“A place to start in Italy,” Matthew replied. “Venice.”
“I don’t exactly understand, but I’ll tell you that giving false hope to the people here is like cutting them off at the knees. I know you hate like sin to have to go back on your word, but facts are facts. No one is going anywhere anytime soon…except you, me, the professor and whoever else he pulls out of here. To Italy.”
Matthew nodded. “First…there’s Berry.”
Was it Berry any longer? Was there any way the woman he loved could be called back from her own descent into Hell? As Matthew watched Firebaugh inspect Berry’s tongue, he had to fight against a crushing feeling of despair. Had all of it been for nothing? All the deaths, all the violence…for nothing?
****
“Frederick?” Pamela called from the back. Her voice was ragged and hollow. “Frederick, how is our girl?”
Nash did not answer. He simply stared ahead, as Firebaugh looked at several small gray circles that had risen up on Berry’s tongue.
“Ah,” said Firebaugh, with an air of satisfaction. “Now I know which way to go.”
thirty-six.
“Drink it all down,” said Firebaugh, as he had directed for the last nine days.
“It’s bitter,” she answered with a scowl. “Do I have to, Father?”
In his chair by the window beyond which morning snow flurries swept past, Nash did not reply.
Matthew was seated in a chair across from the scene of Firebaugh waiting for Berry to put down the cup of dark brown liquid he had just poured from a bottle. He said, “Advise her correctly, Mayor. Otherwise the professor will be calling on you again.”
Nash stirred, ran a hand across his mouth as if he wished to catch the words before they came out, but then he said, “Yes, daughter, you have to.”
“Rats,” she said. “That’s what it must taste like. Rats, and dead ones too.”
“Drink,” Firebaugh repeated.
She took the liquid down and squeezed her eyes shut with the aftertaste. It had happened that way for seven days. The first day she had spit all of it up. The second day she had spit it up and Nash had gotten out of his chair, plucked the bottle of antidote from the doctor’s hand and smashed it in the fireplace. That afternoon, after Matthew had reported the incident, Professor Fell had called Nash to his house. The third day, with a newly-concocted bottle at hand, the cup of liquid—or most of it, at least—had gone down the insensate girl’s throat by the aid of a funnel, while Nash had retreated to the back to console his sobbing wife.
As Matthew and Firebaugh had walked back to the hospital on that third day, after what seemed at best a partial success, Matthew had asked the doctor if it wasn’t best to move Berry out of the Nashes’ house and perhaps give her a bed in the hospital, as she was still so susceptible to their wiles, but Firebaugh had answered that from his experiences at the Highcliff asylum—and mark it, this was not far different from tending to a moonstruck lunatic—Berry believed herself to be the daughter and it would be more traumatic for her to be removed. So one had to trust in the power of Professor Fell over the Nashes, and there was no recourse for that.
Matthew had harbored the fear that in their delirium of what was right and what was wrong the Nashes might take up a pistol one night and kill Berry rather than see her taken away by another hand, after which they might dispatch themselves in a similar fashion, but what was there to do but to accompany the doctor at nine o’clock every morning, stop at the mayor’s house at three in the afternoon, at six and at eight like clockwork as he had done since the ministrations had begun. He could move into the house, he supposed, and sleep on the floor in the front room, and he had begun to consider that as a real possibility though he considered the idea that Pamela Nash might brain him with a poker past midnight.
During the past few days he had seen Julian walking about, and had spoken briefly to him but it seemed their association was done. Julian had taken on the aura of the bad man on Fell’s payroll again, and in their quick encounters Matthew caught from him the feeling that he didn’t wish to be bothered any further with Matthew’s situation, Berry, the sorcerer’s mirror, or anything that was not about his principal interest of Julian Devane.
“If…I mean to say…when Berry recovers,” Matthew had said to the doctor, “how might it happen? Will it be a gradual thing, or sudden?”
“I wish I could say,” Firebaugh had answered. “I’m following the formula as scribed, but this is all new to me.”
“I hate that,” said Berry, as she returned the empty cup to the doctor. “Father? How long must I endure this?”
“Ah.” Firebaugh smiled at her. “And how long do you believe you’ve been drinking it?”
