Writings

London, England
June, 1667

The cock’s crow awoke William before sunrise on the morning of the hanging day, and he swung himself out of bed despite the early hour.

Were there ever a day to be awake and fresh, this was it.

Kneeling on the cold floor, he carefully pushed the trundle back beneath his bed. Again, it was perfectly made up, the old quilt taut across the bedding.

His son had not slept here again last night.

The boy had all but disappeared after his outburst; coming home only the following morning to plead the woman’s case. When William hadn’t budged, the boy disappeared. To Thomas’s, William supposed, though he hadn’t been down to the smithy to check.

But he pulled out the trundle each night, just in case his son chose to come home.

The boy hadn’t known, he rationalized. And that he didn’t back away just yet, well—if anything, it was a sign of how bewitching the woman’s power was. Once she was gone, the spell she had over his son would break, and he would return to the good Christian man he was.

He was not in possession of the devil himself.

William’s shoes were on the other side of the room, and he padded across in his hose. Next to his shoes, leaning against the wall, were the two pieces of the cross from the kitchen. There were no other adornments in the house besides this one; William had carved it himself just upon starting seminary.

He winced as he recalled the look of furor on his son’s face as he brought the hulking cross down on the floor, the way the wood had groaned as it splintered. The way his own child had renounced not the devil but their God. The tears of anger that had streamed down the boy’s face as he stormed out of their home.

Without thinking, William found himself kneeling before the pieces of the cross.

Broken.

Like everything.

“It all happened so quickly,” he whispered, running his fingers across the wood. “I was happy for him, Lord. He was righteous and true. Turned to thee. His strength shone in all that he did.” He recalled the joy which had flooded him that afternoon that his entire world had exploded; when he learned that his son was courting a woman. That he would go to seminary, serve the Lord, and raise the family William himself had been unable to. He had even felt healthier—he almost could have guessed that Young William’s strides were healing him as well. Perhaps this was what the Lord had intended for them both; for William, healing; for his child, a family.

And then it had all shattered.

This was a test, if ever there were one. A test of his own commitment. Could he stand by and watch his child break so that others might be spared the presence of evil among them?

What would Sarah have thought, he wondered. To be wrenched so completely from joy to pain; knowing their child was to marry, to be a seminarian, to become a father—only to learn that in truth, he’d been seduced by evil?

She would not have stood by, came the answer from deep within him. For while a father could sit idly at a table while his child screamed and sobbed, no mother would be able to bear that sight.

Did that mean he was stronger, or just more foolish?

“It hurts,” he continued his prayer. “It hurts, my Lord, to see this. I pray for thy strength. I pray thou to give Young William strength. For he shall need it this day and in the days to come. Please give him strength, and bless his soul to keep it from corruption. Forgive him his errors when he asks your forgiveness.”

He placed a trembling hand on what had once been the bar of the cross, which now leaned vertically against the cold stone wall. Did it tremble because of his sickness? Did it tremble as a sign that he was close to death?

Or did it tremble because of his own sorrow?

“Protect my child, Lord,” he whispered. “Protect my child.”

Then he stood, straightened his collar, and made his way toward the stairs.

~||x||~

“You. Vagrant. Awake.”

Carlisle barely managed to force his eyes open through the thick crust of his own tears. Between these, and the fact that for several days, one of his eyes remained swollen, opening his eyes to awaken in the morning had become difficult.

His breath left him so abruptly that he felt the effect before he registered its cause: the guard’s boot as it landed a kick square to the middle of his chest.

He growled, but staggered to his feet.

“You should not even be here,” snapped the guard.

“Then stop holding my wife,” Carlisle snapped back.

At this the guard only laughed. “Your wife? What, is she held for cuckolding you?”

The blood from the man’s lip spurted several satisfying feet when Carlisle’s fist slammed into his jaw. Unfortunately for Carlisle, the guard was a bit sturdier a fighter, and the fist which answered was powerful. A throbbing pain ripped through Carlisle’s head and little white pinheads appeared at the edge of his vision. As the world began to swim, Carlisle dropped to his knees.

The guard spat on him.

“Try that again and you will find that it is you locked here instead of your woman,” he snarled.

Carlisle fought his way to his feet, staggering slightly. He did appear a mess, he realized at once. His shirt was stained with grass and mud from his multiple nights of sleeping outdoors. His breeches were ripped at the knee. He knew that if he lifted his hand, he would feel several days’ beard on his cheeks.

He’d been in Southwark for a week. They kept Elizabeth and the others in a tiny debtor’s prison here, which before the Great Fire had been used for only the pettiest of criminals. There was word of making Newgate into an even more formidable prison on its rebuild, but that would be years away.

So the prisoners were held in a tiny building here, across the river where the buildings were untouched by the Fire. Thomas had tried to convince Carlisle to stay safely in Aldgate, but he would have nothing of it. The prison had a small yard, and it was here he made camp, sleeping outside like a dog. He hadn’t eaten in days. Like all the prisons, the guards here were easily bribed, and while he hadn’t been able to negotiate a visit, Carlisle had spent his money sending Elizabeth blankets and baked goods and paying for her to have a bed.

He would be the one who shivered and starved. That seemed more than fair.

“When will they bring them out?” he managed to ask when his vision stopped swimming.

The guard laughed, his grin spreading wide and showing a set of very crooked teeth. “Wanting to see your woman one last time, eh? I would go home, boy. Lovesickness is not cured by twisting your own heart.”

Lovesickness? Was that what the guard thought this was?

Nevertheless, he pulled himself to his full height, squaring his shoulders as he regarded the other man.

“She is accused falsely,” he answered. “And not by me.”

The guard laughed again. “Then you had better take that one up with the judge. Sleeping out here like a lost dog will not undo the judge’s orders.” Gesturing to the gate, he added, “And it’s too late for that.”

And Carlisle heard it. The jangling of tack as it was hooked to the mules which would pull the cart to Tyburn. The creak of the wheels as the cart maneuvered into place. The whistling of a minstrel tune.

Someone was whistling?

They were readying the cart to pull people to their deaths, and someone was whistling?

His stomach clenched so violently he doubled over and was sick. Only bile, as he’d not eaten in three days.

The guard shot him a look of disgust.

“Get out of here,” he snarled. “Go. Meet the cart and your woman later.” He shoved Carlisle with such force that he stumbled.

But he did go, at least a little ways. He walked across the street to a small bakery, from which wafted the scents of freshly-baked bread. Readying for the crowds, no doubt. It was a hanging day, and people would gather as far as this to take part in the spectacle. He leaned against the doorpost and closed his eyes again, allowing the scents to bathe him.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed; perhaps it was possible that as tired as he was, he’d fallen asleep standing up. But he became aware of his surroundings again when a voice asked, “You all right, Boy?”

It was the second time in an hour Carlisle had been called “Boy.” How odd.

In the doorway of the bakery stood a woman, shaking down a small mat, which she beat with the palm of one hand. With each strike, particles of dirt and dust fell to the ground like snow.

He stared.

Was he all right? He was ripping apart. He was becoming a madman. He was starving. He was afraid.

“Boy? Are you all right?”

He shrugged. But then, as though the mere act of being asked was too much, he fell to his knees and started to cry.

