Chapter 19
THE NINETEENTH CHAPTER
Mistress, both man and master is possess’d;
I know it by their pale and deadly looks:
They must be bound and laid in some dark room.
—William Shakespeare
The Comedy of Errors
I alighted from a hansom in front of the house in Chapel Street scarcely half an hour later.
The fruit basket was a thrown-together affair, less the tasteful, elegant display that I had imagined, and more a wickerwork coster barrow heaped with fruit that was either not quite ready or just past ripeness and oozing juice.
But I had given Aquinas little notice, and for all its shortcomings, the basket was rather pretty.
He had instructed the gardener, Whittle, to find a few flowers as well, so here and there a few bright-petaled faces of early roses peered out from behind bunches of cherries or clusters of currants.
The Psalter, in its sturdy brown wrappings, was tucked deep into my pocket, bumping lightly against my thigh as I walked.
I rang the bell and it was answered almost immediately, not by Mrs. Lawson, but by a boy of perhaps nine or ten.
I pushed past the child, an easy enough task with an armful of fruit.
“Do not mind me. I am expected,” I called over my shoulder.
Not entirely true, but not entirely untrue, either.
Brisbane should have known that I would call if I discovered a clue, shouldn’t he?
In fact, I distinctly remembered him telling me to do so.
I knocked awkwardly, from under the basket, and waited quite a long time before I heard noise from behind the door.
It opened, a bare crack, and I saw Monk’s eye, wary and dull, peering out at me.
“Your ladyship,” he began.
“Good afternoon, Monk,” I replied, nudging the door open with my boot. “I have come on an errand of mercy.” I smiled widely, indicating the fruit.
He hesitated, casting a glance behind him. “I suppose I could admit you for a moment, my lady. But I fear Mr. Brisbane is quite unwell. If you would leave the basket with me, I assure you—”
I edged in through the tiny opening he had left me.
“Actually, I have a matter of business to discuss with Mr. Brisbane. It is rather urgent,” I said, pushing on into the room.
The door to the inner chamber, Brisbane’s study, I presumed, was slightly ajar, the room itself unlit.
Long, dark shadows spilled from its doorway across the carpet where I walked.
The main room was brighter and very warm, stuffy even, and in place of the usual scents of leather and tobacco and herbs that usually pervaded the air, was an odour that I had not smelled before and could not place.
Monk hurried to put himself in my path, but I strode on purposefully, stepping around him and heading for the open door that beckoned.
Here the scent grew stronger; it seemed sharp, metallic in the nose and on the back of the tongue.
From behind the door came a noise, a rustling, gathering sound that for some reason put me in mind of a bear, thawing itself from hibernation.
Or something worse, something darker and more sinister, rising from its hiding place at the scent of blood…
It is easy to be fanciful now, but I was not so then.
I did not brave the lair of the wolf because I was courageous in the face of danger.
I went through the open door because I was too stupid to understand that there was danger at all.
I do not know, not even now, if I suspected what lay beyond, but I know that I dropped all pretense at good manners.
I brushed Monk aside and forced my way into a place where I did not belong.
Was it curiosity? Impatience? Something deeper?
Still I cannot say what drove me on. There was only that metallic scent that I did not know, and that strange rustling.
I know now that it was Brisbane, rousing from his state of semiconsciousness.
I do not know what alerted him to my presence.
The sound of my voice? Or was it more primitive than that?
Did he catch my scent, over the sharp smell of his own medicine?
I entered the darkened room, heedless of Monk sputtering behind me.
I carried the fruit basket in both arms, clutching it gracelessly.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the gloom.
The room was not a study, as I had supposed, nor was it unlit.
It was a bedchamber, Brisbane’s bedchamber.
There was a tiny fire burning in the hearth, but it was heavily screened.
No lamps or candles brightened the corners, and the shadows of the little fire were eerie, atmospheric.
There was a small, bare table with a single hard chair and a narrow bed—a campaign bed, probably French, I thought.
Brisbane himself sat upon it, wearing only trousers and a shirt open to the waist. The sheets were crumpled damply beneath him as though he had just risen from a restless sleep without bothering to crawl between them.
