Charles Sheffield - The Amazing Dr. Darwin

“Twice now you have mentioned the Helm. What is it?”

“Dense cloud, like a thunderhead. It sits as a bank, crouching over the top of Cross Fell. It does not move away, even when the wind sweeping from the top of the fell is strong enough in Milburn to overturn carts and uproot trees. Anna says that it is the source of the fiends.”

Darwin nodded slowly. The two men rode on in silence for a while, both deep in thought.

“Nothing you have said so far suggests the usual mental diseases,” Darwin said at last. “But the human mind is more complicated than we can guess. Tell me, has your wife any other fears or fancies? Any other fuel for her beliefs?”

“Only more legends.” Thaxton shrugged apologetically. “There are other legends of the fell. According to the writings of Thomas of Appleby, in Roman times a great king, Odirex, or Odiris, lived in the high country of the fells. He acquired a great treasure. Somehow, he used it to banish the Romans from that part of the country, completely, so that they never returned.”

“What was his treasure?”

“The legend does not tell. But according to Thomas of Appleby, Odirex hid his treasure on Cross Fell. Local folk say that it is there to this day, guarded by the fiends of the fell. Anna says that she has seen the guardians; that they are not of human form; and that they live on Cross Fell yet, and will sometime come down again.”

Darwin had listened to this very closely, and was now sitting upright on the hard seat of the carriage. “A strange tale, indeed, and one that I have not heard before in all my reading of English myth and legend. Odirex, eh? A name to start trains of thought, if we will but remember our Latin. Odii Rex —the King of Hate. What else does Thomas of Appleby have to say about the King of Hate’s Treasure?”

“Only that it was irresistible. But surely, Dr. Darwin, you are not taking these tales seriously? They are but the instruments that are turning my wife’s mind away from sanity.”

“Perhaps.” Darwin relaxed and hunched low in his seat. “Perhaps. In any case, I would have to see your wife to make any real decision as to her condition.”

“I can bring her here to see you, if you wish. But I must do it under some subterfuge, since she does not know that I am seeking assistance for her condition. As for money, I will pay any fee that you ask.”

“No. Money is not an issue. Also, I want to see her at your home in Milburn.” Darwin appeared to have made up his mind about something. “Look, I now have the responsibilities of my practice here, and as you can see they are considerable. However, I have reason to make a visit to York in a little more than two weeks’ time. I will have another doctor, my locum tenens , working here in my absence. If you will meet me in York, at a time and place that we must arrange, we can go on together to Milburn. Then perhaps I can take a look at your Anna, and give you my best opinion on her—and on other matters, too.”

Darwin held up his hand, to stem Thaxton’s words. “Now, no thanks. We are almost arrived. You can show your appreciation in a more practical way. Have you ever assisted in country medicine, two hours after midnight? Here is your chance to try it.”

“The roof of England, Jacob. Look there, to the east. We can see all the way to the sea.”

Darwin was leaning out of the coach window, holding his wig on with one hand and drinking in the scenery, as they climbed slowly up the valley of the Tees, up from the eastern plain that they had followed north from the Vale of York. Jacob Pole shivered in the brisk east wind that blew through the inside of the coach, and huddled deeper into the leather greatcoat that hid everything up to his eyes.

“It’s the roof, all right, blast it. Close that damn window. No man in his right mind wants to be out on the roof in the middle of December. I don’t know what the devil I’m doing up here, when I could be home and warm in bed.”

“Jacob, you insisted on coming, as you well know.”

“Maybe. You can be the best doctor in Europe, Erasmus, and the leading inventor in the Lunar Society, but you still need a practical man to keep your feet on the ground.”

Darwin grinned, intoxicated by the clear air of the fells. “Of course. The mention of treasure had nothing to do with it, did it? You came only to look after me.”

“Hmph. Well, I wouldn’t go quite so far as to say that. Damn it all, Erasmus, you know me. I’ve dived for pearls off the eastern Spice Islands; I’ve hunted over half the Americas for El Dorado; I’ve scrabbled after rubies in Persia and Baluchistan; and I’ve dug for diamonds all the way from Ceylon to Samarkand. And what have I got out of it? A permanent sunburn, a bum that’s been bitten by all the fleas in Asia, and a steady dose of malaria three times a year. But I could no more resist coming here, when I heard Thaxton talk about Odirex’s treasure, than you could stop… philosophizing.”

Darwin laughed aloud. “Ah, you’re missing the point, Jacob. Look out there.” He waved a brawny arm at the Tees valley, ascending with the river before them. “There’s a whole treasure right here, for the taking. If I knew how to use them, there are plants for a whole new medical pharmacopeia, waiting for our use. I’m a botanist, and I can’t even name half of them. Hey, Mr. Thaxton.” He leaned farther out of the coach, looking up to the driver’s seat above and in front of him.

Richard Thaxton leaned perilously over the edge of the coach. “Yes, Dr. Darwin?”

“I’m seeing a hundred plants here that don’t grow in the lowlands. If I describe them to you, can you arrange to get me samples of each?”

“Easily. But I should warn you, there are many others that you will not even see from the coach. Look.” He stopped the carriage, swung easily down, and went off to a mossy patch a few yards to one side. When he came back, bareheaded, dark hair blowing in the breeze, he carried a small plant with broad leaves and a number of pale green tendrils with blunt, sticky ends. “There’s one for your collection. Did you ever see or hear of anything like this?”

Darwin looked at it closely, smelled it, broke off a small piece of a leaf and chewed it thoughtfully. “Aye. I’ve not seen it for years, but I think I know what it is. Butterwort, isn’t it? It rings a change on the usual order of things—animals eat plants, but this plant eats animals, or at least insects.”

“That’s right.” Thaxton smiled. “Good thing it’s only a few inches high. Imagine it ten feet tall, and you’d really have a ‘Treasure of Odirex’ that could have scared away the Romans.”

“Good God.” Jacob Pole was aghast. “You don’t really think that there could be such a thing, do you—up on Cross Fell?”

“Of course not. It would have been found long ago—there are shepherds up there every day, you know. They’d have found it.”

“Unless it found them,” said Pole gloomily. He retreated even farther into his greatcoat, Thaxton climbed back into the driver’s seat and they went on their way. The great expanse of the winter fells was spreading about them, a rolling sea of copper, sooty black and silver-grey. The land lay bleak, already in the grip of winter. At last, after three more hours of steady climbing, they came to Milburn. Thaxton leaned far over again, to shout into the interior of the coach. “Two more miles, and we’ll be home.”

The village of Milburn was small and windswept, a cluster of stone houses around the church and central common. Thaxton’s coach seemed too big, out of scale with the mean buildings of the community. At the cross-roads that led away to the neighboring village of Newbiggin, Thaxton halted the carriage and pointed to the great mass of Cross Fell, lying to the northeast. Darwin looked at it with interest, and even Jacob Pole, drawn by the sight of his potential treasure-ground, ventured out of his huddle of coats and shawls.