Vectors (36 page)

Darwin nodded slowly. The two men rode on in silence for a while, both deep in thought.

"Nothing you have said so far suggests the usual mental diseases," Darwin said at last. "But the human mind is more complicated than we can guess. Tell me, has your wife any other fears or fancies? Any other fuel for her beliefs?"

"Only more legends." Thaxton shrugged apologetically. "There are other legends of the fell. According to the writings of Thomas of Appleby, in Roman times a great king, Odirex, or Odiris, lived in the high country of the fells. He acquired a great treasure. Somehow, he used it to banish the Romans from that part of the country, completely, so that they never returned."

"What was his treasure?"

"The legend does not tell. But according to Thomas of Appleby, Odirex hid his treasure on Cross Fell. Local folk say that it is there to this day, guarded by the fiends of the fell. Anna says that she has seen the guardians; that they are not of human form; and that they live on Cross Fell yet, and will sometime come down again."

Darwin had listened to this very closely, and was now sitting upright on the hard seat of the carriage. "A strange tale, indeed, and one that I have not heard before in all my reading of English myth and legend. Odirex, eh? A name to start trains of thought, if we will but remember our Latin.
Odii Rex
—the King of Hate. What else does Thomas of Appleby have to say about the King of Hate's Treasure?"

"Only that it was irresistible. But surely, Dr. Darwin, you are not taking these tales seriously? They are but the instruments that are turning my wife's mind away from sanity."

"Perhaps." Darwin relaxed and hunched low in hits seat. "Perhaps. In any case, I would have to see your wife to make any real decision as to her condition."

"I can bring her here to see you, if you wish. But I must do it under some subterfuge, since she does not know that I am seeking assistance for her condition. As for money, I will pay any fee that you ask,"

"No. Money is not an issue. Also, I want to see her at your home in Milburn." Darwin appeared to have made up his mind about something. "Look, I now have the responsibilities of my practice here, and as you can see they are considerable, However, I have reason to make a visit to York in a little more than two weeks' time. I will have another doctor, my
locum tenens
, working here in my absence. If you will meet me in York, at a time and place that we must arrange, we can go on together to Milburn. Then perhaps I can take a look at your Anna, and give you my best opinion on her—and on other matters, too."

Darwin held up his hand, to stem Thaxton's words. "Now, no thanks. We are almost arrived. You can show your appreciation in a more practical way. Have you ever assisted in country medicine, two hours after midnight? Here is your chance to try it."

* * *

"The roof of England, Jacob. Look there, to the east. We can see all the way to the sea."

Darwin was leaning out of the coach window, holding his wig on with one hand and drinking in the scenery, as they climbed slowly up the valley of the Tees, up from the eastern plain that they had followed north from the Vale of York. Jacob Pole shivered in the brisk east wind that blew through the inside of the coach, and huddled deeper into the leather greatcoat that hid everything up to his eyes.

"It's the roof, all right, blast it. Close that damn window. No man in his right mind wants to be out on the roof in the middle of December. I don't know what the devil I'm doing up here, when I could be home and warm in bed."

"Jacob, you insisted on coming, as you well know."

"Maybe. You can be the best doctor in Europe, Erasmus, and the leading inventor in the Lunar Club, but you still need a practical man to keep your feet on the ground."

Darwin grinned, intoxicated by the clear air of the fells. "Of course. The mention of treasure had nothing to do with it, did it? You came only to look after me."

"Hmph. Well, I wouldn't go quite so far as to say that. Damn it all, Erasmus, you know me. I've dived for pearls off the eastern Spice Islands; I've hunted over half the Americas for El Dorado; I've scrabbled after rubies in Persia and Baluchistan; and I've dug for diamonds all the way from Ceylon to Samarkand. And what have I got out of it? A permanent sunburn, a bum that's been bitten by all the fleas in Asia, and a steady dose of malaria three times a year. But I could no more resist coming here, when I heard Thaxton talk about Odirex's treasure, than you could stop ... philosophizing."

Darwin laughed aloud. "Ah, you're missing the point, Jacob. Look out there." He waved a brawny arm at the Tees Valley, ascending with the river before them. "There's a whole treasure right here, for the taking. If I knew how to use them, there are plants for a whole new medical pharmacopoeia, waiting for our use. I'm a botanist, and I can't even name half of them. Hey, Mr. Thaxton." He leaned further out of the coach, looking up to the driver's seat above and in front of him.

