Remembered

by Caroline Hanson

  There’s no response to that. Not even a blink to show my words mean anything at all to him. “Who do you care for?”

  “Hetty, my friends…” A wave rose inside of me as I tried to keep my answer back. “You.” I blinked, tried to look away, wanting to pull back from the current of his will.

  “Me?” he repeated, voice blank. My eyes were pulled back to him, to the question I thought I could read in his eyes.

  “I’d be dead if it weren’t for you, Lord Marchant. I would….” No. There was no way I was going to keep baring my soul to him. Even if I was mildly obsessed with him.

  I always listened to gossip about him, paid attention to when he sent things to the island and our infirmary. If he was on the island and attended public meetings or entertainments, I tried to catch a glimpse of him. And he didn’t need to know that. I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood. His head jerked back as if I’d slapped him, his nostrils flaring. Blood. He knew. My heart beat faster in fear.

  But I kept my mouth shut.

  He took a step closer. His hand went to my cheek, keeping me in place. His voice was a like a whisper in a midnight garden. There was so much beauty in the dark. “I’m going to ask you a series of questions, and you won’t remember your answers. Do you understand?” The heat of him seared me.

  My head nodded on his command. Ten years I’d been waiting for this moment. To be close to him, to have him looking at me. And then…well, I don’t know what happened next. Suddenly I was standing there alone with Hetty, and Lord Marchant had gone. How much time had passed? How long had I been standing there like a fool?

  “What happened?” I asked, blinking frantically, my stomach in knots. “What did I say?” My hands were shaking. She gave me a pitying look. Maybe that was the moment she knew that my fate was already decided. That I was already claimed. As good as dead, no more than ash that would drift away while he stayed vital and whole. Perfect and beautiful.

  “He trusts you, dear. That’s all that matters,” she said, voice rusty. “Now, come see what he brought. With the supplies he’s given us, it’s very likely Lady Taylor’s maid won’t die.”

  What kind of a ridiculous explanation was that? Why wouldn’t she tell me? Why wouldn’t she look me in the eye? And he was gone? Had I made such a fool of myself that he didn’t even want to see me? I peered over her shoulder at the mountain of pills, bottles, and capped syringes she was placing on the counter. The clock showed me it had only been a few minutes. Oh, but the things I could have betrayed in a few minutes! I felt like crying. What had I told him? And what did she mean, he trusted me?

  I knew Hetty well enough to know that continuing to ask her would get me nothing but a tongue-lashing and extra chores. I had to focus on the task at hand. That was all. The rest I could agonize over later, when I was alone at night with nothing but my own thoughts for miserable company. I’d torture myself and strain to remember, unable to of course because he’d told me not to, locked my memories away from me. Maybe in another ten years, when I was twenty-six, I would run into him again in a hallway and I could ask him why he compelled me not to remember. What I’d said that was so upsetting. And he’d probably look at me blankly again, not remembering who I was. Hysterical laughter bubbled up inside me, and I swallowed it down, panting from the effort. Focus on the present, I commanded myself.

  I busied myself by unzipping the other bag. Containers of pills rattled dully as I removed them. I read the labels absently. Penicillin, whatever that was. Morphine. I knew that one. Valacyclovir. Didn’t know that one, either.

  “So many pills and…liquids” I said, inanely, not know what everything was called.

  “Lord Marchant brings medicines from the mainland, and he helps as many as he can. But sometimes we run out of things or we have to let them get sick, maybe even die. It’s a judgment call. We can’t save them all.”

  I’m eager to change the subject and curious, too. “Why not?”

  “It would arouse suspicion if no one died. Lord Marchant has advocated for better health care for us for years now. But to no avail. The Lords don’t care about us. They only care about themselves and their power, their status and order. So we do what we can with what he brings,” she said, her words oddly curt.

