I couldn’t believe Simon was here. “What are you doing in London?” I said. “And how did you know I was back?”
He didn’t answer. He stepped toward me, arms forward, an odd look on his face. I stuffed the mysterious letter I was holding into my coat, thinking he was coming to give me a hug.
Instead, he collapsed in my arms.
His sudden weight made me stagger. I bumped into the counter, heard the antimony cup fall over and roll off, dinging dully across the floorboards.
I tried to hold him. “Simon? What…?”
My hands, my arms wrapped around him, felt warm and wet. As he slipped downward, I saw why. My hands were covered in blood.
And there was a dagger in Simon’s back.
CHAPTER
3
MY VOICE CAME OUT A croak.
“Help,” I said.
Then louder. “Help! Help!”
Simon slid to the floor, conscious but confused. “Christopher?”
He tried to roll over. I stopped him. The dagger, stuck between his ribs, was twisted at an odd angle. If he put his weight on it, it would drive the blade deep into his lungs.
I laid him on his stomach, pressed him to the floor. “Stay there,” I said. “Don’t move. Someone help!”
Simon looked to be in shock. He reached behind him, groping for whatever was causing him pain. I kept his hand away.
“Don’t move,” I said, and I shoved his arms under his body. It was an ugly thing, that blade, sticking through his coat, but I left it where it was. My master had taught me that.
If something pierces the body, he’d said, show great care before removing it. The object may be the only thing preventing catastrophic bleeding.
What do I do? I asked him.
Find a surgeon. Immediately.
I didn’t know about a surgeon. One had lived a couple of streets away, but he’d left last summer with the plague. I had no idea if he’d returned, or if he was even alive.
But—Dorothy. She’d mentioned a physician.
I didn’t like leaving Simon, but I didn’t have a choice. I pressed his arms in again, tucking them under his stomach. “Stay that way, all right? I’ll be back.”
Simon still sounded confused, but he nodded. “What happened?”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I ran across the road, shouting, “Help!”
Dorothy met me at the door to the Missing Finger. “Christopher? What’s wrong?”
“My friend—he’s been injured. Is that physician here? I need him.”
“Yes, he’s in… Your friend? Is it Tom?”
“What? No, not Tom. Where’s the physician?”
He was in the dining room. The man was stocky, not overly tall, with a broad mustache. He sat across from a curly-haired boy dressed in the blue apron of an apprentice. The man looked up, as did the few other patrons, who stopped drinking to watch the commotion.
“What’s the trouble?” he said, in a heavy northern accent.
I didn’t want a gaggle of onlookers. A stabbing was sure to bring them. So I just said, “Simon… my friend… he’s had an accident.”
The doctor had already begun to rise. He’d seen my bloody hands. “Get my bag,” he commanded his apprentice.
The boy ran upstairs as the two of us returned to Blackthorn. The doctor paused in the doorway when he saw Simon on the floor, the dagger sticking out of him.
He glanced over at me. “Some accident.”
“It wasn’t…” I didn’t have time to explain. I didn’t even know what was happening. “He came in like this.”
The doctor gave me a speculative look, but only briefly. “We have to get him up. Where’s your bed?”
“Upstairs.”
We each took one arm. Simon screamed as we lifted him. I looked over at the doctor.
He shook his head. “Can’t be helped.”
We went slowly, careful not to bump Simon into the wall. “You didn’t take the dagger out,” the doctor noted as we inched our way up the narrow stairs.
“My master said not to.”
“Good lad.”
The doctor’s apprentice arrived, clutching the doctor’s satchel, as his master and I carried Simon into my bedroom. The place was a mess of books. Piles upon piles of them, stacked so high they teetered like trees bending in the wind.
The doctor made us a path by kicking them out of the way. The books toppled, knocking down others in a rumble of leather and paper. I winced to see them treated so badly.
The doctor’s only care was his patient. Gently, we laid Simon on the bed, facedown. He cried out, then lay still, breathing in short, ragged gasps.
“Move aside.” The doctor bumped me backward. The apprentice stepped more lightly, weaving between the books to my desk. He cleared a space on top, then began drawing out his master’s tools.
I was surprised to see so many saws and blades. “Are you a surgeon?”
“I was in the army,” the doctor said, as if that answered the question. Which I supposed it did. He’d have seen much worse than this. “I’m not part of the guild, if that’s what you’re asking. You planning on letting them know?”
It was a serious question. By law, the Company of Barbers and Surgeons performed all operations. He’d be in big trouble for doing this. “No.”
“Then go on, get your master. I’m going to need some things.”
“I don’t have a master,” I said.
He frowned. “You’re talking nonsense, boy. Isn’t that your master’s shop downstairs?”
“No, it’s mine. It’s… My master was murdered. Last year. He left me the shop, and this home. I was supposed to get a new master, but the Apothecaries’ Guild’s been ignoring me.”
The physician snorted. “Politics, is it?”
I nodded.
“Well, then,” he said, “let’s annoy the guilds together, shall we?” And he grinned. “I need water, at least four buckets of it, and as much cloth as you can spare. When that’s done, bring me whatever you use to cover wounds.”
“What about something for the pain?” I said.
“Not until I’m finished. Go on now. And you”—he nodded to his apprentice—“get these blasted books out of my way.”
I did as the physician asked, stamping down
