Blue Damask Read online

  The electric torch blinked off. She could not see his face when he answered, “He has destroyed the last one we had. He shall be bound hand and foot for the remainder of the trip.”

  “Shackled like a criminal.” Elsa pushed herself to her feet and rubbed her knees. When she stretched to rub her back she realized she was still in her nightgown. In the faint light of the small wall lamp she could see Marshall’s face redden and he appeared acutely uncomfortable. Elsa looked down at her breasts. They were being unruly, unbound beneath her gown. She made a wry mouth and adjusted her clothing to cover them more securely. “Perhaps you could retrieve my dressing gown, Mr. Marshall. It is hanging on the hook near the bunk.”

  He obeyed without comment and left the compartment. She used this opportunity to examine her patient closely. Elsa sat on the edge of the bunk and touched a finger lightly to Sonnenby’s eyelid. It twitched. She put a hand to his forehead and then the side of his cheek to test his temperature.

  The ether would wear off fairly quickly. She loosened his shirt. He had many short scars tracking through the thick curling black hair that covered his chest. Some scars looked to be several years old, others were still red. His shoulders and arms bulged with more muscle than he needed to be a lord or even a soldier. These were the arms and shoulders of a boxer. She pursed her lips. The file had not mentioned that Sonnenby was an athlete in school, but the muscle explained why the straightjacket had been necessary. Sonnenby would be able to easily overpower his keepers if not restrained.

  But according to the files he was not an athlete. She unbuttoned the shirt and opened it up. Perhaps those expensive boarding schools. She narrowed her eyes. His file and Mr. Marshall had suggested his mother’s affair was not publicly known. But what if it were? Constant fist fights in the shower room and behind the dormitories would require muscles like these. Muscles built by defending his honor over and over again.

  She moved his shirt and looked lower for evidence of the wound that had put him in the hospital. She found a roundish scar near the bottom of his ribs that she recognized immediately. She glanced over her shoulder at the door before grasping Sonnenby and rolling him toward her, looking for the exit wound in his side or on his back.

  There, dangerously close to his kidney. His file had mentioned a long recovery in an Egyptian hospital. She probed the raised scar with her fingers as it was really too dark to examine it better and the angle was impossible on the bunk. She let his body roll back gently to the mattress.

  The door slid open and Marshall entered with her dressing gown. He held the flimsy cloth like it was snake. She stood and took it from him, putting her arms through the sleeves and closing it at the throat. She tied the ribbon under her chin with an exaggerated tug while looking straight at him. He lowered his eyes politely.

  “You were saying, Mr. Marshall, that you planned to keep Lord Sonnenby shackled and manacled for the remainder of this trip?”

  “Yes. After yesterday’s demonstration I would have expected to hear some approval in your voice, madam, instead of disgust.”

  “I understood that we are trying to humanize the patient before presenting him in Damascus. Keeping him bound like an animal is counterproductive.”

  “Humanize? Perhaps this is not the correct word, Fraulein. Say it in Deutsch.”

  “Vermenschlichen,” she said.

  They stared at each other in silence. Her English was precise. Her German understood.

  “I am open to suggestion,” he offered. “But he must not escape custody, nor be permitted to harm himself.”

  “I also understand your concerns,” she answered, thinking about that muscle. “Keep him secured in his room. Cover the window if you must. Post your strongmen at the door in shifts. Permit me to stay with him.”

  Marshall looked at the window, barring it in his mind. Then he looked at her. She read his thoughts.

  “He has no history of aggression toward women,” she offered slowly.

  Marshall nodded. “You appear very sturdy, fraulein, but could you stop him from killing himself?”

  Elsa’s smiled faded. “Mr. Marshall,” she said patiently, “You assume that I would need force to restrain him. Perhaps you have forgotten that I also provide a different kind of medical intervention.” She looked down at Sonnenby who was moving his head and mumbling to himself as he regained consciousness. “I will use words to tame him, sir, not whips or chains.”

