Master of the Moors (13 page)

Campbell awoke in a ditch
and into what he thought must be a dream. Wherever he looked he saw
nothing but white---a dream of Heaven, perhaps, but then the cold hit
him so severely it felt as if someone had replaced his blood with
ice water. And he was wet. His immediate assumption, that his
bladder had let go while he'd slept, was dismissed when he tried to
roll over on his side and the ground squelched beneath him. He
blinked, one last attempt at dragging himself out of this
preposterous dream, and realized to his dismay that he was fully
awake. Disorientated, he sat up and a wave of nausea swept over
him.

What happened? Where in God's name am
I?

He groaned and put both
hands over his face. A deep throbbing ache pounded against the
inside of his skull. With great effort, he planted his hands on the
wet grass and levered himself up. Eyes narrowed against the pain,
he struggled to make out anything in the fog, but there was nothing
to see.

I'm in a field.

He tried to remember how he might have
ended up here but his thoughts were as sluggish as his
movements.

All right, think. I was in The Fox
& Mare...

He stepped forward, hands
pressed against his temples as to keep the brain within from
seeking solace without, and his foot sank up to the ankle in a
soggy hole. In an attempt to keep from falling, he reached his arms
out and staggered back, tugging his foot free, but leaving his shoe
behind to fill with brackish water.

"Bloody
hell!"
he roared and bent
down to retrieve the sodden shoe. Blood rushed to his head, making
him dizzy and aggravating the relentless ache. He groaned, shoved
his fingers into the watery hole until they found leather, then he
pulled. There was a sucking sound and the shoe popped free so
suddenly that he almost ended up on his back again. Once steadied,
he held the shoe aloft and inspected it with mounting fury, until
his chest hurt and his breath wheezed from his lungs as if they
were filled with sand.
Damn and blast it
all
. He grabbed his handkerchief from the
breast pocket of his coat and coughed into it until his throat was
raw and his eyes full of tears. Another hasty search revealed that
whatever machinations had landed him in a field, they hadn't
relieved him of his flask. For this much at least, he was grateful.
He unscrewed the cap and drank until the flask was empty, then
shoved it back into his pocket and set about the unpleasant ordeal
of removing as much mud from the shoe as possible so it was
wearable. He had no intention of trying to find his way home
barefoot. Grimacing, he scooped the sludge from the shoe, then
dropped it and wriggled his foot into it, groaning at the instant
chill that oozed over his toes. At length, he began to walk, unsure
of the direction, aware of the dangers of wandering on the
moors---for that was certainly where he'd ended up---but too furious to
stay still.

This latest development
was just one of the many contrived to bring him down, he knew, to
get him to concede to his own failures as a man, as a doctor...as a
husband. God would have him lie in the earth until the cold killed
him, or until tendrils erupted from the sodden grass to claim
him.
You tried, you didn't succeed, it's
time to give up. There can be nothing ahead of you but more
disappointment, more pain. Your proper place is in the
grave.

Well, to hell with
that
, he thought, clenching his fists and
craning his head forward as he tried to make out something,
anything in the fog that might tell him where he was or in which
direction he was heading. He surmised that the need to void his
bladder had led him here before whatever had inspired consciousness
to leave him. If so, then he couldn't be far from the road.
Emboldened by this rationalization of his circumstances, he
continued walking, taking small steps in case he suddenly found
himself on the unstable edge of a mire.

Unfair
, he decided.
My whole bloody life
has been one unmitigated disaster after another
. Looking at the thick roiling fog only served to remind him
of that morning, many moons ago, in which, yet again, someone else
had dictated the direction his life was to take. On that occasion,
it was his own friend---his
only
friend---and colleague, Jeremy Herbert, who'd
broken the news to him that the chairman of the Royal London
Hospital, where Campbell had worked for eight years, was letting
him go. The board had cited allegations of morphine theft, drug
dependency and patient neglect, none of which Campbell admitted to,
but all of which were true.

He'd been forced out,
ostracized and sent here to this godforsaken wasteland where a man
was either measured in terms of how much money he had in the bank,
or how many fox brushes he had strung over his mantel.

Campbell waved a hand
through the fog, teeth gritted, a single tear rolling down his
cheek. "
Bastards
."
His only friend had betrayed him, his employers had turned on him,
his wife had treated the news as if it was expected, as if he'd
taken the morphine in the hope of being relieved of his post. She'd
never understood his need for it, how it had granted him a blissful
escape from his demons. How it had made the world bearable. Or
perhaps she had, and her demand that he give it up if he wanted to
keep her was just another cruel ploy to prolong his misery. After
all, she had accompanied him to this bleak, desolate nowhere, then
promptly left him to wallow in despair. Since then, it had seemed
as if every attempt he made to dig his way out of his misery only
deepened the hole in which he'd found himself.

Now he was alone again and
lost, with a monstrous headache, wet clothes and a dry mouth,
trying to find his way back to a house that was just that, a house,
not a home, for there was no warmth there. There was no warmth
anywhere, but he would be damned if he would stand here and take
whatever hateful gift fate had in store for him next.

Ahead of him, in the fog,
something moved. Instinctively Campbell lurched toward it.
"Hello?"

There was no answer. He
paused, squinted and found himself trying to look
around
the fog. The damp
clung to him like a second skin, the cold drawing a shiver from
him. He wished he'd kept some of the whiskey, for he was not yet
sure how far away from his house he might be and the chill was
starting to make his back ache.

How long have I been out
here?

