CHAPTER 5
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THE UNHEARD WITNESS
The new day dawned a few hours too early, at least if Firefly was asked. But nopony bothered to ask Firefly; first of all, not the croaking and especially unnerving specimen of a rooster that evidently had decided to take a seat on the roof ridge and to crow his mind to heaven. Due to all her investigation work, Firefly hadn’t yet gotten round to find a real place to stay, and so she had spent the night in a small chamber above the guard house’s armoury that had a spare bed in it.
Unwillingly and cursing that miserable bird making a racket over her head, Firefly stretched her limbs. Had she already missed the reveille, how the wake-up call was dubbed in military jargon? She hoped not, because after yesterday she felt more like going back to sleep for one hour or two…
Sullenly she chewed on her tongue. The last night had left a bad aftertaste. Quite literally also, she felt like she had chewed on a piece of mouldering wood during her sleep. However, instead of providing answers, their unlawful visit in the house of healing had only posed more questions.
The mare rolled on to her back, if only for the moment, she didn’t want to think about what her future could be depending on. She stared at the ceiling, more aptly at the dim between roof beams and the lathing of a thatched roof, and thought about how strange it felt for her to actual sleep in a room alone. With five siblings, mother and father, it could get quite crowded at home and during her drill she had slept in a bunk bed in a dormitory, in one of the bottom ones even. Not to mention where she had slept on her flight to Hollow Shades, or rather hadn’t slept. Clouds might look cosy and comfortable but she had experienced how fairly cold, wet and stormy it could become up in the sky. Compared with that this decrepit bed wasn’t half bad.
Firefly closed her eyes again.
Uncomfortable, that’s right… She had to think about the missing filly again, cold, alone and afraid. And that only if she hadn’t suffered a much grimmer fate by that time!
Now that this thought had stolen in, Firefly wasn’t able to find any peace of mind anymore, and that eventually drove her out of bed. Her washing things only were composed of a jug of water and a washbowl that Sliderule had just put onto a table.
Well, a morning wash without a mirror was kind of a challenge, but she always had problems to get her mane right in the morning, and during flight it would only get messed up again anyway... She just looked a little untidier than usual today, not a problem, the main point was that her uniform was in order. That her commanding officers anything but always shared her opinion was anypony’s guess…
But being as it may, only the most peacocky of all earth ponies and unicorns need more time to get ready in the morning than the pegasi; apart from the usual grooming, their feathered wings need an accurate care, too. And because Firefly took pride in her flying skills, she was very particular about the so-called preening her feathers.
When she finally was ready to put on her blue and white surcoat- not after carefully brushing off the dust – even according to her own estimation she was far too late for the morning assembly. On the other hoof, she hadn’t yet officially reported for duty, at least not to the Captain. The only officer who had already met her was Sliderule and the pegasus had the indistinct feeling that, despite being her superior, the unicorn wouldn’t interpret the matter with the start of duty too seriously…
Just in case she entered the guardroom as unflashy and silently as possible. Needlessly, because she was given the same perspective as yesterday. No other guards were in sight, but in return Sliderule’s piles of books and paper maybe had grown overnight. As for the paymaster himself, Firefly found Sliderule exactly how she had met him for the first time: Behind his desk, his muzzle buried in a preferable weighty tome. But unlike yesterday, he apparently was asleep, resting his head on a book.
“I can imagine a better pillow”, Firefly said aloud, smirking.
The unicorn muttered something unintelligible and opened one eye ajar. Then he got aware of Firefly’s smiling face in front of his own, tore his eyes wide open and bolted up straight as a die.
“Heavens!” he exclaimed. “It’s morning all ready?”
“And a sunny one, too, Sir”, Firefly teased. “If I’m not mistaken I can be glad that I’m not the one who will get a punishment for oversleeping the morning assembly, can’t I?”
Sliderule appeared confused. “The what?” he wondered rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Morning… Oh, a roll call you mean! Yes…” He shook his head. “No, we don’t have that anymore.”
