The Serpent's Shadow (23 page)

Maya bent over one of these, Bill Joad, a tough, ugly man whose suspiciously glittering eyes had softened as soon as he saw her coming toward him down the ward.

“Well, Bill, I think another few days will be all you'll need,” she said, removing the dressings and examining the hand he held out to her. “Bill, this is Amelia. She's a student friend of mine that I want to show injuries like yours. I think she'll be better than I am, one day.”

Amelia blushed. With his right hand imprisoned by Maya's grip, Bill couldn't touch his finger to his temple in salute, but he did offer a ghost of a smile. “I hain't gonna say it's a pleasure, Miss, ‘cause it hain't—but I reckon if Doctor Maya ‘as ye in tow, ye'll be comin' on pretty well.”

Amelia bent over the swollen fingers with interest, noting the neat sutures along the sides. “What happened here, Bill?” she asked. “I don't think I've ever seen anything like this before.”

“Eh, not likely ye would,” he replied. “Caught me ‘and in summat new. 'S this machine, like a bloody great mangle.” His expression turned sour. “Coulda stopped it hearlier and saved me 'and, but foreman wouldn't let ‘em 'till ‘e figured it was gonna jam 'is works if ‘e let it go. Gonna see more o' these, I reckon. Hain't no room between them machines, an' no way of keepin' clear of 'em if ye put a foot wrong. 'S like that ev‘rwhere now.”

“And no guards on the machines to keep you from getting caught foul and dragged into the works if you fall against one,” Maya added, her expression as sour as Bill Joad's. “I don't know what they're making there—”

“Trimmin‘s,” Bill broke in. “Fancy trimmin's for dresses an' bonnets an' all. Laces an' ribbons, Rooshes, an' bows an'—oh, the wife'd know what-all,
I
don't. Machine that got me's fer cuttin' an smoothin' the ribbon, then winding ‘er all up on spool.”

“Makes me ashamed to put trimming on my dress!” Amelia burst out indignantly. Maya gave her a look of gratitude, but Bill shook his head.

“Not puttin' on trimmins ‘ud just put us out o' work,” he replied. “Tha's not the way. Dunno what is, but tha's not.” He did give Amelia one of his rare looks of gratitude, though. “Th' butchers 'ere ‘ud have took off me 'and, but I ‘membered that me missus seen Doctor Maya at Fleet an' sez she wuz a corker, so I ast fer 'er. Man can't work ‘thout a 'and.”

“It wasn't exactly a crushing injury, although it did break some of the bones of the fingers,” Maya went on, pointing out where she'd splinted the fingers with a care to the slashes she'd sutured. “It was the knives that cut the fabric into ribbons that did most of the damage; I sewed them up, but then made open, removable splints so I could keep an eye on the slashes—”

“And a very neat job of sewing, but better served in mending shirts and gowns for your betters,” said a loud voice behind them. Maya put Bill's hand down carefully, then turned, slowly and deliberately, to face the speaker. She looked him up and down with calculated insolence.

A medical student—probably a surgeon in training, since they were the most arrogant of the lot—dressed as nattily as any West Ender on an outing, in his gray suit, waistcoat with a thick gold watch chain draped across the front, and impeccable linen.

“Thank you for the ... compliment,” she replied, keeping her voice smooth and level, although Amelia seethed with resentment. “I don't believe I caught your name; I thought it was considered appropriate for students to introduce themselves to surgeons before joining their rounds.”

“Perhaps. I shouldn't think I'd be demanding that sort of ceremony if I were in your place,” the man replied, a sneer disfiguring an otherwise handsome face. “A half-breed mongrel bitch like you should consider herself lucky to be allowed inside these walls, much less permitted to practice as a doctor here.”

The words struck Maya like blows, and before she could recover from them, he turned on his heel and stalked away toward the entrance to the ward, between the rows of beds.

Anger made her flush hotly and tremble as she tried to hold it in; for a moment, she had no thought other than for her anger. Her palm itched to slap him; no, more than that, she wanted to run after him, jerk him around, and hit him.

