Downtime (38 page)

Derry, sitting across from me in the secluded compartment, seemed just as worried, his attention fixed on the passing night and encroaching fog. Sensing my glance, he looked at me and tried the same reassurance I’d been trying on myself for the past thirty minutes. “He’ll be safe with us in nary more than an hour.”

“I just wish he knew that.”

Derry’s smile softened. “He knows you’d chase down the devil himself to try to save him.”

“It amazes me he doesn’t think I’m the devil.”

Derry saw through my flippancy. “You’ll not blame yourself. You took such a knocking, you should be abed, instead of breathing fumes and fog, with only me for company.”

“You’re good company, Derry.”

“I’ll do, in a pinch,” he said cheerfully, leaning across to pat my knee. “I couldn’t let you go on your own, even if I hadn’t the notion you’d storm the gates, should they not be of a mind to admit us. And you can’t deny it’s a way of thinking that comes as natural to you as breathing.”

I marveled as much at the way he saw things. “It doesn’t bother you at all, what’s going on between me and Ezra.”

“Should I mind that he loves you?”

“An awful lot of people in your time don’t approve of that kind of love. Nor in my time. It means a lot to me that you’re always on our side.”

“Any fellow who’s not on the side of love—” Derry’s voice went soft. “He’s to be pitied.”

Suddenly the train lurched, throwing Derry back against his seat and nearly sending me to the floor. I clutched at the cushion and held on as the train screeched to a stop. Once the racket had died down, I could hear anxious voices in the distance. I looked Derry over as he sat up. “You all right?”

“In body, aye. But none too well in mind until I know the reason we’ve come a cropper.” He went out and was gone long enough to make me consider going out to look for him. When he at last came back, he looked dazed. “An engine’s derailed ahead. It’s all of a miracle our lad saw their lanterns in the fog or we’d have smashed up for certain.”

“Anyone hurt?”

“They say not, thank the Lord.”

I peered out into the night and saw lanterns swinging in the distance but nothing else. “Do you have any idea where we are?”

“Forty miles out from Northampton.”

“Damn.”

He nodded. “T’would be no jaunt to town. And like as not, we’d be turned around in this soup and end up heaven knows where.” He let out a long breath and sat back, rubbing both hands over his face.

“You all right?”

“It was too close to suit me.” He managed a wobbly grin. “But the wrecking train will be along soon enough. Till then, a nip of something might soothe our nerves.”

Trust Derry to come prepared. I had a feeling he’d brought the little silver flask because he thought Ezra might need that sort of soothing. I accepted a sip of it myself, and though it burned a numbing path through my twisted guts, it didn’t do anything for my mental state. I hoped against hope they would get us moving in the next hour. But what followed was a near interminable stretch of waiting. I didn’t sleep but kept drifting off into a twilight state, only to be jerked to wakefulness by the slightest noise that might signal we were about to start up again. It was a miserable way to spend the night, but no worse than Ezra had to be going through.

When the engine had been finally hauled off the line and our own had built up steam to move forward, I was ready to get out and push the train, myself. I looked across at Derry, who’d fallen into an uneasy and uncomfortable sleep. Reassuring myself Derry wasn’t going to hear, I called quietly to Sully beneath the rumble of the moving car and asked him to watch out for Ezra until we got there. Maybe Sully wasn’t around, but if there was even a small chance, I had to take it.

Northampton in the light of day was probably a charming little town of handsome buildings decked all around with flowers and greenery. But in the gray before dawn, it seemed a quiet, lonely outpost; and the asylum, which we reached by carriage from the station, was even more isolated. The fog partially lifted by the time we reached the gates, giving us brief, dreamlike impressions of a garden and trees and the dull, distant gleam of a river. The asylum stood in grim, stolid grandeur on the hillside, three stories, with the smokestacks rising even higher.

The glow of gaslight from a first-floor window led us into a gloomy foyer and a small office crammed with wooden file cabinets. A thin, bespectacled guy snoozed on top of an open ledger at the desk. I brought him back to life with a hand on his shoulder and he sat up hurriedly, sputtering excuses until he realized it wasn’t his boss about to can his ass, but visitors who had the gall to show up at the ungodly hour of five in the morning. Alarm began to segue into irritation; then he got a good look at our faces and decided to proceed with caution. “What may I do for you, gentlemen? You realize the time—”

“We realize.” I handed over the papers Sir William had provided. “Ezra Glacenbie. Where is he?”

“Glacenbie?” He frowned as if the name was vaguely familiar. “He’s a patient here?”

“He was brought in last night,” Derry said.

“By mistake,” I added. “We’re here to get him out.”

“Ah. Get him out. Yes.” The man adjusted his glasses on his nose and looked at the papers. “Let me check his admission status.”

Fighting down a nearly insurmountable need to storm the halls, I planted my butt in a chair to wait. The process of releasing Ezra would have required a whole lot of bureaucratic red tape in my own time; even so, I had less confidence I’d be successful here, dealing with murkier regulations and doctors who might decide to go against even William Glacenbie’s request if they thought Ezra had no business being released. I hoped that wouldn’t be the case, because I didn’t intend to leave St. Andrews without him.