“Day before yesterday,” she said. “I suppose it was.” Her eyes, yet dark-shadowed in the powdered face, looked past Firebaugh at Matthew. “Don’t you ever speak?”
Matthew brightened. It was the first time she’d ever noted he was in the room. “When I have something to say.”
“Who are you?”
Nash stood up and went to the window to stare out.
“My name is Matthew Corbett. I’m from New York, in the colonies. And what is your name?”
“My name is Mary Lynn Grigsby,” she said. And then her eyes seemed to cloud over with confusion and her mouth worked for a moment but no sound emerged. “Mary Lynn Nash,” she corrected. “My name. I am Mary Lynn Nash. Father?” In her voice there was a note of pleading.
“You gentlemen are welcome to leave at any time,” said the mayor, with his back to the room.
“Think,” Matthew said quietly to the stricken young woman on the flower-print sofa. “Are you absolutely certain that’s your name?”
“Easy,” Firebaugh cautioned. “We don’t—”
“My name,” said Berry. “Is…I told you my name. Why are you asking me such a question, Matthew? It makes my head…hurt,” she said, ending on a strained near-whimper. She reached up with both hands to press against her temples, and there her fingers found the brown wig of childish curls and ribbons. With a shiver and the widening of her eyes as if she’d received a violent start she lifted the wig from her head, allowing her real hair to fall in waves about her shoulders, and there she sat on the sofa looking at the wig in her lap as if it were the carcass of a dead dog.
“Get out,” said Frederick Nash. His heavily jowled face had reddened. “At once. I don’t care, you can have Fell horsewhip me if you please, but get out now.”
“Frederick? Frederick?” Pamela called from the back, with increasing intensity.
“We should go.” Firebaugh touched Berry’s arm. She was too dazed to respond and just kept staring at the wig. “Until tomorrow,” he said.
Tomorrow came early.
Near midnight Matthew was awakened by a knocking at his door. When he opened it and lifted the lamp he held he saw that Firebaugh was dressed only in a banyan robe, slippers and a woolen muffler to brave the cold. “Put on a coat and hurry!” the doctor said. “She’s coming out of it!”
On their quick striding to the mayor’s house, Firebaugh explained that Nash had knocked at his door about ten minutes before and in distress had asked the doctor to come see ‘Mary Lynn’, as the ‘child’ was thrashing in her bed and would not be eased.
“Prepare yourself,” Firebaugh said as they reached the house, but Matthew needed no further warning; he was both excited and terrified, for what if the condition was fighting the antidote and leading to Berry’s death?
Nash let them in at once. By the glow of Matthew’s lantern, a low fire in the hearth and two other lamps in the room, they saw Pamela in a nightgown standing with her hands to her mouth, her eyes wide as if trying to stifle a scream.
Matthew followed Firebaugh into the bedroom. There they saw Berry twisting and turning in her bed, the sheet wrapped around her and the blanket thr
own to the floor, her body convulsing with such violence that Matthew feared her spine would break. Her knees came up and nearly slammed into her chin. Her arms flailed out, her head came up and fell back again, her eyes staring forth and sweat glistening on her face.
“Help me hold her,” Firebaugh said.
It was a hard go. Her strength in this state of disturbance defied the two men trying to keep her from breaking her own bones. “Her mouth!” Firebaugh said. “Get her mouth open!” He withdrew from a pocket of his robe a short length of polished wood, which with great difficulty he was able to get between her teeth to prevent her from snapping her tongue clean through. Still she fought. The two men hung on. At some point the bed collapsed. A leg came up, a foot slammed against the wall, and at last her convulsions lessened and stopped altogether.
“Dear God,” said Nash at the doorway. “What have we done?”
“Go brew some tea,” the doctor told him. “Strong. Stronger than strong. Go on.”
Nash went. They could hear Pamela sobbing, and him trying to console her to no avail.
“Now we wait,” Firebaugh said to Matthew. He offered a cautious smile. “The tea is for me.”
The wind picked up outside. The flurries blew. Matthew tended to the hearth in the front room and listened to the ticking of a clock while the Nashes stayed out of sight and away.
