Hidden Company by S E England

Author:S E England [England, S E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-12-21T16:00:00+00:00

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Chapter Nineteen

Flora. Lavinia House

1893

He motions me to sit down again, and though his stare burns into the side of my face I will not meet his eyes, forced instead to stare at the leeches - sweaty and pulsating in their glass jar. I wish he’d get it over with.

“I think,” he says after a while. “That you are too weak and feeble to be bled tonight. That is the cure for you, Flora – to drain the illness from your blood, do you understand?”

“Yes sir.”

Of course I do not understand. I burst to ask the fool what he thinks bleeding an emaciated, undernourished woman could possibly accomplish. But it would be an act of folly to provoke him or give any reason for further detainment. I must leave this room as soon as possible and escape this intense and most unnatural scrutiny. But where are the housemaids, the attendants, his wife even, in this oh-so-silent house? Why are we alone?

Since this morning not a morsel, even a drop of water, has passed my lips and such sickly dizziness overwhelms me that I must grip the edges of the chair to keep from fainting.

Yet still he says nothing, does nothing.

On and on the metronome ticking of the clock.

The leeches fade in and out of my dulling sight, the jar blurring with the wallpaper. From somewhere outside a waft of wood smoke filters into the darkness.

“All right,” he says, eventually. “I will call Miss Strickland to accompany you back to the dormitory. You may be brought brandy and beef. We will try again in a week or two with the leech application.”

“Yes sir.”

He stands to pull the bell rope and this time it is I who become the watcher. He is of short stature with a slight, bird-like chest, the nose aquiline in profile, chin receding beneath the grey beard.

In an instant he swings around.

A glimpse of inner rage sparks from him – a palpable, malevolent fury of indignation. And oh, how quickly it rises from the depths, how he suffers to keep that hidden. I see that now. See it, despite staring at the floor, praying Myra Strickland will hurry up.

She takes an age.

And all the while the good doctor stares. What does he want from me? Why so much hatred when surely I have done him no wrong? It seems he is a man born with a violence of the soul and it begs the question why he elected to become a man of pious religion. Perhaps his vocation is a shield for the monster inside, for it is an effective one at that. Or has he become this way due to some ill-fate or perceived injustice? Yet with all that he has, how could that be so? What would a man of property and power need with such anger?

A plume of fiery smoke gusts down the chimney once more. Indeed there is a haze to the evening. A charge in the air.

But before he is able to challenge my inspection of him, footsteps at long last click along the hallway and the door opens.

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