“What?” Firefly was thunderstruck. She knew the guards of Hollow Shades weren’t exactly sticklers for discipline, but a lack of an exercise as vital as the morning assembly? That practically meant anarchy to Firefly!
“You don’t want to tell me honestly that you don’t even have a roll call in this one-horse town!”
“Well”, Sliderule started to explain, once again ignoring that Firefly had insulted his hometown. “Including the Captain and me, this one-horse town has fifteen guard ponies… Um, sixteen if I count you in as well, that is… However… As we don’t have a casern, all of them live with their families in their own houses. You see, we can’t just go and blow our trumpets all over town to call in our guards every morning… The other citizens would haul us over the coals if we did that during times of peace…”
Firefly wanted to object that the Royal Guard’s signal for the morning assembly had always been a widely audible constant in her neighbourhood. Each morning without anypony seriously complaining about it!
But another question was more interesting:
“Let me get this right, then how exactly do the guards assemble each morning when there's no call?”
“As any other pony with sense of duty does: On their own. I mean, I give them new rotas every month…”
Firefly would never admit it, but if what Sliderule said was true, then she had done quite wrong about Hollow Shade’s Guard. She doubted that many soldiers in Canterlot would gather on their posts in time without being called in by a signal in the first place.
“Speaking of rotas...” Sliderule tapped on the book with his hoof. “I... um, I’ve checked some of the town’s records of the last years. You know, I thought we could maybe establish a connection with some rumours or incidents regarding the hospital…”
Firefly rolled her eyes. “I’ve feared that”, she groaned. “Let me guess: We have absolutely nothing, huh? I’m getting the feeling this blasted case is a carpet woven by one of Calm Mind’s madponies: The longer I consider it the less sense it makes!”
“A bit over-dramatic, don't you think?” Sliderule clicked his tongue. “And I wouldn’t say we’ve got nothing… Although I don’t really know what exactly we’ve got”, he admitted.
“I can only say that much: Somepony has dispersed the filly’s file. And intentionally or not, that pony has put White Nimbus’s file in the folder.”
“If there’s a connection between these two cases”, Firefly grumbled. “I can't see it…”
“Neither can I… Um, at least not at the moment…”
He closed the book in front of him vehemently so a dustcloud was stirred up in the air. After he had managed to weave it off, Sliderule continued:
“A stray filly and Count Rainbow’s foster-daughter, what do they have in common? I can’t tell, but… Maybe there is a connection, maybe there isn’t… However, this whole thing smells to high heaven!
I agree with Silver Blaze insofar that Calm Mind is trying to hide something… Totally agree with him on that point, actually… But without the files, how could I possibly figure out what?
Oh, I know, I know why I hadn’t wanted to get involved with this mess! For crying out loud this patchwork of a criminal case is probably the greatest intellectual challenge I’ll ever face in Hollow Shades and I know for sure that I won’t ever find peace again if I can’t unravel the threads, to stay with your metaphor from the art of weaving...!”
And now again he had blustered himself into such an excitement that he had run out of breath during the last sentence and unavoidably had to break his rant. Now he panted and gasped for air. The matter appeared to make him feel along very intensely. Maybe more than even Firefly herself. She actually felt a little guilty because she had pulled him out of his idyllic dream world of books.
“I know, Sliderule”, she said, but tried to adopt a tone she had often heard with her mother when she tried to soothe her youngest brother when he was throwing one of his tantrums again. And she hoped she was only half as convincing as her mother could be.
“Same goes for me,. But where I come from, we don’t just give up so easily. We stay on track, right?”
Sliderule nodded. He didn’t look to happy, but at least he had calmed down.
“It does no good. Without any clues about what might be going on in the House of Healing, we need a witness.”
