The Lady of Secrets (27 page)

He added so quietly Meg had to bend closer to hear him. “Master was drunk for three days after my sister died.”

“Dr. Blackwood sought to cure your sister? And he failed?”

“It wasn’t his fault. It was the cursed pox. Our whole
lodging was under quarantine. No other doctor or apothecary or even a cunning woman would have come.” Tom’s eyes flashed an angry challenge at her. “But Dr. Blackwood did and he brought me and my mother through it. But not my grandfather and not Bess.”

Meg studied the boy and noticed the few pits the pox had left on his face. Tom had to have been one of the more fortunate ones, surviving a disease that either killed or left its victims horribly scarred. The pox was a most virulent affliction, and even with all the knowledge she had culled from the ancient texts, everything she had learned from Ariane Deauville, Meg had lost more than one person to its ravages.

“I am so sorry, Tom.”

The boy’s anger faded, his eyes welling with tears. But when Meg attempted to press his hand, he pulled away from her and shrugged.

“You don’t have to be. My grandfather and Bess are in heaven with my father. That is what my mother says and she
knows
such things. She tried to tell that to Dr. Blackwood when he got so bitter, blaming himself, especially for Bessie dying. Sh-she was only twelve.

“But my mother said that when the Lord calls, you have to answer and it was Bessie’s time. All any of us could do was light a candle and pray for her. But Dr. Blackwood—” Tom shook his head sadly. “He doesn’t put any faith in God. He said, ‘I won’t be praying to any deity that would cut down such an innocent girl and leave a useless wretch like me still breathing.’ So my mother and I, we pray for Bessie every Sunday and we pray for Dr. Blackwood too.”

Tom gave a loud sniff and wiped his sleeve across his eyes. Meg’s heart ached for the boy and even more for Blackwood. She knew how it felt to strive so hard to save someone
and have that life ebb from your grasp. She had never sought to drown that sense of failure in a bout of strong drink, but there were times when she had wished she could.

She glanced toward Blackwood, fighting a ridiculous urge to rush to his side and comfort him. A comfort he would be quick to laugh off or reject even if he could feel it.

Tom must have misinterpreted the nature of her glance because he snapped, “Don’t you be looking at master that way. He did his best to save my sister. He’s a good doctor, no matter if you don’t think so.”

“I never said—”

“Yes, you did. He told me you consider him a charlatan.”

“He told you that? I did not think my opinion would be of any consequence to him.”

“Well, it is, although he hates that it matters. But he said he has never met any other woman like you and he—” Tom cast a guilty look in Blackwood’s direction. “Oh, lord, he wouldn’t have wanted me telling you that. Master says I chatter worse than a gossiping fishwife. He is always threatening to sew my lips closed. I daresay he’ll do it now.”

“No, I promise you I won’t breathe a word of anything you have told me.”

“Thank you.” Bidding her a gruff good night, Tom turned to go.

Meg hesitated a moment before darting after him. The boy was already out the door and halfway down the first flight of stairs when she called out to him.

“Tom.”

The boy paused midstep to look back at her. “Aye, mistress?”

“I don’t suppose in all his confidences, Dr. Blackwood has ever spoken of his family?”

Tom pursed his lips and Meg could clearly read what the boy was thinking, that he had already spilled far too many of his master’s secrets.

“Please, Tom. I have every hope your master will recover, but with him this ill, it would be better if someone of his kin were informed.”

“Perhaps so, mistress. But the doctor never talks of his family, even when he’s been drinking.”

“Oh.” Meg nodded in disappointment. She bade Tom good night and started to close the door when the boy charged back up the stairs.

He appeared to wrestle with his conscience a moment before blurting out, “There has always been talk that the master is old Armagil Black’s son.”

“
Armagil
Black
?”

“Well it stands to reason, doesn’t it, mistress, the names being so similar? How many men do you know who have been christened Armagil?”

“Only one.”

“I’ve heard tell of two and they are said to be much alike in their stubbornness. According to all the gossip in the street, Dr. Blackwood and his father had a terrible falling-out and have not spoken to each other in years, the doctor even going so far as to alter his last name.”

“But if Mr. Black knew how ill his son was, this quarrel could be mended. If you could take word to him in the morning, surely he would come.”

“I doubt it, mistress. Tomorrow is a hanging day at Tyburn. Father Gregoire, a Jesuit priest, is going to be drawn and quartered.”

“What sort of man is this Mr. Black?” Meg exclaimed.
“His son comes this close to death and he would be unwilling to forgo his pleasure in watching a man being eviscerated?”

“You don’t understand. There’d be no hanging or quartering if he did.” Tom fetched a deep sigh.

“Old Gilly Black is the executioner, mistress.”

N
IGHT FELL OVER LONDON BRIDGE, THE ONLY LIGHTS VISIBLE
the lanterns burning in front of the houses.

“Nine of the clock, look well to your locks, your fire, and your light,” the watchman’s voice echoed. Somewhere in the distance, a dog howled, but otherwise the vast bridge was silent.

Meg fastened the shutters closed, no longer as concerned with muting the street noise as she was with stemming the chill of night seeping through the windows.

It was the only thing she could think of to do to help Blackwood, who had finally roused from his deep sleep. She had stoked the fire as hot as she could, piled as many blankets on him as she could find, but he shivered uncontrollably.

Meg returned to the bedside, attempting to pack the coverlets tightly around him.

“C-cold. So cold,” he said.

“I know. Do you feel strong enough to stand? Perhaps I could make you a pallet and help you to lie closer to the fire.”

“No!”

“I should have had Tom fetch more wood before he left. I may have to go out in search—”

“No,” he rasped again. He rolled over to look up at her. “D-don’t leave me. Climb into bed and w-warm me.”

