Remembered

by Caroline Hanson

  “She’s a fast healer, that one,” Hetty said, in her wavering voice.

  “Good. She’ll need that.”

  “With all due respect, my Lord—“

  A sigh. “That very statement indicates how little regard you hold me in.”

  There was a clatter as Hetty dropped something. “No, my Lord! Never,” she said, voice loud with her sudden fear, “I simply meant—“

  He made a hushing sound, putting his finger to his lips as he stayed against the wall. “I meant it as a joke. I apologize for frightening you,” the annoyed look was replaced with a weary, superficial smile. He uses it to put people at ease. But, I’ve also seen him use that expression just before he does something vengeful and bloody so it really isn’t all that calming if you ask me.

  Hetty grumbled, voice still shaking a little from fright. “Joke with me. Apologize to me. Trying to give me a heart attack, you are,” she said, her hand trembling as she placed the fallen glass cylinder back on the cart.

  “Did you break it?” he asked.

  “No.”

  A pause. “After all this time I had not expected you to still fear me,” he said. He pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers, dark eyes closing momentarily. “I’ll go. Leave you in peace. Send me a note telling me how she does. This is the last of the series, correct?”

  “Yes, my lord. Polio, smallpox, measles, mumps, rubella. You name it, she’s protected.”

  He didn’t even look at me but turned and left, closing the door softly behind him. Hetty exhaled shakily. “It’s time for a cup of tea, I think.”

  “That was Lord Marchant?” Now that he was gone I felt safe to move so I scooted up in the bed, the pillows behind me soft and smelling faintly like rosemary.

  She came over and sat down on my bed. “You are never to speak of him or indicate what he’s done for you.”

  “What did he do?” I asked, curious.

  She chuckled and waved a finger at me scoldingly. “He saved your life, lucky girl. And now he’s given you protections so you’ll never get sick. Stay away from the Lords and Ladies and you might have a chance for a long life.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  She looked uncomfortable, her light gray hair streaked with white. Tendrils of it were coming down out of the bun she’d put it in. “I don’t guess at his motives and neither should you. He saved you, that’s all that matters.” Her voice was gruff.

  I nodded at her, knowing better than to argue with a grown-up. She made a disapproving sound. “Lord Marchant is kind. As kind as he is able. If he had his way, our lives would be very different.”

  “How?” I asked, but I was starting to feel tired again and yawned so hard my jaw made a popping sound.

  “Close your eyes for a moment and look the other way,” she said. I did, suddenly worried about what she might do. Something cold and wet swiped my upper arm. “This will sting for just a moment. You must relax and try not to move. Can you do that?”

  I bit my lip and nodded, suddenly scared. “You’ll feel a pinch but when it’s over you will be the strongest girl on the island.” There was a pinch on my arm and I swallowed back a sound of pain. My arm felt swollen and cold. She smoothed a plaster over the spot and said I could look. In her hand she held a small silver cylinder with a needle affixed to the tip. Was that what she had poked me with?

  “Good girl. Tomorrow you’ll get up and start helping me around the infirmary.”

  “I’m to stay here?” Tears filled my eyes as I thought about my family and my home, that everything was gone.

  “Where would you go, dear?” she said, and squeezed my hand to take a bit of the sting out of her words.

  My lower lip trembled uncontrollably.

  “And you’re immune now which makes you the perfect person to help the sick. It’s time I took a new apprentice,” she said, her gaze sliding away from mine. It was only later that I learned her previous apprentice had died after treating Lady Clotswold’s serving girl when she got diphtheria.

  The Infinite carried diseases in their blood, it was why they were not permitted to drink straight from the vein. But every now and again one of them would slip and we’d get an outbreak of plague or some illness. Sometimes it was hard to trace the original patient (The Infinite can erase our memories) but more often than not we knew which House had slipped up due to who patient zero was.

