Blue Damask Read online

  His arms loosened with the third buckle. She paused there to see what he would do. He rolled his shoulders and flexed his arms. He took a deep breath and then another. He was not unbound, but the jacket hung limply on his shoulders and arms. He could move, though his hands were still inside the overlong sleeves and she had not released the buckle that would remove the jacket completely.

  She felt his arms beneath the canvas and tried to rub them to increase the circulation around his elbows where she thought the restraints may have been pinching him. He turned and glared at her. She removed her hands from his body.

  “Will you not speak to me, Mr. Sinclair?”

  He stared daggers at her.

  Elsa pursed her lips. She had been met with many reactions from her patients, but none had been this hostile. In fact, the most common reaction when she gave a warm smile to a melancholy veteran was tears. Many called her “mutter” or “liebchen”. She spent more time trying to disengage from needy men than trying to engage them. She put her hands in her lap and sat up straight.

  “I am trying to help you. Are you not more comfortable with the loosened straps? If you are ending this conversation I will alert Mr. Davies.” She moved like she would stand and knock at the curtained glass.

  “No.” His voice was a deep baritone. “Don’t.”

  She sat back. “I won’t,” she promised. “Do you prefer ‘Mr. Sinclair’ or ‘Lord Sonnenby’?”

  His eye twitched at ‘Lord Sonnenby’. He did not like wearing his father’s name. She lowered her voice. “Perhaps ‘Henry’.” Sometimes a regression to childhood helped. She did not know if his childhood had been happy. His file only mentioned expensive boarding schools and educational travel. Perhaps his mother had called him ‘Henry’.

  His eyes deepened and then glistened at the mention of his given name. He quickly turned his face away from her to hide them. So. He loved his mother. Mother called him ‘Henry’. A good start.

  “Please call me ‘Elsa’,” she said to his back. “It may seem a bit forward, but we do not have the luxury of time. Surely you are aware of your government’s intent. Its representative, Mr. Marshall, has asked me to prepare you for this duty to your country. Are you aware of the details?”

  He nodded. At least he was responding to her now.

  She leaned forward and touched the one buckle that remained fastened across his back. He shuddered.

  “Are you sorry to leave England?”

  “Do not touch me.”

  She removed her hand from the buckle. She leaned across the short aisle between the seats to pick up her notebook. She would interview his back, then. She took the pencil from her ear. She waited until his breathing returned to normal, then asked softly, “Are you in pain?”

  He flexed his arms, his shoulders bunched beneath the canvas and he twisted and lurched to his feet. He towered over her, glaring. The neatly combed forelock fell over his eyes and the muscles over his jaw bulged. His ankles were strapped, his arms lost in the long sleeves could not reach her, but Elsa felt a twinge of fear. She saw the powerful soldier now, not the injured man.

  She leaned back against the seat and glanced at the door. Sonnenby had made no sound. Davies would not enter without a signal. She looked up at him and told herself to be calm. So far she had learned more about him from his body than from his mouth. Jumping up and standing over her was shouting. Body shouting. He was answering her question. This was a dialogue.

  She swallowed and forced her own eyes to speak to him. “Very well. I understand.”

  He swayed as the train rocked. It was hard to balance with ankles bound and arms useless against his body. She prepared herself to catch him if he started to fall. She was a tall woman and came from sturdy peasant stock. She could catch him and lay him down gently on the seats if it came to that. She readied herself as he swayed again.

  His face relaxed and he sat down across from her where Marshall had been sitting. He looked out the window for a moment, then back at her. “Help me escape,” he said. “I will pay you double what he,” he jerked his chin at the door, “is paying you.”

  “I am committed to helping you escape from your troubles,” she answered carefully. “But I do not work for money, so you cannot buy my help.”

  His face hardened. He turned his eyes to the window again. “You work for him, then.”

  “No,” she said. “I do not.” She moved to the other seat. “I work for you.” She must be honest. “And also for me.”

