Chapter 25: The Curse of the Furies
It took Lian the better part of a week to notice the new arrangement.
Mordred was in his study with the two children. He was working on yet another sketch. Behind him, Roy and Riza were lying on the carpet, engrossed in the work Roy was doing on the slate. He was writing out his letters slowly and carefully, and naming them to Riza.
"This is 'D'," he said softly. "'D' makes the 'duh' sound. Dog and damp and doctor."
"Dragon," Riza added. "Doll."
"Drop," said Roy. "Drink, dream, dress, d-d-dummy."
"What's dummy?" Riza asked.
"Me," Roy said quietly. "I'm a dummy. A dumb boy."
He wasn't really, Mordred thought. In fact, he was uncommonly bright. He seemed to have no difficulty with the idea that letters represented sounds, and he had learned the entire alphabet in six days. Of course, these were theories that most children picked up two or three years earlier than he was, so one had to account for the fact that he was developmentally ahead of the average primer student. Still, he was dedicated, and seemed eager to learn. In that respect, he was superior to Mordred's last pupil.
The alchemist almost corrected the child's self-deprecating statement, but stopped himself. To do so would have meant acknowledging that the children had been talking, and then he would have to make Riza leave. She was in here on the clearly stated condition that she be silent, disturbing neither her father nor her boy.
The door to the study slid open, and Lian came in. "I've brought you your snack, Riza darling," she began. Then she stopped dead, having spied the other child. "Why aren't you at school?" she said sharply. "You naughty child—
"Peace, Lian," said Mordred. "The boy is studying at home for now."
She turned to stare at him. "At home?" she said hoarsely. "Here?"
"That's right," Mordred said as levelly as he could. He could see the storm on the horizon, blowing up into a mighty gale. He could see it, but he was powerless to stop it. "That Strueby girl keeps a poor school, and he will not be attending until there is a change in teachers."
Lian stared at him in disbelief. "Until there is a change in teachers?" she said incredulously. "That could be months. Years, even, if she doesn't catch a husband. You mean to tell me that you'll be teaching this... this guttersnipe at home until that happens?"
"That is what I said," Mordred told her. "He needs attentions that she is unable or unwilling to give, and I intend to provide that until some more satisfactory arrangement can be made."
It was out now, and he waited for the onslaught to begin. She was going to be absolutely incandescent with anger.
To his surprise, she laughed. "You? She exclaimed. "The almighty alchemist, the brilliant scientist, stoop to teaching an ignorant beggar's brat? The man who wouldn't even take city-educated apprentices because they didn't meet his exacting standards?"
"I'm not teaching him alchemy, I'm teaching him the alphabet," Mordred said testily. "There's a difference."
For a moment they stared at one another, his pale eyes locked to her dark crimson ones. Then Lian curled her lip.
"You can't mean it," she snarled, her voice so low that it could scarcely be heard.
"I do mean it," Mordred said. "He will study at home as long as that spoiled chit is teaching.
"You—you hypocrite!" Lian cried, exploding from her precarious shell of control. "When your own son was struggling you didn't lift a finger, and now you want to—"
"Davell wasn't struggling!" Mordred bit back. It was a delusion under which Lian had been labouring for years. "He had a strong foundation in reading and ciphering—a foundation that I gave him—before he ever got near that school. Martins would catch it when he was having trouble, or we would, and we'd help him. This new little idiot's another matter entirely!"
"He was bullied! They tormented him and you let it go on!" Lian shouted. "I begged you—begged you to keep him home, and you wouldn't!"
"He was teased by a couple of ignorant boys," Mordred said, trying to stay calm and reasonable. "It never went further than name calling, and it certainly never became violent."
"Violent?" Lian glanced over her shoulder at the boy, who had his arm wrapped almost protectively around Riza's shoulder. Both children were watching the quarrel with wide, wary eyes.
"That's right," Mordred growled. "Last week the local toughs attacked him in the schoolyard. They bloodied his nose and his shin is still bruised. The boy who tried to defend him was beaten so badly that he wound up concussed. Then the teacher saw fit to flog their hands as punishment for fighting. Not only could they have been seriously hurt, justice was poorly served. I'm not going to put the boy into a position where that might happen again."
"Justice?" Lian cried. "Justice? Where is the justice in doing for a stranger what you refuse to do for your own child? I'll show the worthless little pauper justice!"
Before Mordred could stop her, she turned and kicked Roy squarely in the ribs. He fell back away from Riza, curling reflexively into a ball and using his arms in a frantic attempt to shield his head. Lian let loose a howl of rage, and seized him by his hair, shaking him and striking out repeatedly with her foot
Shocked at this show of violence, Mordred was momentarily petrified. Riza, however, sprung to her feet and smacked her mother's thigh with all the strength in her little arm.
"Don't you hurt my boy!" she shouted. "Momma, don't hurt him!"