  Was it any wonder I worshipped him? Not just a beautiful worldly leader, but a hero as well. Saving people even when it could bring him harm. Oh, how he’d looked looming over me. The stern cast to his full lips, the soft touch of his fingers on my skin. “Why does he do it? If it’s a risk to himself and his own kind wouldn’t like it?”

  She must have heard something of my feeling in my voice, because she whirled on me, her anger exploding. “For the same reason one feeds a dog! He might be better than the rest of them, he might be willing to help us every six months or so, but we’re still here, Rebecca. We will always be here! Trapped in this place. And I hope to the heavens that you’ve seen enough death and carnage at their hands by the time he returns, or by all the good in the world, I won’t be responsible for stitching you back together!”

  I couldn’t have hurt worse if she’d slapped me. “I don’t want that!” I shouted, stepping backwards as she advanced on me.

  Her shoulders slumped, and she shook her head. Even worse, she wiped at her eyes. Tears! I had never seen Hetty cry. She shook her head sadly at the sight of me. “You’ve been like a daughter to me, Rebecca. I don’t want to see you come to harm…but…there is something in you, child.” She was whispering now, as if saying it aloud might make it manifest, “Something that wants him, no matter the cost. You think I don’t know how you always make an excuse to go look at him when he visits the island? You even have his likeness under your pillow! I had hoped you’d grow out of it. I thought, surely, after seeing what all they did to the people under their rule, you’d get some sense.”

  She blew her nose noisily in a handkerchief. “Maybe it’s only fair since he saved you at such a young age, but I’m telling you now, I swear this to be true—if you don’t get past your fixation with him, if you throw yourself at him… he will kill you.”

  “He’s not…like them,” I said, feeling exhausted and sick. Ah, hindsight. It was a stupid, childish thing to say. But I believed in him. I believed in the strength of his will and the honor of his character. He wasn’t like them. Lord Marchant would never, ever, make a mistake. I was so very, very, stupidly, naïvely sure.

  Something happened then, like a veil lowered over her eyes or a flame that hit the end of its wick. If her love for me had been the flame, she’d doused it.

  Hetty turned away from me. Gave me her back in the same way one turns away from a pesky tradesman or a beggar in the streets. She would simply pretend I didn’t exist.

  She wasn’t going to argue with me.

  I had a sudden memory of being nine years old and finding a kitten down at the beach. The little creature had looked dead, already been abandoned by its mother and brothers and sisters. (The similarities are not lost on me.) I’d brought it home, cold and small, determined to save it. Hetty had come over to me quickly, concern on her face as I told her about our tiny patient. We would do it together, save this cat, and it would become a great mouser, a friend to keep us company, I said. But she’d taken one look at it and gotten the same expression on her face that she had just given me. “Don’t get attached, Rebecca. That cat won’t make it.”

  I’d run my fingers over its slight, cool body, feeling every tiny bone and sinew. It was so fragile, so alone. Hetty was wrong. I knew it. I would make this kitten live. I’d feed her, keep her warm, talk to her and cuddle her so she’d know she was meant to live, and I’d prove Hetty wrong.

  The cat died that very night.

  And now Hetty was looking at me the same way. I was the kitten that wouldn’t survive the night. Doubt swamped me. Hetty was so wise. She’d taught me everything. And yet….

  “They’re all murderers. And he’s the worst of them all, my girl. He’s the one who found this island. Who convinced
his kind to settle here all those centuries ago. He keeps the boats from coming in to harbor and taking us to freedom. Lord Marchant is the one who brings the orphans to the island—and by doing so, signs their death warrants. And his sister! He’d defend her to the death no matter how many she slaughtered. Generations have passed. Tens of thousands of lives, and you think he’s so grand because he saves a few hundred a year with medicine?”

  She gave me one last searching look. Her voice was low, urgent. “You’re right that he’s not like the rest of them, Rebbie. But that’s because he’s worse than all of them put together.” It hovered there in the air between us, this moment of finality, of love guttering out into darkness. She waited for me to see, to come to my senses.

