The Winter Garden Read online

  As the red buildings dissolved into yellow bricks and white Grecian temples, Emmeline glanced over her shoulder for any sign of the two men who had held them captive. How was she to recognize them? She had never seen their faces and had only heard the one’s voice, yet with every shifting shadow, she paused and pushed the blinded man into the nearest alcove until it passed or proved to be only a product of her fearful imagination. What if they were following them? Emmeline would never be able to recognize them, and while they inched blindly toward a destination she hoped would appear, she knew they still had the upper hand. She expected them to be thugs, the scruffy common men with shifty eyes who stared back at her from engravings in the paper, but her fears couldn’t slow her pace now. Nothing mattered except finding a place she would be safe and could leave him before returning home, but he was hindering her with his constant shuffling and staggering. She wished she could leave him tucked away in an alley or on a bench in the park up ahead until she could return with help, but when she let go of his hand for even a second, he stumbled over his rag-clad feet and called out to her in his disquieting, dissonant voice like a lost child. Tugging him forward, Emmeline fortified herself against his whimpers and wheezes. They would have to wait.

  ***

  He wasn’t sure when he had been in so much pain. Even during the beatings, the pain resonated only in one or two areas at a time, but today his entire body ached from his toes, as he walked through another puddle of half-melted snow, to his head, which pounded rhythmically and crested each time his feet hit the pavement. The odd pressure in his jaw he had learned to endure, but the stab of lightning through his eye socket and into his skull was becoming so unbearable that he couldn’t string a coherent thought together. No matter how hard he worked to figure out how long he had been locked in that accursed oubliette, he could not tell if he had been there a month or a year. All the days had rolled into one never-ending night after they sewed the blindfold over his eyes. Even though he had wanted to take it off, he had to stop her when she tried to pull it from his face. The pieces of cartilage in his nose ground against each other, and the pain became so intense that he thought he would pass out or vomit what little was in his stomach if she continued.

  As she pulled his arm to make him walk faster, he wondered if he should have let her take it off despite the possible repercussions. Now, he never knew where his next step would fall or what it would fall into. His guide never warned him when there was a curb or puddle of slush but still chastised him for being so slow and clumsy. How could she expect him to move as quickly as she did when he had to sightlessly manage obstacles with a blindfold on? Something wet trickled over the distended skin around his left eye, burning the open wounds until it combined with the drying delta under his nostrils. Licking his lip, he tasted the coppery brine as it seeped into his woolen shawl and coated his teeth.

  The wind blew into his hood and ran down his spine, cutting through the tatters of his remaining clothing and carrying with it the subtle, earthy smell of trees from behind him. There were moments during the journey when he wasn’t sure if he was naked or clothed by the chill that passed through him, but with his free hand, he confirmed his clothes were there by patting and tugging the blankets closer. The girl never gave him a moment to fix the limp cloths bound around his feet, and somewhere near the trees, he lost the wrappings on one foot while the other remained only because it had been saturated by a puddle and clung to his clammy flesh until he could no longer feel his toes when they pressed against the cobblestones.

  As they ambled on and the blood from his fractured features continued to drip into his mouth, his stomach churned from the dense liquid as it settled beneath the beef broth. Her grip on him slackened as he nearly walked into her but quickly drew back when the hem of her dress brushed against his leg. The sudden change in motion made his head reel as if he was swaying in open water, and before he could stop himself, the bile rose in his throat along with thick clots of blood. He staggered away from her until his outstretched arm hit the rough façade of the nearby buildings and retched. He groaned and held his ribs tightly when they seized and crunched under the strain of the bitter vomit pouring from his nose and dislocated jaw.

