Chapter Seventeen
She didn’t have to fall asleep this time. This time she fell from the ceiling. She landed with a bounce on her bed in the lake house. It was broad daylight and the sounds below told her that Sharon and the boys had finished lunch and were getting ready to go to the park. She knew this because Richard was screaming “Park now! Park now!” and Sharon’s calm voice replied, “We will get in the car when Eric’s shoes are tied.”
She looked down at her body half expecting to see the homespun wool dress and a wide apron. But no. She was dressed as she had been what seemed months ago: jeans and a tee shirt and sandals. She heard doors slamming and then Sharon’s minivan start and back out of the driveway, but still she was afraid to move. She put a hand tentatively over her belly.
“Oh my f*cking God,” she breathed. Little chill bumps raised up and down her arms and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Her whole scalp tingled. She blinked several times. She didn’t have to be in a long ago century to imagine what would happen next. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and put her head in her hands.
Jack would be furious that she had been taken. He would be sickened and hurt that Lord Brigayne had used her like his whore. But when he discovered that she had lost the baby…Victoria felt dizzy. This was when Jack had earned his scar. She put her hand to her throat and she knew he had confronted Lord Brigayne. She knew he had killed him. She knew it had not even been a dual, but a fierce pummeling fist fight. She saw it in her mind, for she had not been there when it happened. She had been lying back in their cottage, bleeding on their bed and weeping, weeping for days. She saw this. And she saw Jack hanging from a gibbet. Executed for murder.
“Do you want to see it now?” She looked up. Jasper stood by the bed looking up at her with sad eyes. “I need to take you back. You brought yourself back too soon. It wasn’t over yet. Once you start you have to finish. I warned you not to start. But now…”
“F*ck, Jasper. Damn. Why would I want to see it?” She reached for the tissues and blew her nose. “I can see it all now in my head.”
Jasper put a tiny monkey hand on her knee. “But you are getting the wrong idea, and you are making it worse.”
“Making it worse?” She slid form the bed and towered over the little monkey demon. “How can it get any f*cking worse? It seems that I am responsible for the deaths of three good men. The only men I have ever loved…and I killed him. Three times.” She picked up the whole box of tissues and headed for the bathroom.
“Don’t take the sedative, Victoria.” Jasper leaped ahead of her and blocked the door to the bathroom. “It will make you lose control. You will not be able to think clearly and will be at the mercy of your imagination. You don’t need that right now.”
She stopped mid-kick and put her foot back on the floor. “Why do you even care, demon? Isn’t it your job to torment the living? No wonder you want to take me back to watch him die. Bastard.” She reached for the doorknob.
“Don’t do it, Victoria.”
She kicked at him again and he darted away from her foot to stand by the window. She went into the bathroom and with shaking hands opened the medicine cabinet and fumbled through the prescription bottles for the Valium. She wanted to sleep. To sleep with no dreams, no nothing. She shook out two of them and swallowed them without water and then set the bottle on the sink while she drew a bath. She could still feel the blood and cum dripping down her thighs and only hot water and bubbles could take that away. Bubbles and sedatives.
Jasper’s little face peeked around the doorway. “Victoria. You need to go back.”
“Go to Hell, monkey demon. Go back to Hell and leave me alone.”
He disappeared and she was glad. The warm fuzzies started to take the edge off the pain in her mind. The warm water would ease the pain in her arms and legs, but nothing could ease the pain in her heart. She had killed him. She had killed him as if she had thrust a sword through his heart or squeezed the life from his throat. And Marcus. She blinked the vision of her dark lover from two thousand years ago. He had earned a little farm as retirement bonus for surviving twenty years of marching for Rome. Marcus grinned as he chucked her chin and kissed her ear as he told her about it. He was ready to take up farming. He would grow grapes and olives and spend his last years basking in the kind of peace he had never known in his life.
Then she saw the door open. She saw the faces silhouetted in the opening. Marcus withdrew his cock from her body and turned to look over his shoulder. She saw the look on his face when he turned back to her, and on the faces of the servants at the door. Two of the intruders fled immediately, and Victoria knew they were running to tell Cestius that his favorite concubine was being f*cked by one of his men.
She and Marcus locked eyes. There were no words. She knew she would never see him again. His eyes told her that. Her eyes told him how her heart was lost and she was now dead inside. Victoria sobbed in her bath. He had been ordered to Gaul and died there a month later, his throat slit ear to ear. She had seen it. She knew. There would be no farm for him, no bower of grape vines or arching olive trees. He would die as he had lived, in blood and gore. Victoria wiped her nose.
