Time's Convert
“I put mint in it,” Marcus explained, “just like Tom taught me.”
“And this Tom, he was your brother?” Brother Andrew eyed him over the cup.
“Just someone I knew once.” Marcus turned away.
“I think you are someone who has traveled far, and been known by many names,” Brother Andrew commented. “Like me. Like Brother Matthew.”
“The chevalier de Clermont?” Marcus was surprised. “I have never heard him called anything else, except for his Christian name Matthew.”
“And yet today he answered to Sebastien, when one of the German soldiers called out to him.” Brother Andrew sipped at his tea. “What other names do you answer to, Brother Chauncey?”
Somehow, Brother Andrew had divined that Marcus was not who he seemed to be.
“I answer to Doc,” Marcus replied, making for the door. “The liniment is on the table. Have Sister Magdalene warm her hands before she applies it. Twice or three times a day will help to ease the spasms as well as the tightness in your chest.”
“Once my wife answered to Beulah. Before that, she had another name—one her mother and father gave her.” Brother Andrew’s eyes were unfocused, as though he had forgotten Marcus was in the room. “When we were married, I asked for that name, but she said she no longer remembered it. She said the only name that mattered was the name she took when she was made free.”
Marcus thought of all the names he had gone by in his life—Marcus and Galen, Chauncey and MacNeil, Doc, and boy, and once even son. If he ever married, and his wife asked him his true name, which one would he share with her?
* * *
—
THE NEXT DAY, Bethlehem had returned to some semblance of its normal routine. Congress had left town, and the windows of the Sun Inn were flung open to air out the rooms. All of the wagons save one had moved on, along with most of the guards and the camp followers—except for Gerty, who had decided to stay in Bethlehem. Marcus had seen her outside the bakery, talking nonstop in her native language. Some of the brethren were already at work in the fields to the south of town, replacing the fence posts the soldiers had burned in their campfires and raking the manure left by the horses in the trampled buckwheat fields.
In der Platz, a small group of men were lifting the statehouse bell out of the broken wagon. The spokes that Brother Andrew and the chevalier de Clermont had been working on last night were not for a new wheel but a whole new wagon. How the Brethren had managed to construct it so quickly was a mystery. It stood next to the old one, waiting for its cargo.
Marcus watched as the men strained and struggled with the heavy load. Only one man seemed oblivious to the weight: the chevalier de Clermont. His grip on the bell never loosened, and no groans or complaints issued from his lips.
But it was not only the men who were participating in the work taking place in der Platz. A few of the sisters were assisting the process, adjusting ropes and darting to place another block under the wagon’s wheels to keep it steady. A group from the children’s choir stood nearby while their teacher explained what was happening, highlighting the mathematics and engineering that had been used to figure out the best way to transfer the bell from one wagon to another.
Brother Andrew kept a close eye on the new wagon as the statehouse bell was placed inside and the blocks were removed to allow its slow descent down the road to the creek. The brethren and sisters broke into spontaneous applause when the wagon started to move. Marcus joined them.
“Perhaps you will stay here, Liebling, and learn German?” Gerty smiled at Marcus, exposing the gaps where she was missing teeth. “I think you might enjoy life among the single brethren—for a time. Then perhaps you might court Sister Liesel, and start a family.”
For a moment Marcus considered what life would be like were he to leave the army and stay in Bethlehem, working alongside Brother Eckhardt in the laboratory, spending more time with John Ettwein, reading the books in the Gemeinhaus.
“To join the Brethren, you have to tell your life’s story and how you found God.” The chevalier de Clermont was standing only a few feet away, listening to every word.
A sense of danger surrounded the French soldier, as though de Clermont knew Marcus’s true name—and what had happened in Hadley.
“La!” Gerty waved her hand. “Doc will make something up. Something so full of sin it will satisfy even the Brüdergemeine. I will help you, Doc, by sharing some of my own life history with you.” Gerty gave him a salacious wink and strolled away.
“Stay with Dr. Otto and the army, Doc,” de Clermont advised. “They’re family enough.”
For now, Marcus thought. For now.
PART 2
’Tis Time to Part
Male and female are the distinctions of nature, good and bad the distinctions of heaven; but how a race of men came into the world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished like some new species, is worth enquiring into, and whether they are the means of happiness or misery to mankind.
—THOMAS PAINE
18
Fifteen
28 MAY
When Phoebe awoke on her fifteenth day as a vampire, she discovered that the world was somehow more sensual than it had been only the day before. The touch of silk on her skin was so arousing, so provocative, that she sought refuge in nakedness, shedding her nightgown so quickly that the straps broke and the seams tore.
That had been a mistake.
The breath of air that caressed her bare neck reminded her of Marcus. The feel of cool sheets took her back to his bed. But the softness of the pillow where she rested her cheek was a poor substitute for his familiar body.
Phoebe had taken a shower to cool down her heated thoughts, but it only made the throbbing between her legs worse. Her slippery fingers had dipped into her cleft to ease the pressure, but her mind would not be still, and her touch brought no relief. She picked up a bar of soap and threw it at the porcelain wall in frustration, unsatisfied.
It had been a very long day.
Françoise delivered a tray to Phoebe’s room shortly before midnight. On it was coffee, dark chocolate, and red wine—the only substances she could stomach at this point in her development besides blood.
“Soon, you will have to feed,” Françoise said as she slowly plunged the mesh filter down into the glass carafe. “And not on cat.”
Phoebe was riveted by the suggestive slide of metal against glass. It reminded her suddenly, sharply, of Marcus and sent a ripple of need through her body. Memories flooded her mind.
She was in her flat in Spitalfields. It was the first night Marcus had made love to her. He had been so gentle, never breaking the connection with her eyes as he slowly—so slowly—entered her. They hadn’t made it to the bed that first time, or the second.
Phoebe closed her eyes, but the heavenly scent of coffee set her mind racing down another of memory’s paths.
It was a warm, languid New Orleans morning in Marcus’s house on Coliseum Street. The aroma of chicory and coffee beans was a darkly bitter note in the bright air. Ransome had left them alone after regaling them with tales from last night’s business at the Domino Club. Marcus was still chuckling over one of the stories, a cup of steaming liquid before him, his fingers cool in spite of the heat, one hooked into the waist of the pajama bottoms she’d found in the chest of drawers. They were softly worn, the legs rolled up so that she wouldn’t trip on their length. Marcus added another finger to the first, both moving in a sinuous pattern on her lower back, and pressed a kiss to her damp neck in a promise of the afternoon pleasures to come.
Phoebe’s mouth watered. She swallowed, shifting in her chair.
“You need blood.” Françoise’s blunt voice broke memory’s spell.
“That’s not what I want.” Phoebe’s whole body was a single, focused ache. It originated in her core, from an empty place that could only be filled by another creature.
By Marcus.
“These feelings you are having, they are a sign that you are ready to take human blood,” Françoise said, lifting Persephone from her nest in the remains of Phoebe’s nightgown and depositing the cat on the armchair. Françoise picked up the tattered silk and tossed it in the laundry basket hidden in the wardrobe.