Inversions

'I think the Slave Master does not want his own doctor to know of your visit,' I told her as I clambered on to the dock. 'They are brothers.'

'If this Slaver is so close to death, why isn't his doctor at his side?' the Doctor said. 'Come to that, why isn't he there as his brother?' The servant held out a hand to help the Doctor out of the boat. 'Thank you,' she said again. (She is always thanking servants. I think the menials of Drezen must be a surly lot. Or just spoiled.)

'I don't know, mistress,' I confessed.

'The Master's brother is in Trosila, ma'am,' the servant said (which just goes to show what happens when you start speaking to servants).

'Is he?' the Doctor said.

The servant opened a small door leading to the rear of the house. 'Yes, ma'am,' he said, looking nervously at the boatman. 'He has gone in person to seek some rare earth which is said to help the condition the Master is suffering from.'

'I see,' the Doctor said. We entered the house. A female servant met us. She wore a severe black dress and had a forbidding face. Indeed her expression was so bleak my first thought was that Slave Master Tunch had died. However, she gave the tiniest of nods to the Doctor and in a precise, clipped voice said, 'Mistress Vosill?'

'That's me.'

She nodded at me. 'And this?'

'My apprentice, Oelph.'

'Very good. Follow me.'

The Doctor looked round as we started up some bare wooden stairs, a conspiratorial look on her face. I was caught in the act of directing a most harsh stare at the black back of the woman leading us, but the Doctor just smiled and winked.

The servant who had talked to the Doctor locked the dock door and disappeared through another which I guessed led to the servants' floor.

The passage-way was steep and narrow and unlit save for a slit window every storey, where the wooden steps twisted to double back on themselves. There was a narrow door at each floor, too. It crossed my mind that perhaps these confined quarters were for children, for the Slaver Tunch was well known for specialising in child slaves.

We came to the second landing. 'How long has Slaver Tunch?' the Doctor began.

'Please do not talk on these stairs,' the strict-looking woman told her. 'Others may hear.'

The Doctor said nothing, but turned back to look at me again, her eyes wide and the corners of her mouth turned down.

We were led into the rest of the house at the third storey. The corridor we found ourselves in was broad and plush. Paintings adorned the walls, and facing us were wall-high glass windows letting in the sight of the tops of the grand houses on the far side of the canal and the sky and clouds beyond. A series of tall, wide doors opened off the corridor. We were ushered towards the tallest and widest.

The woman put her hand on the door's handle. 'The servant,' she said. 'On the dock.'

'Yes?' said the Doctor.

'He talked to you?'

The Doctor looked into the woman's eyes for a moment. 'I asked him a question,' she said (this is one of the few times I have ever heard the Doctor directly lie).

'I thought so,' the woman said, opening the door for us.

We stepped into a large, dark room lit only by candies and lanterns. The floor underfoot felt warm and furry. At first I thought I'd stepped on a hound. There was a perfume of great sweetness in the room and I thought I detected the scent of various herbs known to have a healing or tonic effect. I tried to detect a smell of sickness or corruption, but could not. A huge canopied bed sat in the middle of the room. It held a large man attended by three people: two servants and a well-dressed lady. They looked round as we entered and light flooded into the room. The light started to wane behind us as the severe-looking woman closed the doors from outside.

The Doctor turned round and said through the narrowing gap, 'The servant-'

'Will be punished,' the woman said with a wintry smile.

The doors thudded shut. The Doctor breathed deeply and then turned to the candle-lit scene in the centre of the room.

'You are the woman doctor?' the lady asked, approaching us.

'My name is Vosill,' the Doctor told her. 'Lady Tunch?'

The woman nodded. 'Can you help my husband?'

'I don't know, ma'am.' The Doctor looked round the shadowy, half-hidden spaces of the room, as if trying to guess its extent. 'It would help if I could see him. Is there a reason for the curtains being drawn?'

'Oh. We were told the darkness would reduce the swellings.'

'Let's take a look, shall we?'the Doctor said. We crossed to the bed. Walking on the thick floor covering was an odd, disconcerting experience, like walking on the deck of a pitching ship.

The Slave Master Tunch had, by repute, always been a huge man. He was bigger now. He lay on the bed, breathing quickly and shallowly, his skin grey and blotched. His eyes were closed. 'He seems to sleep almost all the time,'

the lady told us. She was a thin little thing, scarcely more than a child, with a pinched, pale face and hands that were forever kneading each other. One of the two servants was mopping her husband's brow. The other was fussing at the bottom of the bed, tucking in bed clothes. 'He was soiled, just earlier,' the lady explained.

'Did you keep the stool?' the Doctor asked.

'No!' the lady said, shocked. 'We have no need to. The house has a water closet.'

The Doctor took the place of the servant mopping the man's brow. She looked into his eyes, she looked in his mouth and then she pulled back the coverings over the huge bulge of his body before pulling up his shirt. I think the only fatter people I have seen have been eunuchs. Master Tunch was not just fat (though goodness knows, there is nothing wrong with being fat!), he bulged. Oddly. I saw this myself, even before the Doctor pointed this out.

She turned to the lady. 'I need more light,' she told her. 'Would you have the curtains opened?'

The lady hesitated, then nodded to the servants.

Light washed into the great room. It was even more splendid than I had imagined. All the furniture was covered in gold leaf. Cloth of gold hung from the bed's great frame. It was drawn up into a great sphincter shape in the centre of the ceiling and even formed the curtains themselves. Paintings and mirrors covered every wall and pieces of sculpture — mostly nymphs and a few of the old, wanton goddesses — stood on the floor or sat upon the tables, desks and sideboards, where a veritable profusion of what looked like human skulls covered in gold leaf were scattered. The carpets were a soft and lustrous blue-black, and were, I guessed, zuleon fur, from the far south. They were so thick I wasn't surprised that walking on them had been unsettling.

Slave Master Tunch looked no better in the light of day than he had by candle glow. His flesh was everywhere puffy and discoloured and his body seemed a strange shape, even for one so large. He moaned and one fat hand came fluttering up like a doughy bird. His wife took it and held it to her cheek one-handed. There was an awkwardness about the way she tried to use both hands that mystified me at the time.

The Doctor pressed and prodded the giant frame in a variety of places. The man groaned and whimpered but uttered no intelligible word.

'When did he start to bloat like this?' she asked.

'About a year past, I think,' the lady said. The Doctor looked at her quizzically. The lady looked bashful. 'We were only married a half-year ago,' the Slaver's wife said. The Doctor was looking at her oddly, but then she smiled.

'Was there much pain at the start?'

'The Housemistress has told me that his last wife said it was about Harvest when he began to get the pains, and then his…' She patted her own waist. 'His girth began to become greater.'

The Doctor kept prodding the great body. 'Did he become ill tempered?'

The lady smiled a small, hesitant smile. 'Oh, I think he was always… he was never one to suffer fools gladly.' She started to hug herself, then winced with pain before she could cross her arms, settling instead for massaging her upper left arm with her right hand.

'Is your arm sore?' the Doctor asked her.