Writings

Wow, okay.

So, behind the scenes on all these chapters is a buffer. I write a little ahead, that way as soon as I finish a chapter, I can have the joy of posting one that I’ve already spent time polishing, had betaed, etc. There is nothing more maddening (for the author and the betas!) than finishing a chapter, being ready to post it, and needing to sit back while your betas do their thing. And frankly, if you want great beta jobs (which I do, and which I get—thank you, Openhome and Julie!) you want the betas to take their time.

In April I fell behind in my schoolwork and in writing SB, so I posted one of my two buffer chapters because I didn’t have chapter 9 ready. That sucker would NOT go down. It’s first the major turn in the Volterra plot, and I couldn’t get it to work. So I put up 7, figuring I’d make 9 happen soon.

It still took another month.

So thank you for your patience. I hope 10 will be a quick write.

As for eight—ah, Edward senior. I actually confess to having taken some canon liberties here. Carlisle is unspecific as to whether or not he ever met Edward’s father; he says only that Edward’s mother caught his attention. Many fics of this period have him meet only Edward and Elizabeth, however some have him meet Senior at least in passing (“This is My Son the Beloved” by minisinoo, one of my favorites, is among these latter). One of the things that keeps sticking out to me as I write Elizabeth and Edward Sr. is how stalwart they are. Really, both Edward and Carlisle are the children of pretty stubborn parents, and they retain a good bit of that recalcitrance themselves as immortals.

Probably one of my favorite scenes in SB so far is the scene at the end of the chapter with Alma. One of the turns that I promised SB would take, but which it largely hasn’t yet, is that of grappling with Carlisle’s faith. He tells Bella of his steadfast faith in New Moon, but that’s some eighty-seven years after this moment, and at a time when he is secure in his profession, happily married, and surrounded by family. Backing up a bit with Carlisle, it’s pretty easy to imagine that he’s the kind of person who, at times, loses heart, wonders, and doubts. So this was an opportunity to write both those sides of him at once.

As always, thank you for reading, and enjoy.

Volterra, Italy
May, 1789

“This one is excellent, dottore. The pain? Like this.” Martina whipped her hand across the air. “This is what she tells me.”

Carlisle smiled shyly, even as he swelled with pride. At times, his work felt more like chasing legend than applying science. He spent more time trying to understand the concoctions which wives made from their gardens to treat their families than looking at any book to guide him.

But his research had led him recently back to a source in England, strangely, another pastor in the English church by the name of Stone. Finding the bark of the willow tree to be bitter, the man had assumed it to be similar to the properties of the cinchona, and he’d dried it and given it to patients. He had written about this in a letter to the Royal Society more than twenty years ago; Carlisle had unearthed a copy of it in a library in Rome.

It had taken him a while to find a tree. He’d needed to journey northward to the mountains and almost back into France, and once he’d found the thing, he ripped down an entire trunk and come back with as much as he was able to carry without attracting notice. He had dried and pulverized the bark according to Stone’s instructions, and although he’d been fully prepared to run a second experiment, it had turned out there was no need. Martina had sold the concoction to a woman who had been suffering a debilitating pain in her back due to carrying a baby. Today she had confirmed its value.

“You have the most brilliant smile,” Martina commented, returning his with one of her own. “Like a gleeful boy’s.”

Embarrassed, Carlisle dropped his eyes from her gaze. “I am only pleased that your patient felt this was a success.”

The woman laughed. “My sister,” she corrected. “And she is as much your patient as mine. She will want to thank you. We have another sister, too, you know. Unmarried.” She put emphasis on this last word, and Carlisle’s smile faded. Martina took a bit too much interest in his love life, or more accurately, the lack thereof. He tried to deflect her comments by insisting that no Italian woman would want to marry a stodgy Englishman, but she insisted that with his good looks and smarts he would have no trouble. It was a friendly tension, but the conversations made Carlisle more uncomfortable than he let on.

“Your sister won’t have any use for me, I’m afraid,” he said with an uneasy chuckle. “I’m rather set in my ways.”

“I suspect you like to pretend that you are more of a hardened bachelor than you are, Dottore.” She came out from behind her cart, and out of habit, he flinched backwards, afraid of her touching his unyielding skin.

“See?” he answered. “Skittish. I would make no one a good husband.”

Even as he said it, though, a pang shot through him. Was that actually true? His kind often mated quickly; a mated pair had advantages over a lone vampire when it came to hunting and defending territory. It usually took more than one vampire to kill another; a vampire and his mate would have the upper hand in a fight. If for no reason other than this instinct, the others often chose partners early. A mate made one more stable, less likely to wander, and he knew for this reason, the others here expected and hoped that Carlisle would take a partner. That Carlisle hadn’t done so bothered Aro, he knew, but then again Aro, who could read Carlisle’s every thought, also knew how much this lack of a mate bothered him.

He pulled himself from his thoughts to discover Martina staring at him. At once her face lit up, a wide smile spreading across it. The change was so sudden that it took Carlisle a moment to realize that she was smiling not at him, but at the person approaching from behind. He looked over his shoulder.

The woman who approached walked with some difficulty, which Carlisle realized at once was due to her pregnancy. She held a hand to the small of her back as she walked toward them. He breathed an inward sigh of relief; it was an excuse to get away from this discussion of his marital status and his own brooding on the matter.

“I should let you attend to your patient,” Carlisle mumbled, backing away, but Martina frowned at him, shaking her head furiously.

“Annetta!” called Martina. “I have someone you should meet.” She beckoned the other woman over.

“This is Dottore Cullen,” she answered, and Carlisle’s eyes dropped at once. He wondered sometimes if he had blushed often as a human, as he could imagine that if his body were filled with blood, it would be rushing to his cheeks now. He carefully avoided the women’s eyes, tracing a little side-to-side pattern in the dirt with his foot.

“He is the one who has provided the relief you sought.”

The other woman’s eyes lit at once. “Oh, Dottore, I cannot thank you enough,” she exclaimed. “This one is my third, and he must be the son we’ve wanted. My daughters did not cause me this kind of pain.” She smiled a little at her own joke. “But this that you’ve made…with the bark of the willow?”

He nodded. “The properties were discovered by a rector in my home country. I am hardly a doctor, despite what Martina hopes.”

Shaking her head in amazement, she said, “Doctor or not, you are a worker of miracles. I only hope you have enough to keep me until he is born!” She laughed.

He could make that happen easily enough. The trail from his home to the willows where he had acquired the bark was straightforward; given his memory, it would require little effort to retrace his steps.

“Ma certo,” he answered. “It won’t be a problem. Martina has more for you right now.”

“Bless you!” His hand was grabbed, lifted, and kissed. He jerked away at once, and both women laughed.

“I tried to suggest our sister to him,” Martina said, raising her eyebrows suggestively. “But he pretends to be nervous.”

“My sister searches for an upstanding man,” Annetta said, giving Carlisle a gentle smile. “Martina has told me much about you.”

“Alas,” he said, returning the smile. “I haven’t time to court anyone at the present. But I do wish your sister every happiness. And I will continue work on this remedy.” He patted one of the packages he had just traded Martina—he had delivered several pouches of a strengthened willow bark substance in exchange for several different herbs that Martina had managed to procure from a trader from the East. They were substances with which he’d never worked, and he was anxious to explore them. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Signora Annetta.”

The other woman gazed at him confusedly, but she smiled. “It is my pleasure, Dottore.“

As he walked away from the stand, he heard the two women begin to discuss him. He tried as best he could not to pay attention to their speech; he felt it was only polite to the humans, who did assumed him to be one of them and thus did not realize they were not out of earshot. But Martina leaned over the counter and sent a single descriptor in his direction: “Timido.“

The word flew and connected with something. Most of his human memories were long gone; they disappeared like wisps of smoke on a slow-blowing wind. But every now and then he would grasp a tiny fragment of something that he was sure he had heard before; they came to him like dreams, and he often wondered if he might have fabricated the idea himself rather than truly remembered anything.

