Overall, I had imagined the most worrying thing Nightingale could say to me would be along the lines of
"your last lux spell went so wrong it ended all life on Earth," or
"there's a nuclear warhead under the Folly and it will detonate in 5 minutes time," or
"the Faceless Man is your long lost half brother and you must battle him to the death in an underwater troll's lair whilst being attacked by zombies, also your fly's undone,"
but not something so seemingly innocuous as "I think you'd better drive,".
Nevertheless, the phrase, uttered quietly with a rueful smile, made my heart lurch in fear.
It had been a long day at the end of a long week. We'd been working on one of the bleaker parts of the Essex coast to first discover then deal with a magical artefact that had washed up on the mudflats of an old seaside town. Nightingale dated it to around 600 A.D. (I didn't have the heart to correct him to C.E.), and it had been trapped perfectly preserved in the mud through centuries of tides until one day out it popped. A harmless looking piece of driftwood that wreaked havoc with the local community.
Of course, it had taken a while for the sudden odd and aggressive behaviour of the town to be noticed, then more time for the Essex constabulary to work out they needed to call us in, so by the time we got there a lot of damage had been done. Nightingale wouldn't admit it outright, but I could tell it irked him how long it had taken him to locate the source of the disruption. In his defence, the artefact predated Newtonian magic by a good millennium. Also in his defence, there weren't many cases that could be solved by me deciding I needed to go for a morning paddle then stumbling across the vestiga of a piece of evil driftwood. Said piece of driftwood (which looked to be part of an old ship, raising worrying questions about what else was lurking under the mud) was already stored safely back at the Folly awaiting further study.
We'd arrived the morning before for what we thought would be a pretty standard debrief of the local residents to discover they had not reacted well to us removing the object. Not well at all. And now here we were, over 24 hours later, on a chilly Wednesday morning and Nightingale was handing me the keys to the Jag. And I had a horrible feeling he wouldn't be trusting me to drive the car unless in the direst of circumstances after the last debacle.
"You sure Sir?" I wasn't going to do something as silly as asking him if he was feeling OK outright just yet.
"Of course Peter, I'll be supervising," he was speaking lightly but his voice was strained, and I noticed he seemed to be listing to one side every so slightly. I resisted the urge to grab his arm and pull him steady.
I nodded and took the keys, noticing his hand retreat to clutch his side as soon as he handed them over.
"OK..." I cleared my throat awkwardly "It's just you clearly took a hit in the night..." I nodded to his blackening right eye which he couldn't hide.
He attempted a laugh "Honestly Peter - I went to an all boys school, I assure you I've been involved in more than my share of rough housing in my time," I decided not to enlighten him on how violent a mixed school could get.
I looked him over. Aside from the spreading bruise around his right eye he was unusually pale. There was mud caked into his hair which had strayed from its normal parting, and his clothes were similarly besmirched. Whilst his suit retained the crisp creases ironed into it it was now bearing more than one tear. Overall it was an odd thing to see Nightingale this dishevelled, I'd always assumed it wasn't possible like he was one of those self cleaning ovens or something - no dirt could leave a mark. But I didn't want to push the issue here and I wanted to get back to London.
The mist was rolling off the sea and down the Thames, and the wind had picked up an awful keening over the marsh grasses; I felt distinctly unwelcome here. I started to walk around the Jag to the driver's side, but as soon as I turned my back on him I heard Nightingale collapse against the car. Yeah, OK, that wasn't good.
I managed to get to him before he slipped to the ground. I shifted him to one arm, got the car open and deposited him on the passenger seat. He opened his eyes and gave me a groggy frown.
"Peter..." he said faintly.
"Yes it's me Inspector, just wait a bit, we need to get to a hospital, but first I need you to-"
"No I..."
"Sir you just fainted on me, I'd advise you not to argue here,"
"No, I mean," he took far too much of a pause than I felt should be necessary to finish a sentence. "The hospitals here, will be full of them from last night."
Ah yes, the friendly locals who we had been driven into a frenzy and we'd had to deal with when we'd taken the artefact away. The people who I was imagining had injured Nightingale whilst he'd been separated from me on the beach last night. Whilst we had managed to sever the possession I agreed it would be foolish to remind them of our presence, especially whilst vulnerable.
I bit my lip, looked out over the roof of the car and considered. The estuary mud banks that passed for beaches here were an unrelenting brown-grey, broken only by dotted rusted fishing boats. There was a faint smell of rotting seaweed that I hadn't managed to get used to yet and myriad wading birds were chirping in a way I was finding eerie under the looming fog bank. I suddenly felt a very long way from London.
