I smiled too as he lowered the violin, the song ending before I wanted it to.
“Good morning, my dear.”
“Morning, Arthur.” I crossed my arms and leaned on the doorframe, watching him place his violin in its case on the table.
“I hope my playing did not disturb you.” He snapped the case shut then turned around to face me.
“No. But that would be a sound I could wake to happily anyway.”
“Then I shall play for you at every sunrise.”
We smiled at each other across the room.
“Please, do come in, Princess.”
Unlike the hesitation I always felt to enter Mike’s room these days, I felt none walking into Arthur’s. I wandered over and took his hand, smiling when he kissed it. The smell of rosemary and mint, and the dry parch of ash from a fireplace not lit for a long time filled my nostrils. My head turned instantly to the scatter of plants and herbs all over the box seat sitting neatly in the cove of the window.
“The song I was playing, you know it, don’t you?” he asked.
I looked back at him. “It’s the same one in my music box: the one David gave me.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Who composed it?”
He leaned on the heavy wooden table and folded his arms. “Vampirie.”
I felt privileged then; felt a kind of intimacy that comes from knowing a secret no one else knows. Just the notes of that song were so wondrous, so ancient, written so long ago in a time before pianos, in a time before great composers like Mozart, who would have given anything to hear such a masterpiece—to hear notes arranged in a way no mortal had ever thought to try. And here I was, just a girl of the twenty first century, not a historian or a person of any great importance, and yet I had been privileged enough to know such a tune: a story that came from a place before time.
“May I ask”—Arthur turned to me—“who taught you the words?”
“The words?”
“Yes. You sung them once, I was told, when… the day David died.”
I swallowed, blinking. “I don’t remember doing that. Did I really?”
“Yes.” His gaze dropped to the floor.
“Well, how would I know them?”
“A question, my dear, I had hoped you might answer.”
I wandered over and moved his curtain a bit to look out his window, resting my head where the bricks cornered outward, forming a cozy nook around the box seat. Outside, a rainy sky darkened the greens, making the hedge labyrinth and the forest border look richly-colored, as if they’d been toned by enhancing the hues artificially. “Did Jason know the song?”
“He did. Why do you ask?” Arthur said, and light filled the room around me, coming through the other window as Arthur pulled back the curtains.
“Maybe he taught me the words.”
“When would he have done that?”
“In a dream. Many dreams.” My arms tightened around myself, my distracted gaze on the day below.
“Dreams, you say.” There was a fondness to Arthur’s voice. “He called them mind-links.”
“Yes. But I like to think of them as dreams.” So they don’t seem so real.
“Then he came to you other times, aside from when he bound you.”
“Yes,” I said. I knew I probably shouldn’t trust Arthur with this, especially since Mike and Morgaine didn’t even know, but something in my heart told me he would keep this secret for me.
“Was he kind to you?”
I nodded, letting my head fall softly against the bricks again after.
“I never believed he did not love you.” He stood beside me, smiling down at the rainy day. I looked up at him, tilting my head slightly since he was that bit taller, like David. “He had the council convinced his affections were a ploy, but I never believed it.”
I swallowed. “I did.”
“I know. He needed you to believe that.”
“I know,” I said, thinking about how little love that poor guy had had in his life. “Was Jason sick as a child?”
“Sick?”
“Mm.” I nodded, not really feeling like I was in the room; still standing on the cusp of my last dream. “He showed me memories.”
Arthur cleared his throat. “Yes, he was sick.”
“What was wrong with him?”
“He… Jason was four when his father saw fit to punish him for speaking out of turn by leaving him on the doorstep for the night like an ill-mannered pup.” The anger from hundreds of years gone by remained in his undertone. “The boy was near death by morning. He came down with the fever and was not predicted to last the winter. But he did, and when spring came, he showed promising signs. But he was never quite the same again. His lungs were weak, his body, even the poor boy’s soul.”
“And where were you while he was being neglected and abused?”
“Running the Set,” he said factually. “I returned that morning to find Jason pale, burning with fever, shaking under a thin blanket a maid had placed over him in the early hours. I swept him up in my arms and, once he was stable, gave his father a beating that parts of his body never recovered from.” He walked away then, taking to the other window. I watched him for a moment, seeing the weight of what his nephew suffered bearing down on him, even so far into the future. “The laws I live by, Amara, prevented I should stay with them, and it haunted me each time I left, for I knew I would return to more stories of horror. But I had no choice.”
“There’s always a choice.”
He only looked up from the window and smiled at me: a conceited smile. “I will forgive that, Princess, because you do not know Drake; you know nothing of the promise I made to him in my own blood, nor do you understand fear of cruel punishment.”
I turned away and looked back out the window. “I’m sorry, Arthur. I don’t mean to imply you didn’t care for them. It just makes me angry to think of what they went through. And I never understood it before, but it makes so much sense now—the way David is—was.” Oops.
“In what way?”
“He was so guarded, you know. He never really let me in.”