He repeated the stories to himself from time to time, in an effort to hold what he remembered. That he was an only child. That his mother died giving birth to him. That his father was a pastor. Details and facts that he had been able to verify by returning to London and checking against the church registers. He had followed his memories of his first waking days back to the narrow alleyway where he had met the beast that had changed him. The roads had led him back to the ruins of the church; it had burned not long after his turning, and a new one had been erected in its place. The house had still been there, and he’d slipped into it when the current pastor had been away. But to his dismay, nothing had ignited his memory as he walked through the rooms. He found a single, worn cross hanging on one of the walls with the name William Cullen carved into its back; this he had stolen.

In the churchyard adjacent to the house he had wandered among the graves; weathered soapstone markers which barely showed the names of those who rested beneath them. His fingers remembered the feel of the letters as he’d run his hands across one. The words had been obliterated by time, but there had been enough to know it for what it was. CULLEN, engraved deep, and beneath it the name William, the newest, and the least affected by age. Beneath that had been a name worn away completely; he recognized only the tip of a letter “A.” His mother, he supposed; her name lost to the ages, and to him. And beneath that, his own name, or what was left of it, really—”S-L-E.”

Unconsciously, he traced the three letters in the air with his forefinger as he repeated Martina’s words to himself. The observation had been made of him before. “You are so shy.” He remembered it said with laughter; the commenter had been delighted by the observation. He remembered his surprise, his instinct to protest the characterization; his fascination that he had never thought of himself this way.

He did not, however, remember the speaker.

There were two of him, he thought. The man who talked to Martina; who made progress with willow bark, who remembered only fragments of a life before this one. Then there was the other man, the one who had lived in the strange little house in London, who had maybe known the woman’s name carved into that gravestone and now washed away by time and rain.

His finger finished tracing the imaginary “E” for the umpteenth time, and he closed his fist, forcing himself to forget the feel of the rough stone under the pad of that finger. He had been that young man that everyone thought was laid to rest in that yard. And now he was someone else.

But he was still shy.

That was something, at least.

Shoving his hand back into his pocket, he closed his fingers around one of the small packages of herbs and turned back toward the castle.

~||x||~

“Arruns.”

Sulpicia seemed to purr as she stretched languidly across Aro’s chest. He hadn’t chosen Sulpicia for her body, but it was exquisite nonetheless. They matched each other in their own strange way—tall, lanky bodies, long hair, skin the clear white color of the fired clay traders brought from the Orient. She was fair where he was dark, soft where he was hard.

Their mating was fluid, perfected after so many years, aided by his gift. In Sulpicia’s thoughts he could pick out what, to her, felt the most exquisite. She had in turn learned his rhythms, and together they were flawless. For this reason he preferred her. Although as the accepted ruler of his race he could have nearly anyone he pleased (and at times had), for a vampire, coupling with one’s mate had no equal.

She called him by his old name, the name he’d been known by in a life now lost to him. Even most of the guard had become one of the Chosen as much a millennium or more after he had; it was only Marcus, Caius, Sulpicia and Athenadora who had been in this life long enough to know the others’ former names.

It was an intimacy that was at once reassuring and uncomfortable.

“You seem farther away than usual,” his mate whispered, her lips so close to him that her breath tickled his ear. “My husband, always lost in his thirst to dominate the world.”

Aro chuckled. His mate saw him accurately enough. But Sulpicia and Athenadora spent enough time alone with their handmaidens and separated from the men that they developed their own views of their husbands’ exploits.

World domination, indeed.

“I seek not to dominate our world,” he answered her absently. “I merely intend to keep its peace. If others see fit to defer to me because I bring order…”

This time it was Sulpicia who laughed, her fingers working their way into Aro’s hair as she kissed him playfully. “Keeping the peace is what you call it, Arnza? This terror you wreak on the rest of our kind.”

He looked away. His chambers were the most plush of the three brothers’, consisting of several couches including this widest one on which he and Sulpicia lay. Many of the most expensive treasures in the castle were kept here: paintings, gold, jewelry. Ostensibly, the three brothers were equal in rank. Most often when decisions had to be made, it was put to a vote among the three of them. They had been raised with expectations of democracy, and Aro preferred to conduct his own affairs this way. But it was true that when a vote was called it was he who called it; he was often responsible for deciding who joined their ranks and who was exiled from them. There could be no denying that Aro was the leader, and the lavishness of his private quarters served to underscore this point.

But this was because their kind needed leaders. They needed laws. They were spread too far throughout the world; in tiny groups. It was for the greater good that the brothers held his place—they meted out judgment because their entire race did not deserve to suffer for the misdeeds of a few.

“It is hardly terror,” he muttered, still staring across the room, and Sulpicia laughed again, moving so that her breasts grazed his skin. He let out a little appreciative sigh. There was a harmony in this; a reason for him to keep a mate. Male and female created a balance; complemented each other.

And, mated vampires were also easier to control.

His eyes flickered to the far wall, where hung a large painting by one of Italy’s many master painters. The scene it depicted was an untruth; mayhem erupting in the piazza below their castle, the brothers looking on calmly from a balcony. They prized themselves on the lawfulness of Volterra; they often sent the most beautiful and powerful of their guard to cajole the peacekeepers of the city into doing their work. The unruliness depicted was certainly imagined. But what made the painting the least truthful was the golden-haired one pictured with them on the tower, looking down with the same unperturbed expression as the other three.

Aro could not imagine a moment when humans were creating danger for themselves and Carlisle would stand idly by and watch.

Sulpicia didn’t miss his shift in gaze, and her eyes followed his. Studying the painting with the same intensity, she finally offered, “At times I feel as though Carlisle is in this bed with us.”

The thought was shocking. In over a century, the blond hadn’t mated anyone, nor had he ever shown interest—were it not for his gift, and that Carlisle was far too young for the practice, Aro might have assumed the man was a eunuch.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You spend so much time thinking about him,” she whispered. “He consumes you.”

Was that true? Aro did think of the other man often, but that was only because he spent so much time skulking in and out of the castle. Aro didn’t want to be placed in a position where he might have to destroy him. As frustrating as Carlisle was, he was also supremely interesting, and to eliminate him would be a loss.

“Athenadora tells me that Caius is jealous,” Sulpicia added. “He doesn’t like him.”

Aro snorted. “Caius likes nothing that disrupts his world.” And if nothing else, Carlisle certainly did that. He challenged the things which made up the very core of their existence; the very necessity for their clandestine life. To Aro, this was fascinating; he’d never known one of their kind who had so thoroughly chosen a different path. But to Caius, anything which upset the norm was something to be feared.

His wife went on. “He also suspects you wish to include Carlisle in the brotherhood.”

“I know this.” Lately, Caius’s thoughts and worries were directed more and more toward the young blond. Carlisle was not expected to perform the duties of the guard, except for remaining loyal to the brothers. But still, Carlisle dressed in the robes of the inner guard, at least, when he was willing to wear them, which was not often. But lately Aro had taken to imagining the dark charcoal changed to jet black, a fourth chair added to the main chamber. He didn’t think Carlisle would be amicable, of course, in part because he didn’t imagine his brothers could abide the young vampire retaining his absurd feeding habits. But if Carlisle were to feed from humans, then Marcus might agree. He liked the Englishman as much as Aro did; they both found his antics more amusing than threatening.

It would come down to a vote. And if Carlisle were willing, Caius would lose.

“He’s not wrong; I’ve thought about it,” Aro answered finally. “But I don’t see any way to bring him to us unless he changes his manner of feeding. To have someone ascend even truly into the guard with his…abnormality…isn’t tenable.”

Sulpicia sighed.

“This upsets you?”

Rolling off him, she stood, gathering to her chest the sheet which had covered them both. She stared for a long moment at the far wall, at the painting that depicted Carlisle as one of the brothers.

