by April White
Finally, when Ringo had gone to his bed of rushes, and we had snuggled down into ours, I turned to Archer and whispered, “Don’t choose things just because you think I’d want them. If you want something, no matter how I might feel about it, please choose it.”
Archer kissed my forehead and then tucked me into his chest. He didn’t say the words my Archer would have said, so I did it for him. “I love you,” I whispered.
The tightening of his arms was the only clue that he’d heard me.
Dreams
The church was filled with people. Women carried babies in their arms while small children clung to their skirts. A young woman pleaded with a soldier at the door. He held his rifle in both hands and stared straight ahead as if he couldn’t see her or hear her cries.
Bas stood at the altar in his priest’s robes, directing women with prams to safe places against the walls. Saira was gathering little boys around her and quietly leading them to the door behind the altar in the south transept which Bas had shown us was the way to his sleeping crypt. She was careful to avoid the eyes of the soldiers who were filing into the nave, and kept her motions small so they didn’t attract attention.
I was the only other man in the church besides Bas, and he’d given me a set of ecclesiastical robes with which to masquerade myself. I was helping some of the young women with babies slip behind the altar to hide in the space between it and the wall. There were fifteen soldiers in the church now, all of them grim-faced and silent as they held their rifles at the ready. They wore the uniforms of the German SS, and they had the dead eyes of boys who have seen things that men should never know.
A young Frenchman slipped in through a side door that a girl had unlocked. I was about to gesture that he should leave – according to a young mother, all the men in the village had been rounded up and taken to the town square, and he could be shot for being here – but then he threw something. I watched the bottle move as if in slow motion, saw the rag hanging out, saw the fire spin with the bottle’s trajectory. And then it exploded.
Gunshots from the soldiers’ rifles filled the air. Children screamed and ran out of the nave to the north and south transepts trying to escape the deadly gunfire. My eyes locked with Saira’s as she screamed my name, and then I heard the shot that hit my chest. I felt it bury itself with a burst of heat and pain in my lungs. A rib broke and another bullet tore into my heart. I fell backwards, into the fire that still burned on the church floor.
“No!” I cried, even as I gasped at the realization that I’d been asleep. I’d been dreaming.
I wasn’t shot. The hot fire of a bullet hadn’t torn a hole in my heart.
My heart.
My heart?
I looked over at Archer, so immobile in sleep he looked dead, and leaned my head down to his chest to listen to his heart pump blood through his body. It was still beating.
That hadn’t been a dream. It was a vision Archer had of his future. The perspective was his. He had seen me with the children in the church, and when he passed the vision to me through the touch of his body as we slept, I saw what he saw. I felt the bullet bury itself in his chest. I felt the flames ignite his robes as he fell into the fire.
If it were possible, my heart pounded even harder than it had when I first woke. I sat up and looked around the barn.
Ringo still slept in his bed near the wall, his blanket tangled around him in a way that spoke of his own nightmares. Where had Ringo been in that vision? Safe, I hoped, and not with the men in the village square. Not for the first time I wondered if knowing what would come would allow us to change it.
The sun had barely risen above the midpoint in the sky, and it was much too early for someone who kept Vampire hours to be up. My heartbeat had returned to something less frantic, and I lay down again, fitting my body against Archer’s. I wondered if he would remember the vision tonight when he rose. If he didn’t, I wondered if I’d tell him.
As it turned out, I didn’t have to make that decision. For the first time in a long time, Ringo and I actually slept as long as Archer did, and the minute he sat up, Archer told me about the vision he’d had. He didn’t ask if I’d seen it, and I didn’t need to mention it because his recall was exactly what I remembered seeing.
“It was obviously at night, or neither Bas nor I would have been awake, and I didn’t see Marianne or Marcel among the women and children in the church, so perhaps it was only people who lived in the village itself that had been rounded up.” He ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “Can we warn them somehow?” Archer asked me. “Does it ever work that way?”
