“More than I have,” said Jones, with candor, surprising her again. “I’ll remember it in future. I don’tmeanto be insufferable, Iven, however I come across. What’s Mrs. Shaw’s interest in this fiddler person? It’s some bugbear of the patients’. Whenever anyone mentions it, there she goes, scampering over, listening for all she’s worth.”
A coldness spread across Laura’s skin. “I don’t know.”
Jones said, “Keep an eye on her; people take on strange manias out here. In the meantime, we have rounds to finish, and then you are to eat some supper, Iven. I could count your ribs, earlier.”
To Laura’s surprise, she felt her face flush. Without another word, Jones stepped through the door and was gone.
· · ·
Supper was army rations, somewhat improved with fresh bread and an egg each. Laura, still coughing, had little appetite. But she got her soup anyway, her mug of tea, sat down at the long, scarred table where the staff not on duty were cramming in nourishment. “Pim,” she said, “Jones told me you are hounding the men with questions about the fiddler.”
Pim tasted her tea, made a face, and added more sugar. Quite prosaically, she said, “I’ve been thinking he’s really that man Faland.”
Laura put her spoon down. “What do the men say about him?”
In answer, Pim pulled out a notebook filled with her handwriting, licked a finger, and started reading off tidbits, going from page to page. “You can only find him at night,” she said. “No one’s ever heard of anyone seeing him by day.”
“Is he a vampire?” asked Laura dryly. She spooned up more soup.
“Hush. He plays the violin— Well, we know that, don’t we? Not much agreement on what he looks like.” She turned another page, and there was Faland’s face, the hair done in swift strokes, the dark eye and the light. Pim really did draw well. “His hotel—sometimes they say it’s a bar—is the best place anywhere, although some say it’s also the worst.” She flipped another page. “You have the best night of your life there. They say he’ll show you the thing you want most.” Her voice wavered onmost. “But you can only find his hotel once. And people who’ve drunk there, they pine for it, once they’ve gone. Then they go mad, some of them.” Pim frowned at her closely written pages. “That’s quite a lot of rumors, isn’t it? About the same person. I’m curious.”
“Only curious?”
Pim flushed. “Faland’s hotelwaslike a miracle, I thought. So—so warm. His music. And then it vanished at dawn.”
Laura didn’t trust the look on her friend’s face.They pine,the men had said. “He’s just a swindler, Pim. A mesmerist selling uncustomed wine. Probably spikes it too. Wormwood. Sugar of lead. How are your bowels?”
Pim pressed her lips together.
“Pim, I don’t think Faland’s a good person,” said Laura more seriously.
“Maybe not. But it all felt like magic, didn’t it? The music, the night, the—the mirror. The morning. All of it.” There was a thread of unwilling longing in her voice. “When was the last time anything in your life felt like magic?”
Laura was silent. Her conviction, born of long days and longer nights, was that if the world contained any magic at all, then it couldnot also contain their war. She asked, “Pim, what did you see in that mirror?”
“Oh—” said Pim, her gaze far away. “Jimmy, of course. I saw my son.”
“Pim, it was hypnosis.”
“Oh, I know,” said Pim, although she didn’t sound wholly convinced. “Anyway, never mind that. There is one piece of the legend that’s easy enough to check.”
Laura was pulled from her own thoughts. “What’s that?”
“I want to go back to the hotel, of course. Because the men say you can’t find it twice. I’m going to see if I can. By day, even.”
Pim turned away to her dinner before Laura could voice her vehement opinion of that notion.
· · ·
It was dark when they finally took themselves upstairs to bed.
Pim was disgruntled, because Mary, to Laura’s relief, had put paid to any notions of leave to go anywhere. “Shaw, the wounded are going to keep coming down on us like three tons of bricks. If Fritz breaks the line up here, we may have to evacuate the hospital. I need every hand ready, and no one is going off pleasure-bound forany reason.”
Laura had never much appreciated Mary’s caustic authority, but in this case she agreed entirely. In their shared room, Laura stripped off her dress, peeled out of waist and stockings and chemise, stood there naked as Eve with a wet flannel, and attacked the sticky remains of fever-sweat. Pim sat primly on her bed and looked at anything in the room but Laura. “You’ll be doing it next,” said Laura, amused. “Unless you want to go to bed mucky.”
Footsteps sounded in the corridor and Mary pushed the door open. Pim yelped in surprise.
Laura glanced up, went back to sponging.