  He looked down at her. “What is in it for you besides money?”

  She made a little sigh. “What is valuable to you, is also what I value. Reputation. It is worth more than your fortune, is it not?” She watched his face. One eye twitched. She had seen this many times in her veterans. The stigma of a mental breakdown injured them far more than their nightmares and anxiety. Even after reconciling their terrible war experiences, many were unable to rejoin society. The mark of cowardice or mental weakness haunted them. She often ended up treating them for social issues rather than emotional ones.

  She could see this in his eyes. This pain was from rejection. She made a mental note because her pencil was on the other seat. Rejection and loss. Something that could not be healed. Something had happened and could never be undone. There was no escape from that no matter how many buckles she unfastened.

  She saw him read her face and understand. Doctor Engel was right. Sonnenby was not insane. She could cure him. She would cure him.

  “Tell me about your mother,” she whispered.

  The whistle blew before he could answer, with his body or his mouth. The train jerked and slowed. Elsa leaned in front of Sonnenby to see out the window. They were approaching another station. She sat back and looked up at him.

  “Your mother?”

  His face darkened and he paused before he spoke. “I am not sure how asking personal questions will further your career.”

  Elsa shifted nimbly away from mother. “You were decorated in the war. You fought at Gallipoli. Afterwards you were sent to Egypt to work for Intelligence. You were assigned as a translator. Your superiors gave you high marks for—“

  “No.”

  Elsa stopped. They both sat in silence as the train slowed to a crawl and wooden buildings appeared outside the window. She started again. “You were sent to the hospital for a wound in your side. You were shot, I believe.”

  His eyes unfocused. “Yes,” he said softly as if being struck with a bullet was a pleasant memory like an afternoon tea party or a day fishing on the river. She very slowly leaned across the aisle and retrieved her notebook and pencil.

  “Go on,” she murmured as she turned the pages silently to get to the blank ones.

  His eyes glittered. There was noise from the outside platform as passengers departed and boarded. A short whistle warned that the train would soon continue.

  Elsa said, “You had been shot.”

  He turned to her. “I was.”

  “But they moved you to the psych ward.” She waited for him to continue.

  He just looked down at her. This time his face was composed with a kind of sympathy. She frowned and set her pencil down. Sympathy? No. She did not see a true caring there. It was more like resignation that she would never understand, and any further explanation would be a waste of time.

  Carefully she asked, “Did they put you in restraints right away?”

  “No,” he answered. His voice was honey-slow but his eyes darted over the station and the passengers outside the window.

  She noted this. She tensed. She glanced at the curtains that separated the chamber from the narrow corridor where, hopefully, Davies remained at his post. Sonnenby would not be able to leap through either window. She wondered what he planned to do. She could see the muscles of his thighs harden beneath his trousers and his feet moved, testing the length of the hobble.

  “Were you drugged?” She pretended to take notes.

  “Yes,” he dragged the word out like he was
in an opium dream, still watching the scene outside.

  Elsa tucked her pencil into the gutter of her notebook and slowly closed it. His shoulders moved under the canvas. She had a vague sense of having made a terrible mistake just before he swung his body like a lever. He pushed himself over backwards and pinned her to the seat beneath him as he lifted both legs in tandem, bent the knees and struck the window with both feet together. The widow shattered and broken glass bounced on the seat and floor around her.

  Elsa tried to breathe but Sonnenby’s weight pressed against her chest. She twisted her arms and pushed. He rocked and with the unintended help of her arms, righted himself and threw his shoulders against the opposite side of the seat. He bent over his knees and she saw that he had freed one hand by putting his legs through the loosened arms of the jacket. His fingers nimbly unbuckled one of the hobbles and he was out the window before she finished drawing in her breath. The sliding door banged as Davies lunged through it. He followed Sonnenby out the window with a daring leap, crunching the shards on the platform beneath his boots and pounding after him.

