“No. Rebecca will meet me. Stay with the coach. I am less likely to be noticed alone.”
The constable was snooping down the alley. I called to him, “Can you wait at Hyde Park Corner? I will come there when I am done.”
“Aye, Miss Bennet,” he answered, clambering back into the driver’s seat. “You be careful. Those Britain Awake thugs are all about.”
The coach rolled away. I hurried toward the hospital, wrinkling my nose at a strange fragrance like sweet, rotted citrus, then I was stymied by the laundry lines. I ducked under one, clean drops splashing my neck, and spotted a hand waving above the linen. A woman’s voice called, “Mary!”
I followed an aisle framed by washed towels and sheets to the rear entrance.
Miss Rebecca Spoon waited for me. Another musician, she had survived abduction by the Blackcoats—Lizzy and I rescued her near death from a stinking cellar—and then overcame the deadly addiction caused by her captors’ drugs. She celebrated by publishingInviolata, a defiant clavichord composition.
Rebecca’s black clothes, styled to mimic mine, were lost in the shadow. A gray-haired woman in a nurse’s blue uniform stood with her. The nurse squinted at me, curious.
“Are you sure it is a crawler sting?” I asked.
The nurse said, “There’s no question, ma’am.”
“The third woman this week,” Rebecca added. “They are lucky you are in London.”
“They were not all lucky,” I said. The second woman I had saved. The first I reached too late.
The nurse opened the door, but I said, “Wait a moment,” and whistled a few notes from my first composition, a fantasia titled “Not One Word From Her.” That had become our summoning tune.
An iridescent blue, robin-sized form winged overhead, flicked a turn that skimmed the hospital’s bricks, then soared to a perfect landing on my shoulder. He was a song draca, the first I met, dazzling me in a London park with his peacock-bright feathers and gem-scaled muzzle. He was my devoted companion, and his claws, hooked and razor-edged, dug into the leather pad I had sewn beneath my dress shoulder—literally to save my skin.
The nurse’s eyes popped when she saw the draca land. She curtsied, almost kneeling. “Great Wyfe.”
“Not here,” Rebecca hissed. “The Great Wyfe must not be recognized.” The nurse straightened hurriedly.
I glared at Rebecca; I had told her many times I was no great wyfe. She shrugged, unrepentant. Our network of women in the city—who copied my black clothes and called themselves “Marys”—revered the legends of great wyves. They did not know that actual great wyves lived: Georgiana, Emma Woodhouse, and my lost sister, Lizzy.
Inside, we descended a narrow, whitewashed corridor to the less used basement. The sour putrescence of illness tinged the air, but it was fainter than the healthy scents of soap and boiled cotton. A wooden door in need of paint led into an examination room. Rebecca stayed outside to watch the corridor. I entered with the nurse.
A woman of thirty and some years lay limp on the table in street-worn,rumpled clothes. Her eyes were closed, her complexion sallow and beaded with perspiration, her breath labored.
A well-dressed man was taking her pulse, his eyes on his pocket watch.
Surprised, I stopped. No doctor had been present for my other visits. The Marys received their clandestine summons from the nurses, or even from washerwomen when the poorest women, prostitutes or beggars, were denied a nurse’s visit.
“The doctor asked for you, ma’am,” the nurse explained.
He may have asked, but he was as surprised as I. His gaze fixed on the shimmering draca perched on my shoulder. The draca cheeped and whistled another bar of the fantasia.
“I am Miss Bennet,” I said. An introduction was required, and I preferred a name to grandiose titles.
“Doctor James Barry,” he replied, and bowed. He was smooth-cheeked and slight-shouldered, his voice contralto. Young. An apprentice physician, perhaps; St. George’s was a teaching hospital. “This woman was found delirious on the hospital steps. Stung, I estimate an hour ago.”
He drew the woman’s skirt aside. Her left ankle had punctures from a foul crawler’s sting. The twin pricks were separated by the width of my little finger, so it was the small variety. Red streaks climbed her calf, inflamed and grossly swollen.
I lifted my gloved hand to my shoulder. The little draca hopped onto my palm, and I held him near the sting. His muzzle darted close, and he gave a chittering growl, his needle obsidian-black teeth bared. Not good. I gave him a light toss, and he fluttered to perch on a cabinet at a safe distance.
“Are you a surgeon?” I asked the gaping doctor while I drew off my gloves.
He started, then patted a leather medical bag on the table. “I was certified at Edinburgh. But I have heard the nurses talk about you. I hoped you could save the leg.”
“We can, but I need your help to administer a tincture.” I drew a corked bottle from my reticule. “Venom remains in the wound. We must drain it and infuse this, then give an oral dose as well.”
He took a scalpel from his bag, and it was done in a minute, a curt partnership of “Cut here,” “Squeeze,” then “Steady her” when the pain penetrated the woman’s delirium. The doctor had a confident hand, unhesitating but careful, better than the heedless butchery of some surgeons.