And Torgal. He also had died for her. She wished the sedative would work faster. She splashed the bath water in her face and used the end of a towel to dry her eyes and her nose. Those chains were there because he had been found in the straw with her the day before her wedding to another man. Her espoused husband and his brothers had taken Torgal and bound him in a neighbor’s remote farmstead until his family could pay restitution for her virginity. Her wedding day had been more like a funeral. Her husband had shut her in her room and not come to her that night to consummate the marriage.
He had married her for her beauty and for her dowry, but now she disgusted him. Not disgusted enough to give up the rich farmland that came with her hand, but enough to keep him from touching her. When pressured by the law weeks later, he had held her down and f*cked her with his brothers and uncles in the room as witnesses. She had screamed. It had hurt. She remembered the cheers from the drunken men on the other side of the door. They had made a party of it. Her husband had beat her afterwards, but never touched her or spoke to her again.
She had lived that life in shame and desolate loneliness, dying years later of some pulmonary disease in the dead of winter with no children or friends or family to mourn her. She saw this. And she saw that it was her love for Torgal that had precipitated this disaster. She had arranged for him to meet her, she had thrust herself into his arms. A young girl’s selfish foolishness and a belief in true love had ruined the lives of three people.
Victoria dunked her head in the soapy and water and rubbed her face with the towel again. She still did not feel clean. She took great gulps of the steamy air and blew them out like she had learned to do in yoga class. It did not help. She felt as filthy and disgusting as a sewer bubbling up from broken pipes. Michael Brand, from Legal entered her mind and she let out a great long groan. Here was another man, an innocent man, not even a lover, and he was dead because of her. His children had no father, his wife no husband in her bed at night. All because of her. And she was supposed to be glad with the money from the settlement. Blood money.
She slid under the water and put her feet up on the spigot. She wondered if it hurt to drown.
“Victoria! Stop this!” A hand grabbed her by the hair and brought her face back into the air. “There is nothing more disgusting than self-pity. Do you understand me?”
She opened her eyes and her sedative-dulled mind struggled to recognize Albert Magnus. She sputtered a drugged greeting.
“Jasper told me you were sliding down that path again. We are trying to help you, Victoria. Why won’t you take the sandwich?”
She blinked. It had sounded like he was offering her a sandwich. She shook her head, but it did not clear. She still felt like a brick in the bottom of a tub of water. She couldn’t eat. She may never eat again. Her stomach twisted and agreed with her. Something was lifting her from the water and wrapping her in a towel. Someone was speaking, but it seemed like a foreign language. She sniffed. Soap got in her nose and her eyes burned. Strong hands rubbed a rough towel over her face.
“You are going to fall asleep, Victoria. There is nothing we can do to stop it.” She understood those words. “You should not have taken the sedative. Now you will sleep and the dreams you dream will not be your own, but the wild images of your emotions. You have made it worse. You cannot hide from the truth. You cannot drown your sorrows or erase your pain by deflecting or ignoring it. You have to face them, Victoria. You have to look them in the eye and conquer them.”
“No, I don’t,” she slurred.
She heard him sigh. “Yes. You are right about that. And you have not for many centuries, yes. You are right,” he agreed again sadly, “but he is here, he has come to you in this time and he is trying to save you, Victoria. He is trying to save you from yourself but you will not let him.”
She rolled to one and realized she was now in her bed. Mr. Magnus had her hand and was patting it. She tried to squeeze it to let him know she was listening, but her muscles refused to obey any direct orders from her brain. It was foggy and warm and soft fluffy blankets and litters of mewling kittens surrounded her. She smiled. This is nice.
It wasn’t nice. Lord Brigayne’s men dropped her unceremoniously off in front of the cottage. Jack saw their horses as they trotted around the bend in the road and left his forge. His eyes were angry and sad and his mouth was in a firm line that told her he did not want to talk about it. Then he saw her bloody skirts.
She had guessed right. His face darkened and without a word to her he turned and strode to the barn. Victoria was watching now. Maggie cried for him to stop, but she did not go after him. Instead she limped into the cottage and closed the door. The barn doors opened and the big cart horse leaped out wearing only a bridle and Jack on his back. Victoria followed him. She was like a ghost flying through the air over his left shoulder. She tried to reach out and touch him but could not.
