Blaze, page 2
“Of course.”
He slipped on his coat and hat, and they hurried down the steps. At this hour it would be a miracle to find a cab. His own driver Thomas wouldn’t be back on duty until six.
“Where are we going?” he asked, following along after the boy, who half-ran ahead of him.
“This way. Please, Doctor, hurry.”
As luck would have it, they did find a cab a few blocks down and took it the rest of the way to the Cain residence.
The carriage pulled up to a middle-class home in Bethnal Green. He instructed the driver to wait for him, warning him that it might be some time.
The boy, as impatient as ever, was already at the top of the steps and waving for the doctor to hurry. He knocked on the front door and a housemaid answered.
“Oh, thank goodness. Well done, Charlie.”
The boy tipped his cap and left.
The woman pulled the door open all the way. “Please come in, Doctor. Thank you for coming.”
Without preamble she turned toward the stairs and Victor fell into step behind her. “How is Mrs. Cain?”
“Oh, she’s in a bad way, sir. Very bad indeed.”
“Is Mrs. Delquist here?”
“Who?”
They reached the top of the stairs.
“Mrs. Delquist. I was told she asked me to come.”
“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know anything about that. Please, this way.”
Victor frowned but followed her lead. A woman’s scream of pain could be heard coming from behind a door down the hall and the doctor’s curiosity about Mrs. Delquist faded.
The maid took him into a nicely appointed bedroom. A woman sat piled up against pillows in a large canopy bed. She was pale and panting for breath. He went quickly to her side.
“Mrs. Cain? I’m Doctor Schäfer.”
She looked up at him with eyes bleary from pain. He shed his hat and coat, tossing them onto a nearby chair and approached her.
“Please help me,” she said as she held out her hand to him.
He took it. It was cold and clammy. “That is why I’m here.” He held her hand for a moment, deftly taking her pulse. It was far too fast.
“Will you protect my baby?”
“Of course, I will do all I can.”
He smiled at her and started to let go of her hand, but she grasped his wrist with surprising strength.
“Do you promise?”
He’d not attended many births; this was only his second, but he knew some mothers were quite emotional when their time came, understandably so.
“I will do everything I can,” he assured her.
Her eyes bore into him. Finally, she nodded and let go.
He offered her a soothing look and opened his bag.
“Try to remain calm, Mrs. Cain.”
He turned to the housemaid who lingered anxiously by the door. “I’ll need hot water, boiling, and clean sheets, Mrs. …?”
“Turnbill. We’ve got them all ready, Doctor. Sheets are there,” she said nodding to a chair, “and the water’s on. I’ll fetch some.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Turnbill.”
He turned back to Mrs. Cain, who seemed to have grown even paler in the few moments he’d been there. He reached for the edge of the sheet that covered her. “Let’s just take a look, shall we?”
When he peeled back the covers he was appalled by what he saw. She was sitting in a pool of blood. A very large pool of blood.
Mrs. Cain looked at him helplessly. She needed to be taken to hospital. Now. He would take her in his cab, but with this much blood loss it might be too late already. She cried out as another contraction seized her.
“We need to get you to hospital.”
She shook her head, whether it was to dismiss him or the pain, he wasn’t sure.
“Yes. I’m afraid we must.”
She cried out again and gripped his arm. “It’s too late,” she said between gasping breaths. “The baby’s here.”
Victor knew neither she nor the baby had much of a chance of survival, assuming the baby was even still alive.
He eased the covers down again and bent down for a closer look. It was difficult to see through the massive hemorrhaging, but he saw the head of the baby crowning. She was right; it was far too late.
“All right. Good. Push gently, Mrs. Cain, gently.”
She bore down and the child’s head emerged. He cradled it in his hands and urged her to push one more time. She did, but the child’s shoulder stuck. He manipulated the baby and urged Mrs. Cain on again.
Finally, the child slid out into his hands, slick with blood.
The infant was whole at least, but not moving.
“Doctor?” the mother asked, sensing something was wrong.
He wasn’t sure what to tell her and settled on the one thing he was sure of. “It’s a girl.”
The infant was so tiny that he could hold her in one hand. He reached for his instruments, clamped the umbilical cord and cut it.
The baby remained motionless.
“Is she alive?” Mrs. Cain asked, her voice barely a whisper.
Victor laid the baby on the bed and reached into his bag for the bulb syringe. He cleared her airway, but she still wasn’t breathing. Gently, he rubbed her sternum to rouse her, but to no avail.
“Is she dead?”
He lifted the baby by her ankles, dangling her upside-down, and slapped her bottom.
“Come on,” he whispered, and slapped her again.
Nothing.
He turned her right-side-up and held her in front of him. He’d already lost two patients today, or would before the night was over. He could not bear a third.
“Please,” he urged softly, “breathe.”
As if the child had heard him, she gave a small cough and then, mercifully, began to breathe.
A laugh of relief bubbled up from Mrs. Cain.
He wrapped the baby in a clean cloth. She was small but not, as far he could tell, premature. Amazingly, she appeared to be completely healthy. The same could not be said for her mother.
