Page 18 of Blood on Her Tongue

Chapter 18

“And how,” Lucy asked, “do you suppose to get someone you can eat?”

“I was hoping you might help me with that.”

Lucy laughed. “Of course you were.”

Not-Sarah frowned. “You know I’d do the same for you if our positions were reversed. I’d help you hide any infirmity.”

“Of course,” Lucy said gently.

Her eye blazed fiercely. “Don’t mock me! You know I speak true. For you, I’d lie and cheat and kill and damn myself straight to hell. I’d do all that and more, again and again and again, as long as it took to ensure you were safe, because you are my twin, my half, my more.”

That’s something Sarah would say . A pain unfurled just behind Lucy’s breastbone. She pressed her palm hard against her chest, but the pain stayed, softly pulsing, running up her throat until that, too, ached.

The gong rang, signaling that it was time to get changed; dinner would be served soon. Lucy had never been so grateful for food. She rose. “I must go now. If I don’t appear at dinner, they’ll think something is wrong.”

Not-Sarah pawed at her hand. “You must help me.”

“I need to think.”

“Please help me,” she begged, worry carving lines between her brows, her eye wet and large.

Instinctively, Lucy laid a hand on her shorn head to comfort her. “I will,” she promised.

Not-Sarah leaned hard against Lucy in relief, and it was easy, so easy, to imagine it was just Sarah doing it. “Thank you,” she murmured. “Now don’t forget: you mustn’t tell anyone what I’ve told you.”

“I won’t.”

God, if only Lucy could be left alone for a little bit, have the time to order her thoughts. She pinched the bridge of her nose. Her crying had given her a headache. It throbbed behind her eyes, soft but insistent. She needed to press a cold cloth against them, or they’d still be bloodshot and swollen by the time the first course was served, and that would prompt questions.

No rest for the wicked, though, and apparently no time to tend to the small pains and needs of the body either , she thought grimly as she made her way to Katje’s room. The girl slept on the other side of the house, not quite with the servants, though very close to them, in a room originally meant for inferior guests. It was cramped and always dark because the windows were small and north facing.

Katje stood at one of those windows, one hand convulsively rubbing the curtains, the other at her mouth. Her eyes were still glassy from the laudanum she had taken, her belly swollen, her skin, normally such a beautiful creamy white, now chalky. She had been tearing at her lips, leaving them raw and bloody. Slivers of skin stuck to her fingertips.

Something more for Not-Sarah to suck on , Lucy thought. The thought wasn’t accompanied by any feeling; everything had become flat and strange again.

“My sister has told me everything,” she said.

Katje swallowed. “Everything?” Moving her mouth caused the scabs on her lips to tear. She winced, then wiped at her chin as a drop of blood ran down. How gladly Not-Sarah would have licked that up.

“Everything,” Lucy confirmed. “About you, and about her, and her current…needs.”

“And?”

“And I need to think.”

“But you won’t betray us?”

“No.” Perhaps she might have been more shocked had she found out at any other time that her sister was an invert—not that she thought inverts were sinful or deranged; she simply had not expected her sister to be one—but now that she knew her sister was a parasite…well, the whole matter of sexual inversion rather paled in comparison to that, didn’t it?

Katje slumped in relief, then came to Lucy and embraced her. “Thank you, oh, thank you,” she whispered with a tear-choked voice, over and over again.

***

In the dining room, Lucy greeted Mrs. van Dijk and Michael, then sat down to eat. As she worked her way through the courses, chewing her food mechanically and tasting nothing, her mind plodded through everything she had just learned. She stripped the matter down to its core, and that core was this: Could she consider Not-Sarah her twin or not?

Yes, because she had all of Sarah’s memories and emotions, and what was a person if not the sum of all they had ever thought and felt and lived through?

Then again, all those things that made Sarah herself were now mixed with Marianne’s memories and emotions—and perhaps with those of other people, too; Not-Sarah might have lied about Marianne being the only one she’d devoured previously. But even if she had lied and Not-Sarah was a conglomeration of all these feelings and thoughts of her previous victims, did that mean she couldn’t be a sister to Lucy? People changed all the time. Not-Sarah wasn’t exactly Sarah, but what did that even mean? Sarah wouldn’t have been the same today as she had been a month ago. Lucy would still have loved her. Hell, she would’ve loved her even if a witch’s spell had turned her into a toad, or a worm, or a wood louse because having a toad or a worm or a wood louse—or a parasite that had eaten her twin’s consciousness and wore her rotting corpse as she might wear a dress—was still infinitely better than having no sister at all.