Just before six, Firebaugh emerged from the bedroom. Hollow-eyed and weary, he said, “Go see her.”
At once Matthew was in the bedroom. Firebaugh quietly closed the door behind him.
She was still wrapped up in the sheet, but she was sitting up and curled up, her back pressed against the wall. As Matthew approached, she blinked at him as if he were an apparition drifting toward her from a dream.
“Matthew,” she whispered.
And then: “My Matthew.”
Berry reached out both arms for him. Before he got to her he began to cry…to weep in wracking sobs…to feel his chest expand with overwhelming joy yet the terror remained that she had been so close…so very, very close…to being forever lost…and might still be, for was this the end of the travail, or might her condition reassert itself? He had no way of knowing, but as he pressed her against himself as to share hearts and her arms locked around his back he thought that for the moment she was returned to him, and pray God it was more than a moment.
Pray God it was a lifetime.
He kissed her full on the lips and she returned the kiss. She shivered in his arms. He kissed her again and smoothed her hair and said the thing he had been yearning to say for so long but had been so fearful of saying: “I love you.”
“I love you,” she answered, and then she began to cry as well, and did ever two souls with such joy leaping in them weep the copious amount of tears that spilled down their cheeks and further dampened the bedclothes?
Doubtful.
After a time Berry looked up at him through her bleary tear-stained eyes and she asked, “Where are we? Where have you been? Where is Hudson…he was with me, I remember. Why do I think I hear someone speaking to me, calling me a different name? And…why do I keep thinking of something that tastes like…well…like dead rats?”
Many questions and more to come, Matthew thought. But praise be to Dr. Firebaugh and praise be to the antidote, no matter how foul its taste.
“Later,” he said. He held her and kissed her again. If he wasn’t bound by the ropes of gentlemanly conduct he would have slipped beneath the sheet and held her body against his own in that way, as well. “You should probably get some more sleep. I’m going to sit over there and just watch you.” He nodded toward a chair in the corner. “May I?”
“You may not,” she said. “Get under this cover with me.”
****
The antidote, as Berry understood what it was meant to abolish, was delivered for three more days and drunk down without hesitation in the safety and comfort of her own cottage on Redfin Street. Firebaugh informed Matthew that she should still take the antidote for a few more days—just for the sake of completion—but to all intents and purposes the foul-tasting but vital elixir had done its job and she was most happily returned to normal.
On the third night that Berry had left the mayor’s house, two shots were heard on Conger Street.
It was determined that Frederick Nash had prepared two pistols, had shot Pamela through the head at close range and then dispatched himself immediately after. Watching the bodies being brought out of the house as he stood between Hudson and Berry on the windy street, Matthew thought that the Nashes had been crushed beneath the weight of losing a second daughter, the sorrow of which they could not bear.
****
It was time to broach the dreaded subject. He had steeled himself for it.
“You’re going back to New York,” he said.
“Of course,” Berry replied. “We all are.”
Here was the edge of the precipice. “No,” said Matthew. “Just you. I, Hudson, the professor and a few others are going to Italy.”
“What?”
They were sitting at a table having their supper in the Question Mark, the time being around seven-thirty in the evening. Matthew had had the wisdom to order from the barkeep a mug of strong cider for himself and a cup of wine for Berry. Across the room, where other residents of Y Beautiful Bedd dined on the catch of the day, Hudson was involved in a game of dice with Hugh Guinnessey and Di Petri ate alone.
“Italy,” Matthew repeated. “It’s a promise I made to the professor. It has to be done.”
“Then I’m going with you.”
“Ohhhhhh no,” was the reply, followed by a drink of cider. “No further intrigues for you.”
She continued to stare at him, her lovely freckled face impassive. “I mean it,” he went on. “You are going back to New York, I am going to Italy to keep my vow, and when it’s done I’ll come home and ask your grandfather for your hand in marriage.” Would that be enough to dampen the fires?
No.
“You are absolutely insane,” she said, “if you think I’m letting you out of my sight, Matthew Corbett! Italy? What’s in Italy?”
“A vineyard,” he answered.
“Here, have my wine.” She pushed the cup toward him across the table.
