The Serpent's Shadow E-Book

Mercedes Lackey

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

From the magical mysteries of India to the gaslit streets of Victorian London, Mercedes Lackey's unique departure from her Valdemar series follows a young woman doctor as she searches for the secret behind the sorcery in her blood.

Leseprobe

THE SERPENT'S SHADOW

By Mercedes Lackey and Available from Titan Books

Elemental Masters

The Serpent’s Shadow

The Gates of Sleep

Phoenix and Ashes

The Wizard of London

Reserved for the Cat

Unnatural Issue

Home from the Sea

Steadfast

Blood Red

Collegium Chronicles

Foundation

Intrigues

Changes

Redoubt

Bastion

THE SERPENT'S SHADOW

ELEMENTAL MASTERS

Mercedes Lackey

TITAN BOOKS

THE SERPENT'S SHADOW E-book edition ISBN: 9781783293841

Published by Titan Books A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd 144 Southwark Street London SE1 0UP

First edition: May 2014 12345678910

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2001, 2014 by Mercedes Lackey. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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for Mike Gilbert we'll miss you

Contents

Cover

Half Title Page

By Mercedes Lackey

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

Epilogue

About the Author

Dear readers, One of the joys of writing historical fantasy is the occasion to use existing quotes or references to actual events. However, as a fantasy writer I reserve the right to bend history as well as create magic. So as you read, if you happen to come across a cited event or quotation which seems inaccurate to the period, please humor me, and remember that the world of this book is not our world, but a place which exits only in my imagination.

—Mercedes R. Lackey

1

Leaden, self-important silence isolated the chief surgeon’s office from the clamor of the hospital and the clangor of the street outside. A rain-dark day, a dim, chill room filled with cold, heavy, imposing mahogany office furniture and lined with ebony bookshelves containing dreary brown leather-bound volumes so perfectly arranged that it was not possible that any of them had ever been taken down and used—the room in which Maya found herself was designed to cow, confine, and intimidate. But Maya Witherspoon, though depressed by an atmosphere so alien to her native India, had spent most of her life perfecting the art of keeping a serene and unreadable expression on her face. All that practice stood her in good stead now.

Across from her, enthroned behind his mahogany desk of continental proportions, sat Doctor Octavian Clayton-Smythe, Chief Medical Officer of St. Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, in the rattling heart of London.

One of Kipling’s “little tin gods,” she thought irreverently, clasping her ice-cold, black-gloved hands tightly on top of the handbag in her lap. He would fit in quite perfectly in the Colonial Service. Stiffly propped up in his armor of utter respectability… sure of his importance, so intent on forcing others to acknowledge it.

Cocooned in the somber black woolen suit of the medical profession, as if he sat in mourning for all the patients he had managed to kill, he frowned down at the results of her various academic examinations—results that should leave no doubt in the mind of any sensible person that she was fitter to be granted the sacred title of “Doctor of Medicine and Surgery” than a good many of the young men who would have that very accolade bestowed on them in the course of this year of Our Lord, 1909. In point of fact, she already had that title—in her homeland of India. This, however, was not India; it was London, England, the heart of the British Empire and of civilization as the English knew it. And as such, there were two distinct handicaps to her ambition that Maya labored beneath at this moment. The first was her sex. Although female doctors were not unknown here, there were no more than three hundred in the British Isles, and most probably the actual number was less than that.

The second was that although Maya’s father had been a perfectly respectable British doctor serving in the Army, stationed at Delhi, and although Maya herself had obtained her degree as a physician in the University of Delhi, her mother had not been a fellow exile. She had been a native, a Brahmin of high caste. And although in India it had been Surya who had wedded far beneath her state, the reverse was true here, and Maya, as a (to put it crudely) half-breed, bore the sign of her mother’s non-English blood in her dusky complexion. All else could be disguised with education, clothing, careful diction, but not that. Maya’s knee-length black hair had been knotted into a pompadour and covered with a proper hat and veil, her body wrapped in good British wool of proper tailoring, her accent trained away with years of careful, self-imposed lessons in speech. Yet none of that mattered very much to someone who was so fiercely determined to consider Maya as one of the barbaric and alien “They.”

It was raining again outside the hospital; it seemed to Maya that it was always raining here. Cold wind blew the raindrops against the glass of the office windows, and Maya was glad of the warmth of her woolen suit coat—for she, too, was encased in the feminine version of the uniform of the office she aspired to, plus the added burden of corset, petticoats, and all the other wrappings deemed necessary to “decent” dressing. Doctor Clayton-Smythe had a gas fire laid on in his office, but he had not bothered to have it lit. Perhaps he didn’t feel the cold; after all, it was spring by the British calendar, and the good doctor had plenty of good English fat to insulate him, seal-like, from the cold.

He looks more like a walrus, though. I believe he probably bellows at his wife, and means as much by it as a walrus bellowing at his little cow.

Doctor Clayton-Smythe cleared his throat, immediately capturing her attention. “Your results are… remarkable,” he said cautiously.

She nodded, part modest acknowledgment, part caution on her own part. In a way, she felt strangely calm; she had been nervous before this battle, but now that the enemy was engaged, her mind was cool, weighing every least inflection. Not yet time to say anything, I think.

