“Eavesdropping, were you?” he said, scowl metamorphosing to sneer. “Jealous, huh? Lady not interested in a cripple?”
“It can hardly be eavesdropping when you bellowed your name loudly enough for the entire cabin to hear.”
Mr. Drebber took a step forward, and suddenly his friend, who had cared nothing for the lady’s distress, was there, deftly insinuating himself into the aisle between Mr. Drebber and me, murmuring pale, cold phrases about “nothing regrettable” and “no rash gestures” with the polish and fluency of a man who had done the same thing many times before. But, for no reason that I could see, Mr. Drebber took the intercession in extremely poor part, shouting that he’d brook interference from no man living; he advanced into the aisle, shouldering his friend aside, and swung one massive fist in a ponderous haymaker.
I had to lean back only slightly to dodge, which also happily put my weight on my good leg. I swung the end of my cane in a neat sharp arc, striking solidly upon the inner condule of Mr. Drebber’s forward ankle. His howl of agony was remarkably satisfying, as was the way he fell to the floor, clutching his wounded appendage and promising me the fiery torments of Hell. His friend, eyes suddenly awake, began to make threats about legal action and lawsuits, a higher-pitched contrapunto to Mr. Drebber’s more sulfurous imaginings. I said, “It is no more than a bruise, sir. Please help your friend to someplace where he will not be blocking the aisle.” I gave the young lady a meaningful glance and added, “I fear he is upsetting the lady.”
I do not know whether she had ever had occasion to practice that sort of mendacity before, but she played up gamely, saying promptly—and perhaps not untruthfully, judging by her color—“Indeed, I am feeling a little faint.”
The American’s sharp-featured face for a moment indicated his profound hatred for all of us, including Mr. Drebber. But cabin stewards were starting to appear, drawn by Enoch J. Drebber’s continuing howls, and he knew as well as I did how the story was going to look when all the participants and witnesses were interrogated. He and I awkwardly maneuvered past each other, he hampered by Drebber’s uncooperative bulk and I by my cane and untrustworthy leg, and at the moment we were closest to each other, he caught my gaze and said, softly, “My name is Joseph Stangerson, Dr. Doyle. When you hear it again, I want you to remember who I am.”
It was an oddly elegant threat. I said, “No fear of my forgetting, Mr. Stangerson,” and then we had edged past each other and the moment was mercifully gone.
I sat down in Drebber’s vacated seat and said to the young lady, “Are you all right?”
She had her color back, in the form of a blush dark enough to make my face hurt in sympathy. She said, “I am fine. But I must thank you for…”
“You needn’t,” I said. “I did not act in order to earn your gratitude.”
She was pretty enough (and no doubt wealthy enough) that this puzzled her for a moment, but then her face relaxed into a more genuine smile. “I see,” she said. “You are a preux chevalier.”
“Sans peur et sans reproche,” I said, and although I intended the words lightly, they emerged with unexpected bitterness.
She drew back a little. I could not tell whether she was offended or frightened, and I did not care. The access of anger and the sharp addictive thrill of a fight, which had carried me this far, were draining out of me. I was aware again that my leg ached abominably, and the combination of fever and fatigue was beginning to make me light-headed.
Finally, well behind the fair, a steward reached us. “Are you all right, miss? Sir?”
“I am fine, thank you,” said the young lady, “but I fear Dr. Doyle is not well. Is there somewhere he could rest until we reach London?”
I should have been angry at her for being interfering and high-handed, but I didn’t have the strength for that, either. I barely had the strength to say, “Really, I’m all right. I’ve mastered the trick of sleeping in these seats.”
“You’d be better off lying down,” said the young lady, and the steward was clearly no more deceived than she was, for he said, “There’s a bunk in the back, for the night watchman. You’re more than welcome to the use of it, Dr. Doyle.”
There seemed no point in continuing to deny that what I wanted most in the world was to lie down. I allowed the steward to escort me into the back of the cabin, behind the swinging port-holed door that protected passengers from crew and vice versa. I started to say, Wake me if there’s need, before I remembered that I was no longer an Armed Forces surgeon. I fell asleep on the Sophy Anderson’s narrow bunk, and when I woke, we were in London, safely moored at the elaborate and ominous spires of Victoria’s Needle, which had still been under construction when I had left the city ten years before.
2
A Meeting in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital
London is no place for an invalid, nor for anyone required by the exigencies of fate to be thrifty. And I did not love the city with either maudlin or clear-eyed passion. But one thing London possesses in greater quantity than any other location in England, Scotland, or the Alliance of Ireland, and that is privacy. One rebuffs the avid curiosity of the country at one’s peril, but city dwellers have so many more opportunities to pry, among so many strangers whom they will never see again, that one missed chance is hardly worth the notice.
This alone made London the inevitable answer to the question of where I would choose to dwell, no matter how uneasy the Nameless Ones made me as they swept silently through the streets or congregated, like rooks, on the Underground platforms; no matter that regardless of how hard I pinched my pennies, they still seemed to slip through my fingers at a slightly faster rate each month. No matter that the obverse face of privacy is loneliness. I spoke to no one save the Armed Forces doctors to whom I reported once a week to have my leg assessed, and they, uncomfortable with my presence, unable either to treat me simply as a patient or to bring themselves to treat me as a colleague, were ill at ease and only became more so as the weeks passed and it became clear that, as so often with spectral injuries, my recovery was going to be less than complete. The leg would bear my weight, which was indeed more than I had hoped for when I first woke in Dr. Sylvester’s tent, but it was sluggish, always dragging slightly no matter how I strove with it, and without my cane to lean on, I lurched rather than walked. Running was out of the question.
I knew that bitterness was mere self-indulgence: I had chosen to join the Medical Corps knowing full well that something such as this could happen, even if I had stupidly believed it would never happen to me, and there was no sense in laying blame or holding on to this pointless anger. Better to pick myself up, whether literally or metaphorically, and go on from where I stood.
And I had almost reconciled myself to doing so when my body finally recovered enough for the secondary effects to make themselves known.
The sense of shame I felt, when I woke that first morning, battered and aching and dizzy with dreams that were in truth memories, was literally nauseous. I lurched across my tiny room to the washstand and retched for what felt like hours, though I brought up nothing but ugly green bile. It was, in a way, a relief, for at least I knew I hadn’t killed and eaten anything. Or anyone. But I was physically miserable all that day—as well as terrified, for I had no idea whether I might change that night.