Chapter 3

Doctor Rach was Quite Unsettled

Morning crept over the windowsill like a guilty thing, and pooled on the carpet in the little patches of light that managed to escape the clouds, where it waited repentantly at the edge of the bed-curtains, quite ready to make amends for its nightly absence. Such was the light that brushed across the face of young Jack Darby and woke him from a better sleep than he'd known for years. He rose in solemn but grateful spirits and, upon opening his door, found himself so utterly bewildered by the size of the house that Winston had to be called again to fetch him down to breakfast.

The grandeur of the library and what little he had witnessed in the dark of the night before had not sufficiently prepared the young man for the rest of the manor; Lord Prime was a mixture of every trait that might be called good and noble, and so also was his dwelling place. Artful, varied, rich and yet never reveling in opulence nor falling into the trap of bad taste, the house of Lord Prime could just as easily have been a museum as the home of a nobleman.

Jack had guessed that he might be allowed some small breakfast in the kitchen, perhaps with Winston and the servants, who had all been very kind to him, and that he might see this doctor friend of the master of the house at a later time. He was put rather out of countenance to discover that he was to be ushered directly to a smaller dining room meant for the morning meal, where Lord Prime sat at the head of a mahogany table, reading his letters. Further down the table, Miss d'Iacon smiled at him, a silent thanks for his assistance the previous night, and at her side sat the men of the Bull's Horn Band.

The very youngest member of the band blinked owlishly and remarked that he didn't see why he'd had to be dragged to breakfast when he didn't even live in the manor, but he was met only with good-natured laughs and told to finish his breakfast.

"Good morning, Mr. Darby," Miss d'Iacon spoke rather pointedly, so that the others were unable to ignore his presence, "Your mother arrived shortly before Winston went up to fetch you. She's just in the drawing room, leaving her coat, and she'll be joining us shortly."

"Hullo!" the speaker was young Raphael Foiche. "It's nice to see someone about my age! I was beginning to think I'd forever be the tag-along and never have anyone but my brothers and sisters to talk to!" And Jack smiled back and said that he was very pleased to meet Raphael; he took care to mention the younger lad's great courage in facing the thugs that had attacked him before.

"If that is how a lad of ten faces danger, I should think that when you are a man, nothing will frighten you at all!" said young Mr. Darby, and O'Garvie moved obligingly so that the lads could sit together.

The talk was low-toned and warm, as the terrors of night had long since passed and all at the table were friends, old and new. Of the gathering, only Optimus did not join the conversation, keeping to his letters in calm silence, for he was not given to much conversing before mid-morning. All at once there rose a clamor of voices in the corridor outside of the chamber, and into the room strode a short, well-built, craggy-faced man of forty-seven, with something of a quick-tempered look, perhaps, but smoothed by eyes that showed every indication of a generous and jovial spirit. On his arm he escorted a woman, dark haired and pale with too many cares on her shoulders for someone of her age.

She seemed both relieved and startled to see Jack sitting at the table, and at once remarked, "Jack! Oh I have been worried about you. Are you alright? Dr. Rach tells me there was an accident?"

Jack stood and greeted the woman respectfully. "No, Mother, I'm quite alright. It was a near thing, though. If Miss d'Iacon and Lord Prime had not acted when they did, I fear you would have had a son who was brave, but stone dead." He laughed at her discomfitted face and sat again, and Lord Prime rose and bowed over Mrs. Darby's hand.

"Welcome, welcome my dear lady! We had hoped that you might be able to join us for breakfast, and here you are." He led her to a chair and seated her across from Miss d'Iacon. "Please, make yourself comfortable, Mrs. Darby. Let's not discuss any of the more distressing business until everyone has had a chance to eat."

He turned to the doctor and asked whether he had eaten yet, and the man answered that he had not. Dr. Samuel Rach made his way to the sideboard, and soon made an exclamation of surprise.

"My stars, sir! What sort of breakfast is this meant to be, eh? Cold chicken? Raspberry tarts? And is this a cherry pie I see?"

