Page 2 of Dark Embrace
Her twice-daily trek along these streets and laneways was something other than routine. More times than not she felt as though unseen eyes watched her from the gloom, footsteps dogging her every move. In the months since her father’s death, she had become increasingly aware that someonefollowedher.
Beneath her cloak, she closed her fist tighter around the handle of her cudgel. She never left her room in the lodging house in Coptic Street without the short, sturdy stick. With goodreason.
St. Giles was not a place for a woman alone. But, unfortunately, poverty did not allow for over-particular standards. She had little choice in where she lived but she could—and did—choose to protect herself. She had neither the means, nor the inclination, to own a pistol, and she had considered—and discarded—the possibility of defending herself with aknife.
So, the cudgel it was, and she prayed she never found herself in a circumstance where she would be required to use it on another humanbeing.
Should those prayers go unheeded, she suspected that surprise would be one thing in her favor. With her small frame, wide hazel eyes, and straight dark hair, she appeared young and delicate. Shewasyoung, but she was far from delicate. Any attacker would likely not expect the defense she would mount. Her father had always said she was sturdy in both body and spirit. She wished it had not taken his death and the desperate turn of her life to prove hisassertionstrue.
She had spent years by her father’s side, honing her muscles lifting and turning patients who could not do so for themselves, honing her mind under his tutelage, learning anatomy and surgery and the details of all manner of diseases. More recently, she had spent months under her landlady’s watchful eye, pummeling a sack stuffed with old rags in order to learn how to wield thecudgel.
A muffled sound to her left made her spin and peer down the alley next to the darkened chandler’s shop. Her heart gave a lurch in her breast, and she dragged her weapon free of hercloak.
With a loud belch, a man stumbled toward her then veered away to lean, panting, against the wall. Muttering and cursing with a drunken slur, he fumbled at the flap of his breeches. Then came the sound of a stream of liquid hittingthewall.
Turning away, Sarah walked on, skirting the refuse and detritus that littered the street. She slipped her weapon beneath her cloak once more and willed her racing pulse tosettle.
The feeling of being watched, being stalked, oozed across her skin like a slug. She glanced back over her shoulder, but there was only the empty street and hollowed doorwaysbehindher.
And the sounds offootsteps.
Swirling fog and mizzling rain settled on her like a shroud, clinging to her hair and skin and clothes, a cold, damp sheen. She quickened her pace andhurriedon.
Her destination was Portugal Street and the old St. Clement Danes workhouse that now housed King’s College Hospital where she worked as a day nurse. There was talk of a new building but a new building required funding and there was none to be had. So, for now, there were some hundred and twenty beds in the old workhouse, split into several overcrowded wards that offered care to thesickpoor.
No one of wealth and means would step foot in King’s College. By choice, the rich were cared for in their own homes, and because of it, they were more likely to survive. Her father had often been called on such visits, and Sarah had accompanied him to assist. But the poor could not afford such luxury—a doctor to attend their bedside, medicines to cure disease or ease their pain—and so they came to King’s College, and often enoughtheydied.
“They would die regardless,” her father had pointed out many times when Sarah had bemoaned the plight of those without ample funds. “At least the hospital offers some hope, however small.” He had been implacable in thatbelief.
Sarah had agreed with him then and still felt that way now. She worked every day among the sick poor and she could not bear to think that all her efforts were for naught, that there was no hope for them,orher.
“Hope matters,” her father used to say, the words lifted by his smile. “There is power in belief.” If she closed her eyes and concentrated very hard, she imagined she could hear his voice. She missed him. She missed their talks. She missed the way he saw her not only as a daughter but as a person, one with valid thoughts and opinions. She missed their lively debates, the smell of his tobacco, and even the way he slurped his soup. She missed his laugh. She missedtheirlife.
Again, came the sound of footsteps behind her, the pace matched to her own. She stopped. They stopped. She walked on and they followed, neither speeding up nor slowing down and when she glanced back, there was only fog anddarkness.
Almost there now. She strode past the crumbling graveyard, shoulders back, head high. It was a horrific irony that King’s College Hospital was situated squarely between that graveyard and the slaughterhouses of Butcher’s Row. She had her own well-guarded opinion that while some doctors and surgeons at King’s College were dedicated souls bent on easing suffering, others might be better suited to work in theabattoirs.
At least there, death was an outcome both expected and soughtafter.
As the hospital loomed before her, she paused and glanced back once more. There, near the graveyard, she saw a black-cloaked figure clinging to the shadows, painted in shades of pewter and coal and ash. Watching. A shiver chased along herspine.
Each day, she walked to work in the predawn gloom and returned home after the sun had set. Many times, she had harbored unnerving suspicion that she was being followed, but proof of her supposition had, for the most part, been absent. This was only the second time that a form had actually materialized from the mist. Or had it? She stared hard at the spot, but could not be certain she saw anything more than a man-shaped shadow that could be cast by any one of the statues in thegraveyard.
She had her cudgel in hand. She should walk to the gate and discover if it was statue or man that cast that shadow. And if it was a man? Her fingers tightened on herweapon.
She was torn between confronting the miscreant and avoiding such confrontation at allcosts.
After a moment, she decided on the latter and headed for the doors of King’s College. She hurried into the building and made her way first to the nurse’s cloakroom, where she divested herself of her damp over-garment, then through the dim hallways to the women’s sick ward. There was a patient here she wished to check on, a woman who was so ill she had not been able to eat or drink or even void for two days. It was as though her body refused to carry out the normal functions of life. Sarah hoped she had taken a turn for the better, though it was more likely that the woman had taken a turn for theworse.
She paused in the hallway near the ward. The first rays of dawn filtered through grimy windows to steal across the floor in pale slashes. The sounds of suffering carried through the place, eerie moans and louder cries, a sob, the creak of a bed as someone shifted, then shiftedagain.
Sarah stepped through the doorway and took a second to acclimate to the smell. No matter how much limewash was slapped on the plaster, no matter how many scrubbings with yellow soap the floors took, the smell—the metallic bite of blood, the raw-onion stink of old sweat, the harsh ammonia of urine—never quite melted away. These small battles might beat back the wretched stench for a time but, in truth, the war was long lost. The sick ward was forever infused with the vestiges of humanmisery.
Her gaze slid over the beds. Each one was full. Some even had two patients crowded into a space meant to holdonlyone.
In the corner was the bed she sought. Little light penetrated that far into the gloom. She took a step forward, then froze withagasp.
There was someone sitting on a stool at the far side of the bed, a man, garbed all in black, the pale shape of the patient’s partially upraised arm a stark contrast against the dark background offered byhiscoat.