Firefly returned a weak smile. “I don’t think the charming ponies in town will be keen to help us. Lest you know some magic truth spell to make them talk, that is…”
“That not exactly”, Sliderule drawled, he didn’t seem to have noticed the cynicism in Firefly’s voice. “But… But I think I know somepony who could know something… We can talk to him this afternoon. But I must warn you: This is going to be all but pleasant…”
****
On schedule with the beginning of the visiting time, Firefly and Sliderule gathered at the front entrance of the House of Healing. And, much to the annoyance of the goat-janitor Rover, the paymaster demanded to see the executive physician. In this case it meant that Rover had to accompany them to Ragstitch’s office because Calm Mind had gone out. The reason Sliderule wanted to talk to a Doctor was quite simple as he explained to Firefly: The stallion he hoped to get information from was Herbal Green, one of the inpatients…
And yet the paymaster didn’t seem very enthusiastic about his own plan and neither was Firefly, by the way.
They met Doctor Ragstitch in what he usually called his 'office'. In fact his work room consisted of a writing desk, an escritoire and a bookshelf in the back part of a room that supposedly had once been the old convent’s chapel of rest. Luckily the stone table in the middle of the room was empty and neatly cleaned, but the polished and very sharp looking, exotic tools lying on a nearby tea cart left little doubt what it now was used for. Firefly hadn’t liked the room when she had first talked to Ragstitch in here yesterday, and today she didn’t like it any better. If she wasn’t mistaken, anatomizing dead ponies still was against the law, and not thirty years ago one could have been turned to stone for this crime, but it wasn’t as much that what startled her about this room. She realized it just now.
It was the smell, that scents of embalming fluid, of sharp alcohol and curd soap. Together they formed an odd smell she couldn’t quite name properly. Maybe nopony even had invented a name for it yet! In any case it made her feel off-colour.
Moreover, and that tended to further dampen her mood, Firefly hadn’t forgotten that Ragstitch had told her just yesterday the House of Healing wasn’t treat any insane ponies at the moment. In her ungracious mood she told him outright that Sliderule and she wanted to speak to exactly to this madpony they, according to the Doctor’s own statement, weren’t treating!
“We prefer the term mentally disordered, Miss”, the white unicorn healer replied. He didn’t seem angry. Rather nervous…
“And I must beg your pardon for my little emergency lie. The matter with Herbal Green is a little… well, precarious. He was this towns healer, as Master Sliderule maybe has told you, he worked and researched together with Calm Mind, but that was before my time. Nowadays he is nothing more than mental wreck, sad but true.
My colleague and I…” He said and meant Calm Mind. “We came to an agreement to not talk about him to outsiders. To forestall possible rumours. That sounds logically, does it not?”
He smiled a little sheepishly. Sliderule and Firefly exchanged a glance. I don’t believe one word he’s saying this glance meant.
“We’re only here for his testimony”, Sliedrule corrected. “Nopony wants to spread any rumours.”
“The testimony of a madpony”, Ragstitch remarked. He took of his glasses and began to brush it frantically with a tail of his doctor’s coat. No doubt, he was nervous. But about what, Firefly wondered.
“That isn’t supposed to sound insulting, but what do you hope to accomplish by talking to him? Still, nothing will come of it!”
He behaved markedly patronizing and cold, but didn’t manage to carry it of quite as good as Doctor Calm Mind. Neither Sliderule nor Firefly would have dared to disagree with Clam Mind, but the more Ragstitch tried to prevent them from talking to Herbal Green all the more they wanted to do exactly that!
After a short time, Ragstitch relented: “Alright then”, he sighed. “Not that I hadn’t known that was bound to happen eventually... Follow me, please…”
With an expression as if he was standing in front of his own grave, he led Firefly and Sliderule through the hallways of the sanatorium. Soon they entered a part of the building the physician hadn’t shown Firefly the other day. Of course… Why would there be any need to visit an empty ward? That was at least what the Doctor had told Firefly…
That damned Ragstitch had run rings around her as if she was an absolute raw recruit!
Somewhere in the back and beyond of her consciousness a little voice of doubt reminded her that she in fact was exactly that: A raw beginner with only one year of drill and only a single training sortie, trying to play with the big colts…
“Oh, shut up”, she angrily muttered to herself.
