Unnatural Issue (44 page)

I
T wasn’t hard to get a job at Bethnal Green Hospital. She was clean, young, and not drunk. She also used an assumed name, figuring that Susanne Whitestone was on some sort of list; she became Constance Weatherby, which was the real name of one of Prudence’s sisters. Prudence would never know, and it was unlikely that anyone would ever travel out to the wilds of Yorkshire just to verify the story of a nursing aide. Nor was anyone going to find Richard Whitestone to verify the reference letters that Susanne forged.

Peter’s money paid for a clean little room in a boarding house; all of the other boarders were actual nurses. The room was scarcely bigger than a closet, but after the Front, it seemed like the height of luxury.

As she expected, the fact that she was sober, honest, hardworking and uncomplaining swiftly elevated her to the officers’ ward, a floor of private and semiprivate rooms, so the work wasn’t as hard, though it was just as back-breaking and unpleasant. Within hours of getting the assignment, she had found Charles’ room and knew what was wrong with him.

He had lain unconscious or semiconscious all of the time in France and for the better part of a week after he had arrived here. They had no means of caring for a man in what amounted to a coma in France, hence the haste in shipping him back to England.

As soon as she determined which room was his, she spent as much time as she could in it or near it, pouring healing into him, willing him to come out of his blank state while she scrubbed floors. His physical wounds were all broken bones, relatively easy to repair. It was clearly his mind that had gotten the worst of it.

November passed, and December arrived, bringing with it more cold rain. She couldn’t help but think of Peter and the others still over there, and what this meant to the ones in those stinking trenches. The papers no longer spoke of it all being over by Christmas, but they kept up the fiction that the men on the Front were living in decent conditions, making life in the trenches sound like a stint of rough camping. When she read that, she wanted to
hurt
someone. The only comfort was that as men trickled back to Britain on leave, people were actually learning the truth. Or at least, as much truth as their loved ones would give them, or let slip.

She channeled all her fury at the idiot generals, the lying politicians, and the hateful Germans into an outpouring of healing for Charles. And it must have worked.

On Friday of the first week in December, he woke up.

She wasn’t in his room when he did, but she heard the nurse’s exclamation and the familiar sound of his voice, weak, raspy, and querulously asking where he was. Her heart leaped and started pounding; she wanted to jump up and run into his room, but she knew that if she did that, she would find herself reprimanded at best and dismissed at worst. So she restrained herself and slowly scrubbed her way closer to his door.

She listened while the nurse carefully explained where he was, how he had gotten there, and how long he had been unconscious.

“Wait,” she heard him say. “What war? Where am I? And who am I?”

There was a long pause. Then the nurse said, “I need to go find the doctor.”

 

As she lurked outside the door, listening to the doctor talk to Charles, it quickly became obvious that Charles had lost his memory completely. He seemed completely bemused by it all, quite cheerful, in fact—but clearly, he had no idea who he was, what had been happening, or that he was an Elemental magician. On the one hand, that just might protect him; if he didn’t know how to use magic, he wouldn’t be revealing himself.

On the other hand, he wouldn’t know how to shield or defend himself, either.

This was bad. This was very bad.

Her mind raced while she scrubbed. She considered putting her own shields on him, but if Richard saw them, he would
know
who they were sheltering, just because there could not be that many mages in a military hospital.

She had to keep reminding herself to move at intervals, otherwise she was likely to wear a hole in the floor.

Peter will have told the man in charge of the White Lodge—what was his name?
She couldn’t remember. But then, it hadn’t seemed important at the time, just one more Peer of the Realm who wouldn’t be bothered to deal with the daughter of a renegade Master.
He will have told Lord Whoever-he-is all about the attack by now. And Peter will have told His Lordship where they were sending Charles. So why hasn’t one of
them
come to shield him?

Well, the obvious answer was,
because there isn’t anyone about London who can.
That might be oversimplifying things, however. The simple answer could be
because he doesn’t need shielding.
Richard surely thought Charles was dead, and Richard was in France. Unless he was planning on joining the other side—which was possible—getting back was going to be a great deal more difficult than getting over was. Virtually all the traffic was being watched. Most of the large vessels had been commandeered for military transport. Susanne had no idea how hard it would be to stow away on one, but she didn’t think it was anything that Richard would care to attempt. It would be even harder to disguise himself as a leave-bound soldier; he was too old to be a regular Tommy, and he didn’t know enough to pass himself off as one of the highly visible officers. She was very certain that every available transport ship was being watched for spies trying to get into England.

As for, say, fishing boats? It was going to be very difficult to persuade a fisherman or the like to take him over, and they would probably report the attempt.

And after the attempt to murder Charles, every mage in the White Lodge would want Richard’s head.

So . . . no. There probably was no need to shield Charles. Richard probably would not be able to get back for some time, and when he did, it would be to find that the hunter had become the quarry.

But then, just as she felt great relief in that realization, she was struck with another shock.

