Aether Spirit

by Cecilia Dominic

  Claire looked into the gloom. She lit the torch with a match from a tin, and a dirt passage like a mine tunnel spread out in front of her. Its downward slope ended in darkness, and she hesitated.

  “Go on, now. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Claire took a step but stopped when a male voice called out.

  “Mrs. Soper! Doctor McPhee! Where are you?”

  “It’s that fool Longchamp,” Mrs. Soper said. “Go on, child. The tunnel goes just one place. Let me take care of him, and I’ll come find you at the hospital.”

  “But…” Claire spoke to the door, which closed in her face. She fumbled the torch but managed to catch it without lighting herself or her nightclothes on fire. She turned to see the young woman who had given her directions at the women’s quarters, and pressure stuffed her ears again. She now recognized the nightgown and head wrap as belonging to an invalid.

  “It’s all right, Miss. I won’t hurt you.” She smiled, but her teeth had the crooked yellow appearance of a corpse’s. “Follow me.” She turned and walked down the tunnel.

  Claire didn’t want to, but she was trapped. She looked down. Wrapped around her hand were golden filaments like the ones that had spread between her hand and the aether orb in its glass cage. She heard a voice whisper, “Trust” in her ear.

  With a deep breath, she stepped down the passage. The ground shook, and a jumble of rocks fell where she had just been standing. She held on to the wall to keep from falling, and the torch extinguished.

  “Corn biscuits and gravy!” she swore into the dark. Even the ghost had disappeared.

  The word “Trust” came from the darkness again, and a faint light flickered in the tunnel ahead. Claire squinted at its golden glow, too far for her to make out exactly what caused it, but she walked toward it. What else could she do? There was no way to go but forward. She hoped that what she walked toward would be less harmful than what she had escaped.

  Chapter Twelve

  Fort Daniels, 24 February 1871

  Chad almost turned toward the general’s house as he sprinted toward the hospital. He hesitated but took the crucial right. His responsibilities were to his patients. Claire could take care of herself—he hoped. But he couldn’t take the thought of losing her again so soon after they’d been reunited—in a fashion, but it was better than nothing. He couldn’t shed the thoughts of how the general’s house, being so close to the administrative buildings and officers’ dwellings, would be a prime target.

  Of course there were wounded from the surprise attack. He worked to the uneven rhythm of shells outside and the discordant symphony of moans, screams, and whimpers inside. Whenever a shell struck too close, the whole building shook, but he didn’t look up, only covered the patient from the hail of dust and splinters coming from the roof.

  Patrick helped out where he could. He’d shown an engineer’s knack for how best to set complicated breaks and fractures in the past, and he held down the injured when the techniques they had weren’t enough, and something had to be amputated, which was Perkins’s job. Thankfully there were only a few of those, crushed limbs from falling masonry, but mostly civilians. Chad held his breath every time he caught a glimpse of copper-colored hair, but it was never Claire. He didn’t want to believe in a god that would allow the things he’d seen, but Chad also felt there must be some sort of larger fate for her if she hadn’t been killed in the steamcart accident that took her memories of him.

  The guns silenced with the light of dawn, and the noises in the hospital quieted into murmurs of the staff and the drugged moans of the injured.

  “Is it over?” Chad asked an officer whose weary demeanor said he’d been at the front. He had gotten a nasty steam rifle burn treated.

  “Yes,” the officer said. “But we still have no idea of the damage.” His cheeks were unshaven over his bushy beard, as one would expect first thing in the morning, and he clutched a cup of coffee but didn’t drink. He lifted it to his lips but seemed unsure of what to do with it.

  “Do you know what prompted the attack?” Chad lifted the cup to the man’s mouth. It would be a poor substitute for sleep, but it would be better than nothing. He wanted to get around to asking about the general’s house but wasn’t sure how.

  “None.”

  Then Chad asked the other pressing question on his mind—“What are the casualties, and you did hold them back, right?”

  “A score killed on our side, a few on theirs, but we held the line. They didn’t seem too interested in advancing, just causing as much damage as they could.”

  “Why now?” Chad wondered aloud. “From what I heard, it’s been quiet on this part of the front for months. It makes no sense for them to attack when the Union is talking negotiation.”

  “Doctor, if you could enlighten us as to that, the general will give you a medal. We had no warning, no indication from our spies that they were planning anything.” He scrubbed his face. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I suspect we both have a long day ahead of us. We don’t know if they’ll attack again, so I should return to the line. The stretcher men will start to arrive shortly.”

  “Doctor?” Nurse Lillian touched his arm, and he started. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I have one more patient for you before the next wave of soldiers arrives.”

  “Excuse me,” he told the captain.

  The soldier lifted his cup in a salute. “Appreciate you, Doctor. Glad you’re here.”

  Lillian led him into an alcove, where Chad found Claire huddled beneath a blanket and clutching a cup of tea. She kept her hands mostly covered, but the whorls of scars were still evident.

  Oh, gods, what has this done to her mind?