"My dear Doctor," answered Prime, "I am a grown man and I shall do as I please. If I wish to serve pie for breakfast, then I shall." Then he relented and admitted that it was the birthday of the cook and he had sent her off on holiday to celebrate. All that remained in the larder, he and Winston had set on the sideboard without much thought.

"I think, Lord Prime," spoke the doctor in dry observation, "That you had better hire a few more people to cook around the Manor, particularly if you're to have so many people living here!"

And this was perfectly true, for Lord Optimus followed in the footsteps of his predecessor and was known to be an incurable philanthropist of the most generous nature. More than once he had come upon the poor and unfortunate of the city and put them up in the Manor until they could find work. Some, like the Foiche family, had gone on to become wealthy in their own right, though they never forgot their benefactor and their eldest son was just as often on the estate grounds as in his own home. With the Bull's Horn Band, the Foiche children, the servants, Miss d'Iacon, and the good doctor all so often under Lord Prime's roof, the matter of food and space was brought up so often as to be hardly noteworthy at all. In fact, it was part of the reason that Optimus had begun to consider simply moving everyone to his family's country estate to afford them all more room.

"Doctor, I wonder if you might examine Miss d'Iacon's arm?" the nobleman asked as he sat once more, "It's only an abrasion, of course, but I would prefer that there be no risk of infection."

"Quite so, my lord," the doctor said, "I'll see to it directly. Who was the other patient the messenger mentioned?"

And here Mr. Jerome interrupted to loudly declare, "Well it's the boy, isn't it? I daresay you ought to have known by looking at him! Why, he looks as though he's been boxing with a fencepost!" And the doctor was very put out by this interruption.

"Wallace, won't you fetch my bags?" he asked in his sweetest voice, "I seem to have left them in the coach." Jerome stood grudgingly at a nod from Lord Prime, and scuffed his blunt boots along the boards as he went; "Wheels" Jerome and Dr. Rach could not be called the closest of companions, for where Samuel was reserved in opinion and respectful in discourse, Wallace hardly seemed to care what anyone thought of him at all. At some point in the past, Dr. Rach had made an unfortunate remark, later apologized for, in which he sneeringly suggested that Jerome's dead father, an American, was to blame for his demeanor.

It was generally agreed upon that it was not good sense to have the doctor and the ostler in the same room of the manor for long periods of time.

The latter returned shortly thereafter, and his hair had a curious white tinge to it, interspersed with the brown, so that he appeared to have aged in moments. Shaking the bags and his coat out, Wheels remarked that the doctor might have taken the time to inform him that it had begun to snow outside, and the doctor pretended he'd been quite ignorant of the fact.

"Here now, young master Jack, isn't it? Let's see that shoulder now."

"Oh, sir, I thought perhaps-" Jack began, with an uncomfortable glance around the table.

"Ah, quite right boy. Quite right," the doctor interrupted cheerily, "I shall just have to clear a space in one of the parlors." He pushed back his chair and gathered up his bags.

"You know," he turned to Lord Prime, "I've just discovered that this godsend woman here-" and he gestured politely to Jack's mother, "has studied medicine? Indeed, she has all the qualifications of a proper nurse, but no one will take her on because she's female! Now I call that monstrously unfair, wouldn't you agree?"

Each member of the House of Prime made some mumbling excuse to go and hastily cleared away, for when Samuel Isaiah Rach began to fret about the standards and prejudices of medical care, he was liable to go on for hours at a time in the driest fashion imaginable.

"Brendan, my lad," Lord Prime caught up to the Irishman outside the dining room, "I don't suppose you've anything on for the day?" When the younger man agreed that he hadn't any plans, the elder took him into the library and showed him an old, old volume, bound in cracked and faded leather.

"This is the Codex Quæ Occidis, a book containing dark histories and methods of murder among other, fouler things. I acquired this myself, in my youth, and I faced many dangers to bring it here."

Brendan looked upon the seemingly innocuous book and felt a chill in his blood, and the strange, pale leather began to unnerve him greatly.

