Chapter 6
There were a few moments in the remainder of that first day where Roland thought Mae Casper was going to speak to him. To truly, meaningfully speak to him.
She would take in a little breath, meet his eyes, and open her lips, but always something would falter in her expression and all that would come out would be a request for a tool or a tonic, something needed as they worked through the clutch of people who had been injured by the toppled cart.
Much of it was familiar. Jammed joints and dislocated bones. Scrapes and cuts and bruises and lumps and so on. No one was very seriously hurt save for the first woman, whose wound could have turned dangerous quickly if the clinic had not been nearby to aid her.
Roland did idly wonder if Mae always smelled faintly of talcum powder and cloves or if that was just today's scent, a result of the necessary things she'd put her skin against in the course of her work.
He genuinely felt surprise when Rosalind and Dinah descended from the upper floors, announcing that they had to depart before the sun finished setting. He hadn't realized so many hours had passed, nor that the light had changed as they had done so.
Tod and Hannah had stayed, both falling into helper roles with a quiet ease that spoke to a time when they had been instrumental in the creation of this place, back when it had only been a tent next to the site of a broken tenement.
"Are you going directly to the Vixen to work through the night?" Roland had asked his friend, finding a spare moment to corner him before he could slip away. "After all this?"
"Afraid so," Tod had replied with a wry tilt of his head. "Unfortunately, I assigned my usual deputy for these situations to clinic duty and can't rightly put the burden on him tonight."
"Maybe not," Roland said, frowning. "But he can share it. I'll follow you back to St. James once things are locked up here."
He watched her as she secured the children in the nursery and the two patients who would stay overnight in the infirmary.
He followed her lead in picking up bottles and towels and random bits of rubbish and sundry to be tucked into their respective cabinets, and clicked his tongue at the kits lingering nearby to do the same.
He did note, with a faint sense of amusement, that the boy Winston, whom he had taken to be some sort of patient here, was still lingering and participating in the work alongside the kits without any explicit instruction or request.
He kept scratching at his sable-brown hair and sneaking glances at Mae as though she were some sort of sorceress, and if he didn't check often enough, she might vanish and he'd lose his opportunity to continue to observe her.
Roland did make a mental note to ensure that whatever reason the boy was here wasn't dangerous or horribly contagious if he was joining the fold, officially or not.
Just before they finished, as two kits literally swept the perimeter with hay brooms, an elderly man with a full head of snow-white hair appeared through the door, looking comfortable enough that Roland didn't immediately move to boot him out.
"Ah, Dr. Bethel," Mae said, looking up at him from where she was rinsing out her basins near the kitchenette. "House calls ate up your entire day, didn't they?"
"They do that sometimes," he replied, a touch more defensively than Roland thought strictly necessary, and then looked around at the children assisting with the cleaning up with an expression of approval. "Well! Look at the lot of you, pitching in. Are you all here to catch the pox?"
"What?!" Roland barked before he could stop himself.
Mae glanced at him, her lips twitching a bit but otherwise giving nothing away. "No, these boys are runners. They come to assist now and then. Except for the one over there with the broom. He actually was here to catch the pox, but it appears he's changed vocation."
Dr. Bethel blinked his brown eyes and then shrugged. "I suppose there's no reason he can't do both."
"Chicken pox," Mae said suddenly, turning and facing Roland entirely, those dark eyes of hers meeting his.
She was finally speaking to him directly with something other than a professional request, and it was to say chicken pox.
"The community drops off young children here sometimes to get the process over with.
It is safer to catch it while you are still small.
I trust you've already had it, Mr. Reed? "
"Twice," he said without thinking, blinking at her in surprise. "Long time ago."
"Twice!" Dr. Bethel repeated, sounding impressed. "That's a rare man you've got there, Miss Casper. Pleasure to meet you, sir, by the way. I am Asher Bethel."