~||x||~

Dawn’s light still crept across the Tyburn field, the sky still shone a purplish blue. Yet Mother Proctor’s Pews were already beginning to fill. On some days, the stands would be packed with people, but today William expected the crowd to be modest. There would be no extraordinary criminals hanged today; not the kinds of people which drew large crowds. A thief, a wife who had cuckolded her husband, a man who murdered his mistress.

And Elizabeth.

His son’s betrothed.

The witch.

Would the boy cause a scene? Would he even show?

William walked the length of the gallows, thinking. The “tree,” as they called it, was in three parts, a triangle, so that the weight from the hulking beams was distributed evenly. Eight could be hanged on each side, but the most William had ever seen was a total of fifteen, and that was after a stretch when a series of saints’ days interrupted normal legal proceedings.

Above him, short bits of leftover rope swayed in the wind.

“Reverend,” a man said, and William turned. It was the judge, Jonathan Porter. They were long-acquainted, brought together by William’s work.

“Mr. Porter.” William nodded.

The other man stood, his hands crossed behind his back as he stared out into the place where the crowd would sit.

“I am surprised to see a crowd this early. They will have barely begun to bring the prisoners.”

William nodded. “I am surprised to see them, also.”

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

“I understand that one of the accused is your son’s betrothed,” the Judge said finally, his voice quiet, as though somehow they would be heard over the hundreds of yards between them and the spectators.

Some said London was the largest city in all of the countries. It was certainly the largest in England by a long shot. Yet news and rumors moved as quickly as they did in any tiny hamlet.

“Was my son’s betrothed,” William answered, his lip curling. “He has denounced her, of course.”

The judge nodded. “Of course.”

But the look on his face was odd.

“Do you not believe me?”

The judge winced, but continued staring to the gathering crowd. “I received word that a young man with golden hair has slept outside the prison for the past half week.”

Slept outside the prison. So he was not spending his nights with Thomas, after all.

“And you suspect this to be Young William.”

“I know it not for certain,” the judge said. He turned, and like William, paced the length of the gallows, gazing up occasionally at the beam with its scraps of dangling leftover rope, saying nothing.

William watched him.

“Plan you to purify the girl?” he asked finally.

This was the final step in dealing with women accused of witchcraft. They were hanged first, of course, as with all criminals. But the devil could be exorcised from the body posthaste, through burning.

He nodded.

“The body must not play host to the Devil after today.”

Again the judge took a long time to speak. When he did, he spoke not to William but to the hanging pieces of rope.

“Perhaps you ought to pardon her, Reverend.”

At once, William’s face grew hot. “Pardon her? Her superior confessed! She is a practicing witch, Judge. I will not have her host the Devil among us. And I will not have her near my son.”

“And your son? He agrees with this course of action?”

“Of course he does.”

Judge Porter rocked on his heels once more, pursing his lips so tightly they turned white.

“Then may God’s blessings be upon you to be rid of this scourge.” He began to walk away, toward the place where he would sit, along with the other judges in attendance, and William and the two other clergy who’d brought the charges.

Young William had sat there, too, once, William thought, as he eyed the empty chairs. When he thought his child would follow in his path. He’d imagined the day when he would stand to the side and instead it would be his son listening to the final confessions, blessing those who carried out the noble duty of execution, bidding the souls which were worthy toward Heaven, and damning the others to Hell.

He stared from the Tree to the dias. This was the vantage point the guilty had; viewing those who had accused him.

What would the girl see, he wondered? Would she think of him as the man who might have become her father-in-law?

Or only the man who condemned her to die?

He folded his hands and bowed his head. Was the judge right? Pardoning the girl would heal his child. It would bring back the joyous man who’d inhabited William’s house these short months. It would bring them back together. Turn them back into a family.

But he was already a weakened man, and it would make him seem weaker…

He bowed his head. “Strength, Lord,” he whispered. “I pray thee to give me strength.”

In the distance he heard the jeers of the crowd, the jangling of the tack.

~||x||~

She was as beautiful as she had ever been. Resolute, her shoulders squared as she sat. Even though he had attended the Tyburn processions since he had been a child, Carlisle had never before thought of how grotesque their form of transport truly was—each prisoner sat shackled to his own coffin, so that the return trip would be easily coordinated.

It was disgusting.

The roads which led west to Tyburn were crowded, though not as much as usual. Part of him was relieved; the other part wanted to scream from the rooftops that more people should care. Unless he could do something, this morning they would take the life of an innocent.

The lies. All the lies. If his father had told him of his sickness, of the treatment he was receiving, perhaps Carlisle might have talked it over with his beloved. She would have known where William Cullen saw his barber-surgeon, and she might have avoided the area entirely.

He had always been taught that lying was the very root of evil. He’d disagreed at the time, but here, now, he understood the truth in that.

Lying had gotten them here, with the woman he loved, sitting atop her own coffin, jerking and rattling her way toward her death.

So he ran alongside the cart quietly, ducking between the people so as not to be seen.

Over the years he had seen men in his exact position—distraught, running alongside the cart, grabbing for their loved ones’ hands. Inevitably they were arrested, or beaten by the crowd. In the worst scenario, one woman who ran sobbing after her husband at the end of the journey was found guilty of colluding with him and they’d put her on the cart and strung her up right next to him.

Carlisle ducked and dodged the crowd as he jogged to keep up with the guards and the cart. Occasionally, he lost sight of it in the jeering people. Small crowds stood on the streets, little children flung rotted vegetables and fruit so that the streets reeked. Most of them were unsuccessful, but one little boy had particularly good aim, lobbing a rotten turnip which smashed on the cart’s wall next to Elizabeth.

He grabbed the boy’s wrist so firmly he worried a brief second that he might accidentally break it.

The boy screamed.

“Would thou prefer it that people threw rotting food at thee?” Carlisle growled.

Wide-eyed, the boy shook his head.

“Then thou ought not do it either,” he snapped. He threw down the small arm with such force it nearly knocked its owner to the ground. But the boy regained his balance and ran into a nearby house for safety.

“Imbeciles,” Carlisle muttered.

The cart jingled and squeaked its way through the streets as Carlisle alternately lost himself in the crowds and appeared alongside the cart. He was a good runner; he and his father ate well and he had grown up strong. He kept up with the cart easily, at times even slowing to a walk.

It was during one of these walking times that he heard a low voice say, “Cullen.”

Carlisle looked over his shoulder.

There Thomas stood, his arms crossed over his chest, his feet planted wide. At once a look of sorrowful pity crossed his face.

“Thomas.”

“You look awful, Carlisle,” he said quietly. “Why did you not come stay with me?”

Carlisle shook his head. “I needed to be near her,” he answered, as though this were a foregone conclusion.

His friend blinked. “And were you?”

“I have been outside the prison these nights.”

Thomas eyed his clothing, looking over Carlisle from head to toe. “Aye, that you have.”

The cart jerked its way ahead of them, the jeers of the crowd moving with it. Carlisle stared longingly for a moment, but then realized he could catch up.

“I’m sorry, Friend. Truly, I am.” Thomas laid a hand on Carlisle’s shoulder.

Carlisle looked down at the street. He wouldn’t cry again. He’d already cried today, and that was enough—if Elizabeth saw him, she needed to see the strength of the man who loved her, not a sniveling child. So instead he bit his lip so hard he drew blood, its salty taste rolling back into his mouth.

This did not escape Thomas’s notice, either.

“Do you wish that we should walk together?”

Carlisle stared. “Needn’t you stay here?” Now that he’d stopped, Carlisle recognized his surroundings at last. He was near the smithy, not far from his own home, which the procession did not pass.

