Free A Christmas Odyssey by Anne Perry Page A

reached down and took Lucien’s arm. “Stand up,” he ordered. “Before we can help you, we need to get somewhere clean, where we can see what we’re doing.”
    “I don’t want your bloody help!” Lucien snapped. “Who the hell are you anyway?”
    “My name is Henry Rathbone. Stand up.”
    Something in the authority of his tone made Lucien obey, but sullenly.
    Squeaky also stepped forward. He could seeother people beginning to stir. A lone figure in the farthest archway was standing upright, one arm bent a little as if holding something, perhaps a weapon.
    “We got ter get out of here,” he said tersely to Henry and Crow. “You bring him.” He gestured toward Lucien. “Give him a clip around the ear if he makes a fuss.” He snatched Bessie’s hand and almost pulled her off her feet. “C’mon.”
    They could not go far. Lucien was weak, and they had no idea how deep his wound was or how long ago he had sustained it. It was bitterly cold outside, and a steady, hard sleet was turning back to a soaking rain. Here in the passages and alleys so narrow that the eaves met overhead, the pall of smoke in the air was made worse by the fog blowing up from the river, so even at midday the light was thin and pale.
    “We need to find somewhere to look at this,” Crow said grimly. “And something to eat,” he added.
    They searched for more than an hour, asking for a room, space, anything private. All the time Crow and Bessie supported Lucien, who was rapidly growing weaker, and stumbling every few yards.
    At last they found a back room in a pub. After a good deal of hard bargaining, threats from Squeaky, and money from Henry, they were shown to one small, dirty room with candles and a wood-burning stove, for which fuel was extra. Squeaky went to buy food and to find the nearest well to fill a bucket of water. Bessie swept the floor after very neatly stealing a neighbor’s broom. She returned it with a charming smile, saying she had found it in the alleyway.
    Crow and Henry did what they could to help Lucien. Crow, who still had his Gladstone bag with him, took out a length of clean bandage and a small bottle of spirit.
    “This is going to hurt,” he told Lucien. “But it’ll hurt a hell of a lot more if you get gangrene in it. That could kill you.”
    Lucien glared at him. “What the hell do you care? Who are you, anyway? Who are any of you?”
    “I’m a doctor,” Crow replied, measuring the spirit out into a small cup.
    “I’m not drinking that,” Lucien told him.
    “You’re not being offered it,” Crow replied. “It’s to clean your wound. It’ll sting like fire.” Without hesitating he jerked Lucien’s protective arm awayfrom the wound and placed an alcohol-soaked bandage on it.
    Lucien screamed. His voice choked off as he gagged and gasped for breath.
    Bessie stared at Crow. Her face was ashen, but she said nothing.
    Henry felt sick. He could barely imagine the pain. He looked at the wreck of a man lying on a pile of rags on the floor, the messy knife wound in his side now exposed, and he remembered the youth he had known a dozen years ago.
    Crow’s dark face was tense, his concentration on the tools of his art: the scalpel, the forceps, the needle and thread. He was an extraordinary young man, not much more than Lucien’s age. Henry realized that he had spent the last four or five days in Crow’s company, and yet he knew almost nothing about him. He did not even know his full name, much less where he came from, who his family were, or even where he lived.
    He watched now as Crow bent to clean and stitch the gash in Lucien’s side. His hands were lean and strong: beautiful hands. And his face was unusual: too mercurial to be handsome, too many teeth—that enormous smile. He was also skilled.Henry wondered why he had not qualified as a doctor, but it would be grossly insensitive to ask, inexcusably so. He maintained his silence, simply handing him the instruments as he was asked for them.
    It