  Marshall winced. “Three days to Istanbul if there are no delays, madam.” He shook his head at Sonnenby. “And then two days on a ship.”

  “Plenty of time, Mr. Marshall.”

  He looked up at her sharply. “Indeed.”

  Chapter Three

  Sonnenby opened his eyes and blinked at her, adjusting to the light. The window had been secured with a heavy plank while he recovered from the ether. His ankles were free. His wrists unbound. They were alone.

  He took in the room quickly, noticing the absence of Marshall and his orderlies. He flexed his newly freed arms and legs and raised an eyebrow then lifted the bandaged arm and looked at it.

  “You are free to stand and walk if you please,” she told him.

  He sat up and held his head with both hands.

  “I have some aspirin powders…” she offered.

  “Please.”

  Elsa opened the door and nodded to Davies, now on watch. “I will get some medicine from my room,” she told him. When she came back with the small packets Sonnenby was sitting in the single chair by the boarded window. Sonnenby took them from her, a glass of water already in his hand.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  She watched him swirl the powder in the water and drink it down.

  “They think you tried to slit your wrist,” she said.

  “You know better, don’t you?”

  She nodded. “The carotid would have been quicker and easier.”

  He gave her a short laugh in agreement. “At least I am out of that damned jacket.”

  “But still on the way to Damascus.” She sat down on his bunk. “Tell me how you feel about this trip. So far you have been a prisoner. Am I to assume, then, that given your freedom you would return to England?”

  He rested the glass on his knee and looked at her with a frown. “Is the analysis beginning?”

  She stared back. “I promised only to help you. I have made no promises to the British Foreign Office.”

  “You cannot help me. Best for you to get off at the next stop. What is it? Budapest?”

  She nodded to his arm, ignoring that comment. “Perhaps it hurts now, but it will heal. I have used my knowledge and skills to sew and bandage that wound, and treated it with chemicals to keep it from festering. You will have full use of your arm in ten days. Had I not been here, you might be looking at gangrene or death from sepsis…or should I say from ignorance. Ignorance is many times fatal.”

  “You suggest I am ignorant?”

  “Aller Anfang ist schwer,” she shrugged. “It is always difficult at the beginning.”

  He touched his bottom lip with his thumb. “And you would heal my mind so that it will not fester?”

  “Does your mind pain you now? Is it not injured?”

  He looked at her. She saw him look at the top of her head, at her hair, unbound and draped over one shoulder, the ends curled into rings in her lap. She saw him look at her breasts, and then her knees and her bare feet peeking out from under her dressing gown. He looked up and into her eyes. “You would come to me as Brunhilde the Valkyrie? Save me from myself? Will those blue eyes look into my soul and save me from Wotan’s fires? Where is your winged helmet and impressive breastplate? Where is Grane, your flying horse?”

  Elsa did not laugh, for there was nothing funny about Wagnerian opera. She must create a rapport with her patient. If it would be through music and literature, then so be it. Elsa was well armed in both. Wagnerian opera was a subject she could expound upon for hours. “Do you truly understand the metaphor you are usin
g, Lord Sonnenby?”

  His smile disappeared. “I thought I did.”

  “Siegfried went to his doom because of ignorance. There is some connection between a lack of fear and being ignorant, is there not? Brunhilde could not save him. He had to come to the realization himself. Too late. Too late. She arrived too late to save him and all the world crumbled around them both.”

  He sat back in the chair and looked at her with new eyes. The aspirin powders were working. The creases in his forehead and around his mouth were no longer deep crevasses of pain, but had faded to thin lines. He took a deep breath. “Yet she saved the whole world.”

  Elsa tilted her head. “She saved it by destroying it. Hardly a triumph.”

  “A better world rose up from the ashes. A glorious Gotterdammerung.”

  “Did it? I think not.” She thought about the recent war.

  Sonnenby stood up and shifted his chair across the room toward her until he was nearly touching her knee to knee and sat down again. “She wanted to clear the world of selfishness and greed.” His eyes nearly gleamed. “She wanted to redeem all of mankind.”

