ELOISE: a Shadow of Death

The Year of Our Lord Thirteen Hundred and Forty Eight

It is a strange feeling, cradling a mortal in your arms are they lie dying. You try and comfort them through the last minutes or hours, whispering of the life beyond, and of heaven and of peace with God, but your words sound hollow, convinced, as you are, in the true and certain knowledge that life, for them, is not everlasting, that all they are, all they saw, all they experienced, their petty brutalies and small kindnesses, are lost forever to eternity, and within a generation or so they too will be forgotten except for a name on a tomb or gravestone.

Some are not even so lucky.

As I sit cradling the child, she is calling out for her mama, but her mama is already dead more than a day and only Malik and a few of the villagers are left. The stench in the hall of the manor is terrible: dirtied straw covering the floor, the dead having voided themselves, and little Emilie having vomited a dark, foul-smelling bloody mess onto the front of my kirtle. But I cannot move, nor can I leave Emilie, for someone has to nurse her through to death - for I do not now believe that anyone will escape - and someone has to remember.

And as I sit here, I remember Peter, and how I had cradled him as he lay dying, calling out for his papa, in the dark hold of that ship so many years ago. His papa, his brothers and sisters, their children and their children's children, and generations beyond would be dead, unremembered. And no stone or even humble wooden cross marks a grave for Peter, consigned as he was to the deep, and so I am his tomb, his marker, the living remembrance of him, and his bravery and humour, who he was; as I am to many of those I have seen die in the last thirteen decades. But now, here, I am full up, I cannot take any more, and I feel numbed to everything.

Malik had wanted to go North or East. He had heard that there were lands of great wealth, learning and opportunity to the east and tried to persuade me of the sense of it. But I was certain where I wished to go, and when. All that had known me when I was young would be dead, and I longed to see once more the place of my birth, in the early summertime as I still remembered it. I believed that only then could I truly let go of my past and accept who I was.

I had just taken my third head. He was a Russian steppesman and warrior, fierce and hotheaded, who, in haze of alcohol and lust had decided to have me, and when I resisted we ended up facing off from each other. Malik watched from the side, anxiety on his face, but unwilling to do anything. The Russian was large and strong and had lived far longer than I, but what I lacked in strength and age, I made up for in speed and skill: he lumbered like a bear and his rage made him lash out with ridiculous sweeping sword-swings I was easily able to dodge. I felt calm. It was all over too soon, and as his sword then his head fell to the floor, the Quickening hit me and ripped through me: at first I felt the Russian's fury within the Quickening, and then the traces of those whose heads he had already taken. And then nothing, the peace after the storm.

My first two heads had been, if anything, easier. Both were young men, barely past their first death, looking for easy kills. I, a young women, must have seemed a fair target. And yet, Malik had taught me well. After that first morning, after my first death, Malik had waited until the evening, and then, as the air cooled, we set off across the desert, our transport: a horse stolen from my master's stables; our supplies taken from the kitchens; new clothes taken from the guards quarters to both hide my fair skin from the sun, and disguise my gender.

The journey was but two days and, finally - the wind whipping my hair and a good meal inside my stomach - I began to realise the enormity of what had happened to me, and to ponder my future, but I could not then see enough to realise the two edged sword my new life would be: it was enough then that a little hope had come into my life and I no longer ached for death.

We arrived in a little walled town, still in the desert, heralded by the call to prayer echoing out over the bleak sands. A small river ran through the town, and along it there was a road, so the town was bustling with life and traders. It was all rather overwhelming: the sounds and smells of the place were so strange after the monotony of the past five years, even remembering the quite different bustle of Marseilles, and I clung to Malik as he rode slowly through the melee.

The place we entered was on the edge of the town, away from the crowds: it was larger than I had expected, though not as large as my master's house, a courtyard surrounded by buildings and colonnades. As we rode in through the large wooden gates, a figure rose from the twilit shadows of the colonnade and first peered at us, and then cried out a greeting to Malik. Though I couldn't see his face, his voice was cracked and old and as he moved forward I could see his face, brown and wrinked like a nut, and his shining bright eyes.

His name was Mehmet Abdu Alayash and he was to become my friend.

Emilie de Gavillac, youngest daughter of the last Lord de Gavrillac, died this morning in my arms. She was raving at the end, senseless and feverish. Then she became quiet, and all life was extinguished. She was eight years old.

Abdu, dear Abdu, ran a religious school for young muslim men, and Malik and I stayed there for some eight years, developing a tiring, though pleasant ritual to life. We would rise at dawn for prayers - though I did not believe, Malik insisted on my keeping up the pretence - then he and I, often along with the other students, would practice our swordplay in the morning sun. In the afternoons it was far to hot for such exertion and, though I did not have to, I would sit in the shade of the colonnades with the other students listening to Abdu, teaching them about the Qu'ran, and Allah and peace and love. The message was a seductive one, but I knew better.

Abdu treated Malik like a son, and me like a beloved grandson, and in the evenings, after some more sword play, we would sit and dine together and Abdu and Malik would swap tales and talk of the day that had gone, and the day that was to become, as the twilight lengthened and the lamps were lit. I would sit listening sporadically, often just appreciating the freedom to just sit with a full belly listening to the sounds of the night.

Twilight falls over the village of Gavrillac, and poor Malik is near finished. He is digging another grave. The whole of the village green in covered in graves, unmarked, but at least separate. As he digs up the last bit of earth, I move to help him with the body: the eldest son of the village reeve, whom we had hoped would survive - his fever had broken - but he had simply gone into an exhausted sleep and then not woken up. The body was painfully light.

As Malik fills in the grave, I say a few words, meaningless though they feel, and then walk across to the church. Inside, it is dark and cool, and as I close my eyes I can, for a brief moment, cast aside all those years, and this last week, and I am a little girl again, coming into this same church, hand in hand with Jean. But as I reach out my hand, I can feel the cold stone of a tomb, and as I open my eyes, I see Jean: not as a young boy, golden hair and blue smiling eyes; nor even Jean as I saw him last, growing into a young man, but not ashamed to cry when his sister left; but Jean, a mature man, grey and stone, his blank eyes staring to infinity.

I cannot stop, though, for if I stopped I do not know if anything could rouse me again, so I move through the church to the belltower. The ropes are frayed, and hurt my hands when I first used them, but in the last few days I have grown used to it, and as the single ring echoes out over the village, I can at last know that there will be no more. No more dead to ring to heaven.

Mehmet Abdu Alayash died peacefully eight summers after we first arrived there. Malik and I were intending to go anyway, for our agelessness was bound to cause comments sooner rather than later. I never knew whether Abdu ever knew what we were, nor whether he would mind, but his care, and his and Malik's love helped me to learn to live at little. A smile came easier to my lips, even sometimes laughter, and the hollow core of me was filled a little by cherished memories.

We buried Abdu beneath the shade of a yew tree, and left the following morning, the sadness in our hearts lifted a little by the joy of being on the road again, unhunted and free. We travelled north and a little east, until one morning, a little after dawn, we rode over the top of a hill and down below us was the sea: blue and glorious in the morning glow. We never looked back.

I leave the church and Malik is standing in the shadows, looking downwards at a grave: Emilie's. He lifts his head and moves to me, and silently, we embrace.

Roleplaying | Return to Main | Email