by Dave Duncan
But if District Officer Exeter had been an impostor, then why had that fact not emerged at the board of inquiry? Edward had read the hateful report a hundred times and there was no hint of any such mystery in it. It did not mention his father’s background at all. In his present state of dejection that curious omission suddenly seemed ominous, like a potential embarrassment swept under a rug.
Obviously Holy Roly must know more than he had ever revealed, and Edward might yet have to grovel to him for enlightenment. Had he shown his uncle that photograph when he arrived in England? He could not remember, but it would have been odd if he had not. Assume he had. The old bigot must have seen right away that the fortyish man in it could not be his brother. So why had he not said so at once? Why had he not said so four years later, after the massacre, when he was landed with custody of the impostor’s son?
In order to lay his hands on the rest of the family money?
The Crown proposes that when Grandfather Exeter died and left the remains of the ill-gotten family fortune to his three children, the genuine Cameron Exeter was already dead and buried at the far side of the world. Somehow a much younger man assumed his identity, was accepted in his stead, pocketed the loot, and promptly left New Zealand, where he was known by his real name. Thereafter he could never be unmasked as long as he stayed away from the dead man’s brother and sister. My Lud, the prosecution rests its case.
Learned counsel for the defense expresses disbelief. Why would such a rogue then go and bury himself in the African bush?
Because, counters the prosecution, the Reverend Roland Exeter had retired from active missionary service and was on his way Home. The impostor would be exposed.
But why Africa? Why not Paris, or Vienna, or even America?
Edward tried to consider the question as judge and ended as a hung jury. He could not deny the evidence of the photograph; he could not believe that the father whose memory he cherished had been such a villain. When Mildred Prescott died, the guv’nor had become Alice’s guardian and therefore custodian of her share of the dwindling family fortune. He had taken the child in and treated her as his own daughter; he had not rushed off to Europe to spend her money. He had remained to serve the people of Nyagatha until his death.
What if, four years before that death, Roland Exeter had seen the photograph? That made nonsense of the hypothesis! Holy Roly would have blown the gaff, denounced the impostor, reclaimed the money, and thrown Edward out in the gutter. Wouldn’t he?
So Edward could not have shown the guv’nor’s picture to Roland. He would certainly give odds that it was presently on its way to London so the reverend gentleman might view it now. The mystery could have nothing to do with the murder at Greyfriars Grange, but surely no copper would resist a chance to solve a twenty-year-old fraud case so easily.
Edward barely touched the leathery slab of haddock that came at teatime.
By nine o’clock the nurses were making their rounds—giving the patients back rubs, bedding them down for the night, removing the flowers because it was not healthy to sleep with flowers in the room. Germany had invaded Belgium, Britain had declared war. Men were enlisting by the thousands. Even that stirring news failed to penetrate Edward’s black mood. He was out of it for at least three months, until his leg mended, and death on the gallows now seemed much more likely than glory in battle.
He noticed a change in the nurses’ attitude. They passed on the latest news, but they did not seem to want to talk with him. Even when he roused himself to be cheerful and chatty, they failed to respond. Now they knew he was a murderer.
He tried to read the last chapter of The Lost World, and the words were a blur. All he could take in was the awful relevance of the title.
The lights were turned off. The hospital fell quiet and gradually the clamor of hooves and engines outside faded into night. Greyfriars would never be a riotous place in the evening, and tonight most men would be at home with family and friends, coming to grips with the catastrophe that had so suddenly befallen the world. If there was a patriotic rally in progress somewhere, it was being held out of earshot of Albert Memorial.
Completely unable to sleep, he squirmed and fretted in his sweat-soaked bed. Tomorrow he must ask to see the solicitor Mrs. Bodgley had mentioned. Or would that be an admission of guilt? Should he wait until Leatherdale arrived with the warrant? Who could possibly have killed old Bagpipe, and how, and why? Nothing made any sense anymore.