His eyes were dull and heavy, but he managed a semblance of a smile. “Not t-trying to seduce you. Just don’t want to be alone when—”

“You are not going to die,” she cried, but she hastened to comply with his request, removing her shoes, stockings, frock, and petticoat with fingers that had turned wooden and clumsy.

She stripped down to her shift and then scrambled beneath the covers to take him in her arms. He was trembling all over and his skin felt like ice. Meg pressed herself hard against him, wishing she was a larger woman, her curves more warm and generous, like Seraphine.

She was too slight, too thin to offer him the kind of heat that he needed. She was all but crushed in his embrace, his body shaking hard enough to shatter them both.

As she rubbed her hands vigorously over his back, Blackwood tried to speak. “M-meg. Must tell you s-something—”

“No, save your strength. Whatever it is, it will keep until morning.”

“D-don’t think s-so.” But his teeth chattered too hard, rendering further speech impossible.

Meg clutched him tighter, trying to infuse him with her heat and strength. She held him until her arms throbbed with pain, until she was spent to the point of weeping from exhaustion.

The chills wracking his frame finally stopped, allowing her to draw a ragged breath of relief. She felt his tension ease, his arms going limp and falling away from her.

“Blackwood?” Meg struggled upright to peer down at him.

His head fell back on the pillow, his eyes closed, his complexion as white at the sheets.

“Armagil!” She felt for the pulse in his neck, but her fingers trembled and she couldn’t find it. She pressed her ear to his naked chest, listening for the beat of his heart. It was there, but faint, his breathing quick and shallow.

A sob welled in Meg’s throat and she fought to suppress it. Raining hot tears on his chest would do the man no good. She had to think of something else to do. Except there wasn’t anything else. The antidote had been her only hope of defeating the poison.

Meg caressed her hand over Blackwood’s jaw, the roughness of his beard abrading her palm. She had known him for such a short span of time and for much of that time she had believed she despised him. And now she could not bear the thought of losing him.

She studied his face in the flickering candlelight. She had seen him drunk, angry, mocking, teasing, or lustful. Never had he looked so vulnerable, so gentle for a man who was a hangman’s son.

Could Dr. Blackwood have chosen a profession more opposed to that of Gilly Black? Was that what had caused the rift between the two men? Meg knew that the grim trade of executioner was like many other occupations in one respect. The skills of the father were expected to be passed down to the son. What horrors Blackwood must have witnessed in his youth to cause him to defy his father.

Meg respected Blackwood for that defiance because she knew all too well what it would have cost him. The deepest longing of any child was to revere a parent, to seek their love and approval. But when one perceived one’s father or mother as being wrong, even a monster, the pain and guilt were immense.

“I am sorry,” she whispered. “Sorry that I did not understand, sorry if I hurt you by accusing you of being a bad doctor, but you are not an easy man to comprehend. You rarely speak seriously and you behave as though you care about nothing.”

Except that she had seen for herself that that was not true in the way he had tried to expose Bridget Tillet’s lies about la Mère Poulet, how he had gone out of his way to make sure the old woman was safe.

Far more than that, he had been the only one who had troubled to find out Hortense’s real name, treating her as though she was a woman who mattered and not just some mad old crone.

Considering all that, Meg should not have been surprised by Tom’s revelations about how Blackwood ventured into the poorest quarters of the city, taking on the most desperate cases even at the risk of his own life.

She might deplore some of his methods, the bleedings, the use of lice, but he could hardly be blamed for that. Trained in the ignorant practices that most doctors followed, Blackwood had not had the benefit of Ariane Deauville’s teaching.

Any man wanting to be a good doctor could have learned much from the former Lady of Faire Isle. But the kind of physicians Meg had encountered would have been too arrogant to avail themselves of Ariane’s ancient knowledge, dismissing her as naught but a simple cunning woman.

Meg had even heard of some doctors who never saw their patients, merely had their symptoms described in a letter and wrote back their cures. Brewing medicine and dealing with broken bones were beneath them. The distribution of potions was the province of apothecaries, the setting of bones and stitching of cuts was left to barbers. And no physician of any standing wasted his university education upon the lower strata of society.

That he tried to use his medical knowledge to treat the poor made Blackwood a remarkable doctor, even when he failed. As for not caring, the man cared too much to the point of drinking himself to oblivion whenever he lost a patient.

She had discovered a great deal about Armagil Blackwood tonight, but there was so much more she needed to learn.

Meg stroked his brow. “I wish we could begin anew. I want to know you better, but for that to happen, you have to fight this poison and stay with me, Armagil, do you hear?”

She pressed her lips to his.

“Please stay.”

“TWELVE O’ CLOCK AND ALL IS WELL.”

The watchman’s voice rang out as he made his round through the environs of Westminster.

Midnight. The witching hour. Sir Patrick tried to suppress the thought as he avoided the watch. But as he stole away from the stairs that led up from the river landing, the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. He had to resist the urge to keep looking over his shoulder.

Ever since he had had the misfortune to become entangled
with those loathsome Rivers women and their mad plot to torment the king, he lived in constant dread of being followed by those witches. He remembered all too well his shock the first time they had accosted him. It had been on a foggy evening when he had been hastening home from one of his secret meetings. The two women has risen up before him like wraiths conjured up from a sorcerer’s cauldron.

How horrified he had been to discover that they knew all about him and the conspiracy to slay the king. One of Thomas Percy’s servants had lain with Beatrice Rivers. While deep in his cups, the lackey had revealed far too much.

“Be not alarmed, Sir Patrick,”
Amy Rivers had cooed.
“My sister and I would never betray your secrets. We also have our reasons for hating King James and wish to help you destroy him.”