Now the doctor looked up, at long last, meeting her eyes for the first time. He was a heavy man; the English staple diet of cream, cheese, beef and bread, vegetables boiled to tastelessness, heavy pastry, and more beef, had given him a florid complexion and jowls that were only imperfectly hidden behind old-fashioned gray mutton-chop whiskers and a heavy mustache, a salt-and-pepper color that matched his hair. If he doesn’t yet suffer from gout, he will, she thought dispassionately, and his heart will not long be able to maintain his increasing bulk. Gray hair, neatly trimmed, and rather washed-out blue eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses completed the portrait of a highly successful physician and surgeon; the head of his hospital, and a man who could deny her not only the right to practice here in his hospital but certification to practice medicine in the British Isles if he chose to exert his influence. However, Maya had chosen her adversary with care; if this man certified her, no one in the United Kingdom would ever deny her expertise.

“How old are you, if I may ask?” he continued.

“Five and twenty,” she replied crisply. “And that may seem a trifle young to you to have become a physician and surgeon. But I had been studying medicine under the tutelage of my father since I was old enough to read, and achieved Doctor of Medicine at the University of Delhi at the age of twenty-two.”

He nodded slowly. “And you were practicing alongside your father as well?”

“I was certified in India as a practicing physician,” she reminded him, taking pains to keep her impatience and growing frustration out of her voice. “I was my father’s partner in his practice. Wives and daughters of military personnel felt more comfortable consulting a female physician in matters of a personal and delicate nature. I aided him as a physician in my own right for a period of nearly four years.”

“That was in India; you might find ladies feel differently about you here,” he replied, the expected hint that her mixed blood would prove a handicap, and a more tactful hint than she had expected.

She smiled a small, cold smile, as cold as her feet in those wretched, tight little leather “walking” shoes she’d laced onto her feet. “The women of the poor take what they are offered; and for that matter, so do the men,” she told him. “They can hardly afford to take their patronage elsewhere, since there is no alternative. I will—if certified—be undertaking work for certain Christian charities. The Fleet Charity Clinic, to be precise.” There were also certain suffragist charities she would be working for as well, but it wasn’t wise to mention those.

Charity work would scarcely allow her to earn much of a living, which was why most male physicians wouldn’t even consider it. She would not tell him what else she had in mind to augment her income.

He brightened a little at that. Probably because I won’t be a threat to the practices of any of the young male physicians, who have wives with the proper attitudes to support, she thought, amused in spite of her resentment. She suppressed the desire to sniff, as her nose tickled a little.

“Far be it from me to become an impediment to someone who wishes to devote herself to the welfare of the poor,” he replied with ponderous piety, and removed a document from beneath the results of her examinations, signing it quickly. He passed it to her over the desk; she received it in those black-gloved hands—black, for she was still in mourning for her father, and though Society might forgive the occasional breach of strict mourning in a young white woman, it would never do so for her. The year of formal mourning was not yet up, and in the interest of economy, she had already decided to prolong it as long as she could. Mourning colors gave her a certain safety. Even a brute would not offer too much insult to a woman in mourning, even if she was a half-breed.

That paper was her medical certification, giving her the authority to practice medicine, and the right to practice surgery here in this hospital, admit patients, and treat them here.

“Congratulations, Doctor Witherspoon,” he continued. “And may I repeat that the results of your examinations are remarkable, including those in surgery. I dare say your skills are equally outstanding.”

“Thank you very much, Doctor,” she replied with feigned meekness and gratitude; he swelled with self-importance, mistaking it for the genuine emotion. “I hope I will succeed in surpassing your expectations.”

She rose. He did the same. She extended her right hand; he pressed it once in token of farewell, released it quickly, then immediately seated himself as she turned to leave. She was not important enough for him to remain standing until after she was gone, nor worthy of his time to be given a heartier handshake or more of his attention.

She closed the door of the office behind her, carefully and quietly, then smiled—this time with real warmth—at the doctor’s receptionist and secretary, a young man with thin, blond hair, who had sincerely wished her good luck on her way in. She met his questioning blue eyes, and held up her signed certification in a gesture of triumph. The young man nodded vigorously, clasped both hands above his head in an athlete’s gesture of victory, and gave a silent cheer. Maya’s companion, a plump, animated woman three years her junior, who was seated in one of two chairs for visitors placed in this stuffy little reception room, was a trifle less circumspect.

“Oh, Maya! Well done!” Amelia Drew said aloud, leaping up from her chair to embrace her friend. Maya kissed her proffered cheek, waved cheerfully at the secretary, and guided Amelia out the door and into the hospital corridor before Amelia said anything that Doctor Clayton-Smythe might overhear and interpret as unflattering.

Nurses in nun-like uniforms hurried past, carrying trays and basins. Young men, medical students all, arrayed in their medical black, strode through the corridor like the would-be kings they all were.

Maya closed the reception-chamber door behind Amelia, and Amelia cast off any pretense of restraint, skipping like a schoolgirl. “You did it! You got the old crustacean to bend and give you your certification!”

“Not a crustacean, my dear. That was a fat, grumpy walrus on his very own sacred spot of beach.” Maya’s grimace betrayed her distaste. “It was a narrower thing than I care to think about.” She stepped around an elderly charwoman scrubbing the floor on her hands and knees, bundled in so many layers of clothing her true shape could not be determined.

Amelia dodged a medical student on the run—probably late for a surgery. “But your marks were so good. And the letters from the other doctors at Royal Free Hospital—”

“I wasn’t entirely certain of success, even with the highest of examination results,” she replied, as they traversed the polished oak of the corridor, the starched frills of their petticoats rustling around their booted ankles. Amelia’s costume, severe, and plain, was identical to Maya’s but of dove-gray rather than stark black. Amelia was in the midst of her own medical education. Fortunately, both her parents were as supportive of her ambition as Maya’s had been. Unfortunately, this gave young Amelia a distorted view of the prejudices of the majority of the male population of her land.

