Augustine’s notes were very clear. Bleed until the cheeks become pale and the lips lose color. Her heart seized at every leap of the scarificator, and she could not stand the smell of blood, but she repeated the procedure again, and again. Orren’s mother whispered that she could feel his fever cooling. His vomiting slowed.
But Orren didn’t rally as the storm outside the farmhouse calmed.
He died in his mother’s arms.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
JANE WAS NUMB as Mr. Lowell saddled their horse. She was numb as they made for the main road, and numb when he twisted in his seat to ask her, “Will you be going to Lindridge Hall or the surgery tonight, ma’am?”
She wanted to say the surgery, but Augustine needed her. And, moreover, she knew she did not deserve to sleep under that roof and proclaim to those who might come in the night that she could help. Who had she been fooling? There was no help coming, not from her. If only Augustine had been able to leave the house the night before—if only she hadn’t lost him to Lindridge Hall, to the inexplicable and impossible. A little boy might still be alive. She might not have his blood on her hands.
There could be no others. She would get Augustine back. This was not the death of her parents; she was not a helpless child. She would find her husband and pull him from the bowels of the house, and she would restore him. She wouldn’t stop until he was back, safe.
And she could hope that she would not see those things again, those things her husband had sworn were the figures of his departed patients, but to her had only been monstrous. Without her husband in residence, she had never seen more than a flash in a window, as long as she was outside the cellar; perhaps she was in some way protected, able to be hurt only through her proximity to him.
“Lindridge Hall,” she said, heart steeled against the fear. “In case … in case my husband returns.”
Mr. Lowell made a concerned noise low in his throat. “I plan to canvass the farms for him tonight and tomorrow, ma’am. I worry that his horse may have thrown a shoe, or worse, in the dark.”
She flinched.
“Pardon me, ma’am. Not meaning to frighten you. Just … I can’t let him be, if he’s in trouble somewhere. You understand.”
“I do. Thank you.”
They rode in silence. When she closed her eyes, she saw Orren’s face, blank and helpless. She felt beneath her hands not Mr. Lowell’s waist but the metal of the scarificator. She tried to conjure up Augustine’s words the day of Mr. Renton’s death, how he had entreated her not to blame herself, but here she could find no one else.
She hadn’t followed Augustine’s treatments to the letter. She hadn’t had the training to find and apply leeches, hadn’t had the purgatives, hadn’t had the time to implement a diet of bland, soft foods and tonics. She could have shaved the boy’s head, and perhaps should have. She should have blistered the tonsils themselves.
But she was not a doctor. She could not be blamed for her lack of skill.
She could be blamed for losing Augustine, right when he was most needed.
What would happen when the next child fell ill, and the next? Because surely it would spread. Surely it would move like wildfire, like gas in the streets. And now Larrenton was without its doctor.
The only choice left to her now was to fix this. To go to where the crypt door had been and strike down the stone with a hammer. She would find him. She would free him.
They reached the hall as the last of the sun disappeared behind the next hill. She waved off Mr. Lowell’s distracted offers of assistance, and watched him gallop away, back into the dark. There was just enough light to find her way to the front door, and to open it, stepping into the warm glow of the well-lit foyer.
Mrs. Purl and Mrs. Luthbright were already gone, but they had left the gas lamps burning, and, following them with hesitant steps, she found a cold plate waiting for her in the dining room, beneath a tarnished but clean silver cloche. The gesture brought tears to her eyes, and she stared at it for a long moment, immobile. She had not eaten all day, and yet her stomach was filled with ash at the sight of food, turned sour by the care shown for her in such a small gesture.
And then she processed that there was only one plate.
This one was meant for Augustine.
She slammed the metal cloche back down, leaving the dining room behind. She could eat later, although her hands trembled already, and her head felt light upon her shoulders. First she must attend to the cellar door, white stone set into the wooden paneling, incongruous and cold. She placed her hands upon it, fingers spread wide, the same way she had that morning.