Thomas shook his head. “My father will understand.” He squeezed Carlisle’s shoulder. “I am so sorry, my friend.”

“It is my father’s fault,” he said. “She is innocent.”

“Did you plead her case with him?”

Carlisle nodded. The morning after he collapsed in the forest, he came back to the vicarage just at daybreak to find his father asleep in the kitchen chair. He’d nearly cleaned the kitchen, but thought better of it upon seeing the cross, the last thing he’d broken, lying still in pieces on the floor.

His father had no idea what it meant to be a Christian.

He had thrown nothing. He had, however, attempted to make food for himself, and it was as he was lighting the fire that his father awoke. At first, William recoiled from Carlisle, flattening himself against the far wall, waiting to be bombarded with anything else his son could throw at him. But the rage that had so consumed Carlisle was gone, snuffed out by his ineffectual tantrum in the forest and the night of sleep.

When he realized he was safe, William approached his son. “I only wish to do what is best for thee,” he said quietly, and Carlisle whirled.

“What is best for me? What is best for me, Father, is to have the woman I love.” He snapped a few twigs they kept by the hearth and threw them in as kindling. They went up at once, causing the fire to blaze briefly. Like his temper, he thought. You could throw kindling or even oil onto it and it would flare, as it had the previous evening. But usually he was like the logs, burning steadily, glowing more intensely at times, but keeping the heat locked in deep.

“William—”

“Carlisle, Father. At least, if you plan to take away all that I care for, call me by my name.”

His father seemed to ignore this, moving across the room and leaning against the wall. “She and her superior were found guilty. Her superior admitted to training her.”

“She is innocent.”

“William—”

“She is innocent!” Unbelievably, his voice choked. He thought certainly he had cried himself dry the previous evening; whatever water was in his body was long since depleted. But no, here the tears were again, stinging at his eyes like some kind of menacing insect. He stood there a moment as the fire crackled to life behind him, clenching his fists.

“You have no evidence beyond the word of a woman you tortured,” he said. “You keep her awake all night, make it impossible for her to think, tell her you’ll send her to the gallows anyway, and then you assume what she tells you is the truth? What sense is there in that?”

It was hard to make out in the dim light, but Carlisle could’ve sworn he saw his father’s cheeks redden.

“The law, William.”

“To hell with the law!” He saw his father cringe. “Father, you are the law! What do you want of me? To run the church at Aldgate? To kill innocents as you do?”

By this time he was shrieking.

“Just tell me! Tell me what to do, and I will do it! Pardon her, and I will do what you want.”

An odd look had crossed William’s face then, as though he were considering. But then the stony expression returned.

“She has you bewitched, Son,” he said quietly, when he’d reached the other side of the room and clearly considered himself safe. “When we remove her; when we exorcise the Devil from your life, you will awaken to yourself and understand.”

A hot rage flushed through Carlisle’s entire body, seeming to start at his head and shoot straight through to the soles of his feet. For a moment he said nothing, only stood there, trembling.

“Just because you are incapable of love does not mean that I must be bewitched, Father,” he said at last.

Carlisle walked straight out the front door, slamming it behind him.

He hadn’t returned to the house since.

“He believes me spellbound,” he told his friend now, as the crowd of people surged down the street toward Tyburn. “He thinks that once she has been hanged, I will come back to myself, and follow the path I offered.” He laughed ruefully. “He of all people should understand that the things which drove me are all related to her. I have no reason to live once she is gone.”

For a moment Thomas said nothing.

“Carlisle,” his friend said finally, “think you not that this solution is a bit extreme?”

He blinked, then gestured toward the cart, which had now rattled its way to several hundred yards ahead of them.

“Were it Anne?”

Thomas did not answer. But after a moment, he replaced the hand on Carlisle’s shoulder.

“Come. Let us go there together.”

It took them another three-quarters hour to walk to Tyburn, and when they reached the place, it was already packed. Mother Proctor’s Pews were filled, and scores of people milled about. The usual entrepreneurs were here; boys selling meat pies, women selling crosses to ward off any demonic forces which might escape the wicked as they died.

And, of course, the pamphlets of last words.

Carlisle fished into his pocket and removed the handful of coins he had, and purchased a little pamphlet from the young boy selling them. They were fake, he believed, yet his curiosity had gotten the better of him. What would even a person who did not know the story, or knew it only as hearsay, think that Elizabeth might say in her final hours?

But when he flipped through the small pamphlet, he saw only her name, and her crime: witchcraft, treason against the sovereign.

He pressed his eyes closed and dropped the pamphlet into the dirt.

“Carlisle?”

Thomas’s voice again. He nudged his friend forward toward the javelin masters who kept the crowed of people who could not afford a seat in the gallery away.

“Get back, ye,” shouted the javelin master, as he shoved at them both.

“This is Reverend Cullen’s son,” Thomas shouted in answer, as he pointed to the dais on which sat the accusers and the judges. Carlisle could see his father there, sitting with his legs outstretched languidly before him, in his finest hose and shoes.

Sick.

The javelin master looked from Carlisle, in his torn and dirtied clothes, to the man sitting so near the gallows. His brow furrowed as he tried to figure out whether what Thomas said was indeed true.

But then William stood and beckoned.

The guard nodded, allowing Carlisle and Thomas to pass.

“I was not certain I would see thee, Child,” William said when Carlisle was a few feet from him.

“You think me a coward,” Carlisle shot back. “And I am not.” He spat for emphasis, only to find his spittle had turned pink from bleeding from his lip.

William gestured to the chair next to his own. “Come. We need to speak.”
Carlisle’s throat went dry. They needed to speak? Was it possible that his father had experienced a change of heart? The confessions still had not been taken.

The words barely squeaked: “Have you changed your mind?”

There was no answer. His father seemed to stare past him, to the approaching wagons, the javelin masters, the crowd.

Carlisle’s heart pounded.

“Will you pardon her?” he repeated.

“I care for you,” his father said quietly. “And I wish you to understand. If you are to take up doing God’s work, you must understand that at times, to do it breaks your own heart.”

He gestured to the chair next to him. “Sit with me.”

His father might as well have punched him in the chest. Carlisle’s breath came short, his eyes

As quickly as the hope came, it disappeared. Carlisle shook his head. “I will not be at your side, Father. I will be at the side of someone I love.”

A surging roar from the crowd announced the arrival of the wagons. Carlisle searched out the crowd for the one he needed, the one where the woman with the chestnut hair sat, looking every bit as regal as she always had. At once, he hopped from his father’s side, using his weight and height to press his way through the crowd toward the Tree.

“William!” his father’s voice called after him, but he did not turn.

One by one, the prisoners were helped down from the wagons and onto the short, horse-drawn cart which would serve as their foothold until the last minute. Ropes which had been wrapped around bodies were unfurled and thrown into the air like sinister snakes, uncoiling as they reached the hangman’s assistants who precariously rode the beams overhead. Several of the prisoners joked about their own fates, encouraging the spectators to wager on how long they would hang.

Sickening. Carlisle stepped away.

And then she was before him, as though he’d divined the spot to stand. Someone had brought her a beautiful dress to wear. Tendrils of her hair fell forward over her face, swaying in the light breeze.

She should have looked this beautiful on the day of our wedding, Carlisle thought.

“Elizabeth,” he called softly. “Elizabeth, I am here.”

