He had me stretched out like the Christ figure in a passion play. I wondered if he’d noticed I was wearing his clothes. I ran my tongue along the hard crust at the corner of my mouth. It came away tasting of blood.
By flexing my waist and shoulders, I could lift the cot frame a few inches. Enough to rattle it, but there wasn’t enough room in the cramped shelter to work the cot apart. I might have managed if I could have braced my feet against the hull, but my lower legs had all the strength of wet newspaper. I flopped about like a fish, trying to toss my feet into a position with leverage. The Anderson echoed with my exertions. It sounded like a demented Highland drum corps holding a tattoo inside a saucepan.
I’d managed little more than scraping my wrists raw and promoting the pain in my shoulders from a small private ache to a major agony when the door opened. Somebody stood over me, silhouetted in the door. But the sudden light hurt my eyes, and a gust of cold December wind made them water. I couldn’t see.
Liv said, “You made him angry, didn’t you?”
“Olivia! I don’t know what they’ve told you—”
“Shush.” She knelt on the floor. Buckles rattled while she undid the belts around my ankles and knees. Renewed circulation flooded through the constrictions. I tried to wiggle my toes. My reward was the sensation of a thousand blue-hot needles piercing my feet.
Liv set to work with the knots at my wrists. I flexed my hands to give her a bit of slack. The wind chilled the sweat from my previous exertions. I shivered.
“I hope you know I never intended—”
“Hush. You needn’t explain anything,” she said. “I don’t care what they say.” Her fingers fumbled at the rope. “You can tell Raybould was a proper sailor at one time,” she muttered. “But I’ve always been rubbish with knots.”
Pruning shears would have made short work of the rope. But I refrained from mentioning the pair hanging behind the door in the shed. “Perhaps a knife.”
Her efforts petered out. Liv was staring at my hand. She took my fingers, gently, and turned my knuckles toward the light. She frowned.
“You have a scar on your ring finger.”
Oh, bugger.
I coughed. “Do I?”
“Looks like you’ve had it a long time,” she said.
“Imagine that.” I turned away from her stare, which had suddenly become very intense. Much as it had happened with Will, an extraneous piece of information, some crumb of my carelessness, had kicked into motion the gears of her mind. They spun.
She couldn’t possibly piece it together, I told myself. Will’s background, his experience with the impossible, had enabled him to make the intuitive leap necessary for sussing out my identity. Liv didn’t have that benefit. She lived in a world free of magic and supermen.
I chanced a look at her. Her eyebrows had hunched together, and she was biting her lip. Bad sign. Her gaze locked on to my eyes. I knew this woman. In her mind’s eye, she was comparing the color of my eyes with that of her husband’s. I looked away too late to stop her.
Liv went back to picking at the knot. “Where were you raised, Commander? I’ve never asked.”
Damn it. She had the bone in her teeth now.
“London,” I said.
“Where in London? East Ham? Islington?” She gave the rope a painful tug. Casually: “St. Pancras?”
“Here and there,” I said.
She wasn’t making any headway with the knots. To hell with it, I decided. I told her about the shears. She didn’t ask how I knew about them.
After that, it was the work of thirty seconds to undo the ropes. I staggered upright on legs that burned as though my blood had turned to acid. I donned my belt again, then gathered the spare along with the severed ropes. Liv watched me all the while, through eyes narrowed in thought.
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t need to.
“Go,” she said. “Before my husband changes his mind.”
I swallowed. Liv was lost to me again. Truly lost. Not just to my feeble attempt at honor. I’d made my choice in Coventry, but she was back with her husband, her real husband, now. And after everything, she still loved him.
“Thanks.”
She touched my shoulder. And when I turned, she laid her hands on my face and kissed me. She didn’t flinch from my beard, didn’t recoil from the feel of the leathery scar tissue under her hand. Her lips were still the softest and sweetest things my life had ever known, as soft and sweet as I remembered.
