Dark Embrace

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by Eve Silver


  “You are here early,” he said, though he did not turn his head to look her way.

  “As are you,” she replied, unsurprised that he chose to engage her in conversation. On several previous occasions, there had been moments in the ward where Mr. Thayne walked his rounds and Sarah came to be in his path. To her befuddlement, and secret pleasure, he had deigned to speak with her, to ask her opinion of the patient’s progress, to note her responses with interest and grave attention.

  Once, he had even followed her suggestion, refusing to allow a patient with an open wound to be placed on a bed until the linens from the previous patient were removed and exchanged.

  Matron had been aghast. “The linens already there will do,” she had said. “The bed was made up fresh only a week ago, and the previous patient didn’t soil them.”

  But Mr. Thayne was not to be swayed and thereafter he had insisted on clean linens each time a new patient entered the ward. The other surgeons scoffed, but Mr. Thayne remained resolute.

  It was rare for a surgeon to consider the opinion of one of the nurses, even less so a day-nurse who was little more than a char. The fact that Mr. Thayne valued hers was a gift, one Sarah treasured. She had spent her life being treated as an intelligent being by her father. But at King’s College, she was only a girl who served meals, cleaned bedpans, and changed soiled sheets, a fact that made an ugly slurry of resentment and anger and sadness mix in her gut. She had so much more to offer.

  “It is not early for me,” Mr. Thayne said, his tone holding a hint of dry amusement. He turned his head to look at her over his shoulder. The thin light glinted off the spectacles Sarah had never seen him without, metal rimmed, the lenses a dark bottle-green. She wondered how he could see through them in the dimness.

  “Late for you, then,” she said, drifting closer. “You’ve been here all night?” He often was. Mr. Thayne seemed to prefer night to day.

  “I have.” He paused. “What brought you here a full half hour before the start of your shift?”

  “My feet,” Sarah said.

  Mr. Thayne offered a soft huff of laughter. “Your skirt is wet.”

  Her cloak had not shielded her completely from the weather and the hem of her skirt was wet and dappled with mud. “The weather is inclement,” she said.

  Even in the dim light, she could see that he frowned. “I have not left the hospital for two nights and a day.” He sounded as though that fact startled him, as though he had not, until this moment, marked the passage of time.

  “It is not the first time,” Sarah said, then pressed her lips together, realizing her words made clear that she was aware of his comings and goings and wishing she could call them back.

  “No, it is not,” he said.

  “It was kind of you,” she blurted. “To give Mrs. Carmichael the coats.” Mrs. Carmichael was the night watch nurse in the surgical ward. Mr. Thayne had given her warm coats for her two growing sons.

  “I am not kind,” Mr. Thayne replied. “I was merely disposing of items which no longer appealed to me.”

  “Of course,” Sarah replied. “The fact that they had clearly never been worn and were both far too small to have ever…” She broke off, unwilling to state aloud that the coats were sized for adolescents and would never have fit Mr. Thayne’s broad-shouldered form, for that would be a clear admission that she noticed his broad-shouldered form. “Those coats will be put to good use.”

  “That is my hope,” he said before turning his attention back to the patient.

  She meant to walk away then, but something held her in place and she stood frozen, staring at the patient’s white forearm where it contrasted with the cloth of Mr. Thayne’s black-clad form.

  A moan sounded from behind her, drawing her attention. “Water,” came a woman’s plea. “I am so thirsty. Please, water.”

  The night watch nurse was curled in the far corner of the sick ward by the fire, sleeping. Sarah could not help but feel pity for her, a widow with three small children who, after working the day as a charwoman came to sit the night through for a shilling and her supper, leaving her little ones with a neighbor, and paying her in turn.

  She had not the heart to deny the woman a few stolen moments of rest, so she turned away to tend to the patient herself.

  When she was done, she looked back to where she had seen Mr. Thayne.

  He was gone, the patient asleep, her head lolled to one side, her arm hanging across the far edge of the bed.

