Chapter 39
Thirty-nine
Good news was never urgent business. Good news never came after midnight.
At first Mina wanted to faint, or to burst into tears and scream at the universe: Go away and leave me alone! I’m too tired! Haven’t you done enough? But the universe rarely listened, and she couldn’t do anything if she fainted.
“Should we come?” Stephen asked. “I’ve no notion what it’s about, but if you’d rather be alone—”
“No,” said Mina.
Stephen took her hand. He’d taken off his gloves, and the warm pressure of his fingers against hers took her further back from the edge of hysteria. She didn’t cling to him as they made their way to the parlor, but she squeezed his hand tightly when Professor Carter stood to greet them.
“You might as well come out with it, sir,” she said, before the professor could begin. “Breaking things gently never works with me.”
Mina expected the news to be about her family. What else did she have? What else that would concern her and not Stephen or Colin? None of the friends from her boardinghouse would have sent a message so late or in the person of Professor Carter, no matter how severe their problems.
So Professor Carter said, “It’s your sister,” and it wasn’t really a surprise, not a surprise at all, but still it hit Mina like a blow to the stomach. All the breath went out of her in a small cry.
“Which one?” she asked in a voice that might have been recorded. She half expected to hear the scratch and hiss of a gramophone as she went on. “What happened?”
“Your younger sister. Er.” Professor Carter pulled awkwardly at his beard, searching his memory. “Flora. Florence.”
“Florrie,” said Mina. Florence was her name, but nobody called her that.
It had always been too long and too formal for her.
There was a chair nearby. Mina fumbled her way into it, and Stephen knelt at her side, taking both her hands in his.
The two other men—and Mrs. Baldwin—had to notice, but Mina didn’t give a damn just then. “What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s ill,” said the professor, “and I’m afraid it looks to be quite serious, though nobody’s really certain quite what’s wrong. She, ah, she lost consciousness this evening, and she hadn’t regained it when your brother came to find me. I’m terribly sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” said Mina, finding and seizing a core of ferocity beneath the numbness of her shock. She sat up straighter in the chair. “Not yet. Have they had a doctor in? When did Bert find you? Where is he?”
“He came to my office about eight this evening. He said your father had gone for a doctor, but that your mother had sent him to find you at the same time, so he couldn’t tell me the results.
He did tell me to add that he’d already spoken to—Alice?
—and that she was on her way home. And I sent him back, of course,” Professor Carter added, shaking his head at the folly of the world.
“A child his age on the streets after dark? I put him into a cab myself.”
“That’s very generous of you,” said Mina, and wanted to smile and cry at the same time.
Riding in a carriage would have been the thrill of Bert’s life at any other time, thrill enough even to overcome his wounded pride at being thought a child or having his ease with the London streets called into question.
Tonight, she thought he might hardly have noticed. “I’ll pay you back, of course.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, girl. The price of a cab ride won’t beggar me any time soon.”
“Oh. Well—thank you.”
She stood up, preparing to spring into action, and then had no idea where to spring to.
For a brief and stomach-clenching moment, she thought that maybe the harshest of the preachers from her childhood had been right, that Florrie’s sickness was a judgment on her for—what? Pride? Magic? Fornication?
No. Even if what she’d done was wrong—even if plenty of people didn’t do worse without consequence—no god worth the name would make a child pay for it. Besides, illness happened often enough without divine intervention. Children in the East End got sick all the time.
Children in the East End died of those illnesses all the time.
When Mina had gotten to her feet, the men had too. Now, when she turned to Stephen, she had to look up to meet his eyes. “I—”
“Colin,” he said, looking past her, “order a carriage for Miss Seymour. The fastest you can get. Have Polly pack her things. Quickly, too. I want her bags by the front door in five minutes. I assume you’ve nothing breakable,” he added to Mina.
“No,” she said, dizzied for a second. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not what we agreed. And I know there’ll be trouble with the wards.”
“Damn what we agreed. And damn the wards, too. The new moon’s safely past, and there’s Colin and myself to guard the place.
Here.” He drew out his new wallet and removed a sheaf of banknotes.
“Take this. Get your sister whatever she needs—medicine, food, a private room at St. Mary’s if it comes to that.
If you need more, send someone here to tell me.
If I can do anything, tell me. We don’t know much healing, I’m afraid. We’ve never really had to learn.”
The notes swam before Mina’s eyes: a rainbow of colors, the Queen’s eyes, and numbers that made no sense to her just now. It was far more than the cost of a carriage ride, though. She put the money into her coat pocket. “Thank you,” she said. “I—I’ll pay you back, if it’s more than—”
Out of nowhere, heedless of Professor Carter’s startled and disapproving harrumph in the background, Stephen was grasping her shoulders, his hands painfully tight. His eyes blazed like a sunset. “Anything I have is yours, Mina. Anything. Whenever you want it.”