“We’re going to change it,” I said with conviction. “It’s against the rules for you to die because you go on to live a long and happy life with me.”
Archer didn’t say anything, but he didn’t look particularly swayed by my argument. His apparent acceptance of the vision reminded me far too much of the way Elizabeth Tudor had surrendered to the idea of her own death, and frankly, I wasn’t having any of it.
We ate dinner with Marianne and Marcel in their kitchen, but conversation was a fairly somber affair. Archer warned her about spending time in the village after dark. The German patrols were too close, he said, and Marianne accepted his word without question. Marcel told him that an older brother of one of his classmates had come by the school that day. The children had all whispered that he was in the resistance, and Marcel had been afraid of the young man, whose eyes had looked so angry. After we’d helped Marianne clean up, we went back to the barn so Archer could translate the conversations for us.
“I don’t like that the Maquis are openly entering the village during the day. It’s going to draw German eyes to this place and foster suspicion among neighbors,” he said. “Reprisals are considered a legal form of warfare, and the French resistance has certainly done enough to cause action against them and anyone who harbors them.”
I shrugged. “Tell Nancy to put her Maquis on a leash.”
He looked thoughtful for a long moment. “We should warn her about what I saw.”
“Warn her? How? You can’t just walk up and say, ‘Oh, by the way, I have visions of the future sometimes, and this is what I saw…’ Best case, she doesn’t believe you. Worst case, she thinks you’re a nutjob and turns on you. It’s bad enough being English in an occupied country. If we lose our credibility with the Maquis, we’ll be hunted by all sides.”
Ringo spoke nearly the first words he’d spoken since we woke up. “She’s right. If Tom’s in Limoges, we need the Frenchies to find ‘im for us. I say we warn Bas, ‘cause ‘e’ll understand, then we go find out what Nancy knows about this village. Maybe there’s somethin’ goin’ on ‘ere that we can change.”
Archer nodded. “Fine, but let’s go to Gaspard’s farmhouse first. Bas is giving his evening mass right now and it’ll be an hour before he’s free to talk.”
We pedaled our bikes back to Gaspard’s and tucked them behind the barn where we’d gotten them the night before. Archer went to find Nancy, while Ringo and I waited outside. I was already on edge, and the idea of close quarters with any Mongers wasn’t a peaceful thought.
Archer’s vision had strung tension between all three of us, and it was affecting everyone’s mood. After a loaded silence, Ringo finally spoke in a whisper. “Meeting Bas was good for ‘im.”
I wasn’t expecting a conversation opener like that, and I waited for him to continue. His eyes were focused on the door to the farmhouse as he spoke. “Whatever story ‘e ‘ad about us—” he pointed between himself and me. “Whatever that was, it’s gone now. ‘E trusts us, or maybe ‘e trusts ‘e’s enough for ye.”
I appreciated Ringo’s insight. I’d been feeling it too, but hadn’t put it into words. “How about you? Do you trust him?”
Ringo knew what I was asking, and he took his time to answer. “It’s different ‘ere. When I first met ‘im, ‘e was gentry and I was from the street, so I was less than ‘im.”
I opened my mou
th to protest, but shut it again because he wasn’t done.
“When ye came back for me, ‘e’d lived into a future I couldn’t imagine in my wildest dreams, and ‘e’d experienced it all. So again, I was less.” He finally dragged his eyes away from the door and found my face. “In this time, ‘e’s still older and wiser than me, but I know things ‘e doesn’t, and I’ve seen things ‘e ‘asn’t. It makes us equal.”
He took a deep breath and returned his gaze to the kitchen door that Archer had just emerged from. “I wasn’t so comfortable with that at first, but now being equal feels right. And I think maybe it was just me making myself less than ‘im in those other times.”
I gripped Ringo’s hand tightly. “You’re more than just about anyone I know.”
He gave me a quick smile and squeezed my hand in return. Archer waved to us to follow him into the woods on foot, and when I couldn’t feel any Monger-proximity anymore, I finally stopped.
