Free Beloved Poison by E. S. Thomson

was calm. He laid his hand on my shoulder. ‘I’ll help you to carry him.’
    We laid my father on a blanket before the fire. Between us, Will and I removed his coat. When I saw what lay beneath, I could not help but draw back.
    ‘Blood!’ said Will.
    ‘Who did this?’ I whispered.
    My father’s eyes flickered open. ‘Nathaniel?’
    His mind was wandering. ‘Uncle Nathaniel has gone,’ I said. ‘It’s Jem.’
    We had no family, my father and I. My mother had no relations; my father one brother, a surgeon on board an East Indiaman. I met him only once, when I was no more than eight years old – a tall thin stranger who looked just like my father, but for his neat brown beard and his weathered face. ‘Are you a pirate?’ I had asked, my imagination excited by his nautical appearance, his tales of wild weather and strange cargos.
    ‘Would you like it if I were?’ My uncle’s eyes had twinkled. My father’s never did.
    ‘Yes!’ I cried.
    ‘Well then, so I shall be!’ He slapped the table top. ‘Nathaniel Flockhart, Cap’n o’ the
Bloody Hand
, forced to roam the seven seas for ever and a day.’
    ‘Why?’ I had asked, jumping up and down beside him. ‘Why, “forever”?’
    ‘Why?’ He lowered his voice to a whisper, and leaned close. ‘Because o’ the curse o’ the Flockharts, that’s why, my lad!’
    I thought he was going to wink, but he didn’t. I thought he would give me a grin, but he didn’t do that, either. In the silence that followed, I laughed, and looked at my father. But my father was not laughing.
    My uncle left that afternoon. He never returned. I wondered why my father chose to remember him now.
    We pulled off his shirt. The crooks of his arms were bandaged; the bandages too were soaked with blood. ‘Jem?’
    ‘Yes, Father.’
    ‘Don’t speak of this to anyone.’
    I was prepared to say anything to keep him calm. To excite him, to stir his pulse now, might be fatal. I nodded.
    He closed his eyes. ‘Good. Now, let me sleep.’
    I unwrapped the bandages. Beneath, at the bend of each elbow, was a hole. Blood oozed out, the way a leech bite seeps long after the leech has been removed. And yet I could not detect the characteristic three-sided bite of the leech, nor the tell-tale cut of venesection. It was as though he had been punctured, and the blood drawn off.
    ‘He’s been drained,’ whispered Gabriel, his eyes wide with horror. ‘Drained of blood.’
    ‘But who, or what, would do such a thing?’ said Will.
    I was about to speak, when I noticed something amongst the folds of my father’s discarded shirt. It was bright, almost luminous, against the white cotton. I held it up between finger and thumb: a single yellow rose petal.
    ‘Dr Hawkins,’ said Gabriel. ‘He always wears a rose. But he’s kind. He’d not do this.’
    ‘Whatever happened here was by consent, Gabriel,’ I said. ‘See how tranquil he is? How at peace? If this had been the work of a fiend he would most likely be in a state of terror.’
    ‘A fiend?’ whispered Gabriel. ‘At St Saviour’s?’
    ‘You read too many penny bloods,’ I said. Poor boy. He would be little use to me amongst the powders and pills that evening. But there were tasks he could do, and I knew the familiar would be comforting. I patted his head. ‘Make us some tea, Gabriel, there’s a good lad.’
    I bandaged my father’s arms once more and dressed him in a clean nightshirt. I made him comfortable beneath a blanket in his chair beside the fire. Behind me, I could hear Will sweeping up the mess. He worked with Gabriel, setting bottles in their rightful place, clearing up spilt tinctures and powders, following the lad’s instructions to keep his mind occupied. ‘Where does this go, Gabriel?’ and ‘Can you show me how to tidy these away?’ But I saw the boy peep in the sack where the coffins were hidden, and his cheeks turned paler still. ‘The work of a fiend,’ he whispered. His hands trembled as he placed the