Fifty Shades Of Darkness III...

“Her name is Emma Hale.” She continued collectedly. “She fell out of a tree as a child. She has a scar on her left elbow.” Harker realised that the stranger had seen the brutality inflicted on the girl and provided him with another means of identification. He was impressed by her level-headedness and yet he could still feel her body trembling. Self-consciously he removed his hands from her shoulders and then turned, crouching at the side of the deceased girl.

Carefully he examined the limb in question, with first thumb and then eye. He was surprised by the flicker of feeling when he found the scar confirming the girl’s identity. He bowed his head before speaking, his words stark in the morning brightness.

“It is her, your sister.”

“I’m deeply sorry for your loss Mistress Hale.” The sheriff interjected with an appropriate murmur of sympathy.

“Lacy. Kathryn Lacy.” Her reply was thoughtless, too occupied by blinking back the tears which threatened to spill down her cheeks than to pay heed to the words which had already spilt from her lips. The sheriff’s reaction was instantaneous, choler staining his cheeks red beneath the fine growth of a beard.

“You’re Mistress Lacy?” Now she realised what had been said there was pride in her bearing as she enunciated carefully,

“Yes.” The name meant little to Harker, who looked on in confusion at the two sudden adversaries.

“It’s very brazen of you. Turning up like this. Or do you intend to confess?”

“I wouldn’t wish to make it that easy for you sheriff. I confess only that I did not stop to think that you might be here. I heard rumours about the discovery of a body and, fearing the worst, I came immediately.”

“And Emma Hale was one of the girls you helped.” Undisguised disapproval coloured the emphasis upon his final word. Kathryn shifted slightly so that she now addressed the bemused surgeon.

“I take orphans and strays into my home. Anyone and everyone is welcome, no matter their past. I try to help them start again. To make a living.”

“You train children to become thieves and whores.” Anger flared briefly at the sheriff’s remark.

“No. You and the rest of society teach them that well enough. You make the choice for them early on. I simply show them how to survive the system and help them to make the arrangement a beneficial one.” Grief passed like a shadow, replacing the anger, as she continued. “Emma has...had...been with me for a few years. She’s been missing over a week. I’ve been out searching for her, but I suppose I knew there was only one reason why she wouldn’t come back.”

Harker had been watching her closely throughout the exchange. She was younger than he had first supposed and there was a surprising delicacy to her features that belied the coarseness of her livelihood. Her face was mobile and expressive, a face of which any stage-player would be proud. The lines could be redrawn, features redesigned, as she assumed each new character. There was a moment of stillness between these changes in which Harker felt certain he could read weariness in her pale eyes.

“And you expected what exactly? For me to let you leave after you provided this information?” Again her expression shifted, this time to amused arrogance.

“Until just now you didn’t even know what I looked like. My ‘crimes’ are merely rumour and suspicion. And if you thought that was evidence, your friend here,” she flicked a finger towards Harker, “would be locked up himself.” The sheriff looked as if he was grinding his teeth painfully, and the surgeon was astonished that the woman knew so much about him when he had never heard her name spoken before today.

“We should be leaving Harker.” The sheriff said abruptly, stiffly formal in Kathryn’s presence. “We have to record your examination and decide on a course of action.” He was already leaving, ducking between the lopsided houses. As the surgeon moved to follow, Kathryn reached out, slapping a hand against his chest. It left a cold, hard impression against his heart.

“Please.” She beseeched him, her features rearranging into feminine helplessness. Annoyance made him push against the constriction but she tried again. “Please.” Her tone was harder, more sincere. “All I ask is that you do not let your knowledge of me affect the way in which you investigate Emma’s death. She was the kindest soul and hardly fit for the role she played. She deserved better in life and I don’t want to think that she deserved better in death also.” The sheriff overheard and turned back, his face a mask of frozen politeness.

“You can rest assured Mistress Lacy that we will do everything possible to capture this criminal.” She didn’t flinch from the insult. Instead she drew herself up and Harker could almost admire the determined tilt of her chin.

“And you can rest assured gentleman that I will do everything possible to see that this man pays for what he has done.” Harker felt a shiver of danger at the words which fuelled so many of his own memories. He seized Kathryn by the wrist, forcing her to look up at him in a submissive pose. Pain whipped through his voice, causing it to become a sharply barbed threat.