He took her hand. “It won’t be so very long. I’ll—”
“Won’t be so very long? It’s months to get to Italy, isn’t it? It could be a year before you’re back!”
Matthew nodded, but to his relief Berry didn’t pull her hand away. “This is something I must do,” he said, with ample force in his voice and in his expression. “The professor has told me that in the next few days we’ll be taking a coach from here to London and arranging the travel plans.” He did not say that Fell had admitted he owned a townhouse in the city but they were all to be staying at an inn, as Fell did not wish that address to be known. He did not say either that Fell’s first choice of a suitable inn was the Mayfair Arms, but upon Matthew’s explanation of objection the choice had turned to the Emerald, which was equally grand. “A ship to take you home and a ship to take us to Italy. Venice, in fact,” Matthew said. “Now…you can get mad and pout, or throw something, or whatever you’d like…but I’m getting you out of harm’s way and that’s that.”
“Harm’s way? Does that mean you’re going into the way of harm?”
“I made a vow.” Matthew glanced quickly at Di Petri, who was oblivious to everything and everyone else as he ate his grilled whitefish, and thought about how that particular vow had become tainted by circumstance. This one he had to carry through. He struck on a straw of redemption. “Hudson won’t let anything happen to me.”
“Who’s going to keep anything from happening to him, and then to you?”
“It’s settled,” Matthew said.
Again, she just stared at him but still she didn’t pull her han
d away. “Oh Matthew,” she said softly, “I love you so much. I have for such a long time. And I know what you went through to get the book…Dr. Firebaugh told me as much as I think he could…but…I’m frightened for you. I’m always frightened for you.”
“This last thing, and then I’m home to stay. All right?”
“No,” she said. “No no no!” And then she took a long breath and her eyes shone and she said as she knew she must, “Perhaps.” Then: “If it has to be, but I hate the thought. Matthew, you’re such a good man. You’re too good for your own good.”
“Maybe I used to be. Now I’m not so sure. But think on this: we’ll likely have a week or so in London to enjoy being together. The professor’s not going to put chains on us, as there’s no need for any further imprisonment. We’ll dine out and take in the sights. I happen to know we’ll be staying at a very exclusive inn. So that’s something to look forward to and be happy about, isn’t it?”
Berry squeezed his hand. In her eyes there were fresh tears, but Matthew saw she had bowed before the inevitable. “I will only be happy when you step off a ship onto the New York dock, and I will look forward to that day,” she said, with a resigned sigh. Her face softened again, as much as possible upon digesting news that tasted as bad as had the antidote. “Well,” she said at last, “if I can’t talk you out of this…come back to my house and I’ll make tea.”
On his return to his own abode an hour or so later, with the thousands of stars shining above in the night and a more gentle but still cold breeze blowing in from the sea, Matthew saw lantern light through the windows of the hospital. The doctor was still at work in his new and solitary home. Matthew felt he’d never fully thanked Firebaugh for what he’d done, so he strode past his cottage and rapped upon the hospital’s door.
The doctor opened it. He was wearing his newly-acquired pair of spectacles. “Matthew!” he said. “Please come in!”
“I won’t take much of your time,” Matthew replied as he crossed the threshold. “I just wished to speak with you for a minute or two.”
“I was working. Good to take a rest, I think. Come back.” He motioned Matthew through an area where there were several beds—vacant at the moment, since Belyard had discharged a man who had suffered stomach cramps just this afternoon—and through another door into the laboratory itself. Past a writing table where sat a lantern, an inkwell and penstand and the red bound book itself was another larger table holding an array of glass tubes, many bottles of liquids, little blackened burners, two brass microscopes, glass vials containing various powders and what appeared to be botanical substances in a long rack, and a number of candleholders with tin reflectors and attached optical lenses. An assortment of various-sized and different-hued pottery jars stood on shelves around the room. Further back there was a large bellows attached to a fireplace that also held a variety of jugs and jars on hooks fixed to the bricks. A man-tall chest sported perhaps a dozen slim drawers with ivory pulls. At the back of the laboratory was a door that Matthew assumed connected to the greenhouse. It was quite the display, and Matthew knew there was much here that he probably couldn’t see.
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