"You see, Mr. Foiche, there are four volumes in all, and I've only got the second. I know that Lord Kaon has the first." Optimus frowned when asked how he knew, and replied that it was none of Brendan's business. "Where the third is, I do not know, but my contacts within the city tell me that the fourth volume makes its way to Lord Kaon's city home in the hands of a young man from Germany. He calls himself Dr. Ottenwilder, but he is no practicioner of medicine. Be wary of him."

With this warning and instructions to retrieve the volume or else destroy it, Brendan found himself standing upon the wide marble steps and peering out into the snow. There was hardly time to bemoan the lack of a bright fire and a warm drink when there was work to be done, and Brendan Foiche was not the kind of man to shirk in his duties.

He made his way around to the stables in the back of the manor, and pulled out the bicycle that Miss d'Iacon normally used.

"Where are you off to, Brendan?" Raphael stood at the doorway, all bundled from head to foot in scarves and gloves and a coat that certainly did not belong to him, being several sizes too large. He was just running an errand for the master, he replied, and he didn't think it one a little boy ought to tag along for. Naturally, this only increased the lad's determination that he should come as well, and after a rather well-reasoned argument, Brendan was obliged to take his brother up onto the bicycle with him.

By and by, they came to the place where Lord Prime's contact was said to be, and Brendan knocked at the door.

"Is Mr. Plum in?" he asked the housekeeper.

No, she said; he'd gone out to Fleet Street to speak with a man at the presses about some books, and wouldn't be back until tea-time.

"Well then," Raph said, "To Fleet Street we go!" For he had in mind that the books in question must have included the Codex Quæ Occidis, and that perhaps the man at the presses knew something about the mysterious figure called Ottenwilder.

It was a bit longer to Fleet Street from Mr. Plum's abode, and the snow upon the walkways had turned to slush, stained with the mud beneath and the the soot of the chimneys above. The going was slow, and so, having the stronger legs, Brendan peddled and Raphael ran alongside in the cold up the winding mazes of streets and people to the Ludgate Circus. Down the walk to Fleet Street, with all its printing presses and papers, there were curiously few people about, lending the place a dismal, factory appearance.

Raphael caught sight of a furtive gesture up ahead, and a stooped and soft-spoken man waved them onward. Having noted Mr. Plum's direction, the smallest of the Foiche children thought it best to warn his brother discreetly that Lord Prime's book-buying friend seemed to want them to follow him into Castle Court.

"You had better keep watch at the end of the alley, Raph my lad," Brendan said as he swung down from the bicycle. "One never knows when a too-curious passerby might turn up, after all. And as for the House of Kaon, there's just no telling where one of those deleterious miscreants might dare to show his face. If you see one, give a whistle, then get clear."

Raphael promised to do so with all diligence, and was soon enough stationed at the end of the lane while the elder Foiche took hold of Mr. Plum's elbow and steered him to a shadowy corner.

Now, said he, hadn't Mr. Plum heard some news of the Codex Quæ Occidis or the young man from Germany who supposedly had it? Oh he had it alright, of that Mr. Plum was quite certain, only as it happened, the young Dr. Ottenwilder was not traveling alone after all. He'd an ill-favored fellow trailing along behind, a hulking brute of a man with an old white scar across his prominent nose and lacking one eye.

Mr. Plum had run across the pair of them further down the street at one of the presses, inquiring after the Kaon estates and-quite oddly-asking for the names of the lads who sold the papers in the different corners of the city.

"I thought it all very strange, and there was something altogether disquieting about that younger fellow," Mr. Plum wrung his wrinkled gray hands again and again, "Oh! Such a look he gave me! You mark my words, my young fellow, there's one who would meddle with all creation if allowed." And he posited that he shouldn't be surprised at all if this "Dr. Ottenwilder" had come from Darnstadt, near the Burg Frankenstein in the Odenwald, for he certainly seemed like a student of the infamous Viktor Frankenstein, however fictional he may have been.