“I don’t think I convinced him until I told him that I intended to practice among the poor.” Maya smiled again, then laughed, thinking what shock the poor mummified man would have felt had she told him the entire truth.

“There’s no harm in intentions, is there?” Amelia giggled. “And if there are those besides the poor who decide to ask for your services, well, that has nothing to do with your intentions.”

“True enough,” Maya laughed. “But can you imagine what he would have said if he had known what I really planned to do?” Now that she was up and moving, warmth and life had returned to her feet, at least.

And now that the ordeal was over and her victory laurels were firmly in her hands, she was feeling celebratory and just a little reckless.

Amelia was the only person outside Maya’s household who knew what Maya intended, and even she blushed a brilliant scarlet as they moved side by side across the echoing foyer, heels clicking smartly on the tiles. “I daren’t even guess,” Amelia murmured, fanning her scarlet cheeks to cool them.

Just before they reached the doors giving out onto the street, Maya’s fingers moved surreptitiously, and she murmured a few words that Amelia did not hear. She sensed a thin breath of energy wafting upward from the well of strength within her, and as they stepped out into the weather, the rain ceased for a moment.

“Well! There’s more luck!” Amelia exclaimed as the clouds parted a little, letting a glimpse of blue peek through. She raised her hand imperiously, signaling their need for transportation. There was always a great coming and going of cabs here, both horse-drawn and motorized, and they procured a hansom without any difficulty whatsoever. Maya climbed in and gave her address to the driver through the little hatch above. It shut with a snap, and Amelia joined her.

It was, as she had specified with her tiny exercise of magic, a clean cab: no mud or worse on the floor, no cigar ash anywhere. And just as they settled themselves within the shelter of their conveyance and pulled their skirts well in, away from possible mud splashes, the rain began again. The cab moved off into a thin curtain of gray, the poor horse’s ears signaling his dislike of the wet.

This was just as Maya had intended. It didn’t do to change anything with magic, not if one wanted to remain undetected; one could only arrange. In this case, the break in the clouds that would have occurred a little later, and a few blocks away, happened above them and at the time they left the building, and closed again as soon as they were in shelter. And the cab was in good repair, the driver neither drunk nor mean spirited.

The precious certificate, now folded and safely inside Maya’s handbag, rested beneath her hands on her lap. Amelia made small talk to which Maya responded with half of her attention. London, from within the partial enclosure of the hansom, was an assault on the senses of a very different sort than the heart of Delhi. In place of the scent—no, call it what it was, the stench—of hot, baked earth, dust, sweat, and dung, the smell of London enveloped them in damp, mold and mildew, wet wool, wet horse, smoke, stagnant water, the acrid tang of motor exhaust, a hint of sewage and horse droppings, and the river smell of the Thames. Harsher, deeper voices than the rapid twitter of her peoples’ myriad tongues fell upon the ear. There was no bawl of livestock, only the clatter of wheels and hooves on cobblestones, neighing, the jingle of harness, and the alien noise of a motorcar or ‘bus. And, of course, the atmosphere, so cheerless, so cold…

But she had no other choice now; this was her home, and this strange island her refuge. If she was ever to find protection, it would be here. Her enemy was even more alien to this environment than she was.

She shook off her dark mood with an effort, turning all of her attention to her companion. Amelia was the most sensible, practical, and dauntless young woman that Maya had ever met. From the moment that they encountered each other at the London School of Medicine for Women, Maya had felt they had been friends or even sisters before, in some other lifetime. Naturally, she had not said anything of the sort to Amelia, who would only have been confused. The Church of England did not admit to the reincarnation of souls.

“Well, it will be your turn to beard the dragon in his den in another year or so,” she told Amelia, who laughed.

“I am going to practice at the Royal Free Hospital,” she replied. “They, at least, are open to women physicians. I’m not so ambitious as you.”

“It wasn’t ambition, it was necessity,” Maya told her soberly. “What if Royal Free had balked? I would have nowhere to turn—”

“But why should they balk?” Amelia interrupted.

Maya gestured wordlessly to her own face, and Amelia flushed. “If I tried and failed to obtain certification at St. Mary’s, then Royal Free would likely have certified me just out of spite,” she continued cheerfully. “My father always taught me to try the hardest path first, you know, although if I had seen that man before I made that plan, I would have thought twice about the wisdom of it.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” Amelia pursed her lips. “Still, that won’t do for me. St. Mary’s might accept a woman physician, but they’ll never accept a woman as a student. Not now, anyway. Perhaps in a few years.”

“There is nothing wrong with Royal Free,” Maya said firmly, “And a good many things that are right.” She might have elaborated on the subject, but the cab had just turned down the shabby-genteel street that housed her home and surgery and was pulling up at the front door. Gupta, a shapeless bundle of waxed mackintosh and identifiable only by the white chalwars stuffed into his Wellingtons that peeked from under the hem of the mac, was setting the last screw into the inscribed brass plate beside her door—a plate that proclaimed this to be the surgery of Dr. M. Witherspoon.

“I suppose we won’t see much of you anymore,” Amelia said wistfully, as Maya dismounted from the hansom.

“Nonsense! You’ll see me on Thursday at the latest, or have you forgotten our luncheon date?” Maya replied instantly. “Not to mention that you are welcome here at any hour of the day or night. Now, you go back to your studies, while I see what Gupta has found for me.”

