Chapter 38: The Fruit of That Forbidden Tree

Winter had become feverish, since the dawn. Laura stopped at his bed when she could, to check his wound and sponge cold water on his face. Once she came into the ward and saw Pim and Winter with their heads together, whispering. Winter was shaking his head.

Laura came nearer, heard Pim say What other way, but before she could hear more, the patient beside her tugged her sleeve. When she looked up, Pim had vanished and Winter looked troubled. Laura went across. “What did she say?”

Winter said, “She is determined, your friend.”

“To do what?”

“Help you.”

“How?”

Winter hesitated, and then Laura, damnably, was already being called away. The whole hospital must scrub itself spotless, overseen by a martial-eyed Mary. “Royal patronage is a splendid thing to gain at the cost of a little scrubbing,” Mary told them. Laura bit back on her flaring temper. At least Winter was safe. She had already boiled his thermometer, surreptitiously turned him sticky and pallid with petroleum jelly. Most experienced nurses had a flair for malingering; there were always patients—the odd fifteen-year-old soldier mostly—that they tried to keep in hospital as long as possible. When Laura was through with him, Winter looked ready to die on the spot, and it was child’s play to have him huddled away at the far end of the ward, where his imminent demise could not disturb Her Majesty.

Pim was wound tight as a clock-spring and trying to hide it. Laura wasn’t fooled, and Jones saw it too. Laura caught him giving Pim an unflattering once-over from the far side of the ward. “I don’t care how much she brightens the men,” he said to Laura, after. “She looks positively fey. Riding for a fall. And what was that outside, this morning? Looking for her fiddler again?”

Jones was too perceptive by half. “I’ll talk to her,” said Laura. “I would have before, if it weren’t for Mary’s strictures. Down with all monarchies, I say. I think I’ll move to Russia and join the Revolution.”

“Throw your lot in with those murdering Bolsheviks? You may as well come to America, where we have no tsar and no kaiser either.”

Jones did not look away when Laura stared at him. “And what,” she said, “would I do in America?” His eyes were so very dark. They studied each other.

But if Jones meant to answer, other voices intervened. “She’s here!” cried one of the nurses keeping watch at the front window, and a wave of chatter went through the staff.

“Right,” muttered Jones. “Now I’m with you. Vive la révolution.”

Laura snorted. He grinned back, looking suddenly younger.

Scrubbed and starched, the whole staff assembled to greet the queen. The sun was slanting west. Laura wished Her Majesty had come earlier; most men were in pain by evening. She saw strain on faces all over the ward. And not only patients. Pim’s whole body was radiating tension as a beautiful white car swept up the drive. Perhaps the visit would be brief, Laura thought. It was dinnertime.

The woman who got out was dazzling too, as she walked into the château on General Gage’s arm. She was wearing a sort of Red Cross uniform, but an experienced tailor had got hold of it, and darted it to flatter. The whiteness was blinding. No one, Laura thought, had been sick on it. Bled on it.

“Welcome, Your Majesty,” said Mary.

The queen smiled, remote as a white peacock. She didn’t seem real. Strange world, Laura thought. It had changed so fast, so suddenly, that you wondered, over and over, what was real anymore.

Maybe more things than she’d thought.

And again her mind circled back to Faland. Freddie.

A decent stretch of tedium followed. Laura could feel a restless Jones shifting from foot to foot beside her. Gage made himself charming, full of swift Irish repartee, and Young, who had come with him, said inane things and looked longingly at Pim. Were they still talking? Didn’t they have a war to run? The queen wished to meet the men. A newspaperman had indeed appeared—Laura didn’t know if he was Mary’s or the queen’s—and he set about industriously snapping pictures.

In the main ward, Laura positioned herself where she could best distract the curious from Winter. He’d buried himself in the covers, looked like nothing more than a heap of blankets. No one glanced his way. There were too many other green-tinged faces vying for the queen’s attention, and to her credit, she didn’t flinch at any of them. She went from man to man with kind words and bits of chocolate. Laura could almost have been in charity with her, were it not for the camera snapping and flashing, setting the men on the jump, and herself too. At least, she consoled herself, the queen was efficient, and her newspaperman too. With any luck, she’d be gone before dark.

Laura was wondering how to get to Faland, what to say to Pim, when the report of a gunshot echoed through the ward.

Half the men shouted, and most hurled themselves off their cots in instinctive search for cover, then howled again as they jarred their wounds. Laura threw herself flat too, on the same pure instinct, then looked up, uncomprehending. Pim was staggering backward, down the middle of the room, grappling with—grappling with Winter for a pistol. What in God’s name? How had he even managed to get up? He was feverish, bloodlessly pale, but on his feet. How had he got hold of a gun? How had he got past her? Had he tried to shoot—whom? The queen? Christ, why?

The gun went off again, and as the bullet whined past his ear, Gage jerked, lost his footing, and fell heavily. The ward erupted with more shouts. A patient was lunging for the struggling pair, as the general stumbled to his feet, shouting. But before anyone could reach them, Winter clipped Pim on the jaw, sending her crumpling to the ground.

Then Winter stood panting, almost doubled over, the gun in his hand. He stared wildly around the room; his eye fastened on Laura. He glanced at Pim, then back to Laura. Raised his eyes briefly to the window. There was a furious message in his gaze, but one she could not read. “I’d do it again,” he said. His accent was damnably German. He’d dropped the pistol. Then his knees buckled.

Gage was sweating with shock and fury; the queen was white and shaken. It had been a close call. Laura scrambled for Pim, just as Jones went for the fallen Winter. He seized the pistol, knocked the rest of the bullets out of the chamber, and passed it swiftly to Young, who was trying clumsily to get past Laura to Pim. Then he turned Winter over to check his dressings, cursed at the scarlet stain; Winter had burst every one of his stitches.

“How did he get a pistol? How did he get in?” Gage roared, bending over Jones, who said nothing. He didn’t look at Laura. Young had paused, frozen in abstraction, the gun in his hand.

Laura had her arms around Pim. Her friend was sitting up now, looking from Gage to Winter with a look of abject horror. Her face was already swelling.

What the hell had happened?

Winter was bleeding fast from his reopened wound. Jones was fussing over it in a competent manner, but not, Laura noticed, working enormously hard to stanch the blood. He looked grim.

“Save that man’s life!” Gage was thundering. “Save him, damn it! He must be questioned! It’s him—it’s the spy—trying to assassinate—”

An assassin? Had she been so deceived? Pim was looking out the window. So was Winter, and there was a likeness to their gazes, dazed and desperate.

Laura looked too.

For just a moment, his face vague in the just-gathering dusk, she saw Faland, watching them all with mismatched, glittering eyes.

“Save that bastard’s life, damn you!” bellowed Gage again.

Jones’s eyes were coldly black, his face set, expressionless. “Get everyone out, if you want me to save him. Give me some room,” he said. “Damn you,” he added, low, to the German. He still didn’t look at Laura.

Winter reached up and caught Laura’s wrist. “Don’t you see? He came for this.”

Despite herself, Laura glanced again at the window. Faland was gone. He might never have been there.

Mary was pulling a trembling Pim out of the room; Young made to follow, his expression troubled. Winter’s eyes stayed fixed on Laura even as they rolled him onto a stretcher. There was a frantic message in them.

Laura turned away, and ran out of the ward, out of the château.