“I like him,” she said finally. “He’s good for you. He challenges you, and he’s smart. That’s why you want to include him.”

This time it was Aro who sighed. She wasn’t wrong. He was readying his own answer when a voice called from the hall, “Master?”

It was custom to give a few seconds’ warning, as this was all any of them needed. Aro and Sulpicia were both fully dressed when the knock at the door followed immediately.

“Enter.”

Alrigo came through the door, followed by Caius. The white-haired vampire was glowering; the guard looked hurried. From Alrigo’s uncomfortable shuffle, Aro suspected that Caius had physically moved him toward Aro’s bedroom. The two stood silent, Alrigo appearing embarrassed by why he had obviously interrupted.

“Tell him,” Caius snapped, giving the guard a little shove forward that caused the other man to stumble.

Aro’s eyebrows raised.

“There is one of our kind in the city, Master,” Alrigo said hurriedly. “We encountered his trail this afternoon while we were following the Englishman in the piazza.“

From behind him there was a little noise as his mate sucked in her breath.

Unheard of. Others of their kind did not enter Volterra without seeking a fight. “Did you learn his identity?” Aro snapped.

Alrigo shook his head. “I chose to continue to follow Carlisle. But the newcomer seems to be foreign, and maybe wandered here by accident?”

“It is not possible to arrive here by mistake.”

The guard numbered twenty-two, plus the five mates; others of their kind could smell the presence of such an immense coven from a ways away. Even those that were too new to this existence to be aware of the law in Volterra nevertheless knew they were well in over their heads before they arrived to the castle. Subsequently, they stayed away.

“Agreed,” Alrigo answered. “With your permission, Master, Rafael and I will find the intruder and bring him to you.”

Nodding, Aro waved a hand to dismiss them, and Alrigo turned at once and moved for the door. But Caius was still staring, his eyes narrowed, a sneer not quite erased from his lips. Aro glanced back at his mate, remembering the conversation they had just had. How much had Caius overheard, if he and Alrigo had already been on their way to Aro’s chambers? He would know soon enough, but perhaps a small gesture would be prudent…

“Alrigo.”

The other vampire turned, his eyebrows raised.

“Carlisle. Does he know of the intruder?”

Alrigo shook his head. “Not that it appears, Master. He went about his usual business.”

Aro shot a look backward at his mate, and found her scowling at him also. He remembered what she had just said about liking the blond man and hesitated for just a moment before issuing his order.

“Please see that he doesn’t find out. And if he does…I expect to be told at once.”

The guard nodded. “Of course, Master.” He left the room.

Caius looked slightly placated, but his brow remained furrowed. He said nothing, however.

“Do you take issue, brother?”

“No,” he said quietly, “but—”

“But?”

He sighed. “Wouldn’t it be more..useful…simply to see what the Englishman does?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“If there is an intruder, and if Carlisle is truly loyal to us, he will behave as we would. Otherwise…” he shrugged, trailing off. “It would give you a great deal of important information about how he might act, were he to be considered more than just…on our periphery.”

Caius’s suggestion was intriguing. The last one vampire to have entered Volterra unannounced had been Carlisle himself. As such, the man was completely untested when it came to this important type of encounter.

This idea of Caius’s was not so terrible.

Aro found himself nodding, and Caius’s expression softened even before he spoke. “Ask Alrigo to observe the newcomer. But Carlisle is not to be kept from him.” He glanced over his shoulder back at the painting, at the imaginary Carlisle who looked with identical disinterest on the humans below.

“Yes,” he murmured, to no one in particular, “let us see what the Englishman does.”

At this, Caius’s expression broke into a smile, small though it was. “It will be done.” He nodded and excused himself to the hallway.

A little noise reminded Aro that Sulpicia was still standing behind him, and he turned to find her standing still, her lips pressed together in a thin line and her arms crossed over her bosom.

“Did I do something to displease you?” he asked

She shook her head, and moved toward the door. “I will retreat to my own chambers. I’m sure Renata waits impatiently for us both.” As she placed her hand on the knob, she muttered, “Having him followed.”

So that was her problem. He bristled at once. “It is my right to do so.”

His mate rolled her eyes. “Of course it is. All of us in this place defer to you. Including Carlisle.”

“Including Carlisle?”

“He will surprise you, if you let him. I am convinced of this. Have patience.” For a moment it looked as though she might not continue, but then she faced him, meeting his eyes. “You know,” she offered thoughtfully, “in other worlds, husbands and wives mate for reasons other than exchanging intelligence.”

Aro scowled. “You take as much information as you give.”

“Yes, Arnza.” She let out an exasperated sigh. “That’s exactly what I meant.”

Then she glided through the door and was gone.

Forward
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Warning: this chapter contains description of human death by hanging.

London, England
April, 1667

As dawn’s light crept into the small house, William became able to see out into the churchyard. His son was sweeping the threshold of the church, a small cloud of dust swirling around his ankles. It was a warm morning, and the younger Cullen worked without his shirt, his golden hair spilling down between his shoulder blades.

The boy’s hair was too long again. The Dissenter men increasingly felt that a length of hair on a man was unsightly; he should be distinguishable from the women to identify him for the work for which he was uniquely called. In Geneva, it was almost unheard of for a man to wear his hair long. William’s own hair was cut reasonably short, just under his ears, and he liked it.

His son, however, wore a veritable mane at times, particularly if it had been some time since William had last been able to convince his younger part to get to a barber. It had now again been several months, and the hair, which had once been appropriately short, was now almost girlishly long, glistening with sweat as he worked.

Making the boy the church sexton had been a good idea. It kept him close to the church, even though he resented the work. William sometimes wondered if he had educated his son beyond his station. He was read in Latin and Greek, and could recite chapters of scripture from memory. He wanted to study the law. William wasn’t opposed to this, at least on principle. His parents had wanted him to reach beyond his station by becoming clergy—he was the first in their family and the only one of his father’s three sons truly attain any sort of education. Drive magnified by generations—it made sense that the younger Cullen wanted to move beyond where his father was as well.

But the work of the church needed doing. Leaning back in his chair, William gazed in the other direction, to where he could already see merchants moving up and down the street, ready to hawk their wares. Pots jangled as tinkers moved up the lane, wooden wagon wheels creaked and thumped in the street. Most of the passersby were on foot, a few traveled by horse cart. Some were Englishmen, clearly, in coats and ruffs. But increasingly, their section of the town, blessed by the Lord in having avoided the fire, was becoming cursed by outsiders. Immigrants, traders, all those who made this place less desirable. They didn’t come to church, they often failed to pay tithes, and among them slunk the very forms of evil: thieves, murderers, adulterers.

He turned his attention back to the paper on which he had been writing his thoughts on exactly this matter. Most Mondays, the wicked were brought to justice at Tyburn, and today, as many days, there would be one from his own parish. Trials were short when it was a clergyman who brought the accusations, and so those whom William prosecuted ended up in Newgate, and without any further pardon, hanged. The man in question was a branded thief—some other, more lenient pastor had given him clemency once before. When he had been caught in the act of taking money from the taverns, William had been asked to bring trial against him. Today the man would plead for clemency again, and William would deny it.

The words that William would give had to be thought through ahead of time, almost as much as a sermon. To look down into the eyes of a man on his way to the gallows was unnerving; to commend that man to his death was near impossible. Yet protecting others from the criminals was his duty to his country, his parishioners, his God…and his family.

He gazed out into the churchyard again. His son was now moving toward the small barn, his broom hefted over his shoulder. He would put the broom away and then tend to the sanctuary, clearing dust and cobwebs, polishing the collection plates, baiting mice. There was a calmness about the way Young William worked, an ease in his gait as he moved from house to church to barn. He was content to work alone on these chilly mornings, rising before his father and slipping out into the pre-dawn with a broom, a shovel, whatever tool he needed for the day. His son had always been hardworking and diligent—William could hardly remember times that he’d needed to cajole the boy or remind him to work as he had come of age.