She followed as he galloped to the manor house. She was there when he leaped from the horse, and when he dropped the reins as he landed and let the animal run down the road. That is when she realized he knew he would not be going back to the forge or to Maggie. Victoria wondered if she were watching events as they happened or if this was like a memory play-back. He took the steps three at a time and drew a sword from his belt. Victoria knew this blade was another he had made for another man, a marquis who lived in the next county. The first two servants who tried to stop him from entering the house were slain with a heavy backhanded blow from that sword. The next one tried closing a door on him. He was knocked down. The next held a chair as one would fend off a wild animal. And Jack was wild. She saw it in his eyes. She saw it in the way his hair stood on end and the way he waved the sword. He was breathing through his teeth with a loud hissing sound and his jaw muscles bulged. The chair was splintered and the servant fled as Jack made his way to the second floor up the grand staircase.
Lord Brigayne met him, sword drawn on the mezzanine. He held the scabbard in his left hand like a shield. He fell into a practiced en gard and the smirk on his face told her that he had no fear of the blacksmith.
“You made this fine sword, John. You did not expect you would have to battle it.”
Jack waved the sword in his hand as one would swing an ax or a scythe. He had no training in swordplay.
“I’m sorry about Maggie, John. Truly. I did not mean to harm her.”
Jack did not answer but his face purpled with rage and he charged. Victoria put a ghostly hand to her throat. The battle was one sided at first. Lord Brigayne easily dodged the attack and slapped Jack on the back with the flat of his blade as the bigger man sped past. He was playing.
Jack was not. He turned at the end of the walkway and raised the sword. Lord Brigayne raised his and they stepped together. The two blades clashed with the ringing sound of beautifully worked steel. Brigayne stepped neatly to and fro, avoiding Jack’s murderous sweeps easily. He would touch Jack here and there with the tip, ripping his tunic and breeches with little laughing snorts. Jack bled from many minor cuts and did not seem to be winning this fight. Victoria was puzzled. He was supposed to be winning. Brigayne kept Jack moving backward which Victoria knew from watching the Olympics was very disadvantageous. Had this been a sporting event Brigayne would be racking up the points while Jack was clearly out of his league.
Out of his league in skill, but not strength. She watched his face and saw when that realization came over him. He relaxed his jaw and started to use his body instead of his arm. He turned and twisted to dodge Brigayne’s thrusts and used his longer legs and greater strength to his advantage. She saw that he was no longer trying to beat him with the steel, but to disarm the lord. It happened in a flash. Brigayne’s sword missed a stab at Jack’s chest and passed harmlessly under his arm. At that moment Jack turned and brought his sword down as one would swing a golf club. His blade met Brigayne’s at a right angle, the force of the blow knocked the hilt from the lord’s hand and sent the blade clattering over the rail of the mezzanine and to the floor below. Jack threw his blade after it.
This act surprised both Brigayne and Victoria. But just for a moment. Jack was on Brigayne in two steps with a wicked upper cut. The lord went down on his back, surprise in his eyes. He had probably never been struck in his life. Jack danced backwards, his great fists balled up like boulders. His shoulders moved back and forth as he evaluated his enemy. Brigayne did not want to play any game he could not win, and now his face held none of its previous arrogance. He got to his feet and put his hands in front of him in the universal gesture of a time out. His eyes darted over the servants gathered on the floor below, watching this drama.
“Go for the sheriff’s men,” he shouted at them. Make sure they bring a pistol.”
A pistol. The great equalizer. Then this was at least seventeenth century, probably eighteenth, the historian in Victoria noted. Jack swung at Brigayne and missed. The lord ducked and danced away, reluctant to engage those huge fists and arms. Jack outweighed him fifty pounds at least. Brigayne shouted at the servants to get the groundskeeper and “have him bring a shovel!” Jack swung again and this time connected with Brigayne’s chest. The lord staggered back and put his fists up. He glared at Jack. “How dare you, ruffian. How dare you strike me. That blow was your death.”
Jack sneered at him and threw another punch, then bounced back on the balls of his feet. He ducked, weaved between Brigayne’s arms and connected a heavy straight armed blow directly on his nose. The lord’s head snapped back and Victoria could hear a popping sound. There would be a broken nose and a concussion from that strike. Jack did not stop, but followed up with mini jabs at Brigayne’s’ neck and chest before landing another powerful punch on the lord’s jaw that snapped his head back so far his nose pointed straight up. Brigayne went down and was still. One leg twitched and Victoria watched from over Jack’s shoulder as a puddle of piss formed under Brigayne’s buttocks. That’s when she knew the lord was dead. Jack knew it too.
