Chapter Fifteen
Oliver Twist’s Report on the “Country Contingent”
Mac Campbell joined his wife and me just as we collapsed, gasping, back under the same tree that I had vacated to begin playing with the children. All of the little ones piled onto the good doctor and he was happy to tumble with them for some minutes and happy to only end up with one frog in his pocket. Sararati, the “naughty son” of Mowgli and Abdalla, was living up to his mother’s description but Doctor Mac heartily enjoyed the chatterbox’s company.
Finally the children were called away by the nannies to clean up for lunch. Dulcinea lingered in her favorite place, papa’s lap, snuggled up inside his jacket with his pocket watch ticking in her ear. She could not run or rough-house with the others and was half the size a twelve-year-old ought to be. Dulcy seldom spoke, having a pronounced speech impediment, but she was a voracious reader and Doctor Mac pronounced her “all right where it counts,” to anyone who ventured to comment on her many challenges.
Pecos Bill could not contribute physically, either, but Doctor Mac declared him an indispensable member of the community as well. He consulted frequently with Dobbs about what Bill might be thinking.
“Will our patients really mend in a week?” I asked when I could breathe again. “And I did beat you, Lady Rosie. You know I did, even with three pairs of hands grabbing my coat tails to slow me down.”
“I concede you did, Oliver, by a hair,” Rose laughed. “Of course they will. My husband is the best of doctors.”
Visha -- I mean Kera -- she looks like death,” I said bluntly.
“You would too if you’d been soaked in poison for eight years and had to be re-soaked in vinegar and purgative salts and wrung out like a sea sponge,” Mac snorted. “The things men do. Thank God she will survive it. And Florizel’s a tough old bird. I always say when folk have something to live for, they pull themselves through in spite of what I do.”
I grinned. “Every time I know of that they’ve been together she was crying and he was grilling her for information about Dodge. It’s funny you call him Prince Charming.”
“I think she might be in love with him,” Rose smiled. “She calls him her father in Christ, but oh, how she is drawn to him and idolizes him.”
“Florizel’s a lone wolf,” Mac grunted. “I’m trying to imagine him in love and failing. She’d be better off with somebody like you, Twisty, somebody who is at least young enough to know love exists.”
I flushed and looked away toward the house. “She’d be lonely. I know love exists, all right, but there’s too much work to be done for me to give time to romance just now.”
“Sometimes having a warm and lovely creature at your side clarifies the mind and focuses the thoughts.” Mac pulled Rose close. “I am blessed to have three women, but you have to start with one. Celibates feel mostly either pride or resentment over their sacrifice, but never real clarity and contentment in love like we married men can have.”
“I had never thought of it like that, Dr. Campbell.” I looked up from my tablet, startled. “It’s not God’s best plan for a man to deny himself, is it? It’s an emergency contingency. Do you suppose--?” I broke off. “But it doesn’t matter. There’s no one I could even claim acquaintance with, much less love and marry just now.”
Archie emerged from the house and made his way slowly toward us, a tiny silver bell ringing merrily in his hand. “Dinner is served at the exile camp,” he called.
All of us got up and met him halfway. Dobbs guided Pecos Bill’s wheeled chair expertly over the manicured lawn. Mac had lent his cousin the bronze-headed sword cane and Archie leaned heavily on it. Mac slipped a supporting arm into Archie’s and Rose took charge of Dulcy.
“My other two patients listen far better to their doctor than the one who has known me and my teacher all his life,” Mac complained. “What are you doing up?”
“You said I could take short walks,” Archie countered.
“With an attendant,” Mac reminded him. “My stick does not count as an attendant.”
“I feel so much better, Mac. And I’m so tired of lying about, besides the fact that I miss Phoebe abominably.”
“She misses you too, Archie.” Rose’s dimples deepened. “You have been apart longer than this and survived.”
“Am I to lunch with the Poison Maiden today?” Archie inquired as the others let him and Pecos Bill’s wheelchair set the pace back to the house. “I understand she and Florizel arrived with you in the dark of the night, Twist?”
“Truthfully, we arrived in the dark of two mornings ago,” I amended.
“Both of them should be well into the Land of Nod by now,” Mac replied. “And she is more of a spent shell than a vial bearing death at this point.”
