I followed the gaggle of boys down the alley. Or rather, pressed between two of them who helped me to hobble along, I was conveyed down the alley with increasing unease. There was one Wrong Boy to either side of me, one before, and two behind, and while their leader had suggested a chance to dry myself and recover, I was not entirely sure that I would be allowed to decline their hospitality, should I change my mind. They were a gang, living by their wits and by the points of their knives, and for all they were against the Hellhounds, I had no real reason to believe they might be on the side of the angels.
I stole a glance at the one on my right, the leader. When I was not hunched over with cold and fatigue, he might have been only about an inch taller than me. In that moment, though I felt like he towered. He certainly thought me smaller than I actually was. Perhaps that could become an advantage, though I could scarcely see how. Weak and shivering and barely able to stand on my own, perhaps I could surprise him with my height.
The thought nearly made me laugh. Nearly.
I must have made some sort of noise, because the Wrong Boy turned his head and blinked at me. His eyes were china-blue, and the fringe of lashes around them was yellow, like lemon crème. Not blond or gold, but yellow.
'You say something?'
I shook my head. 'No, I... I was just wondering why, when they were so ready to kill me, you're... not.' I stopped, not wanting to present any novel ideas.
He shook his head at my stupidity and went back to looking straight ahead. 'Wouldn't put food in our bellies,' he said. ' 'Less you're thinking we might eat ye. Which, s'pose I might if you was already cooked up, but, honest, there ain't much meat on ye.'
Perhaps he was joking, and perhaps not. The uncertainty was not reassuring.
I did not ask why they did not strip the clothes from my back and run; on the chance that had not yet occurred to them, I did not want to bring it up.
Neither did I ask why they did not think to ransom me. Perhaps they were not as clever as the Hellhounds. Perhaps they were far cleverer, had already given thought to the entire scenario, identified the problems, and rejected the possibility. Or perhaps they had given it thought and rejected it on moral grounds, as unlikely as that seemed. There was no doubt in my mind that this raggedy lot had no choice but to steal if they wanted to eat, but perhaps they drew the line at stealing people. I might almost have been ashamed of my suspicions. Their circumstances made my inferiors, as far as society was concerned, but circumstances were artifice, no more substantial than the drifting clouds. Circumstances could not be held up as a measure of human worth, a fact brought home to me by the sudden, dramatic change in my own. The poor were poor by circumstance, not by nature or design, and so I could not doubt their morals based on circumstance alone. And yet...
And yet, I could not say for certain what I would have done in their position, gnawed by hunger and presented with a short, if dubious, route to a full belly.
A problem.
My best guesses relied on my own understanding, what I myself would do in any given situation, and I could not understand these people. I was hungry, but they had grown up hungry, like as not. I was cold, but they were warm only when July sun warmed London's blackened stone. The life I had learned was different from theirs, and no amount of imagining could bridge that gap. I could not anticipate them.
The cobbles seemed to slide sideways beneath me, and I tumbled into the Wrong Boy on my left. He caught my arm and propped me upright, and as though over a great distance, I thought I heard someone say:
'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...
Good God, he may as well have been the spectre of Death! About my height, he appeared far taller, his arms and legs elongated by his incredible thinness. His huge, domed head hung forward on a spindly neck that looked as though it might snap under the weight of his cranium, and sharp, black eyes glittered at me from out deep, shadowed sockets. A quick, reptilian tongue darted out to wet the man's dry, grey lips. His attire was hidden beneath a long smock that hung nearly to the floor, its once-white folds brushing the cracked and scuffed toes of his shoes.
He looked over me with interest, rubbing his long, discoloured hands together before him like a child contemplating a present, as my insides knotted with unease.
Finally, just when I thought I might turn and run, regardless of my ankle and of who might be standing behind me, he stepped forward.
'You're tall,' he observed, 'aren't you? Been eating well? Getting a fair amount of exercise, thought not for the past few months?'
He put his serpentine face inches from mine and squinted into my eyes, then abruptly seized my arm, pushed my sleeve up, and dug his sharp fingers into my wrist.
I jerked myself away from the bizarre person, and he grinned at me. He even had fangs, eyeteeth jutting out far beyond his long, overlapping incisors. His gums showed the stains of a long tobacco habit. In fact, a few glistening strands of the stuff remained behind.
'Come now,' the man chided. 'I am Doctor Peach, and I assure you, your friends would not have brought you to me unless they thought you needed my attention.'
I said nothing, for fear of my voice betraying me, thought the thought going through my mind was that I could imagine no more incongruous name for such a colourless individual.