He found himself wishing
he knew someone who might look for him, someone who would care that
he hadn't made it home. But he hadn't known anyone like that in a
long time. It was a depressing thought, and one that almost sapped
his will to keep moving. But then another glimpse of movement, this
time to his left, made him lean in that direction. "Is someone
there?" No answer, but for a faint shuffling sound. Slowly, he
began to walk in that direction, his shoe squelching, the grass
sinking beneath his feet. He cursed his stupidity, cursed the
bandaged man---what had his name been?---cursed everything that had led
him here to this ridiculous jaunt across the hostile
moors.

Probably a bloody sheep.

"Is someone
there?"

It was possible that
someone
was
out
here, he realized. One of the village youths, perhaps, already
dressed for the October Dance and hoping to scare the wits out of
someone. Disheveled and disorientated, Campbell would make the
perfect target for such a scheme. He did not intend, however, to
entertain it, and smiled grimly at the thought of what he would do
if he managed to apprehend the rogue. Child or not, he would send
them home with a bruised arse.

The fog swirled in front of
him.

"This is Doctor Campbell,"
he said, mustering as much authority as the chill and his hoarse
voice would allow. "If this is some kind of a trick, your parents
will be hearing about it."

But just as quickly as his
resolve had surfaced, it was contaminated by doubt. As lost as he
was, should he really be threatening someone who might help him out
of his predicament?

A figure began to emerge
from the fog, and now he could see that it was most definitely not
a sheep. He straightened. "Who's that?"

"A recent acquaintance,"
came the reply.

Campbell swallowed
painfully, fresh thirst scorching his throat, even as the smell of
seared flesh reached him. A pang of dread flared through
him.
"You,"
he
said, and saw the figure stop, just far enough away so that his
silhouette, backlit by the opaque sunlight, was visible.

"You left in quite a
hurry," Stephen said. "Just as our conversation was getting
interesting, too."

Stephen's words shredded
the temporary amnesia the alcohol had induced in the doctor and
suddenly Campbell recalled Sarah's angry tone, the burned man's
smug smirk, the farmers standing, silently challenging him. It
filled him with a fresh wave of anger, but he kept it in check, for
this was no mischievous youth, no trickster who would run giggling
away from a confrontation, but a fully grown man, larger than
Campbell and twice as threatening. If there was retribution to be
had, he decided, it would have to be later, and executed with more
thought behind it. For now, it would be more beneficial to treat
Stephen as an ally who'd simply had the misfortune to see him at
his worst.

"I was very drunk
earlier," he said, lightening his tone.

"Yes you were, but you
struck me as the type who can only count truthfulness and courage
among his personal attributes when he's too inebriated to care
about the consequences they might bring."

Campbell was shivering so
bad he had to hug himself against the cold, a move that only
pressed his sodden clothes closer to his skin. "Not at all," he
said. "I just have a lot on my mind these days, and I'm sorry to
say it has significantly shortened my tolerance for
ambiguity."

"But there was nothing
ambiguous about my words, Doctor Campbell."

Campbell frowned, as the
fog momentarily obscured the man, then cleared again. "Then why?
Why would you insult me like that? I've done nothing to
you."

"Haven't you?"

"No, damn you, I
haven't."

"Think, Doctor. Think
hard."

"What is there to think
about? I've already told you I don't know what the hell you're
talking about!"

"Think of the last time
this village had a fire."

Campbell did, and fear
contracted his stomach. "But I had nothing to do with that."
Questions buzzed through his mind. Had someone been in the house
while it burned? "It's those others you should be after, not
me."

"Oh but you did something
far worse than that, didn't you?"

"I don't
understand."

"Of course you do.
Think,
you old fool. You
took a life that day."

A face flashed through
Campbell's mind and at last the wheels began to turn as it dawned
on him what Stephen was talking about. But what on earth could this
man have to do with
her?
"It wasn't my fault."

"Blood is blood,
Doctor."

Campbell began to back
away. "No, I tried to
save
her. If you know so much then surely you must
know that."

"I know that your
incompetence killed her, as I'm sure it has killed so many. I know
that you suffered from a chemical dependency that made your nerves
brittle. And I know that a better man would have been able to save
her."

Campbell shook his head.
This was madness. It couldn't be happening. "Who are you?" he
asked.

"I'm the master of these
moors."

"But all the masters are
gone and have been for some time."

"Not all of
them."

Suddenly, he was gone, as
if someone had dropped a white curtain in front of him. The only
sound was that of Campbell's labored breathing. "Why are you doing
this?" he asked the swirling air. "I did
nothing
to you!"

For God's sake, run!
he urged himself. His body obeyed a moment later,
his flight not fast, or sure, but clumsy and dangerous. He felt as
if he were blind, his arms outstretched to protect him against
collision, his feet slipping in the grass. The strengthening smell
of wet animal and decaying things drove him onward, and he prayed
the gate to the village was close, willed it to emerge from the
vaporous air.

The fog swept into his
eyes like smoke, whipping around him as he lurched and staggered
forward. "Somebody, help me!" He didn't care what the villagers
might say about him in the morning if they heard the stark terror
in his voice. Let them laugh at his cowardice. He knew any one of
them would do the same thing in his place. Lost on the moors,
antagonized by a disfigured man with an obvious, and utterly
misguided vendetta against him---he was frightened, and not about to
restrain a cry to save face. He ran the risk of losing more than
that if Stephen, this self-proclaimed master of the moors, turned
out to be some kind of raving madman.