The Isle of Blood

After two weeks had passed with no discernible improvement in my condition, von Helrung summoned his personal physician, a Dr. John Seward, to have a look at me. For an hour I was poked and prodded, thumped and pinched. I had no fever. My heart and lungs sounded good. My eyes were clear.

“Well, he’s underweight, but he is small for his age,” Seward told von Helrung. “He could also use a good dentist. I’ve seen cleaner teeth on a goat.”

“I worry, John. He’s eaten little and slept less since he came.”

“Can’t sleep, hmmm? I’ll mix up something to help.” He was staring at my left hand. “What happened to your finger?”

“Doctor Pellinore Warthrop chopped it off with a butcher knife,” I replied.

“Really? And why would he do that?”

“The risk was unacceptable.”

“Gangrene?”

“Pwdre ser.”

Baffled, Seward looked at von Helrung, who laughed nervously and waved his hand in a vague circle.

“Oh, the children, ja? So robust, their imaginations!”

“He cut it off and put it in a jar,” I said, as von Helrung, standing slightly behind Seward, violently shook his head.

“Did he? And why did he do that?” Seward asked.

“He wants to study it.”

“Couldn’t he have done that when it was still attached to your hand?”

“My father was a farmer,” von Helrung announced loudly. “And one day a cow would get sick, she would lie down, and no coaxing would bring her back up. ‘There is nothing to be done, Abram,’ my father would tell me. ‘When an animal gives up like that, it has lost its will to live.’”

“Is that it?” Seward asked me. “Have you lost your will to live?”

“I live here. I don’t want to be here. Is that the same thing?”

“It could be melancholia,” surmised the young doctor. “Depression. That would account for the loss of appetite and the insomnia.” He turned to 220;Do you ever have thoughts of killing yourself?”

“No. Other people sometimes.”

“Really?”

“No, not really,” von Helrung put in. Nein!

“And I have.”

“You have…”

“Killed other people. I killed a man named John Chanler. He was the doctor’s best friend.”

“You don’t say!”

“I do not think that he did!” von Helrung barked in a voice just shy of a shout. “He has bad dreams. Very bad dreams. Terrible nightmares. Ach! He is talking about the dreams. Aren’t you, Will?”

I lowered my eyes and said nothing.

“Well, I can’t find anything physically wrong with him, Abram. You may want to consult an alienist.”

“To confess, I have been thinking of bringing in an expert in the field.”

The “expert” arrived at the Fifth Avenue brownstone the following afternoon—a soft knock on the door, and then von Helrung poked his mane of white hair into the room, saying over his shoulder to someone in the hall, “Gut, he is presentable.”

I heard a woman’s voice next. “Well, I should hope so! You did tell him I was coming, didn’t you?”

He stepped lightly to one side, and in charged a dynamo draped in lavender, wearing a fashionable bonnet and carrying a matching umbrella.

“So this is William James Henry,” she said in a refined East Coast accent. “How do you do?”

“Will, may I present my niece, Mrs. Nathaniel Bates,” said von Helrung.

“Bates?” I repeated. I knew that name.

“Mrs. Bates, if you please,” she said. “William, I have heard so much about you, I cannot help but feel we’ve known each other for years. But stand up and let me get a look at you.”

She took my wrists into her gloved hands and held my arms out from my sides, and puckered her lips in disapproval.

“Much too thin—and how old is he, Uncle? Twelve?”

“Thirteen.”

“Hmmm. And short for his age. Stunted growth for lack of proper nutrition, I would say.” She squinted down her nose at my face. She had bright blue eyes like her uncle’s. And, like his, they seemed to shine by their own soulful light, insightful, a bit wistful, kind.

“I would not speak ill of any gentleman

,” she said. “But I am not impressed with the rearing abilities of Dr. Pellinore Warthrop. Uncle, when was the last time this child had a bath?”

“I don’t know. Will, how long has it been since you’ve bathed?”

“I don’t know,” I answered.

“Well, here is the problem as I see it, William, and that is, if one cannot remember the last time one had a bath, it is probably time to take one. What is your opinion?”

“I don’t want to take a bath.”

“That is a desire, not an opinion. Where are your things? Uncle Abram, where are the boy’s belongings?”

“I don’t understand,” I said to von Helrung, somewhat pleadingly.

“Emily has generously proffered an invitation for you to stay with her family for a few days, Will.”

“But I—I don’t want to spend a few days with her family. I want to stay here with you.”

“That is not going so well, though, is it?” Emily Bates asked.

“I’ll eat. I promise. I promise to try. And Dr. Seward, he gave me something to help me sleep. Please.”

“William, Uncle Abram is many things—some of them wonderful and some I would rather not think about—but he hasn’t the first idea how to raise a child.”