And for the first time all morning she met his gaze.

He reached a hand up to her as the world became blurred by his tears. As it often did, again his height worked to his advantage, for he was able to reach her—not her whole hand, for it was bound to its mate, but at least her fingers.

As their skin made contact, her fingers closed around his.

That was all it took for the dam to break. He started to sob, his hand shaking so badly it was all he could do to keep it in Elizabeth’s. She stayed resolute, but even through his tears, he could see that she cried, also.

“I’m sorry,” he sobbed. “Elizabeth…”

Still, she said nothing. His arm began to ache, for even as tall as he was, the floor of the cart was at his shoulder and their tenuous handhold was awkward. But Carlisle held on.

He didn’t hear the other carts drawn up. Somewhere, an ordinary must have appeared, perhaps it was even his father, to take the death day confessions. The crowd must have roared. Boys must have hollered to sell meat pies and pamphlets. Men must have taken wagers.

But he didn’t see any of it. The only thing he saw was Elizabeth, her pale skin against his, her fingers interlaced with his own. The only thing he heard were the soft sighs of both their tears.

And when Thomas came, he didn’t hear his friend’s voice shushing him. He did not feel his friend’s arms grasping his shoulders and pulling him gently backwards.

All he felt was his hand slide from hers, her fingertips raking across his palm.

And then the words; her only words the whole day through. Carried over the roaring crowd; or perhaps it was that Carlisle’s ears could hear only those words.

“I love you.”

Thomas pulled him.

“I love you,” he called in answer. “I love you.”

Somewhere, a whip cracked against the flank of a horse. Somewhere, a cart creaked its way forward. Somewhere, slackened ropes went taut, men fell.

But where Carlisle stood there was silence. Where he stood, there was only the whisper of wind as it blew chestnut hair across a pale face. Where he stood, there were only three words still on both their lips. And only his outstretched, empty hand, reaching out and finding no hand in return.

Forward
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When I first envisioned Stregoni, even though the prologue was from William’s POV, I envisioned writing the entire book from Carlisle’s perspective. But as I truly turned the idea over in my head, I realized that it was important to see him through the eyes of the people around him; that to give him the proper foils in each of these time periods allows me to show him more fully.

William has always been tricky, however. For Carlisle learned to be a father somewhere, and it wasn’t merely by doing the exact opposite of what he saw growing up. Somewhere, someone did care about him, even if it was in the most twisted way possible.

Some folks have asked how close we are to the end, which is something I never feel bad about spoiling, because were this a real book, you would be able to tell how close you are. Chapter 22 is the seventh to last—there are two more chapters in each timeline, and then an epilogue (which, if you’ve read Ithaca is Gorges, may very well be a scene you recognize—just retold and enriched.)

Thank you for following the story this far, and I hope you enjoy its conclusion.

As always, many thanks to Openhome; the chapter, no matter how well executed in draft, always gets richer when I revise on her comments.

Paris, Kingdom of France
July 12, 1789

The streets of Paris were nothing like what Carlisle remembered. Paris, to him, was a serene city, its stately buildings and its cathedrals making the landscape purposeful. Saint-Sulpice, Notre Dame—he felt like a disobedient child, going into these houses of Catholic worship, but they made him entranced with the city.

And unlike Volterra, Paris had always felt like home. Perhaps it was the Seine, twisting through the city as a tamer, less foul-smelling version of the Thames. Perhaps it was the libraries; the way he could find peddlers selling books for him to read. He made camp outside the city and prowled it mostly by night; like the creature he wished not to be. Yet even in the dark, even without people, something about the city was invigorating and irresistible. The air itself thrummed with possibility.

Carlisle remembered Paris for its beauty.

But it was not beautiful today.

As he and Garrett picked their way through the crammed streets, Carlisle couldn’t help but to feel crushed and out of place. Even with his height, he could barely see; the streets were so filled with people in protest. Everywhere he looked it seemed his eyes landed on scores of red, blue, and white rosettes.

“Is it not exciting?” Garrett asked, a wide grin on his face as they pressed their way through the crowds, the bodies so close that Carlisle could nearly feel the hearts beating against his own skin.

“How is it that you manage?” Carlisle asked, his voice low enough that only another of his kind might hear it.

“Manage what?”

“With the humans so close.”

Garrett laughed, the broad, booming laughter that Carlisle was just barely becoming used to. They did not laugh often in Volterra, and certainly not as heartily.

“Distraction,” he answered. “The same mechanism you employ, if I am not entirely mistaken?”

It had been distraction, he supposed, especially at first. Though now…the idea of killing a human had grown so utterly repugnant that he could scarcely fathom ever having had the urge. But he had been older than Garrett when he first went so freely among humans, and that Garrett was as resolute to pass among them was surprising.

“Not to mention that this place is too exciting,” Garrett added. “Look about you, Englishman. Have you ever seen something so glorious?”

“‘Glorious’ is not quite the word I was thinking of,” he muttered in answer.

In the intervening days since he and Garrett had met, the King had ordered the French army into the grounds near Versailles and into the streets of Paris. They stood here, now, soldiers resolute with their bayonets; their firepower and weaponry far too near the people. The people, however, seemed not even to recognize the threat—they jeered and yelled and pressed in toward the castle and toward the prison at the city’s heart, swarming in the streets. People looted, and thieved and burned—the sun was blotted by at least as many fires as clouds.

It was madness. There was vibrancy, yes, and the city seemed to tremble with energy, but this was not the Paris Carlisle knew.

“Necker dismissed! The people call for the arms at the Bastille!” shouted a young boy off to their right. “Read the demands of the National Assembly! Read about the ways the Estates General has refused to serve the people of France! Brotherhood! Equality! Liberty!”

Carlisle stopped and fished in his purse for a coin, bringing a wide smile to the boy’s face as he gave Carlisle one of each of the pamphlets he sold. He skimmed these quickly as they continued through the crowed.

A demand for a constitution. A poor transcription of the Bill of Rights written by the National Assembly in Versailles, what, three days ago? The firing of the finance minister yesterday; the King’s restructuring of the finance ministry. A statement of intent for the people to take over the monarchy.

He was still reading, fascinated, when over his right shoulder, a window shattered, spraying Carlisle and Garrett both with shards of glass.

Carlisle whirled, at once finding the culprit, a young man with dark curls, who stood mere few feet behind them, poised with a second rock in hand in case the first did not make its target.

For a split second, the boy appeared shocked at having been seen.

At once he ran—but not away. He ran instead toward the destroyed window—a bakery, Carlisle realized after a moment, though it looked as though it were abandoned. Then the young man was clambering through the broken window, the broken glass tearing at his breeches and shirt.

“Run!” Carlisle yelled to Garrett, realizing at once what would happen. “I will find you.”

But it was too late. The glass ripped through the breeches and into the young man’s thigh. The cut was small, and it seemed that the thief had planned for this, because he barely winced with the pain, instead pressing his way further into the shop as though nothing had happened.

Carlisle acted instinctively. He turned just in time to block his friend as Garrett lunged. Grabbing Garrett by the shoulders, Carlisle pulled him to the stone street, and the two of them rolled over each other, growling and snarling like a pair of wolves. They crashed into the wall of the building across the street, causing several stones to dislodge. Yet Carlisle managed the pin, immobilizing his friend as he snapped ineffectively.

“Run,” Carlisle repeated in English. “Distraction, Garrett. Run from here.”

