The man making the sound had dropped his fork, and peas spilled over the edge of his plate and onto the table. He raised his hands to his face, as if embarrassed at the sound that was coming from him, and I realized the sound actually was laughter—hysterical, uncontrolled. He rocked forward and back again, his face reddening, the sound coming from deep inside him in loops and whorls.
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
“Look what you’ve done!” said Captain Mabry, but he was directing this at Creeton. “You’ve set him off now.” His tone held almost a note of fear.
“Somersham!” said Creeton to the laughing man, who continued to keen. “Crazy as a loon, are you? Somersham!” He lifted his plate and banged it on the table again, sending droplets of gravy flying. And again. “There! What do you think that is? Where do you think you are, then? The bloody Somme?”
The man laughed harder. The air seemed to have gone from the room, and I could barely breathe. “Stop it!” I shouted. “Stop!”
“Somersham, for God’s sake,” Captain Mabry’s voice was almost pleading. “You have to stop.”
Somersham pressed his hands to his cheeks. “I’m not a coward,” he said, to no one. “I’m not.”
I felt a gentle touch on my arm and looked down to find a pudgy man looking up at me, his face unlined and calm. “You mustn’t be too hard on these men,” he said. He leaned closer, lowered his voice. “I think they’ve been in a war.”
I took a step back, and then another. And then I was out of the room, alone in the corridor, with the empty carts and the deep, growing gloom. I made my way to the end of the corridor, where there was a window, my steps echoing strangely off the walls, and looked hopelessly out at the dark drifts of fog.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t. I’d been so certain, but I’d miscalculated. That hand on me—I could still feel it, and it made me sick. I’d thought I’d be caring for madmen, simpletons, drooling idiots. I hadn’t thought they’d be men.
And now I was locked up with them in this place, miles from anything.
I put my palm on the glass, felt its cool dampness, the slick chill of it. Watched the fog go past my fingers. The paint was chipping along the sill and coming off the top of the window in strips. Strange, to see paint peeling already in a house apparently so new.
I closed my eyes. From the dining room, the laughter had stopped, and there was an ominous silence. Calm came over me, almost cold, along the back of my neck and shoulders. It robbed me of my fear and made me feel strong again. Did the door to the nurses’ bedroom have a lock on it? Was there anything in Portis House I could keep as a weapon, just in case?
The silence was broken by a hoarse shout from the dining room, the smash of dishes, the clatter of overturning chairs. From down the corridor came the heavy sounds of orderlies running up the stairs from the kitchen, a shout of surprise. But I was closest, and it took me only seconds. And so I was first into the dining room, and the first to see the blood spilled on the floor.
CHAPTER FOUR
I didn’t think; I only sank to my knees, fighting with my skirts, beside the man prone on the ground. He was wedged between the two tables, curled in on himself, his hands up. When I leaned over him I saw that it was Captain Mabry, his glasses tumbled off to the floor, his face streaked with blood.
Creeton. It must have been. Or perhaps Creeton with the help of another. Or someone else altogether? I didn’t know any of the men well enough to be sure. I pulled the captain onto his back as the room erupted into chaos behind me, chairs scraping as men pushed them back, excited voices. “He’s done it again!” said someone.
“All right, then.” A man’s voice boomed over the others. I looked up to see the orderlies had come into the room, and the biggest one, a huge man with pale hair cropped close to his scalp, was giving orders. “We’re going off to the common room. All of us. In order. Single file. Nice and quiet.”
His vowels flattened over one another, the consonants crisp and brittle. British, and yet somehow alien. I had just placed it as South African when Matron appeared behind the huge orderly and peered past him, her expression livid.
“What is the meaning of this?” she barked to the room.
I looked back down at Captain Mabry. He was lying in my lap, as docile as a trained dog, looking up at me. His nose was bleeding profusely, a great gush of blood down the front of his face, over his lips and chin, onto his shirtfront and the floor. It was a nosebleed in full flush, more gobbets of fresh black blood moving sluggishly out of his nostrils.
Nina appeared over my shoulder. She took in the situation briefly, said, “I’ll get the Winsoll’s,” and was gone before I could ask what that meant.
I swallowed. “Right, then.” I rolled him farther up over my knees. The nose didn’t appear broken; it seemed, unbelievably, like a simple nosebleed. I lifted his torso and tilted his head back—he cooperated with perfect obedience, as if I knew what I was doing—and crooked my elbow under the back of his neck. “Lean back. Lean on me as far back as you can and look up.”
A bloody nose, of all things. The one thing—the only thing—I knew how to treat, at least temporarily. The only thing I had experience of.
Captain Mabry tilted his head back. With practiced precision I pinched his nostrils shut, high up, just under the hard section of bone. He gurgled a bit. The men were leaving the room, muttering, as the big orderly watched them go. I could smell the captain’s shaving soap, could feel the texture of his linen shirt against my supporting arm. There was a spot of dried soap at his temple. I looked away.
Behind me, someone shuffled and walked away, but I couldn’t see who. The captain went very still.
A pair of masculine feet, clad in worn leather shoes, came into my line of vision. Creeton crouched next to me, his wrists draped over his knees, and looked the two of us over. “Well, well,” he said, his voice pitched low, dangerous, and strangely pleased. “Hello, sister.”
I glared at him and said nothing. This man had put his hand on me. My skin crawled.
He leaned closer until his breath, hot and damp, fanned the wisps of hair behind my ear. “Having a good time, are we, on our first day with the madmen?”
“Be careful,” I said back, just as low. “I bite.”
He recoiled. He must have seen something steely in my eyes, because uncertainty flickered across his face, but he covered it quickly with a leering smile. “Perhaps I’d like that.”
“Where I bite, I promise you wouldn’t.”
Surprise again, but he had no chance to answer before Matron stood over him. “That is quite enough, Mr. Creeton.”
Creeton pushed himself to his feet slowly, obeying with an air of open defiance. He turned and followed the others from the room without another word.
Matron stepped forward and looked down at us. “Mr. Mabry,” she said, disappointment in her voice.
Mabry blinked up at her, his expression impossible to read beyond my hand and the trail of blood.
“Another nosebleed,” said Matron. “I thought we were past this. You haven’t had one in several weeks, and it seemed you had conquered this particular problem. But now I see I was wrong. You realize I’m going to have to report this to the doctors, don’t you?”