  He wanted to rush to her, to take her into his arms, but he knew to do so would trigger even more of her nervous blocks. At least she was conscious, and when she looked at him, her eyes were shadowed with circles but clear behind her glasses, which still sat crooked. Her cheeks, hair, and what he could see of her clothing was covered in dust. He squashed his impulse to be dangerously caring with an attempt at humor.

  “Doctor McPhee, if you wanted to come to the hospital, there was no reason to come in as a patient. I promise there is plenty of work for you, especially now.”

  A corner of her mouth lifted in a partial smile. “I apologize for not being dressed, but we were surprised, as everyone was.”

  “And what of Mrs. Soper?”

  She looked at her tea. “I don’t know. She got me out of there, but Major Longchamp came into the house. A shell hit it just after I left.”

  “Are you injured?”

  “No, just shaken. I’ll be fine after my tea.”

  “I’ll have Lillian see if she can find you some clothing. We’re fairly certain the attack is over, but we’ve been advised to stay put until that fact is confirmed.”

  Claire nodded. He would watch her and put her on light duties, but he didn’t think he’d be able to keep Bryce away from her for long. He’d seen the boy during the night also pitching in where he could. Hopefully he’d found a corner to sleep in and hadn’t aggravated the infection in his arm with overuse.

  The fort sounded the all-clear, and Chad saw Lillian and Claire leave. He hoped the general’s house was still standing and that Mrs. Soper and Major Longchamp were alive and unharmed.

  “I’m going to help search for survivors and prop up buildings,” Patrick told him. “Want me to grab something from the mess hall for you if it’s intact?”

  “Please. I can only survive on coffee for so long.”

  “I saw Claire. For having a messed up psyche, she seems all right.”

  “Yes, thankfully.”

  * * * * *

  The mess hall was unharmed. Patrick shook his head. Stupid Rebs. If they’d really wanted to mess up the base, they would have destroyed the social and meal hub. He wondered again what their reason for at
tacking was. None of it made sense.

  The cooks served breakfast with gentle smiles and comforting words to those who straggled in. Everyone showed signs of lack of sleep but also of grim determination. Some even talked of a counterattack. Patrick kept his own counsel but renewed his determination to turn the Eros Element into a weapon.

  “I’m needing an extra plate for Doctor Radcliffe,” he told the cook when his turn came.

  “I’ll give you an entire tray to bring to the hospital. And let me know if you need more.”

  Patrick brought his covered dishes back to the hospital, where a wave of wounded flowed in from the battlefield. He dropped the tray into the staff common area and got out of the way. They seemed to have enough help, so he slipped out.

  By the light of day, the damage to the fort lay evident. It looked like a giant had stomped through, squashing one building, part of another, and leaving a third alone.

  Oh, god, the workshop.

  He picked up his pace and suspected his scowl would keep people from bothering him. He’d help them out soon enough, but he’d promised the general he’d keep his project top secret, and he needed to keep the salvage crews away from the workshop until he could assess any damage himself.

  At first glance, all seemed well—all four walls still stood. He opened his spare padlock with the key, then went inside to find chaos.

  An unexploded shell sat in the middle of the workshop surrounded by shards of wood and beams from the roof, which now sported a large hole.

  Without going in further, Patrick looked at the corner where the aether normally rested. The glass globe had shattered, and the watery sunlight sparkled off the spikes protruding from the connection to the copper chamber. Shite. No telling how long it will take to get another glass sphere here.

  With another look at the shell sitting like an ominous black egg in its nest of destruction, Patrick backed out. Would the thing go off if disturbed? He’d have to call the ballistics guys in, which meant another delay in getting back to work. He carefully locked the door so some unsuspecting curious—or worse, looting—person wouldn’t go in and blow themselves up along with the rest of his projects and notes.

  “Oh, good, there you are!” Sergeant Michael Renfield caught up to Patrick. “We need a strong man like you. Mrs. Soper is trapped in the General’s House, and we need everyone we can to lift a beam out of the way.”

  Patrick followed him. Major Longchamp stood in front of the half-collapsed general’s house covered in dust and in disarray, but he ignored those who tried to get him to sit or go to the hospital to be checked out.

  “I’m staying right here until we find out if she’s all right,” he insisted. At least someone had thrown a blanket around him.

  “Where is she?” Patrick asked. He wondered again how Claire had gotten out. From what he’d seen, if she had walked to the hospital, she would have gone through much of the shelling. She was either damn lucky or damn stupid.

  “In a bedroom in the back,” Longchamp said. “I was stuck in the front part of the house. I worry that Doctor McPhee is trapped inside as well.”

  “She’s fine. She’s at the hospital,” Patrick told him. He half paid attention to Longchamp and half looked at the damage to the house, trying to figure out the best way to get into it without bringing more down on himself and the woman trapped inside.

  “That’s interesting.” Longchamp pulled the blanket closer around him against the chill breeze that swept through the fort. “How did she get out?”

  “She said Mrs. Soper guided her out.”

  Longchamp smiled and shook his head. “By golly, she managed it.”

  “Managed what?” Did the man get hit on the head? He’s not making sense.

  “Don’t worry about it. Just rescue Mrs. Soper.”