He wouldn’t know her. He wouldn’t know
anyone,
of course, but in particular, he wouldn’t know
her.
And he didn’t remember anything about magic, so as far as he was concerned, she was just another menial with nothing special about her.

She hadn’t been allowed to approach him before, and that wouldn’t change now—unless, or until she could somehow restore his memory.

But how?

Peter was thanking his lucky stars that Alderscroft and his own commanding officer were in constant contact, and that his report about the attack on Charles Kerridge would be able to get through without any censors laying eyes on it. It had taken him hours to write, and he was pretty sure that if any censors
had
read it, he would be heading straight for a transport ship, trussed up like a Christmas goose. After all—walking dead? Magic? Anyone reporting such a thing must be mad as the proverbial hatter.

General Smythe-Hastings had given him
carte blanche
to try to track down Richard Whitestone. In fact, at the moment, that was his sole assignment. Which would have been very good, if Richard Whitestone had been holed up somewhere in the middle of nowhere without a war going on.

Unfortunately . . .

Everything he tried either gave him no results at all or lit up all over the map, because,
quelle surprise,
nasty things like goblins and trolls and
svart alfen
were crawling all over the battlefields, wallowing in the death and pain and misery. Richard Whitestone could not possibly have chosen a better place to hide.

Which, sadly, was what he had to report to the general. He felt a little like an errant schoolboy, reporting on his failure to finish his sums.

“. . . and that is all I have to tell you, sir,” he concluded. “If I were an Earth Master, I probably would get better results. Even my uncle hasn’t gotten anywhere.”

“And those damned fools sent the only Earth Master we had packing back to London,” the general growled. He shook his head impatiently. “Between those daft fools thinking they can fight this war like the last ones, and the daft fools who won’t let me override their edicts when I was willing to personally vouch for the girl . . .” He sighed heavily, and Peter felt a sense of guilty relief that Smythe-Hastings wasn’t going to take
him
to task. “I tell you, Peter, the only reason we are going to win this thing is because at some point the German bastards are going to perform some outrage against the Yanks, and the Yanks will
have
to come in. Then we’ll have a flood of supplies and allies. I just hope that every man between the age of sixteen and forty isn’t dead on the battlefield before that happens.”

Peter had
never
heard the general express himself so . . . openly. Or so at odds with the official line. He kept his mouth from falling open in surprise and wisely said nothing.

The general ran his hand over his head, wearily. “Forgive me, young Peter. I do not suffer fools gladly, and when they are going to cost the lives of good men, I do not suffer them at all.”

“Is it that bad, then?” Peter asked, troubled.

“I fear it is even worse,” Smythe-Hastings said, glumly. “All we can do is follow our orders in such a way as to prevent the lives of good men from being thrown away for nothing. Meanwhile—” He paused and extracted a sheet of paper from his dispatch case. “—the Old Lion wants you back in London for a briefing, and to hear what you have to say about the Whitestone case. Oh, and also track down the Whitestone girl; she seems to have done a bunk.”

“Oh, I know where she is,” Peter said, with relief that there finally was
some
question he could answer. “She’s kept in correspondence with me; she’s volunteered as an aide at Bethnal Green hospital.”

“Isn’t that where Charles Kerridge was sent?” the general asked, a bit sharply. At Peter’s nod, he frowned. “Under other circumstances, I would be relatively pleased about that, but . . .”

“Exactly so. I’m not sure what her reaction will be when she and the affianced come face to face. I only hope she doesn’t do a
real
bunk.”

“Then it’s your job to get back there and make sure she doesn’t!” the general snapped. “Off with you! First boat back you can get on!”

Peter saluted crisply and went to collect Garrick. The weather stations were all saying there was a storm coming over the Channel. This was not going to be pleasant.

Susanne slipped into Charles’ room when the last of the visitors had cleared out. She was officially off-duty, so she doubly was not supposed to be here. The visitors, predictably enough, had been Charles’ parents—

—and another young woman. Susanne had immediately sensed she was a Water magician, not a Master, but definitely a magician. She had not been able to linger close enough to determine just who she was. She
hoped
that the young lady was a relative, perhaps a cousin. But she feared—

Well, there was no reason for the young woman to be allowed here unless she was engaged to Charles, or Elizabeth and Michael
said
she was.

Now, there were a great many reasons why they would do so, even though—or even because—Charles had lost his memory. He was the only son, the heir, and since he hadn’t managed to get married before he left, they’d want him to do so now. Especially since it was now clear that the war was going to go on a lot longer than the optimistic projections of August. Even if he never got his memory back, Susanne was not sure that the Army would particularly care. He could still be retrained and sent to the Front again as long as he was able-bodied and perfectly capable of thinking.

And for his parents’ purposes, well . . . not getting his memory back might be preferable to having it. If he had been resisting marriage, they could tell him now that he had been engaged and very much in love with this woman. And he, being basically goodhearted, would go along with it. They could get him married and have the next generation safely on the way again before he was sent back to the Front.