by April White
That bit of news was as unsettling as anything else Tam had said. It could be taken many ways, and I realized it wasn’t fair to assume Tom meant any harm to Saira, but the last time I’d seen the young Vampire he had been on a most effective self-destructive bender.
Frankly, I didn’t trust him.
Saira – Traveling South, 1842
Tom had effectively severed the connection between my brain and my spine with his words. I hadn’t been able to stay focused, or even conscious, for more than a few minutes at a time since … I didn’t really know how long.
Since he’d told me that Archer was dead.
The thought would have been crushing, if there had been any part of me left that felt anything.
No, Tom hadn’t told me, he’d spat it at me as though I was his worst enemy and the news was his coup de grâce. In a way, I supposed it was.
I didn’t exactly lose consciousness when I lay down in those woods somewhere in France. I just lost … will.
I had a vague recollection of Ringo picking me up and carrying me back to the coach. He laid me on the backward-facing bench and then had a heated conversation that I didn’t care about hearing while someone – probably Mary – dressed me. My next memory was of waking to the motion of the coach and the concerned face of Mary, who watched me from the opposite bench. Ringo sat next to her, staring out the window at the passing sky, and it seemed to be hard for him to drag his eyes to me. I didn’t know where Tom was, and I didn’t care.
I didn’t care about anything.
I didn’t even care that we were still traveling south toward Rome. Mary treated me like a mental patient, which was probably the only reason I responded to her at all. She fed me and helped me out of the coach to the privy wherever we stopped. I functioned on a kind of survivalist autopilot, shivering when I was cold, sweating when I was hot, but doing nothing about either of them until Mary noticed and adjusted my clothing accordingly.
Sometimes, to break the deathly silence, Mary told us stories, but I drifted in and out of consciousness so often I lost the plots. Later, I saw Amélie sitting solemnly on Mary’s lap during the stories while Barney, the opossum, played with her hair.
Once, Amélie gave Barney a direction in French, and he came over to my bench and offered me a nut. I couldn’t make my arm move to take it, and Barney chattered at me in frustration. He finally used one little spidery hand to shove the nut between my lips. I chewed it a couple of times and swallowed the jagged edges, and Barney seemed satisfied enough to leave me alone.
Amélie watched me curiously, then tugged on Mary’s sleeve and asked her for another story.
Michel took us all the way to Turin, where he helped Mary deposit me in a train compartment. I was vaguely unhappy to be back on a train, but I couldn’t muster the energy to protest. In fact, I didn’t think I’d spoken in days. Mary went to buy tickets and left Ringo to his own devices. I managed to direct my eyes to him, but he avoided them and sat looking out the window into the night.
Just before the train pulled out of the station, Mary returned with Tom. He sat in the corner of our compartment, as far away from me as possible in the small space. I could study him at my leisure because he steadfastly refused to meet my eyes.
We traveled in silence the whole way to Ancona, alternately sleeping, staring out windows, or avoiding each other’s eyes. I began to spend more time awake than asleep, and I started noticing details about my companions.
Mary was very often out of our compartment. She brought me food and helped me to the privy, but she left the guys alone to fend for themselves. Ringo was utterly silent, but it wasn’t a stealthy silence – that was too active – it was more the absence of sound that surrounded him. He wouldn’t meet my eyes, and I had the sense that when he did look at me, he didn’t register anything he saw. Tom’s avoidance of me was much more active, and it seemed tinged with guilt. He avoided my gaze and always sat as far away as it was possible to be. Yet I noticed he didn’t leave our compartment very often, and only when Ringo or Mary was there. It was as if he was afraid to leave me alone.
With more detailed observations came more awareness of myself. I began to smell like a long-unwashed body, and my hair, even pulled back into a pony tail, was oily and lank. Mary had been able to get the equivalent of about one meal a day into me, and my normally slim-fitting trousers felt loose and saggy. She had made me use a toothbrush and tooth powder, but I could tell that even forcing that much grooming was wearing thin on her.