2 December 1940
Kensington, London, England
Will spent the day trying to nurse Gretel. She hadn’t yet awoken since her accident in the kitchen, so there was little to do but keep an eye on her. He set a glass of water and a bottle of aspirin on the bedside table, where it would be within easy reach when she came around. Her braids had come undone when Will and Marsh the Younger carried her to the bedroom, so now her raven hair and cranial wires fanned across the pillow like a dark halo. Seepage from her blisters had yellowed the clean bandages on her legs. She’d have scars, though it might have been worse. He felt her forehead. Her skin was cool to the touch; she didn’t appear to be running a fever.
Will knew it was only a matter of time before news of her whereabouts reached Marsh the Elder. The sun, hidden behind a bulwark of leaden clouds, hadn’t quite begun its descent into the southwest when he arrived. Like his younger self, he carried a haversack slung over his shoulder. Also like his counterpart, he had sunk into one of his particularly serious moods, and thus spared no time for social niceties.
“Let me see her.”
“Good afternoon to you, too. I’m well, thank you so very much for asking.” Will stepped aside to let him in. “How did you come by those bruises?”
Marsh didn’t answer. Will said, “You made him angry, didn’t you?”
They went upstairs. Will leaned in the bedroom doorway while Marsh stood over the unconscious woman. The look upon his friend’s face contained raw glee and undiluted malice in equal measure. He wasn’t Marsh at that moment, but a leering devil. Will knew, via the Eidolons, how it felt to be the object of complete and perfect hatred. But it wasn’t until he saw Marsh gazing upon his own personal bête noire that Will believed such profound contempt could be expressed by mortal flesh. It was frightening to behold. Marsh became a different man when he looked at her.
Marsh’s hands quivered. So did his voice when he said, “I’ve dreamt about this moment.” He cracked his knuckles. “How bad are the injuries?”
“As long as we keep her bandages clean, and keep her hydrated, she’ll probably recover. She’ll have scars, but nothing compared to these.” Will patted his head to indicate the mass of old surgical scars that riddled Gretel’s scalp. “There’s no sign of infection yet.”
As Will had done, Marsh felt her forehead. But his hand lingered, and the evil glee returned to his face. The laughter that followed better suited a troll, or goblin—any malign fairy tale beast—than a human being.
Will beckoned Marsh to the hallway. “What happens now?”
“I’ll take her off your hands.”
“I’m sure you will. But what then? Let me guess. A burlap sack, a few bricks, and a long drop into the Thames?”
“She’s one of them. A living embodiment of von Westarp’s research. As long as any of that work survives—”
“Please don’t play the righteous hero with me. We both know your hatred of that girl goes beyond mere duty. You have every reason in the world to want her dead. And I can’t blame you for that. Truly, I can’t. But look at her now. She’s harmless.”
“The woman lying in your bed is the least harmless, least innocent creature you could ever have the misfortune to meet.”
Will said, “It’s difficult enough to turn a blind eye each time one of my colleagues turns up missing or dead. But I accept it as a necessary evil, because I accept that knowledge of Enochian is too dangerous for any nation to hold. Your very existence has convinced me. Meanwhile, I’m
doing everything I can to prevent Milkweed from murdering innocent civilians in the name of national defense. So I will not be a party to cold-blooded vengeance. And I’m not debating a woman’s fate where she may overhear us. A walk would do us both good.”
“If you think I’m going to leave her alone and unsupervised,” said Marsh, “you’re more bent than she is.”
“She isn’t moving.”
Marsh unslung the haversack. Kneeling on the floor to open it, he said, “Forgive me if I don’t trust your diagnosis, doctor.” From the sack, he produced several lengths of rope and a leather belt.
*
Low December clouds spat upon London. Gusts of wind rippled our coats and swirled abortive snowflakes about our legs. The snow pellets were too fine to be snow and too dry to be sleet. They scratched my eyes like frozen grit. The wind came in irritating fits and starts. But it kept our conversation from carrying to unwelcome ears.
“Gretel isn’t the last,” I said. “There are two others. Identical twins. They weren’t at the farm.”
