The Serpent's Shadow em-2

by Mercedes Lackey

  "And so it occurred to me that there might be other ways of tracing Jenner to my clinic than the use of private agents," she concluded. "I don't know how one could employ magical creatures to spy, but I presume that a Master could do so. Furthermore, it occurred to me that there might be some danger to my patients, my clinic staff, and Mr. Jenner himself associated with those—other ways."

  "Quite right," Peter Scott agreed, and looked to Almsley, who nodded.

  "I don't much care for the acquaintances this Parkening fellow has made," Almsley said at last, after a thoughtful silence. "I admire Annie Besant when it comes to everything but her metaphysical notions. On that note, she and the Blavatsky crowd are harmless enough, for folk who are utterly deluded about their mystical powers. But when it comes to Uncle Aleister and his ilk, well, Jenner was right to get the wind up about some of them. And you are right to worry about Parkening tracing him to your clinic."

  "What I don't like is that Parkening has been hanging about the hospital," Peter Scott interjected darkly. "Given what Jenner's said about him. Hmm? Gives him a far darker reason to linger than just his failed ambitions to be a doctor, or his uncle's position as Head."

  "Oho! Good point, Twin," Almsley said, sitting bolt upright, his cigarette dangling forgotten from his fingers. "There's a lot of suffering around a hospital. No offense, Doctor, I know it's your job to relieve suffering, but—"

  "No offense taken, Lord Peter," Maya replied, her brow furrowed with thought. "It hadn't occurred to me that the hospital could be a—a reservoir of—"

  "Of the drink the Dark Powers savor most," Peter Scott said grimly. "If I were to hazard a guess, it would be that the hospital holds no charms for Parkening as a place of healing, but he finds it immensely useful as a source of power."

  Maya nodded, but her mind had gone on to other possibilities. The movement of patients in and out of the hospital was not that strictly controlled; they'd had patients get up and walk out as soon as they were able before this. What if some of them hadn't gone off of their own accord?

  No, surely not. He wouldn't dare kidnap sick and injured people to—to torture them! Would he? She wondered.

  Parkening had dropped broad hints that he wouldn't be displeased if Jenner died, and those hints had been heeded and acted upon. How many other times had he hinted the same thing? And to what dark end had he done so?

  "What do you say to a visit to your clinic, Doctor?" Almsley asked suddenly, interrupting her dire thoughts. "I'd like to have a word with this Jenner chap. He probably knows a great deal more than he's told you, and I'll be able to ask questions he'd be embarrassed to hear from your lips. And it might be I could use him when he's better. I wish I had somewhere to put him until he recovers—but frankly, I don't. Well, I could house him at the old barn in the country, but getting him there—"

  "He's been moved enough as it is," Maya said firmly. "I had already considered taking him to my home, but he's safest at the clinic for now. A long train ride to your country estate is out of the question."

  "We can hide him from those otherworldly eyes, though," Peter Scott offered. "And if. Parkening has any sense, he'll steer clear of anything with our sign on it."

  Maya didn't ask what he meant by that; Lord Peter nodded grimly at that point, and she decided that she didn't need to know. "If you don't mind—" she began.

  "Mind? Not in the least. I'll have Clive get us a cab." Lord Peter shot up out of his chair like the greyhound he so closely resembled, and out of the door, returning a moment later.

  "There. If you're ready, Doctor? Scott?" He chivvied them out a little like a sheepdog herding its charges, much to Maya's amusement. She had decided that she liked Peter Almsley very much, despite a slight touch of the unconscious arrogance that came with having money and rank bestowed on him at birth—and she pitied any woman who thought to wind him around her finger. He only played the fool; it was a mask, and a good one, but a mask nonetheless.

  The three of them would never have fit in a hansom, but Clive (who evidently replaced Cedric in the evening, and looked far less grim), had gotten a motor taxi, with two broad bench seats. The men took one, and she sat facing them, in isolated splendor that felt a little ridiculous. The taxi chattered and chugged its way to the Fleet, attracting the attention of little urchins who ran alongside it, shouting. Nothing this modern had ever penetrated the neighborhood around the Fleet before, and it was a marvel to every small boy that beheld it.

  The little boys followed it after it left them at the door of the Fleet. The driver did not care to linger in the neighborhood, and Maya was not particularly worried about getting home. Tom would take her back, then return for the two Peters.

  The noise attracted all of the night staff—and Amelia—to the door of the clinic, however. It was Maya's turn to play sheepdog and herd everyone inside, before too much curiosity got the better of everyone.

  "What are you still doing here?" she whispered to Amelia, as she closed the door behind them all. "I thought you would be home by now."

  Amelia flushed and ducked her head. "I still had things to do," she confessed. "I couldn't go home with half my work undone."

  Translation: "I left everything to do because I spent too much time talking to Paul Jenner," Maya thought, amused, but without a smile. "I hope you've caught up," was all she said.

  "Oh, yes! I was just about to see if someone could find me a cab when you all arrived. What is all this about?" Amelia would have said more, but Lord Peter turned around at that very moment and accosted Maya.