  The Council always made a big show of enacting fines or various penalties against the offending House. Not because they cared about the humans but because drinking from the vein made an Infinite strong. They were paranoid about one family or another becoming too powerful and upsetting the island’s delicate political balance.

  She tucked the covers around me brusquely. “Get some sleep and tomorrow we’ll begin going over the herbs.”

  I closed my eyes obediently but all I could see was Lord Marchant as he’d looked leaning against the wall; bored, beautifully clothed and frighteningly handsome. He terrified me. He’d saved me. Me. Why? What had made me special? It had to be something, right?

  In my defense I was young. Young and too stupid to realize that it wasn’t anything personal. He would have saved anyone in that situation because he wanted to make a point. I just happened to be there. Not fate but dumb random luck.

  But I didn’t know that then. And so, from that point on I felt like I owed Lord Marchant my life. I would see him behind my eyes before I fell asleep. I’d imagine that weary smile, his broad-shoulders and casual perfection. He’d saved me, cured me, made me strong when everyone else was weak or left to die. Every night for years and years I dreamed about him, first as some sort of heroic figure and later I fantasized about him as a Lord and I imagined being his primary blood source. His Prime.

  So really, you see, I never stood a chance.

  2

  My obsession grew worse over the years because Lord Marchant was never there. I saw him a handful of times over the next decade but it was always at a distance. He never came to the infirmary when I was around, although he arranged shipments of medicine and supplies that the dock workers would bring us when the boats came in. The Council knew about all those shipments. If Lord Marchant came to the infirmary it was because he was bringing something secret that would save people but that the Council wouldn’t like.

  The Infinite were not interested in our longevity. They didn’t want us to be immune from disease. Humans falling ill was the only way to detect who was feeding from the vein. A Lord or Lady would drink from a human and the human would get a few or all of the various diseases they’d accumulated over the centuries and the others would know that someone was trying to amass power.

  It wasn’t often that one house challenged another to a duel, but it did happen. The leaders of the two houses would fight, and whoever won could claim the rival house as their own. The loser was usually staked, decapitated, and burned, their remains scattered to the four corners of the island. This was off-putting enough that the Infinite preferred to stick to grumbling and polite slights rather than outright war whenever possible.

  Once I had recovered, I became Hetty’s apprentice. I learned about herbs, poultices, tourniquets, and diseases. I saw babies born, murder victims, and people bleeding to death—and all the time Lord Marchant was a distant figure, guiding the island and its politics from far away. He was a champion for reform, and the myth of him grew inside me.

  When I finally saw him again, up close that is, I was sixteen. I ran into him in a hallway outside of a council meeting, and I was struck dumb at the sight of him. By the sheer enormity of being close enough to see the length of his lashes, to feel dwarfed by his height. I had no idea what to say, where to begin. I’d been waiting ten years for this exact moment.

  In my fantasies I would thank him for saving my life, for sending me to apprentice as a healer. For giving me purpose and the ability to be unafraid of illness. He would be gracious and smile charmingly at me. I would ask him about the medicine he’d given me wh
en I was little, and assure him that I’d kept his secret. That would please him and then…then I would ask him why he’d saved me.

  This mythical conversation was on the tip of my tongue, crammed into my heart and wanting to pour out of me as I stood there blocking the hallway. He made to move around me, clearly on his way somewhere else. I don’t think he even glanced at me as he passed. And then he was almost gone and who knew when I might have the chance to speak to him again? After all, it had taken ten years to run into him in a hallway.

  “My Lord,” I managed, my voice barely more than a whisper. I cleared my throat, tried again, but he’d already stopped, his acute hearing meaning he’d managed to hear me the first time. He turned slowly, looking at me curiously.

  “Name?” he asked, his voice cool.

  “Rebecca Finner,” I said, and dropped into a deep curtsy. When I raised my head and looked at him again, it was clear that my name meant nothing to him. “I work with Hetty, the healer,” I said, and inexplicably I felt like crying.

  He moved two steps closer, head tilted slightly to the side as he contemplated me through dark, bored eyes. “I’m very busy, Miss Finner. What is it you need to say?”

