But I could see more now, my vision growing stronger with each passing moment, and I pushed myself up onto my elbows, watching as Mary jerked backward, dodging a swipe of the doctor’s knife. He had been backed into a corner, but now he advanced on her. I felt her feet slip over mine before she could find better purchase, straddling both my legs and the widow’s. His eyes flared and he darted forward, and I tried to brace Mary from behind to make sure she wouldn’t tumble out of the wagon and into the road.
But the work was done for me. The curtain separating the wagon bed from the driver’s bench tore to the side, Chijioke storming into the fray with a roar. Merriman gasped, spinning, turning into the downward swing of a club.
Thwack! Thud. The crunch echoed in my bones, sickening and final, but Chijioke hit him again with the shillelagh, sending the doctor into the wagon wall before he crumpled next to us.
“Heavens, Louisa, are you all right?” Mary turned and dropped down next to me, tearing at the cravat tied around my ankles. I wiggled my toes, feeling them gradually come back to life.
“Can you speak?” Chijioke tossed the club aside and knelt on my other side.
I shook my head, still a little dazed, my skin alive and thrumming with fear and shock. Mary took the cravat and dabbed at something on my face, blood or sweat or both. She bit her lip and looked to her friend. “Should we turn back?”
“Derridon is nearer,” he replied, scooping me up and helping me to sit on one of the benches. The wrap covering the widow’s body had shifted, one pale, dead hand reaching toward us. Mary kicked the shroud back into place.
“You’re safe now,” she assured me. “How could you let her sit alone with him?”
“I knew he was evil, but not . . . not like that,” Chijioke replied in a whisper. He glanced over his shoulder, but the doctor was motionless, his face purpled and smashed. “It was just a short ride, Mary. I didn’t know.”
I held up one hand, trying to silence them. I coughed, and my voice felt raw and torn, but usable. “It isn’t his fault,” I croaked. “Tried to shout. Wheels too loud.”
“What do we do?” Mary searched the wagon for answers, still dabbing at my face.
“He’s gone. We take him and the widow woman to the undertaker. Mr. Morningside will just have to understand. Aye, we can tend to Louisa there. Here, Mary, give me your cloak.” She untied the cozy gray cape and handed it across. Chijioke motioned for me to lean forward, and gingerly, he wrapped me in the cloak, pulling the hood up to conceal my wounded face. “Can you ride a little longer?”
“Just bruised,” I whispered.
“We will need to be rid of his things,” Mary was saying. She stood and scrounged up the doctor’s bag from where he had stored it under the bench. Flecks of bird dung stuck to the leather. She undid the latch and peered inside, closing her eyes with a gasp. Then, just as quickly, she locked the case up tight again. “Yes, we need to be rid of it.”
“What’s inside?” I asked.
Mary pulled the case away from me with a worried glance to Chijioke. “It isn’t important, Louisa. It only matters that you’re safe.”
“I want to know.”
She closed her eyes again and inhaled deeply, opening the latch and showing it to us. It was too dark to see clearly inside, but there was a definite peek of white and what looked like a silky slash of red.
“Bones,” Mary murmured. “And a lock of hair with a ribbon. Don’t look at it, Louisa, it’s too awful.”
I shrank back against Chijioke and pulled my knees to my chest, holding tight. It could have been me in there. It could have been me.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Derridon unfolded slowly from my view in the back of the wagon. Mary stayed with me, her horse tethered to the others as we rolled our way into the little town. It was scarcely more than a hamlet, one plaster-and-thatch chapel and a row of low, quaint buildings on either side of a main street. It was all quiet but for the soft merriment spilling out of the tavern.
Mary held my hand, or rather, she held her palm open on the bench and I perched my fingers on top of it, the occasional tremor fluttering through my body.
“How did you know?” I asked. My voice was better now, but it still hurt to speak. “I was praying . . . hoping . . . then you.”
She pulled in a long, shaky breath. Now that all was quiet again, she seemed as frail and uncertain as I. The doctor’s body was hidden under the widow’s cover, but his fresh blood soaked the wrapping, painting a macabre mask where I knew his face to be.
“It’s what I am,” she said. “Ach, I might have guarded you from afar, but I was too weak from the last ritual. I could hear you calling to me in my dreams. It woke me cold out of slumber. I came quick as I could, Louisa, I hope you know that.”
“Thank you.”
“No thanking, please.” Mary rolled her head back on her shoulders, staring up at the ceiling. “You should never have been alone with him. I swear on my life, Louisa, I didn’t know what he was, and I know Chijioke too well to think he would want you in any danger.”
“He ate her,” I whispered bleakly. “He ate his daughter.”
“Devil take him, Chi should have clubbed him a dozen more times.”
“What will you do with the bones?”
“Bury them, I think. Make a little marker. She doesn’t belong in a bag.”
I nodded and carefully massaged my aching throat. “Her name was Catarina.”
“Aye. You can help me make the cross.” Mary pulled her hand out from under mine and touched my shoulder just as the wagon slowly came to a stop. “But you are all right?”
“I will be,” I managed. I hope.
The wagon rocked as Chijioke leapt down from the driver’s box. He appeared a moment later, wreathed in the orange light glowing up and down the street. The lantern lighter passed by with his long metal rod, checking the state of the candles and tending to those that seemed low. Given the strength of the full moon, his job was almost redundant. It was a blood moon so bright it looked like a glowing ruby studding the heavens. Somewhere behind us I heard Lee chatting to his uncle. I searched the storefronts with still-bleary eyes. We had stopped at the far edge of town between the Rook & Crook Inn, labeled with the silhouette of a bird picking up a man by his hat, and a dirty, slipshod sign reading simply UDERTAKE. The N and R had been worn away to a few peeling specks of paint.
“Giles should be inside,” Chijioke said, climbing up and unlocking the gate of the wagon bed. “I’ll distract Bremerton and his boy while you get Louisa inside, then I can pull us around to unload.”