  "Doctor Witherspoon!" he said, with a charming smile. "Please introduce me to your staff—and give me a tour, if you would!"

  Head Nurse Sarah Pleine smelled "wealthy donor," and her normally cheerful face was wreathed in smiles when Maya made the introductions. So did the rest of the night staff—Jeffry, the orphan who ran errands and slept in the garret, George, the man-of-all-work and porter, and Patience, Sarah's daughter and assistant. Maya let them think just that; who knew, it might even be true, for Lord Peter showed no impatience on his brief tour, and even asked a few pointed and pertinent questions about the operating costs of such a clinic.

  "Some of our expenses are covered by a group donation—all the London newspapers put together a common fund, which is why this place is called the 'Fleet Clinic.' And once a year, they organize a subscription fund for us," Maya explained. "But that only takes care of some basic needs. I don't receive anything for my services, for instance, and neither does Amelia; the only paid staffers are our anesthetist, the nurses, and the porters."

  "Still, it's better to have the papers as your founding sponsors, I would think," Lord Peter observed. "Isn't there less interference about who 'deserves' treatment this way? And I should think it highly unlikely that members of the press would find drinking and smoking as objectionable as some of our worthy clergy do." His wry smile made Maya and Amelia laugh.

  "Oh, the myth of the Deserving Poor—" Maya replied. "As if we bothered to ask if a man screaming in pain was a regular churchgoer and subscribed to the Temperance Union!" The more Lord Peter said, the more she liked him; it was such a relief to meet someone from the upper classes who really had a grasp of how things stood in the East End. Where cheap gin numbs the pain of the joints of a man who has been working too long and too hard in the damp and cold—where "Sunday outfits" linger in the pawnshop until Saturday night, and if there is no money to redeem them, then there is no way to go to church—

  "Well, as a rule, I don't go subscribing to charities unless I know that they aren't wasting my donations on hymnbooks and tracts," Lord Peter told them, with a definite smile on his thin lips. He didn't say anything more, but when he reached into his breast pocket and brought out his notecase, then took Maya's unresisting hand and pressed several notes of large denomination into it, she stared at him in open-mouthed astonishment.

  "But I didn't—" she managed, trying to grasp the fact that he had just given her the equivalent of a months' wort
h of operating expenses for the clinic.

  "I know you didn't, which is why you can count on the Almsley fortunes augmenting yours from now on," Lord Peter said, with a chuckle. "Meanwhile, this should purchase you a few necessities. I shan't bother to suggest anything; you know your needs better than I."

  Hastily, Maya transferred the handful of notes to Sarah, who took them off to be sequestered in the cashbox and added to the pathetic totals in the ledger. Bandages—sticking-plaster—a set of good scalpels! A real bed for Jeffry! A spirit-lamp so Sarah can make tea at night—oh, and canisters of decent tea!

  "Now, shall we go have speech of your special patient?" Almsley continued, as if he hadn't done anything more costly than tipping a newsboy a farthing.

  Well, perhaps for him, it wasn't, Maya reflected dazedly. If Lord Peter really did become a regular donor—there were so many things that she could do here—

  She shook herself out of her daze; there was another reason why they were here, and it had nothing to do with the finances of the Fleet. "He's this way," she said, gesturing, as Amelia looked puzzled.

  She was even more puzzled when they went straight through the clinic in the direction of Paul Jenner's bedside. He'd been installed in a kind of doorless closet at the end of the tiny sick ward—not out of any consideration for his privacy, but so that it wouldn't be immediately obvious to outsiders that he didn't fit in with the general run of Fleet patients. The closet was generally used for children, or for patients who needed relative isolation and quiet. But that very positioning gave them a chance to talk with him without disturbing—or being overheard by—the others here.

  But the moment that Amelia realized where they must be going, she pushed herself forward. "Let me go first, so he isn't alarmed," she said, and without waiting for an answer, skipped past Peter Scott and on to the sick ward. Maya exchanged glances with Scott; his questioning, hers amused. Evidently it wasn't only unfinished work that had kept Amelia here tonight! I wonder what's been going on in my absence?

  When the little group reached Paul Jenner's alcove, Amelia had lit the oil-lamp on the wall above his head. He was awake and sitting up, looking alert and wary. They couldn't hear what Amelia murmured to him, but Lord Peter came forward with his hand outstretched.

  "You must be Paul Jenner. I'm Almsley of Magdalen," Lord Peter said, an arcane incantation that meant nothing to Maya, but evidently spoke volumes to Paul Jenner, whose face (what could be seen of it) cleared immediately.

  "Almsley of Magdalen! They still speak of your prowess at bat, sir, in hushed and reverent tones! Forgive me for not rising, my lord," Jenner began, but Almsley laughed, and sat down on the stool beside the bed.

  "Not at all; now, I wish we didn't have to jump immediately into an unpleasant subject, but I've heard some things from Doctor Witherspoon that quite alarm me, and as it happens, I may be the fellow to do something about them. This is my good friend Peter Scott, and you can trust him as you would me. It seems that you and I and Scott here need to have a little discussion about a fellow Oxford man who has been a very naughty boy." Maya had no idea how they managed it, but in next to no time, Almsley and Peter Scott had Paul Jenner completely at his ease and talking frankly about his employer while Amelia and Maya simply stood in the background and listened.

