“What is it, man?”
“He won’t show us.” Emma was right behind Ryan, and he just caught her whisper.
“How much should I show them, Baron?”
“Ah, yes. Well, well. Good man, good. The animals and reptiles and fishes.”
“Nothing more?”
“No.” The syllable was like the snapping of a steel-spring beartrap.
“Right, Baron.”
Sharpe looked along the group of outlanders. “Enjoy,” he said. “Meet at supper.”
He turned on his heel and stalked off, back toward the main house, the heels of his boots clacking off the stone path, fading into the distance.
“I’ll open up,” the sec sergeant said.
Ryan stopped him. “Question, Joaquin.”
“What is it?”
“Sharpe ever married?”
“No. Not that taken by women. Not in that sort of way.” He continued quickly, “Nor boys, neither. Not that way at all. Once every few months he asks me to find him a good clean girl from one of the shanties.”
“But if they’re good they’re not clean, and if they’re clean they’re no good,” J.B. said, repeating one of the old war wag jokes.
Joaquin grinned. “Ace on the line. I get a slut in. Have her washed and looked over by a woman. Goes into the baron’s room. Hour later comes out. Handful of jack. Warning about keeping her silence. And that’s it.”
“He changes a lot, doesn’t he?” Mildred said. “Almost like he’s two different people, both of them living in the same skin and sharing the same brain.”
The sec man nodded his agreement. “Been like that since he had a bad fever, about a year ago. Bloody flux and black water. Life was feared for. Seems to some of us been serving him a long time that he’s not quite the same man he was before. Says one thing, then says ‘something else. Like watching a butterfly going around a flower garden.”
“He hear voices?” Mildred asked.
Joaquin shook his head. “Baron Sharpe? You kidding me? You sayin’ he’s a stupe, lady?”
“No, no.”
“Good. Because there’s nothing much wrong with him that time won’t heal.”
The black woman had worked in general practice before becoming a specialist in the medical science of freezing, and she knew that a good doctor listened carefully for what wasn’t said as much as for what was said.
“Nothing much that time won’t heal? I’m interested, Joaquin. I have medical training. Anything else that you’ve noticed?”
The sec man looked at her for several long, considered seconds. “Not my place to talk about the man who pays me jack and places food on my plate.”
“But.”
” ‘Couple things. You’ve seen him be changeable. Times the baron seems upset by things that are going good. Other times he’s amused by bad news. And he’s gotten to be a whole lot more interested in his ‘collection’ than he used to be three or four years ago. Main thing in his life.”
“What kind of interested?” Ryan asked.
“Ville’s going to rack an’ fuckin’ ruin, Cawdor. Me and some of the older servants, men and women, run it. He kind of walks through. Half the days he never seems to notice any of us, like a man in a dream. Only time he shows any excitement is when he hears of some new sort of mutie in the outlands that he can send off and try to get for his zoo.”
Mildred was nodding at everything Joaquin said, though she chose not to speak again.
Dean broke the slightly uncomfortable silence. “Can we go in now?”
The sergeant grinned at him, rubbing fingers through his salt-and-pepper beard. “Why not, young man? One thing, for all of you. No touching or knocking on cages or anything like that. Keep your hands to yourselves.”
He opened the outer door and led the way through, Dean at his heels, the others following.
Mildred waited to go last, catching Ryan’s eye so that he lingered with her.
“You spotted something about the baron?” he asked. “Some sort of sickness?”
“My guess is that he’s become schizophrenic, Ryan. Kind of split personality.”
“Like he’s two different people living in the same body? That it?”
“That’s it, Ryan. What we heard before we came here made me think he was someone you took care with. Now I’m even more certain. Maybe we shouldn’t linger too long around his ville. What do you think?”