A/N: This is the surprise chapter! Literally, it was a surprise to me. This story has expanded beyond the length, I'd expected, and the six-parter is now a seven-parter. I will note that the last chapter has been written, bar polishing, so I don't think this will expand any further than it has.

Damascus Road

Chapter Four: Like Adamant Draw

"thou like adamant draw mine iron heart"

~ John Donne, Divine Meditations I

England, Spring 1940

Peter was annoyingly underfoot or overhead in the succeeding weeks, turning up to scold wherever Edmund happened to be. Even after the promised apology had been delivered (Herbert had looked at him like a scared rabbit when he first approached until the words were out, and then he'd looked sarcastically over Edmund's shoulder at the hovering Peter before walking away), Peter seemed to have made it his mission to catch Edmund in some misdeed. He hadn't shown half as much interest in his younger brother the previous fall.

Edmund began to think that Spencer, for all his faults, had more than a few points about Peter. He was a sneak and a goody goody. The worst of it was that Peter seemed to have recruited the rest of the family into his crusade. There had been a letter from Susan in early March in which she'd said nothing outright, but implied much.

Dear Edmund,

Si vales valeo. I'm studying Latin which is quite a lovely language, but rather difficult. I prefer French. For Latin, we were each required to stand up and recite a memorized phrase, and that was mine. It means, 'If you are well, then I am well,' and the Romans used it to begin their letters. So, are you well? How are your studies? Have you made any new friends? Peter says he often sees you with the older boys which doesn't surprise me as you're so clever. I'm sure you could be such a help to the boys in your own form, teaching them what comes naturally to you. It will make Mother so pleased to hear you are doing well. You know how she worries, especially now with Father fighting. I'm sure she'd love a letter from you.

The new Head seems less nervous than the old one, so hopefully we'll complete the full term. If she doesn't send us home early this time, I'll see you on the train for Easter hols, but try to write before then.

Your sister,

Susan

Edmund scowled at the letter. Susan didn't badger him quite so much as Peter, but only because she tried to be tricky about it. Calling him clever was a cute way of trying to get him to abandon his friends. He could just imagine what Peter had told her about Brimlow and the others. Peter just couldn't stand the fact that anyone didn't worship the ground he walked on. There were actually people who liked Edmund more than they did him, and it must really gall his older brother, if Peter was getting Susan involved in trying to sabotage Edmund's friendships. It was sad, honestly. Just pathetic.

###

Mr. Stephens came to pick them up at the station. Edmund ducked his head and tried to hide his face as the trunks were loaded onto the truck, but Lucy (come along for the ride), made circumspection difficult.

"I'm so glad Easter's come!" she said, throwing her arms around Peter without a glance at Edmund or Susan. "I've missed you so much!"

Edmund rolled his eyes. "It's not Easter yet," he muttered. "Not until Sunday."

Susan frowned at him, but Lucy and Peter didn't seem to hear. Peter smiled and tugged on her braids. "We missed you too," he said.

"Yeah," said Edmund more loudly this time. "A silly little girl is exactly what we needed at school."

Lucy's face crumpled. She looked at him reproachfully. Susan reached out to hug her.

Peter glared at him. "Bad form, Ed."

Mr. Stephens frowned, as well. "There's no call for that, son."

Edmund glared at the man. "I'm not your son! Mydad isn't a traitor."

Susan gasped. "Edmund!" Lucy looked up from Susan's chest wide-eyed.

"Bad form," said Peter again. He turned to the grocer, apologetically. "I'm sorry, sir. It's been a long train ride. He doesn't know what he's saying."

He knew exactly what he was saying. Someone had to. "I'm going to walk," announced Edmund.

"No, you're not," said Peter.

"Mum doesn't want us going off alone," Susan said.

"We can wait a few minutes," said Mr. Stephens, as if Edmund hadn't just called him a traitor to his face. Too much of a coward even to deny it, thought Edmund. "But I know your mother and Herbert's are getting a nice supper ready."

"I'm going to walk," Edmund repeated. "I'm not getting in that truck." He started walking down the street to prove it.

"Ed," Peter called after him angrily, but he picked up his pace. "Edmund!" After a few moments, Edmund heard a noise of frustration, an indistinguishable murmur, and the sound of feet pelting after him.