“I have to admit I’m glad to hear it,” Archie grunted. “Glad also to hear of her conversion, but I’ll have to get adjusted to the idea of passing her the crumpets at tea time. Or letting her pass them to me, for that matter. Sorry.”
“I shared coffee with her in London, and thought it delightful,” I said with a lopsided grin. “Never gave it a thought. Suppose I should have. Those bread ball things were scrumptious.”
Archie cast a long, searching look of wonder at me. “I heard that Dodge got interested in you that night. Any thoughts about why?”
“I still wonder if Florizel didn’t imagine it,” I shrugged. “I have roamed London for a decade and everyone, especially criminals, knows me and my tablet by sight. Surely if Dodge is a Londoner he already knows about me.”
“He knew about you, and about your tablet, perhaps,” Archie mused. “But didn’t I overhear someone say our maiden called Dodge an ‘eyes on’ type? Perhaps he did, in fact, see you with his own eyes for the first time the other night. Anyone who might actually recognize your sweet face from those scant twenty years of life you’ve lived and have reason to hate you?”
“Hate me? I can’t really speak about that. I can barely tell if anybody likes me, and though I’ve been told there are those who fear me I don’t altogether credit that either.”
“The list of those wanting Dr. Twist dead might be very long,” Rose murmured.
“Mrs. Campbell, you make my blood run cold,” I shuddered.
Dulcy seemed to be trying to disappear into her mother’s skirts at this grim talk and Rose let her cling as closely as she could, throwing her soft white shawl around the child as if it would shield her from the subject. Archie, Mac, and I all favored Rose with incredulous looks. Rose drew herself up a little straighter.
“You bury your head in your wonderful inventions, Doctor Twist, and relish finding the solution to a knotty problem. Don’t you see the legions of wicked hearts plotting vengeance for you tablet’s proofs presented in court? These are living people, black-hearted ones, to be sure, not just puzzles you’ve solved. They must passionately want your problem-solving to stop, mustn’t they?”
“My Rosie always did speak her mind,” Mac murmured as they reached the French doors and let themselves into the dining room. “More of this later, when the children are not present, but apply your great big brain to the problem in the meantime, Doctor Twist.”
Fun-See Tokiyo’s Report on the London Contingent
Madame Phoebe and I spent two days casting about for any evidence that Dodge had found a new funding source to go after. All of our research seemed to come to nothing, however. Even the criminal activity we all had come to recognize as bearing Dodge’s peculiar stamp seemed to have vanished.
“Have we throttled the serpent?” I asked as we looked up at each other from a sea of shipping reports and newspapers. “Might he be truly beaten for want of capital?”
“I can’t imagine that’s true.” Madame Phoebe stood up and stretched. “More likely he has recognized us, or at least some of us, as his enemies and is trying to lure us out and take us down.” We had drawn in ranks and were all staying in the hotel, filling up the penthouse and the floor below.
&nbs
p; “The Poison Maiden seemed so certain that he had not,” I murmured. “Do we dare to trust her, Madame Phoebe? What message did she really send to Dodge? Could he not pursue her to the country home? I must ask these questions, you understand. Annabelle and I -- Our children are there, and she is there, and--”
My Annabelle appeared from the one of the suites at that moment and saw the expressions on our faces. She spoke to me in Mandarin, touching my fingertips. “My beloved husband, I thought we agreed not to trouble poor Phoebe with our misgivings. Her husband and her children are there in that woman’s presence as well. She sent her husband’s poisoner to sanctuary with him, and risks so much more than we do.”
Madame Phoebe knew enough of the language from her travels to blush and I could see that she admired my Annabelle’s transformation more than she ever had before.
“It is true.” I bowed my head and turned to Madame Phoebe, shamefaced. “I am so weak and foolish when it comes to my little ones, Madame,” I said in English. “Please forgive me.”
Zambo joined us with his wife Sahara clinging to his huge arm. “If it is any comfort to you, my Asian friend, we sent additional members of the security team along with Doctor Twist, the Bohemian and the maiden. They have orders to guard her with especial care. God’s angels defend us from demons and men, and sometimes from our own weaknesses, and so do our team of protectors. Whatever the state of her heart, they will do their best to safeguard all their charges.”