She circled around to the driver, perched up above the passenger compartment in the weather, and handed him a guinea—more than enough for her fare and Amelia’s with a generous tip. “London School of Medicine for Women, please,” she told him briskly. “My companion has a class at two.”

“I’ll ‘ave ‘er there well afore, ma’am,” the cabby said, impressed by the guinea, if by nothing else. He chirruped to his horse, who trotted off without needing a slap of the reins or a touch of the whip. Amelia’s gray-gloved hand waved farewell from the side of the cab, and Maya turned to Gupta.

“Was this bravado or anticipation, my friend?” she asked in Hindustani, touching the plaque.

“Neither, mem sahib,” Gupta replied. “We knew, we all knew, you could not fail.” His round, brown face held an expression of such earnest certainty that she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.

“Well, let us go in out of this miserable weather. Come to me in the conservatory, and tell me what has happened to make you so sure of me.” She waited while he put a last polish to the plate with a rag he stuffed back in his pocket, then moved past him into the little house she had bought to shelter her odd little “family.”

It had taken most of her inheritance to buy it and fit it up, and had it been in better repair, or a better neighborhood, she could not have managed it. But because it was so shabby and had required the tearing out of walls, she had been able to install a great many comforts that better dwellings could not boast. The house was lit by electric light, which was much safer than gas. Hot water from a coal-fired boiler in the cellar circulated through the house via pipes and radiators, a luxury often used to keep conservatories and hothouses warm in winter on the Great Estates. More hot water was available for cleaning and bathing at all times, laid on in the bathrooms, without the need to heat water on the stove and carry it up in cans. At last she was warm enough so that she was able to throw off her coat as soon as she entered the front hall.

She had arranged for the hallway to be painted, rather than papered, in white. Furnished with pegs for coats, a bench for waiting patients, and a small table holding a brass dish from India for calling cards, she had hung prints of some of her father’s favorite paintings on the walls. The impression was warmer than that of a hospital, but not “homelike”—wise, since this was the entrance to her surgery as well as to her home.

It was scarcely possible that she would have any patients calling yet, and she longed to shed her woolen suit with the coat and revert to more comfortable garb.

Not yet. Not yet. But I shall be rid of these confounded shoes! Why is it that attractive shoes are a torture to wear?

Hanging her coat on its peg in the hall, she passed the door to her examining room and surgery (formerly the parlor and smoking room) and climbed the stairs to the next floor. Here were the bedrooms, all alike, and the bathroom fitted up with the most modern of appointments. Her room was at the back of the house, away from street noise. The second bedroom, connected to hers, served as her parlor and sitting room.

Gupta had the third bedroom, and his son Gopal and his son’s wife Sumi the fourth. Gopal and Sumi’s four children shared the nursery on the floor above, where the servants’ quarters had once been. Gupta had been her father’s friend as well as his servant—but more importantly, he had been Surya’s devoted guardian. There had been no question of whether or not the family would emigrate when Maya fled to England; she would have had to lock them all in prison to prevent them from coming with her.

Gupta had seen a great deal in his fifty-odd years, and she rather thought he was unshockable, which was just as well, considering what she was planning. She needed the help of a male to carry it out, and Gupta was the ideal man for the job.

The door to her bedroom stood invitingly open, and she hurried through it. With a sigh of relief, she sank down into a chair and unlaced her shoes. Exchanging them for soft leather slippers, she hesitated a moment, then shrugged.

Ridiculous. There is no reason to go out, and unlikely that anyone but a friend will call. I am gettingout of this rig!

The rooms of this house were so tiny, compared with those in the bungalow in India. She had enough room to pass between the pieces of furniture, chair, bed, trunk, wardrobe, and table, but no more. Never, ever would she have needed the featherbed at home! Here, it, and the down-filled duvet and woolen blankets were absolute necessities, for not even the hot-water pipes could prevent the house from cooling at night.

In a trice, she slipped off the coat and skirt of her suit and hung them up on the outside of the mahogany wardrobe to be brushed later. The shirtwaist followed, then the corset cover, which she laid on the lace coverlet of the bed, and at last she could unhook the front busk of the corset and rid herself of the unwelcome constriction. At last she could move! She never laced her corsets anywhere near as tight as fashion dictated; she flattered herself to think that she didn’t need to. Nevertheless, the garment restricted movement, if only because it was designed around what a lady would consider appropriate movement. Maya had chafed against those restrictions as a girl, and her feelings hadn’t changed in the least now that she was an adult.

Fashion be hanged.

The corset joined the rest of her undergarments on the bed. Donning a far more comfortable flannel wrapper dress of a chocolate brown over her uncorseted petticoat, she went back out into the hall, then descended the stair at her end of the upstairs hall, passing the kitchen on her way to the conservatory. Gopal was in the throes of creativity in there, and she paused a moment to sniff the heavenly, familiar aromas appreciatively. Gopal had reacted to the presence of the modern iron stove set into the arch of the fireplace with tears of joy—though many of his countrymen preferred to cook over a tiny charcoal fire, Gopal was an artist and appreciated good tools. With so many thousands of British soldiers and civilians going out to Colonial Service and returning with a hunger for the foods they had grown accustomed to, it was a simple matter for Gopal to procure virtually any spice or foodstuff he required for them all to eat the way they had at home.

Home. Odd how the other Eurasians she had met would speak of Britain as Home—a “home” they had never seen—with as much longing as the expatriates. Home for Maya was and always would be India, the place where she had been born and where she had spent most of her life. How could you long for a place you had never even seen?