The week before, the younger Cullen had presented William with a chair, a handsome one of pine and holly, to replace the worn one in the sanctuary. That one had been removed to the rectory study, and the study chair moved here to the table. As with all things, his son worked hard at his carpentry. He would become a master of it if William let him. But it seemed a trade ill-befitting his son—they were called as a family to the work of the Lord. Making furniture for the sanctuary was one thing; spending the rest of his life making tables and chairs for commoners was quite another. His son was meant for greater things.

And then there was the other problem. As though to remind him, the cup of beer in his hands trembled a bit, the brew sloshing back and forth against the sides and a few drops spattering the table, thankfully missing the paper on which he wrote. Slowly, he put the cup down, but the hand which held it did not cease its shaking. It was happening more and more lately. He had ordered his son to begin taking care of the altar candles, not because he felt that the boy’s duties needed expanding, as he had explained, but because holding a flame still enough against the wick had begun to require a finesse that he could no longer manage.

William was fading; the Lord was calling him back in increments. Someone would have to take over the church. Someone William trusted.

But was he guiding his son, or stifling him?

The door to the house swung open and his son’s figure appeared, looking sanguine. The warmer weather agreed with Young William; his face and shoulders had become handsomely tanned. His son’s skin had the tendency to freckle as had Sarah’s—looking into his face, it was as though she were reminding them she still stood sentinel over them both.

“Good morning, William,” he said, and the other winced. It was a topic on which they fought more than was necessary. In his haste, William had christened the boy with a name he less preferred, and the boy had been called this by his nurse until he’d been breeched. He had never taken well to being called by the name William preferred for him.

It was probably for this reason that the younger one turned a moment later and said brightly, “Good morning, Father. It appears the Lord has blessed thee with lovely weather for killing people.”

Blood rushed to William’s face, making him suddenly dizzy. This prevented him from standing up and confronting his son, and so he glowered from across the table.

“I will not tolerate thy dishonor,” he snapped back, and the boy spun, his eyes on fire. For a moment, they stood, appraising each other as though they were wild animals and either might spring. If the boy had been younger, smaller, or weaker, William might have considered taking his hand to his son’s cheek. Instead he took a deep breath and growled, “The commandment is to honor thy father and mother.”

The boy’s shoulders tensed, and the blue eyes clouded. His lips pressed together so firmly that they turned white. It took only a moment, however, for this expression to pass from his son’s face, to be replaced by the same feigned politeness.

“Then I shall ready for the day,” Young William said quietly, and moved toward the staircase that lead to the small bedroom. William watched him tensely; his son moved with a deliberate slowness, and his footsteps seemed to echo their way across the floor. For a moment, William thought that perhaps they were finished, and he breathed a short sigh of relief that the boy was willing to let the matter drop so quickly. But when he reached the stairs, he turned again, his brow furrowing as he seemed to search for words. When he finally spoke, his voice was icy.

“Tell me, Father, for you know better than I. The commandment says to honor thy father and thy mother. Do your actions honor her?”

And as William fought to regain his voice, his son disappeared.

~||x||~

The streets were full, as they always were on a hanging day. The poor and the wealthier merged in mobs, barely leaving enough room for the carts to pass. It hadn’t been so long ago that the threat of plague had thinned these crowds—many too ill to leave their homes, and others too afraid of becoming ill to do so, either. But people feared death less now, and the crowd had grown again, curious faces pressing against windows as the carts rattled their way westward.

For the sake of simplicity, the guilty were transported sitting atop their coffins, their hanging ropes twisted around their bodies, and their hands bound before them as though they were praying. It was sickening, really. Many of the men were repentant enough without the need for forcing them to do so. Carlisle walked with his head turned away from the spectacle as much as he could manage.

As a boy, Carlisle had not been permitted to come to Tyburn. He’d heard reference to the place, of course—he knew what it meant to ‘go west’ and he knew that the ‘Tyburn jig’ was no ordinary dance. But for some reason he had always pictured the tree as a real tree—a stalwart creation of the Almighty Himself, on which the wicked were brought to justice for their sins. A holly tree, perhaps, or a pine—his thoughts on this matter were unspecific and he hadn’t known the proper names for the trees anyway—but something massive, befitting the way the world and the Lord had passed judgment on the wrongdoers.

He had been thirteen when curiosity had finally gotten the better of him. Carlisle had felt himself old enough to learn what was happening, and he’d been indignant that his father was keeping him locked out from this part of his world. So instead of staying safely in the churchyard, he’d slunk from the house a few minutes after William, burying himself in the crowds. He was careful to take a different route than he knew his father took, but stayed within earshot of the carts’ jangling tack so that he would not lose his way.

The square at Tyburn wasn’t so much a square as it was egg-shaped, with tall grandstands on either side in which those of higher station sat in their finery. The air was filled with the stench of rotten fruit, brought to be hurled at the prisoners as they passed by in the beds of wooden prison carts.

And then there had been the tree.

It wasn’t a real tree, not as Carlisle had pictured it. There was no trunk and no branches, just six hulking pieces of roughly hewn lumber; as though it were a set of triangular legs that awaited some massive tabletop to be dropped upon it from the heavens. From it in places hung a few feet of leftover rope, swaying ominously in the summer afternoon breeze.

He hid himself in the crowd, being careful to stay away from the throng of neighbors he recognized from his own parish. Carlisle wasn’t tall for his age, and for once he was thankful for this as it meant he could move virtually unseen. He watched as though he were a student, taking in every detail of the spectacle. The bystanders jeered, the prisoners sobbed, the ministers prayed for mercy on long-since-forsaken souls. And then the carts rattled their way under the hulking beams, and nine heads were fitted with dark hoods.

One man refused.

Carlisle learned later that the man was being hanged for the murder of a woman’s husband; a woman on whom he had fathered a child. But he looked young and innocent, maybe ten years older than Carlisle himself. There was a childish stubbornness in his expression as the hangman rearranged the noose on his collarbone as gently as though it were a necklace.

He would imagine for years after that the man had locked eyes with him as he stood there, transfixed. Ropes flew into the air like swiftly uncoiling snakes, caught by men on ladders twelve feet overhead who tied off the slack quickly and without fanfare. The roar of the crowd surged with each one, washing over him like the tide. Some of the prisoners crossed themselves; more rotten fruit was thrown. The young man looked briefly skyward, perhaps offering some prayer of penitence, or maybe just judging how much give his own rope might have.

Abruptly came the crack of a whip against the flanks of the mules, and the cart jerked from beneath the young man and his companions.

It was over too quickly and too slowly. The bodies hurtled toward the ground for a foot or so, but then jerked like rabbits suddenly caught in a snare. Arms and legs went slack; heads wrenched to the side at freakish angles. The rapid sucking of air as the men strangled seemed to echo over the roar of the crowd. And the young man stared at Carlisle as his legs struggled a moment, scrabbling for purchase on an invisible floor, before the steely eyes went half-closed, and the tongue lolled from the opened mouth.

Carlisle remembered screaming, crying, and running, perhaps in that order or perhaps all at once. The crowd had crushed forward, still jeering, and he had twisted away from them, tears streaking down his cheeks and phlegm dribbling over his lips from his nose. He’d run far enough from the crowd that their sound dulled in his ears before he stopped, his breath heaving as he stood doubled over in a narrow alleyway. By the time he’d finished sobbing, dusk was falling, and he’d run as much of the rest of the way as his body would allow him. He didn’t manage to get there before his father, however.

William Cullen didn’t have need to punish Carlisle often, and the boy had learned to remain stoic when he did. But that night he hadn’t been able to contain himself, and the table became wet with his tears and slobber as the belt in his father’s hands whistled down onto his backside. Five welts from seven strikes—three landed true to the same mark and opened the skin.

The bleeding had been nothing compared to the nightmares.