Mary was getting sick of us.
“I’m sorry, Mary,” I said as she pulled her valise down from the overhead luggage rack at the station in Ancona. My voice cracked and squeaked from disuse, and she started at the sound of it. When she turned toward me I expected to see annoyance and resignation on her face. Instead, she wore the most beautiful smile.
“Hello, lovely. It’s nice to see you again.”
I must have lost brain cells in the catatonia, because it took a few moments of mulling the sentence over before I understood that she meant I hadn’t been present.
“Can I help you?” I asked weakly.
Her smile grew even wider. “Yes, you certainly could. If you could walk on your own power to the Rome train, it would help me immeasurably.”
I understood enough to nod sheepishly. Obviously I hadn’t been carrying my own weight at all, and I was startled to realize I didn’t know how long I’d been so helpless.
I stood carefully, and despite the weakness from disuse, my muscles were still toned enough to support me with only minimal swaying. Ringo roused himself from whatever absence he’d been stewing in, grabbed our satchels, and followed us out of the compartment.
“What about Tom?” I asked.
Mary’s eyes met mine. “He will meet us tonight at the home of my friend, just outside Rome. He is in a coach, and the driver is under the impression Tom has consumption, so he won’t be bothering him until they arrive.”
“Oh.” The complexity of their arrangement surprised me, and I was momentarily distracted from the effort it took to walk across the platform to the train bound for Rome.
Once Ringo and I were settled in another private compartment, Mary left to deal with our tickets. Ringo had placed himself at the window again, as he’d done since we’d learned about Archer.
Pain seared my chest at the thought of Archer’s name, and it surprised me how glad I was to feel it. I hadn’t felt … anything in days. Even if the feeling hurt worse than any injury I could imagine, it was a feeling. It had substance and depth, and it provoked a physical, mental, and emotional response in me.
I recognized it as part of me, and it made me want to rip more of the bandages off.
“Ringo?”
His head turned toward me slowly, and his eyes were a fraction of a second behind, as if he couldn’t bear to let go of the scene outside the window to focus on anything else. When his eyes were finally on mine, I sucked in a breath.
I had never seen emptiness in Ringo’s eyes. Not ever. No matter how sad or angry or tired he’d ever been, Ringo’s eyes always flashed with life. Ringo did not have dead eyes.
But there was nothing there.
“Ringo?” My voice was suddenly desperate. I needed to see some spark, something that was uniquely Ringo.
He submitted to my searching gaze just long enough to realize I didn’t have an actual question, and then his gaze slid away toward the window again. A sob tore from my chest, and I dove across the compartment to sit next to him. I drew his unresisting arm around myself and looked into his face. His eyes were unfocused again as they stared out the window at nothing in particular.
He could have been chiseled from stone for all the animation there was in his face, and I had a sudden urge to slap him, or tickle him, or kiss him – something … anything to get a true reaction.
So I kissed him - on the edge of his jaw, near his ear. I let my mouth linger there and breathed in the scent of his skin. He smelled like home, like fa
mily, like laughter and love, and I closed my eyes to remember.
“What are ye doin’?” he ground out through his teeth.
I leaned back so I could see his eyes. They had finally focused on me, and they flashed angrily.
“Waking you up.”
“I’m not Sleepin’ Beauty,” he snarled, “and I don’t want to be awake.”
I narrowed my eyes at him and pulled his arm away from my shoulders. “Why are we still going to Rome?”
He closed his eyes and sighed. It was the most human and vulnerable sound I’d ever heard him make. “Because I didn’t want to be the strong one,” he said quietly.
“Oh Ringo.”
I put my arms around him and gathered him to my chest like a little boy. He resisted at first, but then his shoulders trembled, and he began to shudder as great, wracking sobs escaped him and bled into the fabric of my shirt.
I held him and we rocked a little in rhythm to the movement of the train, and when he could breathe again without the air catching on a sob, he sat up and screwed the heels of his palms into his eye sockets. He was avoiding my gaze again, so I spun in my seat and laid my head down in his lap facing straight up his nose.