"Fine," I said, "We'll start driving back, but I reserve the right to call an ambulance at any point I deem necessary, and I'm ringing Dr. Walid,"
"Be just another lecture," Nightingale mumbled.
"Yeah, and a better idea of whether or not you're dying on me,"
I climbed in the car and phoned Walid. "Can I trust you to describe your symptoms accurately if I give you the phone and start driving?" I asked Nightingale.
He rocked his head back against the seat and groaned. "This is patently unnecessary," he said. I took that as a no. Walid had already picked up though so I briefly explained the situation as best I could.
"I understand," he said, "I'll start heading for Barking and meet you there,"
"Thank you," I said, surprised at how relieved I was that someone was on their way. I'd still have to get us out of Essex by myself though.
"Now put me on with Thomas,"
I dutifully passed the phone over and Nightingale gave it a few clipped answers before giving it back. Walid talked me through how to asses Nighingale's injuries - which, considering 'assess the passed out drunk' had at various points of my probation felt like my job description, wasn't too unfamiliar to me. Although it did involve looking under my boss's shirt, which felt like getting a bit familiar and therefore made me thankful of my decision to not call him by his first name. No concussion, no danger of bleeding out, though he seemed to have taken one hell of a beating with some cracked ribs and - when I finally got him to take of his jacket - a long chunk of driftwood sticking though his left forearm.
"You weren't going to mention this?" I asked.
He seemed to go to shrug and then realised that was a mistake. "I cut the ends off it, I just couldn't remove it cleanly it was too splintered. Was going to do that at the Folly,"
"Yeah well, now you're getting blood all over the Jag," The lack of response to that was almost more worrying than the impaled arm itself.
Walid sounded a bit more sure once I'd got all the information to him, but said we'd still need to go to a hospital not least to check for internal bleeding. Nightingale's expression soured slightly at that but overall seemed to be regaining most of his usual impassivity.
The drive to London felt like slow going. Truth be told I had been looking forward to dozing on the drive back. Whilst I clearly hadn't had as rough a night as Nightingale - and how had that happened anyway? - I was still tired and sore. It had been an exhausting night, using that much magic took a lot of concentration and it had been unrelentingly cold.
The flat land of the Thames flood plane made uninspiring scenery and I was in danger of nodding off. It looked like Nightingale didn't have concussion but I still needed to keep him awake in case shock set in. I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. Idle chit chat just wasn't coming.
"What's you erm favourite..." I trailed off. Colour? Pancake topping? Where was I going with this? And since when could I not manage inane conversation?
I let the silence stretch for bit.
"Why didn't you, I mean why did you get so - how didn't you defend yourself last night?" I finally asked.
Nightingale turned to look at me, but I resolutely kept my eyes on the road.
"Because I didn't want to hurt them," he said. I knew that would be the answer.
"I've been training with you for a while now sir, I'm sure you could have defended yourself without harming them. I may not know enough magic, but I know enough to know you must know enough,"
"I didn't want to risk any harm coming to them, I eventually managed to put each one gently to sleep but it took time,"
"And you couldn't have shielded? Or repelled them?"
"I was worried any of those actions could have hurt them," I didn't answer that. I didn't really believe it, I was quite convinced he had enough control to have defended himself better but I didn't know how to push it. Nighingale eventually answered it for me.
"The beach was dark Peter," he said suddenly, quietly, "It was dark and they were close and there was violence and fear and mud. I was... I was worried I would do something out of instinct. That things there were too similar to other points in my life,"
Other points in your life, I thought, you were scared that night, scared you'd found yourself back in the war. And he'd chosen to shut down and take a beating.
"But it was different sir," I said eventually.
"There was so much mud," he said. And that I did not have an answer to.
We continued for some time in silence. The mist hadn't followed us this far down the Thames yet and for that I was grateful. I was pretty sure I was too tired for fog driving. I considered putting the radio on to break the quiet but unless there was a radio channel of Gregorian chants I was pretty sure whatever station I landed on would be too chipper for Nightingale's mood.
"It never ends does it," his voice was pitched just above a whisper, but I still nearly jumped at the sound of it. He was gazing unseeing out the windscreen, "It was over a thousand years old, fourteen hundred years and it can still do that,"
"Pretty strong magic" I said.
His voice when he answered was distant and I was pretty sure he didn't know who he was talking to.