The young man’s face had haunted him for years, tearing him from dreams into pitch darkness. Flat gray eyes disturbed him in wakefulness and in sleep, and this was more than punishment enough to keep him away from Tyburn for half of a decade. It would have been longer had William not decided that it was an important part of Carlisle’s clerical education for him to attend the hanging days.

Sometimes he made excuses—repairs that needed doing in the sanctuary, windows dirty with the chimney smoke produced by the ever-growing number of homes in the neighborhood. But his father wasn’t a stupid man, and it wasn’t long before the expectation had been made clear that Carlisle would tend to the church in the predawn hours, so that he could accompany William to Tyburn later in the day.

His father walked at his side now, his eyes darting from the crowd, to the carts, to his son. William wore his clergy attire to the hangings, which afforded him a few nods of respect as he and Carlisle moved through the throngs. Carlisle was no longer the scrawny child who had sneaked his way to the gallows a decade before. He stood a head and shoulders above his father, and his body easily cut a path through the eager spectators.

The tree loomed ahead of them, its three horizontal beams stark against the brilliant blue sky. It was ironic the way the most beautiful weather often seemed to accompany the hanging days—London was nothing if not gloomy and overcast, except, it seemed, on the days when the whole city was possessed with this fervor to kill its wrongdoers. The weather seemed to sit well with the higher class who were arranged in some of their best clothes in Mother Proctor’s Pews, anxiously awaiting the hangings as though they were a fanciful sporting match. Around them moved vendors selling food, newspapers, and souvenir pamphlets purported to contain the last statements of those to be hanged today. As most criminals were unable to write, Carlisle highly doubted the accuracy of these.

At any rate, it was all quite disgusting.

As they reached the opening to the square, William tapped his son’s flank. “We could meet at Fen Tavern,” he said, searching behind them for the approaching carts.

Carlisle frowned. “You wish us to separate?”

His father’s jaw set, but he looked across the crowd with tired eyes. “Thou hast seen the mantle which awaits thee, William,” he answered, gesturing toward the gallows. “When thou shalt choose it.” Beneath the tree, a small knot of other clergymen stood, awaiting the final requests of the dying. William locked eyes with Carlisle for a moment, then turned away—whether in anger or defeat, Carlisle wasn’t sure.

Carlisle stood in shock as his father moved quickly through the crowd toward the gallows. Those who had brought the charges against the accused always stood closest, and Carlisle had been forced to endure dozens of executions at his father’s side as William continued on his singular crusade to purge the world of all its evil. He had not stood on the grounds of Tyburn alone since that scarring first time he had come here as a boy.

Had it been what he’d said? The two of them kept an uneasy peace in the tiny house, and Carlisle spent as much time out of it as he was able to these days. Yet his comment this morning had been unusual, even given the general unease of their relationship. But if such statements meant he would be left alone…

Free to roam, Carlisle began to pick his way through the crowd, hoping duck to the tavern right away. There was little sense in staying. Moving across the field of bodies, he avoided the vendors’ calls, and kept his head low.

It wasn’t quite enough to escape notice, however.

“Mister Cullen!”

He spun at once in the direction of the sound, but saw no one he recognized. Then his eyes noticed a gloved hand waving in his direction. The hand’s owner smiled at him, and from beneath the dark blue coif she wore, Carlisle recognized the chestnut hair that had so captivated him a week ago.

She beckoned.

He gulped, but before he had time to walk away, she moved toward him, and he moved toward her, much to his own surprise. They reached each other momentarily, becoming a tiny island around which the crowd flowed.

For a moment neither said anything.

“This is no place for a woman,” he blurted, and as soon as the words left his lips, he at once felt foolish and rude for having said them. Thankfully, Elizabeth Bradshawe’s face broke at once into a wide grin.

“Come, Carlisle, this is no place for anyone,” she replied, laughing. “The carnival over this; the spectacle—it is depraved.”

Carlisle. His heart made a little leap sideways. “How do you know what I am called?”

She smiled again. “I might have thought you would have known,” she answered. “The way you stared at me that night I retrieved my brother from the coffee house. You looked as though you had seen a ghost.”

He remembered at once Thomas’s gentle chiding as he had stood, transfixed on the place where Christopher Bradshawe and his sister had met in the street. It was little wonder that the object of his attention had noticed as well.

“I give thee my apology for that unbecoming behavior,” he muttered, and she laughed.

“It is nothing. I was flattered. But I thought you had certainly recognized me.” She paused again and studied him for a moment before continuing. “My mother’s sister is Katherine Hall. She always referred to you as Carlisle; that was how she knew you.”

Carlisle’s breath caught. Had that not been his exact thought? The dark hair, the form—she had reminded him at once of his late nurse. He had nearly forgotten this in the intervening week; but of course it made sense. It had been Katherine who had been responsible for his even using this name in the first place; this name given to him at an emergency christening and later course-corrected by his father’s cramped handwriting in the church register: the letters W-I-L-L-I-A-M squeezed before the name that had been entered there in haste years before.

“Mister Cullen?”

Pulling himself back to the attention of the woman who stood before him, he shook his head.

“I am terribly sorry for the loss of your aunt,” he said firmly.

“Thank you,” she answered quietly, “but in her I lost only my aunt. You lost your mother…for the second time.”

“It was nothing,” he began to say, but all that came out was a half-strangled squeak. He fell silent at once, remembering. Katherine had not been a great part of his life after his breeching—he had been maybe five or six years old? But he had seen her from time to time, and her presence in his life had always been comforting. He remembered wishing fervently that his father would marry her, even though he knew her to be already married to another man. Her husband, too, had been lost to the plague; Carlisle had lost track of their children, who were older than he.

His silence did not go unnoticed. When he met her eyes again, he found Elizabeth was looking on him with an expression of mixed pity and sadness. He looked away.

“Your brother escorts you today?” His voice was gruffer than he intended, and Elizabeth looked shocked for a moment, but regained herself quickly and nodded.

“He tries to.” She gestured in the direction of the surging crowd. A young boy of maybe twelve or so stood hawking cheese and fresh bread, but Carlisle didn’t see Christopher in that vicinity. “He loses me often—or perhaps it is I who lose him.” She smiled again. “And you? You are here with your father, are you not?”

Carlisle shrugged, cocking his head toward the gallows, beneath which two carts were finally parked. He could see, even from this distance, the dark hoods being taken from the hands of the condemned, which the hangmen pulled over their heads to cover their faces a final time.

His lip twitched as he turned back toward Elizabeth. “My father takes his place of honor—one of the accusers, next to the accused.”

“And you do not join him?”

“His business is not mine.”

Elizabeth chuckled. “It seems we are alike in that respect. Both here not by our own doing ”

Carlisle frowned. Was he? He supposed he was old enough, now, to defy his father if he wished to. He wouldn’t be turned over the kitchen table and subjected to a belt-lashing at twenty-three. He’d made excuses often, about work that needed to be done around the church, to keep himself from needing to come to the hangings at all, but in the end, he had succumbed to his father’s demands that he finish his work in the mornings and come with him. Did that mean that he had chosen to come?

The question was somewhat disturbing, and so he chose to probe Elizabeth further instead. “Why does your brother have you accompany him?”

She laughed, but it was far from genuine. “Our mother does not know the places my chaperone prefers to take me. I needed to visit some shops, and she insisted Christopher accompany me. He, of course, delights in this.” Her hand waved in the direction of the crowd. Cheers rose and fell one by one, and Carlisle could see in his minds’ eye the ropes unfurling themselves as they were thrown upward to the waiting assistants to be tied. His lip curled.

“But I would admit,” Elizabeth went on, “that I had the slightest suspicion that you might be here also.”

“I am nearly always here,” he answered her dumbly, and she laughed.

Her head whipped around suddenly as they both heard the call of “Betsy!” from a familiar voice. Christopher was winding his way through the crowd toward them.