“The sentiment’s pretty enough,” said Colin from the doorway, “and I don’t doubt you mean it. But perhaps further elaboration could wait for another time. Miss Seymour’s bags are ready, and there’ll be a cab pulling up momentarily.”
“I’ve got to go,” said Mina, stepping away reluctantly: reluctant because of both what awaited her and who she was leaving. “I’ll come back, if—when—” Her throat caught. Her mind caught too, fearing to tempt fate by either too much confidence or not enough. “I’ll come back when I can.”
“I could go as well,” Stephen began.
“No, you couldn’t.” Colin’s voice was calm and cold, even if there was more than a touch of sympathy in it. “You can’t do a damn thing there, and you have problems of your own here. People you’re responsible for too, Lord MacAlasdair.”
“He’s right,” said Mina, and managed a smile. “Thank you. For everything.”
Stephen wrapped his arms around her and kissed her, not for very long but forcefully enough to leave her breathless, her lips tingling. “Come back to me,” he said, when he finally let her go.
“Of course,” said Mina, and fled into the hall.
***
A short time later, though it felt like years had passed, she stood in a dark room and watched her sister.
Florrie slept on her side as she always had.
At first glance, she looked healthy enough, at least in the dark.
Only by looking closely did Mina see the way her hair was plastered to her face with sweat.
Only by watching for several minutes did she see how shallow Florrie’s breathing was and hear how she wheezed with each inhalation.
Mina closed her eyes. Almost immediately, she made herself open them again. She couldn’t hide from Florrie’s illness, and she shouldn’t if she could have.
“It’ll be all right,” Alice whispered at her side. “We’ve all been sick a few times, haven’t we?” But her voice lacked confidence, and the basin of water she carried shook a little. She swallowed and pitched her voice a little higher, toward the figure who sat at Florrie’s side. “Mum, Mina’s here.”
Mrs. Seymour looked up slowly. She stood, wrung out a damp cloth for the final time, and then picked it and the bowl up before she came over to the door.
Encumbered as she was, she couldn’t embrace Mina, but she gave her a one-handed squeeze with what must have been the last of her strength. She looked exhausted.
She apparently wasn’t the only one. “You look all in,” she said to Mina. “I told your father it wasn’t so bad, but—”
“Doesn’t matter. I’d want to be here.”
“Both of you go downstairs,” said Alice. “And then to bed. I’ll sit up with Florrie, and Dad’s said he’ll take over when I’m knackered.”
“But I—” Mina began.
“Go on, dolt. You’ll make yourself useful before long. We all will. And you’ll both be more useful with sleep.”
“She sounds like you,” said Mina, reaching out to take the bowl from her mother as she went downstairs.
“Funny,” said Mrs. Seymour. “I was going to say she sounded like your Aunt Jane.”
It was good to laugh with family again, but the moment didn’t last long. It couldn’t.
“Professor Carter said she fainted this evening,” said Mina, as they reached the kitchen. Mrs. Seymour began to fill the kettle. Falling into old patterns, Mina emptied the bowl into the sink and started getting the tea things ready.
“She did. After supper. We thought it was nothing at first. A bit of a cold, maybe, or—well, I thought it might be female troubles, though she’s young for that.
But we couldn’t wake her, and then the fever started.
” Mrs. Seymour wiped at a nonexistent spot on the stove, keeping her face turned away.
Putting down the teacups, Mina hugged her mother from behind. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”
“What could you have done?” Mrs. Seymour asked sharply, but she patted Mina’s hand.
“Been here,” said Mina. “Has the doctor been?”
“Oh, yes. The lady doctor I wrote you about. She said to try and keep the fever down, and to give her tea and broth and similar when she wakes. She can’t say what it is, though,” Mrs. Seymour added.
“Just a fever, maybe. That happens,” said Mina, trying not to think of stories she’d read in the Times or heard at Professor Carter’s.
Steamships came in every day from all around the world.
Along with passengers and official cargo, might they bring diseases?
Maybe even one that a London doctor hadn’t ever seen?
Maybe she should stop borrowing trouble.
Mina let go of her mother and went to get the canister of tea.
“She’ll be here again tomorrow,” said Mrs. Seymour. “I’m sure—she seems very bright.”
“And if she can’t do anything,” Mina said, glancing for the first time toward the hallway where she’d hung her coat, “we’ll find someone who can.”