Chapter 18
I snuffed out my lantern’s candle and hustled back to the manor before dawn broke. The shock of my conversation with Nin’s brother wore off on my way up the servants’ stairs, when I realized about half a dozen things I should have asked him.
Then I realized something more important.
He’s using you.
During my first few weeks at the hospital, before Bethany had died, I’d been assigned a recovering patient to monitor while he healed from a broken leg.
He was kind enough, but he was always trying to talk me into doing little secret things for him.
Getting me to bring him extra pillows, more servings of food, more pain medication…
all in secret, hush-hush. “Don’t tell the doctors or they’ll punish me,” he told me, and I was so na?ve, I believed him.
He treated me like he was a schoolteacher, I was his pet student, and all the rules I was breaking were helping him get better. I alone could save him.
Until I found out he was doing this with half the other junior nurses. He was addicted to morphine and nearly died of an overdose because he had us all secreting it away for him.
I certainly didn’t know the Top Hat man’s motivations or what he was capable of, but I definitely knew what it felt like when someone was trying to convince me to do something wrong that would only benefit them.
And this person, this being, was trying to scare me into keeping our conversation secret from Nin.
He looked down on me, thought I was simple. Just a silly girl.
I knew his type.
And I knew my own instincts, which told me to trust Nin.
And be wary of everyone else in this godforsaken manor.
When I got to my room, Bethany was waiting. “Where were you?”
“Where was I? You left me. I woke up and you were gone.”
She gave me a puzzled look. “Did I? Oh, I went walking outside last night and got lost.”
Something struck me. “Bethany, have you tried leaving the property?”
“Why would I? I’m not going to abandon you here.”
Hmm. I considered warning her about the Top Hat man, but I didn’t want to panic her. “Maybe don’t walk on the eastern side of the manor, okay? We don’t want Voss seeing you from his balcony. Remember? Like we saw him walking when I threw the book into the atrium from his rooms?”
“Oh, I remember. Don’t worry, I’m careful.”
She never had been when she’d been alive, so that would be a first.
But I had other worries occupying my mind.
Dawn was rising, and I needed to eat breakfast so that I could do the one thing I wasn’t looking forward to doing: my job.
I dreaded facing Voss. I wished I could talk to Nin first, to tell him about his sibling.
But I didn’t have time to even read the red book entry again.
I just stuck the book into my medical bag, knowing that I had to return it eventually.
If I got the opportunity today, I would.
I took a few seconds to put myself together, adjusting the pins in my hair and making sure my boots weren’t muddy after my predawn walk to the border. Then I took my medical bag and headed down the servants’ stairs to make my way to the kitchen.
The servants’ wing was empty. Where was everyone?
I paused and heard banging from somewhere on the first floor. Where is that coming from? I warily took the path toward the foyer. Halfway there, I realized the sound I was hearing wasn’t banging. It was coughing.
I rushed through the servants’ wing, and as I stepped onto the foyer’s marble floor, I spotted the three servants attending to Voss, who was bent over on the floor on all fours, hacking violently at the base of the Artemis statue.
My mind went blank. Voss was my patient, and I would care for him, no matter who he was or what he’d done. That was all there was to it.
“When did this start?” I called out as I raced toward the group.
Hoffmann looked up. “A few minutes ago. I was coming to get you when he collapsed. Help, Schwester Molly!”
My mother had coughed so much before she died. The image of her during those final weeks filled my head, and a wave of sorrow crashed over me.
I raced around Mr. Hoffmann and came to a stop, finding the master propped on his elbow, hacking and coughing in a fit.
His face was purple. Specks of blood dotted his white shirt.
That wasn’t good. Blood meant the disease had progressed.
Blood meant he was a walking dead man.
I put that out of my mind and shouted, “Help me get him outside! Fresh air! Fresh air!”
Mr. Hoffmann and Mrs. Culpepper struggled to pull the master up from the floor, but they managed it as Filomena ran to the front doors and swung them wide open.
