A Death Along the River Fleet (15 page)

“Oh!” Mrs. Larimer said, looking disappointed. “They will still join us for Easter dinner?” When her husband shrugged, she frowned. “I will send around a note to them, inviting them properly. I am certain they will come.” She turned around then, disappearing back toward her chamber, presumably to write the letter of invitation.

“Poor Miss Belasysse. I am starting to wonder if we will be able to help her at all.” Dr. Larimer sounded sad. “That is the part of my profession that I do not like so well.” He turned and walked into his study, although he did not shut the door behind him.

Although Lucy wanted to rush up the stairs after Mr. Sheridan and Miss Belasysse, she did not wish to irk the physician's assistant further. Instead, she impulsively followed Dr. Larimer into his study, having taken the open door as an invitation to continue the conversation.

Standing in the doorway, she very nearly told him about the exchange she had just heard out by the carriage, but then hesitated. She did not wish to be thought a gossip.

Instead, she asked him about Miss Belasysse's condition. “Is there no hope, then, sir?” she asked, feeling a flash of pity for the creature upstairs. “Is she truly too ill to cure? Is there no solace to be found for her condition?”

“I am rather afraid not, Lucy,” Dr. Larimer said, seating himself at his table, pushing aside some sheaves of papers that lay scattered about the surface. “All these scholars”—he waved at a row of leather-bound books on the shelf beside the table—“and even these less learned sorts”—he shoved at the loose stack of papers—“and I can find nothing that will truly cure the lass. It is a puzzle indeed.”

“But you can solve it, surely?”

Dr. Larimer sighed. “I have made every
tinctura cephalica
—tincture for the head—I can think of.” He gestured to his rows of leather-clad books. “I have examined any medicine that makes claim to cure the distempers of the head and brain. Headaches, vertigo, palsies, lethargies, frenzies, coma, dullness of the senses, thickness of hearing, noises in the head, convulsions, weakness of the neck, drowsiness, glimmering of sight, and apoplexies. And I have found no help in dealing with the falling sickness.”

Here he pointed to a stack of printed papers, much like the type that Lucy would sell on a street corner. “Those tell me what astrologers say I should do—tie an astral talisman about her neck.” He pulled out another. “This one says I should tie bits of the Latin liturgy into a small bundle, and place it within a leaf of St. John's wort or a leaf of mugwort. All tied with taffeta! Tell me! How will tying something with a bit of taffeta—not wool, mind you—keep that poor woman from falling into convulsions every bloody hour?”

“I could not say, sir,” Lucy replied. “Do you know anything about what brings them on?”

“We know so little,” he said. “A stressful moment, a harsh smell, a flickering light, a loud noise. Any or all of those things.”

Stretching out his hand, the physician plucked one of the books from the shelf and opened it to where a piece of paper had been laid inside. “Listen to what Bruel has to say of the falling sickness,” he said to Lucy, before proceeding to read.
“‘When he is deprived of his senses he falls to the ground with a violent shaking of his body, his face is wrested, his eyes turned upwards, his chin is sometimes driven to his shoulders, and oftentimes he voideth seed, odor, urine against his will.… They do often snort and cry out in their sleep.'”

Lucy nodded. “I have witnessed Miss Belasysse do as he describes.”

Turning the page, Dr. Larimer continued to read.
“‘They oftentimes thrust out their tongues and it is to be feared, that sometimes they bite them with their teeth. There is likewise a gentler kind of falling sickness which doth not differ much from giddiness.'”

“I have seen that as well,” Lucy said. “He is most apt, from my limited view.”

“There are some new treatments for
epilepsis
that some Dutch physicians have encountered,” he said, tapping his fingers on the table. “Truth be told, I am at my wit's end. I will even look to what the Persians have to say on the subject. A few pieces have been translated by scholars at Cambridge, and they offer some interesting remedies, even if they are of a heathen sort.”

Taking a deep breath, Lucy asked the question that had been plaguing her. “Where
do
you suppose Miss Belasysse has been these last ten months? She could not have been stumbling about the rubble this whole time. Indeed, she managed to stay safe from the Fire.”

