Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [36]
“Where? Where did he shoot you?”
“It was a she. In my shoulder.” I rested my hand on the fabric over the puckered scar, and was startled when Marsh laughed merrily.
“Never had I met a woman such as you. Do you remember when Ali—”
He froze over the name, and at the intrusion of a life that was over. Then he set about retracing the thread of his thoughts.
“So, being shot resembles a deep stab wound. Not the surface cuts—at those the body screams from violation. The mortal wounds are too terrible for the mind to acknowledge, so it retreats. Interesting. That is encouraging. You see, I find myself wondering sometimes what young Gabriel felt. Knowing it was coming, having to stand upright and proud despite the state of his nerves, waiting for his men—his own men—to raise their rifles and take aim at his chest. What a death, for a boy of eighteen. Poor bloody little bastard.” The picture in his mind had gone far beyond suspicion: He clearly had no doubts concerning his nephew’s fate.
He downed the wine in his glass and went to the tray again. This time his hand fell on the other decanter, and brought back a glass with enough brandy in it to stupefy an elephant. He drank half of it straight down as if it had been water, fingered the scar on his face, and then noticed what he was doing and shifted the glass to his right hand.
“When Alistair and I were boys,” he said, his voice just beginning to slur, “we would meet at a hut old man Bloom the gamekeeper kept in the woods, and listen to his stories. There was one day . . .” Tales of boyhood foolishness carried him along until he had reached his goal of insensibility, until his voice faded and he sat as if he’d been clubbed, far beyond speech, veritable or otherwise. Holmes stubbed out his half-smoked cigar, removed the glass from Marsh’s senseless fingers, and went to fetch Ogilby.
They came back with a muscular young man who looked enough like the morning’s footman to be a brother. Between them, the footman and Ogilby got Marsh upright and supported him out of the library. Holmes and I stood and listened to the muttering, bumping progress of the men.
To my surprise, however, Holmes made no move to follow them. Instead, he went to the tray and dashed into a glass a smaller dose of Marsh’s anaesthetic. He then paced to the end of the room and back, took a cigarette from the box on the table and lit it with sharp, tight movements, then sucked in only two or three deep draughts before flicking it irritably into the fire. He returned to his glass, topped it up with a harsh clatter of crystal, and stalked off into the adjoining billiards room.
I found him outside the French doors, glaring across the gardens at the darkness with a fresh cigarette between his fingers. There was no moon and the terrace lights had been shut down, but the distant patter of the Pond’s fountain reached our ears, and a faint breeze stirred the nearby leaves. I was conscious, however, only of the waves of emotion pouring out of the silent man beside me.
Holmes was in a rage.
I knew Holmes as a man of great passions, but they tended to be volatile—or at least, swiftly brought to rein by force of will. I had only occasionally felt in him the deep, burning pulses of an uncontrolled fury; the sensation inevitably made me wish to creep silently away, far away.
Instead, I waited in the open doorway, listening to the falling water and the sharp whistle of breath through his taut nostrils, until he had smoked his cigarette to the end. Only then did I speak.
“What is troubling you, Holmes?”
He flung the near-flat butt to the ground and ground it beneath a vicious boot-heel, then went back into the house.
“Fools and butchers, all of them,” he stormed. “Sitting in their offices and deciding that an example must be made, that the men won’t fight without a threat hanging over their heads. The Romans practised decimation—line up one in ten and stab them to death to encourage the others. Pah! Idiocy.” He became aware that I was staring at him as he paced, and made an effort to pull himself