She stepped through the French doors into the warmth of her conservatory—which had required the lion’s share of her inheritance to build—and was almost Home.

A little judicious use of magic had caused the flowering vines planted around the walls of the conservatory to grow at an accelerated pace, hiding the brickwork and the view of the houses on all sides. Passion flowers flung their great starburst blooms against the green of the vines. In bloom at all times and seasons, they filled the air with perfume, as did the jasmine, both day-and night-blooming. A fountain and generous pool added warm humidity and the music of falling water, the hot-water pipes around the perimeter a tropical heat. Here were the flowers she loved, and here, too, were her pets—

Not pets. Friends.

They rushed to greet her as soon as she set food on the gravel of her path—first the pair of mongooses, Sia and Singhe, romping toward her with their peculiar humpbacked gait. Rhadi, the ring-necked parrot, dove for her right shoulder, long tail trailing out behind him like a streamer, while the saker falcon Mala dropped down onto her left. Neither so much as scratched her skin, so soft footed were they, and though Mala was death incarnate to the sparrows, starlings, and pigeons, he would sooner starve than touch a feather of Rhadi’s head. The peacock Rajah strode toward her with more dignity, his tail spread for her admiration. And last of all, Charan, her little monkey, sprang into her arms as soon as she held them out for him. Only the owl, named Nisha, whose round eyes seemed to stare straight into one’s heart, did not stir from her slumber in the hollow of a dead oak tree that showed what a fine garden had once stood here. Maya had left it there for the benefit of her birds, who all found it a fine place to perch, and the vines twined around it just as happily as they climbed the brick of the walls, giving it a kind of new life.

“And have you been good?” she asked them all, as the mongooses romped around her ankles and the monkey put his arms around her neck, chattering softly into her ear. The falcon gave her a swift touch of his beak by way of a caress, and took off again to land in the tree.

The peacock shivered his tail feathers, and Rhadi said in his clear little voice, “Good! Good!” and laughed, following Mala up into the tree.

She laughed with him, and carried Charan to her favorite seat in the garden, a closely woven rattan chair with a huge back that mimicked a peacock’s tail. From here she could see only the green of her plants, the fountain and pool; she could forget for a while the cold world outside.

In a moment, Gopal brought mint tea, and placed the tray with two glasses on the rattan table beside her. Gupta arrived without a sound, as was his wont, materializing beside her and taking a second, smaller chair on the other side of the table, also facing the pool and fountain. He poured for both of them, and they each took a moment to savor the hot sweetness in companionable silence.

“We will prosper, mem sahib,” Gupta said with satisfaction, putting his glass back down empty. “We will prosper. There is great progress today.” He smiled. “I went, as you instructed, to the theater last night. I left your card with the man who attends to the stage door, and also with the stage manager, and the ballet master. I made mention that you were of liberal mind, and not one of those inclined to attempt reform on those who were merely making a living for themselves. It was he who asked for several more cards, on seeing it and hearing my words, and made me to believe that he would be giving them to some of the young ladies.”

“Aha!” Maya responded. The cards she had given to Gupta, unlike her “official” business cards, had not been printed up, but had been calligraphed elegantly and by her own hand, because what they implied was risky, even scandalous.

Doctor Maya Witherspoon, Lady Physician. Female complaints. Absolute discretion, and her address. On the next lot, she would add, Licensed to practice at St. Mary’s, Paddington, and Royal Free Hospital.

What the cards implied was that she would treat the women who came to her for treatment of their “female complaints”—including inconvenient or unwedded pregnancy—without a lecture or a word slipped outside the office. And that she would give instructions and supplies to prevent inconvenient pregnancy, regardless of marital status.

“Ah, but I was wise and cunning, mem sahib,” Gupta continued, his face wreathed in smiles. “I followed well-dressed gentlemen as they left the theater last night, and marked the houses they went to. This morning I looked the houses over, and chose the finest. There, too, did I leave your card, and pleased were the dwellers in those places to see it, though one did sigh that it was too bad you were a lady and they could not pay for your services with an exchange of trade.”

“Gupta!” she exclaimed, and giggled, although her cheeks did heat up. “That was very well done! How clever of you!” She had not been able to work out a way to get her cards into the hands of the mistresses of the wealthy men of London. Now Gupta had managed that, and once one or two of the “Great Horizontals” came to her, they would see that the rest of their set knew her name.

“Yes,” Gupta replied, not at all modest. “I know, mem sahib. I think you will have callers tomorrow, if not today.” He cast his eye around the garden, which was growing darker as evening approached. “Will you have your tea here, mem sahib? I could light the lamps.”

“Please,” she said, as Charan nestled down into a corner of the chair. “And if friends call, bring them here instead of the parlor.”

“And callers of another sort?” Gupta raised his eyebrows to signal what he meant.

“Use your own judgment,” she told him. “You are a wise man, Gupta; I think you will know best whether to summon me to the office or bring the caller here.”

Gopal soon brought her tea, a hybrid mix of the High Teas of India and of Britain. She shared the feast with her menagerie, other than Mala and Nisha, who ate only what they hunted, or the starlings and pigeons Gopal’s eldest boy brought down with his catapult. Charan adored the clotted cream, as did Sia and Singhe; the latter swarmed up her skirt into her lap to lick their paws and faces clean as Rajah picked at the last tea-cake.

There is one good thing about this cold country, she thought, scratching the two little rowdies under their chins. It is too cold for snakes.

Or at least, it was at the moment.