'You have a name?' he continued, then chuckled, as though fully aware that I would not answer. His tongue appeared again, passed over his lips, and vanished. 'You don't say much. Perhaps you would be so good as to step into my examination room, so I may form my own opinions?'
I did not want to be alone in a room with the man, doctor or no. But I was alone already, I discovered, looking around to find that the boys had silently disappeared.
He moved away and waited for me to follow.
Seconds passed, and then his sunken face twitched. 'Well,' he said, in a tone I might almost have called amused, 'come on.'
'I don't want to,' I replied, forgetting myself for an instant. The lifeless face moved again, scalp tightening, tongue making another darting appearance.
Then his eyes crinkled in unmistakeable humour. His voice, though, was filled with acid. 'Ah. New, are you? Well, little lady, you ought to know that no perceived impropriety can sully your reputation out here. Now, if you can stand on that foot you're favouring – balance on it for a full count of ten – you may go, and I'll say no more. If not, you will come in here and let me take a look.'
His glittering black eyes fixed on me almost in accusation.
There was no use in refusing to respond. My accents had betrayed me already, and I could do no worse by answering him again.
'Sir,' I said, thinking of the Hellhounds and their salacious, rotting grins, 'it is not the perceived impropriety that concerns me.'
A moment too late, I realised how a man might take offence at such a frank statement of mistrust, but instead, he froze as though absorbed in thought.
'Perhaps,' he said slowly, drawing out the second syllable into a shuddering hiss. His gaze fixed on the splinter-prickled floor a moment before darting back to me, stabbing into me like needs.es It took in my boots, my coat, the soiled hem of my night-dress, the damp strands of hair clinging to my cheeks.
'Perhapsss... that is why you left?'
I did not answer, hoping he would take my silence at face value and not as an affirmation. The shrieking and chaos of home still rang in my ears. I did not want to think of them, even to count the sins of which they were not guilty.
The pause lingered uncomfortably, then abruptly shattered as he snapped his fingers. His smock rustled as he brushed past me and stuck his head out into the corridor.
'Sylvia!' he called, drawing the name out like a sibilant curse.
Almost at once, a woman materialised in the doorway. She was the wife to his Jack Sprat, as completely his opposite as a human being could possibly have been. Her nearly spherical girth filled the door, and her ruddy, pockmarked face was drawn into an expression that was somehow at once obsequious and demanding.
'Aye?'
'Ah, Sylvia. The boys are fed?'
'Aye.'
'Then, would you be so good as to supervise my treatment of this young lady?'
Sylvia looked at me as though I had just torn off all my clothes, perched a flowerpot on my head, and declared myself to be the queen.
'S'pose.'
Doctor Peach nodded his satisfaction, then crossed to the fireplace and picked up the shovel, which he handed her with a thin smirk. 'And if I cross any boundary whatsoever, you are to thrash me soundly with this.'
She coughed less than politely. 'O'course.'
'And one for you, little miss.'
The poker somehow made its way from the hearth to my fist, though I could not for the life of me have said exactly how.
'Good,' he declared. 'Well, then, shall we?'
On the one hand, I was not particularly reassured by the presence of Sylvia, whom I did not know, and who seemed just a touch too familiar with the idea of a hearth shovel as a blunt weapon.
On the other hand, it did seem to be an earnest attempt to put me at ease. And anyway, the way Sylvia was brandishing that shovel told me that crossing her was a bad idea. Whether or not the gesture actually was meant as reassurance, I suddenly realised that whatever chance I'd had of refusing had just been deftly removed.
I clutched my poker tightly and allowed myself to be examined.
There is no need to detail the process too closely. I was palpated within an inch of my life, stripped of my coat, boots, stocking – not without considerable protest, though the quilt that was provided in their stead was much warmer than my soggy things. He bound my ankle tightly, at which I uttered a number of words a person of my station and sex should not have known, and even a few I am certain I must have invented specially for the occasion. I was prescribed hot broth, hot tea, and a crust of brown bread with jam, and Sylvia, who did not seem to be the maid but did not seem to be Mrs Peach, either, forcibly installed me in the crumbling chair nearest the fire while my clothes began to dry and my treatment was prepared.
Drenched in warmth, watching the shapes in the steam that had begun to rise from my coat, there was little chance of keeping my eyes open, not even for the promise of food. I found a spot to fit my back between the chair's lumps and settled in, not exactly secure, but knowing full well that there was little to nothing I could do about it if the situation did turn sour.
I allowed my eyes to close.