Elizabeth looked at Carlisle expectantly.

“Your brother,” he said.

“I see him.” She made no move toward her brother, which Carlisle found bewildering. It was obvious Christopher was trying to call her back, but she still stood before him, looking expectant. His eyes darted nervously to the other man as the crowd continued to yell and jeer, and he could just make out in the distance the shout of the hangman.

His gaze did not go unnoticed. “If I didn’t know better, Mister Cullen, I would suspect you wished to be rid of me.”

“No!” he blurted, eliciting a wide grin from Elizabeth. His face grew hot at once. “My apologies,” he mumbled.

“Not needed.” She was still grinning.

“Forgive my impertinence. I—I rarely have another to talk to at these awful events.”

Elizabeth nodded. Over her shoulder, he could see Christopher drawing nearer. “It is a pleasure talking with you also, Carlisle.”

He looked nervously up at Christopher, who had seen him, and was looking perplexed. When he said nothing to answer Elizabeth, however, she continued, her voice lower in pitch as though she might be overheard in the crowd. “Some men in this instance might ask if they would be permitted to call on me.”

Carlisle’s eyebrows shot up. The thought hadn’t even crossed his mind, but now that she suggested it, he realized he wanted nothing more. His heart sped, but he found he couldn’t put the words to his lips. When Christopher was almost upon them but still out of earshot, Carlisle managed a voice just above a whisper: “Might I be permitted to call on you?”

Elizabeth grinned, and for a flash of a second, she took his hand and squeezed it, then dropped it quickly before anyone could notice. “You’ll have to ask my brother,” she answered. And with a second smile and a nod, she danced away. Christopher threw him a glance, to which Carlisle nodded his own greeting, and then led his sister away.

Carlisle watched them until the dark blue of Elizabeth’s coif became lost in the drab clothing around them. Satisfied that he could not catch her without causing a scene, he turned away: away from the crowd, away from the tree, away from his father. The crowd roared suddenly, and he knew that one of the carts had moved. Screams—equal parts horror and delight—erupted from the gallery as the men began to struggle against the ropes.

But Carlisle wasn’t watching. “You’ll have to ask my brother,” he repeated quietly to himself.

Where Elizabeth had touched his palm, it tingled.

Forward
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Chapter notes

Chicago, Illinois
October, 1918

The brow was still unnaturally hot under his palm as Carlisle gently pressed closed a pair of eyes that had once danced with life. Now they had gone as flat gray as the bedclothes on which their owner lay. He murmured an apology, faster than human ears around him would be able to hear, and then in a single motion lifted the body into his arms and stripped the bed beneath it. Strictly speaking, stripping beds was the nurses’ duty, but there weren’t enough hands to go around any longer, and he could easily carry both the human child and the bedsheet.

So light, he thought in dismay. No human body felt heavy to him of course, but the young woman in his arms was scarcely more than a girl—fourteen, he’d read on her chart. He hadn’t known her at all. Yesterday, she had not even been ill enough to need to be moved from the temporary infirmary at the armory, and today, she was dead. The only twisted consolation Carlisle could offer himself was that the nurse had reported the girl had already been orphaned and had no siblings. There was no one left to miss her.

He wasn’t sure whether to be thankful or outraged.

It was as though the whole of Chicago had become ill overnight. Reports of the influenza were pouring in via telegram and telephone as doctors throughout the entire country tried to put a stop to what seemed to be the eleventh plague. Or perhaps it was merely the tenth plague, revisited—it did, after all, seem as though every other hour Carlisle heard a mother’s wail as yet another firstborn child was taken.

He was in the hospital today, walking among frazzled nurses as they rushed from bed to bed. The most ill were to be put in a special ward, but some turned so quickly there was no time to get them there. Once there, they were often delirious with fever—a good thing, Carlisle supposed, as it kept anyone from discovering his dual life. He worked at two hospitals and an armory-turned-infirmary, leaving each position under the auspices of needing rest, only to turn up shortly after at another location. His apartment sat empty for days at a time now, although he doubted that in the mayhem any of his neighbors had even noticed.

Carlisle wound his way through the rows of beds, the girl’s body gently cradled against his own. The hospital was a frenetic hive of energy, with bedpans clattering, patients talking out in their fevers, families shedding tears. And still the silence of the body in his arms was deafening as he pushed his way through the doors and down the stairs to the morgue. If there had been eyes to see, someone might have questioned that he did not use a stretcher, but every nurse and every doctor were too swamped with other patients to notice anything unusual about Carlisle’s behavior. At last he reached the hulking doors that separated the morgue from the rest of the hospital, and when he slid inside, the clamor of the world around him disappeared.

It was early, and the girl was the only one so far today, although Carlisle had seen days when there had scarcely been room to lay a grown man in this space. He hoped it would stay nearly empty today. He laid the small body on a canvas gurney and arranged her limbs so that when rigor mortis set in, she would be easily transported. He wondered for a moment if she would be claimed. Many weren’t, as their families were either too poor to bury them properly, or too afraid of infecting their household with the disease. Public mass graves were being dug throughout the city, and a number of his patients had been carted to them.

The girl’s hair fanned out beneath her as Carlisle turned her in the winding sheet. It was a rich chestnut, and he allowed it to fall over her shoulders as it likely had in life. She was utterly alone, left to die by family members who had all been claimed before her. He wrapped her carefully, as though she would feel pain, then chastised himself for thinking so.

When he reached her face however, his hand brushed her brow once more. The forehead was already beginning to cool, the body admitting its defeat. His hand lingered there a moment as he bowed his head over his patient.

He wasn’t much for praying, not any longer. He made his peace with the Almighty on one night every year, which for a man whose life was unending, made sense. Humans, with their shortened existences, repented every seven days—he, with his interminable one, every three hundred and sixty-five. But he still found comfort in ritual, the one part of him, he supposed, that was still a little bit human. And so he always said the same words over his patients, or to them. So as he pulled the sheet up over the small head, sealing off the body from the world around it and hiding it from view of those who might see it, he murmured the same phrase he always did:

“It has been a pleasure treating you.”

Tucking the sheet under the body, he turned away and swallowed deeply. There were scores already who had died, and these words seemed to leave his mouth almost daily. Yet each one weighed on him. He hadn’t seen this many dead so quickly since he had first begun practice, when he had served among the wars in France. Usually one had time to recover, to collect oneself before facing the next case that might end in the loss of life. Not here. Here almost every patient bore the weight of a death sentence from the moment he walked—or more likely, was carried—through the door. Healing meant less treating and more hoping, and it felt at times that all he could offer were a few words of consolation.

His steps were slow as he left the morgue. The girl was his seventieth death in a month. The Cook County hospital was bursting at its seams, and it a bed was barely emptied before another patient arrived to fill it. Sometimes the patients lasted two days, sometimes four, and once in a while, they made their way home—although those whose illness had warranted their arrival in the hospital were usually not able to achieve this last. Even the doctors were becoming sick now, their own bodies falling to the influenza as surely as did their patients’.

This disease had rendered him powerless.

The hospital was a constant assault to his senses as he walked back toward the patient wards. The influenza caused hemorrhaging of the capillaries, and it seemed every step he took, he was met with the salty scent of fresh blood as a new patient hemorrhaged. Patients rasped for breath, their lungs filling with the viscous fluid that would eventually claim them.

Carlisle wanted to plug his ears, his nose. He could leave, he rationalized. Many already had, hoping to save themselves and their families from this invisible killer. Deserters, the hospital called them, as though they were all soldiers at war. He would be missed, but it would not be unforgivable.

It would be, however, something he for which he could never forgive himself.

The din of the hospital fell away as he made his way to his office. He needed to fill out the death certificate for the girl, and while it was a poor use of his time, it gave him an excuse to back away for a moment. He flicked on the light and took his seat, finishing the paperwork in seconds. But he stayed there, hunched over the desktop for nearly a full minute, staring at the death certificate. Fourteen. He had lived as a human himself longer than that by half.

