“It’s just as I suspected when I read about the case in the paper.” The words sprayed from Standish’s mouth. “In taking up this chit of a girl—and dignifying this charade by setting a formal watch—McBrearty’s made himself a laughingstock. No, made his whole unfortunate nation a laughingstock!”
Lib couldn’t disagree with that. Her eyes rested on Anna’s bent head. “But such unnecessary harshness, Doctor—”
“Unnecessary?” he scoffed. “Look at the state of her: scabby, hairy, and gross with dropsy.”
The bedroom door banged behind Standish. A strained silence in the room. Lib heard him bark something at the O’Donnells in the kitchen, then march out to his carriage.
Rosaleen O’Donnell put her head in. “What’s happened, in the name of God?”
“Nothing,” Lib told her. And held the woman’s gaze till she withdrew.
Lib thought Anna might be weeping, but no, the child looked more thoughtful than ever, adjusting her tiny cuffs.
Standish had years, no, decades of study and experience that Lib lacked, that no woman could ever obtain. Anna’s downy, scaly skin, the puffy flesh—small matters in themselves, but was he right that they meant she was in actual danger from eating so little? Lib felt an impulse to put her arms around the child.
She restrained it, of course.
She remembered a freckled nurse at Scutari complaining that they weren’t allowed to follow the prompts of the heart—to take a quarter of an hour, for instance, to sit with a dying man and offer a word of comfort.
Miss N.’s nostrils had flared. You know what would comfort that man, if anything could? A stump pillow to rest his mangled knee on. So don’t listen to your heart, listen to me and get on with your work.
“What is fumigated?” asked Anna.
Lib blinked. “The air can be purified by burning certain disinfectant substances. My teacher didn’t believe in it.” She took two steps to Anna’s bed and began to smoothen the sheets, making every line straight.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s the harmful thing that must be taken out of the room, not merely its smell,” said Lib. “My teacher even made a joke about it.”
“I like jokes,” said Anna.
“Well, she said that fumigations are of essential importance to medicine—because they make such an abominable smell, they compel you to open the window.”
Anna mustered a tiny laugh. “Did she make lots of jokes?”
“That’s the only one I can recall.”
“What’s the harmful thing in this room?” The child looked from wall to wall as if a bogey might jump out at her.
“All that’s doing you harm is this fast.” Lib’s words were like stones thrown down in the quiet room. “Your body needs nourishment.”
The girl shook her head. “Not earthly food.”
“Every body—”
“Not mine.”
“Anna O’Donnell! You heard what the doctor said: half starving. You may be doing yourself grievous harm.”
“He’s looking wrongly.”
“No, you are. When you see a piece of bacon, say—don’t you feel anything?” asked Lib.
The small forehead wrinkled.
“Not the impulse to put it in your mouth and chew, as you did for eleven years?”
“Not anymore.”
“Why, what could possibly have changed?”
A long pause. Then Anna said, “’Tis like a horseshoe.”
“A horseshoe?”
“As if the bacon’s a horseshoe, or a log, or a rock,” she explained. “There’s nothing wrong with a rock, but you wouldn’t chew it, would you?”
Lib stared at her.
“Your supper, ma’am,” said Kitty, walking in with a tray and setting it down on the bed.
Lib’s hands shook as she pushed open the door of the spirit grocery that evening. She’d meant to snatch a few words with the nun at the changeover, but her nerves were still jangling too much from her encounter with Dr. Standish.
No carousing farmers in the bar tonight. Lib had made it almost to the staircase when a figure reared up in the doorway. “You didn’t tell me who you really were, Nurse Wright.”
The scribbler. Lib groaned inwardly. “Still here, Mr.… Burke, was it?”
“Byrne,” he corrected her. “William Byrne.”
Pretending to misremember a name was such a reliable way to annoy. “Good night, Mr. Byrne.” She headed up the stairs.
“You might do me the courtesy of staying one minute. I had to hear from Maggie Ryan that it’s you who’s barred me from the cabin!”
Lib turned. “I don’t believe I said anything to mislead you about my presence here. If you jumped to unwarranted conclusions—”
“You don’t look or speak like any nurse I’ve ever met,” he protested.
She hid a smile. “Then your experience must have been limited to the old breed.”
“Granted,” said Byrne. “So when may I talk to your charge?”
“I’m simply protecting Anna O’Donnell from the intrusions of the outside world, including—perhaps above all,” Lib added— “Grub Street.”
Byrne stepped closer. “Wouldn’t you say she’s courting the attention of that world by claiming to be a freak of nature as much as any Feejee mermaid at a raree-show?”
Lib flinched at the image. “She’s just a little girl.”
The taper in William Byrne’s hand lit up his copper curls. “I warn you, ma’am, I’ll camp outside her window. I’ll caper like a monkey, press my nose to the glass, and pull faces till the child begs for me to be let in.”
“You will not.”
“How do you propose to stop me?”
Lib sighed. How she longed for her bed. “I’ll answer your questions myself, will that do?”
The man pursed his lips. “All of them?”
“Of course not.”
He grinned. “Then my answer’s no.”
“Caper all you like,” Lib told him. “I’ll draw the curtain.” She went up another two steps, then added, “Making a nuisance of yourself to interfere with the course of this watch will earn you and your newspaper nothing but disrepute. And, no doubt, the wrath of the entire committee.”
The fellow’s laughter filled the low room. “Haven’t you met your employers? They’re no pantheon armed with thunderbolts. The quack, the padre, our publican host, and a few of their friends—that’s your entire committee.”
Lib was disconcerted. McBrearty had implied that it was full of important men. “My point remains, you’ll get more from me than from badgering the O’Donnells.”
Byrne’s light eyes measured her. “Very well.”
“Tomorrow afternoon, perhaps?”
“This minute, Nurse Wright.” He beckoned her down with one large hand.
“It’s almost ten o’clock,” said Lib.
“My editor will have my hide if I don’t send something of substance by the next mail. Please!” His voice almost boyish.
To get it over with, Lib came back down and sat at the table. She nodded at his inky notebook. “What have you got so far? Homer and Plato?”
Byrne’s smile was lopsided. “Miscellaneous opinions of fellow travellers denied entrance today. A faith healer from Manchester who wants to restore the girl’s appetite by the laying-on of hands. Some medical bigwig twice as outraged as I at being turned away.”
Lib winced. The last thing she wanted to discuss was Standish and his recommendations. It occurred to her that if the journalist hadn’t seen the Dublin doctor at Ryan’s again tonight, that meant Standish must have rattled straight back to the capital after examining Anna.
“One woman suggested the girl might be bathing in oil so that some of it soaks in through her pores and cuticles,” said Byrne, “and a fellow assured me that his cousin in Philadelphia’s achieved remarkable effects with magnets.”
Lib laughed under her breath.
“Well, you’ve obliged me to scrape the barrel,” said Byrne, uncapping his pen. “So why all the secrecy? What are you helping the O’Donnells to hide?”
“On the contrary, this watch is being conducted as scrupulously as possible to uncover any deception,” she told him. “Nothing can be allowed to distract us from observing the girl’s every move to make sure no food reaches her mouth.”
He’d stopped writing and was leaning back against the settle. “Rather a barbaric experiment, no?”
Lib chewed her lip.
“Let’s assume the minx has been getting hold of food on the sly somehow ever since the spring, shall we?”
In this village of zealots, Byrne’s realistic attitude was a relief.