She could only pray it would remain that way.

2

Gopal had come and gone, taking the tea things with him, and Maya retreated to a hammock swung between two vine-covered posts in lieu of the tree trunks that would have suspended it back home. Surrounded by scented warmth, cradled in the gently swaying hammock, she closed her eyes and listened to the play of the water in her fountain, the soft chatter of the mongooses and the parrot. This time of the afternoon, full of shared treats, they all felt sleepy and were inclined to nap. Mala had been fed late this morning, and Nisha would be fed once dusk settled, so they, too, were content to doze. Charan curled up beside her, a little soft ball with his head pillowed against her cheek and both arms wrapped around her neck, and she had actually begun to doze when Gupta reappeared, waking her.

Charan awoke, too, and scampered up to an observation post in the dead tree. “Mem sahib, you have a caller,” Gupta said, his expression one of intense satisfaction. He made a grand gesture toward the front of the house. “This will be a client, I do believe. I have taken her to the surgery office. She waits there for you.”

Oh, heavens! She quickly tilted herself out of the hammock, glad that she had at least not taken her hair down, and that the sober brown dress disguised its comfort in its severity. Primly buttoned up to the neck, waistband tightened, and cuffs twitched straight, it would pass for professional attire. With a pat to her hair, she followed Gupta inside, and hurried to the surgery itself, for it would not do to have a potential client see her enter by the same door that the client herself had used. She passed through it, wrinkling her nose a trifle at the familiar scent of carbolic, entering the office from the surgery door rather than the hall door.

This was a comfortable room, meant to be the very opposite of the kind of office that Doctor Clayton-Smythe had. The wallpaper, a warm Morris print, softened the impression given by the rows of medical texts on the wall and the plain, uncompromising desk. The woman waiting there stood up slowly. The velvet coat lying beside her, the collar of jet beads at her throat, and the abundance of maroon lace making up the ornamentation of her deep red dress was nothing at all compared to the impact of her wide, limpid blue eyes and the shining mass of her golden hair. She could have been the wife of a peer, or a successful man of business—could have been, but was not. There was something indefinable about her dress and air—or perhaps it was only Maya’s own ability to see deep past the surface of things. At any rate, there was no doubt in the young doctor’s mind that this was one of the ladies with whom Gupta had left her card this morning.

Maya extended her hand across her desk, and it was taken tentatively by the other. “I am Doctor Witherspoon,” Maya said, in a firm, but friendly tone. “Would you care to have a seat and tell me what brings you to my surgery, Miss—” she hesitated just a moment, then finished, “—Smith?” A raised eyebrow meant to convey a tacit understanding that there would be no real names used here evidently translated her meaning perfectly.

The woman released Maya’s hand, and a smile curved those knowing lips, about which there was more than a suggestion that the ruddy color was not entirely due to the hand of nature. Certainly the pure, pale complexion had nothing at all to do with nature, and very much to do with the ingestion of tiny daily doses of arsenic or lead, a dangerous practice that many professional beauties resorted to, sometimes with fatal results. “Very good,” she said, seating herself. “Miss Smith, indeed, will do as well as any other name.”

Maya seated herself and folded her hands on the top of her desk. “Does anything bring you here besides curiosity, Miss Smith?”

“Your card.” The woman slipped two fingers inside a beaded reticule and extracted the rectangle of heavy card stock. “I came to see—” She seemed for a moment at a loss for words.

“To see the horse, and perhaps try its paces?” Maya supplied, and again that winsome smile appeared. Calculated, perhaps, but this lady was a professional in every sense.

“Indeed. And I am not disappointed, although I expected to be. Too often those who advertise discretion are anything but discreet.” Miss “Smith” placed the card back in her reticule. Maya made another addition to her mental assessment; though her caller might look little more than eighteen, she was much older—in spirit and experience if not in years. “As you might assume, although I am currently in good health with no—complaints—I am in need of a personal physician. As are several of my particular—circle. We conferred over tea, my friends of the theater and I, and I was chosen to approach you.”

Aha. Candor. I, too, shall be candid. So this lady was from the theater—not in the chorus, probably not a dancer, or she might have mentioned it.

“In that case, if you will give me your medical history and any trifling troubles that might concern you, perhaps we can see if we shall suit each other.” Maya took out a sheet of foolscap and dipped a pen in the inkwell, labeled it as “Miss Smith,” and looked up attentively.

At the end of an hour, Maya had a reasonable history, along with some cautious advice for the “trifling troubles” the lady confessed to. The best advice she did not bother to give. There was no point in telling her new patient not to stay up until dawn, not to starve herself for days only to overindulge at a party or dinner engagement, and not to drink so much champagne.

I would like her to make some small changes in her diet. But not yet; I had better coat the bitter pill with sweetness. “Miss Smith, you need a rest, but I know you cannot afford to take one, at least, not until the theater season is at an end,” she advised briskly. “Failing a little excursion to a sunnier clime, you should take fresh fruit at every meal. Especially citrus or hothouse fruits.”

Miss Smith looked surprised, then calculating, and nodded. Maya had expected as much. The young woman had not gotten where she was now without being clever as well as beautiful, and it probably occurred to her that not only would the request for fruits instead of chocolates or wine cause her admirers just as much effort, and would be quite as expensive a way to show their interest, it would indicate a certain delicacy of body and mind on her part. That might, in turn, increase the attentions of those with better-lined pockets, who preferred that their mistresses be above the common touch.