“Indeed. She seems to have been eating regularly and, while a bit jaundiced, does not have the abysmal health of one who has lived without shelter or nourishment. I believe that someone has taken care of her.” He frowned, falling silent. “And not a Gypsy either. Someone familiar with bloodletting.”

Like Mr. Sheridan?
Duncan's comment popped into her head. “A physician such as yourself, sir?”

Dr. Larimer gave a short laugh. “Unlikely, Lucy. We physicians are too civilized. We deal with the internal ailments; we leave the more barbaric practices of cutting and purging to the surgeons.” He began to line up his medical instruments so that they lay neatly across his table, continuing to speak of the woman's condition as he did so. “Moreover, I believe this woman's frenzy and memory loss to be a more recent phenomenon, explained by whatever trauma she experienced before you found her by Holborn Bridge. Although these holes in her memory may be connected to her illness as well.”

“Her mother did say that her daughter had always had these fits, even as a child,” Lucy said.

“Yes,” Dr. Larimer said. “It seems clear that Miss Belasysse has no awareness of what is happening to her—or around her, for that matter—while a fit is upon her. Nor does she seem able to recall events that immediately precede a fit.”

Lucy thought back to the odd conversation she had heard just now among the Belasysses out by the carriage. “Do you think that Mr. Boteler's account of her disappearance was a bit strange? Do you think it as he described?”

He frowned. “His account seemed plausible enough to me.” Dr. Larimer might have said more had his wife not sailed in then. “If you will excuse me, Lucy,” he said. “I should like you to stay with Miss Belasysse now. And if you would, please send Mr. Sheridan back to me.”

When Lucy entered Miss Belasysse's bedchamber a few moments later, Mr. Sheridan stepped hastily away from the bed where Octavia was reclining. Lucy thought he might have been holding the woman's hand again, but he released it when she came in.

“Checking the movement of blood in her veins,” Mr. Sheridan said. “She is improving.” Without looking at Lucy he said, “No need for your ministrations.”

“Dr. Larimer has sent me to keep watch over Miss Belasysse, and he wishes you to rejoin him downstairs,” she said.

“Pray tell the good doctor that I shall look after her, should she suffer another fit. Having suffered a seizure of the sort we just witnessed, we must assume that she might suffer another in short order.”

Lucy nodded. “Let me help her rest more comfortably.” Quickly she took out the pins she had only just put in the woman's hair a short time before, so that her long tresses came unbound and fell about her shoulders. She thought she heard Mr. Sheridan sigh.

“Mr. Sheridan,” Octavia Belasysse murmured, “you may leave. Lucy can tend to me well enough. I am certain she will call for you, should she require your assistance. Is that not so, Lucy?”

It was clear from her tone that she did not wish to be with Mr. Sheridan any longer. Lucy opened the door wider. “If you would, sir,” she said firmly.

Reluctantly, Mr. Sheridan left the room, but not before giving Lucy a warning look. “I expect you to watch over her. Do not let her leave, or grow overexcited. I shall be quite unhappy if you take her on another
excursion.
”

“Yes, sir,” she said stiffly. “I shall look after her as I would my own family members.”

To her surprise, his arrogant expression relaxed, and for a moment something like gratitude appeared in his eyes. “Thank you, Lucy,” he said, before stepping out into the corridor.

Slowly, Lucy closed the door behind him. His response was not as she had expected.

When she turned back, she found that Miss Belasysse had curled herself into a ball on the straw pallet, blankets pulled to her chest, staring straight in front of her. Alarmed, Lucy could see that tears were once again flowing from her eyes.

“Miss Belasysse,” Lucy asked gently, “are you in pain? What can I do to help you?”

“No, Lucy,” she replied, with a heavy sigh. “I do not think that there is anything that can be done. Every breath I draw is a torture for me, and I cannot but wonder why the good Lord has sought to trouble and afflict me in this manner.”

“Would you like me to bring a clergyman here?” Lucy asked. “Surely if you are in need of spiritual solace and comfort—”

“No more clergy! There are many who have sought to relieve me of the demons who anguish me. Since my childhood, I have had people pray over me, run their hands over my body, ply me with terrible treatments, fill me with the most dreadful concoctions. Quacks all!”

