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haired youth, whose pimples stood out purple against a skin waxy
and yellow as a lemon. John was mopping sick from the boy s face
with economical movements; distantly tender. Nodding a greet-
ing, rather than breathe in this murk enough to speak, he indi-
cated a large jug of beer and a cup that stood on a small table by
the opened iron bars of the door. His demeanor revealed noth-
ing neither resentment nor pleasure, not even discomfort
upon meeting Alfie again. Perfectly polite. Perfectly meaningless.
A channel built into the center of the room cell, rather, Alfie
corrected himself drained the swabbing water, blood, piss and
vomit out into the corridor, where it joined a deeper runnel of
filth, making him glad of the brimstone. Manacles, hanging from
their hasps buried deep in the stone walls, fitted themselves into
his memories of Algiers. As John poured the stinking water out
of his bowl into the gutter on the floor, Alfie picked up the end
of one of the chains, pulling it taut with a rattle and clash of metal.
 This is fucking obscene!
Gillingham flinched then applied himself to fiddling with his
vinaigrette once more. John stilled, head bent over his jug as he
dipped it in a barrel of fresh water.  Fresh was something of a
euphemism, for the liquid had the oily, greenish look of water
which had lain in rotting barrels in a ship s hold as it traveled
twice around the world. A man would have to be crawling the
borders of death from thirst before drinking it would become ap-
pealing, but for cleaning the clogged blood from the noses of pa-
tients, and the sick from around the edges of their mouths, it was
well enough.
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ALEX BEECROFT 267
Stirring once more, John refilled the basin. The quiet, musi-
cal lilt of pouring water threaded through the sounds of hell.
Then he looked up. As their eyes met, a shock seized Alfie from
his balls to his throat. He swallowed, leaning back as he fought an
almost physical tug forward. With a shock of recognition, he saw
again the incandescent something for which he had left his ship
and his career, lifetimes ago in the Bay of Biscay. After betrayal
and heartbreak, here it still was, pulling on him like a magnetic
pole to a needle. At times it seemed this thing between them was
the only fixed point of Alfie s compass, whether he steered away
or towards.
John s face, hollowed by shadows, looked gaunt as the faces of
the dying. He had unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves,
and each wrist bore livid scars that might have fitted the cuffs of
the manacles exactly. Still holding Alfie s gaze, he nodded, po-
litely. But the expression said I know. We know, the two of us.
But this is not the time. Stand down, lieutenant.
Almost involuntarily, Alfie s lips twitched. He stepped for-
ward, responding at a level beneath thought to the urge to chal-
lenge to crowd John against the wall, test his authority and see
how deep it went. A rush of thick heat in his stomach& and then
away in the darkness someone screamed like a stuck pig. The in-
cantation, holding the ugly world away from Alfie, popped like a
bubble. He flung the manacles against the wall where they
knocked a further splinter from the deep furrow they had already
gouged there and glowered, disappointed now not only with
John, but also with himself. How can I fall for this a second time?
John s silver gaze slid away. He turned his face aside, his
shoulders drooping. Then he braced them up once more, mo-
tioned with his chin, and Alfie followed him through one holding
cell after another. Sulfur and brimstone settled like wig-powder
over them all, making them gleam yellow as their patients.
They soon established a wordless rhythm. Alfie waited until
John had washed each man s face. Then he took each one by the
soiled linen over their bony shoulders, hauled them up, and
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268 FALSE COLORS
helped them drink. Gillingham followed behind, the vinaigrette
pressed beneath his nose by one gloved hand, the other clenched
in the fastenings of his waistcoat, like a child holding tight to a
protective blanket. Speaking halting words of painfully sincere
encouragement and comfort, he passed down the line of diseased
sufferers without touching, suffering ravings, accusations, and
sometimes pitifully grateful tears.
It wasn t much to give; one symbolic gesture per man. But
the Albion s people were far from home and did not deserve to
die unknown and nameless, in the harried and over-busy hands
of strangers.
Burning powder settled on the sick men. Torches flared
greasily in the long central corridor, and their smoke hit the ceil-
ing above them, spilled down in darker arabesques through the
smog. Moving through their fitful light, Alfie looked back at the
room from which they d emerged and it seemed to him a field of
shallow graves. A corpse jerked, scrabbled convulsively upright,
and lurched towards him.  Help me! Help me! Take me with
you! it cried. He froze up. Nightmare images of the thing falling
to pieces as it touched him, screaming from a tongueless mouth,
its eyes gone, made his stomach twist like a cold eel& .
He lurched away from the creature just as John stepped in
front of him, took it by the arms, and leaned close to calmly speak
to it. It sagged into his support, turning to Alfie s shamefaced
gaze from a revenant to a frightened boy whose nightshirt was
embroidered at the shoulder with his initials. As John lowered
the youth back to his bed, Alfie punched the wall. The sting
across his knuckles felt clean, as nothing else in this place could,
no matter how hard John swabbed.
Kneeling down by the next sufferer, Alfie got an arm beneath
his shoulders, lifted him slightly from the floor, and set the cup
to his mouth. The man retched over Alfie s fingers. Blood and
sputum curled into the beer, dripped from Alfie s hand, burned
like acid in the new grazes, running beneath his cuff, up his arm
to the elbow. He cursed, dropped the cup in the patient s lap, and
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ALEX BEECROFT 269
watched the wet stain spread with hopeless fury as he scrubbed
and scrubbed at his hands, plunging them deep into the jug of
beer. A chuckle sounded behind him. He spun, ready to lash out,
and saw that it was Dr. Bentley, thin-lipped and smiling.  No rest
for the wicked, eh, Lieutenant? Yet it will get easier once they
begin to die.
Alfie shook his head. The man had become his own personal
demi-urge. Should Death ever visit him, take down its cowl be-
fore the final swing of its scythe, he swore it would look like Bent-
ley. The same gentle, remorseless chill. Eyes pinched closed as if,
unseen, the doctor would vanish like a fever dream, he pressed
his hands over his nose and mouth, and did not notice John s ap-
proach until he felt a firm touch on his arm.
 Go home, Mr. Donwell. Take the captain with you. I ll deal
with what needs to be done here.
 I&  Alfie wanted to be angry. Surely he should want revenge
for what Bentley had done to him? He should not feel this mere
hollow desire to be out, out, away, where he need never see an-
other doctor s face. Most of all, he did not wish to need protec-
tion; to have his endurance called into question, or his pride
insulted yet again. But whatever his wishes, he wasn t sure he [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]