Page 12 of Dark Embrace

Instead, he said, “Moldingbread?Why?”

In for a penny, in for a pound. Her chin kicked up. “My father learned the technique from a woman in Scotland years ago. He had traveled to Edinburgh to attend the anatomy lectures of Robert Knox and he stayed on to travel the countryside. The woman was a healer. The folk in her village both respected and feared her skill. She told my father the mold lessened putrefaction. She gave him a jar as a parting gift. When I was small, it was my job tofeedit.”

“Your job to feed it? Now there’s an image.” The corners of Mr. Thayne’s lips lifted. Sarah stared at his mouth.Shehad elicited that tiny smile. It was for her and heralone.

She could not help but smile in return. “I added stale crusts of bread and the mold proliferated. When my father used it up in treatment, I fed it morebread.”

He made a soft laugh. “Anoddpet.”

“It was,” she said, his laughter warming her even more than hissmile.

“And did the mold save your father’spatients?”

“Some,” Sarah said as she glanced about once more. The matron watched her from across the ward, arms crossed, a frown clouding herfeatures.

Mr. Thayne followed her gaze and intuited the situation. With a dip of his chin, he said, “We will speak of your pet another day. I leave the patient in your most competent care, MissLowell.”

His words shimmered through her, and she wondered if he knew how much she valued his acknowledgment of her skill.Sheknew she was competent. It wasn’t that she needed his validation, but acknowledgmentwas…nice.

As Mr. Thayne turned to leave, Mr. Scully lurched up and caught hold of his frock coat, tightening his fingers in the material so that his knuckles showedwhite.

“Please,” he begged, his voice slurred, as though he had already been well dosed with the gin Mr. Thayne had recommended. “Please do it for me. Do it quick. With a knife, or some other way. Fast and clean. This is a terrible suffering, and we both know they’ll only come again. What if you are not here to speak for me? What if they drag me to that table and hold me down and cut my flesh? I do not want to die that way, sawed into sections like wood for a fire.” He paused, and then said in a clear, ringing voice, “Kill me and be done with it. You know the way of it, Mr.Thayne.”

A heavy hush fell on the ward. Many eyes watched the scene unfold and many earslistened.

Mr. Thayne held the man’s gaze for a moment, his expression ruthlessly neutral. “Sleep now,” he said. Then he reached into his pocket, withdrew his bottle-green spectacles, and slid them on to hidehiseyes.

A mask, Sarah thought.Awall.

With a groan, Mr. Scully loosened his hold and dropped his hand back to the sheets, his eyes rolling back and his lids lowering. His hand slid down to hang at an uncomfortable angle, and Sarah moved forward to set it back onthebed.

When she looked up once more, a single shaft of light broke through the grime of the window to cut across the floor exactly where Mr. Thayne hadstood.

But he was gone. Disappeared. His passage silent asthemist.

5

Bergen,Norway,1349

Kjell watchedthe stranger fall to ash, watched his clothes crumple empty to the ground, and he understood nothing. None of this was real. Everything—the stranger, his mother’s death, the pain in his wrist—was but a fever dream, a delirium. That was the only explanation. He tried to move, to rise, but he was weak and weighted bydespair.

The pain in his gut bloomed, a dark flower, and spread like a poison to his limbs, his head. He writhed and cried out for hours uponhours.

It was the smell that woke him, the smell of death, like nothing he had ever experienced. The smell, the sounds, the feeling of his clothing on his body, all familiar yet not. His wrist no longer pained him. He examined it to find nowound.

He must have slept and in that sleep, he must have dreamed the stranger, his mother’s death, even thesunrise.

The day had passed. It was night now, and the room was cold. The fire had long since gone out. But the cold was merely a fact, not a discomfort. His teeth did not chatter; his limbs did not tremble. He raised his hand and stared at his fingers, feeling as if he had never seen them before. The small hairs on his forearm were a wonder, the shape of his nails inexplicably fascinating, the sinew and muscle beneath his skin a symphony of movement. It took some time for him to remember to think ofanythingelse.

He rolled to his side and pushed up to a sitting position. His family was all around him, but they were gone. Dead. His father, his sisters, hisbrother,his—

His mother lay where the stranger had left her, her throattornopen.

No dream. It was real. The stranger hadbeenreal.

Kjell’s heart broke, shattered, and he yelled and railed even as he knew it wouldn’t bringherback.

He knew not how long he remained in that room. He brushed his sisters’ hair. He hugged his brother’s lifeless body in his arms. He wept tears of blood. The sun rose again and he hissed at the agony it caused, though little enough filtered through the animal skins that covered the windows. He crawled to his father’s bed and yanked off the blanket and spent the day hiding beneath it while the sun found small ways to poke through andburnhim.