Because there would be no mercy for them were they exposed. For all Carlisle knew, Aro’s guard were already following them; if Garrett attacked this boy in broad daylight, perhaps one of their kind would leap out of the shadows and tear off his head…

But the other man still lunged helplessly toward the boy. Carlisle shook him. At last, their eyes met.

“Run, Friend,” Carlisle ordered. “You must.”

Garrett blinked, but then nodded, and Carlisle eased on his friend’s shoulders ever so minutely, until he could feel movement. Garrett was ready to spring—but this time, away from the bakery.

He released, and Garrett flew down the street, away from the throngs of people and the bleeding boy.

It had been what, perhaps a second? Two? Carlisle turned back to the bakery.

The thief had actually stopped. Pausing halfway through the shattered shop window, he gaped with wide, terrified eyes at where the two vampires had been.

“You must go,” Carlisle managed to scream. He repeated himself at once, just in case in his panic he had accidentally yelled in English. “Don’t steal the bread.”

The boy stared. He gazed longingly into the bakery, with its loaves set out on shelves.

“My family—” he murmured. “The bread. My younger sisters—”

Carlisle looked around anxiously. They seemed to be alone, but if Garrett hadn’t fully fled the scene…it could be disastrous for them all.

“It is not worth your life!”

Strangely, the boy seemed to understand. He nodded, his dark hair shaking up and down. He climbed out of the shop window, shrugged his satchel over his shoulder, and took off running down the narrow street toward the crowd. A moment later he had disappeared, his body obscured by shouting men.

It took Carlisle the better part of a half-hour to comb the streets for Garrett’s scent. He’d run several different directions, as though he’d doubled back and changed his mind multiple times. He at last found the other in at the mouth of an alley, near enough to the main crowds and yet effectively hidden in the shadows of twilight.

Garrett had recovered himself, and was dusting debris from the street from his own breeches. He glared at Carlisle, but if anything, the expression was also one of relief.

“I could not let you hunt him out here,” Carlisle offered. “We would be exposed.”

“You could not let me hunt him, simply put.” Garrett grimaced, looking askance at the street. His eyes darted from the darkness of the alley back out into the crowd, searching.

“I doubt we will be suspected,” Carlisle answered his unasked question. “It would be difficult to believe that your back nearly took down a wall.”

For a long moment, Garrett was silent.

“How is it that you are able to resist,” he muttered at last. “Fresh, Carlisle. He tore his own skin breaking that glass. And yet you calmly advise him to leave as though you are the town magistrate.”

Carlisle shrugged. How were people growing so desperate, he wondered. Word had spread even as far south as Volterra of the piteous state of the French people. But for them to reach a state where a shop would be looted in broad daylight—he shook his head in dismay.

Was it simply the people rejecting the rule of law, as they rejected their nobility? Or was it that in the face of others doing the same, even good, reasonable people saw no cause to continue being guided by their own understanding of right and wrong?

Garrett stood examining him.

“You astound me, English,” he said and gestured to the street. “Come. Let us walk.”

Leaving the alley behind them, the two friends made their way deeper into the city, delving further and further into chaos.

Men stood on makeshift barricades, aimed at stopping the King’s army from advancing on the people. In homes, curtains were drawn and candles extinguished as the Parisians blocked their city and its crime from their view. He and Garrett walked up one street, dark between the crowded houses and the overcast day.

“He was young,” Carlisle muttered.

“Who?”

“The boy. The bread thief.”

Garrett stopped walking. “And this bothers you?”

Of course it did, Carlisle thought. He remembered also the young boy peddling pamphlets. Was the money needed for food? Would he go home for a supper prepared by his mother, or was he one of Paris’s orphans, out in these unforgiving streets?

They passed three uniformed soldiers, their bayonets glistening even in the overcast day. The men regarded Garrett and Carlisle with a wary indifference.

The soldiers were everywhere. But Paris’s children were starving.

“They’re not prepared,” Carlisle muttered. “Garrett, if the army turns on them, they won’t live.”

His friend shook his head and pointed. Carlisle hadn’t noticed where they walked, he’d been content simply to walk with his friend and talk. They had made their way to the very center of Paris, and ahead of them loomed a huge structure, all stone, its thick walls appearing every bit impenetrable.

“That,” he said, gesturing grandly, “is why the people will win. And why I brought you to the midst of things.”

To the midst of things? “I beg your pardon?”

It was the prison, which Carlisle had seen on many of his previous visits to the city. Eight towers and thick walls, a short drawbridge leading to the shops and neighborhood nearby. Here everything was thicker-the crowd crushing in on all sides, the extent of the looting, the smoke.

“The Bastille?”

Garrett nodded, his eyes wide with a crazed excitement.

“We’re going to seize it.”

~||x||~

Volterra

The study seemed almost small with all three brothers inside it. The heels of Caius’s shoes clacked against the stone floor as he paced, echoing off the walls and making Aro feel hemmed in.

“We should clear his chambers,” Caius snarled. “At a minimum, Aro, if you are not willing to destroy him, then throw him out.”

Throw him out. That could be done easily enough. All they needed to do was to station the guard in such a way that the Englishman would encounter them on his way home. They would tell him he was unwelcome, divert his path from Volterra as though he were any other of their kind.

Aro leaned back in his chair, running a hand across the large book on his desk.

“But you would prefer I destroy him,” he said.

Caius snorted. “I think he is of no use to you, Brother, except perhaps as an oddity. But you can’t keep around every bauble which catches your eye. He shows himself to be unwilling to obey you, and unwilling to fully join our ranks. He cannot be trusted not to turn. It is best that he remain far from here.”

Instead of answering Caius, Aro turned to the book. The tome was large, and, in the Englishman’s absence, had slowly become covered in dust. Aro knocked this off with one hand as he opened it.

Aro’s study was situated off the library, where it could share resources freely and easily with the books the brothers had amassed over the centuries. The book he read now had come to them from the Orient; it exhibited the exquisite pictograms which had at first seemed so puzzling but which over time had revealed themselves to be a language, just like any of the others he spoke.

He’d begun to peruse it because it was drenched in Carlisle’s scent. Reading this had been one of the Englishman’s final pursuits before this odd outburst that had sent him into flight. Now that he thought on it, Aro recalled that he had even heard the other vampire talk about it; learning the language of the Orient and traveling there, walking around the great Mediterranean Sea and through the Ottoman Empire. The idea had been welcome at the time; to be rid of Carlisle for another short stretch of years would probably be good for them all. It would remind the young one that above all else, he prized companionship.

It would keep him bonded here.

But that hadn’t happened, and instead, the Englishman was gone.

Aro aimlessly turned several pages before addressing Marcus. “And you, Brother? You are the one who has schooled him.”

Marcus let out a long sigh. But instead of making a statement aloud, he stood from his chair and walked over to Aro, placing his hand against the other’s palm. His thoughts and memories flickered across Aro’s consciousness like tiny flames, bursting into fire in some places, fizzling to nothing in others. But among them, Aro found what he sought—Marcus’s peculiar gift. The pull between two individuals, as though there were some physical tie keeping them from going too far. His with Sulpicia, as strong as ever, neither able to pull away from the other for too long. His Brothers, less so than his mate, but still firm. Caius to Athenadora, Charmion to the brothers, Alrigo, Rafael, Renata, his servant—he flicked through them quickly, seeking the ones about which he was concerned.

