The Pale Blue Eye: A Novel (33 page)

"She quite undervalues her own beauty, doesn't she?" said the doctor. "None of the amour propre which is, you know, the province of the female. Ah, but I haven't yet shown you my monographs!" Thrusting his hands into the shelf just below, he came away with a stack of thin, yellowing paper that stung the air like pepper. "Yes, yes," he chuckled, "just the thing! An inaugural essay on blisters. I was invited to read this at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Inaugural essay on fistula in ano, very well received at the University of--oh, but now this, well, I think it's fair to say this made my reputation, such as it is. A short account of the most approved method of treating the putrid bilious yellow fever, vulgarly called the black vomit."

"A most impressive range of interests, Doctor."

"Oh, that's just the way the old cranium works. Hither and yon, that's my modus. But the paper I really must show you, Mr. Landor... my observations on Dr. Rush's work on diseases of the mind. Published in the New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery."

"I'd be fascinated to see it."

"Would you really?" He grimaced at me, half believing. I must have been the first human being ever to respond to this overture. "Well, that's... oh, but it's not... do you know, I believe I was perusing it in bed last night. Shall I fetch it?

"By all means."

"You're certain?"

"Of course! Why, I'll even escort you, if you don't mind the company."

His jaw swung open, his hand came forward. "It would be a--a distinct privilege. It would be a delight."

Yes, a little kindness went far with Dr. Marquis. I remember how brightly his boots rang going up the stairs--the sound echoed through the whole house, that's how small these government quarters can be. Everything that happens in one room becomes the property of all rooms.

Which meant that from his dining room roost, Artemus could track every step of our progress, would know the exact moment we reached the second-story landing. But would he know this? That his father would forget to bring a candle? And that the first light to present itself to us should be a night-lantern fixed high on the wall of a small, shuttered bedroom? A strange barren curdled space, where the only things visible were a wall clock (stopped at twelve minutes past three) and the outlines of a plain brass bed, stripped of everything but its mattress.

"Your son's room?" I asked, turning on Dr. Marquis with a smile.

He allowed that it was.

"How nice for him," I said. "A little retreat from the hurly-burly of cadet life."

"As a matter of fact," said the doctor, scratching his cheek, "Artemus stays here only on holidays. More credit to him. He told me once, he said, "Father, if I'm going to be a cadet, then by God, I'm going to live like one. No running home to Mother and Father every night, that's not how a soldier makes his way. I shall be treated the same as all my comrades." " Dr. Marquis tapped his chest and smiled. "How many men can lay claim to having such a son, eh?"

"Few indeed."

Once again he leaned into me; once again the air grew bitter with onions. "I needn't tell you, Mr. Landor, how my heart... swells to see him grown to such a man. Not cut from my cloth, no. Born to lead, anyone can see that. Yes, but we were looking for the monograph, weren't we? This way, please."

At the end of the hallway was Dr. Marquis' bedroom. He stopped-- made as if to knock-- then retracted his hand.

"It has just occurred to me," he whispered, "that my good bride is resting. Perhaps I'll just tiptoe inside, if you don't mind waiting here?"

"Not at all, Doctor. Please take your time."

As soon as the door had closed after him, I took three long strides back down the hallway and ducked into Artemus' room. Lifting the lantern from the wall and working at top speed, I surveyed the bed frame, then felt under the mattress and behind the headboard. I trained my light on the childhood totems that lay strewn, with bizarre carelessness, round the floor: a pair of cast-off sled runners, a waxen man with clove eyes, the remnants of a box kite and an old hand-cranked miniature carousel.

Not here. I knew that, somehow. Not here. And then the lantern light, matching the arc of my thought, swerved toward the closet in the room's far corner.

Closets. What better place for secrets?

The door opened into a darkness so deep my light could scarcely make a hole in it. Smells of bergamot and frangipani came at me, and twining through everything else, the sweet-sharp scent of mothballs. The rustle of satin and organdy and taffeta, stiff with cold.