  “I recognize this house,” she said, ignoring the man as he was sick behind her. The house on the corner was a mass of the usual red brick, but on its corner was a white tower with urns and laurels affixed to its face and a weathervane on its peak. Her gaze ran between the house and the rest of the street that ran perpendicular to the road they had been traveling on. It was so familiar. At the corner was a sign marked, Wimpole Street. Emmeline’s strigine eyes brightened in recognition. They were in London only a few hundred yards from her uncle’s house. She hadn’t seen him in a year, but she still remembered his was number thirty-six because it was the same number as her own. Her fellow prisoner was still leaning against the wall with his head resting on his arm as he struggled to catch his breath, but she could not wait for him as the rhythmic patter of footsteps echoed down the empty street.

  Emmeline tugged at his arm, nearly knocking him over. “Come on, we have to go. We are almost to my uncle’s house.”

  He shook his head, refusing to budge as he clutched his chest.

  “You will move, or we will be caught and brought back to that horrible place. Do you want that to happen?”

  What she didn’t understand was it wasn’t that he didn’t want to move, he couldn’t move. His lungs were expanding and contracting so rapidly that it felt as if his heart was being forced against his sternum. The thundering organ resonated up the armature of his throat, but as he tried to straighten up again, his heart skipped a beat, stumbling out of rhythm as it erratically writhed against his ribs in protest. The girl roughly pulled him upright, refusing to be ignored, but the string of coughs it elicited sent his heart back into its normal cadence. She wrapped the blanket closer to his mouth to muffle the sound as the steps seemed to grow nearer.

  Emmeline looked over her shoulder and found that the disembodied feet echoing up the street came from the worn boots of a bobby walking his beat. She watched as the policeman prodded a ragged man who had been sleeping in the doorway of a house and hollered at him to keep moving otherwise he would be arrested for trespassing. Her companion looked as filthy and perhaps even more tattered than the beggar who had been thrown out of the respectable Westminster neighborhood. Five houses now stood between them and safety, but it only amplified her fear of being caught. The officer would never believe her explanation, and if he saw the other man’s face, who knows where he might take them. A steamer chugged past, shining its headlamps on them. Emmeline flinch in the spotlight, but it continued on without looking back at them.

  Staring up at number thirty-six, Emmeline noticed a light illuminating one of the upper most windows of the house. Maybe they are still awake, she thought as she gave him a gentler tug to indicate they were at the front steps. The blindfolded man used the railing to grope his way to the landing until he was at her side. She quickly tidied his wrappings to better disguise his dangling jaw and mask before smoothing her own meager dress to give some semblance of decorum. Emmeline was about to reach for the doorknocker when she recoiled at the sight of a grinning metal skull. The constable was directly across the street from them when she grasped the knocker’s jaw and frantically banged it against the metal plate, hoping her aunt and uncle would be able to hear her. She was about to knock again when she spotted an indent around the nasal cavity, and upon pressing it, a buzzer sounded on the other side of the black door. One light flipped on upstairs and then another until finally the foyer lamps glowed brightly through the glass beside the door. The warmth and light from the rooms within seeped onto the porch until the winter wind scared it away. A redheaded woman with a thin, slightly upturned nose and sharp green eyes hesitantly opened the door to the strangers on her steps.

  “May I help you?” she yawned. While she was still dressed, her gown was rumpled as if she had been sleep
ing in it.

  “Aunt Eliza, it’s me. It’s Emmeline.”

  The book dropped from the older woman’s hand as she searched the girl’s features. A gasp escaped her lips and her tired eyes flickered with recognition. “Emmeline?” Eliza Hawthorne scrutinized her niece’s face again before wrapping her arms around her. “Oh, you do not know how happy your uncle will be to see you. We thought—”

  “I was dead?”

  Before she could reply, the lanky form of Dr. James Hawthorne sprinted down the steps with his dressing-gown thrown over his clothing. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Emmeline! She is alive.”

  As Eliza stepped out of the way to allow the young woman in and to close the door, it was as if she noticed the threadbare man standing beside her for the first time. Each breath crackled louder until finally he fell into a fit of wet coughs. When he drew back his grimy hand, it was flecked with fresh droplets of blood.

  “Who is this?”