The only certainty was that he had no choice but to stay and face the music. Even if he were able to run, he had no one to run to—except Alice, and he would never impose on her like that. He could never impose on anyone like that. As it was, he could not walk, he had no money or clothes; he would not even be able to pull his trousers on over his splints. If he even had a proper cast on his leg…
Suppose he had shown the photograph to Holy Roly? Suppose Roly had recognized his brother, but his brother thirty years younger than he should be? That would explain his references to devil worship. He had been implying that Cameron, like Dr. Faustus, had sold his soul to the devil in return for eternal youth.
Oh, Lord! That was even madder than keys jumping into pots or murderers going out through locked doors.
He might have been asleep, he was not sure. Sudden light startled him as the door swung wider and a nurse entered, making her rounds. He saw her only as a dark shape. He raised a hand in greeting.
“Not sleeping?” she asked. “Pain?”
“No. Bad news.”
“Oh, they’ll hold the Germans off until you get there.” She laid an appraising hand on his forehead.
“Not that. Personal bad news.”
“I’m sorry. Anything I can do to help?”
“Find me a good solicitor.”
She said, “Oh!” as if she had just remembered who he was. “Want me to ask the doctor for a sleeping draft for you?”
He thought about it.
He very nearly said yes.
“No. I’ll manage.”
“I’ll look back later.” She floated away and the room filled again with darkness, except for one thin strip of light along the doorjamb.
He went back to his worries. Eventually a new thought penetrated—the nurse’s belated reaction suggested that Leatherdale had removed his watchdog. Perhaps he had been needed for more urgent duties tonight. Marvelous! Now the suspect could tiptoe out of the hospital and run off to Brazil or somewhere. When the nurse came back he’d ask her for a set of crutches.
Again a sudden flowering of light startled him out of semiconsciousness. He blinked at the same dark shape against the brightness. He wondered why she’d removed her cap at the same moment as he registered her long braids and realized that this was no nurse.
“Dvard Kisster?” The voice was husky and heavily accented. It jarred loose an avalanche of memory.
He flailed like a landed fish, half-trying to sit up, half-trying to reach for the bell rope, and the result was that he jolted his leg. It hurled a thunderbolt of pain at him. He yelled.
Then he saw a glint of metal in her hand and screamed at the top of his lungs.
She left the door, coming around on his right. Danger!
He began to yell for help, using the first words that came into his head. “Once more into the breach, dear friends!” Grabbing the nearest weapon, which happened to be the kidney-shaped dish, he continued to shout. “…once more; or close the wall up with our English dead. In peace…”
He hurled the dish with all his strength. “…so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility…” She had not expected his attack and the missile took her full in the face. She stumbled back with a cry; the dish clanged and clattered on the linoleum. “…imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews…”
He started to reach for the bell again, but it meant extending himself and would leave him open. He needed that ha
nd for throwing. “…hard-favored rage…” She flashed toward him, cursing in some foreign tongue and raising her blade. “…then lend the eye a terrible aspect…” He hurled the water carafe, she flailed it aside; glass crashed. Where was everybody? “…like the brass cannon; let the brow…” He followed with the tumbler and scored a hit. “…galléd rock o’erhang…” He was o’erhanging the side of the bed now, earthquakes of agony running through his leg.
She was holding back, watching him, a sinister dark shape. He continued to scream out his speech as loudly as he could: “Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide…” He had Bagpipe’s book ready. Why, why, was no one coming? “…on, you noble English, whose blood…” She lunged forward and he hurled Conan Doyle. He thought it hit her, but she laughed, and spoke again in her guttural accent. “What next, Dvard?”