  Another patient called out. Sarah hesitated, wariness prickling through her. Stepping forward, she almost went to the patient Mr. Thayne had been tending. Then she wondered what she was thinking. What could she do for her that he had not? The woman was sleeping now. Best to leave her undisturbed.

  Again, a voice behind her called out, becoming more insistent. Sarah helped the woman sit up and take a drink of water. When she was done, she noted the time and then made her way to the surgical ward.

  Only hours later did she learn that the patient Killian Thayne had tended had died in the silvered moments when night turned to day, discovered by the night nurse when she roused from her slumber.

  Only then did Sarah hear the whispers that the woman’s wrist had been torn open, with nary a drop of blood spilled to mark the sheets.

  Mr. Simon, the head surgeon, determined that the patient had injured herself on a sharp edge of the bedstead, and in truth, they found a smear of blood there that offered some proof of the supposition. But there were no bloodstains on the sheets or the floor. No blood congealed in the wound. And the woman herself looked like a dry husk, as though something had drained her of both blood and life.

  Death was no stranger to King’s College. But this manner of death would be strange anywhere, all the more so because it had happened before. Two months ago, a man had died in the surgical ward with his wrist torn open and no blood to be found. Three weeks after that, it had been a woman, dead in her bed, a dried-out husk.

  And now, a third person, dead in a manner both strange and frightening.

  Throughout that day and well into the night, Sarah could not dispel the memory of Killian Thayne, swathed in darkness, his head bowed, and the woman’s arm white against the black of his coat.

  2

  Bergen, Norway, 1349

  * * *

  Kjell missed them: his parents, his three little sisters, his baby brother. Not so little anymore. He’d been gone for three years. The baby would be walking. The oldest of his sisters might be married. His mother would say it was long past time that he married. Maybe she would be right. There was a farm a day’s travel from theirs with four pretty daughters. At least, there had been four of them when he’d left. If there was even one yet unmarried, he might offer for her.

  He’d left his parents’ farm to find his own way. He’d signed on with a merchant ship carrying dried fish. That time, they brought back salt from Lübeck. Other times it was cloth or spices. They sailed to ports far from the life he’d known in more than just distance; they were worlds away in sights and sounds and smells, each place foreign and fascinating. Oh, he’d been back to Bergen many a time over the years, but there had never been a chance to go home because it was an overland trek and because…well, because he’d always felt like tomorrow would be a good day to go, or the tomorrow after that.

  But on this most recent trip he hadn’t just seen wonders, he’d seen the effects of the Black Death. His shipmates had lost friends and family. Men he met in other ports spoke of the sweeping plague that decimated families, towns, cities. So, Kjell decided he would not wait for the tomorrow after tomorrow to go home. Today was the day.

  With a grin, he glanced around the harbor. There was an English ship newly arrived, carrying a cargo of cloth. The men from that ship bumped shoulders with the men from his as they all moved away from the docks. He found himself in the midst of a group of them as they shouldered past. They were like a tide, and he rode it until he cleared the crowd. One of the men from the English ship f
ell into step beside him. He was pale with dark rings beneath his eyes, his brow dotted with sweat. He tripped and fell against Kjell, mumbling an apology as he coughed into his hand. Kjell helped the man right himself then stepped away and moved on, heading for home.

  “Kjell!” His mother cried as he walked through the door. She threw her arms around him, laughing and crying and he was not ashamed to feel the prick of tears in his own eyes as he looked at his brother and his sisters. He threw his arms around each of them in turn. His father clapped him on the back, and Kjell clapped him in return.

  “You’ve grown wider,” his father said with a laugh, pressing his palms against the sides of Kjell’s shoulders.

  “As have you, but in a different direction,” Kjell said, tapping his father’s round belly. His father cuffed the side of his head in good-natured play and they both laughed.