  Elsa shook her head to disagree, but she was gratified that they shared an interest in literature. “It is a story.”

  “A powerful story. An enduring story.”

  She argued, “Enduring because Gotterdammerung repeats with every war. It repeats with every man who strikes another to take his belongings, every lie told, every love denied, every fate averted…” Her voice broke. She was getting worked up as she did every time she talked about Wagner.

  Sonnenby turned up the corner of his mouth, “…and every love consummated, and every life sacrificed for honor.”

  Elsa felt in the pocket of her dressing gown for her handkerchief. She touched her nose. “Yes. Honor.”

  Sonnenby looked at the door to the corridor. “I am not mad.”

  “I know.”

  He turned to her. “Do you? How do you know?”

  “I am not ignorant, as I have just explained.”

  “And I am not Siegfried. I am not the ‘man who knows no fear’.”

  “No healthy man is truly fearless,” she told him. “Fear is a necessary function of being human.” She smiled and shrugged, “and a good argument could be made that Siegfried’s fearlessness was a symptom of insanity. After all, he was the son of incestuous twins. I don’t think he was quite right in the head. He could have used a therapist.”

  “Talking to you is fun,” Sonnenby said with a little laugh. “Imagine that.”

  She smiled at him. “What would you like to accomplish in these next six days?”

  He shook his head. “They will take me to Damascus and Marshall will present me as a solution to an international dilemma. I do not want to be a solution to their problems.”

  “You have told them this?”

  His cheek twitched. “My madness should have dissuaded them.”

  “Why do you not want to be a solution to their problems?” She asked.

  “For one, it will not solve them, but instead create larger ones. They think that because my natural father was a tribal leader, the tribesmen will listen to his bastard son. This is a mistake. The land did not belong to my father and it does not belong to me. The British think that property is owned by individuals. It is not. It is in possession of the tribal people, they choose a leader they think can defend it from the other tribes. My half-brother is more likely to be the leader. They will not trust me.”

  “Then perhaps they need you to convince your brother and uncles and cousins that a treaty with Britain is in their best interests.”

  “And how am I to do that? I am the enemy.”

  “The Turks were the enemy,” she countered.

  He stopped. “Not their enemy, but that is true in a way, but you are not thinking like an Arab. To the tribe, the enemy is everyone who is not them. The idea of alliances is brief and not often sustained.”

  “And yet the blood of your father runs in your veins.”

  “Tainted. I speak Arabic with a London accent. I am not one of them.”

  Elsa nodded, understanding. “So this is a hopeless mission. That explains Mr. Marshall’s sour face.”

  “His face was sour before he took this on,” Sonnenby said. “He was my father’s solicitor for years before the war. I never saw him smile.”

  “Will you tell them you do not wish to continue?”

  “Aye, there’s the rub.”

  “So there is a method in your madness, is there?”

  He gave her a sad smile. “I like you, Brunhilde.”

  “Mr. Sinclair, we are both in a drama we cannot escape without damage to our honor.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “I think…” her words were interrupted by the sound of a blow against the door. They both looked up. Sonnenby stood and patted the air by her head, silently telling her to be still. They heard another thump and a cry. Then heard the sound of a man groaning. The car swayed as the train took another slow curve.

  They traded puzzled looks in the silence that followed, then the door burst inward and Sonnenby backpedalled quickly to avoid being struck by the door’s edge. He knocked over the chair and tripped backwards on top of it. He fell sprawled on his back against the dressing table and Elsa’s first thought was that he would muss her carefully wrapped bandage and tear her stitches. The next thought was fully focused by the intruder who leaped through the doorway after him.

  He was a large dark man with a huge black mustache, dressed in tunic and trousers with a wide red sash tightly wound around most of his torso. The man swung his head like a bull to look at her with bovine eyes. She saw herself dismissed as a harmless woman before he turned his attention to Sonnenby. The intruder brought a massive boot down on the little chair and burst it to splinters. He lunged for Sonnenby and dragged him up by the remains of his shirt with one hand. Elsa saw he had a long knife in his other hand which was moving in a swift arc toward Sonnenby’s neck.

