Pratt forces a smile that looks more like a grimace. One of his two front teeth is missing; the other is rotten and black, and the stink of his breath reaches even to where I sit, on my small stool near the fire. He pushes back his chair and stretches out his spindly legs. “So you see, you and I are both medical men, after a fashion, Luxton.”
The disgust on Father’s face is impossible to miss. “I consider myself a plantsman, first and foremost. And you sound more like a banker than a healer, frankly. But now I know who you are, and how you earn your keep. So I ask you again: what brings you to my door, Mr Pratt?”
“I have a story to tell you.” Pratt drains his tea and puts the cup down with so much force it rattles the dishes. “And a gift for you as well – although you may not want it, after you hear what I have to say.”
A thin blue vein throbs in a crooked line down the centre of Father’s forehead. “A gift I may not want?” he says coldly. “You are trying to intrigue me, Pratt. That alone is enough to make me show you the door, for I dislike being played with. If you have something to say, say it, and make sure it’s the plain truth while you’re at it. I have no patience for elaboration.”
For a moment Pratt looks as if he would try to argue; to his credit he thinks better of it. “Have it your way, Luxton. The plain truth it shall be. My tale is about a boy. A foundling boy, an orphan, no doubt. He’s a strange, half-grown lad. I don’t know how old; at a glance I’d say about as old as your daughter here – this is your daughter, is it not?” He jerks a thumb in my direction. “She’s a bit young to be a wife, to my way of thinking, but to each his own.”
I feel my cheeks redden. “The girl is no part of your tale; leave her out of it, if you please,” Father says harshly.
Pratt lifts his hands in apology and continues. “I meant no offence. This boy I speak of – he came to live with me nearly two months ago. Before that he’d been raised by a local friar; before the friar, God only knows where he was whelped. He’s not much to look at, a skittish, wild-eyed sort of waif. You know the type: flinches when you speak to him, never lifts his eyes from his shoes, a body so thin a strong wind could snap him in two like a dead branch.”
“The company of poets has taken its toll on you, Pratt,” Father says wryly. “Judging from your description, this urchin hardly seems a worthwhile addition to your household. Why did you take him in to begin with?”
Pratt squirms. “Well, you know how it is. There’s no end to the work in my business, and an extra set of hands is always welcome. And the scrawny ragamuffin scarcely ate, so he was no expense to keep. He never took any gruel or bread. Now and then I’d catch him eating a bit of rabbit or pigeon he’d caught on his own. I let him sleep in the coal bin and put him to work gathering firewood and doing errands for the cook.”
“So you took the child as an unpaid servant,” Father observes. “A slave, to put it bluntly.”
“Better that than freezing by the roadside!” Pratt retorts. “I could tell right off he was an odd one, but he did his work without complaint. After he got his bearings, one day he asks if he might start bringing in the afternoon tea for the patients. Like a fool I let him.”
“A fool?” Father interjects sharply. “In what way?”
Pratt wrings his hands as if he is trying to wring the words out of himself. “A fool, yes…I wonder what you will make of this, Luxton – the wretched brat cured my inmates!”
“Cured them – of what?”
“Of their madness! What else is there to cure a madman of?” Pratt rises from his chair and paces around the small room. “Mind you, these were hard cases. Babbling, gibbering maniacs who’d wrap their hands around your throat if you looked at them sideways. Women who cackled like hyenas and tore their hair from the roots. But within a fortnight after the boy arrived, the worst of the lot were lolling about the garden, reading The Times and exchanging pleasantries!” He leans close to Father. “Here’s the meat of it, Luxton: I’m convinced the brat put something in the tea.”
Silence, except for the crackle and sputter of the fire.
“Fascinating,” Father finally says, in a level voice. “What do you suppose it was?”
“Who knows? Who cares? Straightaway I told the witch boy, ‘Whatever tonic you’re brewing in that kettle of yours, I order you to put an end to it now. If England runs out of madmen I’ll soon go out of business, and that means you’ll be out of a home once more; how would you like that, you wretched pup?’Well, I thought I’d made my point clear as day, and that’d be the end of it – but the lad said nothing, just stared at his feet nodding.”
“And then?”
“That was two weeks ago. My inmates – those that are left – are docile as doves, but half the town has gone mad.” Pratt wipes the sweat from his forehead with his soiled sleeve. “Respectable matrons running unclothed in the streets. Grown men jumping off rooftops, screaming, ‘I can fly, I can fly!’ Now people are starting to look upon my business with suspicion. As if madness were contagious!”
It might only be the play of firelight on his features, but to me it looks almost as if Father is trying not to laugh. “Shocking,” he remarks, not sounding particularly surprised. “And did the boy have anything to say about this development?”
“I asked him, you may be sure,” Pratt says, clenching his fists. “I had to find him first; the guilty wretch had disappeared. I searched high and low, until I found him lying in a hayfield, happy as you please. I lifted him up by the shirtfront and shook him hard, and demanded to know what devilment he’d wrought this time! And hear what he says, in his smug, simpering voice: ‘I know nothing of devils, Master, but I did speak to an angel once.’ The cheek! So I shouted at him, right in his face so there’d be no mistaking my mood, ‘Don’t talk to me of angels! The whole town has gone loony!’And the imp shrugs his bony shoulders and says, ‘Business will be picking up then.’ You see what I’ve been up against.”
Exhausted, Pratt collapses into his seat at the table again, and props his head in his hands.
The light from the fire leaps and flickers. I burn too, with curiosity; what does Father make of this outlandish tale? He says nothing for a long time, and then gestures to me.
“I believe I am ready for that tea now, Jessamine.”
I leap up and pour. Father stirs his cup idly for a moment and then raises his eyes to Pratt.
“Who is this boy? Where does he come from?”
Pratt shakes his head. “No family that anyone knows of, or that he’ll admit to. As I said, he was living with a local friar when I came into possession of him. He answers to the name of Weed. It suits him, if you ask me.”
“And where is the friar now?”
Pratt glances at me, then looks away. “Dead. The friar died in his sleep, with no sign of illness as warning and only this boy as witness.”
Father stands. I can see from his face that he has had enough of this man. “It is an outlandish story, to be sure,” he says. “But I am confused; you mentioned something about a gift?”
“I mean the boy, Luxton. That’s him tied up on the back of my horse. I want you to take him off my hands.”
I bite my lip so as not to let out a yelp of surprise, but I bite too hard and the taste of blood fills my mouth. But Pratt called him “monster”, I think. Surely Papa will say no?
Father crosses to the fire. He does not warm his hands,