“Excuse me?” Ragstitch huffed. He seemed a little piqued, because maybe he applied Firefly’s words on the instructions regarding the patient Herbal Green he was giving at the moment. But the pegasus certainly hadn’t meant her words for him simply because she hadn’t been paying attention his words at all.
“Chrm, chrm.” Ragstitch cleared his throat as Firefly a little awkwardly stood silent. “As I was trying to say before I was interrupted”, he said giving Firefly an oblique glare. “I need you to consider something if you want to talk to Herbal Green – which I still cannot recommend by the way… No matter what he tells you, he is a criminally insane pony. After all I know, he suffers from severe delusions, but it is among his disorder to overact his symptoms. He sometimes appears calm and helpful, but he is dangerous to the public and takes any chances to hurt other ponies! Calm Mind convicted him when he used his position as apothecary in the House of Healing to wilfully poison a patient. With a fatal outcome, sadly…
We have restrained his magic, but he still is dangerous if he can. Please always keep that in mind, will you?”
Firefly, although she had decided to never again believe even a single word the Doctor was saying, she couldn’t help but shiver. The thought of talking to a mad and dangerous poisoner didn’t seem very desirable…
Ragstitch stopped in front of a prison cell’s door. He sighed and indicated Firefly and Sliderule with a gesticulation to step closer and to look through the cross-barred viewing panel. The cell was lighted by an unnatural magic light that had to be placed somewhere beneath the ceiling, out of sight and out of reach.
In the middle of the cell stood a unicorn stallion. His haggard features really could have used a grooming, but as he heard a sound at the door he slowly turned around. Firefly flinched like hit between the eyes: All warnings to be careful had been needless. Though Herbal Green was looking tired, his eyes had a feverish glimmer. He really looked remarkably insane. All over his greyed fur red splashes were spread. Behind him two walls of the cell were also tainted over and over with red daubers and smears; on the first glance Firefly’s mind couldn’t make out anything but a horrible bloodbath!
“Our newest approach is an art therapy”, Firefly heard Ragstitch’s quiet voice from behind. “Thanks to Silver Blaze. Give him his due, he does have interesting ideas. He thought if we gave the patient paint and a brush it would be aggression relieving. Unconventional attempt, but Calm Mind thought it could be promising. Well, see the result for yourself.”
Firefly forced herself to step forward again. On a closer look she could make out different shades of red and also black colour in the stains. Of course, this wasn’t real blood. It was paint, just red and black paint. One ought to think this insight should have been relieving, but it didn’t help all too much. So Herbal Green didn’t paint in actual blood, that made the scene less macabre but no less disturbing:
All those splats and dashes, as unbelievably as it seemed, formed an overall picture. The painting on the back wall was a strange masterpiece, but none of those strange ponies would spend a fore- and a hindleg for. It was art, no question, but more like art that was bound to haunt one in bad dreams: It was a portrayal of a mountain lake with a castle on a cliff; Firefly recognized the lake and the castle north of Hollow Shades, but everything else was wrong somehow. Kept only in different shades of red and black, the water turned into blood, the battlements of the castle looked like a black claw stretched upwards and the sky seemed to burn. The trees of the woods, totally black as well, appeared like the army of doomed gathering for battle.
This alike were the kind of connotations the picture arose. Strong stuff indeed…
“ ’re you interested in art, lassie?” Firefly jerked. She had been taken in by the nightmarish painting and so she paid attention to Herbal Green only when he stepped right in front of the viewing panel. She could only see his muzzle and his blazing eyes.
“Not really”, Firefly admitted uneasily.
“You rather should be”, Herbal Green smirked. “Art often is a mirror for the truth. A murderer for example might record ‘is crimes as paintings, or as poems maybe. And I for one paint the world as I clock it, although nopony sees what I paint…”
The dreamy tone of his voice made Firefly shiver. She turned around and looked to Sliderule. He had whipped out a carbon rod and a notebook and encouragingly nodded at her. The pegasus turned back to the prisoner and thought hard about what she could reply to Mister Green’s cryptic statement, when Ragstitch stepped in.