“I hope you’re not saying your counterpart’s ordeal was all for naught.”
Will listened while I explained how the other me had obtained a blood sample from one of the women in question. He knew where this was leading.
“And what do you propose to do with this blood sample?”
“The Eidolons can reunite the Twins and bring them to us. Identical twins, identical blood. I’ve seen it. It will work.”
“You expect me to carry out a secret negotiation for this purpose, then.”
“We’ll do it at the warehouse.”
“Has it occurred to you that I might not know how to perform the negotiation you envision?”
“You’ll suss it out. You’ve done it before.”
“I have?”
“Circumstances were different then,” I admitted.
“Ah.”
We fell silent as we approached the long queue outside a fishmonger’s shop. Because fish wasn’t on the rationing list, people sometimes queued up outside a shop for hours if they thought it meant a chance for a bit of fish. Will tipped his bowler to a bevy of housewives. The ladies ignored him and stared at my injuries, taken aback by the extent of my wounds. Did they think I was one of the Few? Did they take me for one of the RAF pilots who stuck it out with the Luftwaffe day after day, only to burn when a Jerry ace downed my Spitfire in the soft earth of a Sussex field?
Once safely past the fishmonger’s, Will said, “I take it you’ll, ahem, deal with the Twins once they’ve arrived?”
“This is a war. They’re the enemy.”
“Yes, I know. And I haven’t begun to doubt your tale of the future. I wouldn’t be doing any of this if I had.”
We came to an amber Belisha beacon. London traffic wasn’t what it once had been, owing to the petrol ration. Still, the blustery flurries made for poor visibility. We took care on our way across the street, lest a taxi or omnibus blow through the crossing.
“Still,” said Will, “it’s quite another thing to condone the casual murder of the woman sharing my bed. Tied to my bed.” He paused. “You know what I mean.”
A gust of wind hid my frustration. To myself, I muttered, “At least you’re consistent.”
Will raised his eyebrows. “Beg pardon?”
I’d seen this part of Will before. This was the same moral quandary that nearly destroyed him the first time around. He’d been eager to serve his country as a warlock. But that changed as the blood prices mounted. Will never objected to turning the Eidolons against the Jerries. They were all we had against an enemy determined to crush us and doing a bang-up job of it. But Will was a good man, and the sacrifices required to secure the Eidolons’ cooperation turned him into a drunk and worse. He’d aimed for a slow suicide by morphine addiction. Would have hit the mark, too, if not for Aubrey’s intervention.
If he turned Gretel over to me, and I killed her, it would eat at him. Even if we never spoke of it, and that evil bitch quietly disappeared one day, never to be seen again, he’d know. And the guilt would fester inside him. Would it be enough to overcome his aversion to alcohol? Would it be the pebble that started the landslide?
Could I do that to Will? Would the joy of wrapping my hands around Gretel’s diminutive throat, feeling the cartilage shift under the pressure of my fingers, watching her eyes bulge as her windpipe pinched off, shaking her like a rag doll just to see the long hair fly and those dark eyes roll back into her skull … would living that fantasy outweigh the self-hatred that would come with the knowledge I’d destroyed Will again?
Maybe I’d choke her with her own wires. That would be appropriate. Stripped of insulation, the bare copper would cut a fine scarlet necklace into her olive skin when I yanked it tight.…
My reverie was broken by the bustle of people flowing from the High Street Kensington Tube station. They flowed around us; we had become two pensive stones in a stream of unfamiliar faces. The wind caught the loose end of a man’s muffler. It unwrapped itself and snagged in my beard. I flicked it free. He turned to apologize, but blanched at the sight of my face.
When we were alone on the street again, I spoke. “Coventry wasn’t an accident,” I reminded Will.
“But she failed. You weren’t there at the flat when she realized Agnes and Olivia survived. I’m telling you, this was the astonishment of a woman who had never known a single surprise in her entire adult life.” Will reached over and touched my elbow. “You’ve beaten her, Pip. Let that be your revenge.”