But she killed Sarah , she thought. She swallowed the piece of potato she had been chewing. It seemed to stick to her esophagus, so she took a sip of wine to dislodge it. It was strong, heady, suffusing her cheeks with heat.

Yes.

That was the crux of the matter, wasn’t it? Not-Sarah was directly responsible for Sarah’s death. There was no denying that. She had killed to survive, true, but that didn’t make it any less awful.

Yet what use would it be to hate her for it or to retaliate? Lucy thought as she moved her food aimlessly around her plate; a lady never finished all the food served to her because she was not a glutton.

Lucy didn’t even think she could hurt Not-Sarah, not while Not-Sarah continued to wear her sister’s face and speak with her sister’s voice, and wasn’t that clever of that parasite, to use the love people held for the host as a defense mechanism?

Though if Lucy really wanted to, she didn’t have to lift a finger to kill Not-Sarah. If what she had told Lucy was true, she could simply let Not-Sarah starve to death. She couldn’t, though, because she would’ve loved her sister even if she had been turned into a toad or worm or wood louse, so why not love her when she was a parasite…?

When dinner finished, Arthur arrived for Sarah’s daily examination. Lucy accompanied him to her sister’s room. Katje was already there, sewing in front of the fire, her face pinched with pain. She held a hot brick wrapped in flannel on her lap.

“You are up,” Arthur said to her in surprise.

“I’m feeling a little better,” Katje said, then gave him a wan smile. Her mouth puckered as another stabbing pain tore through her womb.

“You must rest. This time of the month is trying for you. I’d feel much better if you’d take to bed.”

“I shall, in a minute.”

“Have you been taking those drops I prescribed you?”

She nodded.

“That’s good. Now, for the main patient. How are you feeling, my dear?” He turned to Not-Sarah, who was sitting up in bed, pillows propped behind her back, her hands hidden in the folds of her shawl.

“A little better, thank you.”

During the next ten minutes, Arthur examined her. He felt the lymph nodes in her throat, took her pulse, listened to her breathe. He made Not-Sarah stick out her tongue, then peered into her mouth. When he stuck his fingers inside, Lucy took Not-Sarah’s hand and squeezed it very hard, warning her not to bite down.

“Do you still find it difficult to eat?” he asked as he washed his hands in a bowl of hot soapy water.

“Very.”

“I think you may have reached a point where you’re afraid to eat because it makes you nauseous, but you’re nauseous because you haven’t eaten properly for a long time now. It’s a damn conundrum, I know, but you must try and eat. Your body can’t heal itself if it doesn’t have any fuel. I’ll give you something to help soothe your stomach.”

He dried his hands, then began to pack his bag. Lucy placed her hand lightly on his arm. The muscles stiffened. Even the tendons in his hands drew taut. “I want to talk to you,” she said softly.

He took her out into the hallway. “What is it you want to talk about?” he asked, smiling at her.

She told him of the small golden ring they had found in the same field as the bog woman, then of her trip to the archives to discover if the ring had belonged to her. “We found this,” she said, handing him the copy she had made of the court document. He did not read it there and then but folded it and tucked it into his jacket.

“Thank you for this,” he said, his eyes shining. “I’m sure it’ll make some excellent reading for when I’m home and in front of the fire with a glass of brandy. Now, if I’m not mistaken, you said there was something you wanted to tell me?”

Lucy spoke slowly, feeling her way through the words. She had not known what, exactly, she’d tell him until now. “My sister has been acting quite strange lately, don’t you think? Very much…Not-Sarah.”

Oh, but she mustn’t laugh now. If she began, she wouldn’t be able to stop, and nothing made a woman’s sanity and logic easier to question than hysterical laughter. She pinched the bruise on the back of her hand made by Not-Sarah to kill the giggles before they could climb up her throat and damn her.

She cleared her throat, then tried again. “She told me why that is, and I need to know what you think of it because I don’t know how to feel.”

He frowned. “What did she say that has disturbed you so?”

Careful now. There was no saying what he might do once he knew the truth about Not-Sarah. It all came down to who he was first and foremost: Doctor Hoefnagel or plain Arthur. The doctor would think Not-Sarah insane and have her sent to an asylum, where she would surely die; her friend might help her in the way she needed. Which one was she talking to now?