She was right; he was running out of missiles. Why could no one hear him? He had never been louder in his life. “Be copy now to men of grosser blood, And teach them how to war.” She came, fast as an adder. He swung farther to the right as she slashed down at him, flailing his pillow around with his left hand, parrying the blow. But he had almost fallen off the bed, and the jolt on his leg brought a howl to his throat. That was the worst ever—he thought he would faint, and thrust the possibility away. Feathers swirled like smoke. He scrabbled with his right hand and found the empty urinal bottle. “…none of you so mean and base…” He swung it as a club against her arm as she struck again, wishing it had been weighted with contents. She cried out and dropped the knife on the floor. He tried to grab her dress with his left hand, thinking he might be able to strangle her if he could pull her close, but she slipped away. Oh—his leg again!
His throat was sore with shouting, “I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips…” She made a dive to snatch up the knife. He swung the bottle at her head and missed. She came at him again and this time he thought it was all over “…straining upon the start. THE GAME’S AFOOT!”
“Desist!” said a new voice in the corner.
The woman spun around with a shriek.
Edward had not seen him come in, but without question this was the same Mr. Oldcastle he had imagined before. Even in his fur-collared overcoat, with his ancient beaver hat set square on his head, he was a small and unimpressive ally. Yet, with one hand pointing his cane at the armed madwoman and the other tucked in his pocket, he was certainly the calmest person present.
“Begone, strumpet! Go lick thy scurvy masters’ boots in penance lest they feed thy carrion carcass to the hounds.”
The woman hesitated, then fled out the door without a word. Her footsteps seemed to fade away almost instantly.
The crisis was over.
“Hey!” Edward gasped. “Stop her!”
“Nay, nay, bully lad, it were no profit to deed her to the watch.” Mr. Oldcastle removed his hat and brushed it absently with his sleeve. “That wight has been accorded arts to rook their locks and manacles. Wouldst sooner close a cockatrice in a cockboat than jail yon jade.”
“You mean,” Edward said, easing himself back onto the bed, “she can get out through a bolted door?” He was soaked and shaking, his heart seemed to be running the Grand National, jumps and all, but he was alive. He was almost sobbing with the pain, but he was alive.
“Aye, or in withal. Had they who seek thy soon demise invested her with deeper skills, thou hadst not fared so well.” The little man chuckled. “The recitation was most gamely done! It wanted something in smoothness of phrasing, methinks, but ’twas furnished well in vehemence. Hal himself could not have seasoned the lines with greater spice.”
He stepped over to the bed and peered down at Edward with an intent expression on his puckish, wrinkled face. He brought a strange odor of mothballs with him. “The pain in thy leg is not beyond thy strength to bear.”
“Er. No, it’s not too bad.” Edward panted a few times. “Amazingly good, considering.” It was not what he would describe as comfortable. He did not need a bullet to bite on, but he was making his teeth work hard.
“It needs suffice for the nonce. Compose thyself a moment. I shall return betimes.”
With that Mr. Oldcastle laid his hat and cane carefully on the bed and bustled over to the door. Edward caught a brief glimpse of his tiny, stooped shape against the light, and he had gone.
“Angels and ministers of grace defend me!” he muttered, as this seemed to be Shakespeare night. “What in the name of glory is going on here?” His heartbeat was gradually returning to normal. He was definitely awake and not dreaming. Feathers and water and sparkles of glass on the lino—and splatters of blood also, so he must have scored a hit, perhaps with the tumbler.
And certainly an antique hat and stick lay on the bed, so Mr. Jonathan Oldcastle had really been present and did intend to return. Perhaps he had popped over to Druids Close, the town that received mail and did not exist? Steady, old chap! We’ll have no hysterics here.
Strangest of all—why was the hospital not in chaotic uproar? The racket should have wakened every patient on the floor and brought every nurse for miles. Edward thought about trying the bell and then decided to wait for his mysterious guardian to come back.
That did not take long. The little man minced in with a pale garment over his shoulder, carrying a pair of crutches almost as long as himself. His stoop and the forward thrust of his head made him seem to be hurrying even when he was not.