Artemus' closet was now the holding pen for a woman's excess wardrobe. A perfectly practical thing to do with a young man's abandoned closet, but under the conditions, I couldn't help seeing it as another of Artemus' gibes. (And wouldn't he have tracked the pattern of my tread on the overhead ceiling? Wouldn't he know precisely where I was standing?) Stung, I drove my arm straight through and found, to my surprise, no back wall, nothing to bar my way. Only more darkness.

With my lantern in hand, I squeezed through the massed garments and found myself standing suddenly free of encumbrance, in a hot black lozenge of air. No smells here, no outlines. But something more than emptiness. I had only to take a step forward and feel the soft blow against my forehead to know what was there: a bare clothes rod.

Even this was not quite bare. My hands, ranging along its length, came to rest on a wooden hanger... then moved down to find the ribbed cinch of a collar... the rough track of a shoulder... and beneath that an expanse of dampish wool, descending in bounded segments.

I laid my hands round the garment, dragged it to the floor and raised the lantern to it. It was a uniform. An officer's uniform.

The real thing, or a very good facsimile. The blue pantaloons with their gold piping. The flourishes of gold on the blue coatee. And there, on the shoulder (I had to bring the lantern closer to make it out), a faint rectangle of shorn thread. Where a bar had once been sewn on.

My mind flashed to--what else?--the mysterious officer who had ordered Private Cochrane to abandon Leroy Fry's body. And at the same instant, my hand, passing along the coatee, came to rest on a small raised patch just above the waist: some sort of substance, faintly sticky, faintly raspy. I ran my finger through it, but just as I was raising the finger to the lantern light, I heard a footfall.

Someone had come into the room.

I blew out my lantern. Sat there in the steaming darkness of Artemus' closet, listening to the unseen presence on the other side take another step... another...

And then stop.

Nothing for it now, I could only wait. For what came next.

And what came was, at first, just one more sound--rending the wall of clothes that lay before me. And by the time this sound had resolved itself into a thing, it had already glanced off my ribs and driven through my frock coat and pinned me to the back wall.

Ah, yes. The uniform's missing accessory: a saber.

In those initial moments, it was easier to feel the thing than to see it. The shaft of beveled steel, of such a ridiculous sharpness that the air seemed to part before it.

Struggle though I might, it held me fast in my frock coat. I drew my arm from the sleeve and began to wriggle free. Just then the blade loosed its grip... only to come surging forward once again, even faster. As I lunged clear, I could see the blade striking the very section of the wall where my heart had lately been, pinning my empty coat in a death blow.

I might have cried out, yes. But I knew no sound would ever escape this dark little cupboard. And I might, yes, have flung myself at my attacker. But that barricade of dresses had left him nothing more than a possibility. One wrong guess, and I'd be even more thoroughly at his mercy than I already was. But this was equally true: he couldn't fling himself at me without losing his advantage.

The rules, then, had been set down. Our little game could begin.

Back drew the blade... forward it charged... whing! came the answering cry of the wall as the saber caught the section of plaster by my right hip. A second later it was springing back, probing the darkness once again, hungry for flesh.

And me? I kept moving, Reader. Up and down, side to side, a new target for each new thrust. Trying in my own bleak way to read the mind that lay behind this blade.

The fifth thrust just missed my wrist. The seventh passed like a breeze through the hairs along my neck. The tenth found the crook between my right shoulder and my rib cage. Faster and faster it came--maddened by all its missed chances. No longer did it crave an outright kill; the crippling thrust was its new object. Inch by inch it descended, from the region of my heart to the region of my legs. And my legs, in reply, leapt into Highland reels, dancing for their very life.

It was a dance that would soon have to end, I knew that much. Even if my lungs could keep pumping air, there wasn't enough oxygen left in this tiny space to draw from. It was exhaustion, then--not strategy, not any hope of reprieve, just bone-tiredness--that dropped me to the floor.

And there I lay, on my back, watching that length of steel make a silhouette of me against the plaster. The closer it came, the colder I grew through my sweat. For it seemed to me I was being fitted--measured--for my own coffin.

My eyes slammed shut as, one last time, the blade came roaring back. One last time the wall sang its protest. And then... silence.