He put his fists down and leaned over the mezzanine’s rail. All the lord’s servants stood looking up at him in horror. The groundskeeper was there with his shovel, but he didn’t come up the stairs. Jack turned his head. All the doors on the next floor were closed and bolted. Outside they all heard the sound of galloping horses and shouting men. Victoria wondered if she needed to stay to watch any more of this. There was no place for him to hide, no place to run to. He had murdered Lord Brigayne in broad daylight in front of a dozen witnesses. She watched his face. She saw no regret. He then turned sad eyes down to the floor and she knew he was thinking of her. Of Maggie. Victoria tried to touch him. Her ghostly hands went right through his sweating body. As the sheriff’s men barged in through the front doors with rope and swords and one heavy pistol, Jack put his hands up and surrendered. Victoria covered her eyes. She did not want to see the rest.
But she had to. Even with ghostly eyes closed, she stood before the gibbet with every member of the village as Jack swung back and forth over the wooden platform. She tried to turn around, but he hung there everywhere she looked, hand and feet tied, but no hood covered his purple death face. Victoria turned away. Sedatives could not help her here. Jasper and Mr. Magnus had been right.
They were both looking at her when she opened her eyes for real. “Ugh,” she groaned. “That was a really bad trip.” She moved her hands and feet. They hurt.
Mr. Magnus steadied her as she tried to sit. “It can only get worse unless you listen to me.”
She winced and touched her forehead where a flamenco headache was forming. “I’m listening,” she whispered.
“He is not dead. We will start with that.”
She looked at him, then at Jasper. She frowned, then thought better of that. “This is why I do not listen to you. I saw him die.”
“Everyone dies.” Mr. Magnus sat on her bed. “Many times. It is an inescapable fact. The first thing you must do is stop thinking that death is a ‘bad thing’. We can’t go any further while you are still under the impression that the worst thing that can happen to a person is for him or her to die.”
She took a deep breath. ”Okay.”
“You are humoring me. Let us pretend that it is true. That may be easier for you at first.”
She nodded, then winced. Jasper handed her a glass of water and she drank it gratefully.
Mr. Magnus continued. “Pretend then. Pretend all of life is a video game, and that you must learn the rules as you go. There are no cheats. Are you following me?”
She handed the glass back to the monkey demon. “I am.”
“When you die you get a re-start. Sometimes back to the beginning, and sometimes further along. What do they call those?”
“A save-point”
“Fine. Then we will call that a save-point. You do have a mission, just as in the game, and every time you fail to complete that mission you return. Sometimes in a different century, sometimes in a different country, always in a different body but some things remain the same so you can recognize them in the cloudy mists of eternity.”
“His scar?”
“Exactly. He is trying to contact you and get you to remember him. You resisted at first because the memory was too painful. You made up all kinds of fantastic reasons that this could not be Torgal or Marcus or Jack. You formed him into a demon and an incubus. You told yourself you might be crazy. You took the sedatives. Anything to keep from facing the truth, Victoria.”
She wanted something stronger than a glass of water before she must ask him the inevitable question. Jasper grinned and help up a smaller glass. She sipped and recognized a gin and tonic. She smiled back, but her eyes were leaking tears as she asked, “What is the truth, then, Mr. Magnus?”
“You are not responsible for his deaths. None of them. We each die our own deaths for our own reasons. Your guilt and erroneous beliefs are what are imprisoning you. Wake up and see the bars of this prison, Victoria. Shake them with both hands and then turn the lock and let yourself out. I can’t turn that lock for you.”
“Where is he?”
“He can’t come to you until you have jettisoned this tremendous guilt. You have told yourself for centuries now that you don’t deserve a lover. You don’t deserve to love or be loved. You don’t deserve happiness. You need to be punished forever. These beliefs become real and you have now found yourself in Hell. A Hell of your own making. These beliefs have formed a great barrier that he cannot penetrate. He is trying to get you out. He has been trying for a long time. He loves you so much. He will never give up trying.”
Victoria sniffed. “Which one?”
Mr. Magnus patted her shoulder. “All of him.”
“How,” she paused, thinking, “how can I stop?”
“You just stop believing you need to be punished for these imagined crimes.”
Victoria drained the gin and tonic and handed the glass back to Jasper. “I stop believing.”