She hammered with her fists against the woman's leg, and Lian whirled, swatting the little girl across the side of her head. Riza landed on her tailbone with a resounding thud! and Lian turned her attention back to the boy, foul insults spilling from her lips as she kicked him again and again.
He had been strangely detached from the scene, unable to interfere, but when Riza let out a shuddering, hiccoughing sound that was almost a sob, Mordred sprung from his chair. He seized Lian by the arms, lifting her up and wrenching her away from the child, who was now lying very still. "Lian, stop it!" he barked, dragging her back across the room so that the desk stood between them and the children. "Stop it!"
He turned her around and slapped her soundly. The string of profanity stopped as abruptly as if a sabre had plucked out her tongue, and she stared at him, shocked but oddly dissociated from her surroundings.
"Davell is ill," she gasped. "He's not well. He needs to stay home, where he's safe."
Behind her, Roy Mustang tried to scramble to his feet. He couldn't quite do it, for he was dazed from the assault, but he scurried to Riza on his hands and knees, catching her by the arm and herding her into the far corner of the room. He pressed her into the space between the two bookshelves, and then crouched in front of her. With the wild terror and defiance in his eyes, he looked almost like a mother wolf guarding her young as he watched the adults, alert for any sign of a fresh attack.
His fear and the shock on Riza's innocent face filled Mordred with an intractable fury. He slapped Lian again, and reflected distantly that it felt good to do it. "You needed him to stay home!" he rebutted cruelly, saying what he had never before been spiteful enough to say. "You never wanted to let go! If it had been up to you, he never would have left the house. He wasn't that sick: he could have lived a normal life if you had just left him alone to do it!"
"If you hadn't forced him to school he would have been happier!" Lian countered hoarsely, hatred dripping from her words. "You heartless bastard."
"He would have been smothered! He had to learn how to interact with children his own age, instead of sitting around the house being petted by you all day, and tormenting the baby in his free time!"
"You pushed him too hard! You always did!" Lian shrieked, struggling against his hold on her arms. There was a wild madness in her eyes and she tossed her head so that her loose hair flew. "If you hadn't tried so hard to make him a man instead of letting him be a child—but you never cared what you were doing to him! You never loved him as I did, so caught up in your precious alchemy and your damned daughter! You never wanted him. You—you did it on purpose!"
Mordred felt his limbs go cold, and the color drained from his face. She knew Davell was dead, he realized abruptly. For the first time in months, she really knew that he was dead, and she remembered how he had died, too. "Lian..." he croaked helplessly, the old remorse and self-doubt flooding suddenly back.
But she was in an ecstasy of rage and couldn't hear him. "You did it on purpose!" she repeated. "You built that death trap knowing it wouldn't hold him! You wanted him to fall! You knew he would—w-would—"
It was terrible to watch. She backed away from Mordred, her face contorting horribly, twisting and arcing painfully as she fought the brutal onslaught of the truth. Her eyes, which until this moment had been blazing with the fires of her people's desert hell, were suddenly opaque as two sandstone orbs. She clawed at her throat and let loose a raw ululation of pure torment. It was an inhuman sound, and it made the hairs on the back of Mordred's neck stand on end. The cuvets of alkali metals rattled in their racks, and the children cringed against one another, covering their ears and closing their eyes.
Lian crumpled to the ground, sobbing wretchedly and digging her nails into the dusty floorboards. Horrified, Mordred dropped beside her.
"Lian! Lian!"
Her limbs were rigid and her whole body shook with the force of her anguish. Mordred cast frantically for aid, and his eyes fell on the two terrified children in the corner.
"Go for the doctor!" he said, locking eyes with Roy Mustang. The boy stiffened, pressing himself closer to Riza. "Go! Run, you little fool, run!" Mordred shouted.
Roy scrambled to his feet and tried to drag Riza with him as he bolted from the room. She tugged her arm from his grip, and the boy left her behind. Mordred could hear him stumble against the umbrella stand in the corridor, and then the front door opened. Riza let out a little yelp as she realized that her boy had abandoned her, but then Lian let out a terrible, sundering wail that frightened the girl into silence.
Dimly aware that a three-year-old had no business witnessing such a scene, particularly when her mother was at its centre, Mordred cast a half-hearted order over his shoulder. "Go upstairs, chibi-chan," he said numbly. He was hardly conscious of the fact that Riza did not move.
Lian writhed, trying to claw at her temples, and Mordred gripped her wrists. She fought him, moaning incoherently in her torment. He had read of the curse of the Furies, the mythical harbingers of madness of which the ancient texts spoke, but never before had he seem something so evocative of that forgotten evil.
discidium
The life of a country doctor was a gruelling one. Bella Greyson had no colleagues to fall back on when she needed rest or respite: she was the only physician within fifty miles. She cared for the population of Hamner, about nine hundred people all told, and offered services to the dozens of farms and cotholdings that dotted the countryside. She was the midwife, the coroner, and the archivist for the small community. She also served on the school board, consulted for the town council, and advised the village corporal when he wound up in situations out of his depth.