The Englishman. There. First to Marcus, a strong, fraternal attraction. Memories of laughter and the rapid-fire Greek lessons, the unfolding of the Brothers’ personal history intermingled with a deepening of Carlisle’s understanding of the formation of the whole Western world.

Next, Caius. The faintest of connections, which was no surprise. The enmity there was palatable; if anything connected the two men, it was the intensity of their mutual dislike.

And then to Aro. Even more confusing. At times, Marcus’s thoughts revealed the strongest of attractions on the Englishman’s behalf. Admiration, even adoration.

And then, at times, sheer disgust.

When Aro nodded, Marcus sat back down. There was an awkward silence.

“Will you destroy him, when he’s found?”

“Did I not just repeat this to Caius? Carlisle has broken no laws. For me to destroy him would be to admit that our enforcement of our laws is not what it seems.”

“And if you destroy him, you’ll have to admit the offer he turned down,” Caius muttered.

Aro growled.

“It’s true, Brother,” Caius answered, turning toward the desk. The clicking stopped at once. “That’s the true problem here. Had you not asked him to join us…” His lip curled. “And now you have no reason to destroy him because he has not broken our laws.”

“Caius—” Aro said sharply, but Caius made his way swiftly toward the door.

“You and Marcus created this problem,” he snapped. “And if you won’t take my advice to simply dispose of him, then it can be the two of you who find a solution.”

The door to the study slammed behind him with such force it caused Aro’s desk to rattle. For a long moment, neither he nor Marcus said anything.

“And if he did break our laws?” Marcus offered at last.

Aro hesitated. The idea was completely foreign.

“He will not break our laws,” he answered, which was true. “And while he abides by them, I wish to be fair.”

Marcus laughed. “Aro, you have done plenty of things which are not fair. Keeping Carlisle here, when he refuses to join the guard—that is not fair.”

Aro frowned. “I was under the impression that you liked Carlisle.”

“I do! I am not advocating that you destroy him, Brother. As you say, he has broken no law. And would that all of our kind were as inquisitive as he. Perhaps then we would achieve the superiority which you so long for.” He stood, walking toward the window. It was another sunny day, and scores of humans milled in the piazza below. Marcus watched them a long time.

“He may be of use,” he muttered finally.

Aro sat up straighter. “Of use?”

Marcus nodded. “His ability to slide among the humans. The only other of us who does that so easily is Heidi.”

“You’re not suggesting he hunt for us.”

Marcus laughed. “Of course not. He would never do that. And Brother, I believe it is his desire to leave. Our banishment of him will be meaningless. He arrived nearly forty years ago, and I don’t believe he intends to stay.”

The other had a point. But instead of replying, Aro paged absently through the book before him. He wondered what it was that the younger vampire saw in these pages of ancient poetry? Carlisle’s thirst for knowledge was utterly insatiable; he, Aro knew, would be one of the rare beings of their kind for whom eternity would present endless challenge and discovery instead of unending drudgery.

A hand stopped Aro’s page turns, leaving the book open to a page on which the other’s scent was strongest. Marcus’s eyes wandered over it, reading the text again.

“Allow him to go,” Marcus said, after he’d read the verse a few times. “Caius is right; I believe at this point, he must. You, for all the right reasons, try to hold him back, but he won’t be held. He is not meant to be one of us. We could contain him only for a short period, and that period has come to an end. Yet, Aro, I believe there is much to be learned from him. He will mingle with humans for the rest of time, in a way that no others of our kind have ever managed. Because he refuses to hunt them, his purity will guide him to know humans in a way we cannot. He will prove an asset to us, I am convinced of this.”

“And if he does not?”

Marcus moved closer, a thin smile on his lips, but again it was a long moment before he spoke. He re-read the verse again.

“You know, Brother,” he said thoughtfully, “I believe the problem with Carlisle is not that he threatens to expose our kind to the humanity around us.” He tapped the page. “The thing which so unsettles you is that he tends to expose our kind to the humanity within us.”

Aro said nothing. Marcus only grinned.

“Let him go, Brother. It is right. ”

And then the door opened and Marcus was gone, leaving Aro alone to stare at the page to which his brother-in-law had turned. He re-read its contents carefully, considering the implications that this was the page, it seemed, that the young vampire had read most.

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing thyself is true wisdom.

Mastering others is strength; mastering thyself is true power.

If thou realizes thou hast enough, thou art truly rich.

If thou stayest in the center, and embrace death with thine whole heart, thou will endure forever.

He stared.

No one else would be like this one. Somewhere, Aro had always known this, from the moment Carlisle had wandered into a city which reeked of others of his kind and presumed that they desired his company rather than his destruction. Others came near Volterra and ran; he walked to its center and demanded change.

Marcus was right. They couldn’t contain him. And Aro wasn’t sure he even wanted to. To hold Carlisle was to stifle him, and they’d done enough of that. But then-there was the pull that Marcus saw, the connection even Aro’s mate felt.

Things which were fascinating were things Aro had always been loathe to let go.

Allow Carlisle simply to vanish.

Was such a thing even possible?

Aro closed the book, pulling it into his lap as he thought.

A bit of a personal story interlude:

When my father turned 40 (I was 2, he’s now 68), his sister bought him a copy of the Tao Te Ching, He read it every morning for 20 years, so basically the entire time I was growing up. So it was always something I knew of, and something he quoted frequently, both in public and in private.

Not too long ago, I was complaining about something, and he told me that according to the Tao, I was a perfect daughter. I stammered a bit, and then he said, “In the Tao, to be is to be perfect. You are perfect because you are.”

One of the things that fascinates me about Carlisle, and one thing that continues to draw me to him (and where I felt SM gave him particularly short shrift), is this idea of his feeling of utter inadequacy as a result of his Puritan theological upbringing. Puritanism is a belief system of constantly falling short, of being born into a nearly irreparable state of original sin, of constantly needing to work to better oneself and to prove that one is worthy of God. I see this in Carlisle’s profession and his attitude toward it: in a way, vampirism becomes a new kind of original sin for him, a state of disgrace which he finds himself constantly working to be better than.

So as I thought about how Carlisle would react to a piece of philosophy/theology (I’m never quite sure where to put the TTC on that continuum, if indeed there even is one) like the Tao, I realized that it must shake him to the core—and for that reason, speak to him rather sharply. It’s a different forgiveness than the forgiveness he was taught. A forgiveness that rather than “Work hard, pray hard, and hope it’s good enough,” says instead, “Allow yourself to be. Be in harmony. And this is perfection.”

One of the beauties of Volterra is that it is this place where Carlisle does a ton of growing and learning and changing. For this reason, it is a place with which he is reluctant to sever ties. He associates it with a bit of his own personal renaissance as a vampire. Yet the very nature of such growth is that it tends to take you away from the place where you experienced it, as you desire to stretch yourself beyond the boundaries you now know are able to be broken through.

Growing pains, I suppose you could call them, though I’m sure Aro would have a more insidious interpretation….

As always, I owe great thanks to my beta, Openhome, who always helps guide these chapters until they are pinpoint precise on what I wanted them to be.

Happy Reading.

October 18, 1918
Chicago, Illinois

Carlisle was hiding.

Oh, he could justify it, if he had to. He’d promised numbers to his supervisor, a full write-up of the results of his little experiment in keeping the Masen boy with his mother in the second-floor quarantine room. And they were as ill as any other influenza patients in the hospital, the terrifying purple-blue of cyanosis seeping into their skin as though someone were pouring ink into their hearts.

