I had the sense, even then, that there could be nothing permanent in my life from now on.
You see, at this point, I didn’t know things were going to change. I had no understanding of my condition. It had no name. And I wouldn’t have known even if it had. I just assumed that was it. I was going to stay looking this age for ever. Which you might think would be quite joyful but, no, not really. My condition had already caused the death of my mother. I knew I wouldn’t be able to tell Rose or her sister about it, without putting them at similar risk. And back then, things changed fast, especially if you were young. Faces changed almost with the seasons.
‘Thank you,’ I told her.
‘It will be good for Grace, having you here. She misses her brothers greatly, we both do. But if you cause any mischief – if you bring us into any disrepute – and if you refuse to pay’ – she held the moment like a cherry still to be swallowed – ‘you will be out on your arse.’
‘In a ditch?’
‘Covered in shit,’ said little Grace, having finished her ale.
‘Sorry, Tom. Grace is her name, not a description.’
‘Shit is a fine word,’ I said diplomatically. ‘It is quick to its point.’
‘There are no ladies in this house,’ Rose said.
‘And I am no lord.’ Now wasn’t the time to tell them that I was, however, technically a member of the French aristocracy.
Rose sighed. I can remember her sighs. They were rarely sad sighs. They always had a sense of this is the way things are and how they are going to be and that is perfectly fine about them. ‘Good. Well, today is a new day.’
I liked these two. They were a comfort amid the silent howl of grief.
I wanted to stay. But I didn’t want them to be in danger. They couldn’t be curious about me. That was the main thing.
‘My mother was thrown from a horse,’ I said, from out of nowhere. ‘That’s how she died.’
‘That’s sad,’ said Grace.
‘Yes,’ said Rose. ‘Very sad.’
‘That is what I dream of sometimes.’
She nodded. She may still have had questions but she kept them inside.
‘You should probably rest today. Restore your humours. So, while we go to the orchard you can stay in the cottage. And tomorrow you can go and play your lute and bring us money.’
‘No, no, I will pay my debt. I will earn some money today. You are right, I will go into the street and I will play.’
‘Any street?’ asked Grace, amused.
‘A busy one.’
Rose shook her head. ‘You need to be in London. South of the city walls.’
She pointed. She showed me the way.
‘A boy playing the lute! They will rain pennies on you.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Look, the sun is out. There will be good crowds. It might give you new things to dream about.’
And the sun shone through the window and lit her face and strands of her brown hair turned gold, and for the first time in four days my soul – or what I used to consider my soul – for the smallest sliver of a moment felt something other than insufferable torment.
And her little sister picked up her basket and opened the door and the day streamed in, a slanted rectangle of light working its alchemy on the wooden floor.
‘So then,’ I said, as if I was going to say something more. And Rose caught my gaze and smiled and nodded as if I just had.
London, now
It is three in the morning.
I really should be in bed. There are only four hours left before I have to be up for work, for school.
Yet, realistically, there is no way I am getting to sleep. I switch off the Discovery Channel documentary about Ming, the five-hundred-and-seven-year-old clam, which I was watching on the computer.
I am sitting here staring at the screen. It probably isn’t very good for my headache to be doing this. But I am resigned to it now. It is the curse of the alba. A kind of altitude sickness, but of time, not height. The competing memories, the jumble of time, the stress of it all, made these headaches an inevitability.
And then, of course, being threatened at knife point hadn’t helped. And seeing Anton among the boys had unsettled me.
I go on the BBC and Guardian websites. I read a couple of news articles about fracturing US and Chinese relations. Everyone in the comments section is predicting the apocalypse. This is the chief comfort of being four hundred and thirty-nine years old. You understand quite completely that the main lesson of history is: humans don’t learn from history. The twenty-first century could still turn out to be a bad cover version of the twentieth, but what could we do? People’s minds across the world were filling with utopias that could never overlap. It was a recipe for disaster, but, alas, a familiar one. Empathy was waning, as it often had. Peace was made of porcelain, as it always was.
After reading the news, I go on Twitter. I don’t have an account but I find it interesting – all the different voices, the squabbles, the arrogance of certainty, the ignorance, the occasional, but wonderful, compassion, and watching the evolution of language head towards a new kind of hieroglyphics.
I then do what I always do, and type the names ‘Marion Hazard’ and ‘Marion Claybrook’ into Google, but there is nothing new. If she is alive, she isn’t using either name.
Then I head over to Facebook.
I see a post from Camille.
‘Life is confusing.’
That is all it says. It has six likes. I feel guilty about how rude I was to her. I wonder, as I often do, if it is ever going to be possible to have anything resembling a normal life. Looking at Camille made me want that. There was an intensity to her that I could sense and relate to. I can imagine sitting next to her on a bench, watching Abraham. Just sitting there, in the comfortable silence of a couple. I haven’t wanted such a thing for centuries.
I shouldn’t do anything, really. But I find myself pressing ‘like’ on her update, and even adding ‘C’est vrai’ as a comment. The moment I comment and see the words there with my name beside them I think I should delete them.
But I don’t. I leave them. And I go to bed, a bed Abraham is already asleep on. He is whimpering in his sleep.
For years now I had convinced myself that the sadness of the memories weighed more and lasted longer than the moments of happiness themselves. So I had, through some crude emotional mathematics, decided it was better not to seek out love or companionship or even friendship. To be a little island in the alba archipelago, detached from humanity’s continent, instead. Hendrich was right, I believed. It was best not to fall in love.
But recently, now, I was starting to feel that you couldn’t do mathematics with emotions. In protecting yourself from hurt you could create a new, subtler type of pain. It is a dilemma. And not one I am going to solve tonight.
Life is confusing.
That is all we really know, I think, and the thought keeps repeating like a musical motif as I slowly fall into sleep.
London, 1599
Bankside, in those days, was made up of liberties. A liberty was a designated area outside the city walls where normal laws didn’t apply. In fact, no laws applied. Anything went. Any kind of trade could be plied. Any entertainment was allowed, however disreputable. Prostitution. Bear-baiting. Street performance. Theatre. You name it. It was there.
It was an area, essentially, of freedom. And the first thing I discovered about freedom was that it smelled of shit. Of course, compared to now, everywhere in or out of London smelled of shit. But Bankside, in particular, was the shittiest. That was because of the tanneries dotted about the place. There were five tanneries all in close proximity, just after you crossed the bridge. And the reason they stank, I would later learn, was because tanners steeped the leather in faeces.