A rapid footfall from behind the rows of file cabinets alerted us to the return of the clerk, watchman, or whatever the hell he was. He had more papers with him and he looked at us over his glasses with some concern. “Mr. Glacenbie is in temporary seclusion.”

“What?” I’d hardly realized I was out of my chair until I felt Derry’s grip on my arm, not so much restraining as just holding on in commiseration. “Why the hell is he in seclusion?”

“Ah.” Papers were shuffled, a stalling tactic as he retreated a step. “It appears Mr. Glacenbie became violent and delusional—”

Derry’s oath cut him off. I couldn’t process such a ridiculous idea, either. “No way. We’re not talking about the same guy. Look, do you have the authority to discharge anyone from this hellhole? If not, I want you to go get someone who does, okay?”

The clerk blinked and, handing back the papers, scuttled sideways to the door. “I’ll just fetch the house steward, sir,” he said and was gone.

That was all the opportunity I needed. “Come on, Derry. We’ll find him ourselves.”

“But how? If they’ve locked him away—”

“I’ll get him out.”

He stuck by me as I abandoned the office for the main hallway, which led to a broad flight of steps to the next floor. The gaslight was so low, my eyes had to adjust before I could venture down any of the side passages. The first passage opened up into a room of iron-railed beds with crisp white linens, most of them occupied by sleeping patients.

A woman in a black dress and white apron motioned us to be silent, then beckoned us behind a screen at the end of a row of beds. Jowly and implacable as a bulldog, white-haired, and radiating disapproval, she asked in a sharp whisper what we thought we were doing, skulking about well in advance of visiting hours. I gave her the discharge papers and a long minute to look them over. When she had finished, she looked even jowlier, her white brows drawn together in annoyance.

“I cannot think what possessed you gentlemen to imagine the night staff might discharge anyone at your convenience. There is no doctor here as yet and the patients are all asleep—”

“Have you checked on Ezra since you locked him in isolation? Go do it now and you’ll find him wide awake and more than ready to get out of here.”

“It is not to be done without the doctor’s say. You may wait in the sitting room if you like, but it may be a few hours yet. I’d advise you to return to town.”

“Pardon me, ma’am. Are you a nurse here?”

“I’m matron. Mrs. Lougheed. Are you Mr. Glacenbie’s family?”

Weren’t matrons the ones who spent all their time carving up birch switches to use on naughty orphans? “Yeah, we’re his family. Look, we’ll hang around here as long as it takes. Just let us wait wherever you’ve got Ezra locked up.”

“That will only stir up the patient. Mr. Glacenbie has been difficult since his arrival and I should be very much surprised if the doctors are willing to discharge him in his current condition.”

“He’s been difficult because he shouldn’t be here to begin with,” I said, trying to keep an iron grip on my patience. “Once he sees us and knows he’s going home, he’ll be the perfect gentleman he always is.”

“You seem very sure of that, sir.”

“It’s God’s own truth,” Derry said quietly.

Mrs. Lougheed glanced at the watch pinned to her apron, and I hoped she was musing on the productiveness of arguing over a patient who would be leaving in a matter of hours, one way or another. Finally she led us out of the ward and down another dim hallway to a locked and bolted door. The stationed attendant turned up his lamp and gave the matron a questioning glance.

“Ring up some help, Samuel,” she said. “We’re in to see the patient brought ’round last night.”

“That poor miserable bloke? He’s only just got off to sleep.”

“I’ve said as much to these gentlemen, but they have discharge papers and they will have him now.”

“Suit yourself,” Samuel said with a shrug and got up to pull on a tasseled cord near the desk. A distant bell sounded and he unhooked a key ring from his belt. “He’s been a lively one. Up and down the room all night, pounding on the door, shouting and calling. Shouldn’t give you no trouble now, though,” he added as if he thought he was planting second thoughts in our minds about taking Ezra away. Unlocking the door, he slid back the bolt. “I’m to go at six, matron, you know.”

“You’ll have to see him out, all the same.” She followed him into the dark corridor and I stayed hot on her heels, Derry close behind me. With a long metal pole, the attendant turned up the gas by a valve on the ceiling, illuminating two doors on either side and a door at the hallway’s end. The quiet was disturbing—but not as much as hearing Ezra shouting for help would have been. I felt Derry’s hand on my arm and looked into his troubled face. He was thinking the same thing. Two more attendants, one carrying a lantern, entered the hall behind us to join us at the last door. The door was unlocked matter-of-factly and swung wide to reveal more darkness. Ezra couldn’t be asleep; more likely passed out from sheer terror.

Not waiting for the attendants, I pushed past the matron and went inside. Enough light penetrated the gloom to show me painted wood walls and a padded floor with a mattress in one corner. Ezra wasn’t on the mattress but in the corner opposite the door, knees drawn up as if he’d huddled there for some time before unconsciousness claimed him. They’d taken his clothes and dressed him in a long, sack-like gown that covered his hands and fell over his feet. His face was strained, hands clenched even in sleep. Kneeling in front of him, I pressed a hand against his cheek.