“Okay, what?” I whispered to Archer.
“The Maquis are planning a reprisal for the snipers,” he said grimly.
I looked at him in surprise. “Because blowing up the bridge wasn’t enough?”
“Apparently not.”
“What are they going to do?”
“Wait,” Ringo cut in, “did anyone find trace of the Werwolves in Limoges?”
Archer answered Ringo’s question first. “Yes, and no. They think they know where there’s an advance SS unit of 2nd Panzer Division hidden in Limoges, and they assume the Werwolf unit is billeted with them. The unit works at night, according to Nancy, which means they’ll be on the road hunting Maquis tonight.”
“Awesome. Makes me feel so safe in the woods.” I deadpanned.
“Their reprisal is a bigger problem for us though. They’ve captured a German Sturmbahnführer – a man named Kämpfe – and plan to send a ransom note for him, just so there’s no confusion about who has him.”
Ringo scoffed. “This isn’t a battlefield. These are villages full of farmers and their families. Ye don’t go stingin’ soldiers like that. They’ll not just swat at ye, they’ll burn yer ‘ive.”
Archer’s mouth was a grim line. “Considering the vision I’ve had, I’d say that’s quite likely what will happen.”
“Can ye get them to release ‘im?” Ringo’s voice sounded a little desperate.
“I tried. I’m not sure he’s not already dead.”
Ringo threw up his hands. “It’s goin’ to ‘appen then, isn’t it.” It wasn’t a question, and Archer didn’t bother to answer.
Archer looked at me. “We need to warn Bas.”
The village of Oradour-sur-Glane seemed deserted as we slipped along its cobbled streets. Luckily, the church was on a hill above the central square, so we didn’t have to sneak past too many shops and homes to get there.
The sundown mass was long over, though candles still flickered at the entrance to the church. It was a formidable building, made of stone rising up from the top of its hill. It almost seemed more like a castle, and could have been one in another time.
I just barely held back the gasp that threatened when we stepped inside, and Archer’s expression had turned to stone. This was the church from his vision. This was where it would happen.
The design was classic for a Catholic church – a building in the shape of a cross. We had entered at the bottom, and the long part of the cross was the nave, which held wooden benches with seating for about a hundred people. The main altar stood at the far end of the church just in front of a stone wall, and was topped by a simple, but elegant window. The window was about six feet off the ground inside the church, but might have been ten or twelve feet from the ground outside given how the building was perched on the hill.
There were two other altars in the wings on each side of the nave. Archer had known the wings were called the north and south transepts in his vision, just like he had known that Bas’ safe place to sleep could be accessed behind the south transept altar.
It was surreal to stand in this empty room that I’d seen only a few hours ago full of women and children and soldiers with guns.
Ringo was the only one of us who strolled around with interest examining the icons on the walls. He had seen us both stop and seemed to be giving us space to deal with the aftershock of Archer’s vision. He disappeared into the south transept, and then I heard Bas’ voice greet him warmly.
Archer turned me to face him and searched my eyes. “You Saw it too, didn’t you? Just like in 1888, when I Saw your mother, you Saw this.”
I nodded, and my voice came out in a whisper. “It’s happened since then – about Ringo getting tortured. It’s what sent us back to Tudor England.”
He pulled me to his chest and held me tightly. “I didn’t want you to See it. I don’t want you to see me die.”
I pulled back and glared at him. “You don’t get it!” My whisper was fierce. I didn’t want to fight with him, but I wasn’t giving in to this, because it could. Not. Happen. “Whatever you Saw, whatever horrible things might happen, you are NOT going to die! Get that through your head so we can figure out how to keep it from happening at all. Because if you give in to it, we’ll be powerless to change it.”
I was closer to tears than I wanted to be, and I turned away from him to get my pounding heart under control. Archer pulled me back against his chest and held me in his arms.
“Marry me and I can let go of the fear.”