  One last chance.

  I took too long to answer, couldn’t choose between my girlish fantasy and the woman who’d loved me. We all have moments in our life that we wish we could pause, rewind five seconds, and do again. I was sixteen, and that was my moment. I wish I had been smarter. I wish I had told her what she wanted to hear and thrown my arms around her like the daughter I’d become. I wish I’d been smart enough to see the truth.

  But I didn’t, and we can’t go back and remake our destiny.

  She sent me out to gather milkweed down by the beach and that was that. Hetty hadn’t kept her sanity as a healer to the sick and the dying by loving lost causes. It took emotional distance to be a healer. An ability to separate herself from patients.

  And victims.

  When death comes a healer must stay stoic, an island unto oneself, and let love’s currents flow by without notice.

  In Hetty’s mind I had just shifted over from the column of ‘safe to love’ to ‘lost cause.’ I’d gone from survivor to victim because I’d said a few things that I couldn’t even remember!

  I hated her in that moment. I hated myself too. But of course, it never occurred to me that the real blame was for Lord Marchant.

  3

  Penicillin is an amazing drug. Lady Turner’s maid lived. Her family cried when she came back home, and there was such a celebration down in the eastern part of town—complete with burning effigies of Lady Turner and graffiti scrawled on the city’s high walls—that the council implemented a week-long curfew until the people settled down.

  Hetty and I had a calm few weeks in which we cleaned the infirmary, made house calls for simple things like colds, and set a few broken bones. The garden needed weeding, so we worked in the sun, the ocean breeze cooling us down, the damp earth like a healing poultice laid between us. I could almost imagine that things were normal again.

  And then one day, about two weeks after Lord Marchant had left the island again, and a few weeks before I turned seventeen, a parcel came for me. It had my name on it, and it had been brought in with supplies from the mainland.

  The island received goods once a week. The boat would dock in the harbor, and her crew would unload everything while our people stayed hidden inside, waiting for them to leave. Anyone caught outside when ships were in harbor faced an immediate death sentence.

  The moment the ship was unloaded she set off again, back to wherever they came from, and the townsmen were let out of their houses to gather the supplies and unpack them, all boys and most of the men running food and goods to the big houses and merchants once the dockworkers were done with them. From fruit and vegetables to furniture, fabrics, and the parasols that the Lords and Ladies both used to protect their fair skin from the sun.

  I’d never gotten anything before. It was quite obviously unusual, as the runner who brought it to the infirmary hung about the infirmary entrance, wanting to see me open it so he could gossip with anyone who’d listen.

  Hetty shooed him out and took a long look at the package sitting on the clean metal table. With a shake of her head, she turned and left, going back out to the garden and leaving me to my gift.

  I instantly ripped it open, shredding the plastic, cutting through the tape and thick paper that protected it. Inside it was a book. Aesop’s Fables. There was even a bookmark made of emerald-green leather, stamped with gold leaf in a pattern of twisting vines.

  Inside was a single line written in Lord Marchant’s bold and loopy hand, along with his initials. LM. ‘See if you can find it’ was all he wrote.

  I sat down right then and skimmed through the book, flicking past pictures and stories, reading until I found the right fable. Perhaps you’ve heard of it, the fable called the Scorpion and the Frog.

  I started to read the story but couldn’t concentrate. Did the Lords and Ladies give humans gifts from the mainland like this? Not often. The council placed great importance on separation of the species. I took a few deep breaths, opened my eyes and read the story, concentrating intently, determined to absorb every last shred of meaning from the story.

  Once upon a time there was a scorpion. He looked around at the mountain where he lived and decided that he wanted a change, so he set out on a journey through the forests and hills. He climbed over rocks and under vines, scuttled through meadows and over dirt paths until he reached a wide river. He hadn’t gone far enough. What was on the other side, he wondered?

