Thorn by Sarah Rayne

homes. He would have to look into that in case there was anything he could use.
    Oliver would remember the notes, no matter what else he might forget. Dan could just recall their father being exactly the same: charming, gentle, unworldly almost to the point of exasperation at times, but razor-sharp when it came to his own subject. Oliver was also razor-sharp on his own subject, which was day-to-day life during the Reformation, and he was pretty well honed on other periods of English history as well.
    Even without the notes, Dan found himself tumbling more or less involuntarily into the mid-nineteenth century: conjuring up a dark brooding madhouse that was a nightmarish mosaic of every bleak house ever created. Dotheboys Hall and Mr Bumble’s workhouse. That stark and pitiless institution in William Horwood’s remarkable book
Skallagrig
.
    He finished the description of his heroine’s prison with relish, and turned with interest to the matter of removing her guardians from the scene for good. It was time for the long, dark sojourn to begin, and it was necessary for the venal Sairy Gamp and the increasingly sinister characters with which he was surrounding his heroine to have complete control over her.

Chapter Seven
    M atron Freda Porter was always just a little bit fluttered by a visit from Dr Sterne, and she was fluttered by it this afternoon.
    She ordered a pot of tea to be brought to her private office and issued instructions that she was not to be disturbed on any pretext short of fire in the house or raging mayhem among the patients. It was not, of course, that she particularly wanted to be alone with Dr Sterne, but it was as well to keep his visits quiet because, aside from his reputation, which was peculiar, he had a disturbing effect on patients – not just the patients in Briar House, but everywhere.
    He fascinated them. Even his detractors admitted this. He fascinated them so much that there had apparently even been occasions when patients had virtually mobbed him, reaching out to him like lepers trying to grasp the hem of Jesus of Nazareth’s robe, or fourteenth-century sufferers from scrofula being touched for the King’s Evil. Not that you got scrofula these days, of course, any more than you got leprosy, but it was irritating and unprofessional to have Dr Sterne being treated as if he was a cross between the risen Christ and Henry VIII, and Matron Porter was not going to have it in Briar House, never mind what might go on elsewhere. Nor was she going to allow her nurses to cluster about him as they had done on his last visit, batting their eyes hopefully, all giggles and no knickers, most of them, and absolutely shameless. Dr Sterne, to give him his due, had not seemed to accord any of them any particular attention, and it had occurred to Matron Porter more than once that it would not be surprising if Dr Sterne had an eye for the more mature woman. Just in case, she powdered her rather large face before his visit, and sprayed her bosom with scent.
    He arrived abruptly, churning up a spray of gravel from the drive beneath the wheels of his ramshackle car, parking it untidily and then erupting through Briar House’s front entrance. It was impossible to avoid the thought that he brought with him an aura of exotic brilliance. Freda Porter was not given to fanciful notions, but when she visualised Dr Sterne (which she sometimes did when dropping off to sleep, or during a particularly tedious spell of night duty), she always pictured him permanently silhouetted against a kind of medieval stained-glass window that showered vivid jewel colours over him like a harlequin cloak.
    Pouring the tea, she listened to Dr Sterne’s request that a place be found in Briar House for the young relative of a business associate of his. It was a straightforward request, although the apparent need for speed was a bit surprising – ‘Tomorrow or, at the latest, the day after,’ said Dr Sterne