  When the evening meal was eaten, tales of Kjell’s travels told while he dandled his brother on his knee and teased his sisters mercilessly, his father sent his siblings off to bed.

  “Is it true what we hear?” his father asked once they were alone. “The Black Death? Is it truly so bad? They say it kills everyone, a terrible death. That it cuts entire families down within days.”

  “I haven’t seen it myself,” Kjell said. “I’ve only heard it’s a terrible thing. They say it can go into the chest and starve a man of his breath. It can make tumors in the armpit or the groin, and then—” He broke off as his mother joined them.

  She took his hands in hers and held them, her face lit with joy. “I am so glad to have you home.”

  He was glad to be home. He’d been lonely these last months, for the thrill of adventure had faded after years on a ship and in unfamiliar ports. As his mother spoke of the crops and the neighbors, he was lulled into relaxation. His eyes began to feel heavy and slid shut for but a moment. He was tired beyond tired, more exhausted than he could ever recall.

  His mother rested her palm against his cheek. “Rest, Kjell. Tomorrow is another day.”

  He woke in the morning to find his head pounding and his skin clammy, his body trembling, hot one instant, cold the next. By that night, he had black swellings the size of apples in his armpits. Pain clawing at his insides, and he was so weak he could not stand.

  Two of his three sisters and his brother fell ill the next morning.

  His third sister and his mother took sick that night.

  His father, who became ill last, died first.

  The others followed within hours. They all died, save his mother who lay insensate, unmoving. Only the fluttering of her chest told Kjell she yet lived. He had heard tales that some survived. She could survive. He needed to believe it. The possibility that his mother might live was the tether that held his spirit to his body, the incentive he needed to keep fighting his own fight against the agony that consumed him.

  He was sick in body, in mind, in spirit. Sick at heart. He had done this vile deed; he had brought this disease to them. He knew what it was. Plague. The Black Death. He knew it was the man from the English ship, the one with the cough who had visited this death upon him.

  And he upon them, his precious family, all those he loved.

  He had killed them all.

  He lay shaking in his childhood home, surrounded by their bodies and he was too sick and weak to even tend to their corpses. He closed his eyes, despair and horror at what he had done moving sluggishly like an ichor in his veins.

  The door burst open, letting in a blast of frigid air. A man filled the doorway, and beyond him, Kjell saw the stars of the night sky. He tried to rise, to warn him away from this place of death, but he was weak, so weak. And then he saw the man’s face, his lips drawn back to bare his teeth, his eyes crazed.

  “Is not one alive?” the man cried. He sounded desperate, agonized.

  Kjell’s mother moaned then, a sound that was little more than a breath.

  The stranger lurched forward and fell upon her, tearing at her throat with his teeth. Kjell tried to rise only to find himself writhing on the floor as the pains in his gut sawed at him. Horrific sounds filled his ears, gurgling, gasping—these from his mother. And the sounds of the stranger feeding, greedy and vile.

  It was no man that had come here this night, but a monster.

  Or was there no man at all, only a thing conjured by Kjell’s fevered nightmares? Was he in truth alone here with only the dead for company? He could not separate truth from falsity.

  Blackness shaded the edges of his vision, then the whole of it. His lids were weighted and he could not fight the darkness.

  When he opened his eyes, the monster had become a man once more.

  He sat by Kjell’s side and stared at him with sunken eyes, sad and full of regret.

  “You are dying,” the stranger said.

  He didn’t want to die.

  “Are you certain?” the man asked, and only then did Kjell realize he had spoken the words aloud. “There are worse things than death.”

  Kjell’s eyes closed, but he forced them open once more. And he saw his mother’s body. She was dead, her throat opened, but very little blood to mark the wound.

  “You see?” the stranger said. “Things worse than death. I did not wish to do that. But I could not help myself.” He buried his face in his hands. “The farms in this land are days’ journey from each other. I stopped at three before I stumbled on this one.” He lifted his head and looked at Kjell once more. “They were dead. All of them. At every farm I passed, they were dead. The plague. And with each farm, my hunger grew until it became a living thing unto itself.” He paused. “I needed one alive. The hunger…”

  “What are you?” Kjell asked.