  Marshall entered, his face red with anger, his eyes wide with fear. Elsa put a hand to her ribs and gasped. The edges of her vision were still black from lack of air and it was at least three deep breaths before she could see clearly again. Marshall hung out the window and shouted loudly. Elsa could not follow his English. It sounded almost like another language entirely.

  He pulled back from the window and glared at her, his face was blotched white and red. “You stupid woman! Did I not warn you? God damn you and all women!” He pushed past her knees and left through the opening into the corridor. His pounding feet echoed in the car and she heard the door at the end open and slam shut.

  She heard his voice shouting outside on the platform. Elsa pushed herself up and moved to the shattered window and looked out. A crowd had gathered around where she assumed Lord Sonnenby was engaged in battle with the orderlies. She could see nothing but the broad backs of workmen and the bobbing of hats. The crowd shouted encouragement to one side or another and the station’s uniformed engineers and conductors and linemen joined the noisy fray.

  She leaned back into the seat and used her notebook to brush the remaining shards on the cushions to the floor. She remembered what the doctor had once told her, the taste of true learning is the bitter tang of failure. She winced. The car shook as many feet climbed aboard. She heard the angry voices and puffing struggles of several men as she imagined they strong-armed a re-captured Lord Sonnenby into his sleeping car. The straightjacket would be tightened again and soon Mr. Marshall would be in to give her a tongue-lashing.

  Her hand trembled as she put her notebook and pencil on her lap. She gave herself a moment to breathe before she opened it and started to write. She had written quite a few lines before she realized the pencil had broken with the glass and only the scratches on the paper were visible, like scars on the page.

  Marshall arrived at the open door with a conductor who surveyed the damaged window with professional acuity. Neither man looked at her until they finished the examination. The conductor turned to Marshall and said, “We have telegraphed the next station. They will have a replacement ready for us as well as a glazier. Nothing can be done here until it is repaired. I suggest,” and now he looked at Elsa sitting small in her seat, “that passengers remain in their compartments for the next section of the trip. We will be in Budapest tomorrow morning.”

  Marshall nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Bingham.” The conductor turned sideways to brush past him. Marshall looked down his nose at her. Elsa gave him a defiant tilt of her chin, though her eyes admitted her guilt.

  “Fraulein, I suggest you retire to your bunk until we reach Budapest. I will have the steward bring you some supper. We will not take supper in the dining car tonight.” He said nothing more but turned his back on her and left.

  That night Elsa lay awake in her top bunk, listening to the voices in the next compartment. The rumbling of the steel wheels on the track kept the words from her, but tone and volume were all that she needed. Sonnenby was not being left alone for a moment. Right now all three of his keepers were there with him and it seemed all of them had something to say. She did not hear the distinctive baritone that signaled he was responding, only the tweedy voice of Marshall and the twang of one of the Welsh orderlies. Probably Jones. Sonnenby was being roundly savaged for the damage to the window. Probably also reminded of his duty to father and king and country.

  She heard a few thumps and the wall between the chambers shook. This might be Sonnenby’s response. It was effective, for the voices stopped berating him. Then silence again for a moment before the thumping and banging restarted, and then there was a cry.

  Elsa sat up straight. After the cry she heard low cursing and then maddening silence. She climbed from her bunk and moved closer to the door and pressed her ear against the thin partition between the rooms. The voice she expected to hear did not come muffled from the wall but clearly through her door.

  “Fraulein Schluss. Please come immediately.”

  She lifted the latch and slid her door open to face a tired-looking Marshall in the narrow corridor. His raised eyebrow reminded her that she had not put on a dressing gown before opening the door and that her blonde hair hung unbound to her waist. She used one hand to close the nightgown between her breasts and the other to push her hair over her shoulder.

  “What is the matter, Mr. Marshall?”

  “I was told you were a nurse during the war.” He made it sound like a question.

  “Yes. I was a nurse in a field hospital during the war and afterward in the military hospital in Munich.”