"This is Roland Reed," Mae said quickly, seemingly to spare Roland the effort. "He is here to assist us for the remainder of the High Season, lest we run into any more mischief-makers or vandals."
"Twice, though!" Dr. Bethel said again. "You do understand how unusual that is, don't you, sir?"
"I didn't," Roland answered, a little stunned by the attention. "How unusual?"
"Oh, very rare. Exceptionally so. Say, have you had any other skin complications later in life? I would love to ask you—"
"Not tonight, Dr. Bethel," Mae said gently, in a tone that suggested an unspoken addition of not ever.
"You know," Dr. Bethel said as soon as her back was turned to put away the last of the drying rags. "It might mean you're even safer than the rest of us from all sorts of things floating about in the air."
"In the air?" Roland repeated, a little disgusted.
"Oh," said Dr. Bethel, frowning. "Well, some think so."
Mae reappeared and ushered everyone out, withdrawing the clinic keys from her apron pocket before she tossed it into the hamper next to the door. She blinked as she pulled the door closed behind her, pausing to take in the effect of the new torches burning on either side of the door.
“There will be a few more installed tomorrow, it looks like," Dr. Bethel observed, pointing at the metal bases that had been installed farther down the wall. "Oil cloth should burn for a good few hours too, but it'll be a pain to replace every day."
"Hopefully we'll only need them until the end of summer," Mae replied, frowning as she clicked the door shut and rotated the key until it made a reassuring clanking sound.
"Winston, do you know the way home? I should have asked if you wanted to stay another night in the ward. I can open back up if you like."
"I know the way," he said quickly, reddening as he glanced furtively at the other kits. "But I'm going to stay and watch with the other boys for a time, doctress."
"Watch?" Mae repeated, narrowing her eyes. "Whatever do you mean?"
"Rotating patrol," Roland muttered, stuffing his fingers into his pockets. "They'll be relieved in a couple of hours. We just want eyes on the clinic in case your vandals come back."
She turned to him, her lashes casting long, thin shadows down the apples of her cheeks, and pursed her lips as though she wished to vocalize many sharply tipped thoughts at him. Instead, she took a deep breath in through her nose and shook her head. "Fine.
"Until tomorrow," she said, nodding at them and turning toward Soho, gathering up her yellow skirts in her freshly washed and oiled hands, her skin gleaming under the torchlight and flashing at the knuckles like gemstones in invisible rings.
"You're walking home alone?" Roland asked, softly but not without shock. "In the dark?"
"It is not yet dark," she observed, glancing at him. "But yes, I walk home at night. It is not far enough to justify the cost of a hackney. Sometimes my grandfather is with me, but tonight he had to leave early to catch the fishmonger, lest my grandmother divorce him for forgetting again."
"Do you ... are you ..." Roland stammered, glancing at the street and then back at her, his brow furrowing farther each time. "Will you ...?"
"Good night, Mr. Reed," she said pointedly, and turned to leave.
He watched her for the space of five breaths before he took a step after her, but Dr. Bethel reached out and touched his arm lightly.
He looked over at the old man with indignation, thinking he was being stopped from seeing to the safety of this woman, whose very person had just been threatened in paint on these very walls.
The doctor chuckled. "Wait until she turns the corner," he suggested. "Or she'll catch wise."
Roland squinted at him but gave a curt nod and did as suggested, only setting off once the doctor's aged hand slid off his sleeve. Oddly, the man had grabbed him right over the scar on his forearm.
Had it stopped itching as the day had gone on?
He frowned as he slipped shadow to shadow in Mae Casper’s wake.
He wasn't sure.
Almost as though he was antagonizing the damned thing by thinking about it, it tingled, making him give an annoyed rub over his sleeve to silence it.
She turned again, this time down a narrow runoff ditch that cut between two streets. A shortcut, yes, but also a dangerous chokepoint if she was being followed.
He grimaced. She was being followed, wasn't she?