His hand turned black. He stared at it, puzzled, until he realized that he’d crushed his ink pen in his grip. The viscous fluid trickled down the backs of his knuckles to his wrist, where it soiled the hem of his sleeve in a perfect black ring.

“Dr. Cullen?”

It was Dorothy. As was her habit, she swept into the room, frowning at him and the ink that was now pooling on the desk. He jerked his arm as though to hide it, but there was no way. She looked from him, to the pen, to the stain on his shirt, then to the death certificate. This last she snatched up before the ink reached it, shaking her head at him in dismay.

“It’s a long night,” she said, her voice gentle. “How long have you been here?”

He looked at the clock, although he knew perfectly. It was just after dawn, and he’d come a few hours before dusk. “Fourteen hours.”

She clucked her tongue. “You need rest, Doctor. You won’t be of use to them if you go and get sick, too.” Holding up the death certificate, she looked at it a moment. “This what’s got you upset?”

Not really, he thought. What had him upset were the bodies piling up in the morgue; the mass graves in the heart of Chicago that reminded him of the massacred revolutionaries he’d seen in France. What had him upset was the way even with undetectable speed and senses thousands of times more sensitive than humans’ he still lost just as many patients. What had him upset was that the girl had no family—and that they had this significant detail in common.

That she was only a girl barely scratched the surface.

But still, he sighed and nodded, as she studied the death certificate some more.

“Fourteen,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Young to be so ill.”

Young to be ill? It was young to be dead.

As though she had heard his thought, Dorothy added, “We can’t save them all, Doctor.” Giving a disapproving look to his still-blackened hand, she added, “And you won’t be saving any, state you’re in. I’ll take this to the women. You get on home.”

He didn’t answer. Instead he stood there, flexing his hand open and closed a few times so that more ink squeezed from his palm onto the desk. This was the part that was difficult, when he had to pretend to be human, to force himself home instead of staying where he could be of real use. He knew he was supposed to go, and it was an overcast day—the reason he’d stayed so late to begin with.

Two hands appeared on the desk, holding a rag which blackened as the ink spill slowly shrank. Then the rag moved to his own hand, and he found his palm gently burnished back to a nearly-clean state.

When Dorothy spoke again, her voice was a little softer. “Doctor Cullen, I’m not your mother.”

It was an odd thing for her to say, and an even odder thing for him to react to. He kept to himself, for to talk about his past was to potentially travel down rabbit holes from which there was no escape. The less people knew, the less he had to fabricate. But Dorothy’s words drew his eyes upward. She had a son near his physical age, he knew, and it occurred to Carlisle that he was on the receiving end of a much practiced look—an expression that was at once both disapproving and kind.

“I’m not your mother,” she repeated when she knew she had his attention, “and I’m not the boss of you. I can’t make you do something. But you need to go home.” The rag disappeared back into the pocket in her apron, and Carlisle considered for the briefest of moments that the ink would stain her clothing as well. She didn’t seem to mind.

He could go home. It wouldn’t be the first day a shift would end with a death, and it was far from the last. But he was tired of ending his days with defeat instead of victory. And so he shook his head, causing Dorothy to sigh.

“I’ll go down to intake,” he told her. “I’ll see one more. Then I’ll go.” He stood, brushing his hand against his coat as he did so. It left no mark—Dorothy’s rag had done its job well. He nodded toward her pocket. “Thank you for cleaning that mess. You didn’t need to.”

She grunted, but a small smile played on her lips. “You just see that you don’t make another. And if you think that you will, you go on home.”

He nodded. “I will.” Replacing the shattered pen with another from his desk drawer, he slung his stethoscope over his neck. The two of them departed the office together, Carlisle tugging the door closed behind them. Dorothy turned away, toward the wing of the hospital where the filing clerks worked, no doubt to deliver the death certificate for the young girl. They were a few yards apart down the corridor when he heard her mutter to herself, “The boy could use himself a mother.”

The pain that flooded him was unexpected, and for a moment, his steps stilled, and he squeezed his eyes closed against the dim light of the hallway. He drew a deep breath and found that it quavered, and he was thankful that Dorothy was far enough away now that she wouldn’t see. Exhaling slowly, he answered her comment in a voice too low for any human to hear:

“That’s because I never had one.”

Another deep breath—this one steadier—and then he willed his feet to move toward the waiting patients.

~||x||~

It happened while they were arguing over Junior.

Elizabeth was tired of it, frankly. The two of them always made the same points, slung back and forth like mud—she coddled him; Edward pushed him. He wasn’t a baby; he wasn’t yet a man. To die for one’s country was noble; to lose their son would leave them childless.

This time it was about the future, as it always seemed to be these days. They were running a risk, she thought, arguing where Little Edward could hear them. Not that he was all that little any longer—he stood a head and shoulders above her, and now had several inches on his father as well. To Elizabeth, her son was perfect, a blend of her husband’s frame and her coloring. The boy had inherited her eyes, the unusual sea-glass green that had caused her own mother to joke that she’d somehow been bewitched as an infant. On her, she quietly had to side with her mother—the eyes looked odd and out of place. But set in her son’s strong face, the strange eyes softened him, gave him an air of perpetual inquisitiveness, underscoring his gentle nature despite his ungainly frame.

“If he wants to join up, we should let him, Lizzie,” her husband explained. “It will be good for him. Toughen him up.”

She barely repressed the snarl that formed in answer. In their circle, there was no one who supported the war. Other mothers had wailed when their sons had been called up; only two had enlisted underage. Toughen Edward up, certainly it would—but that was only if he came back alive. Thelma in the women’s circle at the church had already lost her son, Private Christopher Hadrick, nineteen years old.

Two years older. The thought alone could make her weep, and she did so sometimes, when Edward was off at school and she was laundering his clothes. Her husband was known for his confidence—overconfidence, in her opinion. But she was the one who was left with the nightmares—the image of the wooden coffin sailing its way over the ocean, the sea glass eyes clouded and flat.  She would wake from these dreams, disturbing her husband, who’d turn in his sleep and grumble a little before falling back into a deep slumber. And when he was fully asleep, she would slip out of their bed in her nightgown and tiptoe down the hallway to the room where their son slept.

Those nights Elizabeth would stand in the doorway, watching the moonlight shade over young Edward’s cheeks, looking at the way his hair spilled over the pillow, how he lay with a gangly arm flung over the side of the bed. He still looked like a boy when he was asleep, and when his eyelids fluttered, Elizabeth still saw traces of the plump baby who had once slept in her arms. All young mothers, she had once been told, sat and watched their babies sleep, afraid that they would suddenly cease breathing in the night. But one was supposed to grow out of that, and she never had. Perhaps this was in part because her baby seemed so intent on increasing his chances to die.

Edward accused her of mollycoddling their son, of placing too much importance on what he considered the boy’s less-than-masculine pursuits. This was why, she supposed, he was so willing to support their son’s bloodlust—and perhaps why Junior himself was so eager, also. A personally-acquired body count of Germans would go a long way toward offsetting any worries others might have about his virility just because of his skill at the piano.

As though he’d heard her thoughts, her husband added, “I won’t have an Ethel for a son.”

“Junior is hardly an Ethel.” He played football with his friends, much to her dismay, and she’d dutifully looked the other way when six months ago he had decided that it was high time for him to take up with Lucky Strikes. If anything, she desperately missed the boy who had cuddled against her when he the world had seemed too overwhelming.

“Just because he wants to go to the Institute of Musical Arts doesn’t make him less of a man.”

Her husband grunted. “Still. It’d be nice to see the boy making some headway on his own.”

“Edward, he’s seventeen. By law he can’t enlist.” Although who knew what Wilson would do next? Mere weeks ago he’d all but dropped the guillotine on the younger boys of his country, when he’d lowered the age of conscription. It brought the jaws of death chomping ever closer to Edward Junior—he would be able to enlist on June 20, when he was eighteen. Here’s hoping we’re out of this godforsaken war before then.