  Very frankly, as it turned out; what he'd told Maya was merely the visible tip of the iceberg. Within a very short period of time he'd revealed things that made the hair on the back of Maya's neck crawl.

  She didn't know a very great deal about the dark side of magic, but some of what Jenner said made it very clear to her how closely he had come to things that were truly evil, and only his good sense and instincts had warned him away. He had no notion of how imperiled his very soul had been. From the looks that the two Peters exchanged, they didn't plan to enlighten him.

  And why should they? It wouldn't help him now; there isn't anything he could do about it. But, oh, now I am so glad I went to Peter with this!

  Amelia looked completely bewildered by some of it, but there were parts that even she understood. She went pale, and then greenish a time or two. The two healthy men, one standing, one sitting, bent over the injured one with faces that reflected nothing but concern and a certain urgency. They could have been his relatives or friends, just paying a visit to the sickroom; the heavily-shaded oil-lamp at Jenner's bed cast a circle of dim light that enclosed the three of them, with Maya and Amelia left in the shadows outside that magic space. Only the things they were calmly discussing—dark rituals involving blasphemy and pain in basement chambers, the spilling of blood on nameless altars, unsettling forms of Holy (or more aptly, Unholy) Communion, and things that Paul Jenner had only glimpsed or guessed at—were totally at odds with the otherwise pleasant scene.

  Finally the two Peters seemed to have gleaned everything they could from Maya's patient, and Almsley sat up straighter. "Thank you, Jenner," Almsley said with a sigh. "Thank you very much for telling us all of this."

  "Thank you for believing me," Jenner replied earnestly. "There aren't many who would."

  "There aren't many who would understand the significance of what you had to tell us," Peter Scott said somberly.

  Jenner looked from one Peter to the other, and his mouth tightened. "There's more to this, isn't there?" he asked. "You know something—No! I don't want to know what it is! It's enough that somebody does! Can you act on it?"

  "We can," Peter Scott told him, as Almsley nodded in confirmation. Then Scott smiled, and added, "Think of us as a sort of police agency; rely on it, the information you've given us is going to have some results."

  "And meanwhile, let me change the subject for a moment and ask if you're free to take a position outside of London as soon as you're well enough to move and work a little?" Almsley asked. "As it happens, I could use a private secretary of the sort who . . . now how shall I put this?"

  "Of the sort you can trust to handle some rather odd correspondence, who won't be disturbed by it, or get the wind up about it," Scott supplied, and Almsley grinned broadly.

  "Exactly! And one who won't lose his nerve if I happen to need some very odd jobs done." Almsley waggled a finger at Jenner. "Think of your experiences this way; before you'd had them, you'd have been useless to me, but now that you've seen some of the things that are 'not dreamt of in your philosophy' and know them for verifiable truth, you're invaluable to me! So, would you care for a position? Same conditions as your previous employer, but without the nastiness. That much I can assure you. Also that I am not a sadistic bully; I drive myself quite as hard as I drive my employees."

  "Ah—" For a moment, Jenner was quite speechless, and it was Amelia who spoke up a bit sharply.

  "Just where would this be, my lord?" she asked.

  "The Almsley estate for now; Heartwood House. Between here and Oxford—just past Hatfield," Almsley replied, looking not at all surprised that it was Amelia who had posed the question. "Newport Pagnell, to be precise. A journey, but not a very long one, as rail journeys go; it wouldn't be a bad thing, I think, to get Master Jenner out of physical reach of Simon Parkening for a bit. In fact, when the time comes, if you would be willing to accompany him there as a sort of private physician and see him settled, I'd be obliged to you."

  "Would you be wanting me to personally deal with some of the more outre matters that might involve you, my lord?" Jenner said at last, looking distinctly uneasy again. "Because—well, I'd really rather not. I'm not certain I've got the stomach for it."

  "Nor do I blame you!" Almsley responded, as a trick of the light and the way he held his head made his hair shine, creating a kind of halo about it for a moment. "Jenner, I can't promise you that you wouldn't ever be called in to help me with such things, because that would be a lie. I'm not much good at foretelling the future, don't you know. I'd as soon tell you that sort of thing didn't happen, I really would, but it's a kind of nasty little war that Scott and I are engaged in, and war is no respecter of persons or promises."r />
  Jenner nodded solemnly.

  "So I shan't make a promise that I might have.to break," Almsley continued, "But I can promise that if such a need should arise, I wouldn't spring it on you as a surprise, and you'd have at least one chance to tell me to take myself and my interests somewhere a great deal hotter than here!"

  Jenner actually laughed weakly at that, much to Maya's relief. "In that case, Lord Peter, I would be honored to serve you," he said, holding out his hand, which Almsley shook firmly.

  Maya let out the breath she had been holding in; two problems off her hands at once—three, if you counted Lord Peter's promise of support for the clinic. The whole atmosphere seemed to lighten, even though nothing had outwardly changed. Then Paul Jenner sagged a little, and Amelia moved into the circle of light cast by the shaded lamp.