“On the other hand, don’t starve yourself on thin consomme and broth,” Maya continued. “Small portions will do you more good than starving; leave off the sauces and butter, and vegetables will serve you better than breads. There is no harm at all in having very lean meat, but do avoid fat. Fat is very hard for a delicate appetite. Fish, on the other hand is excellent.”

“Lobster?” Miss Smith ventured, hopefully. “Oysters?”

To accompany all that champagne? “All very well, but avoid rich sauces. They are often used to mask shellfish that are no longer wholesome, and can you afford a month of wretchedness for the sake of a lobster bisque?” Maya asked shrewdly. “A case of food poisoning would keep you off the stage for at least that long. Miss Smith, this is advice unsolicited, but it pays one to know precisely what transpires in one’s kitchen. There are much worse things that could come from that domain than merely being cheated by the cook.”

This time Miss Smith nodded knowingly. “My cook lives in terror of me,” she replied with a real smile this time. “What of the shortness of breath?”

Don’t lace your corsets so tightly and exercise, my dear.

“As you are in the theater, I venture to guess you might find a Shakespearean coach who would give you fencing lessons; loosen your corsets or do without altogether for that hour, and put the same effort into it that he does. You might be surprised at how flexible fencing lessons can make one,” Maya told her instantly. “You might also consider dancing lessons every day; good, brisk ones, perhaps with the ballet. The same lessons that make them so graceful will do the same for you—”

“Fencing lessons are quite fashionable, are they not?” the young woman said, after a moment staring off into space in thought. “The theater director might be pleased to find I’m taking them, and he’s mentioned dancing class once or twice as well.”

Ah. Music hall, operetta, or popular theater, I think. She is probably playing the“Ingénue” and the “Innocent Maid.” And she wants to stay the Ingénue for as long as she can.

“Quite,” Maya reassured her. “Now wait one moment; I will go and fetch a prescription I think will please you better than any pill or patent medicine to ensure a perfect complexion.”

She rose and went to a very special cupboard which stood in the surgery office in place of one of the bookcases. From it, she brought out a carved sandalwood box, which she took to the desk, opening it to Miss Smith’s curious gaze. It contained six carved stone jars.

“These are from India, are they not?” Miss Smith asked, newly aroused interest causing her intense blue eyes to shine in a way that must have been irresistible to any man. “Like…” she began, then flushed, and put her hand in its red-silk glove to her lips.

“Like me, you were about to say?” Maya laughed. “Miss Smith, I cannot conceal my parentage, so I do not trouble to try. But because of my parentage…” She lowered her voice, and Miss Smith leaned forward eagerly. “Because my mother was of great learning in the ancient ways of her people, I have knowledge that is not accessible to those of this land. My mother’s people believe that female beauty is a thing to be cultivated and made to flourish, then preserved for as long as she lives. They do not believe that it is a sin to be lovely. I do not only supply physic internally, Miss Smith, I am prepared to supply it externally as well.”

Great good heavens, I sound like a patent medicine man! But Miss Smith took in the words with parted lips and shining eyes, and Maya continued in the same vein. “Here are my special balms and lotions, meant to enhance and preserve against the threats of cruel weather and the hand of time. I have an apothecary at my disposal. He compounds them under my strict supervision.”

She wrote down the name and address of the apothecary at the end of the street with whom she had set up her arrangement. She supplied the herbs, after a little preparation of her own, and he did the rest. There was more in those jars than just salves and balms; there was magic there, magic infused into the herbs with which they were made. It was not a magic that would ensnare a man’s mind and passion for all time (although she could, but would not, do that as well). This was the gentle magic of the earth, green magic, Maya’s own. It fed and nurtured, fed the generous instincts that were part of man or woman, creating a beauty that would not fade.

The young woman took out one of the jars, a gentle face cream compounded of aloe, rosewater, glycerin, and several healing herbs. She opened it gingerly and sniffed. Her face reflected her delight in the scent of roses that wafted up from the cream. “They are very effective, far more so than anything that you will have seen heretofore. See—here they are labeled, each for what it is for. You can leave off whatever you have been doing and use these preparations exclusively; I promise you will be very happy with the results. You may have these to try. When you are satisfied, you may have him make up more as you need them.” Getting her to stop taking those daily doses of arsenic will do a great deal to settle the rest of her problems.

She closed the box and pushed it over to her visitor, who picked it up. Miss Smith’s hands trembled only a little with eagerness. “These samples are included in your consultation fee,” Maya continued. “Now, I think that we should suit well as patient and physician, but what say you?”

Miss Smith replied with a real smile. “I shall be returning—and so will my friends.”

Once her visitor—her first patient—had gone, Maya cheerfully organized her notes under the name of Helen Smith—“Helen,” for Helen of Troy. If Miss Smith’s face failed to launch ships, it certainly had the power to create quite as much mischief as her namesake had. Subsequent patients would be filed under similarly fictional names, memorable only to Maya, so that if anyone should somehow gain access to her records, they would have no way of connecting real person to fictional identity. And the consultation fee of five whole shillings resided safely in Maya’s strongbox; a woman of Miss Smith’s profession might sometimes neglect her butcher’s and dressmaker’s bills, but dared not anger her physician, once she had found one who would not betray her.

A few more “Smiths,” and not only would the household prosper, Maya could spare time and medicines for others who needed them, but had no means to pay for them.

And we can pay our own butcher’s bills. Maya smiled, opened the heavy filing drawer in her desk, and filed Helen Smith’s history away in an empty slot. It would be time for supper soon, and she was definitely looking forward to sharing it with her household, with this much good news to tell them.