So, understandably, quiet afternoons were a coveted treat.
Today, the surgery was quiet. There were no mothers coming with earache-afflicted toddlers or colicky babies. There were no old men in the waiting room, looking for sympathy and camphor rubs to treat their lumbago. No unexpected labours in the village or the countryside. No tabletop tonsillectomies or inflamed appendices.
In light of this unexpected lull, Bella had taken the luxury of a long, hot soak in her tub. Then she had made herself a proper dinner for once, enjoyed it thoroughly, and cleaned up the dishes. Then she had retired to her empty consulting room to lounge on the examining table and read that book that she had been meaning to pick up since New Year's.
She was just starting chapter two when there came a frantic hammering upon the door. Though it was rapid and clearly panicked, the noise was weak. Bella hurried through the waiting room, opened the door, and caught Roy Mustang before he pitched forward onto her mat.
He was quivering, his sparrow-thin chest heaving desperately beneath Mordred's cast-off shirt as he tried to catch his breath. There was an ugly bruise forming on his cheekbone, and his lip was split and bleeding.
"Roy!" the doctor cried, gathering him up into her arms and cuddling him instinctively to her soft bosom. "Are you all right? What happened?"
"It's—it's M-M-Mrs. Hawkeye," he choked out, still struggling to drag enough air into his lungs to stop the spasms ripping through his diaphragm. "She's had som-some kind of f-f-f-fit!"
Bella didn't wait to hear more. She shifted the child onto her hip, snatched her bag from the table where it always stood, awaiting such emergencies, and ran from the house. She didn't bother with the door, knowing that Mrs. Parsons across the way would come out to shut and lock it for her.
The livery stable where her faithful Milly was housed was three buildings up from the surgery. The stable boy understood the importance of his duties, and could have the horse in full tack in under three minutes, but today Bella wasn't going to wait. She opened the stall, set the child on the docile mare's broad back, and thrust her bag into his hands. With her hand on Milly's jaw, she led the beast hurriedly out into the sun, then planted one hand firmly on the mare's shoulder and swung up behind Roy.
The boy looked absolutely terrified, perched as he was on an animal more than twice his height. Well, thought Bella, he was about to get a fair sight more frightened. "Squeeze tight with your knees," she told him, wrapping one hand snugly around his waist and using the other to gather a bundle of Milly's mane. She dug her heels into the horse's side, and a moment later they were off at a gallop.
To her surprise, the child did not cry out. He merely pressed himself back against her stomach, and squeezed his legs against the beast's flanks as hard as he could. It was not the first time Milly had carried her mistress without the benefit of saddle and bridle, and she followed the cues perfectly as Bella let her through the heart of town, shouting out warnings to the other traffic.
The shopkeepers and their customers were treated to the uncommon sight of sedate Doctor Greyson tearing through the village, riding bareback with her skirt flying up to expose her boots and pantalettes, her unruly hair flying in a loose plait behind her, and her arm wrapped around a skeletal, half-naked child as she hollered like a drill sergeant and egged her poor horse mercilessly on.
The Hawkeye house at last came rushing towards them. Bella slid off of Milly's back as if she were a limber student of twenty, and not a grown woman more than twice that age. She grabbed Roy and lifted him down, leaving him on the grass as she snatched her bag from his arms and ran through the opened front door.
"Here!" Mordred's frantic voice called from his study. "Oh, god, Bella, in here!"
The doctor hurried into the room. The alchemist was on his knees, struggling with his wife who seemed lost in a frenzy of self-mutilation. Hardly noticing Riza cowering in the corner, or the frightened boy who had limped into the house after her and was now clutching the doorpost for support, Bella dropped her bag on the alchemist's desk and pulled out one of her hypodermic syringes, and an ampoule of morphia. She drew up the full dose—enough to sedate a husky farmhand—and then knelt next to the alchemist. She held the glass syringe in her teeth and wrapped a leather strap around Lian's forearm, pulling it tight against the buckle to raise a vein.
"Hold her arm, Mordred, and hold it still!" she ordered. The distraught husband obeyed her, using his legs to keep Lian from striking the syringe from her hand. Bella flicked the slender purple rope that popped out against the brown Ishballan skin, and plunged the needle into the vessel, pushing the drug into Lian's body. The woman cried out like one in a trance, then went abruptly still as the opiate swept through her bloodstream and incapacitated her.
There were tiny rivulets of blood running down her cheeks, where her nails had dug into her smooth skin. The front of her dress was torn, and half of her buttons were lying on the floor. Bella pulled the rest open and used all of her strength to pop open the busk of the other woman's stays. Since the corset was laced snugly, this was not easy, but they gave way with a ping of warping metal. Lian pulled the garment away and tossed it into the corner. She looked up at her old friend, who was watching her with numb, distant horror.
"Let's get her into bed, sensei," Bella said firmly. "Then you can tell me what happened."