Ruby thought of herself as a pragmatist.
She always had, and it was perhaps that tendency which had led to the great turning point of her first life – she was unmarried, and friendless in fifteenth century London. Last month, caught up in the festivities of the carnival day, she had lain with a man – and now she had not bled. Other than that, she felt herself - tried hard to visualize the possibility of life inside her, but the thought was too distant. Unreal. Uneasy.
The woman with black eyes had offered the solution – in the form of a solution, of all things:
"Don't let a man touch you for this," she'd advised. "They are fumblers, those that don't hate us on principle. I can give you a solution that will rid you of the babe, and trouble you little. You will be sick for a day or two, but after that, it will be as though the whole business had never taken place."
And Ruby feared for her immortal soul. The back room was smoky and dim, air heavy with whatever boiled in the pot on the fireplace. The shelves and every surface were cluttered with books. Ruby had never met another woman who could read before, and that intrigued her. But the strange sumbols, spirals and inverted crosses chalked on the walls and ceiling made her shift uneasily in her seat. The woman saw her looking.
"What has the Church ever done for us, sister?" she asked sharply.
"A priest taught me my letters," Ruby ventured.
"A brave individual," the old woman replied. "I suppose his beloved brethren approved this?"
"There was….dissent," Ruby admitted. The priest had been flogged: his superiors were ardent witch hunters, and considered it safest that women be kept in 'simple faith'.
"There was once a wise man," said the old woman, folding her fingers awkwardly and hunching forwards across the table to hold Ruby's eyes, "Who lived long before the Church of our days. He advised, 'Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.'"
Something thrilled in Ruby at the notion. "But," she said, "Would not a just god punish murder, regardless of the dictates of the Church?" Her hands rested uneasily on her still-flat belly.
"Murder?" The old woman raised her eyebrows. "I know what the physicians do not tell you. If there is a thing inside you now, it is no person, but a seed. It has no thought, no feeling, not one of the properties of man nor woman. Kill it now, and it will know less of its existence than the fish eaten by the monks last fasting-day. And if you do not…they must stone you, and so be guilty of a murder you could have prevented, whilst you die a slow and miserable death. Or, you and the child must starve together, in exile and hiding, and so again you will be guilty of murder. In the ways of this wicked world, do you not see that it is better for the child not to come to being? To prevent suffering is good."
Ruby nodded, slowly. The woman spoke well. And – she did not want to die. The world was wicked, true, but there was joy in it. And she was a sinner already – who knew what the afterlife boded?
"What must I give you?" she asked the old woman. The woman's eyes flashed black.
* * *
Now, even now, she did not regret it. Heaven, from what she could tell of it, was for mindless drones. Demons were individuated – some were sadists, shameless abusers of power, and some were here because they had signed over their souls for a thing which they desperately needed and which they had no other access to in their time. Sometimes their need was as simple as food – other times, as complex as a convoluted plot of multigenerational revenge. Many, such as herself, had given themselves for a thing other societies would've granted them in a heartbeat, freely. It wasn't the deal-maker which consigned one to Hell – it was the deal.
Still, she was alive in some sense, and what she had wanted as live. The halls of Pandemonium were a misery and a terror – but her forays into the upper world were life. She was herself then, and could breath the free air. It was more than could be said of God's masses.
Yes, she was a pragmatist – so naturally she planned for the end of their incarceration. Feigned to listened to Lilith's plans, that pretender, with her strident voice that echoed in the red-black caverns and set the fire-lakes to burbling. All the while knowing it was not her who would free them. When Ruby had become a demon, she had inherited the Memory – the glamour, the rumour of Him. Morning Star, Brightest of Angels, yet born with a mind, He refused to bow to His father. Not long after she had lived on earth, had come His prophet, whose beautiful words they recited:
What though the field be lost? We may with more successful hope resolve
All is not lost; the unconquerable Will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?
That Glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me! To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deifie his power,
Who from the terrour of this Arm so late
Doubted his Empire, that were low indeed,
That were an ignominy and shame beneath
This downfall; since by Fate the strength of
And this Empyreal substance cannot fail,
To wage by force or guile
Irreconcilable, to our grand Foe,
Who now triumphs, and in th' excess of joy
Sole reigning holds the Tyranny of Heav'n.
It stirred her. She told herself it was only for rational reasons, but in the secret depths of her long-preserved heart, Ruby loved.
A/N: As the summary indicates, the old woman's quotation is attributed to the Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, 121-180 AD. The verse, and the word Pan-demonium, are of the immortal Paradise Lost (1667), by John Milton, 1. 105-124. Though it is purportedly a Christian poem, most critics agree with William Blake's judgement that Milton 'was a true Poet, and of the Devil's party without knowing it'.