"And where is Ottenwilder at this moment?" asked Mr. Foiche. His contact answered that he and his rough friend had just stepped into Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese for a drink, and likely would be out again at any moment.

At the end of Castle Court, Raphael leaned against the wall and tried not to inhale too deeply. The cold and the slush had done little to alleviate the stench of the squalor that so filled so many parts of the crowded city, nor had the liquid nature of the condensation served as any sort of bath for the unwashed bodies passing along the street in front of him. He was so focused on watching the streets and the windows for the tell-tale purple of a Kaon scout that he was badly startled by a young voice beside him.

"Good day to ya, chavy, Any blackguards about?"

The speaker was a lad of no older than twelve, soot smudged liberally across freckled cheeks and bits of straw-colored hair peeping out from under an oversized bowler cap. He whistled like a parrot through a gap in his front teeth and rocked back and forth in his dirty, patched boots.

"Because I think you forgot to look up! There's a feathery chancer ye mightn't want to ignore."

At first, Raph was simply annoyed. He had come across the older boy twice before, the first time ending in a terrific row that had seen the constable drag them both back to their mothers in high dudgeon. The second had ended merely in a trading of amused and only partially hostile looks between them, and now it seemed that the other boy was in the mood to be friendly. His name was Hagen Shackleton, the eldest of many siblings, and so often did he run errands for Lord Prime and Inspector Fowler that he regarded the streets and such missions as his own with a special fervor.

Raphael crossed his arms and remarked that he hadn't seen any feathery chancers and that he thought Hagen had better state what he meant and stop playing about.

"Don't tell me you didn't notice the bold birdie up there," Hagen pointed and there on a filthy, coal-stained roof was a black falcon that sat and watched the street in a most unnerving manner. "I've had my eye on him a while now. He's up near a second-floor window, so that's jammy. Come on then, give yer brother the slip and we'll off and have a bit of fun with the Kaon Canary!" The arrangement seemed perfectly agreeable to Raphael, and so he darted down the alley and whispered to Brendan that he had somewhere to be just at that moment.

The next Brendan and Mr. Plum knew of it, there was a shrill squawk as though someone was being murdered. All eyes turned to the rooftops of the printing presses, where two laughing boys had got a bird by the tail.

"Watch him now, Hagen," said Raph, "Those are wicked claws he's got!"

"Oh nevermind his claws, mind his beak!"

By turns, the two lads managed to pin the falcon's wings to its sides and wrap a jacket around him. Then Hagen placed his cap over its head and said the little spy looked a proper gentleman now.

Out of the blackness of the smoke and the chimneys rose a tall shape, rigid with absolute fury as Bajānā bore down on the troublemaking pair. The sunlight that filtered through the clouds glittered on the blade of a silver dagger he'd drawn from his robes as he moved to rescue his bird.

"Look out, Raph!" Hagen released the bird and swung nimbly out of the way for all the world like a young monkey as he ducked a powerful swing and came up on the other side. The younger boy snatched up his fallen coat and trapped the bird in it once more. He turned once, twice, then opened it again.

The black falcon, disoriented, flew right into Bajānā's face with a terrible cry, and in the confusion Raph and Hagen made themselves scarce.

Down below, Brendan frowned and said that he thought Mr. Plum had better make for his home, as it was not unlikely that the House of Kaon had identified him as an ally of their enemies. Then he strode down the street to find the lads who had caused such a commotion and dragged them out of the alley where they crouched.

"You lads are mad, ye know that? I don't suppose Lord Prime will be especially pleased that you've gone and attacked Lord Megatron's aide. D'ye have any idea what you've done?"

"Well we didn't want him to catch you and the book-man, did we?" Hagen was quite unrepentant. "Come on now, Cousin Wallace would've done the same."

"You're half-cracked, the pair o' ye!" Brendan took no notice of their protests as he seized both by the collar. "Right, see the bicycle? You two get on it and get back to the Manor. I've a book to retrieve." With dire warnings of what should follow should they disobey his orders, Brendan slipped into Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese and shut the door behind him.