Chapter 7 #3
Caroline drew the little tin from her pocket and pried the lid open. Rab’s eyes narrowed.
“May I?” he asked, and at Caroline’s nod, he pinched up a pill and dropped it into his palm. He considered it for a long moment, then sniffed it.
“I have no idea what this is,” he said. “The size is common, but the color, the smell…Where did you get these?”
“A doctor in…in Birmingham.”
“And what did this doctor’s treatment entail?”
Caroline balked. The intimacy, discussing her medical care with a man! But Rab seemed to follow her train of thought and said gently, “I realize the delicate nature of my question. But if I am to parse out the identity of this medication, some details would be helpful.”
“He listened to my heart. My lungs.” Dr. Hoffman’s scent of ether and mothballs, his face pressed to the bare skin of her back. Her chest. Caroline repressed a shudder. “He said I was weak of constitution and spasmodic of nerves. He treated my mother for the same affliction.”
She didn’t say, She died of it.
Rab nodded once. “Did he bleed you?”
“Yes. He applied leeches…liberally.” The horrid black things on her throat, between her shoulder blades.
Another slow nod. “Bleeding fell out of favor decades ago. Only the least respectable doctors still practice it.” He considered the pill again. “Whatever this is, I’ve never seen it before.”
Panic gripped Caroline. She had never been without her medication; never, other than a handful of times when she had been too sick to swallow, gone a day without taking Dr. Hoffman’s pills.
Rab seemed to sense this. “The chemistry stocks several effective nerve tonics,” he said.
“I’m sure any of them will act as suitable substitutes.
I’ll bring you something when I’m off work tomorrow.
In the meantime, do you mind if I keep this?
” He indicated the little pill in his palm.
“I’m a bit of a scientist, you see. I may be able to figure out the chemical makeup of this medicine and concoct something similar. ”
“Thank you,” Caroline replied. Only a score of pills remained. She would have to ration them. Take no more than one per day, or even every other day, until Rab had discovered their makeup.
“No promises.” Rab flashed her his most rakish grin. “I’m just as liable to melt it into sludge as deduce what it’s made of.”
“Would Mrs. Easton care for supper, do you think?” Caroline asked, steering the conversation into less intimate waters.
Rab shook his head. “She was asleep before I left the room. Poor thing. She took a double dose of the cordial, which should keep her in bed until noon tomorrow. Looks like you’re on your own again for breakfast and lunch. Can I help?”
“No, thank you.” She did not trust herself to keep the mask in place. Not when her terror was so recent, not with his body so close.
Rab shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’ll be in my room if you need me.” He paused at the doorway. “You have flour on your nose, by the way.”
Caroline lobbed another carrot at him, but it missed, and she was alone again with a boiling pot and her screaming thoughts.
—
When supper was served and the dishes done, when the kitchen floor was swept and tomorrow’s soup lidded, Caroline dragged her abused body up four flights of stairs. Rab’s lamp glowed through the chinks of the doorjamb. She heard the clink of metal against glass but did not pause to listen.
She locked the door behind her.
Her stockings reeked of the puddle she had stepped in; beneath their clammy fibers, her toes were red and blistered.
She undid the laces of her dress, slid it over her head, followed it with the chemise.
Naked, standing on tiptoe, she touched the white skin of her belly in the glass.
It was tender and boggy, but her throat was worst, blood already pooling purple in the unmistakable pattern of a stranger’s fingers.
He had left her with this, like a brand. She would not forget it.
Face washed, hair plaited, nightgown fastened with shell buttons, Caroline slid into bed.
But sleep did not come.
In the camera obscura of her closed eyelids, visions flashed.
The men at the alley opening, grinning their hunters’ grins.
Her head against the wall. Their hands around her neck. Her swallowed scream.
She had been nothing to them. A flower to be plucked and crushed beneath their bootheels. A thing to be used and discarded.
Caroline sat up. She reached over and fumbled with the metal key until warm lamplight spilled over the room. She threw the covers off, walked from bed to desk on protesting feet.
She stared for a long moment at the medicine tin. Another pill, she knew, would drag her into deep, dreamless sleep. But she had only a few weeks’ worth of medicine remaining, and she did not want to yield control of her body and mind. Not again.
She sat in the desk chair and pulled paper and pen from the drawer.
Today, she wrote, in sharp black lines, the eighteenth of September, 1888, I, Caroline Foster, nearly lost my virtue and my life.
And only when she had emptied all the words from her head could she finally sleep.