He stared at me. “What the bleedin’ ‘ell are ye doin’?”
“You’re going to need to trim your nose hairs pretty soon.”
He glared at me. “And ye need to wash yer ‘air. What of it?”
“I missed you,” I said. The view up his nose was pretty terrible, and I was going to have to move soon. But not yet. Not while he was still talking to me.
“Ye weren’t ‘ere to miss anyone.”
“I missed me, too.”
He swiped at a stray tear and nodded solemnly. “Yeah.”
“What are we going to do?”
He started to speak, then shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.
It was an answer I understood.
“Yeah,” I whispered.
I watched his eyes, and they watched mine. Ringo had interesting eyes, full of gold flecks and prone to squinting in the sun, or at a fascinating book, or with laughter.
“I liked it when ye kissed me, but then ye smelled me and it got weird,” he finally said. The corners of his mouth were tight, like he was trying to hold in a laugh, so I reached up and flicked his nose.
“Jerk,” I said as I burst out laughing.
He couldn’t keep a straight face, but still tried to hide his laugh behind his hand, so I sat up and tickled him, and he wrapped his arm back around my shoulders to hold my arms to my sides. “Ah, Saira. I love ye too much.”
“Too much for what?”
He shrugged and wouldn’t say more, no matter how much I threatened him with tickles.
We ended up talking for a long time, mostly about Archer, and some about Mary and Tom. Ringo had told Tom that for whatever wrong he thought I’d done to him, we were now even, because he had hurt me worse than anyone could ever imagine.
At first Tom had stayed away from me, riding up front with Michel and Amélie on the coach. But then, on the train, he had stayed in the compartment with me, maybe afraid of what I’d do if I were ever left alone. Ringo said that before Tom left the train to find a covered coach to travel through daylight, he looked at me with something like compassion.
I almost scoffed at that, but a wave of tiredness hit me and knocked the scorn right out of my voice. “I wish I could make things better for him somehow,” I sighed.
Ringo’s arm was still around me, and the heat of his body, with the rocking of the train, was like a sedative. I closed my eyes and snuggled in.
“Yeah,” he whispered.
Mary’s Friend
We arrived in Rome several hours before Tom’s coach was due, and Mary had us all taken directly to the estate of her friend, Signora Schiattesi, on the outskirts of the city. I recognized the name, but I wasn’t sure from where, and I still felt like I could barely use my brain for more than basic functions.
The instant we entered the walled estate, the noise and crowds of Rome vanished. The house was hidden from the view of the road by massive trees that covered the property in dappled light. A fountain sat in the middle of the drive, and I was seriously tempted to take off my boots and splash my feet in the water.
The villa itself looked like a Moorish palace, rising from the lush garden with towering walls of rich, orange-red stone. Mary explained that the Signora’s lover of many years had gifted the villa to her, and although Mary and Percy had stayed there many times, their visits had never overlapped with his.
Mary had sent word ahead about our arrival, so when the coach came to a stop in front of the villa, the doors opened and a woman came out to greet us. She looked to be in her fifties, with long, pure white hair that had been haphazardly tied up with a strip of cloth. Her dress sleeves were covered in red, orange, and brown paint, and two small paintbrushes were stabbed into the bun at the back of her head. Mary bounded out of the carriage like a teenager and flew into the woman’s arms, and the woman’s remarkably unlined face broke into a delighted grin.
“Oh, Mary! I’m so glad you’ve come!” she said in Italian-accented English.
“Mia, these are the friends I told you about. Saira Elian and Ringo … I’m sorry, I don’t know your family name,” Mary said in embarrassment to Ringo.
“It’s Devereux,” he said quietly. If Mary was surprised, she didn’t show it.
“Ringo Devereux, Saira Elian – this is one of my dearest friends in all the world, Artemisia Schiattesi.” She smiled proudly and waved her arm with a flourish.
Ringo made the connection just before I did and shot me a quelling look when my hand went automatically to my satchel. He was right, I’d been about to pull Artemisia’s emerald out of my gem bag.