“There is a line. A line between revenge and justice. You would do well to mark it Mistress Lacy and see that you do not cross it. Or one day you will have cause for regret.”

Fifty Shades Of Darkness II...

The sheriff nervously rubbed at his jaw as he considered Harker’s words.

“We cannot make public what we suspect. It would cause mass panic. After all it is only unfounded suspicion. We could be wrong. Sibyl may well turn up, a little ruffled but unharmed, after an ill-considered rendezvous with her young man.” Yet even as he said the words there was a doubtful edge to his voice, and he sounded more desperate to convince himself than hopeful of such an outcome. “We don’t know she is dead. And we certainly don’t know that it was the same person who murdered this poor young woman.”

Harker had been working in silence, drying each of his instruments with a scrap of cloth before returning them carefully to the cavernous bag, but now he turned to his friend with frustration writ across his face.

“The man who did this will do it again. And he has already done it before. This wasn’t a single rash moment of rage to be regretted in the next instant. Here look,” he said, crouching and gesturing towards the body that no one had thought to cover. “There’s no blood on the ground beneath her, which means that she was attacked elsewhere and brought here after death. Why? What’s so important about this location? He could have chosen somewhere more public. But equally why not throw her in the river and be rid of the body? He arranged her carefully, staging her almost. Look at her skirts and the way they are folded. He did that. Why is it so important for us to see her this way?”

He blinked, breaking the intensity of his focus upon the deceased girl. As he glanced up he noticed that his friend was observing him carefully. Rocking back on his heels he attempted to regain his usual detachment. “We need to discover the pattern of his actions. That is the only way that we will be able to find him. There is a reason, an explanation, for why he has done this.”

“You’ve seen this before.” The quiet statement held too much certainty to be a question. Harker stood, brushing the palms of his hands roughly against his thighs.

“Yes.” The word was clipped and invited no further comment. His eyes had darkened, fixed on some unseen point, and tension hardened the lines of his face. Even now the past threatened to seep out from the place where it had been buried and smother him.

“I have never sought to uncover your secrets. I believe in judging a man by his actions and you have been a solid ally and friend this last year. But I need to know anything that might be relevant to this case. Anything that might stop this happening to another young woman.” Harker remained motionless as, caught in a web of deceit, he realised he was unable to divulge that information without unravelling the lie that was his life as Surgeon Matthew Harker.

“Simon I can’t –” The uncharacteristic hoarse plea was drowned out by the clash of raised voices coming from the soldiers stationed at the entrance to the street. There was the sound of a scuffle and then the pounding of feet on beaten earth. A figure burst out from the passage between the lopsided buildings. Rowntree shifted forward, as if to shield the body, but the stranger darted neatly around him. The figure stopped suddenly and the street seemed oddly still and silent in the pause.

Annoyance and suspicion caused Harker to stride forward. He grabbed the surprisingly slight figure by the shoulders and yanked the hood away. The woman flinched back from his hard inspection as he glared down at her. Her plain features would have been unremarkable if it had not been for their expression of intense grief. When she spoke, however, her voice was soft but perfectly controlled.

“It seems you have found my sister.”

Fifty Shades Of Darkness...

I have urgent need of your skills. Come quickly.

The sheriff’s typical scrawl seemed more hurried than usual due to the brevity of the note; and the impression of the seal was faint and blurred as if pressed only fleetingly to the wax surface. Surgeon Matthew Harker clasped a coin tightly between his dexterous long fingers until the messenger had provided him with the correct direction. Quickly dispensing with any plans that he had formulated for the day ahead Harker grabbed the bag which hung ever ready by the door, filled with the tools and instruments of his trade. His solitary existence, with the refusal to even employ a servant, meant that he was always prepared and able to respond with haste to the demands of patients at all hours. There was, however, only one reason why the sheriff would have sent such a message. There had been a murder.

Harker was closing the door behind him within moments of the note’s arrival. This was, after all, not the first time that Simon Rowntree had called upon his services. There had been cases in the past when the sheriff had consulted the surgeon’s intimate knowledge of anatomy, which had been gleaned from the controversial and virtually heretical universities of southern Europe. Generally feared and despised for this dark knowledge, Harker’s expertises were at least valued by Rowntree, particularly when they were used to help apprehend murderers and villains. It was only Rowntree though who wondered at the surgeon’s own private reasons for offering this assistance. Most others assumed he took some unholy pleasure in pawing over the bodies of the recently deceased.