I heard Arthur sigh. “His childhood was something he tried to push down deep within his memory. It wasn’t that he kept it from you, but that he wished to forget.”
And that just made my heart bleed for him—for both boys, actually. “Why did Jason show me then?”
“He dealt with grief by talking about it. He was always a very scientifically-minded young lad—had to find a reason for most things in life, including the actions others took against him.” Arthur’s presence warmed my side before I saw him slowly appear next to me. “He told me once that he learned more about himself and his suffering by hearing other people talk about their own trials.”
“Maybe that’s why he showed me—because I’d suffered so much. Maybe he was trying to help me deal with my suffering, do you think, by showing me what he’d come through?”
Arthur’s lips turned down with thought. “Perhaps. Or perhaps he wanted you to understand his brother—to know what you had signed yourself over to.”
“What do you mean by signed myself over to?”
“Those close to David knew a different side to him.” Arthur looked down at his clasped hands. “I feared for you when David told me he was in love with a human girl. I wondered on what twisted version of this planet God would allow such a match, but it seemed you brought out the best in him, not the worst.”
“Well, what was the worst?”
“It’s not relevant, my dear. Not now. I’m just thankful you loved the side of David I knew was in there somewhere.”
“I loved all of him.” I folded my arms. “I did see another side to him from time to time,” I added, thinking about the day he nearly exploded over Pepper. “But he loved me, Arthur, and he was never harsh or cruel to me. I can’t believe there were two versions of him: this cruel boy who tormented his brother, and this sweet, loving boy who carried my books at school.”
> “Well, there are two sides to anything in life, my dear. One does not have to understand to love but must love to understand.”
I turned my head a little, a sarcasm-littered smirk twisting my lips. “Do you make those up on the spot?”
He frowned at me, growing taller. “Make what up?”
“Those lines? You could write quotes for the Dalai Lama.” I laughed lightly.
He gave a kind smile. “I came up with a good one this morning. Would you like to hear it?”
“Sure,” I said, pulling a pretend pencil from behind my ear to hold over an imaginary notepad. “Let me just jot it down.”
Arthur cleared his throat. “The branch of hatred is always grown from the seeds of greed and jealousy.”
I dropped my imaginary note-takers. “Meh, not that good.”
“Then, how ’bout: One cannot teach what must be learned; in order to give advice, you must be telling a person something they, deep down, already know.”
“Wow.” My eyes lit up. “That’s pretty good. Very true.”
He nodded.
“So, is that what you do all day? Just sit around and dream up quotable quotes.”
His lip lifted on one corner with an easy grin. “No. I’m an Herbalist.”
“A what-now?”
“See those plants there?” He pointed to his window.
“Yeah.”
“I grow them, not to look pretty in the light of the sun, but to use for medicinal purposes, mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“Yes, they have other uses, but my main focus is vampire medicine.”
“So, are you a doctor?”
He shook his head once. “I was. A long time ago.”
“How long ago?”
“When I was human. I’ve not practiced human medicine in my vampire existence, though. Only herbology for vampire treatment.”
“Wow. So, does that work—you know, the whole mystical alternative medicine thing?”
He chuckled. “Yes. In vampires, it does. I cannot speak for humans though.”
“Why? I mean, why don’t you treat humans?”
“Never had the need.”
“Not even with Jason—when he was sick?”
He shook his head. “I would not have presumed to interfere with matters I knew nothing of. It had been many centuries since I was versed in the biology of the human body. To treat him may have been to kill him.”
“I’m surprised David didn’t ask you to treat him in that case, since he hated him so much.”
He nodded again, the daylight making shadows around his soft smile. “I sometimes wondered if much of David’s hatred for his brother was merely jealousy.”
I laughed. “Oh, definitely—as adults, anyway. I mean, I don’t know about when they were kids, but David even admitted he was jealous that his brother could read vampire minds.”
“Did he now?” Arthur bounced on his toes once then sunk back down, seeming lighter. “Then he truly was a changed man.”
“Changed, huh?” I said to myself. “Was David really that bad? You talk like he was some kind of monster.”
Arthur looked down, cupping his hands behind his back. “Not a monster. He was good and kind, but had a manner about him that people did not mess with—not even those who loved him.”
“Why?”
“Because the good, kind man would become… something else when tested.”
“Did you ever see that side of him?”
“I did. However, I was not once the target of his infuriation.”
“Why not?”
“I am a figure of authority, almost like a father. David’s interactions, his respect for me, differed to those who were peers or subordinates.”
“So, people were afraid of him?”
Arthur nodded once.
“I find that hard to believe.”
“I know, and there are many stories I could tell to make you see, my dear, but I’ll not speak ill of the dead.”
“I’m sure if David could go back he’d do things differently, especially with Jason.”
“I’m sorry.” Arthur reached for my hand, holding it until I looked at him, his bright-blue eyes softening. “He did love his brother. For all they fought, I know that deep in his heart he never felt what his father did.”
“Why did his father hate Jason so much?”