He knew there was nothing he could do to slow the hemorrhaging. She would bleed to death within the next few minutes, and he would be helpless to stop it.
He brought the baby to her and she cradled the infant in her arms, gently kissing her forehead. “Artemis,” she said as she gazed at her child. “You’ll keep her safe?”
“Where is your husband?” Victor asked, frowning.
Panic and fear suddenly filled her eyes. “He must never know. He must never find her.”
Ah, Victor thought, I see. “Is she someone else’s?”
Mrs. Cain began to cry. “No, she’s his. God help her, she’s his.” She looked up at him in pained anguish. “You have to take her away.”
“Take her?” Victor shook his head. She was becoming delirious.
She looked back at her child with infinite sadness and regret. “He’ll kill her.”
“What?”
She looked at Victor with a clarity he hadn’t seen since he’d arrived. “John isn’t the man I married anymore. I’m not sure what he is. He wanted to be a doctor like you but it didn’t work out and then … he Changed.”
“Some men find it—”
She shook her head violently. “No, you don’t understand. He Changed.”
The way she said it, the way she looked at him, sent a shiver down his spine.
She looked back at the little girl in her arms. “He’s gone to Whitechapel again. But he’ll be back soon. And if he finds her ….” Her sobs intensified. “Please, Doctor. Protect her.”
Victor wasn’t quite sure what to do. Helping with a birth, even with a death, he was trained to do. But this ….
“She said you were the one.”
“Who?”
“Mrs. Delquist, she—”
The sounds of a commotion downstairs cut her off. A man’s voice shouting. Loud and angry.
Mrs. Cain looked at the doctor beseechingly. “That’s him. Please, take her. Keep her safe. Promise me?”
It was absurd. He was no nursemaid. Yet he knew with an instinct he could not define that she was telling the truth, and if he did not do as she requested, the girl would follow her mother to the grave.
He nodded and quickly gathered his instruments, tossing them into his bag, then gathered his hat and coat.
“Hurry, please,” she begged and gave her daughter one last kiss. “I will always love you.”
Victor eased the baby from her arms and started toward the door.
“Don’t let him find her,” Mrs. Cain begged again. “Ever.”
The doctor hurried out into the hall. He could hear the man downstairs arguing with Mrs. Turnbill, who was vainly trying to keep him from coming up.
“Get out of my way, woman!”
He heard heavy footsteps starting up the stairs. Looking around the landing for an escape, he ducked inside an empty room and quietly closed the door behind him.
The room was dark except for a thin shaft of light coming through the keyhole. He knelt down by the door and put his bag on the floor. The baby began to fuss, nearly crying out, but he soothed it with a touch and she fell silent again. He gently placed her inside his medical bag. She was just small enough to fit.
Outside the door, he heard the footsteps grow louder and closer as they reached the top of the stairs. Then they stopped.
He peered through the keyhole. The figure of a man took a step toward the bedroom where his wife lay dying, then stopped. He stood motionless for a moment, then turned and started toward the door Victor was hiding behind.
He couldn’t see the man’s face, just his black trousers and the edge of his long black cape. As he got closer, Victor held his breath and kept one hand on his bag.
The man paused by the door and slowly lifted a hand toward the doorknob. That’s when Victor saw that the man’s hand was covered with blood. What in the name of God?
Victor’s heart raced and it was as if time slowed. The man’s bloody fingers reached toward the doorknob, growing closer with each passing second. The hairs on the back of Victor’s neck began to prickle. His hand clenched reflexively on the handle of his bag. Gooseflesh rose along his forearms. The temperature seemed to drop and a cold dread formed in his stomach. He’d never felt anything like it before. It was more than fear for the child; it was something else, something primal; the recognition of something he dared not put a name to.
The bloody hand was nearly to the door, and he clutched the bag more tightly when Mrs. Cain called out from her room.
“John!”
The man’s bloody hand froze inches away from the doorknob and then dropped to his side. He turned and strode to the bedroom.
Victor waited a moment and then eased the door open. The landing was empty. Carefully, he lifted his bag and moved as quickly and quietly as he could down the stairs.
Mrs. Turnbill was waiting at the bottom of them, a red mark blossoming on her face where Cain had struck her.
She shook her head, staving off any potential questions or offers of help, and ushered him out the front door.
He held his bag tightly as he made his way down the front steps. Cain’s roar of anger echoed from above. Victor looked up just in time to see a chair crash through the bedroom window, dropping onto the street below. He hunched over to protect the precious cargo in his medical bag and hurried as glass shards rained down all around him.
Once he was clear of them, he looked into the bag, worried he’d been too slow, but the baby girl wriggled inside, unharmed.
Thank God.
Without looking back, he hurried toward his waiting cab.
* * *
The Infant Orphan Asylum at Walsteadt was one of the finest in the country, but in the dead of night it felt like one step from Hell. And the sad truth of it was, for a child such as Artemis, it would be Hell itself.
There are other kinds of Hell, he reminded himself, and thought back to Mrs. Cain’s fear for her daughter. He looked down at the infant as she lay in his bag.
