A Scandal in Battersea (Elemental Masters #12)(49)
Unable to bear this travesty of life a moment longer, Nan withdrew, and dropped her hands—and quickly thought of an adequate way to describe what she had found to Holmes. “Sherlock, it’s not that she’s in shock, not at all. It’s that there is nothing there anymore, as if her mind has been wiped clean of every memory, every fragment of self. I’ve never encountered anything like that. There’s nothing for me to read, because there is nothing there. Nothing but the basic instincts that keep her breathing. I honestly don’t even know how she obeys commands, because for all intents and purposes, there’s nothing in there to recognize commands.”
“A tabula rasa,” Holmes muttered. “By Jove . . . this becomes more interesting by the moment! If you all will excuse me, I need to go to the British Library—”
And he snatched up his coat and sped off, without so much as another word.
Now Nan turned to John Watson. “Her soul’s gone,” she said, flatly. “Oh, her mind’s been wiped as well, but her soul is gone. I’m not sure why this thing in front of us is still breathing, but . . . everything that once made it a young girl isn’t there anymore.”
“Good God,” Watson murmured, shaking his head sadly. “In that case—there really isn’t anything any of us can do, is there?”
“You should consult Memsa’b, but not to my knowledge, no, not unless you know some way of calling the soul back to the body,” replied Sarah, looking ill. “I might be able to do such a thing if her soul was anywhere near, but it’s not. I would have sensed it, if it was. Or, recognizing me as someone who could communicate with it, the soul would have appeared to me. John . . . I can’t help but think this might be linked to Amelia’s prescient visions in some way. It seems just as unlikely, and just as, well, evil as her visions, and I can’t think that the two coming so closely together in time is a coincidence.”
“I think we would be foolish to discard that idea,” Watson agreed, and sighed. “I fear that I must speak to the Penwicks and tell them there is no hope of bringing Elizabeth back to herself, and advise them to find an institution in which to place her, unless they can care for her themselves. Shall I meet you at the Harton School this afternoon?”
“Yes, please,” Sarah agreed. “And bring Mary.”
Memsa’b’s parlor seemed a better place for the meeting than Sahib’s study. It was warm and bright with sunlight; Sahib’s study had few windows, and Nan wanted a lot of sunlight just now. Trying to read Elizabeth Penwick’s mind had left her feeling chilled to the bone. Only now, after drinking two cups of good, strong hot tea and sitting in the chair closest to the fire, was she starting to feel warm again. Mentally touching that empty shell had been so profoundly wrong that she was still unsettled from it. She was not religious at all, and despite having had many encounters, directly and indirectly, with spirits and creatures of the supernatural, she did not often think in religious terms. But at that moment, she had found herself wondering how God could have allowed such an abomination. She could only fall back on something Memsa’b had told her when, as a child, she had asked why God allowed evil.
“Because we are not children, and God does not treat us as children, to be given orders and forced to obey them, or punished if we do not. But that also means we are not rescued from evil things, nor from the consequences of our own folly.”
It was not comfortable thinking. But then, as she very well knew, the world was anything but “comfortable.”
She had finished describing what she had found, and now Memsa’b and Agansing were muttering to each other. Finally they seemed to come to some conclusion, and Memsa’b gestured to Agansing, the Gurkha, to speak first.
“It is said that among the holy men, and among those who seek to master mystic arts without aspiring to holiness, there are those who can send their spirits out of their bodies,” he said, as Watson listened, showing no signs of skepticism. “I am sure that you have heard of these things, Doctor. It is also said that those who attempt this feat before they are properly skilled can become lost, swept away on the winds of the spirit world, and if the link to their body is broken, they leave behind a thing much like you describe.”
Watson nodded. “But this is a young English girl,” he objected mildly. “How would she have come by this knowledge?”
“That is the difficulty,” Agansing agreed. “If she had had a high fever . . . that has been known to drive the spirit out. Also the action of certain drugs.” He pondered for a moment. “Also life-threatening danger, such as being caught in a fire.”
“She was abducted,” Sarah pointed out. “Could that alone have frightened her enough?”
“I do not know,” Agansing admitted. “Perhaps? If she was frightened enough? She was, by all accounts, a gently treated girl.”
“If she suddenly fell senseless . . . I suppose her captor might have discarded her because she was no longer of use to him?” Watson said doubtfully. “—whatever it was he wanted her for.”
“I should think a giant, soulless doll that does exactly what you tell it to without fuss would be exactly what someone who abducts young girls off the street would want,” Memsa’b said dryly. Nan nodded, agreeing entirely.
The fire crackled, punctuating the silence. Nan sipped her tea.