How I wished Tom and Sally were here. I spotted Dorothy hovering by the door to the Missing Finger, worried. So I enlisted her help instead. We each grabbed a pair of buckets, filled them, and brought them up the stairs, puffing.
The apprentice took them from us at the bedroom door. The doctor’s stocky frame blocked our view, but I could see he’d cut away Simon’s clothes.
There was blood on the sheets. Dorothy blanched at the sight of it. She grew even whiter at Simon’s howls as the doctor began to work. I led her back down to the shop.
Bridget flew to me from her perch, alarmed by the commotion. I held her just a moment, then put her aside. “I need to send a message to Whitehall.”
What I’d said was so unexpected, Dorothy stopped thinking about the horror upstairs and stared. “The palace?”
“Yes.” I scribbled a note on some paper I pulled from under the counter. “Can you find someone to take this to Lord Ashcombe? Make sure it goes straight to him, and that he reads it immediately. I’ll pay for the courier, just come find me for the penny.”
“Ashcombe? The King’s Warden? Christopher… what have you got yourself into?”
“Please, Dorothy. I really need your help.”
She stared at me for a moment, then glanced at the pistols on my belt. She grabbed the letter. “I’ll take it myself.”
“Thank you,” I said, grateful.
She stopped, regarding me from the door. “You’ve changed,” she said.
Had I? Then how come I still felt like the useless, clueless boy stuck in the middle of things he didn’t understand? I couldn’t even keep my friends safe.
Dorothy left. I shut out Simon’s cries and got to work.
CHAPTER
4
MY FIRST TASK WAS TO make the honey balm. That was Master Benedict’s recipe to spread over wounds. Once that was done, I took the jar upstairs, leaving it in the corridor outside my bedroom. I then returned to the workshop to make some pain reliever. Willow bark extract would do nothing for this level of hurt; I’d need to boil a poppy infusion.
Bridget fluttered about the workshop, agitated by Simon’s howling, but I had no more time to calm her. Again I wished Tom and Sally were here. Fortunately, working distracted me, and Simon’s cries faded as the minutes passed. I hoped that was because the surgery was ending, and not because…
I shuddered. I didn’t even want to imagine it.
When the poppy was ready, I carried it up. Just in time, it seemed, because the doctor and his apprentice were already wrapping Simon with bandages. They’d dipped into the honey balm; I could see it smeared all over Simon’s back.
“Leave the pot there,” the doctor ordered. I did as he asked, then went back downstairs to pace the shop and wait.
When Lord Ashcombe arrived, he was flanked by four of the King’s Men. Two stayed with the horses, while the others accompanied him inside.
“Where’s Chastellain?” he said.
“Upstairs,” I said. “The doctor—”
Before I could finish, the doctor came down. He stopped short, hands bundled in a rag, clothes stained with blood.
He stared at the King’s Men, at their leather tabards emblazoned with the king’s coat of arms. Then he spotted Lord Ashcombe—and turned to me, stunned.
He’d recognized the King’s Warden. With the man’s distinctive black style, scar, eye patch, and injured hand, it was hard not to. I made introductions anyway.
“Lord Richard Ashcombe, Marquess of Chillingham,” I said. “And Doctor…” It finally occurred to me that I’d never heard the man’s name.
“Kemp,” the doctor said, with a slight bow of the head. “John Kemp, of Newcastle.”
That explained the northern accent. He gave me a small, bemused smile. I could imagine what he was thinking. A masterless, pistol-wielding apprentice, and the king’s right-hand man. What have I stumbled into? I’m glad he didn’t ask.
“What news?” Lord Ashcombe said.
“Good, I think,” Dr. Kemp said, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “Your friend has an excellent chance of recovery.”
“I thought he had a dagger in his back.”
“Aha. Yes. Normally does little to improve a man’s lifespan. But in this case, I’d say he has the luck of the angels.”
The doctor finished wiping something in the rag, then held it out for us to see.
It was the dagger. Lord Ashcombe took it, turned it over.
The weapon was an odd shape I’d never seen before. It had a large conical pommel and a smooth cylindrical grip. There wasn’t much of a hilt; the grip simply rounded up to where it held the steel. As for the blade itself, it was long and flat—though the point was badly bent.
I stared at it. “This didn’t kill him?”
“Like I said, luck of the angels. When our would-be murderer stabbed— What was your friend’s name again? Simon? Simon’s spine got in the way.”
The doctor took the dagger back to demonstrate. “The tip of the blade bent when it hit the vertebra, and so couldn’t penetrate farther. It slipped sideways instead—stuck in him at an angle, you see? It never got through to the innards.”
Lord Ashcombe studied the dagger as Dr. Kemp continued. “There’s damage to the muscle, of course, and he’ll be in quite a bit of pain for a few weeks, but as long as we stave off infection, he should recover. And thank his heavenly guardian. An inch up or down, he’d be paralyzed. Right or left, he’d be dead.”
Lord Ashcombe nodded, then turned to me. “Who did this?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Simon just came in and collapsed.”
“Did you check for witnesses?”
I flushed. “I didn’t think to… I was worried about… No.”
Lord Ashcombe commanded the King’s Men to search outside. Then he asked the doctor, “Can we speak to him?”
“You can try, but you