  Thank you. You saved my life. Why did you do it?

  I didn’t know what to do. How to start and from the look on his face, the sternness of it, the blankness and utter lack of curiosity or even kindness…this was the most important moment in my life, something I’d imagined for years, thanking him for my life, and yet this Lord would not care. He didn’t even remember me. “I’m sorry,” I said, and curtsied again, staring hard at the floor.

  With a sigh, he turned and walked away.

  I slumped against the wall, the uneven edges of the stone cutting into my shoulder blade through my thin summer dress. Heat washed over me, followed by nausea, and I dashed a tear from my cheek. How many times over the years had I remembered him carrying me away from death? How many nights had I remembered him in my room at the infirmary, standing there as though he’d cared? And that was just the start of my fantasies! The foundation of them. I had elaborate castles built of hero-worship and awe. And I felt like I could almost see myself at a distance then, how ridiculous I must look to him. How very, very young.

  When I returned to the infirmary, Hetty gave me a double take. “Did she die, then?” she asked.

  “Who?”

  “Lady Turner’s maid, of course.”

  “She’s still alive,” I said, and tried to push my disappointment away. I’d have years to ruminate over it, unfortunately. “Her hand was cut open and I stitched it closed. She should have full use of it.” A grimace. “If she lives.”

  “A bite, then?”

  “Yes. The skin was torn quite badly…She has five children. The youngest is only a year old.”

  Hetty sighed. “And you think she’s worth saving. When is she coming in?”

  “The guards went with her to tell her family. She knows she needs to be here by sundown.”

  Hetty automatically lifted her thumb to her mouth, worrying the end of it. I thought it was a rather odd habit for someone who knew about the spread of disease. According to Hetty, diseases were spread by tiny, tiny germs, so small that we couldn’t even see them. People put them in their bodies through their mouth or nose. Or because they were ripped open by a disease-ridden vampire. And yet, knowing this, she always brought her hand to her mouth when she was thinking hard.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. Just trying to remember what diseases Lady Turner carries,” She turned away, heading to the quarantine area to make sure it was ready.

  I followed a step behind. “I was there fairly quickly. I cleaned the wound well and while it was deep, there was good blood flow. It’s possible she won’t get too sick.”

  Hetty turned on the light in the storeroom, and began grabbing vials of medicine. We were one of the few places to have electricity on the island. Most of the Lords and Ladies didn’t like the harsh light that electricity cast. And it would have been very expensive to give it to the humans. Lord Marchant’s house had electricity, of course, as well as Lord Dalmaine’s. But when Lord Marchant was away and it was only his sister, all the lights were off because she didn’t like it.

  Hetty muttered something I couldn’t hear. And then, “Any news on when Lord Marchant will arrive on the island?”

  “He’s here,” I said, and blushed.

  She shot me a look. “You saw him?”

  “I passed him in the hallway when I was leaving Lady Turner’s…he didn’t even recognize me,” I said, and blinked back tears. Hetty didn’t seem to notice, but told me to make some tea and scurried away to get the room ready for our patient.

  I put the kettle on to boil and stood there, watching it, lost in my own thoughts. Sometimes I wonder what sort of person I am that I could so easily be consumed by my own concerns when someone’s life is on the line. A woman was telling her family that she’d been infected by her Lady, that she was probably getting sick at that very moment and might die in a week or two, and I was sad because Lord Marchant hadn’t recognized me.

  It makes me ashamed.

  She’d be prayed for at church on Sunday. Assuming she was still alive on Sunday. We would do what we could, give her food and fluids, keep her comfortable and give her what medicines we had, but it likely wouldn’t be enough.

  That was the problem with working directly for the Lords and Ladies. They did their best to be civilized, to not bite us or hurt us, but they were fallible. At church the Infinite preached tolerance on our part. Forgiveness. We were constantly reminded of their superiority and how fortunate we were to be alive and thriving at all. They didn’t want to hurt us. It just happened sometimes.