“I have a sudden craving for Turkish coffee,” Madame Phoebe announced. We stared. “Will you all accompany me to Uncle Vanya’s cafe?”
“Indeed, it is the last place we believe Dodge may have been.” Mowgli came out of the suite he and his wife shared, Abdalla close behind.
“Cinnamon bread balls,” Edward sighed. “Perhaps I can coax the recipe from Uncle Vanya for you, Elinor?”
“I hope we can coax much more than that from Uncle Vanya,” Phoebe murmured.
Sue had brought us in the catfish since the little shop stood on the banks of the Thames. She had dropped us off in pairs or threes within a few blocks so we could arrive separately and not attract as much attention. When she and Mowgli got to Uncle Vanya’s cafe, however, a “Closed” sign hung in the window. They took a casual turn around the building and were just in time to catch Uncle Vanya as he tried to slip back inside from sweeping the back porch.
“Well, well, if it ain’t Uncle Vanya.” Sue hauled him out of the doorway by the neck strap of his leather apron. “Where you off to in such an all-fired hurry? You got customers dyin’ fer a sample a’ yer fine coosine.”
“No English,” Vanya choked. “Close today.”
“Somebody wrote yer menu out by the front door,” Sue observed, dragging him toward the front of the shop as the rest of us arrived. “It’s plumb good English.”
“My daughter -- She write. She no here--” Uncle Vanya suddenly collapsed and began to weep. Mowgli relieved Vanya of the key on his belt and we quickly entered the cafe. By the time we had congregated in the tiny dining room Vanya had gotten himself back under control and sat tight-lipped, refusing to speak.
“Vanya, we are friends of Visha Kanya,” Madame Phoebe told him. “We need your help.”
“Because of her de Cyclops take my daughter!” Vanya raged, smashing a fist down on the little table we had sat him at. “Never do I harm her, never turn her away, no madder what she is. She drink coffee, she love de bread balls, she make my daughter laugh -- But den she bring dose two here and de Cyclops, he is like a mad man! ‘Ged me de liddle one, de one wid golden hair,’ he say, ‘and your daughter come home. No get heem, she die!’ How can I ged de liddle one? He is vanish up in de sky. My daughter, is she already dead?’”
“Cyclops?” Edward looked around at the rest of us.
“Visha said that Dodge wears goggles in which you can see one blue eyeball,” Phoebe shuddered. “He must be the Cyclops. Oh, Vanya, we will try to help you get your daughter back. I swear we will do everything we can. Do you know why he wants the golden-haired young man?”
“You know heem? You bring heem here my shop? Den de Cyclops giff me back my daughter. Den he neffer come again to my shop! I neffer take da message again for heem. My daughter and I go far away--”
“Do not be a fool,” Zambo exclaimed. “This man murders as carelessly as you throw flour down to knead your dough. You will not save your daughter or free her or ever have any peace by doing the Cyclops’ bidding. Help us to help you save her. Do what you know is right, in God’s name.”
Vanya looked up at the giant black, then around at all the faces of the Legacy Company members. “In God’s name, da, I do whad you say. I defy de Cyclops. My daughter will be wid God eef he kill her. She ees in God’s hands now, not his. But I do not know where he is, or why he want de liddle golden-hair.”
“Did the Cyclops say anything? Anything at all that might give us a clue, Russian?” I asked.
“He haff a peephole back in storage room. He come two, three times, look for Visha. My daughter, she fear him, but he pay me gold sovereign to wait and like fool I say yes. When Visha come, wid dem, he look out into de dining room. And he say -- He say, ‘Greenland’,” Vanya burst out, straining with all his might.
“ ‘Greenland’? What can that mean?” Phoebe puzzled.
“It’s a city cant,” Edward said. “When someone comes from the country, and a city-bred person of the lower classes sees him, he says the country fellow’s from Greenland. It means he’s green, inexperienced, ripe for a con or to be taken advantage of in some way.”
“How does that tell us where we might find Vanya’s daughter?” Phoebe demanded.
“Perhaps it doesn’t,” Edward admitted. “But it tells us Dodge recognized Doctor Twist as a mark. Dodge was once some sort of grifter who had tried to take advantage of him somehow. If Dodge was in the habit of trolling for newcomers to the city, it fits the pattern he follows of taking people unawares, of enslaving them by cunning and ‘slick paperwork,’ as Mr. Guppy would put it. Doesn’t that give us a clue to where we might find him?”