Commotion next to her distracted her, she turned back to see Amelia holding Bill Joad down. “Lemme up!” he begged her, as she sat on his chest to keep him in his bed. “By gawd,
I'll
fix ‘is face so's 'e sneers out t‘other side of 'is mouth! Jes lemme up! No fancy-boy says
that
about th' doctor! I'll show ‘im 'oo ‘e's gotta beware of!”

That cooled her off, as if someone had dropped her into an icy pond, and she joined Amelia in remonstrating with the factory worker.

“Bill, you can't do any such thing,” she replied, shaking his shoulders a little. “He'll not only have you thrown out of the hospital he
might
have you declared insane and chuck you into Bedlam, and then where would you be? You
know
no one ever leaves Bedlam!”

That
threat was enough to quiet him, for Bill Joad had not survived this long without being well aware what the “toffs” could and could not do to a poor working man. He subsided, although his stormy expression left her with no doubt that if the man came within his reach again, Bill Joad would extract some form of revenge.

Maya released him and signed to Amelia to get off him before someone noticed. She leaned down and spoke to him, urgently, but quietly, words meant only for his ears. “Don't do anything right now,” she urged. “Don't do anything he can pin to
you.
It was only words, and words mean
nothing.
Not to you, and not to me.”

Bill snorted, and made a wry mouth. “Pull t‘other one. I seen yer face.”

“I'm here right now because I'm better than he is—whoever he is—and he knows it,” she told him fiercely. “Think about it! Why did you ask for me, insist on someone sending for me, instead of letting whoever was here at the time work on you?”

“ ‘Cause
ev'ryone
knows—” Bill Joad was not stupid ; as the import of his own words dawned on him, his expression turned from angry and sullen to shrewd. “ ‘Cause ev'ryone at th' Fleet, an' ev‘ryone what knows
about
th' Fleet knows 'bout you. ‘Get Doctor Maya,' they sez. ‘She'll save aught there's t'save.‘ ”

“And?” she prompted.

“Won't be long ‘fore them as got more'n we do finds out.” He nodded.

“Got it in one, Bill,” she replied. “Right now, all I have are cases like yours, but how long will it be before people with a great deal of money begin to notice how well my patients do? He's jealous,” she continued, taking cold comfort in the fact. “Neither of us can afford to have someone like
that
for an enemy, Bill. Not now, anyway, and if important people
do
start to notice me, the important
patients
I take away from him will be revenge enough.”

Bill's brow furrowed as he frowned. “Still. It hain't
right,
Miss Maya. ‘E's got no call t' say things loik that, an' some'un had oughta teach ‘im better manners.”

“Don't let it be you—or at least, don't let him find out it's you behind it,” she said sternly. “There's no justice for the poor man. Money buys justice, and I have no doubt there's a great deal of money in that man's pockets to buy the finest judge on the bench.”

“Should be,” said someone from the next bed with a bitter laugh, a man in an unusually clean and well-mended white nightshirt with a bandage over half of his face. “His uncle's the head of this hospital. I should know; I worked for him as his secretary before one of his damned dogs tried to tear my face off.”

Maya traded startled looks with Bill, turned to stare back down the ward, along the way where the arrogant young man had gone, then turned back toward the stranger.

“If that's the case, what are you doing here?” she asked carefully.

Another bitter laugh. “Because the dog attacked me on the master's orders,” came the astonishing reply.

10

“W
OULD you care to elaborate on that ... remarkable story?” Maya asked carefully, aware that this could all too easily be a trap for her. It seemed too much of a coincidence—and after the warning of last night, she was very wary of coincidence. And yet, if her enemy didn't know who or where she was, how could so specific a trap be laid?

“You don't believe me,” the injured man said flatly. “You think I'm mad. That's what he's told everyone, that my ‘nerves failed me' and the dog attacked me because it thought I was going to harm its master.” Beneath the bandage that swathed most of his head, his pale face was only a shade darker than the linen surrounding it, and his single visible eye was a mournful burned-out coal dropped into a snowbank.