Lucy could not help but take a step back. For a moment, the woman seemed as Lucy had first met her—strange, tormented, possessed. She shuddered despite herself. “Is there no one who can bring you a bit of cheer?”

The woman's voice grew stony and flat. “I have no one in this world who cares for me in the manner you suggest.”

“Surely your family? Your mother, or your uncle? Or even your sister-in-law? They came here because they are worried about you—”

“No!” Miss Belasysse interrupted, sitting bolt upright in the bed. “I do not know why they have come, but it is not because they are concerned for my health or my well-being.”

“Why ever not?” Lucy asked. “They should like to nurse you, and who better but your own mother?”

“Oh, Lucy, how little you know!” The woman's words were not haughty, Lucy could see, but rather sprang from a place of deep melancholy.

Lucy knelt down on her knees beside the woman. To her surprise she leaned over and put her head on Lucy's shoulder. “I must admit to you that some of my memory has returned,” she whispered. “There is much of my youth I can now recall. Winters in London, summers in our family seat.” Her voice, though muffled, was bitter. “I can tell you that my mother kept me hidden away from others for much of my childhood, for fear that my illness would be discovered.”

“Mr. Sheridan said he recalled meeting you in Cambridge a few times,” Lucy said.

“Ah, yes. I think my memory had begun to stir when I met James, er, Mr. Sheridan.” She smiled to herself. “Henry had insisted to my parents that I be allowed to join them when they came to visit him at university. Mr. Sheridan was on hand once when I had one of my spells at Cambridge. It was a crowded tavern, and the noise and the sounds just began to overwhelm me.”

“Did Mr. Sheridan help you?” Lucy asked.

“Well, he was still a student then. I remember great shouting when I came to—he thought they should have been tending to me with more care. Poor Mr. Sheridan, he did not know then what my parents and other doctors have long known—there is no real cure for the falling sickness.”

“Then you must remember where you have been these last ten months!” Lucy said eagerly.

“Alas, that I do not. I cannot explain how strange it is that such a hole remains in my memory.”

“Well, what is the last thing that you
do
remember?” Lucy asked.

“I remember journeying to London with my uncle and Susan, and our maid, Hetty. I remember that people were just returning to London after the sickness had subsided. Uncle Harlan told me that my father wished to see me before he left for his post at Tangier. Susan came as my companion, I recall, with the hopes she would be reunited with Henry. I was hoping we would see Henry in London as well.”

A shadow crossed her face. “She was so very young when they married, you know. She is not even Henry's first wife. He only married her for her fortune, which is considerable. She has very little wits or charm.” That was what the tract had said of Susan Belasysse, and for the first time Lucy wondered how the author of the piece had come by that description.

But she did not state what she was thinking. Instead, she asked Miss Belasysse, “Do you remember what London was like then, after the plague? Perhaps you can remember the Great Fire?” she asked. “Maybe that will prompt a memory.”

Miss Belasysse looked up at the ceiling. “I do not remember the Fire. Or do I? Watching the smoke from the distance—did I do that?” She shook her head. “I do not know. Pray, let us remove ourselves from this cumbersome talk.” She gestured to the great Bible on the table beside the bed. “I know that you can read, Lucy,” she said. “Read some passages from the Bible. That will distract me from my ills.”

Lucy complied, but was little able to focus on the words. It did not help when Miss Belasysse said, “Lucy, I may seem addled to you, but even I know that you have just read the same passage twice now.”

“What you said just now puzzles me,” Lucy said, setting the Bible aside. “When I served in the magistrate's household, we only returned to London after the plague because Master Hargrave believed it was right and proper for us to do so. As a magistrate, he thought it was his duty to help restore London to order. Those who could stay away most certainly did.”

“I see,” Miss Belasysse said. “That was most sensible.”

Lucy's next words flew out before she could keep them reined inside her wayward mouth. “Forgive me, but I find it so strange that your father would have requested that you return to London at such a perilous time. Or that your brother would wish that of his wife.”