Fatal Enquiry

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

De Quincey, in his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, complained of the debilitating aspects of laudanum. The Chinese call it “eating clouds.” The mind floats free, full of delusions of wonder and grandeur, and yet one is tethered to the earth by the ignominy of one’s digestive tract, which is ruined by the drug. The only way I’ve found to get over it is to take it as long as the doctor tells you and then to smash the bottle. Never keep laudanum or laudanum-based elixirs in the cupboard; it is a siren singing mischief. One sip, it sings. Just a tiny sip. I’ll ease your pain. Laudanum helps one up over the scraping edge of agony, but sometimes I wonder if it would be better to simply endure the pain.

All my teeth felt loose and the bones in my face ached. My ribs, which had sustained hit after hit from Nightwine, were bandaged so tightly I could barely breathe. My wrists, which had been bloody and numb from being tied behind my back, were swathed in gauze and a sharp pain pulsed up and down my arm.

“Where am I?” I asked to someone hovering nearby. I regretted speaking, for it broke the crust of scabs around my mouth and the gauze stretched painfully across my face.

“The Priory of St. John,” a voice said. “It is a private hospital.”

I thought for a moment I knew that voice. I turned my head slowly and saw a form standing in the doorway whom I did not recognize. The pain, which came from more parts of my body than I could count at that moment, seized control of me and I cried out.

“It’s all right,” the man said. “Try to rest.”

It was easier to do as he said than to think for myself. I closed my eyes and slept again. Sometime later, who knows how long, Sofia Ilyanova’s features came into focus from far off, like a view through the wrong end of a telescope.

“How long have I been here?” I asked.

“Two days,” she answered.

“God,” I said. I wasn’t certain whether I was calling for help or simply uttering an interjection. Probably both. I was staring at a cross on the opposite wall, with Christ’s body writhing on it. My laudanum-addled mind wanted to pull the pins and let him down. “What are you doing here?”

“Seeing what my brute of a father has done to you.”

“Any word from Mr. Barker?” I asked hopefully.

“None. Perhaps he doesn’t know you’re here.”

“He knows,” I answered, though it still hurt to speak. My lungs contracted painfully with each breath. “Wherever he is, he knows.”

A pair of cool hands lifted mine and held them. I didn’t mind that at all. We sat in companionable silence, and I savored her icy fingers.

“Is he awake?” a man’s voice eventually interrupted. A heavily mustached fellow in a dark suit stood by the bed. Was it the same man who had been there before? I wasn’t certain. He took my hand away from Sofia, and pressed his thumb against the veins of my wrist. His hands were as dry and callused as he was. The steady throb of blood pumping through my veins told me Thomas Llewelyn had survived yet another scrape. I was awfully short in the tooth to be an old warhorse.

“You’ve taken a serious beating,” he said. “Who did this to you?”

“I did it to myself,” I told him, which, as far as I was concerned, was accurate under the circumstances. Delivering myself to Nightwine’s gang had been entirely my own fault.

“Oh, I can see we’ll have some fun with you. I may have to deputize this young woman to keep you in line.” He turned to look at her. “Keep his spirits up, if you can, but don’t coddle him. Patients grow insufferable if you coddle them.”

“He’s insufferable now.”

He moved to the door and then turned back again. “He’ll live,” he pronounced, and departed.

“You do insist on getting yourself in trouble, don’t you?” asked Sofia. “You didn’t have to march into my father’s garden like that, you know.”

“I was hunting for the Elephant and Castle gang.”

“Well, you certainly found them. I almost feel responsible for what happened to you. He’s my father, after all.”

“How did you find me?” I asked, wishing I could remove the bandages that constricted the movement of my face. My hands, however, weren’t quite up to doing anything useful yet.

“One of the Elephant Girls saw you being put into a priory vehicle at Charing Cross Hospital.”

We sat quietly for a minute or two. I was having trouble concentrating. As I lay there, her face swam in and out before me.

“I’m tiring you. I shall give you your medicine and leave you to rest. Open your mouth like a good boy.”

I obeyed. She inserted a spoon of laudanum and I swallowed, grimacing at the taste.

Then she stood and collected her reticule. “I shall be back in the morning.”

She leaned over and kissed the top of my head. After she was gone, I could still feel the moist print of her lips.

“Quite a nice young lady,” the doctor remarked, coming back into the room. “Ah, and reliable, as well. She got you to take your medicine.”