Since her father’s death, Maya no longer stood on ceremony with those others would call her servants. Yes, they performed tasks for her while she provided their incomes, food, and shelter, but without them, she would have been hard put to pursue the life she had chosen. Certainly, she could never have found English servants she could trust as she did her little family.

The single note of a gong vibrated through the house, telling her that supper was ready. She carefully turned out the electric light on her desk—a small miracle, one as marvelous as any magic of her own, to make light appear and vanish at the turn of a key! The sun had set while she played hostess to Miss Smith, and now the only light came from the corner gaslight out on the street. She shivered as she left the office, glancing out the window at the shiny, rain-drenched cobbles; it could have been ice that glazed them, and not water.

The noise and merriment in the small room just off the kitchen dispelled her shivers. The entire family, including the children, sat on the floor on cushions and carpets in the area that would have held a table for the servants in a proper English household. Maya took her place among them, and helped herself from the pots and plate of flat bread resting on a footed tray in the center of the group.

Why waste two rooms on dining, when there was small chance that she would ever play hostess to a meal for anyone outside her household? The former dining room was now an invalid’s room, a place for a seriously ill patient to stay until she was well enough to be discharged and taken to her own home. And this servants’ meal room was good enough for Maya; brightly lit, painted the same cream color of the walls of her old, beloved bungalow, redolent with saffron and spice, it was another small slice of the place she thought of as home.

The children, who had all gotten training in English from the time they were able to toddle, attended a local day school, and she listened with amusement as they chattered about their lessons and classmates in a mix of Hindustani and English. Their parents and grandfather listened to the babble with a tolerance no English parent (believing the rule that “children should be seen and not heard”) would ever understand.

The four children made enough chatter for twice their number, but Maya enjoyed their artless confidences. Ravi, the eldest boy, was enough like his grandfather Gupta already that the elder man was in the habit of taking Ravi with him on his trips to the market and other harmless errands. Ravi was eleven; his brothers Amal and Jagan nine and five respectively, and their adorable, large-eyed sister Suli was seven and just beginning the schooling that Jagan had already started.

When the young ones finally ran out of chatter, Maya caught the eyes of their parents. “The lady who called will be my client, and will send her friends,” she told them, and was rewarded with smiles and no little relief. “All will be well on that score.”

“Ha!” Gupta said, looking wise. “It is well, mem sahib. Your father, blessed be his memory, would be pleased.”

Privately Maya doubted that her father would have been pleased to learn that his daughter was the physician to music-hall singers and the kept mistresses of wealthy men, but she said nothing to Gupta on that score. Nigel Witherspoon, whether he was in the Christian Heaven that Maya had been brought up to believe in, or on Surya’s karmic wheel of reincarnation, was no longer in a position to judge what Maya did. And Maya saw nothing sinful in what she was doing. I am hardly in a position to judge them, after all, no matter what the vicar at the Fleet Clinic says. I will heal the sick and leave it to Christ to judge. And since He kept company with thieves and prostitutes, I doubt very much that He would so much as raise an eyebrow at what I am doing.

She turned her attention back to the conversation. Gopal was planning a celebratory dinner and required her to make some choices. Not all the dishes were from India—in fact, the party would have a rather eclectic mix of Indian, British, and French dishes, for Gopal was trading lessons in Indian cuisine for those in Continental cooking with an expatriate Parisian cook he had come to be acquainted with. For all I know, she realized with amusement, it might be the very own chef of a Member of Parliament!—No British household would eat as they were doing tonight, with everything on the low table at once, and everyone helping himself; Maya hadn’t actually had meals like this when her father was alive, at least not since she’d come out of the nursery. They’d always kept to proper manners, as absurd as that was with only three of them—later, two—at the long formal table, with servants attending and each course being removed as the next was brought in. But she’d begun dining with the others for comfort and company after he died, and kept on with it. Who was to see or care? Much better to have converted the dining room to a sick room; any seriously ill patient Maya wanted to keep an eye on would find she had excellent care here.

It would be a “she,” of course. Maya doubted she’d get any male patients. This part of London was hardly the abode of the respectable middle class, but those who lived here were not so desperate that they couldn’t make a choice in physicians. This wasn’t the neighborhood of the poorest of the poor—not the Fleet, not Cheapside, and dear God, not Whitechapel. This was barely the East End. On the other hand, you never know. The working-class poor who lived here were also pragmatic; a man might bend his stiff neck to take the help of a woman doctor…

Especially since I’m one of them, in a sense. But a man of this neighborhood would recover at home, tended by his own womenfolk. Only a woman needed to be kept here, lest she go back (or be driven back) to her wifely duties too soon.

The children finished their meal and ran up to the nursery. The other adults finished theirs and began to clean up. Maya took a cup of tea out with her to the conservatory, walking softly. All the other pets were asleep, but Nisha the owl was wide awake, and flew down, soundlessly, to perch on the back of a chair. A pigeon feather caught at the side of her beak told Maya that Nisha had already dined. Maya scratched her just under her beak and around her neck, a caress which the owl suffered for a moment before dipping her head and flying back up to her roost. Maya smiled; was there anything so soft as an owl’s feathers?

It was time to make the nightly rounds. Not for the first time, Maya wished that her mother had taught her some of the secrets of her own native magic, and the enchantments and protections that she had learned in her temple, before she died.

“I cannot,” she had said, her eyes dark with distress, whenever Maya begged. “Yours is the magic of your father’s blood, not mine.”

And she had never had the chance to explain what that meant.