Silence for the Dead(106)
He took the rifle from her with sure hands and nodded.
She stepped to the doorway, looked back at him. “If he doesn’t shoot me, promise you’ll do it,” she said. “Promise me.”
He didn’t hesitate. “I promise.”
Anna stepped out into the rain, her arms at her sides, her hands open. “Papa!” she cried.
Mabry turned.
Next to me, Jack cocked the rifle as quietly as he could, but the sound was still loud, even through the muffling of the rain.
Anna had moved out into the clearing, toward Mabry, who was staring at her, dazed. “Anna,” he said.
“Don’t take him, Papa,” she said. “Take me.”
“He’s one of the weak,” said Mabry.
She moved closer to him. Mikael still stood, one hand outstretched, as if he did not see her.
“I don’t have a clear shot,” Jack whispered to me.
“Don’t shoot her,” I said through the lump in my throat. “Not yet.”
“He isn’t weak,” Anna said to Mabry, her voice shaking now. Rain had soaked her braid, her bedraggled dress. “I am. I always have been. Shoot me, and then you can go. I’m the last one left, aren’t I? The last one to bear the shame?”
Mabry’s hand raised the gun slowly, unsteadily, aiming it at her. Blood had begun to trickle sluggishly from his nose. “Anna,” he said.
And then it all happened at once. Paulus Vries appeared at the other side of the clearing; he shouted. Mabry jumped. Mikael moved, his eerie form sliding toward his sister. And Jack raised the rifle, sighted it, and fired.
Two shots went off; the noise was deafening. Mabry’s leg buckled and he fell. At the same time, his finger squeezed the trigger and he shot at Anna Gersbach with the last bullet in the Luger.
Anna screamed and fell. Jack ran forward into the rain, rifle still at the ready, and Paulus came from the other direction. I followed, my boots squelching in the mud.
Mabry was moaning, his leg drawn up to his chest. “Hold him down!” Paulus shouted, pinning his arms. Mabry had already dropped the gun and lay bleeding into the wet grass, unresisting. I swung a leg over him, straddled him. His spectacles had fallen off, and when he looked up at me, I was reminded of the first day I met him, when he had lain bleeding in my lap. From the look in his eyes, I knew he remembered it, too, and I knew I was looking at the real Andrew Mabry, the kind, gentle captain with the Roman nose and the family he adored and the old-fashioned sense of honor.
I pulled one of the needles from the pocket of my skirt and grabbed his arm. “Sorry,” I said, and I stuck him as quickly as I could.
When he fell slack, I turned to Jack, who had dropped the rifle in the grass and had knelt beside Anna. She pulled herself up, wiping water from her face. She had no blood on her at all.
“She wasn’t hit,” Jack said to me.
“It was Mikael,” Anna said to my incredulous expression. She wiped water from her face again, and I realized there were tears mixed in with the rain. “He pushed me. I felt him. Kitty, he’s gone.” Her breath hitched. “Saving me freed him. He’s gone.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The sun was just breaking over the horizon, and the day was going to be warm. The rain had stopped as night fell, the hem of my skirt sodden as I walked.
Portis House receded behind me. A single, rutted road led from the front door, over the low hills and through the huddle of trees, and eventually to the bridge to the mainland. I could have followed the road, but each pothole and rut was now a puddle deep with rainwater, and the grass actually seemed the drier path. I had never been this way, except for the day I’d arrived here in the hired car. I swung my arms and inhaled the fresh summer air, thinking of that girl I’d been as if she were someone else.
I turned a final curve and stopped, staring. I’d come here in the fog, and nothing had prepared me for how beautiful it was. This was the low part of land, opposite the high, rocky cliffs, the part of land that tilted down into the sea. Long grasses waved on the slope in the early-morning breeze; they finished in a brief, rugged strip of rocks, dark sand, and driftwood before the land vanished into the ocean. The water was choppy, a dark, dangerous blue, with a froth of whitecaps appearing and disappearing, some of the surface slick with fronds of seaweed. Built over this was the bridge, narrow and wooden, launching off over the unsettled water toward the smudged line of the mainland.
Beneath the bridge, the uneasy ocean slapped the wood hard, as if resentful that the storm was over and the bridge had remained standing. The bridge surface was slick with debris and drying water. But it was passable.
I stood watching the water, the bridge, the birds wheeling overhead. I tried to make out details on the mainland, but couldn’t. I turned and looked behind me, where the cool stone of Portis House appeared through the trees. The line of windows above the portico, which I knew was the nursery, was just visible. I imagined I could see the abandoned statue of Mary through the waving branches, but the truth was, of course, that she was hidden from here.
I took another breath of salty air, heavy with oncoming heat, and turned back down the path. There was work to be done.
? ? ?
We now had two injured men, on top of our five sick with influenza. Once we’d moved Roger and Captain Mabry, and Nina had awoken, groggy and rather angry, all of us had set to work. We’d brought three more mattresses to the common room, including one for Douglas West to use when he wasn’t in his chair. Roger would need surgery, but we had no means to perform it. We disinfected and bound their wounds as best we could, stanching bleeding and changing dressings. Jack’s bullet had taken Mabry through the meat of his calf, a neat flesh wound that hadn’t even broken bone. Roger’s shoulder wound was more serious, and I worried he would never have full use of his arm again.