  Emmeline hesitated as she looked up at the faceless man and tugged his arm to make him cross the threshold into the house. “I do not know his name. We were trapped by the same people, and when I escaped, I took him with me.”

  “Escaped? You were kidnapped?”

  James held his niece’s shoulders and looked into her brown eyes, which were so much like his own. “I cannot believe my sister was right about you. What happened on Samhain?”

  “I am not sure, but that can wait. He needs to be properly attended to.”

  Chapter Eight:

  Meatless Bones

  James Hawthorne studied the man huddled behind his niece. His head and torso were obscured with a wool blanket, and while he was hunched over, the doctor could tell he was probably near his height. Below the cloth, what was left of his black trousers was stained and torn, revealing the skin below, which was coated in mud, offal, and bruises. The small portions of his legs and arms that could be seen were punctuated by jutting bones, but beneath the stockings, the tops of his feet appeared swollen. As he drew closer, James caught an eye-searing whiff of the sour odor emanating from his skin, but beneath it was a smell Dr. Hawthorne had come to know well while working in the hospital and morgue, the metallic yet sweet scent of blood. From the strength of the odor, there was probably a lot of it.

  “Sir, my name is Dr. James Hawthorne. I would like to help you, but I need to know what is troubling you,” the doctor called as his wife came to his side, picking up the volume she dropped along the way.

  “E’ryting,” the faceless man murmured. His fingers groped across the side of his head until he reached the end of the blanket.

  His hands shook as the makeshift hood fell away with each section he unwound, revealing his grimy blindfold and distorted features. Both doctors’ eyes widened as they beheld his askew jaw and lips, which glistened with sputum and blood. The man’s eyes were hidden beneath the swath of second skin, but the unseen wound bubbled and trickled congealed plasma. He blindly turned toward the faint gasp that broke from Eliza Hawthorne’s lips. She covered her mouth as he turned his head sideways, silhouetting his distended features as the swelling fought to free itself from the fabric binds. Tears crept into her eyes against her will, but her husband’s hand pressing against her own steadied her.

  When she glanced up at James, she realized he, too, had been greatly affected by the young man’s grave appearance. His face had paled, and his eyes refused to leave his patient’s body as he mentally noted each injury. She knew that look well. It had appeared on his face when he had been a practicing surgeon, but recently, she had only seen it down in the morgue when he was trying to discern the secrets of the dead. During his time as Coroner to the Queen, Dr. Hawthorne had forgotten the spectral countenance of human suffering, which flickered with the ebb and flow of life and threatened at any moment to blow out. Something was palpably sad about this man’s condition that had so often been absent in the cadavers who, apart from lacking a pulse, didn’t differ much from the pitiful creature before them.

  “I need to get you downstairs, so I can properly care for you.” James was able to conceal the tremor in his voice, but he was grateful that the blindfold shielded the man from their horrified expressions. He deserved better than to be gawked at like some sideshow curiosity. “I am going to take your arms now and lead you to my office. Is that all right?”

  The young man nodded and held his aching arms ahead of him.

  “Eliza, please take care of Emmeline. If she needs to use the bath, do it now and be quick about it.”

  “Will you need any help with him?”

  “I do not think so, but he will need—,” he began but stopped their trek to the basement in order to support the other man as his body was racked with coughs.

  “I will get a bed ready and prepare something he can eat.”

  The doctor heard his wife and niece going upstairs as he led the man blindly through the house, carefully guiding him around the corners of furniture and warning him when his feet neared the upturned edge of a rug. In the hall beside the dining room, there stood a very plain door resembling a cupboard or linen closet, but behind it stood a set of polished steps that led down to Dr. Hawthorne’s examination room. As the younger man navigated the stairs with the doctor’s aid, his heart quickened with each yawning creak. In the narrow, wooden shaft, the musty perfume of dust and earth crept up from the soil outside the walls and into the blindfolded man’s mind. For a moment, he saw the stone and earthen chamber before his eyes, a sharp blow lashed against his face as the man mocked and assaulted him again. When the door at the bottom opened, the catacomb disappeared as the sharp, familiar scent of ethanol burned his nose.

