Cold Stone and Ivy (20 page)

From behind the door, Ivy heard the tap, clank, and hiss that had begun to invade her dreams. The door creaked open onto the shiny shaft of the mallard cane, then the metal of his legs, and finally, the glare of the reticulating spectacles. He eyed her until he noticed the axe.

“Lizzie?” he said slowly. “What did we decide about your temper?”

“That girl is a greedy girl,” Lizzie snapped. “She’s jealous of me.”

“You must keep your axe in the pigeon coop.”

“The Russian scares them! He jumps off the roof and scares them every time! I hate him!”

“No pudding for supper tonight, I’m afraid,” said Frankow.

“I hate him and will chop off his head!”

“Girls who chop off heads do not get pudding.”

With a growl, the girl sprang to her feet, yanked the axe out of the door and stormed off down the hall. Slowly, the doctor turned back to them.

“Miss Savage, how kind of you to visit,” he said with the ghost of a smile. “And Sebastien, what is this? I hear you are dismissing my nurses.”

“Didn’t want to waste a bullet,” he muttered. “That woman. You’re not releasing her?”

“Who? Miss Borden? Oh yes. She is quite cured.”

Sebastien raised his brows.

“I am convinced, at any rate, that there is nothing more we can do for her here.” Frankow looked at him, and the lenses circled in. “Why? Would you care to try?”

The Mad Lord shook his head and sighed.

“Miss Savage is concerned for the well-being of her mother. Would we be able to conduct a short visit to ease her mind?”

“Her mother is in the baths, now. Perhaps later.”

“I will not leave without seeing her,” Ivy said.

“Then I suppose you will be staying the night?” Frankow asked, and his tone filled Ivy with dread. “Would you like your old room, Sebastien? You may share the bed with Miss Savage. She seems small enough. We haven’t changed a thing, you know.”

“Is Mumford there?”

“He is. He has commenced a treatise on the care of fine woollens but is currently suffering from what he calls ‘writer’s block.’ He has not left the room for months.”

There was a long and awkward silence, when suddenly, Sebastien began to laugh.

And even more suddenly, the two men embraced like old friends.

“Please,” Ivy moaned. “Tell me what in the heavens is going on!”

With an arm draped across the doctor’s shoulders, Sebastien grinned at her.

“He’s been having a jape on you, Miss Savage,” he said happily. “Frankow is a good man. A middling doctor, I’ll admit, but a good man.”

“But my mother . . . When can I see my mother?”

“My dear young woman,” Frankow began. “Your mother is indeed in the baths. But she will be done within the hour. Please, come into my office. It is a dreadful night and I have some fine port warming by the fire. They will notify us when she is ready.”

They followed him, and once again, Ivy was astounded.

The office of Dr. Arvin Frankow was a marvel of engineering. It had huge windows, at least three stories in height, and the many panes of leaded glass seemed to bend and fold to amplify the little light put out by the English sun. Above their heads, great cogs wheeled in slow motion, creating a low hum and generating sparks that leapt in lanterns higher up. It gave her the impression of a factory. Fitting, she thought, for the machine-man from Slovakia. He conducted business like an automaton.

Sebastien and Frankow were chatting like old friends, and she sank into a deep leather wing chair. This man, this machine-man, was treating her mother. He was a founding member of some wretched Ghost Club, along with Dr. Williams and Sebastien’s dead father. For the first time in her life there was entirely too much mystery for her.

“But the woman is unstable, clearly,” said the Mad Lord as he lifted the port to his lips. “I can’t believe you will declare her cured.”

“With the exception of her little outburst tonight, Miss Borden has been an exemplary patient, Sebastien,” countered Frankow. “Her father and stepmother wish to start a new life abroad. There is no clinical reason to detain her.”

“I see no good in her future. Violence and death at the end of that axe. Notoriety. Infamy . . .” He sighed, swirling the port in his glass. “And pigeons.”

