One of the Fourteen Read online

be."

  The Battle of Passchendaele had occurred in 1917. I remembered some of its casualties all too well. The date on the medal was 1918. "Are you sure?"

  "Aah, they were all the same, the battles. Run out through mud, run back through blood. All the same."

  "Can you remember the occasion? That they gave you the medal for?"

  "There were lots of occasions. Killing. That's what I got it for."

  He seemed to expect a response, staring at me with his hands clasped around his glass.

  "That's how it is in wartime, isn't it? How long did you serve?"

  "Until they threw me out." He emitted a sound like a small, muffled machine-gun. I assumed it was a laugh. "I was a lot better at it the second time – after I got out of the hospital."

  "You were wounded?"

  "They didn't put you in hospital for nothing. I just about died, I guess… Don't remember much about it."

  "Which hospital were you in, can you remember that?" The answer to this question was disproportionally important to me. Those ears.

  Seale sat and thought for a long moment, during which I realized it was full dark beyond the windows.

  "It was a General Hospital," he said. "Right far away from the front. Now, what was the name of the place? Apples, Stapples, something like that?"

  "Étaples." I breathed the word. I wasn't sure I wanted him to recognize it, but his good ear was good enough.

  "Yes! Étaples, that was it. The Number One General Hospital." He gave me a keen look from narrowed eyes. "How'd you guess? Were you there?"

  You've known this was likely to happen sooner or later.

  I couldn't lie to him. "Yes. Yes, I was there. Medical Officer. How much do you remember about your time at the Number One? When was it, exactly? During Passchendaele?"

  He snorted a laugh. "I don't remember anything exactly. It's all red, and then it turns black. That's all." He licked his lips, slowly.

  I had finished my pint and decided something stronger was in order. "I'm for a whiskey," I said, standing up. "You?"

  "I don't mind if I do. Many thanks."

  Seale had probably experienced a period of amnesia after his hospital stay, I thought. I had seen it in others under similar circumstances. "Do you remember anything from when things turned black?" I asked, after we had raised our glasses in a wordless toast.

  "No. But – well, everything was different after that. Easier. As long as the War lasted, anyway." He took the Military Cross out of his pocket again, and rubbed his fingers over it, jabbing the points into his fingertips in a way that must have been painful.

  "What did you do after the War? Did you go home to Canada?"

  He returned the medal to his pocket. "I tried. But no one knew me. The family – I could tell they'd be just as happy to see the back of me, so I left. Went west." Another harsh laugh. "I know what that means, all right. I mean I took a trip across the country. And back. I just kept moving. Worked at jobs here and there. Couldn't settle."

  "What kinds of jobs did you do?"

  "Whatever I could find. Nothing lasted long, but some of those jobs were better than others."

  "Oh? Which ones were better?"

  He took a swallow of whiskey and smiled. "Killing. In abattoirs, slaughterhouses. I was good at it." His eyes took on a glazed, reminiscent look. Perhaps it was only the drink. I realized I had drunk a good deal more than was my habit. It was growing late, I was tired, and I wanted to be quit of Edwin Seale.

  But it was too late for that. Hadn't I come to London in a spirit of atonement? I suspected I was in for a long night.

  "So you liked killing livestock?"

  Seale licked his lips again. "All the deaths. Red and black. But they were only cattle…" He drew in a quick breath and turned toward me.

  "Have you seen that book? Vesalius? Humani corporis fabrica?"

  Miskatonic's Library had a copy of the 1543 edition – all seven volumes – locked up in the vault, of course. I had bought myself a reprint. "I have. My Medical School professors recommended it. The illustrations are quite good, aren't they?"

  "Illustrations? They're fine, but just think what that Vesalius fellow did! What he saw. He must have spent a lot of time with dead bodies, getting right inside of them, slicing away. Cutting and looking."

  He leaned closer to me and dropped his voice. "Do you think they were all dead?"

  I shook off the whiskey fumes. "Well, there's a story that Vesalius dissected a man whose heart was still beating. He went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem after that – to atone, some said, or perhaps only to escape the Inquisition."

  "Pilgrimage. Well, there's an idea." Seale spoke as if to himself.

  I decided to take a chance. "Did you… try something like that? Vivisection – on those cows, perhaps?"

  Seale laughed, as though I had told a joke. "No, that wasn't it. Not cows."