  “I am a creature of evil.” There were loathing and despair in his tone.

  “I will kill you for what you have done here.” A fruitless vow. Kjell could barely summon the strength to speak, his words slow and slurred.

  “Would that you could,” the stranger said with a bitter laugh. “But you cannot.” He looked away, then back toward Kjell. “You are so quick to pass judgment against me. I wonder what you would do in my place. You say you do not want to die. Well, I will give you that in payment for what I stole. A life for a life.” His tone was dark and ugly and made the hairs at Kjell’s nape rise. “You will see,” the man said. “You will see.”

  He caught Kjell’s hand in an iron grip, and though he struggled, he was too weak and the stranger too strong. The man lowered his head and a sharp pain sank deep into Kjell’s wrist.

  Bile crawled up the back of Kjell’s throat. He struggled and tried to jerk away, the sensation of teeth gnawing at him and the sucking pull of the man’s mouth made his stomach churn and his thoughts howl. He grew weaker and weaker, dark spots dancing before his eyes, and finally, he drifted away.

  Drink.

  Kjell’s mouth tasted like copper and ash. Like blood.

  Swallow. An order.

  Too weak to move, to protest, he swallowed. Again and again.

  He knew not how long he lay there, insensate. When he opened his eyes, the man stood in the open doorway, the first rays of the sun touching the horizon, turning it from black to gray.

  “Watch it rise,” the stranger said. “Watch as though it is your last sunrise.” He made a choked sound that might have been a laugh or a sob. “Because it is.”

  Through the open door, Kjell watched the dawn until the bright ball of the sun was surrounded by a sky of uninterrupted blue. And then the man, this nameless man, this monster stepped through the doorway and stood in the light, arms outstretched to his sides. As Kjell watched, the stranger crumbled to ash, his clothes falling in a loose pile to mark the place he had last stood.

  3

  Weeks passed and the whispers about the strange deaths at King’s College waned.

  As was her habit, Sarah crept through her lodging house long before dawn, taking care to avoid the creaking stair and the floorboard in the corridor that groaned under the slightest we
ight. The building was old, musty, her chamber small and dark and damp, but it was inexpensive and the landlady was kind, both high recommendations as far as Sarah was concerned.

  She had seen Mr. Thayne several times in the wards in recent days; there was nothing unusual in that.

  She had dreamed of him last night; there was nothing unusual in that either. In her dream, he had stood between her and the shadowy form that followed her through the alleys of St. Giles. An interesting thing, given that she had not been plagued by the man who watched her in over a week. She almost dared hope that she had imagined the whole of it, that there was no man, no shadow, no threat.

  As she passed the open door to the dining room, her landlady’s voice carried from the darkness, slurred words and a petulant tone. “Rent’s due. And why’re you leaving so early?”

  Sarah turned and lifted her candle to find Mrs. Cowden sitting on a chair in the dining room, elbows on the table, palms cupping her chin. There was an empty bottle of gin lying on its side on the floor.

  “Have you been here all night?” Sarah asked as she retrieved the empty bottle and set it upright on the table.

  “I have,” Mrs. Cowden said. “My bed seemed too far away. Too quiet.” She paused. “Mr. Cowden’s been gone a year today. Or was it yesterday?” She paused again. “He used to make me laugh. We’d laugh and talk and sometimes he’d hum a tune and grab me about the waist and dance me around the parlor.” She looked around as though expecting Mr. Cowden to step from the shadows at any second. Then she closed her eyes, lowered her forearms to the tabletop, and fell forward to rest her forehead on her crossed wrists. Just when Sarah thought she was asleep, she sat up straight and pinned Sarah with a sorrowful gaze. “It’s a heartsick thing, missing someone you love.”

 

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