I became more than ever determined to stay in London, and I said nothing to my doctors of this new development.
But, of course, the natural perversity of all things dictated that the more reasons I had to stay in London, the more beset with difficulties that prospect seemed to be. I could not afford London on my own, not with my health still so precarious that I could not hope to find regular employment, but finding someone to share lodgings seemed every bit as chimerical a goal. Although Armed Forces training made me at least capable of sharing my living space with another person, I harbored no illusions about the difficulties my temperament would make for anyone trying to share their living space with me. A natural tendency toward the autocratic had not been curbed by either my experiences as a surgeon or as a serving officer, and I had been accused more than once of being dour and pedantic and impossible to live with. Added to that were the new difficulties caused by and associated with my injury; pain made me short-tempered. And I now had a large and ugly secret to hide. I had a good deal of practice in keeping secrets, but this one …
At one point I began making a list of the traits I should look for in a potential flatmate. “Amiable” was the first, “dim-witted” the second. I considered for a moment, added “possibly deaf,” and burst out laughing for the first time since Kandahar.
The conundrum remained unresolved, my savings dwindling at an alarming rate but not yet extinguished, on the day the doctors pronounced me healed—or as close as they thought me likely to come—and I decided on the strength of it to have a drink in the Criterion Bar, where once I had felt myself to be the ruler of all creation.
“Oh, how the mighty have fallen,” I said, saluting the indifferent bartender with my glass, and a voice behind me said incredulously, “Doyle? That’s never Johnny Doyle!”
I swung around and cried, “Young Stamford!” in disbelieving delight. Stamford of course was not young—he had been middle-aged when we struggled through Human Anatomy together, and he had to be nearly sixty now—any more than my name was “Johnny.” But the sophomoric humor of medical students had bestowed fitting soubriquets: “Young” Stamford, who was old enough to be our father, and “Johnny” in retribution for my refusal to reveal more of my given names than my initials. And it could have been much worse.
Stamford and I shook hands, and he said, “Good gracious, Doyle, what have you been doing with yourself?”
“I am only recently returned from Afghanistan,” I said, “and I have been devoting my attention to the question of whether there is a man in London mad enough to share lodgings with me.”
I meant it mostly as a joke, for Stamford had known me well enough to appreciate it, but instead of laughing, he got a very odd expression on his face and said, “Do you know, you’re the second person today to say that to me?”
“Who was the first?”
His expression became assessing. “I’m not at all sure … But then, you might just be cold-blooded enough to put up with him.”
“But who is this paragon? One of those terrifying German lecturers?”
“Nothing like that,” Stamford said cheerfully. He consulted his watch. “If you care to, you can come along and meet him, and it will spare me trying to explain.”
“I have nothing better to do,” I said truthfully and gripped my cane in preparation to follow wherever Stamford might choose to lead.
Outside the Criterion, he hailed a hansom and told the driver, “St. Bartholomew’s.”
“Bart’s?” I said, when we were settled. “Are you teaching, then?”
He gave me a wry smile. “The fate of any man who cannot afford a London practice and yet cannot bring himself to leave London. But it’s not so bad. I like to think that I’m doing my part to save lives by improving the pool of available doctors.”
“I can almost guarantee you that you are,” I said, and I told him stories of some of the so-called doctors I’d met in Afghanistan until we reached Bart’s.
Stamford led me to one of the chemistry laboratories. It was deserted except for a man hunched over a lab bench in the back of the room. As we came in, he straightened up, and my first, puzzled thought was, Why is he wearing an overcoat in here? But then, as he turned toward us, the overcoat flexed around him, spreading slightly before pulling back in, and I realized that it wasn’t an overcoat at all, but a pair of coal-black wings, crow’s wings, and the man wasn’t a man, but an angel.
I looked at Stamford in confusion. “Is that the Angel of St. Bartholomew’s? I thought surely I remem—”
“Him? Oh good Lord, no.” But before he could explain, the angel was striding toward us, his wings spreading and mantling around him. “Human blood!” he said. “I need a drop of human blood!”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Stamford said, putting his hands protectively behind his back. “If you’re turning vampire, I don’t want any part of it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the angel said and turned his attention to me. He was tall but slight-built, with an angel’s long, light bones. His complexion was marble-white, his hair white and as fine as a child’s, and his eyes so pale that they seemed transparent and lit from within—although nothing could have been farther from the terrible light of the Fallen’s eyes. He wore a subdued fog-gray suit.
“Human blood,” he said again. He had a lovely voice, clear and measured, and perfect enunciation. “I only need a drop. I promise it isn’t for occult purposes of any kind.”
“Then why do you want it?” I said.
Stamford said, “Don’t get him started.”
The angel hunched both shoulder and wing—which quite effectively created a barrier between Stamford and the two of us—and said, “It’s a question of stains, you see.”
“Stains?” said I.
“Yes! After a few days, the police have no means of determining whether a particular stain, say on a shirt cuff, is blood or rust or perhaps paint. And they can’t distinguish between human blood and animal blood at all. I’m working to find a reagent that will change color in the presence of hemoglobin, but not in the presence of other similarly colored substances. I think I’ve got it, but I can’t test it without a drop of human blood.” He looked at me beseechingly. I saw that despite the looming darkness of his wings, which made him look taller, we were very much of a height.
It was a bizarre request, but not an unreasonable one, even if it did seem oddly personal, and no matter what the metaphysicum morbi had done to me, I was still human. “All right,” I said. “But I want to watch this test of yours.”
His smile made his rather beaky face quite beautiful. “Of course! Here, I have a clean bodkin just over here—” He did not actually grab my hand to drag me across the laboratory, but it was obviously a very near-run thing. “Here, a beaker and a liter of distilled water. Here, your finger and the bodkin. Just a drop, really, I was being accurate. And I’ve got a bit of sticking plaster ready.” His enthusiasm was weirdly touching—and more than a little contagious. I pricked my finger and pressed a drop of blood into his beaker, then applied the sticking plaster and watched as he stirred the water vigorously until the blood was invisible.