“And pigeons.” Frankow grinned, and his lenses whirred. “And how is your Christien doing in London, Miss Savage? Oh, one moment—”

He rose to his feet at the whoosh and thump of pneumatic pipes, and she watched him clank over to a brass wall plate, slide open a hatch, and remove a large capsule. Inside was a letter, and she understood. Pneumatic pipes were all the rage in London. Could send posts speedily and efficiently throughout buildings and, if some reports were to be believed, throughout cities as well.

The lenses whirred and clicked, and Frankow looked up, his eyes as large as moons. “Your mother has retired from her baths. We may see her now.”

“Thank you, sir,” she snapped, and she sprang up from the chair. “You don’t need to accompany me. Just point me in the general direction—”

Suddenly, the fire roared in the hearth and just as suddenly died, and the office was plunged into darkness.

The gears above their heads began to groan and sparks leapt in the lanterns up above. Ivy shuddered as the temperature plummeted, and she could see her breath frost in front of her face.

“What’s happening?” she asked, but her attention was drawn to the window. The rain that was striking the glass was quickly becoming hail, and at the bottom of the panes, ice was gathering.

With eyes made wider by his spectacles, Frankow turned to look as well. Pane by pane, the ice was crawling its way up the glass, crackling in a crystalline wave like a living thing, just like that first night at Lasingstoke.

“
Mulieres mortuae iratae . . .”

It was a strange voice, hollow and echoing and in a language she didn’t understand. Slowly, Ivy turned to look.

Sitting deep in his leather chair, the Mad Lord was completely still, his eyes bluer than a country morning and fixed on something no one else could see.

“
Mulieres mortuae iratae . . .”

“Sebastien?” said Frankow slowly. “What is it?”

“Mulieres mortuae iratae . . . Mulieres mortuae iratae . . .”

“Is that Latin?” Ivy shivered, arms wrapped around her chest.

“Dead Women,” said Frankow as he laid the capsule on his desk. “Very Angry Dead Women . . . Sebastien, speak to me now.”

“There is someone in Seventh,” Sebastien announced in English, but his voice was strange, as if narrating a tale on a theatrical stage. “A boy . . . in the windows . . . the women . . .”

Frankow moved to the chair where the Mad Lord was sitting.

“Sebastien, is this present or future?” His breath fogged, created tiny icicles on the hairs of his beard.

“Present. Now. A boy . . . the boy . . .” He closed his eyes as if trying to recall a name or a face. “
Puer insipiens . . . Mulieres mortuae iratae . . . occident te . . . saevus . . . saevus . . .”

“Saevus . . .” Frankow looked at her. “That is Latin for ‘savage’ . . .”

“Davis,” she gasped. “Davis kept saying he would find a way to Seventh. Is it Davis, Sebastien?”

“Davis Saevus,”
said Sebastien. “Davis Savage. The women are going to kill him.”

“Women?” exclaimed Ivy, and she dropped to her knees beside the chair. She could barely breathe. “What women, Sebastien? Please tell me what is going on!”

“They are very angry, and they will kill him.”

“
Oh!”

Suddenly, the glass shattered in his grip. Blood dripped from his palm onto the floor.

Frankow moved slowly, surprising her by removing the glass and taking the Mad Lord’s hands in his.

“Sebastien . . . Sebastien, look at me. Look now at me . . . Yes, that’s right. That’s good . . .”

Slowly, Sebastien did as he was asked, blinking as if surfacing from deep and dangerous waters. Frankow nodded and continued.

“You need to get home, Sebastien. Take this young woman and crack the whip on your horses. I will have Carl send a telegraph to Rupert. But you, get home as quickly as you can. Do not forget your training. You may yet be able to save him.”

“There are too many women,” he whispered. “It’s so cold. I can barely even look at them.”

“There are always too many women, Sebastien. Do not forget your training. Use the frost. Harness it. Rise above it. Now go.”

“Please, sirs,” wailed Ivy. “Tell me what is happening to my brother!”

Sebastien rose to his feet, grabbed her hand, and bolted out the door.

