The Grimm Dossier

Chapter 11 - The Night

West Coast
Devonshire, Dartmoor
St George, Skirrid Inn
4 November 1898, 03:04 hrs.

Dr Benjamin Archer slept fitfully. He turned from side to side, the bedspread folded wildly around his legs and had already slipped down to his waist through his restlessness. Since he had been in the war and returned from Sudan, he often had bad dreams. Traumatic consequences after the war were not uncommon, as he knew too well as a doctor, but it still gnawed at him. And yet, compared to other poor souls, he had gotten off lightly. Sometimes all that tormented him was a little restful sleep and the next morning he didn't even know what kind of dreams had given him that restless night.

On other nights it was worse. Then he dreamed again of the endless hills of sand. Dust and desolation as far as the eye could see. Of the dunes or the sandstorms that could easily engulf people and the gunshots in the icy night. On the worst nights, he dreamed of the day he died and the sound of beating wings. The war had certainly left its mark on him. Wounds of scars, some visible, others not. Today, however, it was not thunderous gunshots or the feeling of bird claws on his chest that robbed him of sleep. Nor the feeling of suffocating amid the sand. Today, the events in the bog and at the ritual kept him awake.

It was true: he had thought Mr Crowford an arrogant, self-important phoney. One of those gentlemen who thought they were better than others just because they had more money in their pockets. He seemed to him like a rooster who fluffed up his colourful feathers and strutted around as if he owned the world. He reminded him of his father. All in all, the kind of man he couldn't get along with and never had.

As the rooster stood at the station with three pieces of luggage, wrinkling his nose because his pretty little suitcase might get dents or scrapes, Ben wanted to roll his eyes. At the same time, however, he secretly knew that he had once been no different. He too had grown up with a golden spoon in his mouth, his pockets stuffed with his father's money and a title that opened doors for him. He received special treatment everywhere. He got what he wanted, when he wanted it, without worrying about anything like cost or value.

But then the father of his best friend and fellow student, Lord Richmond, had wanted to teach his spoilt son a "lesson about responsibility and the value of life". So he sent him to join a stationed regiment in Egypt. Because of the Lord's influence, to a quiet, harmless spot far from the seething theatres of war. But Ben, of course, could not accept Percy going without him. Ben had been foolish and unworldly. Today he knew better. Heroic thoughts and patriotic, empty slogans lost their value between death and sleepless nights. His war service had changed him and made a new man out of him. Percy was not so fortunate, for he did not return home. In fact, it was not a bullet that took him out of life, but an illness. No amount of clever planning and no safe corner away from explosions could cheat death. But the loss of his childhood friend fuelled Ben's desire to become a doctor and save others from such doom.

The cruel Mahdi uprising in Sudan had taught him that rank, title and especially money did not make one a good person. Sometimes things were not what they seemed at first glance. He not only believed Crowford was hiding something, he knew it. There was just one crucial difference: until that moment in the woods on Dartmoor, he hadn't been sure he wanted to know.

There on the moor, the young mage had shown a sudden change of attitude, which was revealed much earlier during the occult investigation in Ben's room. Ben had seen the elaborate circle that the other seeker had drawn on the floor without the aid of a template. This was not a matter of course and even in the Order of Seekers, most new members usually needed countless books, notes and aids.