“Ye’re an artist,” he said with wonder and, I thought, admiration.
Her friendly interest shifted into surprised intrigue. “I am. How do you know this?”
He hesitated only a moment before indicating her sleeves. “If the paint on yer sleeves and the brushes in yer hair didn’t give it away, yer name would. I saw yer self-portrait in the Royal Collection during a public exhibition for the queen last year.” He stumbled very slightly over the last words because last year was probably 1888. Good thing Queen Victoria had such a long reign. He recovered with a genuine smile. “Ye look very much the same, Signora.”
She laughed delightedly and shook Ringo’s hand. “You are a charming liar, caro, but I will accept your compliment with grace and only a little skepticism. I was twenty-three in that portrait your queen collected– I am sixty-three now.” She shook my hand with equal grace and a smile that made me feel like I was the only person she saw.
“Miss Elian, I believe I know of your Family. It is very lovely to meet you both.” I couldn’t tell if she knew my last name as just a name, or as an Immortal Descendant, but based on her association with Mary, I thought anything was possible. Artemisia watched the hired coach drive away with consternation. “But what of your luggage?”
Mary laughed and took her friend’s arm in hers. “That is a story best told after baths, with wine. Shall we?” The two women turned and walked into the villa. Ringo and I followed a few feet behind.
“My emerald—” I whispered.
“Shhh, I know,” Ringo murmured back.
“Have you really seen one of her paintings?” I watched the women walk ahead of us into the arched entry hall of the villa. Spectacular oil paintings hung on the walls, and I gasped quietly.
“Wow,” Ringo whispered in awe.
We stared around us with open mouths and huge eyes, and I felt a tiny piece of the despair that had filled my world with shadows break off and open a window to light. The color and glow emanating from each canvas reminded me very strongly of Caravaggio’s work, yet the subjects of the paintings were all women. The men were utterly peripheral to the stories told in the paintings. Artemisia’s women seemed strong and capable, like they were the heroines of their
own stories rather than men’s. It might have been a subtle thing to someone else, but to my eye, it was as obvious as if each painting had been tagged in neon spray paint.
Artemisia sent Mary to her room with a servant and then returned to our sides. “Too much, no?”
“No,” Ringo said decisively.
“They’re extraordinary,” I said at the same time.
“Grazie.” She sounded surprised. “It is not often people like them.” Her accent was thick and musical, though her English was excellent.
“Who could say a bad word about any of this?” Ringo asked in honest confusion.
“Men, most likely,” I responded.
“And some women who do not trust my past,” she said.
Ringo studied the paintings for a moment, then finally nodded. “I see it now. Sometimes the weak are threatened by strength.”
Artemisia considered him thoughtfully. “Come, after baths, as we wait for your friend, we will discuss women and art, for they are the most wonderful topics in the world.”
Ringo shot me a look of “uh oh,” and I was surprised to realize I’d smiled. A servant led us to rooms on the second floor of the villa overlooking a glorious interior courtyard with a tiled fountain. My bath was definitely the best thing that had happened to me all week, and afterwards, I dressed in a long, white caftan that the maid had left when she took my clothes away to be cleaned. It had intricate embroidery at the wrists and around the v-neck, and wearing something so pretty felt strange and foreign, as though the insides of me didn’t match the outside.
Mary met me in the courtyard wearing a similar gown, and Ringo joined us a few minutes later in a loose white shirt and pajama-like trousers of the same material. Mary explained that Artemisia enjoyed trips to the northern parts of Africa, and whenever she wasn’t painting, she preferred the loose robes that Moorish men often wore.
It was full dark by the time we finished a light meal in the courtyard, and it was so nice to be clean and comfortable that I curled into a chaise with a glass of sweet Moroccan mint tea and just listened to Mary and Artemisia talk. They let me bow out of contributing to the conversation until Ringo returned from his walk in the front gardens, but finally, our hostess requested that we all join her in the salon.