The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [218]
“Take it easy, son,” I said, patting the driver’s bench where Miss Howard had been sitting. “Come on up here and grab ahold of something—the ride’s about to get a little rough!” With a gleeful laugh at the idea of being graduated to the bench, El Niño jumped up beside me and got ready to roll as I turned the wagon around and slapped the reins against the Morgan’s backside. We wouldn’t be able to travel full speed until we got outside town again, but once we did the little stallion showed he was no worse for the day’s work, and as we barreled along we raised such a cloud of dust—not to mention such an unholy racket—that El Niño couldn’t resist breaking into another song, what he told me he’d picked up during his pirating days in the South China Sea.
It was still fully light out when we reached the Westons’ farm, a testament as much to the durability of our horse as to my driving talents. Josiah Weston, though taken off guard by the sight of the aborigine in my evening clothes, told me that the Doctor and Clara Hatch were somewhere down by the stream behind the house, once again drawing. This didn’t surprise me; the Doctor had amazing patience when it came to these things, and if a given kid responded to a certain form of treatment or communication, he could stay with it for days on end. Telling El Niño to get some feed and water for our horse, I took off down toward the stream at a run.
Shooting around the big vegetable garden, then through a cornfield and down along the banks of the loud, clear brook, I found myself getting more and more excited, about just what I had no idea. I jumped and bolted over the rocks and muddy grass of the streambank, searching for the Doctor and Clara but not finding them right off; and, even though I knew that they wouldn’t be able to hear me over the noise of the rushing water, I called out their names a couple of times, never pausing to listen for an answer. Finally, after some five minutes of dashing and leaping, I caught sight of the Doctor’s back about half a mile upstream from the house. He was sitting underneath a large maple tree, one whose roots had grown out to form a kind of platform over the streambed. Clara was sitting quietly across from him, sketching away.
When I finally did get within earshot of the Doctor, I slowed down a bit. The part of the stream where the two of them were sitting was a little bend where the water spread out into an undisturbed pool, and grew quiet enough for me to hear the Doctor’s gentle voice as he spoke with Clara. He was obviously at a critical juncture in his effort to reach the girl, based on what I could hear of his words:
“… and so you see, Clara, I began to understand that what had happened was not my fault—and that if I only told others the truth about what had happened, it would help. It would help me to stay safe, and it would help my father to stop doing such things.”
This was all fairly predictable: again, I’d heard its like before, from the Doctor, and though I knew enough to approach quietly, I also calculated that a pause in the conversation—brought on by Clara’s silent attempt to wrap her troubled young mind around his last thought—would follow. I waited for it, figuring that at said point I could gracefully step in and break the news that we were urgently needed back in town.
What happened instead was that my jaw dropped at the sound of Clara answering the Doctor in a soft, slightly hoarse, but still amazingly clear voice:
“And did your papa get better?”
I could see the Doctor nod slowly. “He was a very sick man. Like your mama. But yes, he got better, eventually. So will she.”
“But only if I tell the truth …” Clara said, quietly and with real fear.
There was no doubt about it: they were having a conversation.
CHAPTER 39
I did my