  * * * * *

  Claire followed Lillian to the women’s hospital and to a room that looked like a bedroom but had been converted to clothing storage.

  “You don’t mind wearing clothing from a dead girl, do you?” Lillian asked. “I can promise you it’s clean.”

  “Whatever you have will be fine.” I’ve seen and touched worse.

  She suppressed a shudder at the memory of corpse dissection. It was a standard part of medical training, and seeing inside the body had been fascinating, but…

  Vienna School of Medical Training, October 24, 1866

  “Look at the man’s face, Miss McPhee,” the professor said before they got started. “You can’t make him un-dead by looking away, can’t restore life to him by giving him his privacy.”

  The other students had laughed, and, the fire of a blush lighting her neck and cheeks, she forced herself to look at the young man whose neck had been broken in a fall from a carriage. His family, deciding they’d rather have the coins from the medical school than let the resurrection men have them, had donated his body. Claire wondered if he had a young lady somewhere who mourned that she’d never run her fingers through his dark curls or see him smile with his full lips again.

  Someone knocked the table, and the corpse’s head lolled at a grotesque angle. It was obvious where the spine had been damaged, the vertebrae crushed, and the delicate nerve pathways severed in a moment of horror. Had he felt anything, or had his soul left his body in one merciful instant?

  “Part of medicine is not flinching from death,” Professor Gounod told her. He stood too close to her, the rancid stink of pipe tobacco mixed with rotten teeth stuck in her nose.

  “What if you’re the one who caused it?” she asked. She knew medical mistakes happened. Hell, she was a medical mistake, and now she was an experiment to see if she could withstand the rigorous medical training in Vienna’s finest university.

  “Then it was the patient’s time.” He moved away, and Claire released the breath she always held when he approached.

  “I suppose we now know why he teaches instead of treating patients,” the student beside Claire said in English. “He probably has an affinity for corpses because they cannot question ’is methods or philosophy.”

  She turned to him. He’d faded into the mass of dark suits and questioning looks she saw everywhere she went in the school. Now his features resolved into short sandy brown hair and a beard and moustache. Gallic nose. Eyes that actually seemed to twinkle until she figured they were dark brown with odd gold flecks. What surprised her was that he spoke English with a French accent, not the Latin the class was conducted in or the German of the city.

  “You’re probably right,” she responded, also in English, after her mind sorted through it all.

  “Ah, so you are American. I thought so from your accent, but I was not sure.”

  Claire snuck a look at Gounod, who was making some sort of joke about post-mortem priapism with two of the other students. They were all men but her, the former hysteric who had tried to run away but who had been found.

  “He is a barbarian,” the young man said. “Ignore him.”

  She wished she could. She knew Gounod and the other professors sent reports on her to Charcot’s second-in-command, who wanted to know what, if anything, broke through the blocks he’d hypnotized into her. They were humoring her delusion. She was there to learn while indulging their need to experiment on her. Whatever it took. She had plans as to what she would do if they refused to allow her to graduate.

  “And you’re French?” she asked. Could this young man be an ally? Or was he just like all the others, interested in what was under her skirts, not her hat?

  “Yes, from Paris. My name is Martine Herrod.”

  Ugh. She turned away with reflexive disappointment and disgust, not wanting to hear what he inevitably had to say, that he’d seen her be hypnotized in Charcot’s theatre.

  “I’m sorry, did I say something to offend you?”

  Claire put a hand on her stomach to soothe the tightness that emerged wheneve
r someone mentioned Paris. “No, Monsieur Herrod, I am sorry. I assumed something incorrectly.” She tried for a bright smile and feared she only came across as a dim taper, neurotic as expected.

  “Please don’t think I’m like the others.” He touched her on the shoulder.

  Surprised by his touch, she turned back to him. “What do you mean?”

  “They only see a beautiful but delicate experiment, but you are intelligent, no? You know the answers to the questions even though the others talk over you before you can get credit for them.”

  Claire’s eyes burned, and she blinked. Someone had noticed. “It’s the chemicals,” she said to explain the water in her eyes. “And I appreciate your kind words. I just hope they’ll realize it and allow me to graduate. I didn’t put all this work in to merely be observed.”

  “I will help you.”

  Part of her wanted to accept his help, but another part instantly distrusted him. What if he was another one of the Salpêtrière’s spies?

  “Why?”

  “Because you have an understanding of hysteria no one can match, and it will help you do good work for those who need a softer touch, compassion rather than exhibition.” He gestured to the body in front of them. One of the other students had tried to straighten its neck, and now its—his—head was cocked as though it listened to them. “This young man leaves grief behind him because of a stupid accident. Others his age will be soldiers. Your country has been at war for many years. There is need for someone like you.”

  “And what do you want to do?”

  His cheeks turned a delicate rose. “I want to help babies into the world.”

  She wanted to ask why he blushed, but the professor directed their attention back to the corpse.

  “Mister Herrod, you make the first cut. I cannot promise there will be a fetus—that would make for an interesting discovery—but perhaps you will find something else to your liking.”

  Claire blinked and came back to the present. Why was she thinking of Martine? “Who did the clothing belong to?” she asked.