“That’s old enough,” her husband answered gruffly. “You baby him. He’s a man.”

“Barely.” He still had one year left of high school, still struggled with his Latin, still resisted doing his reading. Could a boy whose mightiest battles to date had been fought against literature essays really be sent off to the trenches?

“What’s more important,” her husband added, his voice softer, “is that he wants to go. I’m not forcing him there, Lizzie.”

At this she hung her head, because it was true. Elizabeth looked away and stared at where their radio stood. Every night they turned it on, listening for the latest reports from France and Germany, the latest victories by their brave soldiers, the most recent body count. Edward Junior was raring to be over in Europe. He had wandered down to the enlistment office himself, but thankfully a teacher from his high school had recognized him and alerted the on-duty officer before Edward had been able to get his name down.

She had wanted to die that day, when the teacher showed up on her doorstep with her son in tow. Had she been the beating type, she would have thrashed him well–not because she felt he had done wrong, but because he’d scared her so badly.

Elizabeth Masen couldn’t lose a second child.

Her husband had not carried Margaret. He hadn’t even known her. He hadn’t felt her kicking and moving, the way she would fail to sleep when Elizabeth meant to. He hadn’t felt the agony of her trying to fight her way into existence from the wrong position, the pain—the physical, yes, but that was so distantly second to the pain of fearing, and then knowing, that your baby was going to suffocate before she ever took a breath. The little girl had been delivered blue, unmoving, having ripped through Elizabeth’s insides in what would prove to be a suicidal struggle. It had been all Elizabeth had been able to do to even convince her husband that the baby should be named before she was buried, content as he was with “Baby Girl Masen.” He had simply telegrammed her mother to come assist with caring for Junior, just barely three at the time, while Elizabeth convalesced from the birth which had preempted her daughter’s life and nearly taken her own. Her woman organs were removed, and her body healed slowly, but her heart stayed broken. There would be no more children.

Edward had simply commented that they should throw their energy into their son.

So she had. Junior had always had the finest things they could afford: the best schools, the nicest clothes, and a shiny Bosendorfer in the parlor. He’d shown aptitude for the instrument since just after he’d been left without his sister, and now he was nearly as skilled as any professional. If Elizabeth could have it her way, she would send him off to New York, where he could train with the very best masters and begin his career. There was nothing like the sound of Junior at the piano. She most preferred the Chopin, which he played often, simply because he knew she liked it. Elizabeth could walk into the living room and slide her fingers into Junior’s hair as he played, and he would pretend to ignore her, only finally swatting her away when he reached the end of his song. When he played, he was at peace, and she was too.

There would be no piano in the army.

Turning back from the radio, she murmured. “I can’t let him go, Edward.”

But before her husband managed to respond, he leaned off the edge of the sofa and coughed up blood.

~||x||~

Patients seemed to be swarming everywhere in the intake room. They sprawled across the metal chairs, leaned against the doorjambs, lay half-collapsed on the cold floor. Three nurses moved swiftly among them, writing down the names of those who were too ill to walk, sending those who merely had a light cough off to one of the infirmaries. In some chairs, patients sat alone, a hospital blanket clutched around their shoulders as they shook from chills.

The humans couldn’t move fast enough, he knew. He would try to make up for them, but even he was only able to do so much. He’d told Dorothy he would see exactly one more. For some strange reason, he felt inclined to follow his word, even though he would never be tired. He could see hundreds more patients, and no one would notice…

His eyes searched over the small crowd, looking for the one who most needed his assistance. He was just ready to turn to the nurses and ask whom he should see when he saw her.

Green eyes. An unusual, bottle green—not a color Carlisle had often seen on humans. Human eyes were flat somehow, the brightest colors dulled. But not this woman’s. She stared around the room and alternately at the man down in her lap. Her husband? It seemed so, for next to them both sat a young man. He was a good head and shoulders above the woman, but he had her coloring–reddish hair, and the same strange green eyes. The son looked more worried than did his mother, casting furtive glances down at the man who lay trembling against his wife.

Moving carefully, Carlisle wound his way through the room, bypassing patient after patient to reach the woman. He stood before her for several seconds while she focused on her husband’s face. Her own dress was becoming dark with his sweat, and the chairs beneath them both rattled as he shivered.

“Hello,” Carlisle said quietly, and the woman’s eyes drew upward at once. Her expression was plaintive, and he swallowed guiltily. There was so much need in a hospital, so many faces like this woman’s. And he couldn’t help them all. He remembered the small body he had carried to the morgue–what, an hour before?

Before he could stop himself, he had knelt beside the woman, and begun to assess the husband. His pulse was quick, and Carlisle could feel the heat radiating from his fevered body. But his coughing was still clear, his skin yet showed no sign of the cyanosis. These were good things. He had time.

“This is your husband?” he asked, and the woman nodded solemnly. Carlisle laid a hand on the man’s brow, and the face turned into his palm, no doubt seeking the coolness there. Usually Carlisle needed to be careful about touching his patients, for the unnatural temperature of his body was off-putting to many of them and risked his secret. But in the midst of this epidemic, his cool touch was welcome, and he was finally able to use his excellent sense of touch in his diagnoses.

“Edward.” The sound startled him so much that it took Carlisle a split second to realize the woman had spoken.

“I’m sorry?”

“Edward. His name is Edward. Edward Masen. Senior,” she added, cocking her head meaningfully in the direction of the young man sitting beside her.

So the young man was Edward also. Carlisle took a moment to appraise him. He had his father’s build–strong, tall, and the planes of his face were angular in a way that suggested that he would be a striking man when he grew into his limbs and out of his acne. But it was his eyes that truly did it. He looked at Carlisle with his mother’s green eyes, eyes that made him look more vulnerable, that seemed to show that trapped within this young man was a boy worrying over his father.

Carlisle swallowed yet again.

“Will you be able to help him?” the young man asked. His voice was unexpectedly plaintive; high in pitch for his age, and Carlisle’s ears could detect the tiny crack that the boy was obviously trying to mask. It was a fearful question, asked by a young man trying very much not to sound like a scared little boy.

His usual answer would be “I hope so,” or perhaps “I’ll do everything I can.” If there was one thing Carlisle had learned over the years it was not to make promises he had no scientific ability to keep. It did no good to inflate expectations. For a moment his mind wandered three floors up and an hour earlier, his pen crushing in his fingers as he looked at the young girl’s date of birth. Fourteen. Snatched from this world before she’d ever really lived in it. These things tore at him, but that was the way things were, and while he could try to prevent it, it was ultimately unstoppable. Humans were mortal by definition, and it did no one any good to exaggerate their chances of survival.

But something about the way this boy looked up at him, the way his expression matched that of his mother stirred Carlisle. He found himself desperately wanting to assure the boy and his mother that the man sprawled between them would live. Nevertheless, he’d nearly managed his usual carefully tempered statement, and the words were nearly on his lips when the man moaned.

“Elizabeth…”

Carlisle gasped and froze, and suddenly those two sets of green eyes were on him again, watching his face as though it might answer them before his voice did. But he found he couldn’t answer her, that the careful words of cautious optimism were gone. The name stirred a longing for which he had no context, even though his mind raced to grasp at wisps of memories long lost to him. But no face came to his mind, no person presented herself in his memory to ground his response, but he knew at once beyond reason that an Elizabeth was someone he had to help.

“He’ll live,” he muttered, standing. “I will save him.” He barely heard the coughing of the rest of the patients in the intake or the words of the nurses as they rushed from patient to patient. He didn’t see the people to either side; he didn’t smell the blood, the mucous, the spit. His senses dulled to everyone but the woman, her husband, and her child, as though the whole world had reduced itself to him and this small family.

“Just let me find a team with a stretcher.”

Chapter Notes