Richard Thaxton leaned perilously over the edge of the coach. "Yes, Dr. Darwin?"

"I'm seeing a hundred plants here that don't grow in the lowlands. If I describe them to you, can you arrange to get me samples of each?"

"Easily. But I should warn you, there are many others that you will not even see from the coach. Look." He stopped the carriage, swung easily down, and went off to a mossy patch a few yards to one side. When he came back, bare-headed, dark hair blowing in the breeze, he carried a small plant with broad leaves and a number of pale green tendrils with blunt, sticky ends. "There's one for your collection. Did you ever see or hear of anything like this?"

Darwin looked at it closely, smelled it, broke off a small piece of a leaf and chewed it thoughtfully. "Aye. I've not seen it for years, but I think I know what it is. Butterwort, isn't it? It rings a change on the usual order of things—animals eat plants, but this plant eats animals, or at least insects."

"That's right." Thaxton smiled. "Good thing it's only a few inches high. Imagine it ten feet tall, and you'd really have a 'Treasure of Odirex' that could have scared away the Romans."

"Good God." Jacob Pole was aghast. "You don't really think that there could be such a thing, do you—up on Cross Fell?"

"Of course not. It would have been found long ago—there are shepherds up there every day, you know. They'd have found it."

"Unless it found them," said Pole gloomily. He retreated even further into his greatcoat, Thaxton climbed back into the driver's seat and they went on their way. The great expense of the winter fells was spreading about them, a rolling sea of copper, sooty black and silver-gray. The land lay bleak, already in the grip of winter. At last, after three more hours of steady climbing, they came to Milburn. Thaxton leaned far over again, to shout into the interior of the coach. "Two more miles, and we'll be home."

The village of Milburn was small and windswept, a cluster of stone houses around the church and central common. Thaxton's coach seemed too big, out of scale with the mean buildings of the community. At the cross-roads that led away to the neighboring village of Newbiggin, Thaxton halted the carriage and pointed to the great mass of Cross Fell, lying to the north-east. Darwin looked at it with interest, and even Jacob Pole, drawn by the sight of his potential treasure-ground, ventured out of his huddle of coats and shawls.

After a couple of minutes of silent inspection of the bleak prospect, rising crest upon crest to the distant, hidden summit, Thaxton shook the reins to drive on.

"Wait—don't go yet!" Darwin's sudden cry halted Thaxton just as he was about to start the coach forward.

"What is it, Dr. Darwin? Is something the matter?"

Darwin did not reply. Instead, he opened the carriage door, and despite his bulk swung easily to the ground. He walked rapidly across the common, to where a boy about ten years old was sitting by a stone milestone. The lad was deformed of feature, with a broad, flattened skull and deep-set eyes. He was lightly dressed in the cast-off rags of an adult, and he did not seem to feel the cold despite the biting breeze.

The child started up at Darwin's approach, but did not run away. He was less than four feet tall, heavy-chested and bow-legged. Darwin stood before him and looked at him with a professional eye.

"What is it, Erasmus?" Jacob Pole had dismounted also and come hurrying after. "What's his disease?"

Darwin had placed a gentle hand on the boy's head and was slowly turning it from side to side. The child, puzzled but reassured by Darwin's calm manner and soft touch, permitted the examination without speaking.

"It is not disease, Jacob." Darwin shook his head thoughtfully. "At first I thought it must be, but the lad is quite healthy. Never in my medical experience have I seen such a peculiar physiognomy. Look at the strange bone structure of the skull, and the curious regression of the jaw. And see that odd curve, in the relation of the thoracic and cervical vertebrae." Darwin puffed out his full lips, and ran a gentle finger over the child's lumpy forehead. "Tell me, my boy, how old are you?"

The child did not reply. He looked at Darwin with soft, intelligent eyes, and made a strange, strangled noise high in his throat.

"You'll get no reply from Jimmy," said Thaxton, who had followed behind the other two men. "He's mute—bright enough, and he'll follow any instructions. But he can't speak."

