Alex Scarrow - October skies

‘I think young Johanna will not live…’ He struggled to clear the emotion from his voice. ‘She’s down there.’

Preston led him to the floor of the gulch, strewn with boulders, shards of shattered and twisted timber and scattered personal belongings. The small, ice-cold brook energetically splashed and gurgled around them, carrying away with it the lighter things; letters, poems, dried flowers, keepsakes and mementoes sailed away downstream.

‘This way,’ said Preston again, leading him over to where Keats squatted, powder snow gathering on the floppy brim of his tan hat. To his credit, the grizzled old guide had managed to manoeuvre his scarred and pockmarked old face into something that resembled a tender smile for the poor child.

Ben looked down to see him stroking the ghostly white face of a young girl, stretched out across a wet boulder and bathed in the freezing cold water of the stream. Across her narrow waist lay a large section of the wagon’s trap. The heavy wooden frame had crushed her, cutting her almost completely in half.

‘My God,’ Ben whispered and Preston shot him an angry glance.

‘If you cannot help her, at least let her think you can,’ he hissed at him.

He nodded and then knelt down beside her. ‘Johanna, is it?’

She looked up at him, her blue lips quivering from the cold. ‘I.. I know you. Y-you’re an outsider.’

Ben nodded and smiled. ‘That’s right, my name’s Benjamin. I’m a.. a doctor. I’m going to have a little look at you. See what we can do.’

She smiled up at Preston. ‘G-God a-always p-provides.’

Preston stooped down and held her hand. ‘Yes, he does, Johanna, my love. God saw to it that Dr Lambert was to travel with us.’

‘Where is m-my m-momma and p-papa?’ she whispered, through flickering, trembling lips that were turning blue.

‘Your mother is fine. She leapt free and is safe at the top.’

She sighed with relief and turned to look at Preston. ‘M-momma t-tried to get me… d-didn’t she?’

‘Yes, she did. Because you’re special to us, Johanna.’

Ben looked across at Preston; it was a tender thing to say.

She smiled faintly, shivering as she did so. ‘I’m h-happy my m-momma is s-safe.’

Preston nodded. ‘She’s fine, just fine.’

Ben fumbled for her pulse; it was weak and fading. ‘Johanna,’ he said, ‘we’re going to get you out of here, then I’ll tend to you shortly, up at the top of the hill.’ It was a shameless lie to comfort her last few moments. He looked down at her separated body. The shattered timber had cut through her like a serrated blade, not a clean bisection but an untidy tangle of shredded organs, muscle tissue, skin and fragmented bone… messy.

‘Yes, we’ll have you out of here very soon. But first, let me give you something. You’ll feel better.’

Ben reached into his bag and pulled out a bottle of laudanum.

‘What is that?’ asked Preston.

‘An opiate. It will help her…’ Ben’s words faded to nothing. He uncorked the bottle. ‘It’ll make it easier.’ He lifted the girl’s head and poured a modest amount through her quivering lips. Almost immediately the trembling began to ease.

‘There, there,’ cooed Ben softly, stroking her face, ‘there’s a good girl. You’re going to be fine.’

The young girl nodded dreamily, reassured by the soothing tone of his voice and the soft touch of his hand. She was slipping away now, mercifully, very quickly with the hint of a smile on her purple lips.

Ben glanced across at Keats, seeing, to his surprise, tears tumbling from narrowed eyes, and down his craggy cheeks into his beard. The guide chewed on his lip silently as Preston uttered a quiet prayer.

Looking back down at Johanna, Ben could see she had slipped away.

‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered, ‘there was nothing I could do.’

Keats nodded. ‘Nothin’ no one could do.’

Preston turned to them both. ‘I’d like a moment alone with her, if you please.’

Ben put the glass bottle carefully back in his bag and stood up. Together he and Keats made their way across the stream and a few yards up the steep hill.

‘She must have been only eight or nine years old,’ whispered Ben. ‘Poor girl.’

‘Yup,’ Keats replied, his gravel-voice still thick with emotion. ‘And these stupid sons-of-bitches will consider it God’s will… just you see.’

Ben nodded.

They stood in silence awhile and watched as Preston knelt down and kissed the child.

‘What you saw there, Lambert,’ said Keats, ‘was the elephant.’

He knew what the guide meant, and that was exactly how it felt; as if some huge malevolent entity had grown tired of watching from afar and decided to announce its presence.

‘All of us seen the elephant today, Lambert… all of us. And that ain’t no good.’

Sunday

Fulham, London

Julian was glad to be home in his modest flat. Junk mail was piled up against the inside of his front door, and the smell wafting through from the kitchen suggested some food in his waste bin had gone off. In the fridge there was nothing to grab — he noticed some pate had grown some blue hair, and a litre jug of milk had separated into curious layers of yellow liquid and pale gunk.

Otherwise, though, his flat was the tidy little sanctum sanctorum he had left behind a fortnight ago.

Though keen to hit the sack and catch up on the sleep he’d missed in the woods and on his uncomfortably hard motel bed, he called Soup Kitchen’s part-time receptionist, Miranda, to grab a handful of phone numbers that he’d be calling later.

Then he turned his attention to finding some details on B.E. Lambert.

Three hours later he pushed himself away from the desk, wandered over to the phone and ordered himself a pizza. With twenty minutes to wait, he sat back down at the desk and reviewed the notes he’d printed out.

It appeared that Benjamin Lambert had come from a very wealthy family. His father, Maurice, had made a fortune on property in the Square Mile, but accrued most of his wealth as a result of investments he’d made in America. Most of this information Julian had found on the website of Banner House Hospice (formerly Asylum). Maurice Lambert had donated substantially to the institution, funding the building of a wing — the Lambert Wing, naturally.

Maurice Lambert, knighted later on, had only one son with his wife Eugenie — nee Eugenie Davies, a distant relative through marriage, Julian discovered, to the Duke of Westminster. Their son, Benjamin Edward Lambert, went to Westminster Boarding School and on to Oxford to study medicine, later specialising in the emerging discipline of psychiatry. Julian wondered if that was his father’s aspiration — for his son to practise medicine in the hospital he paid for?

He also managed to find a short article in The Times’ online archive, an article dated 1855 in which it was mentioned that Benjamin Lambert, son of Sir Maurice, had announced that he was preparing to extricate himself from polite London society and travel to the Americas to explore the wilderness of the west. He planned to write a study of the frontier, perhaps even a novel, which he would publish on his return. The paper wished him bon voyage and looked forward to serialising his work.

And that’s where the trail of information dried up.

Julian chewed absent-mindedly on a biro.

That didn’t necessarily mean Lambert perished out in those woods. There might be further biographical footprints from later on in his life, elsewhere. For example, he might have survived and stayed in America — in which case, there would be a trail somewhere.

But for now, there was nothing more he could easily find. Any further information on Lambert would require some digging.