  She picked up the surgical kit beside her and threw it with all her strength. The heavy metal box struck the knife and sent it bouncing off the wall and to the floor. She leapt after the knife, planning to snatch it up and keep it away from the intruder.

  The man now had both hands on Sonnenby’s neck. She kicked the knife through the open door into the corridor and leaped on the intruder’s back. He shrugged his shoulders and bucked to dislodge her, but she wrapped her legs around his waist and dug her heels into his groin. She reached around and clawed at his face, trying to get her fingers in his eye sockets. One index finger was rewarded with a wet squish.

  The intruder roared as he came up and off of Sonnenby. His thick arms now reached behind him and ripped her off his back easily and threw her to the floor as if she were a doll.

  A boot rose up to stomp her head and she rolled until the edge of the bunk stopped her. She was trapped. He was standing on her twisted nightgown, pinning her to the floor. She was surprised that at the moment of her death her mind went completely blank.

  But the expected blow never came. Instead the upraised boot disappeared with a crash as the intruder’s body fell over her. She heard heavy breathing and grunting and hard boots gouged her legs and heavy bodies rolled on top of her back. She pressed her face into the small space between the bunk and the floor. She heard the sickening smacks of fists on flesh. The grunting and gasping seemed to go on forever. She was continually stepped on, first her posterior, then her back, then her feet and legs. She tried to bring her knees up under her and closer to the bunk.

  The sounds of the blows slowed and then stopped. There was an eerie quiet and the clacking sound of the rumbling train came to her ears again. She still could not get up. Something heavy was draped across her thighs. She heard the nauseating sound of a death rattle. Moments later her legs were free. She got to her hands and knees, afraid to look behind her, but more afraid not to.

  The intruder lay on his back, mouth open, his face battered so badly
she could not see anything but bloody pulp where his nose should be. His eyes stared up, the whites now red, his mouth dangled open, his jaw and teeth shattered. She pulled her feet under her and scrambled away from the bunk, looking for Sonnenby. He lay among the rungs and legs of the shattered chair. His teeth chattered and he trembled like he was freezing. His eyes stared straight ahead. His dark hair was plastered to his pale face in stripes across his forehead.

  Elsa crawled over the body of the dead man to reach him. “Henry,” she whispered. When she touched him he came alive and leapt up from the floor, crouched into a defensive position, fists in front as if he were boxing an invisible opponent.

  “Henry,” she repeated. She stood carefully, lifting the hem of her dressing gown, now soaked with blood, and pulled it up around her knees so she could walk. “Henry.” She put a hand out as if he were a feral animal. He turned his wild eyes to her without recognition. She stopped.

  His throat bore the livid marks of his attacker’s fingers. One eye was swollen shut and his lower lip was split. Blood dripped from his mouth to the carpet. Both fists were bloody and swelling quickly around the knuckles. On his forearm, her bandage had come off, but the barbs of catgut showed her that her stitching held.

  Elsa turned her head toward the door. A man’s body lay there face down. Davies or Jones. She could not tell. Where was Marshall? She looked into the hall, then back at Sonnenby. No one would hear her cry out. The steward who sat at the end of the private car was most likely dead as well or else he would have summoned help by now.

  Sonnenby had dropped his fists and was bent over, breathing in uneven gasps. He wavered and looked like he was going down. She caught his shoulders and steered him to his bunk where he collapsed.

  Elsa lifted her bloody gown and climbed into the bunk beside him. “Henry,” she murmured. He shuddered at the sound of his name but did not answer. She put a hand on his shoulder. “I am going to find Mr. Marshall.”

  He lay very still. His eyes stared up at her but did not see. Elsa leaned back against the wall and put a hand to her eyes. She did not want to leave him alone, but she would not stay in the compartment with two dead men, waiting until they were found. She must act immediately. And she must find out what happened to Marshall.