He could come up with all sorts of reasons to be here. These two needed him. He needed data. They were a good experiment.

But the truth was, he was hiding.

It was an overcast day, but as Carlisle sat between the beds, a single ray of sunlight hit the glass of water on the bed stand, at once shattering into a rainbow which flickered over the boy’s face.

Edward grunted in his sleep and haphazardly batted at his own eyes before rolling over and tangling himself in the bed sheet.

Were it not for the severity of the situation, Carlisle might have laughed.

He took Edward’s arm and lifted it, gently rolling him to his side and tucking his hands under his chin. Then he rearranged the blanket over the slim body, lifting it to the boy’s chest so that it better covered him. Instinctively, he laid a hand on the forehead, feeling for the temperature. Searing hot, as he expected; a completely unnatural state for the human body to reach. A hundred and four degrees, perhaps? That seemed about right.

His hand continued its way from the forehead back through the coppery hair. The pads of his fingers stroked his young patient’s scalp.

The boy sighed.

“I’m sorry, Edward,” Carlisle said quietly, perching himself on the edge of the bed. But who was he sorriest for, he thought at once. Edward? Edward’s mother?

Himself?

Carlisle stared into the shaded room. Across, in the other bed, Elizabeth slept soundly, a look of utter peace on her face. He wondered what that was. Was it because she knew she was safe? Because she knew there was no other option for her except to succumb to the illness?

The mother was even further gone. The last time she’d been awake in Carlisle’s presence, she’d stared blankly at him and demanded loudly to see her husband. She insisted that her son would still go to the Institute for Musical Art, and then on to law school. He would make his father proud, she insisted, and wouldn’t the doctor be so kind as to bring his father in?

Carlisle had only nodded, his voice becoming choked as he said, yes, he would retrieve the boy’s father, if only she would sleep.

She’d closed her eyes and complied. When she was asleep, Carlisle snuck out of the room.

People were dying everywhere he looked. He would be with a patient and take their pulse, note that their fever had increased a degree, maybe two, jot the locations of the cyanosis, and move on. By the time he reached the end of the ward and started back, a patient or two from the beginning of his round had already expired.

It was useless.

He was helpless.

Sometimes, if he allowed himself the luxury of wallowing in his own fear, he would sit in his office and think that perhaps this was the end. That this would be the final scourge that would result in humans being permanently wiped from the earth. Blood, boils, locusts, flies—he would trade for those things, he thought. At least, even with the death of the firstborn, the Israelites could paint their doorposts, and be passed over.

There would be no passing over here.

And so he spent his time hiding here, in the dark room with the boy and his mother, doing everything he could, but counting the hours until the moment in which he would lose his ability to help them, too.

He dropped onto the stool between the two beds, putting his head into his hands, and was sufficiently lost in his own thoughts that he was startled a few minutes later.

“Now Doctor, what has you hiding in here?”

Even if he hadn’t recognized her scent, Carlisle would’ve known the tone of voice at once. There was only one person in the hospital who dared approach him with such an opening; scolding him as though her were a slightly misbehaving child.

Oddly, he found it welcome.

“I’m not hiding,” he answered at once, and smiled as he realized he’d fallen straight into the role. Caught with his hand in the cookie jar, he denied what he was doing, just like any child before his disapproving parent.

Dorothy chuckled. “Sure you aren’t. Lucille says she saw you duck in here, right as you came in the door, and then she didn’t see you again.” She gazed over the two beds, taking in the Masen woman and her son, how peacefully they lay—well, peacefully now that Edward had settled into a deeper sleep.

“Makes you think, doesn’t it?” she whispered. “How a mama and her boy could both get struck down by this infernal disease.”

“And his father,” Carlisle mumbled.

“I’m sorry?”

He spoke louder. “I treated his father first. Delirious on admission. I don’t believe the son ever got to say goodbye.”

Dorothy shook her head. She moved over to the boy’s bed, laying a hand on his forehead as though to check his temperature, but Carlisle wondered if it wasn’t simply more to make contact with him. Surely, Edward reminded Dorothy of her own sons. Like any boy whose body was trying desperately to turn him into a man, Edward’s limbs seemed to outstrip the rest of him, giving him a gangly appearance that was only exaggerated by the weight he’d lost in the hospital. As Edward had been bedridden for a week, a stubbled beard had begun to grow in, but in patches—the sideburns first, the chin, a decent amount on the upper lip, but only a tiny bit on the cheeks.

He looked so young.

The bed creaked as Edward rolled over in his sleep, muttering.

“And you treated his father,” Dorothy answered quietly after a moment.

Carlisle nodded. “I—” he gulped. Made a mistake was the correct way to finish that sentence. He made a promise he’d known the moment he made it he would never be able to keep. And yet he made it anyway, and felt it still bound him.

“I promised him I would help his father,” he muttered, looking over at the boy. “I promised him I would save him.”

Dorothy made a tsk-tsk sound at him. “Now, you know you can’t keep a promise like that, Doctor.”

“Of course I do.”

“But you up and did it anyway.” She frowned. “And now that silly promise is what’s got you stuck in here, trying to cheat Death as though he plays his cards fair.”

Trying to cheat Death. The words caught him. Because hadn’t that been the way he thought of it himself?

His head dropped again into his hands. It was a good two minutes before he felt a firm hand on his shoulder, a thumb stroking up and down the side of his neck. By instinct, he flinched away, but the grip on his shoulder only strengthened.

So he went still.

“What’s done is done, Doctor,” Dorothy’s voice said quietly, as he continued not to look at her. “There’s nothing you can change here. You can’t turn back the clock, and you can’t make this be something other than what it is. You’ve done your level best here, and that’s all the world asks of you.”

All the world asked of him? He laughed darkly.

“For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required,” he answered.

“Yes, but it’s the world going to do the requiring, Doctor. Not you.” She rubbed his shoulder again. “And the world asked you about these two. It asked you to do exactly this. And you’ve done everything you could.”

Everything he could? Was that even possible? Everything he could would’ve included researching instead of treating; perhaps if, instead of working at the armory, he had instead figured out the disease, he could have cured it instead of sitting here, helpless.

That would be “everything he could do.”

And there were other things he could do also…

He shut this train of thought down at once. He would heal these humans as their human doctor. To do anything otherwise was beastly.

The hand on his shoulder squeezed.

“Come on, Doctor. There are others here who need you, too. Save them, and let their lives stand for these two.” She nudged him gently to his feet, shoving a clipboard into his hands.

He glanced at it. A young lady, a year older than Edward Masen, spiked fever and cyanosis already set in.

He raised his eyebrows. This woman was no better off; if anything, she was maybe even closer to death.

“I believe you can do something, Doctor,” Dorothy said. “Let us go help her.”

Carlisle expected her to go ahead of him, but instead she hung behind. When he caught her eye, she cocked her head in the direction of the door as though to remind him where the exit was.

He nodded, moved, and Dorothy carefully herded him out the door.

~||x||~

Edward was gone. His solid body wasn’t there, the skin always too warm, the blankets always kicked around his knees even if it left Elizabeth freezing. His arm always over her chest, warming her.

It wasn’t like her husband to leave in the night.

Elizabeth’s heart pounded as she groped for the other side of the bed, her hand looking for the cool sheets her husband had vacated, whenever he’d left them. The cry was already rising in her throat.