That yellow dress she was wearing stood out in the low twilight. A wise choice for avoiding accidental collision with carriages, but perhaps not the best thing to wear to evade ne'er-do-wells in the shadows.
This time he almost chuckled at the thought. He couldn't follow her down that ditch, so he'd have to cut around.
This would be easier if he already knew where she lived.
He glanced to either side quickly, wondering which way would get him around faster than her shortcut if he hastened and chose the path that wound around near the signage hub.
He'd have to cross into its torchlight and swing under the big wooden arm that pointed to the right and announced St. Bartholomew's lay in that direction, but it seemed a safer bet than trying to weave through a bunch of half-shuttered market stalls and tenement buildings.
He was moving before he'd even finished making the choice, nearly colliding with a quartet of young men carrying a heavy burlap sack between them and giggling amongst themselves as though they'd already broken into their libations for the night.
"Christ, don't get it on me!" one of them yelped. "It's leaking!"
"Of course it's leaking, it's been dissected!" another returned with a chortle. "We'll dump it on the doorstep and then you can go have a nice bath, hm?"
"What if that little witch doctor woman uses it to curse us?" a third moaned. "They use animal parts in West Indies cunning magic, don't they?"
"She's not Caribbean," the first one snapped. "She's a Londoner."
Roland froze.
"Well, that doesn't mean her people aren't doing witchery," the moaner responded. "Who knows what they got up to before they sailed here. People who look like that came from somewhere, didn't they?"
"As long as she isn't there when we arrive, I don't care where she came from or where she went after," another snapped, voice polished and posh. "Walk faster. This is bloody heavy."
“Bloody and heavy,” his compatriot muttered in return.
Roland pressed the tip of his tongue into the sharp points of his teeth, contemplating which way he was supposed to go now.
This coterie of idiots wasn't out to do any real violence, but they were clearly a source to the vandalism problem, and if he lost them now, he might never find them again.
At the same time, if this quartet was out and on this mission, they might have compatriots on others. And one of those others might be aimed at Mae herself.
That is who they were talking about, after all.
He swallowed the urge to turn on his heel and beat these four within an inch of their pampered lives.
Let them dump whatever disgusting, dissected viscera they had in that sack and run. It was harmless. He could see to that as soon as he knew she was safe.
He needed to know she was safe. And he had already wasted precious moments now eavesdropping on their plot.
He darted across the cobbles and into the cross street, scanning the road for a flash of yellow fabric emerging from the alley. He walked directly toward it, his pace brisk and determined.
He was no longer concerned with the prospect of her catching sight of him. He needed to ensure he was the only one in pursuit of her tonight.
His heart clenched, his eyes finding little to nothing on the empty street, passing back and forth and back again along the dents and dips of London's barrows, until in a brief and blessed flicker of movement, he spotted a flash of yellow, just a little slip, against a brick wall in the distance.
He wasted no time moving toward it, breaking into a run as the shadows of other night dwellers began to trickle into walkways while the final glimmers of light faded away, their shadows growing longer and more ominous by the second.
When he reached those bricks, that wall where he'd last seen her, and took the corner so fast he nearly left the ground entirely, he found himself only a breath away from collision not with Mae, but with her grandfather, who was blinking at him in shock, holding up a brown-paper-wrapped parcel of very fragrant fish as though he was going to beat him with it if he tried anything untoward.
"Dr. Casper," Roland breathed, collapsing forward with his hands on his knees and dragging in a breath.
"Mr. Reed?!" the doctor returned, clearly baffled as he swung his maritime bludgeon back down to his side. "What in the heavens?"
Absurdly, Roland felt himself begin to laugh, his fingers digging into the recesses around his kneecaps as the buzzing panic in his skin began to fade and the little townhouse behind the doctor came into hazy relief, glowing from within as Mae herself and a woman who must be her grandmother moved about inside.
"Well, I hope you haven't come for dinner," Dr. Casper said, watching this unfold with bemusement. "I only bought three fish."