“Spare us, Herbal”, he said with sudden determination. “These two guards are here to ask you some questions.”
“Oh, that’s right”, Firefly recalled her manners. “My name’s Firefly and that’s…”
“Oh, I already know your names”, Herbal Green interrupted her still flashing his mad grin. “What I don’t know is ‘ow somepony like meself could ‘elp you?”
Firefly wasn’t all too sure anymore whether Sliderule’s idea really was worth the effort. She was feeling uneasy more and more.
“Well, Mister Green”, she cleared her throat. “We’re looking for a missing filly. Please, think carefully: Did you notice anything strange during… let’s say, the last month?”
“Strange?” Herbal Green snapped. His fake affability had vanished completely, his voice sounded very hostile and his eyebrows formed an angry line. “It might ‘ave slipped your attention but this is a mad’ouse. Everything’s strange here.”
The next moment, however, his mood changed again. Almost every expression vanished from his face and he continued in a sober tone:
“She was not the first to be spirited away all of a sudden, y’know? There has been one like her before. Be careful, lassie, your quest might create a stir far bigger than you can imagine.”
“I fear”, Sliderule dared to object. “We need you to… um, go more into detail…”
Herbal Green’s further blaze of anger was so vigorous he threw himself against the cell’s door and shooed the other ponies a few steps back again.
“Fools, don’t you see it?” he cried out, but then he slowly slid to the floor alongside the door.
“They really don’t see it, do they?” His voice turned quiet and sympathetic, and thus was all the more creepy. “Well, well, well… What to do with the clueless…?”
He paused for about ten heartbeats and then said in an even quieter tone: “Yes, yes, I could tell them… No, of course not…” It was clear he wasn’t talking to them anymore. It was like overhearing a conversation, just that they could hear only Green’s replies.
After half a minute, his face appeared in the barred window again.
“You’re lucky”, he informed them in susurrant voice. “ 'cause, Ragstitch's right: I'm spun like a cotton reel. I have that little voice in my head that tells me bits and pieces. And now this voice wants me to ‘elp you. So I’ll tell you what I’ve also told this canaille Silver Blaze: The most important question is the one for the cradle of all evil. Find it and you’ll get all the answers you seek for: Calm Mind’s plans, the missing fillies, everything will make sense eventually.”
“Yeah, I still don’t get it”, it slipped out of Firefly's mouth which made Herbal Green’s mood tilt again.
“Dammit, lass!” he barked. “Search for the beginning, got it? When, ‘ow and where did these unfortunate events begin? Oh, and you might also ask four-eyes 'ere what 'e did in the night the filly vanished…”
Herbal Green turned away from the window and trotted away, whistling an eerie, off-key melody, seemingly having lost all interest in his visitors. Firefly was rather happy he now turned back to his so-called art. She felt like chewed and then spat out again, all the uncomfortable experiences she had already made with the House of Healing had been nothing compared with actually staring into the face of insanity in the shape of Herbal Green...
Sliderule was looking exactly as bad as she herself was feeling, but Doctor Ragstitch was actually looking even worse. Herbal Green’s last words had taken all of his self-confidence... Together with his body tension. He seemed to have awaited something like that right from the start, and now probably saw his worst fears confirmed. As much as Firefly wished herself at least a hundred miles away from all hospitals, madponies and physicians, she knew they weren’t done here yet.
“Doctor Ragstitch”, Sliderule eventually piped up, just as if speaking out Firefly’s own thoughts. “We really do need to talk.”
As always when nervous, Doctor Ragstitch started to clean his glasses again.
“Yes”, he sighed. “I thought that much. If you please would follow me back to my work room. Call me panicky but I do not want Herbal Green to hear what I have to say…”
****