necessity for him to be removed from all possibility of danger. Having an heir to the throne near the front like this was barely acceptable, even given the rallying effect it had on the morale of the troops, but hosting the actual King? Preposterous.
Aubrey had also seen the thoughtful looks many around the table had been giving the new King. He guessed they were the more ambitious among them, deciding how best to commend themselves to the new monarch. Ambition never slept.
General Apsley went on to canvass the safest way to transport King Albert back to Albion, but Aubrey had other more important matters at hand. After taking in the information from the Directorate, he tried drawing diagrams to determine how Dr Tremaine fitted in.
His cogitations were interrupted when George appeared at his elbow. It didn’t create any great interest as the room was abuzz with comings and goings; the brass at the table constantly had aides whispering into their ears with news, information and dinner menus, for all Aubrey knew, so one more was hardly noticed.
‘You need to come with me,’ George said softly, but urgently. ‘Professor Mansfield has escaped from Dr Tremaine and wants to talk to you.’
60
The field hospital on the east side of the chateau was a large and well-ordered, if sombre, place. George hurried Aubrey and Caroline through the rows of tents full of beds with men who weren’t critically wounded, but who were definitely not capable of fighting in the near future. At the centre of the medical facility was a large tent in uproar. ‘She’s refusing to go into the operating theatre until she sees you,’ George explained to Aubrey and Caroline.
‘She’s hurt?’
‘She was on that ornithopter we saw crash, but it’s more than that.’
George explained that Sophie had been co-opted into acting as an interpreter for the hurt Gallians who had ended up at the facility. George had done what he could, and when on an errand to find a particular chest surgeon he’d been recognised by the seriously injured Professor Mansfield. She had implored him to bring Aubrey to her.
Having delivered Aubrey and Caroline, George hurried off to find Sophie.
Wounded men and stretcher bearers were clustered at the opening of the tent, which smelled of carbolic soap, ether and blood. From inside came shouting and the sound of breaking glass.
With Caroline at his side, Aubrey eased his way through the crush at the entrance to find a large space, well lit by electric light, a preparation area for those about to enter the operating area behind the two wooden doors at the far end of the tent. Screened-off beds were being shielded by nurses, while near the doors white-coated doctors struggled around a trolley. One – round glasses and an impressive pointed beard – staggered back and cursed in a most unprofessional manner. When he saw Aubrey, he barked in aggrieved Albionite tones: ‘Are you Fitzwilliam? She keeps calling for you.’
‘Professor Mansfield?’
‘Calm her down, quickly. She needs surgery, but we have others just as needy who are waiting.’
With a word from him, the other doctors backed away from the narrow trolley. Aubrey approached to find his one-time lecturer in Ancient Languages draped in a blood-stained sheet, her eyes wild, her movements frantic. ‘Aubrey? Is that you?’
Aubrey’s heart went out to her. She had been the most energetic and most vivid of his Greythorn lecturers, and not only because she was the only woman among them, and nor was it the fact that she was by far the youngest. It was her animation and her vivacity that had appealed to him, but here it was transformed. Her eyes rolled, her small frame shivered, her face was blackened by soot, her hair hung in sweaty ringlets as she was sitting, gaze darting about as if she expected to be attacked from all sides at once.
He came to her side. ‘Professor Mansfield.’
Her gaze locked on him. She gasped – a wrenching, tormented sound – and clutched at his arm with bony fingers. She buried her face in his chest. Awkwardly, he took her in his arms. ‘Dr Tremaine,’ she sobbed hoarsely, ‘he’s on his way to attack Trinovant.’
Trinovant? But Tremaine needs to be near a battlefront for the Ritual of the Way!
Aubrey felt as if he’d been standing on carefully constructed scaffolding made from his observations, speculations and deductions about Dr Tremaine and as he was about to reach out to grasp the final, clear understanding of the rogue sorcerer’s plans the scaffolding dissolved beneath him.
Why is he abandoning everything?
Aubrey glanced at Caroline to find that she was staring with horror at the back of Professor Mansfield’s head.
He looked down and nearly cried out. In a shaved patch, just above where her neck swelled out into the skull proper, was a socket.
The ghastly thing was an inch or so in diameter and had the appearance of hard, white ceramic. Scar tissue surrounded it, reddened and weeping in places, and Aubrey shuddered at the thought of the operation needed to insert such an abomination.
Professor Mansfield pushed away from Aubrey. Before he could ask what had happened to her, she chided herself. ‘No, no, no! I promised Kurt I wouldn’t cry. Not a tear, not at all.’
Aubrey took Professor Mansfield’s shoulders, but at that moment he saw the bearded doctor hovering behind her. He pointed at his watch then at his leg in an awkward pantomime. Aubrey looked down and saw fresh blood on the sheet.
‘They said I might lose my leg,’ Professor Mansfield said softly.
‘Don’t worry.’ The words came automatically to Aubrey’s lips. ‘You’ll have the best of care.’
She grimaced, then gripped his arm again, hard. ‘I won’t, but it doesn’t matter. Kurt risked his life to save us from that madman. He made a much larger sacrifice when we crashed, and I’m not going to dishonour his memory.’
‘But how is Dr Tremaine going to attack Trinovant?’
‘He has the Rashid Stone,’ she said and Aubrey wondered at her state of mind, skating about like that. How badly shaken had she been by her experiences, let alone the crash?
‘It’s important?’
‘Listen!’ She glared at him and her fingers dug into his arm. ‘He’s collected magical artefacts from all over to enhance his magic, including the Rashid Stone. He’s gathered magicians and savants from all over -’ She broke off and coughed, her face contorting with pain. ‘He’s harvested their knowledge and harnessed their magical talent.’
‘He wired you together.’ Aubrey remembered the booths under Dr Tremaine’s clifftop estate. Revulsion made the words stick in his throat. ‘He treated you like a row of batteries.’
A flutter of a smile. ‘You were always quick, Aubrey. As you should be with such parents.’
Aubrey did his best to be reassuring, but he found it difficult as he tried to fit this new data into his thinking. ‘He did this to you and the others to achieve his goal.’
‘You know what that is?’
‘I do.’ The Ritual of the Way. A blood sacrifice and then immortality for his sister and himself.
A thousand thoughts were rampaging in Aubrey’s mind, calling for attention, insisting that he bring them all together to form a coherent, comprehensive theory. One of these thoughts rose above all the others and thumped the inside of his skull until he turned to it.
Dr Tremaine wouldn’t abandon his preparations unless he had something more suited to his ends. ‘He could have something better than the Ritual of the Way,’ he said softly. The horror of anything that would surpass a magical rite needing the blood of thousands struck him like a blow. Only with an effort did he prevent himself from folding in the middle and falling to the floor.
‘Aubrey.’ Professor Mansfield brought her face close to his. She was shivering. ‘Whatever he’s doing, he must be stopped. He’s going now!’