  The water was swift, and he had no idea how to get across. Then he saw a frog sitting by the bank and he decided to ask the frog for help. "Hello, Mr. Frog!" called the scorpion loudly. "Would you be so kind as to give me a ride on your back across the river?"

  The frog was very rightly quite suspicious. "How do I know that if I help you, you won’t try to kill me?"

  The scorpion knew this was a sensible question. "Because if I try to kill you, then I would die too, for you see, I cannot swim!”

  Now this seemed to make sense to the frog, for he gave a quiet ribbit of agreement. But the frog hadn’t lived so long without being cautious, so he asked, "What about when I get close to the bank? You could kill me then, and likely you’d make it to shore."

  The scorpion pondered this, his stinger poised delicately in the air. "This is true," he eventually agreed, "But ‘likely’ isn’t the sort of guarantee I’m looking for. It’s all too possible I would get swept away and drowned."

  "All right, then...how do I know you won’t just wait until we get to the other side and then kill me?"

  The scorpion seemed offended by the very question. "What sort of a beast would I be to harm you after you’ve helped me? I’ll be so grateful for your help, that it would hardly be fair to reward you with death, now would it? Besides, my home lies on this side of the river. I will want to go home again once I’ve done a little exploring."

  So the frog agreed to take the scorpion across the river. The scorpion crawled onto the frog's back, his sharp claws prickling into the frog's tender skin. The frog ignored the unpleasant sensation and hopped into the river. The river moved swiftly and the frog worked hard to keep them afloat so that the scorpion didn’t slide off and drowned. Halfway across the river, the frog felt a sharp sting in his back, a cold numbness spreading through his small body.

  "You idiot!" croaked the frog, "Now we shall both die! Why would you do something so foolish?”

  The scorpion sounded regretful, and in fact, the frog believed he was. "I could not help myself. It is my nature," he said, just before they both sank under the water.

  My skin was covered in gooseflesh, and even though the day was warm, and my forehead was still damp with sweat, I was chilled. Why would Lord Marchant send me this? Why tell me and warn me of his true nature? Why alert me and make me stay away from him?

  And of course I know now that he saw the end result of us. I understand that he felt something brewing between us, even though I was only sixteen. The Infinite are always looking years ahead, thinking of the ramifications of possibilities that we mortals wouldn’t consider to be yet important. I’d be seventeen soon, could be a Lord’s primary feeder when I turned eighteen.

  As bizarre and impossible as it seemed, whatever I’d confessed to him was so terrifying a possibility that he had made a personal effort to w
arn me away from him. I didn’t understand then that it was because the dark part of him saw my desire for him and was tempted by it.

  He was warning me to say no when the offer came. For he was the scorpion who would want to use me, I was the frog who would trust, and ultimately he’d ride me down, sink himself into me, and when I died I’d have no one to blame but myself.

  I took the book to my room and put it on a shelf, the grandness of it drawing my eye every time I entered the room. I didn’t see then that it was mutual. Didn’t know that my desire had infected him just as their diseases infected us. I assumed he sent it to me because I’d made a fool of myself and he, being as kind as he was, was trying to spare me from my foolishness.

  Little did I know.

  4

  A few months later Hetty showed me the telephone. It was hidden under a wooden floorboard in the closet. She pried up a loose panel of wood, and there in the dark was this tiny black thing, no bigger than a deck of playing cards, plugged into a wire that led underneath the infirmary to who knows where.

  She told me how to keep it charged (it needed electricity), showed me how it worked (there were so many buttons!) and how to make the actual telephone call if it was needed. I had so many questions about the telephone, but Hetty had no idea how it worked, nor did she have any interest in discovering anything about it.

  “Did he warn you against pressing them?” I asked, desperately curious to explore the small device. She threw me a caustic glance.

  “He didn’t have to. I know better. I’ve been given this, and have strict instructions,” she said, her gnarled fingers hovering over the flat front of the phone as if she were a witch about to cast a magic spell. She slanted a glance at me. “I don’t go looking for more.”