My memories of that afternoon are disjointed. I recall a monk with a long beard and spectacles coming in to change my bandages. The gauze he took away was bloody and stained with discharge. It turned out I was something of a mess. He told me I had three broken ribs, a broken nose, the muscles and ligaments in my jaw were torn, my lip was split, two cut and rope-burned wrists, and most of my face and chest deeply bruised. I blamed it on the spectacles I gave to Soho Vic. If I hadn’t been so proud of myself over them, I would not have been foolhardy enough to think I could investigate on my own. Perhaps I had underestimated Sebastian Nightwine. His hatred of my employer was greater than I realized. There was no possibility of my being any use to Cyrus Barker at all in my current condition.

“How did I get here?” I asked the monk through clenched teeth.

“You were brought here from Charing Cross Hospital.”

“Why?” I asked. “Who sent for me?”

“That’s priory business, I’m afraid. You’d have to ask the Order of St. John.”

As I lay in bed and the laudanum wore off, I began to think. If my grasp of history was correct, the Order of St. John was also known as the Knights Hospitaller. They had been formed during the Crusades to recapture the Holy Land. It was beginning to come back to me. The Crusades themselves had been planned in this very building. The Knights Hospitaller were a brother order of the Knights Templar, but later the pope ordered the Templars destroyed because they had grown too powerful and rich. In spite of it, the remnant of the Templars had fused with the Hospitallers later to form one single order. The Masonic order. I had worked it out. It was Pollock Forbes. He was the one who had seen that I was brought here.

I passed a long and fitful night, alternately staring at the ceiling and having strange dreams. Normally, one’s day is broken down into minutes and quarter hours, but in hospital, time has no relevance. There were sounds that night that I couldn’t identify, probably not unusual for a building as old as this one. A draft came in from the corridor every time someone opened the door. Through the darkness, I could see nothing clearly. Someone seemed to look in now and again, but did not approach the bed so as not to disturb. I slept again, having no idea how much time had passed until I woke. One minute, I was alone, and the next Sofia was there again.

“Good morning,” she said quietly.

“What o’clock is it?”

“A little after ten,” she responded, resting her elbow on the bed close to my face in an intimate gesture. She wore a three-quarter-sleeve dress and I saw my breath move the short white hairs on her forearm.

“You came again.”

“I have. Here, take your medicine.”

After I swallowed the bitter dose, she dared lift the bandage on one eye to inspect my face, which had been painted in iodine.

“To tell the truth, I think you are in more danger here than you were in my father’s basement. I’m afraid they’ll neglect you dreadfully when I’m not here.”

“I don’t care for hospitals,” I admitted. My head still felt fuzzy, but I liked the sound of her voice. I could have listened to it all day.

“Talk to me. Say anything,” I asked her.

“What shall I talk about?”

“Tibet. Tell me about Tibet.”

“Every couple of years, my father goes to Simla, and then up into the Himalayas with bearers and a Sherpa guide. He took me there last year. There is a village along the Tibet-Nepalese border called Karnali, where my father has marshaled a group of men to form an army. He is treated there almost like a king. He has trained them using all the skills he’s acquired as an officer. It is a beautiful place, Thomas. The mountains must be seen to be believed. I should like to take you there someday. Far away from civilization and its artificial laws-”

Gradually, the opium took effect and I began to fall asleep, carried by her quicksilver voice. I dreamed I was in a monastery on the side of a hill. There were dozens of open rooms there and bridges spanning impossible chasms. Was this Shambhala? There were rows of bald monks in saffron-colored robes chanting in meditation, and a tall screen made of gold, studded with jewels as big as a man’s fist. I wandered into a library filled to the ceiling with books and scrolls. The architecture seemed ancient and yet more advanced than our own, supporting platforms and structures that appeared insupportable.

And all about us were snowcapped mountains that were purple in the distance. The books on the shelves in front of me were classics which had long been lost to time. There was Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Won, the collected works of Pythagorus, the lost manuscripts of the Incan empire. A monk murmured in my ear that Sofia was waiting for me and that I should follow him. She stood in a long robe of white silk that pooled at her feet, at the edge of a precipice. As I reached her side, she pulled her gaze away from the scene before her and regarded me with cool golden eyes and impossibly black lashes.

“Thomas, wake up. Can you hear me?”

I tried to open my eyes, but it was no use. I had no defense against the effects of either laudanum or the tantalizing vision of Shambhala.