Even now as he strode through the winding streets people drew back from him, retreating to the safe proximity of their homes. The length of his cloak flapped and snarled sharply behind him, his imposing figure swathed entirely in black. He might have been tall and dark, but his features were arranged in too unpleasant an expression to ever be considered handsome. Harker was aware that others considered his soul to be as black as his scowling brow and fierce temper. Whilst there was a grudging recognition of his medical proficiency, it was commonly acknowledged that this was owing to a deal which he had struck with the devil’s winged minions. Through recent accusations of heresy and necromancy, it had been only his friendship with the sheriff that saved the surgeon from a close experience with the gallows.

It was merely a short walk to where the sheriff awaited him. The sun was bright in the clear morning sky, seemingly incongruous with Harker’s mission and what he imagined awaited him. Nodding curtly to the soldiers who guarded the passageway that gave entrance to the street, they eyed him uneasily as he brushed past. Immediately the surgeon noted that the body had not been hidden, aside from the natural seclusion offered by a back street which few persons dared to enter after dark. This brazen display offered to a curious onlooker was perhaps the most revealing detail of the killer’s character. The sheriff stood some distance away from the body. His fair hair pushed back from his forehead by a shaking hand, and his usually placid features were ragged and pale.

As Harker neared the body he understood what had upset his normally composed friend. Crouching beside the deceased his intense gaze and steady fingers catalogued and considered what he saw before him. She had been young, for he observed that her bones and limbs had not grown to their full potential. Perhaps once she might even have been beautiful, but the rigour of death had stolen the lively flash of a smile and the delicate hue from her cheeks. Death had, however, been even crueller to her than most. Her neck and face were grossly disfigured rendering her unidentifiable. Her skirts had been equally ripped and tattered, flung high above her waist, and revealing to the surgeon how she had been cruelly misused.

Collecting up his instruments Harker crossed to where the sheriff had provided the requested pail of water. As he submerged the tarnished metal objects Rowntree stepped towards him, a hand pressed to his mouth as if to stop himself choking on his disgust. His own daughter was barely a year old.

“What kind of monster could do this?” He demanded weakly in a strangled voice. The surgeon froze, his gaze darkening as he replied.

“It is what you still fail to grasp. Men are the monsters. Each one of us has this capacity for violence within us.” As a man who had long ago discovered his own capacity for violence, Harker was much more intimately acquainted with the mind of their murderer than his friend. “Who found her?” He asked brusquely, dunking his tools abruptly back into the water.

“One of my soldiers. I had commissioned several of the men to look out for a missing girl. Unfortunately it seems that they found her.” Rowntree was unable to look towards the body sprawled so deliberately across the ground.

“You believe this is the girl you were searching for?”

“I hoped you’d be able to tell me. Her face is so...” He swallowed convulsively, unable to articulate the brutality which had been inflicted. “Sibyl, the goldsmith’s daughter, went missing last night. She was last seen with a young man heading towards the river in the early evening. At least we know we have a suspect.” Harker frowned as he considered the evidence he had gathered from his examination.

“That is not the girl you are seeking.”

“But it has to be.” The sheriff argued in dismay. “She fits perfectly with the description of the missing girl. She is the same height and age.”

“She has been deceased for longer than your girl has been missing. This is someone else. Have there been any other reports of missing girls in the past week?”

“Can it be a coincidence that two girls, identical in looks, went missing around the same time?” The surgeon sounded trouble when finally he responded.

“I fear you will not like my answer.”

Of Monks And Men

A mischevious cellarer (who was responsible for the catering and provision of the monastery) depicted within a medieval manuscript.

In Bloom

Pennyroyal is, from what I understand, a native plant to Britain. It is a member of the mint family and so was used in the past for making tea. Its Latin name mentha pulegium comes from pulex meaning ‘flea’. This was due to its properties as an insect-repellent. The leaves today are used in cosmetics and can be taken (with due caution) internally as an infusion for digestive complaints.

Far from green-fingered I was doubtful that this herb would survive my company for a fortnight let alone four months. Much to my surprise, however, not only does it continue to live, (I hesitate to say thrive), but this week it has also begun to flower. As I was unconvinced that these delicate summer flowers would ever appear on my admittedly small and straggly charge I am beyond delighted at this success.

Mentha Pulegium, Pennyroyal