My Anthologie. The Revenge of Feidre Drummond COMPLETED

the Killer and the Rapist

Roe arrived, and taking one look at the sleeping child, opened his kit and ordered me to hold her head back whilst he poured a foul smelling potion down her.

She did not wake, as he surveyed her from head to toe, carefully examining her. After he'd finished his examination,  he began bandaging the child's midriff.

"Raped, broken rib, sodomized, and some bruising around her throat. Her tongue is bruised and swollen,  likely from whoever raped her holding her mouth shut so no one could hear her screaming." Roe's voice was matter-of-fact, but his eyes blazed as he looked up at me.

Skyrie walked to me, seated behind the desk, and took the half empty decanter from me, taking a quarter of the remaining whiskey at a go. "How can we help her?"

Roe shrugged. "Keep her sedated, bed rest. I can give her something for the raw flesh, but she'll have to bathe with it. Have a woman help her, or she'll never recover."

He rose from bandaging her ribs, and Skyrie offered him the decanter.  He took it, and brushed his hand through his hair, the action making him seem his age, not the older, controlled façade of professionalism and careworn years that he showed his clientele.

"Jonathan." Roe's voice was hard. "Hire a governess. Now. She needs a companion who will be a daily influence, to help settle her into a routine."

I continued to stare out the window, my eyes blurring.

Skyrie said, "Wouldn't it be better if she had familiarity, with the servants, I mean to say?"

Roe considered the question long enough I turned to look at him. "Depending on who it was that raped her,I'd say yes."

Skyrie nodded. "So if I were able to employ the staff she was familiar with, her recovery would be more plausible? "

The doctor nodded. "So long as they were not complicit. I'd start with one or two, until she reacted unfavorably to one. I'd then take the forsaken bastard out and beat the life from his body."

Skyrie dropped the decanter back on the desk. "Good idea, Jonathan. The doctor has spoken."

I opened the decanter and finished it. "It was her uncle, Travis."

Roe's face hardened into a mask. "I see."

Skyrie brought out another decanter of whiskey. "What's his habits, Travis? He's one of your patients, isn't he?"

As the only competent doctor in the city proper, of course he was. 

Roe flicked the top out of the fresh decanter and helped himself. "He is. And I'd normally disapprove of your asking, Pa, but in this case, my conscience is clear."

Skyrie smiled at our childhood name for him, and for a moment,  I lost myself in the memory of the hard man who had  found me scavenging for my dinner with the street dogs in Dublin.
He had taken me in, trained me in his profession, and collected strays ever since.

Those of Skyrie's strays who could remember lives before their abandonment wore their names.

Those like me, who remembered only the streets, were given their own name, and his.
I'd kept mine, because unlike my brothers, I'd never recalled my family name. 

Roe had, and had remembered they were healers of some sort.  Skyrie had merely nodded when Travis had told him he wanted to heal people,  not kill them, and told him he'd send him where ever he wanted to go to learn.

Travis settled in the deep armchair next to the window I'd been staring moodily out, the fresh whiskey in one hand. "He's an affinity for powders, a great love of opium, from what I've gathered. I don't really know much more, but I believe it should be enough for what you're doing, Jon."