She said, “I can’t tell you, not unless you promise you shan’t have her committed.”

“I can’t make such promises. I’m to do what is best for my patient,” he said.

She could not give up on him helping her, not yet. “And I must do what I think is best for my sister, or else my loyalty means nothing. You know being committed to an asylum is her worst fear. As my friend, I beg you, please promise me you will not tell anyone nor send her away.”

Arthur rubbed his mustache, the hairs bristling against the cuff of his shirt. Then he sighed and said, “All right. I promise I won’t have her committed no matter what you tell me. Now, please, tell me.”

Lucy hesitated, then decided to make as much of a clean breast of it as she could. “She doesn’t think it’ll do her any good, because she…she doesn’t quite know whether she’s alive or dead. Of course, if she won’t eat, she’ll soon truly be dead, so you can understand that this is quite a predicament.”

“If she truly believes that, then she’s much more ill than even I suspected.”

Lucy persevered. “Sarah may, at times, struggle to understand the limits between ‘alive’ and ‘dead,’ as she did after poor little Lucille died, but surely it isn’t so strange of her to think it now? You must’ve felt how cold she is, must’ve noticed the smell. Could you even find a pulse?”

“Just because her pulse is very faint and she is perpetually cold doesn’t mean she’s dead.”

“Of course, and I’m sure this belief will pass, like it did last time, but until it does, we must find a way to get her nourished. Maybe we can give her another blood transfusion? I’ve talked to her, and not only is she not averse to it, she even desires one. She thinks it’ll heal her, make her current state less…”

Arthur shook his head, cutting her off. “A transfusion is the last thing we should give her.”

Her heart sank. A transfusion would have been the only acceptable way to provide Not-Sarah with what she needed to survive, at least for a little while, long enough for Lucy to order her thoughts and decide what was to be done. She tried not to let the disappointment show on her face when she asked, “Why not? It worked a charm last time, didn’t it? Sarah is adamant that blood is the only thing that will help.”

“Transfusions are risky endeavors, Lucy. I’ve told you before that they are as likely to kill the patient as to cure her. Sarah’s situation isn’t dire enough anymore to warrant such a dangerous procedure. More importantly, we must never encourage a patient’s delusions,” he said patiently.

Doctor Hoefnagel through and through , she thought, and her heart ached softly because she could not trust him, could never tell him the truth now. Already she regretted telling him about the ring and the bog body, regretted giving him a copy of the court document, regretted telling him about Not-Sarah.

He would not help her.

No one would.

Once more, Lucy was alone.

The realization made her stagger.

Arthur took hold of her arm to keep her upright, his face lined with worry. “Are you well?” he asked, then shook his head in answer. “You poor thing. You are overwrought, overtired…”

“I’m fine. A moment of weakness, nothing more. It’s passed already.” She tried to pull her arm from his grip, but he would not let her.

“You’re not fine. You must rest. I’ll take you to your room.”

“Please don’t fuss. I don’t want to go to my room. I want to stay here, with my sister,” she said.

He made her look at him. “You can trust me. You know that, don’t you, Lucy?”

But I can’t. She forced herself to smile. “Of course.”

Slowly, he took hold of her hands. He had honest hands, square, dependable. Little scars from where he had cut himself patterned the skin, which was dry and tight because he washed his hands so often. A working man’s hands, now trembling a little at her touch. “Before you go and become the faithful sister and nurse once more, I must ask you this: Have you thought about my offer?” he asked, his voice low and hoarse.

In that moment, she didn’t pity him. She just felt exhausted. She pulled her hands away. “I can’t think,” she said, “with Sarah being as sick as she is.”

There was no tightening of his face, no hardening, as there would have been with Michael, had she rejected him. Instead, disappointment made his shoulders droop and tugged the corners of his mouth downward. “Of course. I shall try and be more patient. Good night to you.”

At the mouth of the stairs, he turned back and called to her. “You must try not to fret as much as you do. I’m a capable doctor, you know. She doesn’t need a transfusion; she just needs to eat. As soon as she does, you’ll find her much improved.”

She smiled, said that he was probably right, then went back to Not-Sarah and Katje.

As soon as Lucy closed the door behind her, Not-Sarah launched a volley of questions. “What did you have to talk to the doctor about? Did you tell him what I told you? Did you show him that court document to try and convince him of what I am?” Fear and suspicion warred on her face. For all that she was a parasite with her host actively dying, her mimicry was eerily accurate.