“It is good hunting,” Mowgli nodded. He and Sue had been searching the shop while the others questioned Uncle Vanya. “He would be king of all the con men. We have tried to get information from those who are only gray, who may have done a little wrong, but we must dig into the sewer, the places where evil men know their masters well, admire and cannot help bragging about having served the chief of the tribe.”
“So it’s time ta git down inta London’s underbelly,” Sue nodded. “So be it. Ah’ve tracked in the cesspools b’fore. Mah boots’ll clean up jest fine.”
“Bagheera and I spent a night with Thuu, the cobra who guarded the treasures of dead kings,” Mowgli put in. “All night long he plotted to bite me. I ran across half of India with the Dhole at my heels and cut off the tail of their leader. I have looked evil and death both in the face and I will track by your side into Dodge’s den, Sue.” The pair shook hands.
“Vanya, you must come with us,” Phoebe insisted. “Dodge might come back and do you harm.”
“But eef I am gone, whad he do to my daughter?”
“We will leave him a trail of breadcrumbs and make him believe Doctor Twist is at the end of it,” Phoebe reassured him. “If she is alive, he may be distracted enough following our trail to leave her in peace.”
“I cursed the golden-haired one,” Vanya confessed. “But I bless heem now. He ees de liddle angel who lead me back to a God I shove deep into closet in Russia. I pray, and God send hees strong warriors, all you, to help me fight de Cyclops. You, Madame, are my dark-haired angel. I go wid you, and my daughter is safe in God’s arms.”
It did not take long for me to begin to chafe at lying around in the pretty room at the country estate. Doctor Mac was obdurate about the clothing issue and made sure the curtains were always wide open after I had dealt with life’s necessary tasks. A bright-eyed young black man called Lanton attended to me but insisted
that he could not get me so much as a nightshirt without Doctor Campbell’s say-so.
I had seen these “servants” around the grounds, all of them wearing ordinary, if somewhat more snug than normal, service livery. To my experienced eyes the number of weapons they concealed on their persons and their extraordinary quickness and strength was staggering. These people were indeed like guardian angels, wingless but otherwise strong and ready to lift up anyone likely to dash on the stones and more. They were also ready to hold down a reluctant convalescent, as I had already learned firsthand.
Madame Rose sometimes held the morning lessons on the terrace just outside my window. It was a diverting time for me to know that Kera sat among the children, drinking in the study of the Word right along with them. She suffered no embarrassment when sometimes the children answered her questions. I was not positioned to clearly see her face but I could hear her soft voice, no trace of the irony or the strange detachment she had sometimes shown with me. There seemed to be no poison maiden anymore.
Oliver Twist visited me on my third endless day of confinement since I had awakened, turning his tablet restlessly in his hands.
“Need your advice, Florizel.” Twist was not much for greetings or preliminaries. He was not much for knocking, either. He simply barged in, sending me retreating under the coverlet, and flopped down in the chair Kera had occupied on my first day awake. Twist tinkered with his tablet without speaking for a few moments.
“I can give no advice if I have not heard your dilemma,” I reminded him finally.
“Too true. Well, I’m thinking of bugging off. Wondered if you think it would be too bad of me to give up the country exile and return to London.”
I had frankly been surprised that Oliver had submitted to leaving town with us in the first place. “Madame Phoebe thought you could do your work as well from a distance,” I said cautiously. “You have not found it to be possible?”
“I was trying-- I was reviewing some visuals I made around London, trying to see if I had anything of Uncle Vanya’s place. I know Kera said Dodge hadn’t ever been there before but I still ... It was the only place we had to look. Besides, I’ve heard -- Well, I suppose I oughtn’t to tell you this, but we got word that Uncle Vanya’s daughter, whose name appears to be Tatiana, was taken hostage after we were there.”
“What?” I almost shot out of the bed. I could scarcely restrain myself.
“That’s not the worst of it. Uncle Vanya says she was taken because Dodge wants me in exchange.”
“So he does have an interest in you. I knew it. Do you have any idea why?”
“The folk in London have made much of something he’s supposed to have said when he first saw me. He said the word ‘Greenland’.”
“It means nothing to me.”