  Like today. Lady Turner’s maid had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and she’d been bitten by Lady Turner. When I’d arrived she’d been frightened, crying, utterly beyond words as I bandaged her up.

  We humans succumbed to the Infinite’s illnesses, and they didn’t. It was a sign of their superiority. It was difficult enough for us to survive the plague or scarlet fever, smallpox or measles. But to get all of them at once? It was not a pretty death. Really, one just hoped it was fast.

  But sometimes people didn’t die. Sometimes they made a miraculous recovery or never developed any symptoms. Hetty said some people were lucky, that the diseases just didn’t get into their bloodstream. But typically they survived because of the medicine Lord Marchant brought to the island.

  I poured water for Hetty’s tea and steeped it to a dark brown. “We meet again,” someone said from behind me, and I jumped, startled. Lord Marchant stood in the doorway, a faint hint of a smile on his lips. Not that it was sincere. His eyes were flat, cold. Even now he gave no indication that he put it together, who I was. “Where is your mentor?”

  “Miss Hetty is in the back. Preparing for Lady Turner’s maid. I can show you the way,” I said.

  He shook his head, voice soft. “No need. I know the way.” He carried two large bags, one in each hand, the material foreign. From the mainland. The fabric was almost shiny, and there were zippers along the front. We didn’t see a lot of zippers on the island. Hetty had let me try one once, the last time Lord Marchant had brought in supplies. I had been disappointed to miss him. Now I wished to never see him again.

  Liar.

  He disappeared down the hallway and shut the door behind him so I couldn’t hear what he and Hetty might say. Because I would have tried to listen. Of course. The door opened a few moments later. “Rebecca, come here, please,” Hetty said.

  A feeling very similar to panic rushed through me. Had he said something? Was I in trouble? Rebecca, Lord Marchant would like you to stop ogling him. I would die of mortification. I brushed my hair back from my face, wishing I’d looked in a mirror first.

  As I went into the room I tried my best to look only vaguely inquisitive rather than desperate and filled with mild panic. The bag he’d been car
rying was open, and Hetty was taking things out of it. “Rebecca, I have assured Lord Marchant of your loyalty and told him you would never reveal the secrets you’re about to see. But he would like to make sure of that for himself. Is it all right if he compels you to answer a few questions honestly?”

  My hands clenched into fists at my side. I saw him note the gesture, one dark brow rising in question. “Of course,” I said, heart thudding hard in my chest. It wasn’t as if I could say no.

  He came towards me slowly, his firm lips pressed into a stern line. He was well over a foot taller than me, and even more imposing than I’d remembered. I had softened him in my memory; over the years he’d become approachable, almost friendly. But he was not my friend. Maybe he didn’t even know the definition of the word. Four hundred years. That was how long he’d been alive. Was that why his eyes were devoid of curiosity? Was that why he seemed so unreachable? He was like some Greek statue come to life. Planes and angles. Harsh cheekbones and a stern jaw. Had he been made Infinite all those centuries ago because of his beauty?

  I don’t know what he saw on my face, but he frowned. My breath hitched in my chest as the smell of him, clean skin and peppery cologne, swept inside me. He held my gaze with his, and I couldn’t look away from the depths of his dark eyes. I saw facets of color in there, the brown resolving into segments of amber, flecks of black, maybe even a shade of darkest green. He had beautiful eyes, I thought dimly. And then I was being dragged under by his will, like being in the ocean when a wave goes back to sea and the sand shifts under you and wants to pull you out with it. It was like that but mental…if that makes any sense.

  “Why did you stop me earlier?” he asked, and my body relaxed into the wall. There was no looking away from him, there was nothing for me beyond what he wanted.

  “I wanted to thank you for saving my life,” I said, feeling the answer pulled from me, hearing the words as if they came from a long way away. It was only after I spoke that I realized what I said, my answers so truthful and uncalculated that I didn’t know them until it was too late.