Prying open my lids, I found the blade poised exactly one inch above my left eye. Not still, no... twisting and writhing with a pure rage... but not withdrawing, either.

I knew then what had happened. The force of the thrust had been so great that the blade had been wedged into the masonry.

It was my last, my only, chance. Sliding out from beneath the saber, I seized one of the dresses from the clothes rod, threw it round the blade, and began to pull. Plying my strength, such as it was, against the strength on the other end.

For a while, we were equal. But my assailant had a tight grip on the saber's handle, with all the leverage that supplied. And I? I had only my bare hands, pulling as hard as they could. For several long seconds, we struggled there in the darkness--unseen to each other but no less present.

The blade had now pulled free of the wall. No longer a prisoner, it was once again an instrument of blind will, sliding away from me. The strength was ebbing from my fingers, my wrists, my arms, and the only thing that kept me gripping was this thought, chiming over and over in my brain: If I let go now, it will be the end of me.

And so I held on, though my hands were sizzling with pain, though my heart was melting into my lungs. I held on.

And in the very moment I had given it all up for lost, the force on the other end of the saber gave way, and the blade went limp. Sank into my bruised hands like an offering from the sky.

I stared at it in dazzlement, waiting for it to spring to life again. It didn't. And still I remained there for another whole minute, unwilling-- unable--to let it go.

Narrative of Gus Landor

26 Stuffing the uniform under my arm and dragging my frock coat and lantern after me, I pushed through the wall of clothes and stood once more in the chill half-light of Artemus' bedroom, searching myself for signs of violence--and finding none. Not a scratch, not a drop of blood. The only sounds were my own panting and the soft drip of my sweat on the floor.

"Mr. Landor."

It was by his voice I knew him. But standing there in the doorway's shadows, without a candle, he might have been his son's double. I hesitated for just a moment, wondering whether to trust the evidence of my eyes or my ears.

"Very sorry, Doctor," I said. "I'm afraid I tore my coat"--sheepishly, I pointed to the garment that lay in deltas of light on the floor--"and I thought I might borrow one of your son's."

"But your coat is..."

"Yes, I did quite a job on it, didn't I? All the same," I added, laughing and brandishing the uniform, "I don't think I could in good conscience impersonate an officer. Having never served in harm's way myself."

Mouth ajar, he came toward me, staring at the garment in my hands.

"Why," he said, "that must be my brother's!"

"Your brother?"

"Joshua was his name. Died shortly before the Battle of Maguaga. Influenza, poor puppy. The uniform's all we have to remember him by." Kneeling down, he gave the fabric a few long strokes, then rubbed his fingers together under his nose. "Funny," he said. "The blue's faded, and the shoulder straps, well, they're a mite old-fashioned, but otherwise, eh? Could almost pass for new."

"My very thought," I said. "Oh, but see? The bar has gone missing."

"Why, there never was a bar," he said, frowning. "Joshua never made it higher than second lieutenant."

The frown now curled upward. A soft rush of air issued from his nose.

"Something amusing, Doctor?"

"Oh, I was--I was remembering how Artemus used to wear this around the house."

"Did he, now?"

"When he was the barest tadpole. I wish you could have seen it, Mr. Landor. His arms gave out a foot or two before the sleeves did, and the trousers! Why, they'd just drag after him in a--in a most comical fashion." He gave me a sidelong grimace. "Yes, I know, I should have begged him to show more respect for his country's uniform, but I couldn't see the harm in it. He'd never met Joshua, you see, and he'd always had such a profound respect for his uncle's service."
"Your service, too," I put in. "How could he fail to respect that?"

"Oh. Yes. Well, perhaps. He's never--he's never much taken after me. All the better for him, eh?"

"You are too humble, sir. Do you mean to tell me that after all these years of seeing you practice your art, he hasn't absorbed some small amount himself ?"

Those ruined lips of his twisted to one side. "I suppose he has, that's true. Why, he could name all the bones and organs from the time he was ten! Knew how to use a stethoscope. Once or twice he helped me set a broken bone. But I don't think he ever cared much for the-- "

"What on earth?"