I shrugged him off. I wasn’t about to abandon the fantasy I’d entertained for so many years. Not when it was so close. We could go back right now. I could be throttling her right now … the weight of my body pressing the air from her lungs.… But Will had raised another issue that wanted discussion.
“How did that happen? Gretel always gets what she wants. Her plan played out exactly as she intended for over twenty years. And now you and my doppelgänger both report something has changed.” I cracked my knuckles against my jaw. “I’ve wondered ever since our return from Coventry. The rescue should have been impossible. Gretel should have anticipated it. That’s how she works.”
Far to our left, across the Palace Green, no flag fluttered atop Kensington Palace. The Royal Standard wouldn’t be seen in Kensington for a while, since the Queen’s apartments had been hit by incendiaries almost two months earlier. Extensive fire damage led to haphazard patches to holes in the slate gray roof. Wooden panels covered the missing window glass. No doubt Göring and Hitler slapped each other on the back for that one. Will rubbed his temples as we neared the gardens.
I said, “You get that look when you’re thinking about the Eidolons. Did they do this to Gretel?”
He shook his head. “Remind me. What exactly did she say just before you embarked on your, ah, journey?”
Illness and the Eidolons’ touch had made a hash of my memories of those final moments. Mostly I remembered creeping darkness, a cold wind, and every soul in London screaming in terror while the world came apart. But I recounted the conversation we’d had, he and I and Gretel, during those final moments of history. Those were also the last moments of Will’s life, of course, but I saw no reason to emphasize that.
Will asked, “A new time line. That’s what she said?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting.” We walked a bit farther, along the edge of Kensington Gardens, where the wind threaded the boughs of yew trees, and holly swayed under a gray sky. Will chewed his lip.
“Out with it,” I said.
“Her choice of wording suggests she sees all futures as preexisting entities. Perhaps she chooses between them. But, setting aside the semantics, the important thing is that this time line is different. From her perspective, it didn’t exist prior to your arrival. Meaning she couldn’t have mapped it out in advance. All of her effort went to exploring and manipulating a time line that, technically, never happened. And now our future has begun to diverge from the
one she plotted so carefully. Who knows how long she spent honing her machinations? But the effort left her with detailed knowledge of a future that will never come to pass. My uneducated guess? She’s experiencing interference between competing time lines. Like a poorly tuned wireless.”
“She would have foreseen that, Will.”
Will slapped his hands together. The wind muted his clap. “Ah, but there’s the rub. If this is a new time line, she couldn’t have foreseen the problem. To hear you tell it, she was rather proud of herself. Mere mortals such as you and I will probably never fully understand just what it is she achieved. But whatever she did, it was a major accomplishment even to her eyes.” He nodded to himself, warming to his speculation. “Yes. I think the creation of a new time line was uncharted territory for her. She might have overloaded her own ability.”
Will could be such a foolish toff at times it was often easy to disregard him. But he had rightly been the guilty conscience of Milkweed, and I wondered if perhaps my old friend had seen to the true heart of this matter as well.
A notion long lost in the back of my mind sent up a signal flare in response to something Will had said. I knew it was nothing more than idle speculation, but something told me he was right.
“Interference between time lines.”
Will shrugged. “Merely thinking aloud. Perhaps best to ignore me. I haven’t a clue how she does what she does.”
“I think you’re right about the interference. It can happen, and I’ve seen it. As have you. The other you, from my past.”
Afternoon was sliding into evening, and we swung around the Round Pond to begin our return trip to the flat. Along the way out of the Gardens, I told Will about the Ghost of St. James’ Park. In the original history, Will had been the first to see the scarred and bearded figure who appeared and disappeared on the night Gretel escaped from the Admiralty. We had reenacted that encounter, he and I, when I finally caught up with Gretel in this history.
“Hmmm,” said Will. “The two scenarios are quite similar. Same location, same events, same people. Perhaps in rare circumstances it causes cross talk between the time lines.”
Necessary Evil (Milkweed Triptych) Page 33
