping her head down.

“Yes,” she managed.

“You did well,” he said. “Most can't keep it down, their first one. Makes a bigger stink than the body.”

“That's a comfort,” she said, her voice muffled. “I think I can get up now.”

“You sure?”

“Oh, yes.”

He helped her to her feet, letting her retrieve her bag herself.

“Thank you,” she said, brushing off her skirt. “Mr.…?

“Donovan. Artemis Donovan.”

“Mr. Donovan. I'm fine now.”

“You want me to go away now?”

She smiled. “Yes. But no offense intended.”

“None taken, Doctor Huxley.”

He left her composing herself under the curious glances of deliverymen. When he had touched her arm he'd had a vivid picture of a young woman, doubled over in pain, hovering at the lip of the embankment, and the terrible cry as she fell into the dark waters below.

He wondered if it was his vision or Dr. Huxley's.

Bryani House, the Mists

“Trueblood!”

The man who called himself Trueblood frowned, and looked up from the book spread open on the heavy oak table in Yorick Robarts' library. On the page in front of him was a sketch of a connected string of gears, twisting across the yellowed paper like a snake.

He made as if to close the book, then paused, and drew a sheet of foolscap over the page.

Robarts was in the great foyer, bent over a woman who was spread-eagled and facedown, on a wide metal table that had come from his laboratory. She was bare from the waist up and a folded sheet protected her from the cold surface.

Trueblood could see her face; it was turned, facing him as he came from the hall that led to the library. Her eyes were glazed open but there was no spark of recognition or even awareness within them. Only an occasional flutter of her eyelashes as she blinked hinted that she was alive; she was tranced as deeply as Robarts' drugs and Trueblood's powers could make her.

From the dip in her back just above the buttocks to the tops of her shoulder blades Robarts had flayed away two immense sheets
of skin and flesh, each almost half the width of her back and still attached to her body along the spine. Beneath the flaps the structure of her back muscles was visible, dull red and corded with white tendons. Blood welled in the crevices between but didn't spill; it looked dark, thick and jellylike.

Trueblood studied Robarts. The doctor was holding his scalpel over the flaps of skin; his hand was shaking now and droplets of sweat stood out on his forehead. He was deathly pale.

He glanced up at Trueblood's approach, and withdrew his instrument from over his subject's back.

“May I be of assistance, sir?”