"No, not the magic, the war. The violence. Carried down all those centuries. War was not considered such a bad thing when I was younger,"
Ah yes, I thought, the good old days when we were gung ho for a good fight. Tally ho lads off to fight the- actually when it came to England you could sub in just about any nationality there
"But my generation was shaped by war, shaped by war... destroyed by war. I'm old Peter," he suddenly turned to look at me again, remembering I was there, "The world turned on without me, I was hoping my war would fade with me. But if that sort of violence can still be around fourteen hundred years later, what hope do I have?" I thought I heard a catch in his voice, but then he was also in a lot of pain. "Those people were innocent, that war was long gone, they didn't need to be touched by that,"
Innocent? You should have looked at the graffiti on the side of the kebab shop. I decided not to say that.
I didn't have anything to offer him.
"We did too much damage," he said finally.
Damage that's in danger of harming people now? But pushing Nightingale when he was vulnerable didn't seem like the right way to get answers. I do have some tact.
Besides Nightingale had lapsed into a deep silence that I didn't think was going to be broken again.
I pulled into Barking station car park as the rain started. Walid was ready and waiting for me and together we moved Nightingale into the back of the car so Walid could take a look at him whilst I drove. Now the responsibility wasn't solely on me the toll of the past week was beginning to tell on me; I kept my hands gripped tight on the wheel to stop the tremor that had started. From the back Nightingale kept up his campaign of silence as Walid kept up a constant stream of commentary.
"Oh you would have fixed this yourself would you Thomas? Yes that seems likely you just have a tree trunk sticking out your forearm. Man I just fixed your chest you have to go and break it again?" But he didn't tell me to call and ambulance or put the spinner on so I concentrated on driving.
I dropped them off at hospital and would have followed them in but Walid stopped me in the waiting room.
"Go home," he said.
"But I should-"
"But you should take care of yourself, there's nothing you can do here right now. He's going to be OK, I'll have him back to you tomorrow,"
I smiled weakly. "Don't make me face Molly alone,"
He frowned and seriously considered that, and told me to wait for five minutes. As I was using the coffee machine in the waiting room I noticed I was having trouble getting the coins into the slot. I was definitely going to have to call a cab to get back. Walid reappeared with an envelope addressed to Molly. He'd written her a note that explained everything.
"You absolved me of all guilt?" I said.
"As much as was possible, I was mainly trying to reassure her,"
I thanked him profusely then headed back to the Folly.
Molly was not pleased with her letter. She read it, returned to the kitchen, and I had a brief pants-shitting moment where I was pretty sure she was going to stab me with a meat cleaver. It turns out she was just enthusiastically preparing Toby's meal, seemingly as a means of distraction. Well, that I could sympathise with.
I could feel myself nodding off on my feet and after a hot bath managed to go straight to sleep without giving my brain much room for worrying. Nighingale was dutifully returned to me the next morning, his movements stiff, his arm strapped up in a sling and half his face a lovely shade of purple. I helped him settle into bed and then perched myself nervously on a chair next to it. I was fidgeting slightly; it didn't feel quite right being in Nightingale's bedroom.
"I must thank you Peter," he said finally. He was watching me and his gaze was thankfully a lot more lucid than the day before.
"It's OK sir, all I did was drive. And not crash. Although actually I left the Jag in a hospital car park,"
A small frown creased his forehead at that. "We both know that's not all you did, and," he cleared his throat, presumably this ghastly display of emotions was getting to him, "I am grateful to you,"
I said it was OK, and we lapsed back into silence. I asked him if he needed anything, he said no. I was feeling like I should leave I just couldn't find a good way to do it.
"I didn't want to let them attack me," Nightingale said abruptly, "I was truly scared I wouldn't remember where I was if I let myself attack them. I fear you were worried I was being a tad self destructive Tuesday night,"
"Well... yeah. You didn't need to end up in the state you're in. What if... what if anything. I get the guilt and the worry it's just you're here now, you just have to do what you can now,"
He didn't quite smile but his expression softened ever so slightly. "Yes I am," he said softly, "And I also have to thank you for letting me do that. The other worries I spoke about, about the war still being there to this day, those are best faced by being firmly in the modern world. I thank you for keeping me here,"
I gave him an awkward smile-and-nod combo that I think managed to convey my feelings sufficiently.
The moment was shattered by Molly bustling in (as much as someone completely silent can bustle in) with a tray containing the most comprehensive breakfast I had ever seen which she proceeded to set up on the bedside table. She left, a withering glare in my direction, and Nightingale indicated that I should help myself to breakfast even if it had clearly been meant just for him.
"I hope you realise you've doomed me to several weeks of salty tea," I said through a mouthful of toast.
He smiled, "Oh, I think I can live with that."