His hair, usually orderly in spite of its length, was wildly disarrayed, as though he had been tearing at it. His face was half lit by the feeble fire and he sat watching me, Janus-like, as I hesitated just inside the door.
His eyes were in shadow and I did not know if he knew me. I caught a glint from them as he turned his head, restless in the gloom. He lifted his head as a hound will do when it catches a scent, and I thought I saw a flash of sharp white teeth between parted lips.
“What is wrong with him?” I whispered hoarsely to Monk. I had come expecting a fierce headache, a bit of melancholia, perhaps. Instead I had found an animal, unleashed from hell.
“Migraines,” Monk replied in a low voice.
“Of an unusually virulent variety. He usually manages to keep them at bay—sometimes for months, but then they return with a vengeance. He felt this one coming for a week. We did everything to allay it, but…” He broke off, his voice rough, and I knew that he suffered as much as his master.
“It is so dark,” I began.
“The light is like a lance to his head, my lady. He cannot bear it.”
“He does not seem to be in pain now.” I watched Brisbane uneasily. He was sitting quietly, but rather than seeming serene, he presented a picture of lightly restrained savagery—a lion waiting by the watering hole for an unsuspecting deer.
“He has tried conventional methods of relief and found them lacking,” Monk was saying, his tone faintly regretful. “He has resorted to dosing himself with other preparations. Absinthe, for one.”
“Absinthe!” I had heard of it, and I had heard what it could do. “Does he know that that rubbish can rot his brain? That it could kill him?”
Monk lowered his eyes. “Better it kills him than he kills himself.”
I rocked on my heels a little. “Is it that bad?”
To his credit, Monk did not despise me for the stupidity of the question. “I have to remove knives and glass from his room when he is like this. One of his wrists still bears a scar….”
I did not want to hear more. I could not believe that this self-possessed man whom I had come to think of as my partner in this investigation had been reduced to trying to destroy himself.
I looked down at my silly basket, thinking how stupid I had been to bring hothouse fruit.
What would that do to cheer him when he was accustomed to the vicious pleasures of absinthe?
Monk touched my arm. “My lady, it is best if you go now. This is the most dangerous time. He has been quite calm as of yet, but I cannot promise you will be safe here.”
I nodded, my mouth too dry for speech. Nothing would induce me to turn my back on Brisbane in that moment.
He sat, watching motionless as I slid one tentative foot behind me.
Before I could even put my weight upon the foot, he was up and across the room, moving with a speed and ferocity I would never have imagined.
I gasped when his hand closed hard on my wrist. He jerked, pulling me into the room. With his free hand he slammed the door in Monk’s face and twisted the key in the lock.
It occurred to me then that it was extremely careless of Monk to leave a key in the lock at all, but I realized that this was not the time for such recriminations. I flattened myself against the door, brandishing my basket in front of me—a feeble defense, but the only one I had.
He released my arm and made no other move toward me. He seemed content to stand, staring at me, his eyes clearly bloodshot even in the darkened room.
I heard Monk pounding on the door, his voice muffled through the thick wood.
“I am fine, Monk,” I called with more conviction than I felt.
“Thank God for that,” I heard him say. “Do not move suddenly, my lady. You must not startle him. I do not believe he will harm you.”
I tried to take comfort in that, but I decided it was much easier for Monk to be confident with three inches of stout oak between him and an unpredictable man driven half mad by pain and narcotics.
But it was true that Brisbane had had quite enough time to do me harm if that was his intention, and he seemed content to watch me instead, his eyes unfocused and confused.
“Why have you come?”
The sound of his voice startled me. I had not expected him to speak, at least not lucidly.
“I was worried for you. I thought you might like some fruit,” I said stupidly, indicating my basket.
He said nothing and I continued to hold it, feeling absurdly grateful that I had at least this flimsy bit of wicker between us.
He was quite close, near enough for me to smell again that sharp metallic scent over the lush sweetness of the fruit.
It was on his breath, and I realized it must be the absinthe.
“Would you like to sleep now?” I asked softly.