As they slung his arms over their shoulders, I tried to hold him up from behind.
And we somehow dragged him into the cool morning air, onto the front bricks, where he collapsed.
Mr. Hoffmann and Mrs. Culpepper set his back against the wall, and I dropped to my knees in front of him with my medical bag.
A spray of blood hit my chest. I ignored it and ripped open the high collar on the master’s shirt, buttons flying, to reveal a fancy necklace beneath it. Then I spoke to him in the calmest, steadiest voice I could manage between his horrific coughs.
“This will pass. Listen to my voice,” I told him, looking into an anguished face with glazed-over eyes. “Fresh air will calm your cough. It’s going to be okay…”
I desperately wished I could give him cough syrup, but I couldn’t force liquid down a throat that was choking.
I also wanted to encourage him to just breathe; however, I knew from experience that this was poor advice.
I could still hear my mother’s complaints after one of her coughing attacks, when I’d repeatedly told her to breathe: “If I could, I would!”
So, instead, while chilly air blew across the manor’s entrance, I merely kneeled by Voss’s side, enduring every cough, holding his hand.
My eyes roamed to the fancy pendant around his neck, the biggest teardrop-shaped opal I’d ever seen, milky white and banded at the top by silver filagree.
Iridescent color flashed inside the milky white in the morning light.
I wondered briefly if it had belonged to Agnes.
After almost a minute, his coughs began calming.
“Bring cool water and a rag,” I told Filomena when he was able to take a couple breaths between coughs. I sat with him until she returned, then wiped away blood that had dribbled down his chin. I wrung out the cloth; then I set it against his forehead while the remainder of his cough petered out.
It took him several minutes to even look me in the face. When he finally did, I said, “Welcome back. I think you might be able to handle some cough syrup now.”
He stared blankly at me with no recognition. I could have been the president of the United States for all he knew.
“The master may need a little more time,” Mr. Hoffmann whispered, a little anxious.
“Master Voss? It’s Nurse Molly,” I told him, dabbing blood from his open shirt. “You had a pretty bad coughing attack, but you’re all right now. Let me get some medicine inside you, yes? It will help coat your throat.”
He stared at me dully, so I dug around in my bag until I found the cough elixir, all too aware that the red book was stuck amongst the bottles.
Stay calm. He can’t see it, I told myself.
And while the servants fretted, I measured out a dose of syrup and coaxed it into the master’s mouth.
He continued to stare at me as if he couldn’t work out who I was.
I spooned a second dose, just to make sure the attack wouldn’t restart, and he swallowed the syrup down eagerly.
“It will be okay now,” I told him, patting his leg.
He leaned against the building and let his head loll backward. “Tell me true, Molly O’Rinn, will I make it to December?”
I glanced at the servants. Filomena gave me a shrug. Mrs. Culpepper wasn’t paying attention. And Mr. Hoffmann just looked sad.
“Don’t worry,” I said in a light tone, hoping to keep him calm. “You’ll be celebrating Christmas along with the rest of us.”
“I’ve got to make it…,” he whispered hoarsely.
“You will, with my care,” I said, hoping that would soothe him.
He blinked several times, seemingly in a state of shock. Then his eyes sharpened, and his gaze swung around at us before settling on his bloodied clothes. As though he had no idea how he’d gotten there or what he’d been doing.
Tuberculosis was a nightmare.
Despite the circumstances, for the first time since I’d come here, I felt sorry for the man.
“What are you all looking at?” he asked in a weak, frustrated voice. “It’s absolutely freezing out here. Culpepper, draw me a hot bath and get me inside.”
Maybe not that sorry.
Mr. Hoffmann and Mrs. Culpepper helped Voss through the front doors. And while they walked him up the grand staircase, one step at a time, I noticed something I hadn’t when Voss had been in the middle of his coughing attack.
The copper gate leading into the crypt stood open, just a crack. Worry sprang up.
What had Voss been doing when he’d had his attack?