Of Bad Boys, Good Samaritans,
and the Seventh House of Lasingstoke

THE GOOD SAMARITAN
was a public house on the corner of Turner Street and Stepney Way. Tucked in behind the London Royal Hospital, it was a favourite for doctors, patients, and medical students alike because of its proximity to the Royal and because of the local ales on tap. It was a favourite of Bondie’s boys as well and they could often be found at a round table in the corner. They had carved their names into the wood when they had first started studying together. The table was near the dartboard, and it was well known that Henry Bender was a crackerjack with a dart.

Christien sat now with Ambrose Pickett while Bender gathered his darts. Rosie had a wall of empty glasses in front of him, and he looked up over it as Bender dropped down onto the bench.

“Won my drinks for the week,” he grinned, stabbing his darts in a row into the wood.

“Ours too?” asked Rosie.

“Dream on, you git.” Bender raised his beer to his lips. “My darts, my money.”

“Damn,” grumbled Rosie.

“Where’s Lewie?”

“Late,” said Christien. “As usual.”

“Typical. He should’ve been a lawyer.”

The pub was loud, and they had already gone through two pints before Lewis Powell-Smith shewed up with a young woman on his arm. He was a trim fellow, dapper in tan pinstripes and tweed, and like Rosie, he was moustachioed, with a bolt of blond hair that fell across his forehead. The woman on his arm was young and quite beautiful, and when she smiled, she shewed great dimples in her cheeks. Upon closer inspection, it was clear that her clothes were old and the red shawl over her shoulders was threadbare and patched. But her hair was a mass of strawberry blonde curls, and the fact that she was not hiding it with a hat caused very few to pay attention to the state of her clothes.

“Marie,” said Bender, and he sat up a little straighter at her approach.

“Henry,” and she winked at him, the dimples giving her the look of an impish little girl.

The pair dropped into seats at the table and their beers were brought. Immediately, Powell-Smith raised his glass and downed a good third before dropping his mug to the table with a thump.

“Damn that Bond,” he growled, and he tossed his head. “He made me work overtime tonight. There was a bloody accident with another steamcar.”

“How many wheels?” asked Bender.

“Four, naturally. A woman got her head crushed under the wheel. It was putrid. He made me do the autopsy for the lawsuit.”

The boys grinned. Lawsuits against four-wheeled steamcars were all the rage in London now, fueled, it was said, by the makers of the six-wheeled variety.

“He’s also asking about that Jane Doe. About why she got shipped from Bedlam to us.”

“Oh God,” groaned Bender. “She’s still bagged, yeh?”

“Yeh, he didn’t look.”

“Yet.”

Christien raised his glass to his lips. “And what did you tell him, Lewie?”

“Nothing. I told him I didn’t know nothing.”

“Well, it’s not unheard of for Bedlam to send us cadavers.”

“Yeah,” moaned Rosie. “Happens all the time.”

“Not without the papers,” groaned Powell-Smith. “And with the Bottle on his ass about that arm, we’ve got a very, very short chain.”

“Indeed.” Christien sipped his ale slowly before lowering the mug to the table. “We are medical students. The public would love nothing more than to see us trotted out as villains here. We must be very, very careful in this particular climate, boys.”

“Yeah,” grunted Bender. “No mistakes.”

“No
more
mistakes,” said Christien. “We have six months, boys, until we’re done. And I want to finish free and clear.”

“So’s you can get married,” said Marie, and she smiled at him, her eyes roaming over his fine face, his perfect lips, his smart suit. “’Ow’s yer moll, then, Remy? You missin’ ’er somethin’ awful like?”

Powell-Smith didn’t care. He had paid for her so she was his tonight. Marie Kelly was a favourite of the boys. She would go with whoever had the coin but she was a good-hearted girl and very pretty. She had acted on the stage in Paris, or so she said. She had spoken about her experiences in Kensington-Knightsbridge with a French matron who had shown her the ropes. She was a friend to John Williams, and it had been her name Christien had seen in the book at Bethlem. Mary Jane “Marie” Kelly with an abortion at Bedlam.