“Every time the lads and lasses Fagin controlled brought in new recruits from the country, that’s what they were called. Everyone used that name, called them green, or greenies, or from Greenland. It was code for somebody ignorant, somebody who could be fooled into thinking they were being given food and lodgings by a kind-hearted old man for nothing.”
“So this person remembers you from those days?”
“There were so many of us there with Fagin.” Oliver shook his head in frustration. “Pickpockets, housebreakers, prostitutes. That man’s house was full of new ‘uns and old ‘uns, and he surely wasn’t the only fence taking in innocents and turning them into criminals.”
“Plotting escape, Doctor Twist?” Doctor Mac appeared suddenly in the window. “Don’t even think about talking Florizel into coming along. He has two more days before his clothes reappear.”
“I wasn’t -- I didn’t -- How did you know?” Oliver flushed as Mac stepped right through the large, low window into the room and bent himself into another chair.
“It’s what I’d do if I wasn’t strapped down taking care of poisoned and stabbed people and had a bad guy to catch,” Mac shrugged. “Besides the fact that I’m not a member of the company. Phoebe just told you to go hide and you agreed?”
“It was actually our friend the prince, here, told me I needed to fly into exile,” Oliver corrected him. “And upon my life I wasn’t trying to spring him, Doctor Mac. We almost killed him dragging him to Uncle Vanya’s. I hate blood on my airship cushions, and Tod hates cleaning it. I was only asking him if I should go on account of that girl getting kidnapped.”
“How would that help?” Mac inquired. “You’ve got old Florizel all worked up again just talking about it. If our poor little vessel learns that girl’s been taken she’ll be out finding nasty plants to choke herself with in remorse -- For a doctor you give precious little thought to the effects of your words on people, or the effects of your actions. Phoebe’s got a plan to use you as bait to draw Dodge out, just like she used our Prince Charming to draw the Maiden All Forlorn out, and yet keep everyone safe by knowing where they are. You’d smash that to smithereens if you took off.”
“I’m not a doctor of people,” Oliver said shamefacedly. “I don’t pretend to understand them or handle my dealings with them all neat and proper. That’s exactly why I try to stick with clockwork and steam. I can’t hurt mechanicals. I didn’t mean to upset Florizel and I pray God poor Kera doesn’t find out about Tatiana.”
“Too late for that. The airship’s on its way to London to bring Uncle Vanya out to make bread balls for everybody here. Phoebe wanted to keep him close at hand but they’re all stuffed and he keeps baking when he’s nervous, it seems.”
“It is unwise to keep this knowledge from Kera Mion in any case,” I stated. “Of course it will cause her pain, but she may be able to help locate the girl, since she knows more of Dodge’s organization than anyone. I am assuming the man had no intention of either killing Tatiana or returning her to her father. Most likely he has simply sold her off or is preparing her for sale.”
“That’s the conclusion the London bunch came to as well,” Mac nodded. “She’s not in immediate danger of death because of Dodge’s history as a trafficker first and a killer only secondarily. He might have expected you to jump in with tablet blazing to try to rescue the girl, Twisty, but he’ll know by now that he was wrong. Still no idea why this fellow wants you?”
“No,” Oliver grunted. He fiddled with his tablet and a projection appeared on the wall, Uncle Vanya’s shop with Tatiana unlocking the door in the early morning. “There. I do have some recordings of the place.”
“She looks like such a sweet, innocent girl,” I murmured. “I pray she has not been harmed.”
“Smells like fresh bread and cinnamon,” Oliver mumbled. “Soft cheeks. But I’m guessing not many people know that, Uncle Vanya having such a heavy, nasty rolling pin and such a quick arm.”
“You are fortunate you lived to tell the tale of her soft cheeks,” I observed.
“Don’t I just know it.” Oliver put up another image, this one taken inside the shop. He studied the curtain and then moved over to the storeroom door.
“You captured that when we were there,” I marveled. “I see the movement of the peep-hole cover right there -- See, it opens, there is dark hair, a side-whisker, such as Dodge has been said to have--”
“Close in some more, can you, Twist?” Mac urged. “I think he took his goggles off, the better to see through the peep-hole.”
“It won’t be as clear.” The image expanded and all three of us cried out in horror at the brief image we saw before it went dark.