Maya glanced at Bill Joad, who only shrugged. Evidently he had no notion who this man was, or if his story was true or not. The man
was
new here; Bill's former neighbor had been another of Maya's patients whom she had discharged yesterday. She was actually surprised that there hadn't been another body in that bed before the sheets had a chance to cool. Despite the fact that people were afraid to go to hospitals—because people died there, far more often than they were cured—there were never enough beds.

“He's
not
a doctor, by the way,” the stranger continued, his single eye staring off into the distance, as if he didn't want to meet Maya's gaze and see doubt and disbelief there. “Mostly he pretends to work in the city, at the behest of his father. He's got positions in the main offices of two companies that trade in the East, one in China and one in India, and by day, when he isn't at his club, he's usually pretending to work. Really, though, all he does is saunter late into one of his two offices, read the paper, sign a few letters, dawdle to his club, and go home again, proclaiming how difficult his job is and how the firms couldn't get on without him.”

Bill laughed without humor. “Puppy!” he snorted in contempt. “Meantimes, th' loiks uv us is breakin' their ‘ands an' 'eads an' ‘ealth from dark t' dark. Tha's enough t' make ye disbelieve in God, so 'tis! For sure, there's a Divil.”

The stranger nodded. “Oddly enough, he'd like to be a doctor—he claims—and I know he tried to study to be one, but he hadn't the stomach for it. Or the brains,” the man added, by way of an afterthought. “He got sent down from Oxford in disgrace after failing utterly at everything but cricket and football.”

“Interesting.” Maya was trying to remain noncommittal, but it was difficult to remain that way in the presence of such abysmal bitterness.
How does he know? Why is he telling us all of this?
“You know his history well, then.”

“I think that might be why he hired me, so that he could humiliate Oxford in my person,” the man said distantly, as if he wished with all his heart that he could pretend his misfortunes had happened to someone else. “I knew him by sight and reputation before he offered me a position; we were in the same College—Trinity. He knew I was as poor as a churchmouse when I finished my degree, and I thought—well, never mind what I thought.” He uttered a sound that might have been a laugh, but might equally well have been a sob. “It hardly matters. How I'm to get another position looking like Frankenstein's monster and with the reputation of a madman—”

He broke off there, as if he had said too much. Maya waited for him to continue, but he had run out of words, and the noise of the ward filled the place his speech would have taken. It was never silent in the wards; the constant background noise of moans, weeping, coughing, and buzz of talk echoed all throughout the enormous room. The walls of sound surrounded those who were having quiet speech, and gave their conversations a strange feeling of privacy.

Amelia clearly did not share Maya's doubts about this fellow. She held herself back from converse with him with great difficulty, and there was sympathy warring with anger in her eyes on his behalf.

Careful, Amelia. This might be no more than a story to get our attention and our sympathy. There are plenty of people here who would like to see us overreach ourselves and get into trouble
.

“Who is your physician, if he is not?” Maya asked, when Bill wriggled his eyebrows at her, urging her silently to keep up the conversation.

“Anyone. No one,” he said listlessly. “I've been seen by half a dozen people since I was brought in. There was an Irishman that stitched me up. He's looked in on me, but so have a flock of jackdaws posing as medical students. I've been on a cot in a corridor and was just moved here when the bed went empty, I suppose; I don't remember much before this morning. That's when they stopped giving me anything for the pain. When I woke up, I was here.”

This was altogether very strange, and Maya didn't quite know what to make of the situation. One thing she
could
do, though, was to have a look at the man. “Could you go get me some fresh dressings, Amelia?” she asked in an undertone. “It doesn't look as if he's been attended to today.”

With a great deal of lively interest on her face, Amelia hurried off to the nurses' station.

“I take it that you wouldn't object to me having a look at you, then?” she asked.

He waved a hand at her. With his initial burst of accusation over with, all of the life and energy seemed to have drained out of him. “Go ahead. I can't see that it makes any difference one way or the other,” he replied listlessly. “If you're a doctor, I suppose you have the stomach to look at wrecks like me.”