  "In Canada, this was?" I tried to follow the trail I thought I had seen, however faint.

  "No. Here. London is still the centre of the world, isn't it? A place where a man can find his niche." The last word spoken with a peculiar intensity.

  "And have you found your… niche?"

  "I have."

  Another moment of silence. I took a final mouthful of whiskey and wondered what came next.

  Seale drew in a breath. His sunken forehead wrinkled, and he tapped his fingernails against his glass, which, like mine, was empty. "Doctor Dexter. I want to ask you a favour."

  Here it was, whatever 'it' was. I assumed the attentive expression I found helpful with especially anxious patients. "Yes?"

  "You really were at that place – Étaples? In the Great War?"

  I kept my eyes on his face. "I was."

  "I want to show you something."

  "Here?" Was the fellow about to display a rash or swelling of some sort?

  "No, not here! Not at all. At my digs. Please. It's… it's time."

  It's time to deal with this thing, whether I want to or not. Even after twenty years. "All right. Where are your digs?"

  "Not far. An easy walk."

  "Let's go, then."

  In the Fog

  The Antonescu Clinic for Foundlings and the Indigent, at which I had volunteered my services since arriving in London more than a year before, proved to be a surprisingly effective venue for penance. Its presiding goddess, the Countess Sylvia Antonescu, was not Romanian – as her name suggested – but an Englishwoman of the most formidable sort. She regarded the clinic as a monument to her dead husband, Count Radu Antonescu. Everything had to be done to her exacting standards, which fortunately resulted in fairly good care for the clinic's patients. Nudging and persuading the Countess Sylvia was a large part of my role as Chief Medical Advisor, even when it involved non-medical problems, such as finding a replacement for the clinic's janitor and handyman, who had disappeared a few days before my encounter with Edwin Seale.

  On many an evening, once free of the Clinic and its crises, I took a long way around to my lodgings in Clerkenwell, stopping at a pub for a drink and a meal. I didn't usually drink as much as I had this time, however. My legs felt rubbery and my head threatened to float away, but once outside, breathing lungfuls of the damp autumn air, I began to feel steadier.

  I thought I knew my way around the East End, but in addition to my interior fogginess, an actual mist had rolled over the streets, obscuring my mental map. Seale, however, did not hesitate, but set off with a confident stride, despite his limp. After a misgiving or two, I followed his lead.

  I will never know just how far we walked, neither numbers of steps nor the distance a crow might have flown. Seale kept up a distracting flow of words.

  "That was it, you see, Doctor. I wasn't fit for much besides killing, either livestock, which was hard work, or people, which was illegal once the War was over. I thought I needed a cure. Hospitals are for curing, aren't they, so that's where I went. To the London Hospital, just over there."

  He raised an arm and pointed. Althou
gh familiar with the London Hospital, I had no way of knowing whether Seale was really pointing toward it or making a rhetorical gesture.

  "So you went to the casualty department?"

  "No! I wasn't injured, was I? Not anymore. They would have told me to go away. What I did was, I got a job there."

  "But you told me you didn't work at the Hospital."

  "I don't now. But I did then. Cleaning things – floors, toilets. Taking out garbage. But I was there, where people were cured. I was close to the doctors, saw them working. I was in the right place."

  Our footsteps conspired a rhythm as we proceeded along the damp pavements, our shoe soles making their distinctive sounds – mine sharp, his dull, with an alternating drag. The fog shrouded us, muffling our words. Small lights gleamed here and there, an errant constellation.

  "That helped you, did it? Working in the Hospital?"

  He did not reply for several paces. "It helped, but in a different way than I figured. Because I discovered something."

  A slight downgrade in topography, and a thickening of the fog, suggested we were getting closer to the Thames. Blank walls loomed above us, rather than the lighted windows of homes and hearths. Seale nudged my arm.

  "In here." He steered me toward a narrow gap between buildings. "Watch your step. Loose bricks."

  "What was it you discovered?" Water had accumulated among the broken bricks of the pavement, which gave way to mud as we progressed along the alley.

  Seale laughed, a short, hard laugh. "Lots. You'll see when we get there."

  Where? I wondered. And what?

  The Laboratory

  Seale stopped by a narrow iron gate set in the wall to our right. He fumbled a bunch of keys