“I’m an officer in Her Majesty’s service, Seventeenth Lancers,” he said, a steely resolve in his voice. Lifting his cuffed hands and rattling the chain secured to the wall, he added, “And if I were not at such a disadvantage, you’d soon regret trifling with me.”
Michael stood up, surprised again at Sinclair’s sudden change of tone. Was it the beer? Did alcohol have some unforeseen effect on him, because of his condition? Or were these mercurial moods a part of his everyday nature? Despite the chain, Michael backed a few more feet away.
“Do you want to call back the guard?” Sinclair taunted him.
“I think it’s the doctor you should see,” Michael said.
“What?” he said. “The blackamoor again?”
“Dr. Barnes.”
“That bitch has already tapped me like a barkeep taps a keg.”
What had happened here? What had gone wrong? Sinclair had gone from calm to crazy in a matter of minutes. And there was an unwholesome gleam in his bloodshot eyes.
Franklin ambled back in, his bushy moustache covered with frost. “You two still reading poems to each other?” he said.
Then he saw Michael standing back, and the look on his face, and knew that something was off. “Everything all right?” he asked Michael, and when he didn’t get an immediate reply, he said, “What do you want me to do?”
“I think you should get Charlotte. Maybe Murphy and Lawson, too.”
Franklin gave Sinclair a wary glance, then went right back out.
Michael had never taken his eyes off Sinclair, who sat on the edge of the cot, staring back with red-rimmed eyes.
And then, returning to the same measured voice he had used to recite the earlier lines, Sinclair intoned, “‘An orphan’s curse would drag to hell, A spirit from on high; but oh, more horrible than that, Is the curse in a dead man’s eye!’” The look in his own eye was nothing short of murderous. “Do you know the lines?” he asked.
“No. I don’t.”
Sinclair rapped his knuckles on the cover of the old book. “You do now,” he said, chuckling grimly. “Don’t say you weren’t warned.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
December 24, 8:15 p.m.
EVEN THOUGH SHE HAD TAKEN great care to hide the dreadful evidence, Eleanor soon knew that her secret had been discovered. No one had said anything to her, but all the other bags of blood had been removed from the infirmary. And there had been a wary look in Dr. Barnes’s eye.
Eleanor was ashamed—mortified, truth be told, by her dreadful need—but she was also scared. What was she to do when the urge, the terrible thirst, came upon her again? And it would—she knew that it would. Sometimes she could go days, even perhaps a week, without it…but the longer she waited, the more urgent it became, and the more she was driven, even against her own will, to slake it.
How could she ever confess to such a desire? In whom could she confide?
She stared out the window of her tiny room, at the frozen square with the flagpole at its center. A tall man in a bulky coat and hood was standing there, looking up at the pewter sky, with something in his gloved hand, something that looked like several strips of bacon.
And although it was hard to recognize anyone, under all the coats and hats and boots, she knew instinctively that this was Michael.
Under the whining of the constant wind, she heard him whistle, loudly, still looking up, and after several seconds, a bird appeared. Perhaps it had been roosting atop the infirmary. It was a dirty gray, with a hooked beak, and it shot almost directly at his head. Michael ducked, and the bird skimmed the top of his hood. She heard him laugh, and it was only then that she realized how long it had been since she had heard anyone laugh like that. It was at once the most foreign, and agreeable, sound she had heard in ages. And she longed to run outside, into the snow and ice, and join it. To laugh, too, at the marauding bird, and to put her face up to the sun—what sun there was—and feel its rays beating on her eyelids.
As she looked on, Michael straightened up again and waved the bacon in the air. Then, as the bird doubled back, he threw the bacon high into the air—the strands separating—and the bird swooped down, catching one in its beak and flying off. The other strips landed on the hard-packed snow, and Michael simply waited—wisely, it seemed—for the bird to come back. It plunked itself down, rather inelegantly, and waddled from one to the next, gobbling them up. Another bird, bigger and brown, dropped down to investigate, but the first one ran at it, squawking, and Michael even tossed a chunk of snow to chase it off. Ah, Eleanor thought, the dusky bird is his favorite. His pet.
He crouched, extending one gloved hand, and the bird came toward him. It pecked at his glove—and although she couldn’t see it, she guessed he had some bits of bacon left—and the two of them remained there, like a couple of old friends catching up. The wind ruffled the feathers of the bird and made the sleeves of Michael’s coat ripple like tiny waves, but still they sat, and Eleanor felt so suddenly overwhelmed that she couldn’t watch any longer.