she had been.
She tore at her gag, released it, and coughed and retched until a thin trickle of fluid ran from her mouth.
The horse was a huge steaming shadow at the edge of the pines. A few feet away, the General sat stiffly against the trunk of a pine. Cockle stood above her, smiling. He held out a hand. “Are you all right, Doctor?”
She looked him in the eye. He kept smiling.
She swore to herself that she would not beg.
She begged.
“Please, Mr. Cockle, let me go. I know nothing, I have nothing, I cannot help you, I will only slow you down. I am a stranger here and—”
“Doctor—”
“And no one will pay for my release. Let me go, Mr. Cockle, I will tell your pursuers whatever—”
“Doctor—”
“Please, Mr. Cockle.”
“Call me Creedmoor. Cockle was a nice enough fellow, but he’s gone now. Stand up. No?”
He lowered his hand and shook his head sadly.
“If you were caught by what’s pursuing us,” he said, “you wouldn’t lie to them. Not that I doubt your good faith or your word as a doctor. But no one lies to them. Their methods of interrogation are more methodical than ours. And what would be left of you afterwards wouldn’t be you anymore, which I’d regret. So we are in this together now, Doctor.”
“In what, Mr. Co—Creedmoor. In what?”
He waved a hand vaguely in no particular direction. “Everything. The Great War. We’re coconspirators, Doctor. No doubt it’s obvious to you which side you find yourself on—I am far too handsome and charming to be a Linesman.”
He sat down with his back against a tree, facing her, and began to roll a cigarette. He looked up at her and smiled.
“I brought my vices with me. I apologize for taking you without warning. I imagine you miss your nerve tonic. Not to worry! We’re going to meet my very old friend Dandy Fanshawe in Greenbank, and he’ll have all the opium you need to float all the way back east with us if that’s what you’d prefer. One more reason to stick with me.”
“The tonic is a medication, Creedmoor—”
“As you please.” He lit his cigarette, took one long drag on it, then extinguished it between finger and thumb. “No light tonight,” he said. “No fire, either, sadly.”
“Why am I here, Creedmoor?”
“Why are any of us here? They don’t tell me everything, Doctor. One of the things you think before you take up the Cause is that when you do, you’ll be in on all the great secrets of the world; not so.”
He pointed at the General, who was staring at his feet and quietly muttering nonsense.
“There’s a secret in that old fool’s head. He saw something, or did something, or went somewhere. There is a weapon. I can say no more. But anyway, the secret is buried under the rubble the enemy made of his mind.”
He patted the gun at his side. “My usual methods of questioning are in effec tive here. So I thought, Dr. A’s a clever woman. I read your notes. Didn’t understand a damn word of ’em, but they looked clever enough to a simple man like me. So I want you to heal him, Doctor. That’s not so bad, is it?”
“I don’t know how to heal him, Creedmoor.”
“Try.”
“I don’t know how.”
“I have faith in you.”
The General suddenly shuddered.
“Cold night,” Creedmoor said. He walked over to his bag and extracted one of the House’s rough woolen blankets. He wrapped it around the General’s shoulders.
“Sorry, Doctor. I brought only the one blanket. Unchivalrous of me; but I’m sure you agree the patient comes first.”
He removed a rope from the bag, too, and tethered the General’s ankle to the tree.
“In case he wanders off. Of course, there’s no need to do the same for you. I wouldn’t insult you by suggesting anything of the kind. Do be mindful, though, that I sleep lightly.”
He lay down on his back with his hands behind his head.
“We’re sleeping, Creedmoor? What about . . .”
He looked up. “The Line, Doctor. Say it out loud if you like, no awful consequences will follow; or at least nothing that wouldn’t have happened anyway.”
“The Line, Creedmoor. Are they not—?”
“We will be meeting friends of mine in Greenbank, at the Grand Howell Hotel. I can’t vouch for most of them, but Dandy Fanshawe’s a good fellow in his way. But we cannot ride down into Greenbank like this, three to a horse, you in your funeral clothes. A little way over the edge of a scarp