Read Beloved Poison for Free Online

finger, as though to brush a tear from its cheek. An ancient fleck of white paint drifted to the floor. ‘And that one is singing. See the lute below?’ The colours were faded but beautiful, ghostly against the dim diamonds of light that filtered through the harlequin windows.
    He jumped down and came over to me. His face was suddenly serious as he put out his hand. ‘Thank you, Jem,’ he said. ‘Thank you for bringing me here, for showing me everything. For being my friend, despite the task I’m here to complete.’ His fingers were warm against my own, his grasp firm, reassuring.
    We grinned at one another as we shook hands. ‘It’s a pleasure,’ I said. And I meant it too.
    I turned to leave; the cold of the place was eating into my bones. But Will did not follow. ‘What’s this?’ He was pointing to a wooden panel, no more than eighteen inches square, that was embedded low in the wall beside the altar. It looked to be made of oak, and was dark and pitted with age. It had slipped a little in its casing, and behind it we could glimpse a dark, rectangular space. Other than a small cross-shaped hole cut into its centre, it was quite unmarked. I had never noticed it before. ‘May I?’ Without waiting for an answer, he hooked his finger into the cross and gave a tug. It lifted out easily.
    Within was a cavity, dark and cobwebbed. I crouched down, and squinted inside. ‘There’s something in there,’ I said.
    As I crouched in the dusty stillness of St Saviour’s derelict chapel, peering into the shadows of that dusty hole, an icy dread seemed to grip my heart. I could not account for it, though after the bustle and din of the infirmary the air of the place felt dead, its silence and shadows oppressed me, and its atmosphere was as cold as the grave. It was a building I rarely entered, and one in which I never lingered. But we had started now, and there was no going back. I stretched my hand into the cavity. Something wrinkled and papery shifted beneath my fingertips. Was it parchment? Dried flesh? I could not quite get a purchase on it, and it moved away from my grasp like a live thing recoiling from the light. But I was curious now, and I thrust my hand in further.
    The object I drew out was dusty and mildewed, and blotched with dark rust-coloured stains. It smelled of time and decay, sour, like old books and parchments. The light from the chapel’s stained glass window blushed red upon it, and upon my hands, as if the thing itself radiated a bloody glow.
    ‘What is it?’ Will’s voice was a whisper, though he could see as well as I what it was that we had found. No more than six inches long and three inches wide, it was a coffin, small and dirty, the signs of the knife that had created it visible in crude hack-marks at its edges. I could feel something moving within, and it was all I could do not to drop the thing onto the floor in horror. What did it signify? Were there more of them hidden in that dark, forgotten space? I stooped down, and slid my hand back into the opening.

Chapter Two
     

     
    T he herb drying room was a small, woody attic in the roof space above the infirmary’s abandoned chapel. Warm and fragrant, away from the noise and stink of the wards and more private than the apothecary, it was my favourite place. Its gabled window looked out across the crooked rooftops of the city to the stubby panopticon of Angel Meadow Asylum, the dome of St Paul’s and the possibility of countryside far beyond. Or one could forgo the view and look down into the infirmary’s central courtyard. I looked down now, and saw Dr Magorian and Dr Graves walking towards the operating theatre. The infirmary clock indicated that we had twenty minutes until it was two o’clock.
    I put our finds on the table, lining them up side by side. ‘Six,’ I said. ‘All more or less the same size but crudely manufactured.’ I pointed to the smallest. It had a dusty, cobwebby look. ‘This must have been the first. It’s