What had driven him to take the child? Fear, instinct, something more?
She’s so very small, he thought as he picked her up.
Whatever it was, he knew it had been the right thing, the only thing, to do. He still couldn’t explain what had happened. He tried to rationalize it. He was a man of science; surely there was some logical explanation for what he had seen, what he had felt. But with a certainty that frightened him, he knew. What he had seen that night, what he had felt, was evil.
Is there really such a thing? he wondered.
It was absurd to even think it. While his rational mind railed against the absurdity of it, the deepest part of him knew its truth. But he was unprepared to accept it. Clenching his jaw, he shook his head to dispel the thought.
This is madness.
The child wriggling in his arms brought him back to the problem at hand. He looked again at the imposing entrance to the asylum. It was the only logical course. He was a young bachelor, hardly ready for a wife much less a child. And yet, he could not bring himself to open the carriage door.
He knew that leaving her there was best. For him. Illegitimate children, and she could be called no other without revealing her identity, were still outcasts in society.
How could someone so small fight something so great?
He sat up straighter. He was being ridiculous. Of course he would give her to the orphanage. He had already done more than many would have. She would be looked after, and what became of her was none of his concern. He could put her and the entire incident out of his head.
He reached for the door handle, but as he looked down at her and she up at him, he stopped. The infant grabbed his finger.
“Artemis.”
He tried to slip his finger out of her grasp, but she held fast. She was strong. Curiously strong. And when she looked at him with those clear grey-blue eyes, she held more than his hand. She held his heart.
Just as she would not let go, he would not either.
It was insanity. A single man with no particular affinity for children, and yet ….
He would keep his pledge and protect her.
Rapping on the roof of the carriage, he called out, “Drive on.”
The carriage lurched as the horses pulled away. He sat back in his seat, cradling the child to his chest.
Victor stared down at Artemis, who snuggled into the makeshift bassinet he’d made. She slept peacefully, as she had most of the night.
A knock on his bedroom door interrupted his reverie. He hurried to the door, catching it just as Mrs. Perry was opening it.
“Good morning, Doctor,” she said with a smile. She looked at his disheveled clothes, wrinkled from having been slept in. “Long night?”
“Yes.”
He eased the door partially closed, blocking her view.
She arched her eyebrows in surprise and leaned forward curiously, but he remained in her way.
“Is this breakfast?” he asked, indicating the tray in her hand.
“It is.”
He took the tray from her hands. “Thank you.”
She lingered, staring him up and down.
“Mrs. Perry?”
“Hmm? Oh, yes. A package arrived for you. Quite large and heavy.”
“I see. Was it marked urgent?” He didn’t understand why she’d mention it otherwise.
She shook her head. “No, but it’s from Mrs. Delquist, and I thought …”
“Hmm.” That’s odd. “Thank you. I’ll see to it later.” Mrs. Perry continued to linger in the doorway. “Was there anything else?”
“No.”
She eyed him curiously, but he was in no mood for her meddling today, well-meaning though it may be. “That will be all.”
She seemed surprised and perhaps a little hurt at the curt dismissal, but she nodded. “Of course, Doctor.”
He waited until she’d walked away before slipping back into his bedroom and closing the door.
He set the tray down on the table. Toast, marmalade and coffee. Perfect for him, but not exactly what a child needed. The full brunt of his madness struck him then. How on earth was he going to care for a newborn baby?
He could get a wet nurse to come. There were several at the hospital, he knew. He could concoct some story as to why he had her. A distant cousin’s child, perhaps.
With a sigh, he sat down on the bed and massaged his temples. A massive headache was coming on quickly. Reaching for his coffee, for some sense of normalcy, he noticed the headline of the paper that sat folded neatly on the edge of the tray. “Brutal Murders In Whitechapel.”
“Whitechapel?”
Mrs. Cain’s words came back to him in a rush.
“He’s gone to Whitechapel again.”
He skimmed the article. Two more dead last night. Butchered. That was four now.
“He’ll kill her.” He remembered Mrs. Cain’s anguish.
He looked at the child as she slept peacefully.
“Don’t let him find her. Ever.”
It was a promise he could not break.
He reached into the little bassinet and touched the child’s cheek.
“What am I going to do with you, Artemis?”
Chapter Two
September 1904
Harley Street, London
“What am I going to do with you, Artemis?”
Artemis grinned at her father. “Let me go to the lecture?”
He sighed and she knew she had him. That was his Sigh of Surrender. He had one for all occasions. There was the Sigh of Great Disappointment; she didn’t like that one. The Sigh of Extreme Irritation, also not her favorite. And the Sigh of Enduring the Foolish, usually reserved for her friends. Well, friend, since she really had only one.
She glanced over hopefully at Phoebe as the two of them stood in the foyer waiting for her father to officially give in.
“All right—”
Artemis turned to Phoebe, who grinned in delight. They’d been wanting to go hear Horace Rouse, the well-known poet and philosopher, for ages. Or at least Phoebe had. Artemis’s interests were somewhat adjacent.
“But,” her father continued, “you will be back before five for your ballet lesson, do you understand? Five o’clock.”