What?
I turned to search his face, and he saw the confusion in my eyes. He repeated softly. “Marry me, and then everything I have is yours.”
The choke hold on my voice let go as anger took its place. “What does that have to do with anything? You want me to marry you so I can … what, inherit after you die? Are you insane?” Now I was yelling, and I didn’t care if Bas and Ringo heard this fight. “That’s the last reason on the planet I would ever marry you or anyone!”
I took a step backward, away from him, but he wouldn’t let me go. His hands held my upper arms firmly, and he made me look him in the eyes. “I told you I should have married you when we first met, and you’ve told me that I want to in your time. So, there’s intent that has nothing at all to do with assets.”
I almost huffed an eye-roll, I was that mad, but he still continued. “This is about war, and chance, and opportunity, and love. No—” He shook his head, which was interesting enough that I let him continue. “Who am I kidding. It’s all about love. I love you so much that since I woke up tonight, my soul has been screaming Marry her! Marry her so no matter what else happens, no matter what horrors you’ll face, you’ll have this moment of pure … light. Light and goodness and rightness and truth. That’s why marrying you would erase my fear, because nothing can take away the peace of knowing I belong to the person who makes me feel whole, and she belongs to me.”
I stared at Archer, and his eyes searched mine for some clue to what I was thinking.
Good luck with that, I thought. I had no idea what I was thinking. I couldn’t actually think. My brain had gone into deep freeze shock and looking out through my eyeballs felt like seeing underwater.
“Hey, Saira!” Ringo called from somewhere over my head.
We both looked up. There was Ringo, sitting on a rafter above the altar where he had probably heard every word. He waved cheerily at us and then called out again. “I dare ye.”
I had no idea if he was daring me to climb or daring me to marry Archer. All I knew is that he had given me a reprieve from my brain-freeze and I could have kissed him for it. Archer knew it too, because he smiled and released my arms. “Go,” he whispered. “Show him how it’s done.”
I did kiss him, which surprised us both.
And then I ran.
I sprinted the length of the nave and bounded up the main altar. I was probably going to hell for desecration of a holy piece of furniture, but I figured I was already going for much more egregious transgressions, and I needed the height.
From th
ere, I leapt to the window sill, which I used as a springboard to the heavy chandelier that hung over the altar. Because chandeliers actually beg for it.
The chandelier did that thing they always do when someone jumps forward to grab ahold of them – it swung. Away from Ringo’s rafter, which was to be expected, so I had to use my own body weight to give it forward momentum. This wasn’t a new move, or even a particularly creative one, but the rafter I was going for was higher than the chandelier. It was, in fact, the same height as the one the heavy brass fixture hung from. Consequently, I wasn’t gaining momentum so I could let go, I used the momentum to flip myself forward and up onto the arms that held the lights.
The fixture beneath me now swung wildly without my weight to steady it, and I had to use my hands and feet like a monkey to make it up the chain. Then it was just a playground swing up to the top of the rafter, and a balance-beam run to the corner where Ringo sat grinning at me.
There was applause from Archer and Bas below us. I waved, and then dropped down to sit next to Ringo with my legs dangling over the edge.
“Pretty fancy,” he said graciously.
“The fact that I didn’t even see you get up here means you did it in stealth-mode. Which way did you come?”
Ringo pointed out his route, which was definitely less showy than mine had been, but would have taken a lot less effort too. Then we sat in companionable silence for a moment, watching Bas show Archer around the church and talking in tones too low for us to hear.
“So, are ye goin’ to do it?” Ringo finally asked.
“Marry him?” I couldn’t look at Ringo, so I kept my eyes on the two Vampires.
“Yeah.”
I shrugged. “I’m too young.”
“Hmm.” He made a non-committal noise in his throat. “What’s marriage mean to ye, then?”
I looked at him then, but there was nothing piercing or particularly focused about his gaze. It was like he was just shooting the breeze with his question. Somehow, that made me relax.