  “Stand right here, and I will get you a chair,” Hawthorne said as he finally released the stranger’s arms.

  He swayed unsteadily with nothing to hold onto, but as he groped behind him, his hand landed on the cold, marmoreal surface of the examination table. Despite the bright, electric lamp shining down over the table, his swollen eye and dirt-encrusted blindfold only allowed the darkest of shadows through. Across the room, the leg of the chair squealed against the tile floor, and as it clattered, he flinched and clenched his eyes shut against the grating sensation. The next bang erupted only inches from his feet. As the doctor reached out to guide his patient into the seat, the younger man jerked away, hitting his back against the edge of the table. James caught his arm to steady him, but the other grimy fist swung frantically, nearly knocking the glasses off his face as he narrowly avoided the blows. Finally, he let go and watched the other man whimper and pant as he scurried heedlessly toward the corner. A bottle from the apothecary shelf teetered with the sudden motion before crashing to the floor in countless shards of glass and particles of powder. The deformed man dove under the table and clung to the farthest leg. Silent sobs shook his fragile body. James sighed at the sight and quietly crawled toward him while still staying out of reach.

  “Don’ hurd me,” he begged, the words barely audible through his labored, tear-laden breaths.

  “My boy, I have no intention of hurting you, and I most certainly did not mean to scare you.” When the man finally looked up at him, he continued, “If you come out from under there, I will take off your mask, and we can discuss getting you patched up. I know you have no reason to trust me, but I want to help you.”

  His heart bounced out of rhythm, and suddenly he felt faint. His body was telling him not to come out from under the table, but the man’s voice was not like the one who beat him. It wasn’t harsh or mocking. Instead, it was sonorous despite its softness and deep, like Professor Martin’s. He shouldn’t trust him, but he had to if he wanted to live. The young man felt the floor in front of him for obstructions and hesitantly crawled out toward the doctor.

  “The chair is beside you on your left.” As Dr. Hawthorne silently drew his surgical tools from the cupboard, he watched the young man grope his way to the chair, feeling the seat and back before finally settling on the edge. “If you will all
ow me, I will cut the blindfold off, but I need you to hold very still.”

  His patient nodded and held his breath as the other man slipped behind him and lightly pulled the edge of the fabric away from his hair. After three snips from his scissors, the binding was severed, but it was still enmeshed in the clotted blood across his eye. The doctor soaked a wad of gauze in alcohol and wiped the edge of the wound until finally the fabric peeled off. Behind the blindfold, the left side of his face had distended until the skin was shiny and so filled with fluid that his features were lost. From an inch above his eyebrow down to his cheekbone, a laceration cut through the swelling as well as his eyelid, pulling the wound asunder. Surrounding the cut was a deep purple and red bruise that blended with the one around his nose. The man’s nose was unnaturally bent to the right, but from the darkness of the bruising, James was fairly certain he could still set it back in place if he would allow him to do so. His patient tried to open his eyes, but dried blood clumped in his lashes and sealed his eyes shut at the corners. With the square of gauze, the doctor carefully cleaned around his eyes until the right one shot open, revealing a crystalline blue iris.

  He clenched his eyes shut against the searing brightness of the electric examination lamp. The vessels in his head and neck dilated, increasing the pressure and pounding in his temples and sinuses. When he opened them again, he discovered his left eyelid was so swollen he could barely lift it, and for the brief time it was open, it throbbed and was too blurry and dim to see through. Finally, he saw the man who offered to put him back together. James Hawthorne’s soft features stared back at him. His dark eyes casually caught his patient’s gaze from behind a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, and his chestnut brown hair was parted to the side and had begun to grey at his temples. The doctor turned to the counter behind him and brought back a piece of paper and a pencil.