Darwin nodded, and ran his hand lightly over the boy's throat and larynx. "Yes, there's something odd about the structure here, too. The hyoid bone is malformed, and the thyroid prominence is absent. Tell me, Mr. Thaxton, are the boy's parents from these parts of Cumbria?" Darwin smiled encouragingly at the lad, though his own lack of front teeth made that more frightening than reassuring. A piece of silver, pressed into the small hand, was more successful. The boy smiled back tentatively, and pointed upwards towards the Fell.

"See, he understands you very well," said Thaxton. "His mother is up on Dufton Fell, he says." He turned away, drawing the other two men after him, before he continued in a low voice. "Jimmy's a sad case. His mother's a shepherdess, daft Molly Metcalf. She's a poor lass who doesn't have much in the way of wits. Just bright enough to tend the sheep, up on Dufton Fell and Cross Fell."

"And the father?" asked Darwin.

"God only knows. Some vagrant. Anyway, Jimmy's not much to look at, but his brain is all right. He'll never be much more than a dwarf, I fear, but there will always be work for him here in the village. He's trustworthy and obedient, and we've all grown used to the way he looks."

"He's certainly no beauty though," said Jacob Pole. "That's a strange deformity. You know what he reminds me of? When I was in the Spice Islands, there was a creature that the Dutch called the Orange-Lord, or Orang-Laut, or some such name. It lived in the deep forest, and it was very shy; but I once saw a body that the natives brought in. The skull and bone structure reminded me of your Jimmy."

"It's a long way from the Spice Islands to Cross Fell, Colonel," said Thaxton. "And you can guess what Anna has been saying—that daft Molly was impregnated by a fiend of the fell, some diabolical incubus, and Jimmy is the devilish result. What do you think of that, Dr. Darwin?"

Erasmus Darwin had been listening absent-mindedly, from time to time turning back for another look at the boy. "I don't know what to think yet, Mr. Thaxton," he finally replied. "But I can assure you of one thing. The only way that a human woman bears children is from impregnation by a human male. Your wife's chatter about an incubus is unscientific piffle."

"Impregnation is not always necessary, Doctor. Are you not forgetting the virgin birth of Our Lord, Jesus Christ?"

"Don't get him started on that," said Jacob Pole hastily, "or we'll be here all day. You may not know it, Mr. Thaxton, but this is Erasmus Darwin, the doctor, the inventor, the philosopher, the poet, the everything—except the Christian."

Thaxton smiled. "I had heard as much, to tell the truth, from Dr. Warren. 'If you are wise,' he said, 'you will not dispute religion with Dr. Darwin. If you are wiser yet, you will not dispute anything with him.'"

The men climbed back into the coach and drove slowly on through Milburn, to Thaxton's house north of the village. Before they went inside the big stone-built structure, they again took a long look at Cross Fell, rising vast to the north-east.

"It's clear today," said Thaxton. "That means that the Helm won't be on the fell, and Anna won't be seeing or hearing anything tonight. Dr. Darwin, I don't know what your diagnosis will be, but I swear to God that the next twenty-four hours will be the hardest for me of any that I can remember. Come in, now, and welcome to Heartsease."

Darwin did not speak, but he patted the other man sympathetically on the shoulder with a firm hand. They walked together to the front door of the house.

* * *

"They are taking an awfully long time." Richard Thaxton rose from his seat by the fire and began to pace the study, looking now and again at the ceiling.

"As they should be," said Jacob Pole reassuringly. "Richard, sit down and relax. I know Erasmus, and I've seen him work many times in the past. He has the greatest power of observation and invention of any man I ever met. He sees disease where others can see nothing—in the way a man walks, or talks, or stands, or even lies. And he is supremely thorough, and in the event of dire need, supremely innovative. I owe to him the lives of my wife, Elizabeth, and my daughter Milly. He will come down when he is satisfied, not before."

Thaxton did not reply. He stood at the window, looking out at the inscrutable bulk of Cross Fell. A strong north-east wind, harsh and gusting, bent the leafless boughs of the fruit trees in the kitchen garden outside the study window, and swirled around the isolated house,

"See up there," he said at last. "The Helm is growing. In another two hours the top of the fell will be invisible."

Pole rose also and joined him by the window. At the top of the fell, a solid bank of roiling cloud was forming, unmoved by the strengthening wind. As they watched, it grew and thickened, shrouding the higher slopes and slowly moving lower.