No Cage for a Crow

Four - Doctor Peach

'Best make for the doctor, I reckon. Something's got in 'er.'

A doctor! Good Lord, a doctor was the last thing I needed. Doctors, by nature, tend to be moderately clever, and a moderately clever person could not fail to notice that I did not exactly match my motley companions. Beneath my filth, my coat was well-made, sturdy, and while the lining had been replaced more than once, even the replacement was of silk. The cotton of my night dress was soft and fine. My boots, though made for feet rather larger than mine, were nevertheless bespoke, of visible quality even after years of hard use. Even I, myself, stood out. Gawky, yes, and thin, but not for want of food, not for a lifetime of hard living. Even the Hellhounds, who might on a good day have matched wits with a Hyde Park pigeon, had known me for what I was the moment they heard me speak. A clever man would know I belonged elsewhere.

Worse yet, my understanding was that doctors tended to be responsible citizens. A responsible citizen who discerned a runaway would take her immediately to the police. Even if I had not yet been reported missing, I would be, soon. I would be back in that house by noon. And then?

I could not imagine what would happen then, and I did not want to try.

'No,' I tried to tell them, 'No, I'm fine, really not all that bad,' but only a vague mumble emerged from me. I tried to pull away, but all my strength seemed to have left me at once. Voices crashed in upon me, roaring and then receding like waves at the seashore, and I felt myself hurried along through the labyrinth that hid behind London.

It crossed my mind that this might be a kidnapping, after all. Might they be subtle enough to feign concern, to pretend to help me so that they might lead me wherever they pleased without risking screams? That would be quite the ironic turn, to be kidnapped in the middle of running away. Even worse to be fooled into thinking that one's kidnappers were actually one's rescuers!

It didn't matter, though. None of my thoughts mattered, because I was entirely incapable of acting on them. My ankle throbbed abominably, and the rest of me was so numb I could only be certain I was moving because the scenery was slightly different after each of my increasingly long blinks.

They could take me where they would, and, I realised, I didn't care in the least, so long as the end of the line was enclosed by four walls and a roof, out of the wind and the fine, piercing rain that had started again.

I may have made another try or two at breaking free. I do not know. I do not remember.

But when they did finally stop, and I with them, I relinquished any thought of getting away, because they stopped me in front of a door. A once-blue door, faded with age and darkened with soot and smuts and mildew and possibly things even nastier, but it was a door all the same, and a door promised the possibility of an indoors.

One of the boys rapped sharply at the mouldering door, using his bare knuckles rather than the tarnished bras knocker. After what seemed like no pause at all, the door creaked open, and I was hustled down a dim, damp hallway hung with artworks made grey and indecipherable with age, then shunted sideways through a second door and into a room.

A sudden blaze of light forced my eyes shut: paraffin lamps covering every surface, tallow candles clustered upon every wall sconce, a fire blazing furiously in the tiny fireplace, before which crowded a thicket of tattered, mismatched chairs awash in a drift of horsehair.

And it was warm. It could hardly be otherwise, so full of flames as to shame a volcano. I began to relax, but only for a moment before the feeling returning to my face became burning pins and needles. I winced.

The swarm of boys around me surged and then subsided as another, darker figure entered my field of vision. Quite suddenly, there seemed to be no boys around me at all. All that remained...