She couldn’t cry out. She’d wake Teddy, and he was so hard to get to sleep. She would swaddle him, and feed him, and rock him, and sing to him, and if she was lucky, he’d stay asleep for three hours.

Waking the baby wasn’t worth it. Edward likely hadn’t gone very far.

And besides, her hand didn’t meet bedclothes, only air.

The room swam when Elizabeth opened her eyes. She was in a single bed—that was why the air—white ceiling beams.

A grown man lay in the other bed.

Her heart leapt to her throat.

“Edward?” she called feebly, but there was no answer.

Where was her husband?

Her baby?

Against her better judgment, she rolled over far enough to see who was in the other bed. Whoever he was, he seemed to be asleep, with one arm flung over his head and the blankets tangled around his thighs.

The way her husband liked to sleep.

But he was too young, and his hair was the wrong color…

“Teddy,” she whispered.

The man grunted.

The truth crashed down at once. She didn’t have a baby any longer. Seventeen, old enough to be mistaken for a man. She was alone in the bed, not lying with Senior, but in the Cook County Hospital, lying in a room that the yellow-eyed doctor had procured. Both riddled with the influenza; both, to hear the doctors say it, on the verge of death.

And her husband was gone.

But as she rolled over, she could see that her son had kicked off all his blankets, and lay shivering in his thin nightshirt, curled on his side.

She swung her own legs out of bed, causing the room to wobble again. But it lasted only for a moment, and then her balance returned, and she found herself able to lean forward to her child’s bed.

Her son lay shivering; the posts of his bed clattered against the floor. Carefully she leaned over him, pulling the blankets back up over his shoulders and tucking them in under his chin.

He grunted, but stopped shivering. But within a few minutes, the chills came back in full force, his body shaking so violently he began to retch. So she slid into bed behind him, pressing her chest to his back and wrapping her arms around him. She kissed the back of his ear; it was as hot as the rest of his skin as he lay burning with fever. His torso beneath her arms felt fragile and thin.

He was losing weight fast, now, she realized. Quite literally being destroyed from the inside out.

The influenza meant he had difficulty eating; Elizabeth found herself constantly cleaning spit up and vomit as she had done when Edward had been a child. The illness showed on his face; his high cheekbones seemed pronounced; his eyes appeared sunken with dark circles beneath them.

A glass of water sat on the nightstand between them; it appeared freshly filled. This meant, of course, that the nurse or the doctor had been here. The doctor, she realized at once, as she thought her way through her memory. She’d heard his voice, speaking to another.

Something about a promise. He had sounded guilty. Sad. Though of course, that was if he’d been here at all.

Perhaps the doctor wasn’t even real.

She hugged her baby to her chest, and briefly worried she’d crush him, even as her arms told her that she was holding an adult and not an infant.

But she had to keep him from falling out of bed, or he’d die…

The room swam again. The doctor’s voice floated in her ears.

“Of him shall be much required…”

“I require you to save my baby,” Elizabeth said aloud.

But there was no answer.

And Junior wasn’t her baby any more, she reminded herself.

Her son convulsed suddenly, his bed jerking so that the glass on the nightstand fell and shattered on the floor. The door crashed open and the doctor came flying into the room, his coat sailing behind him like a driver’s scarf.

But then he stood there and did nothing.

She blinked.

The doctor disappeared.

Edward groaned.

Rolling away from her child, she could see the glass was whole, the water within it completely still. And Edward lay still, too.

The doctor hadn’t stood there. He’d helped Edward, and Elizabeth had been in the other bed…had this been last night? The night before?

Years ago?

Whenever it was, his purpose had been sure. He seemed to understand things by intuition alone; he walked into the room and his expression would change before he even lifted the stethoscope from his neck.

The yellow-eyed doctor knew things.

That much she could see.

She kissed the back of Edward’s neck. It was searing hot.

“Doctor,” she called, but all that came out was a whimper.

She strained to look near the foot of her bed, and was surprised to see her mother sitting there.

“The doctor isn’t coming, Libby,” her mother said quietly, patting her feet. “He’s not magic, you know. There’s no such thing.”

She blinked.

Her mother smiled, her red hair cascading over her shoulder and shimmering in the waning daylight. The red hair she’d inherited. The color she’d passed on to her child.

“Good Catholics don’t believe in magic, Libby,” her mother went on. “God’s will is fate. You pray to God, and God will change your fate, if He sees fit to do it. But the doctor isn’t God.”

“He could be,” she croaked, but by the time the words got out of her mouth, her mother had faded away.

With a trembling hand, she stroked her son’s face.

“I’m so sorry, Edward,” she whispered. “Mama is so sorry.”

A deep voice in the hall caused her thoughts to shift once again.

The doctor?

The doctor isn’t God.

Elizabeth took to staring at the ceiling again. The brown water stains were still there, but now they seemed to swirl a bit.

At once, the nurse was there again. The hefty one, with the gentle smile; the one who seemed to like the doctor.

He’s not careful with you…he’s wise…he knows too much .

New words? Or old? Elizabeth wasn’t sure.

And just as soon as the nurse appeared, she was gone.

Nurse Dorothy was right. The doctor was different. It was, perhaps, why Elizabeth had felt drawn to ask him twice to save her men, first in the grungy intake room in this very hospital, and then again at the armory only a short time ago. He knew something.

She stroked Edward’s hair, and he moaned, his eyes opening just so slightly. Just enough that she could see his eyes in the twilight.

But the brilliant green was cloudy; the pupils wandered lazily, and before long, his eyes closed once again.

Dead.

She screamed. Her heart pounding, at once she shook him so hard that his head bounced against the pillow, his hair flopping in front of his face. Briefly the eyes fluttered open again, and then closed.

Elizabeth loosened her grip. Instead she laid her head on her son’s shoulder, letting the tears that had already overtaken her in her panic drip down into his collarbone.

Not dead. Alive.

But would she ever look into those eyes again?

Her mother had always said the sea-glass eyes made Elizabeth look bewitched, otherworldly, as though she weren’t human. They had the opposite effect in her son; the green gave him depth and humanity in what otherwise would be the face of an unfeeling, stubborn man. The doctor’s eyes were like that, she thought. That odd yellow, like a cat’s—it made him look alternately soft and hard, at one moment the most humane of humans, at another, like a man possessed.

He knows too much.

Was it possible that he knew something that he didn’t let on?

She had asked the doctor for a miracle. Each time she’d asked him for a miracle, and he’d agreed. He hadn’t been able to deliver for Senior, and she remembered his face—as crushed as hers, if she had to recall it. He’d failed her, and he’d known it. And when she’d asked for one again, he hadn’t wanted to promise. She remembered the startled expression, the way he told her he couldn’t, the way he tried to wave them off. But then she remembered the soft look in those yellow eyes, the gentle way his arms had cradled her child as he carried Edward off to a bed.

Growing up, she had always loved fairy tales, and of course, she’d shared them with Edward . In fairy tales, it was always three…three houses, three huffs, three sisters to try on the glass slipper.

Always in threes. There was magic in three.

And if anyone needed magic, she did, now.

She ran her hand through Edward’s hair and he grunted; he was still here. For now.

“There could be such a thing as magic, Edward,” she whispered.

She’d asked doctor Cullen for a miracle…but only twice.

So tonight, she would ask him one more time.

Chapter Notes

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