Arthur straightened. “He lost his wife. She went into her room to give birth, and when the doctor opened the door, he handed Thomas two boys and a firm hand of apology. That was that. She was breathing one minute, gone the next. And there were few advances in medical science to confirm the cause of her death. He was left to believe myths, wives-tales, uneducated ideas that ruined the heart of this man because he loved his wife so deeply he could not find reason why God would take her, except that it was the devil’s doing.”
I nodded. “So, it’s like David told me: Thomas believed Jason was the devil’s incision of David’s soul—all the bad things in one boy?”
Arthur nodded. “And sadly, Jason never pitied himself this. He believed he was responsible for killing Elizabeth, never questioned it.”
I thought of a little boy with green eyes and dark hair playing quietly by a fire. Perhaps he felt content, perhaps he felt no evil in his soul, and often wondered how he could have done such terrible things before he had even taken his first breath. But this was what they told him. This was what he was.
“It’s not true, is it—he wasn’t evil?”
“My lady, there was no more evil in that child than there was love.” Arthur’s head rolled down a little, a tight breath leaving his nostrils. “Jason, somehow, was perceived the adversary at every turn, but the true monster was that which created his fury.”
“His father?”
He looked up at me. “In the beginning, yes, but when David and Jason became men, I often wondered if Thomas’ own soul had taken the heart from David—lived on in him. And in the end…”
“Jason was the monster.”
Arthur was taken aback, but softened quickly, nodding. “Then they both were.”
“No. Not David. I know he regretted everything. I know he was sorry for how he treated Jason.”
“What do you know of it?”
“I…” I looked away from Arthur. “Nothing. David never talked with me about it, but I saw it in his eyes once when I mentioned Jason. I saw the pain of regret.”
“And you forgive David for the way he treated Jason?”
“It’s not my place to forgive.”
“Is it not, when everything you suffered began from the seed of David’s hatred?”
I swallowed a hard lump in my throat. “Then yes, I guess I do forgive him. I guess I forgave him a long time ago.”
“But you have no forgiveness in your heart for Jason?”
“What does it matter? He’s dead.”
“As is David, but you feel the need to justify what he did.”
“I loved him.”
“And from that, you understand him.”
I nodded. “He had a good heart, Arthur—despite what he did to his brother.”
“Yes, we all contain good. But good is beheld only until loneliness manifests itself for too long in the hurt and the broken. Jason started out good, and died doing what was right. You cannot rightly love one beast and deny the other.”
“One beast killed my husband, the other didn’t.”
“No, my dear, venom killed your husband. Jason was merely the subject who was ordered to oversee it.”
“He could have said no. He could’ve let someone else do it.”
“And you would have had your cheeks sliced open for disobeying when you refused to bite David.”
My mind flashed back to that room—to David on his knees an inch away from death at my hands. I shuddered.
“The fact remains: sometimes, good people must do bad things. Jason was good; David was good.” Arthur looked away. “And I will never fill the emptiness their absence has lef
t in my heart.”
I realized then that the question of my love and forgiveness for these two men was not a question for me at all, but for himself. “You wonder if you should love them after what they’ve done?”
“I have asked myself that question.” He nodded. “And the answer is always, that which does not deserve love, perhaps needed it the most.”
The sparkle of tears in his eyes made me want to tell him that his nephew was still alive—that he need not grieve him. But, for the sake of a stupid prophecy and the belief of my Private Council that he was a traitor, I had to let this man suffer. We talked about good versus bad, but I wondered if, by allowing him to grieve someone who was not dead, it made us the monsters.
“Don’t question yourself, Arthur—for loving them. One thing I’ve learned through all those I loved and lost is you don’t get to choose what your heart feels. It runs by a set of its own rules.”
“That, it does.” He reached out and took my hand. “And you are too young to have this wisdom. It saddens my heart, the things you have suffered to be able to conclude such an end.”
“It’s okay.” I squeezed his hand, thankful for the warmth of friendship I felt with him. “We find new people to love, and make our lives about them, right?”
He laughed at that. “This is also true. A piece of wisdom, I believe, my David taught you?”
I smiled widely. It felt nice to know someone who knew him like I did—who loved him too. “Yes, it was.”
“He was a boy of many thoughts, himself. Shared very little with others, though. You were the first.”
“I know.” I took a deep breath and rubbed my temples then, as the day ahead entered my mind.
“Is something else troubling you, young princess?”
“Just a headache. It’s only mild, but I have them so often now I feel like a new person when I don’t.”
He moved suddenly, and I felt him behind me—the length of his body close to mine as he cupped one hand around my ponytail, gently sliding my hair-tie down the silky lengths until it all came loose. “Better?”
“Yeah. Heaps better.”
“Good,” he said, and each strand tingled along the base of my neck, my forehead and behind my ears, his deft fingers separating then twisting them into a loose plait. “You need to tie it up for training, or you may end up getting your head pinned to the ground by some knight’s knee. But this should be enough.”
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