“Yes.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes, Just like that.”
“Impossible.” She remembered Jack’s eyes when he saw her bloody skirts, and Torgal’s eyes as he slowly bled to death in the woods. And Marcus. Her guilt for his death was worse, for when she had been the little slave girl she had been the only gentleness in his life. He had nothing but his body and his weapons. She saw the miles and miles and miles he marched in his sandals thinking of her. Seven years he lived in poverty, saving his meager salary for the chance to buy her one day. Every time they made love, the episode was re-run in his mind for months until he returned to her again. When he was not on duty, his mind was with her. She was like a lifeline for him. A lifeline of tender beauty in a brutal world of death and war. Victoria’s lips twisted and hot tears ran down her face.
Jasper handed her a tissue. She blew her nose. The monkey demon said to Mr. Magnus, “She’s doing it again.”
“Victoria. You see how these thoughts affect your emotions? You flail yourself with them. Stop. Let’s pretend something different. Remember Marcus. Remember him. Now change the event so you save him instead of condemn him. Do it now.”
That was intriguing, and the thought that she might step in and save him made her take a deep breath and blow out the sad thoughts. “I can do that?” she asked.
Mr. Magnus nodded to Jasper, who took the tissue form her hand and she found herself in Rome. She looked down to see the beautiful collar of coral and lapis. She was perfumed and oiled and dressed in her veils and jangling ankle bracelets and a beaded belt.
She bent her head to see her long black hair fall over her little breasts. Footsteps in the corridor. She backed against the wall. The door opened and Marcus was there, backlit against the oil lamps in the hallway. He closed the door behind him and whispered, “Alana?”
She stepped into his arms. His kiss was gentle and he held her like she was a great treasure, like a songbird. He breathed a long sigh into her neck and caressed the curve of her back and over her buttocks. Alana responded with her own sigh. Victoria knew Marcus would lay Alana carefully on the cushions. He would stroke her with wispy feathery touches and whisper his love for her. When his cock could no longer be ignored he would slide it gently into her and nuzzle her neck as he carefully stroked inside. He was her most attentive lover. He worshipped her body with his own. And that would be how they were caught. Too much foreplay. Victoria knew this though Alana did not. She took Marcus’ hand and made Alana say, “We should go to a different room. This one is too dangerous.” She knew that they would be caught if they stayed. Alana would be dragged to the bathhouse and bent over a massage platform and raped by all of Cestius’ men until she died. Marcus would be in chains for thirty days and then sent to Gaul. He must obey her. She must make him stop.
He did not want to stop. His voice was honey persuasion. “We cannot. There are guards at each intersection. You remember Publius comes tonight to visit Cestius. That is how I was able to get away from the barracks.” He tried to press her to kneel on the cushions. “I volunteered to cover the evening watch. I go on at midnight. It has to be now.”
Victoria made Alana resist. “But they will search this room, looking for me. We cannot be here together when they do,” she said. It was true.
“You have to work tonight?” he sounded so disappointed.
Good idea. “Yes, he wants me to serve the wine.”
Marcus’ face darkened. “Serve the wine. That is euphemism for…”
“No,” she quickly amended. “Really. Just serve the wine. Antonia is for Publius tonight.”
“That pig,” Marcus spat. He did not like the senator. He grumbled as he ran his hands up and down her smooth arms and finally took her hands. “I go on at midnight. Remember.” He drew her in and kissed her so softly. His eyes were big and dark in the dimly lit room. She saw his love there. Changing this moment in time brought out a variety of possibilities now. She could close her eyes as he nibbled the edge of her jaw near her ear and see herself on his farm. He had bought her from Cestius when he retired. He had saved every piece of silver for seven years to be able to afford her. By then she was almost twenty five and Cestius has chosen a new favorite from the younger girls. Her price was high, but not so high that a determined soldier could not buy her. She saw herself milking a goat, picking olives. She felt him press himself inside her every night and telling her how precious she was to him. She heard him tell stories from the battlefield and saw herself gasp. He would laugh softly and draw her onto his lap and kiss her head. “Those days are over,” he would whisper in her ear. He would lay her down in the thick green grass of his pastures and love her with long slow strokes and tender kisses.
Victoria felt a great relief as he ducked out the door and she listened to his sandals as they slapped the stone to the edge of the corridor and down the marble stairs. She sighed with relief and she was alone when the servants opened the door and said, “Time to serve the wine, Alana.”