Page 124 of Malady

The girl’s mother whimpers, so I give her the sharpest look I can muster and press Avis’s flailing hand back into hers.

“Talk to her,” I tell her. “Quietly. Keep her eyes on you.”

Avis’s back arches beneath my arm, lifting clean from the linen with a strength that makes the table creak. Her face has gone from tallow-grey to something darker around the mouth, the skin mottling beneath her eyes while her heels batter against the wood and her fingers scrabble uselessly at her mother’s sleeve.

“Papa! Get Papa!” Avis sobs. “Papa, please!”

Behind me, leather scuffs over the floorboards.

I glance over my shoulder. Iscairn is backing away from the table, one gloved hand hanging uselessly at his side, the other half-raised in front of him. His heel strikes the empty wash-tub by the wall, sending it skittering across the boards with a hollow clatter, and Avis jolts beneath my arm so violently that I have to throw my weight forward to keep her from sliding over the edge.

“Iscairn,” I snap. “What are you doing?”

He staggers back another pace and hits the timber wall hard enough to rattle the dried mugwort strung along the rafters. His chest heaves beneath his cloak, breath dragging in and out behind the bone mask in quick, jagged pulls that make the hair rise at the back of my neck.

I have never seen him frightened. Not of the mob, not of the fire, not even of the church that burned him.

“Hold her,” I tell the woman, catching Avis’s shoulder before she can twist again. “Both hands. Keep her head still.”

She gathers her daughter’s fingers against her breast while I shove the instruments farther from the edge of the table and reach for the candle. Avis drags in another wet breath, her whole throat working around it, and cries for her father again.

Iscairn’s hands fly to the sides of his mask.

“Iscairn?”

His fingers grip the beak, the leather ties, the hard edge of the bone, then drop away before he can loosen anything. He looks towards the narrow service door at the back of the room, and my stomach goes cold.

“No,” I warn. “No, don’t you dare.”

I take a step after him, but Avis chokes behind me, and I turn back towards the table as Iscairn stumbles across the room, catching his shoulder against a shelf hard enough to set the bottles rattling. By the time I look around again, he's reached the rear door and is fumbling desperately with the latch.

“Iscairn, stop!”

But he's already wrenched the door open and disappeared onto the roof, his boots scraping against the slates as he stumbles away. I stare after him, struggling to understand what on earth has possessed him to leave us like this, but another dreadful wheeze from Avis draws me back to the table.

I press my palm against her chest, swallowing the panic rising in my throat as I turn my attention to her mother.

“Right,” I say. “Look at your mum, sweetheart. There you are. We've got you.”

31

DOCTOR ISCAIRN

“Papa! Papa!”

I grip the stone parapet tighter, struggling to draw enough air into my lungs. The cold catches in my throat with every desperate breath, yet no matter how deeply I inhale, I cannot seem to satisfy the need for more.

“Papa, please!”

I wrench the mask from my face, nearly tearing the ties in my haste, and bend over the parapet as another ragged breath shudders through me. Far below, the streets of York are bustling with people going about their afternoon, while I stand above them, struggling to remember how to breathe.

I need it to stop.

Ever since the Vance babe died, the memories have been coming whether I wish them to or not, and although I have struggled to make sense of them, I had begun to hope that I might eventually remember something of the life I left behind. But then that little girl…

Avis.

Such an ordinary name, and yet the moment I heard her mother speak it, I felt the strangest sense of recognition. I have known countless people over the centuries, many of whom must surely have shared that name, but when the little girl began crying for her papa, something in my mind seemed to give way.