A Scandal in Battersea (Elemental Masters #12)(102)

The large concert hall space was rather too large to heat effectively; they were all huddled around the fireplace at one end; Nan and Sarah were draped in their second-best plain wool cloaks with quilted lining, with blankets over the top and the birds on their laps underneath. Grey and Neville’s heads poked out through the openings in the front. “So the girl is from the workhouse? Was she a virgin?” Nan asked bluntly. As she could have predicted, John Watson blushed. Sherlock, however, answered her straightforward question just as bluntly.

“She was, which tells me there are not many workhouses in London that she could have come from. There are only two or three that maintain such strict separation of the sexes that girls past puberty retain their virginity for very long.” He paused. “She was . . . very plain. Which probably aided her in keeping that condition.”

“Do you think all that was meant to deceive the monster?” Sarah asked curiously.

Holmes shook his head. “Not at all. I think it was meant to deceive us, so that although her origin was unknown, we would assume she was of the same social standing as the rest of the girls and bring her here. Our foe must have been desperate enough to go to the effort of obtaining a workhouse girl, and by doing so, he left a trail I may be able to follow back to him once we have eliminated the greater threat. So, the main question now is, when do we want her brought here? Because the moment she joins the rest, our time begins to run out. I sensed a great impatience in that monster when we confronted it. I think it will be no time at all before it makes its move once the seventh girl is here.”

He looked around the circle of faces; besides all the original group who had ventured into that strange world, only the leaders of the new combatants were here, representing their people. Lord Alderscroft for the White Lodge, or those of the White Lodge who had any sort of magic that could be considered a weapon. Sergeant Frederick Black for the platoon of soldiers. Memsa’b stood for a circle of psychics she had managed to gather—none of them was as strong as Nan, so they would work together, while she worked alone. Robin—well, Robin was bringing Elementals, or so Nan assumed, but he had said with a bit of a grim look that they were not Elementals that anyone here would recognize. If circumstances had been less fraught, she would have been wildly curious about that. As it was, she just hoped that whatever they were, they were going to be fierce enough.

Sarah . . . Sarah had been going about these past few days with an abstracted look on her face, and Nan assumed it was because she was communing with spirits. Whether or not spirits could be of any help—well, Nan had no idea. They certainly had been useful against the Lorelei, but the thing they faced now was a lot tougher than a single woman, however magical she was, and it was bringing with it an army.

“I think we’re all ready, sir,” said the Sergeant. “We ain’t going to get any readier for more waitin’.”

Holmes nodded. “Then I’ll go and bring her myself in the morning. You all know the plan. The rest of you, get sleep, a good meal, and be ready to face this thing once I arrive with her.”

He got up and left, and all the rest except Nan and Sarah dispersed.

The room they were in looked more like a ballroom, or the banqueting hall at Hampton Court Palace, than a concert hall. Perhaps it had been intended to serve all of these functions when the hospital had been built. It was one single, large room, wooden paneled and floored in oak, about three stories tall, with the windows all in the upper half of the walls. So at least the drafts weren’t bad. It was much longer than it was wide, with a fireplace and two doors at either end. The girls were lying in their beds on the other side of the hall, uncannily silent, like unmoving lumps of blankets. They were absolutely, mechanically obedient to even quite complicated commands. Three times a day, a nurse went to each in turn, ordered her out of bed, walked her around the room, ordered her to eat and drink, then walked her to the water closet to do whatever it was she needed to do. Then the girl was ordered back into bed, and the nurse moved on to the next. The whole procedure took three hours, about thirty minutes for each girl. It was . . . very uncomfortable for Nan to watch. The whole thing made her queasy. The empty eyes haunted her dreams. The sounds they made, walking on the wooden floor in their slippers, were so mechanical that they could have been giant puppets rather than girls. The only thing that made any difference in their behavior was giving them morphine, which made their bodies sleep.

“I’ve been talking to the ghosts here,” Sarah said, interrupting her thoughts.

“There’s ghosts here?” Nan replied, surprised. “I would have thought this place was too new for ghosts.”

“The doctor also accepts wealthy people who are going to die,” her friend said, matter-of-factly. “It has mostly been people with consumption, but there was one gentleman who contracted some sort of strange sickness in Egypt, and a couple who did the same in India, and some from the Boer War. They are all former officers. They are actually eager to help. They . . . they think they are confined to earth for some dereliction of duty, and if they can discharge their obligations by defending England here and now, they’ll be free to move on.”

Oh—what stuff and nonsense! “You did tell them that’s not true, right?” Nan demanded.

Grey sighed. “Stubborn,” she said.

“Grey is right. Their minds are completely made up. If they believe it that truly, there is nothing I can do to convince them otherwise. At least,” she added thoughtfully, “Not with so little time to work with. However, that means I have a small army of spirits that are helping me. They all confirm that the girls are soulless. This . . . disturbs them, even more than it disturbs us. And it has confirmed in them the desire to find out just what happened to those souls.”