Page 21 of Malady

Her hands lower a fraction. “What happened?”

“My jaw fell off.”

Lucy’s mouth drops open in horror, and he moves. With one swift pull and a shriek directly into my ear, the tooth is out, held neatly between the metal jaws as Lucy jerks back against me in outrage. I’m already pressing the linen to her gum as she glares at Iscairn with such wounded betrayal that my teeth sink into the inside of my cheek.

“There,” he says, looking back at her. “Now you will not have to wear a mask like mine.”

Lucy’s flushed little face crumples as the shock finally catches up with her, and I gather her towards me before Margaret can descend upon us both.

“Oh, sweetheart, you were ever so brave,” I murmur, wiping the tears from beneath her eyes with the clean edge of my sleeve before turning my attention to the blood gathering at the corner of her mouth. “I know, I know. He is a dreadful man, and we shall speak very badly of him once he has gone.”

That earns me the smallest, wettest hiccup of a laugh. I press fresh linen gently against the empty socket and show Margaret how to hold it there, explaining that the bleeding should ease soon and that the mallow poultice can be warmed against Lucy’s cheek if the swelling troubles her later. Lucy listens with the solemn misery of a child who has been grievously wronged, so before I stand, I give her shoulders one last squeeze and tell her again how very brave she was.

Margaret gathers her closer, fussing with the blanket around her knees, and I straighten just as Iscairn rolls the blackened tooth between his gloved fingers. Then, he slips it into his satchel.

What in the…

“Did you just steal a child’s tooth?” I whisper, crossing towards him.

He calmly fastens the buckle. “I have a deep academic interest in the progression of dental decay.”

“Of course you do.”

Looking back at the exhausted mother still wiping Lucy's tear-stained cheeks, I decide not to tell her that the physician she just thanked is about to walk out of her cottage with a piece of her daughter tucked into his satchel. Instead, I bid them both a polite goodbye through my mask and follow Iscairn out the door.

My mind spins as we walk through the village. There are questions I could ask—I should ask. What, precisely, does a man do with a seven-year-old’s rotten molar once he gets it back to his study? Is hoarding pieces of his patients a customary medical practice I have somehow failed to read about, or simply a deeply unsettling hobby? Perhaps that’s why he didn’t want to discuss pastimes with me on our way here from Merewick…

My fingers itch to unbuckle the satchel at his hip and upend its contents into the snow. The curiosity burns fiercely in my chest. God only knows what else he’s got stashed away in there. Hair? Fingernails? Dead lice?

But my stomach is hollow with hunger, the ache in my thigh is now throbbing, and as I walk beside his silhouette in the winter gloom, I realise something far more alarming than whatever is currently rattling around in his satchel.

I don't really mind.

If Doctor Taylor had pulled that tooth, he would have spent the next ten minutes barking instructions at me. Pack the gum, Ophelia. Fetch the oil. Don't just stand there like a limpet. But Iscairn simply extracted the tooth and stepped back, giving me the space to work.

He didn’t treat me like a servant. He treated me like an apothecary.

Hmph. Let him hoard teeth. I’ve tolerated far worse habits from men who offered me far less respect.

7

OPHELIA

Something has been hitting my shutters for the better part of five minutes.

The first knock dragged me awake. The second I blamed on the wind. By the third, I’d pulled the blankets over my head and decided that whatever was outside could bloody well wait until morning.

Then it comes again.

With a muttered curse, I shove back the blankets and drag myself up. Another knock sounds while I fumble with the latch, and the moment I wrench the shutters open, something sails through the gap, clips the leg of my stool, and clatters beneath the bed.

I squint at the offending object.

A stone. A stone?

I grip the sill and lean out into the night.

Arthur Vance is down below, scrabbling along the ground, one hand raking through the frost whilst the other keeps disappearing into his hair.