  “Then come on.” He took her elbow and steered her into the corridor. She saw the steward standing near the door to the next car. He gave them a professionally disinterested look as they passed through the door into the next compartment.

  Elsa pressed herself against the edge of the bunk as it became clear that five people were never intended to inhabit the room comfortably. Lord Sonnenby was stretched out on the bunk without the straightjacket, Jones at his feet, Davies at his head. Marshall entered after her and closed the door. She inched around the chair and toward the window to give him room. Sonnenby was unconscious. Davies had a hand over his nose and mouth. She could detect the faint odor of ether in the small compartment as well as the more pungent smell of unwashed men.

  “You have him restrained,” she murmured. “A chemical restraint this time.”

  “Necessary, fraulein.”

  “He is injured?”

  “His left arm. You can see, there.”

  She could not see there. Jones’ knee and Davies’ thigh were in the way. She knelt on the floor by the bunk and leaned closer. His left arm was bloody from the elbow to the wrist. Someone had tied a tourniquet made from a handkerchief around his arm above the elbow.

  “The tourniquet is wrong and is causing more harm than good. That is only necessary if a limb is severed, or an artery.”

  Marshall grunted.

  “And the ether. How much already? Too much and you will addle his brain and poison his lungs.”

  “We cannot treat the wound through a jacket.” His voice was harsh and she heard his exasperation.

  “Then bind his ankles and tell at least one of the men to retire.”

  The bunk shook as Jones strapped the hobbles on Sonnenby’s ankles. The door slid open as he left and let in some welcome fresh air.

  “Perhaps you could open the window. He cannot leap through it now, Mr. Marshall.” Elsa loosened the tourniquet and tore at the fragments of Sonnenby’s shirt until his forearm was exposed. “I will need better light.” The light immediately appeared over her shoulder.

  Sonnenby’s arm had a long cut from the elbow to the wrist. It was deepest in the center, where blood continued to ooze slowly and dribble over the curve of his muscles as she turned the arm and probed it. “He has not severed anything important, gentlemen. This was not a
suicide attempt.” She looked up at Marshall holding an electric torch near his shoulder.

  “You think not?” He said softly.

  “I do.” Elsa turned the arm. The skin was neatly sliced and muscles showed through where the bleeding had slowed. “I will assume he had palmed a piece of glass from the window.” She turned the hand up to see a neat slice across his palm as well. “Yes. I suggest he planned to remove the detested straightjacket, not to bleed to death on the train.”

  “Can you repair this?”

  She glanced up at his face. “You speak as if he were a broken machine, Mr. Marshall. Or perhaps my English is at fault.”

  He frowned. “We have a surgical kit. Can you use it to repair and bind this wound?” He spoke slowly as if her English were at fault.

  Elsa narrowed her eyes. “Of course I can.”

  Davies produced the kit and with the help of the light she was able to determine the heavy metal box with a hinged lid contained tincture of iodine, two needles and long lengths of catgut in alcohol along with scissors and tweezers and other medical instruments. There should have been more rolled bandages, but she did not complain.

  Only the clack of the train and the occasional faint whistle as they moved through villages interrupted her concentration. Davies dripped ether over the cloth on Sonnenby’s face with professional accuracy. She checked on him every time she had to look up to clip a stitch. Davies was looking a little woozy, himself, by the time she finished. She put a hand up. “Halt, bitte,” she said before remembering where she was. “Stop, please,” she amended and shook her head to clear it. “Open the window wider, Herr Marshall.”

  A blast of night air quickly cleared the room and she heard both men sigh in relief. She tied off the bandage around Sonnenby’s arm and bent it over his chest. Davies lurched to his feet and leaned against the wall with one arm. Marshall spoke to him and the orderly left the compartment on wobbling legs. Marshall said to her, “Thank you, Fraulein Schluss.”

  Elsa put two fingers against Sonnenby’s throat near his jaw. “He will be fine, Mr. Marshall. I suggest you keep the straightjacket off for the time being.”