Lucy hesitated, then took her sister’s hand in hers and squeezed it. The skin was cool and unpleasant. She forced herself to keep holding it. If Not-Sarah was deprived of blood for much longer, perhaps the flesh would turn gray, and swell, and then fall off her bones. Roses of rot would bloom on her cheeks, and…

Lucy pushed the intrusive image away. “None of that. I only wanted to see if I could get Arthur to help us with our little…problem. I thought I might convince him to give you another blood transfusion. It’s the only non-sinister way I can think of to feed you.”

“And?” Katje asked.

“He won’t. I can’t convince him of the necessity without being honest about your being a parasite, and that I can’t do.” Not yet, at least, not when she hadn’t made up her mind about Not-Sarah herself.

Defeated, Not-Sarah slumped in her chair. A foul tear ran down her cheek. She rubbed at it tiredly. “I’m so tired and so hungry…” she murmured.

“We won’t let you starve!” Katje cried out. She knelt at Not-Sarah’s side, her hands squeezing Not-Sarah’s bony knees through the covers. “I’d kill for you, if it came to that. I’d kill someone, and gut them, and cut them, and…”

Lucy began to talk over her. “We’re not quite as desperate as that just yet. There are other things we can do than resort to murder, at least for now.”

She took the bowl Arthur had washed his hands in, threw the dirty water out of the window, and rubbed it clean with a cloth. Then she took the embroidery scissors Not-Sarah had used to cut her hair. She rolled up her sleeve, took a deep breath, then forced the tip of the blades into her arm, aiming for one of the thick blue veins that snaked underneath her skin. When she extracted the scissors, it took a second before the blood came. It hit the porcelain of the bowl with a soft sound, oddly muffled, not at all the clear plink of a drop of water bursting apart in the sink. It didn’t take long for the blood to stop coming. Lucy stabbed herself again, this time using the handles to open the blades a little, widening the cut. She hissed at the pain.

Katje helped her bandage her arm when the flow slowed to a trickle. She wiped the scissors on her handkerchief, then used them on herself. She stabbed at her wrist, where veins lay as purple and abundant as a cluster of grapes.

Together, they managed to fill the bowl roughly halfway. Not-Sarah sat fidgeting all the while, plucking at the sheets with her ruined hands until another nail came away. She salivated; Lucy could hear her swallowing.

When Not-Sarah was handed the bowl, she ignored the spoon Lucy also gave her. Instead, she placed her lips on the rim and tipped back the dish. Her thin arms strained against the weight; Lucy had to help her hold it. The last thing they needed was to soil the sheets with blood and worry Magda, who had become impatient and sullen of late. Lucy couldn’t blame her; Not-Sarah’s rotting body combined with her foul moods and cursing made her a deeply unattractive mistress.

Not-Sarah drank, her throat quivering. With a crust of bread, she mopped up the blood that remained, then poured in a little water to get the clotting blood sticking to the porcelain to come away and turn liquid again, and she drank that, too. By the end, the bowl was licked clean. Not-Sarah sighed with pleasure and lay back against the pillows, her hands folded over her distended stomach.

The whole affair had a fever-dream quality to it, no doubt exacerbated by exhaustion and blood loss. It left Lucy feeling lightheaded and weak. Katje, already faint and sick from menstruating, looked as if the slightest push could knock her over.

“Oh, but you took a lot of laudanum, Katje darling,” Not-Sarah murmured, then giggled softly.

“Don’t get used to it. Katje and I won’t be able to give you any more for a long while now, not without damaging our own health. This is just to tide you over until we can find a better solution for our problem. I’ll bid you both good night now,” Lucy said.

Not-Sarah’s eye fixed on Lucy. Already it had taken on the same glassy quality that Katje’s eyes had. “Why have you decided to help me?” she asked, her voice soft.

Lucy twisted the doorknob in her hand. “It seems the most logical thing to do.” She sighed, then elaborated: “I’m not sure whether it’s better to have a parasite for a sister than no sister at all. I will need some time to make up my mind about that. I need for you to stay alive until then, because wouldn’t it be silly if I decided I’d rather have you than nothing, only for you to be gone as well?”

“I am your sister, Lucy,” Not-Sarah said.

Lucy just smiled, then closed the door behind her.