“Good,” she said. “Very good. You are closing your eyes now. You continue to hear my voice, but your mind is relaxed, open. You are able to answer questions put to you without hesitation. Whatever you experience from now on, it has no power to harm you.”
Quentin closed his eyes. Johanna’s face remained as a pale shape against the darkness behind his lids. He felt his heartbeat settle into a lazy, comfortable rhythm.
“How do you feel?” she said from a slight distance.
“Fine.” And he did. Remarkably well, in fact.
“Excellent. You will notice that your right arm has lost all weight. It is floating up of its own accord.”
The sensation of his arm floating in midair felt agreeable and not at all strange. The rest of him felt ready to join the arm.
“What is your full name, Quentin?”
“Quentin… Octavius… Forster. The Honorable. That means… I’m not the earl.” He was aware of the oddness of his speech, but it didn’t trouble him.
“And who is the earl?”
“My brother, Braden.”
“Have you other siblings?”
“My sister, Rowena.” He felt a twinge of guilt, but it passed into the same dream state as his other emotions. “I think… she’s in New York now.”
“You have lost touch with her?”
“I… haven’t written to her in over two years.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“In England.”
“When were you last in England?”
“In 1875. Autumn.”
“Why did you leave?”
A darkness intruded upon his tranquillity, drawing him away from Johanna’s voice. His arm grew heavy, began to fall.
“You’re safe, Quentin,” Johanna said. “We will return to that some other time. You may lower your arm now.”
He obeyed, feeling the darkness recede again.
“Have you been in America since you left England?”
He nodded. That was an easy question.
“Please tell me what you’ve been doing since your arrival in this country.”
What he’d been doing? He thought back to the first day he’d stepped from the steamer’s gangplank onto the dock in New York. He’d gambled in some high-class saloon—winning as he always did, sleeping on a fine bed in a fine hotel, boarding a train heading west the next morning. No plans, no future.
“It isn’t… very interesting,” he said. “Can we talk about something else?”
“As you wish. I once asked you about periods of amnesia following consumption of alcohol. How often have you suffered this?”
“I haven’t kept an account.”
“What do you do when you wake from such an episode?”
His stomach tightened. “Go. To the next place.”
“Why?”
He couldn’t make sense of her question. She fell silent, and he allowed himself to drift in pleasant nothingness. This was much better than drinking.
“Think about what happened yesterday, outside of Harper’s room,” she said.
Yesterday. It came to him, sprung fully formed into his mind. Johanna speaking of soldiers and war. The stench and the blood and the rattling din of guns.
“India—” he began, shivering.
“You’re safe, Quentin, calm and at ease. India is far away.”
“Far away,” he repeated. “I was… on the northwest frontier. A subaltern with the Punjab Frontier Force, 51st Sikhs.”
“What did you do there?”
“We… tried to keep the peace on the borders. Skirmishes with the tribesmen, bandits. Never stopped.”
“How many years did you serve in the army?”
“Three. I was nineteen when I got my commission. I requested India.”
“What happened in India, Quentin?”
He was nineteen again, eager and itching for action. There hadn’t been any major battles in India since the Mutiny, but there were still the hill bandits and the occasional rebellious tribal leader to defy British rule. Quentin had fallen in love with the place, with its scents and colors and exotic ways. It almost didn’t matter that nothing seemed to happen except drills and exercises and the occasional punitive foray. He was away from England, from Greyburn and…
“You were in a battle,” said Johanna.
His first real battle, and his last. It began as a chase, with his captain, a fellow subaltern, and the Indian troops, into the hills after a particularly daring and elusive raider. It ended in slaughter.
He heard his own voice speaking, cool and unmoved, as if it belonged to someone else. As if the things he’d seen had been witnessed by someone else.