Free A Christmas Garland by Anne Perry Page A

medicine!”
    “Ever treat Dhuleep?” Narraway asked. “Do you know anything about him?”
    “I suppose I could always invent something,” Tallis said with mock cheerfulness. “How about rabies? I let him go so he could infect the entire mutineer army. No good? I could say—”
    “Tallis!” Narraway snapped. “I want to know if you knew the damn man. Did you ever treat him?”
    Tallis looked slightly surprised. After a moment, he spoke seriously. “Yes. He had a bunion on his left foot. I’m intimate with it. I could draw you a picture. Couldn’t cure it, of course. But I cured his indigestion. It doesn’t exactly rate as a friendship. I cure people I don’t like exactly the same as people I do. That’s what medicine isabout.” He gave a sad, self-mocking smile. “Just like you defend people whether you think they’re guilty or not …”
    Narraway was temporarily robbed of words. He had not intended to be so transparent. “Give me anything to argue with,” he begged. “What was Dhuleep like? Why did no one expect him to escape? Why was there only one guard? Who would want to help him? Who did he associate with? Who would want him free? If you didn’t do it, then someone else did. For heaven’s sake, man, help me!”
    “Do you think I haven’t lain awake trying to think?” Tallis asked. “Nobody likes a telltale, but I’d outdo the best actor on stage with stories that’d curl your hair if I knew any. I thought he might know something that was worth his freedom, but who would he sell it to? Latimer? Then I wondered if he was a double traitor, to us and then to the mutineers. Maybe he was let go on purpose, like a disease, to spread lies.” He shrugged. “But as far as I know, he was just one more Sikh soldier who seemed to be loyal to us. Some are, some aren’t. We can’t afford to do without the loyal ones. I mean, look at it!” He swung his arm around, indicating the immeasurableland beyond the cell and the compound. “We’re a handful of white men, a few tens of thousands, half the world away from home, trying to govern a whole bloody continent. We don’t speak their languages, we don’t understand their religion, we can’t stand their bloody climate, and we have no immunity to their diseases. Yet here we are, and we expect to be liked for it! And we’re all taken by surprise when they stick a knife into our backs. God help us, we’re fools!”
    “Don’t say that in court tomorrow,” Narraway said drily, although he was startled by how much he agreed with Tallis.
    “Never let the truth spoil a good defense,” Tallis said, paraphrasing with a crooked smile. “I haven’t got a good defense, except that I didn’t do it. And I haven’t an idea in hell who did. I’m trusting you because I haven’t
got
anything else. If you’d asked me a month ago if I believed in some kind of divine justice, or even in a manmade honor, I’d have laughed at you, probably made a bad joke.” He shrugged his thin shoulders.
    Suddenly his face was totally serious. The laughter had vanished; even the self-mockery was gone. “You seecourage that’s sublime. People enduring pain, disfigurement, losing parts of themselves so they’ll never be whole again—and yet not complaining, still keeping the dignity that’s inside them intact. People care for others, even when they know they’re dying themselves. They keep faith even when it’s idiotic, even when everything’s gone and they know it’s gone.”
    Narraway wanted to shout at him to stop, but he couldn’t.
    “I know they’ll convict me, though I didn’t do it,” Tallis added, his eyes never leaving Narraway’s. “But I still believe you’ll find a way to prove that I didn’t. Unfair, isn’t it?” He grinned. It was a brilliant, shining smile, as if in spite of all that his brain told him, he had a kind of happiness he refused to let go of. He would not accept reality. “You should try being a doctor sometime. See this after