“Thy baggage waits without, Master Exeter.” He uttered the little cackling chuckle that was now starting to sound very familiar. “And thy breakage must wait within! Do don this Oxford.” He handed Edward a recognizable left shoe and threw down a dressing gown across his chest.
“Hold a minute, sir! I can’t walk on this leg!”
“Indeed you will have to make like the wounded plover, dangling a limb to lure the plunderer from the nest. Be speedy, my brave, for worse monsters than the harlot may soon snuff thy scent, such as may overtop my wilted powers.” Mr. Oldcastle proceeded to fumble with the tackle that held Edward’s leg in traction.
“But running away is an admission of guilt!”
“Staying will be a demonstration of mortality.”
Edward’s response was stifled by a searing jolt of pain as the leg settled on the bed. He glared up at the old man until he had caught his breath and wiped the sweat out of his eyes.
The puckish face frowned. “Ah, my young butty, dost not know that dragons of war are now full awakened? Beacon fires shall become funeral pyres and flames will consume a generation. Horror soon bestrides the world.”
“Yes, but what has that to do—”
“Master Edward, those same elements that spawned this evil dissonance can now turn satisfied from that labor and address their intent to destroying thee. Until now they minded more those weightier matters particular to their desires. Thee they gave but little thought, for you are a mere favor they perform for other parties—who shall shortly be discovered to you. Thus thy foes dispatched to your dispatch only that demented trollop who has thrice ineptly sought to undo thee. Now at greater leisure they will loose such grievous raptors to contrive thy demise that thou surely will not see another dawn unless you now take urgent flight.”
In other words: Beat it!
Absurd as it sounded, his convoluted speech carried conviction. There was no arguing with his obvious sincerity—after all, he had undoubtedly saved Edward’s life a few moments ago. Edward pulled up his left leg and struggled into the shoe.
The next few minutes were a stroll on the cobbles of Hell. He made the distance, but only because he chose to regard it as a test of manhood. He sat up and donned the dressing gown. His right foot was lowered to the floor with much help from Mr. Oldcastle, and he pushed himself up to stand on the left. Then he was on his crutches, heading across the litter of feathers to the door. To hold his right leg up was agony; to let it touch the ground
was infinitely worse.
It wasn’t going to work, of course. The nurses would see him and take him back. They would telephone the police. But he had no breath to argue, and he sweated every step in silence along the wide, dim corridor, wobbling on his crutches with Mr. Oldcastle at his side. The little man had recovered his hat and silver-topped walking stick, and seemed to be fighting back a case of fidgets at the cripple’s tortoise pace.
The duty desk was deserted. His old battered suitcase stood beside it, his boater resting on top. Mr. Oldcastle placed this on his head for him at a jaunty angle and took charge of the case. Then he went ahead and opened the door to the stairs.
Edward tried to say, “There’s a lift,” but he had his teeth so tightly clenched that the words would not come out. Mr. Oldcastle might think that the rackety old cage would bring nurses and orderlies running, or perhaps he did not understand modern machinery. Edward went down three flights of stairs on one foot, one crutch, and a white hand gripping the rail. Mr. Oldcastle carried the other crutch. From the way he managed the suitcase, he must be much stronger than he looked.
There was no one about, no one even tending the admittance desk by the front door. Edward reeled out of the hospital into the cool night air, wondering if he had left a trail of sweat all the way from his bed.
30
“WOSOK!” GIM COMMANDED FIRMLY, BUT NOTHING happened. Starlight had his head down, buried in T’lin Dragontrader’s loving embrace, and was purring so hard he could not hear the order.
“Wosok!” T’lin murmured. The dragon sank down on his belly, still nuzzling his owner and purring loud enough to waken the neighborhood.
There could be few places in cramped Narsh where a dragon might be hidden, but a sculptor’s yard was one of them. Even so, Starlight was squeezed in between blocks of stone and half-completed monuments, and the space was hardly enough. A man with a lantern had just closed the gates.