Peter had longer legs. He caught up quickly. Edmund didn't stop walking. "I'm not going ba-" he began.

His older brother interrupted. "You're not going anywhere alone. It's my job to look after you." His expression was fierce. "Even when you do act like a spiteful, little wretch."

Edmund kicked a pebble in his brother's direction. "So you're just going to leave the girls alone, then?"

"Mr. Stephens will take them home," said Peter. "He's a good friend and a neighbor. He was very kind to come get us. When Mum hears how rude you were, she'll be mortified."

"She'll be mortified. I don't see how she can be so friendly to him when Dad's off fighting for the country, and he just hides here." Edmund stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked as quickly as he could. Peter had no right to fuss at him about anything. He only hoped none of the other boys had witnessed the scene. Peter Pevensie making nice with a coward and a traitor. He, Edmund, had refused to have anything to do with it.

Come to think of it, maybe it wouldn't be so bad if anyone had seen them. Let people see what their precious hero was really like.

"...Hopefully, he'll still be there when we get home, and you can tell him you're sorry," Peter continued.

Edmund stopped short. Not likely. Herbert was one thing. He didn't necessarily deserve to have a worthless father, but there was no way Edmund would apologize to Carlisle Stephens. "He can't tell me what to do. He isn't Dad, and neither are you."

"He's our elder. Dad treated everyone with respect," said Peter. "If you cared that much about him or anything he said, you wouldn't be so awful to everyone."

"I'm not the one who doesn't care about Dad!" Treated, Peter had said, as if he'd already decided Dad wasn't coming back. He had the nerve to suggest Edmund didn't care about their father? Edmund didn't speak to him for the rest of the walk. When Mother greeted him at the door with a stern order to go to his room (the girls must have tattled; he and Dad were the only patriots in the family it seemed), he went gladly.

###

Edmund was bored. The vicar at St. Mary's-at-Finchley seemed to believe that a holiday gave him the right to preach an extra-long sermon and either was completely oblivious to the fact that most sensible people would rather be home celebrating Easter than listening to him drone on and on, or else didn't believe in frivolous things like actually having fun. Mum had promised a trip to Battersea Park (not nearly as much of a treat as it had once been, but worth it to see the barrage balloons all lined up to protect the skies above London), but at this rate, there wouldn't be time.

Edmund had the one advantage of being next to a column. If the sermon became too tiresome, he could lean against the column and hopefully no one would notice if he closed his eyes. Peter, over on the other side of Mother next to Lucy, was too far away to hassle him, and Susan was busy trying to copy Mother's fixed attention on the service.

He counted the pipes behind the organ for the third time, and then his eyes wandered over to the stained glass windows. There was a man with some sort of bag, looking at the ground. Edmund made up a story about him. He was searching for buried treasure, and when he found it, he would buy a castle far away from boring church services and school. He'd have adventures and be able to eat all the best things, and... How long was the vicar going to speak?

Peter leaned over to whisper something to Lucy. Edmund eased his hand into his pocket and slid out his brother's folding knife (it wasn't as if Peter had been using it) and flicked it open. The wood of the bench was harder than he expected, but Edmund managed to work the knife into it and shift it back and forth. "Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest…" droned the vicar, "for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself…"

Boring! Edmund smirked slightly and began carving the word into the bench. Better anyone else who sat here be warned.

###

It was fortunate that he'd managed to entertain himself because the trip to the park was cancelled due to fog. "I knew it," Edmund muttered on the walk home. "We never get to have any fun."

"Oh, don't complain on Easter, Edmund!" said Susan. "Anyway, we probably wouldn't be able to see anything in this weather, anyway."

"And there's Easter dinner," said Mother. "There's plenty to do before we eat."

Under his breath, Edmund said, "Not much of one." No ham, no sugar, and no butter to put on the few biscuits Mum had managed to get. The balloons and the parade at Battersea Park had been the only things to make it seem like a holiday. At least there would be wouldn't be present no unwelcome guests for this dinner. With Father gone, Aunt Alberta wasn't speaking to the rest of the Pevensies, and while Mother had invited the Stephenses, they'd declined.

His older brother had put the latter down to Edmund's comments at the train station. Mother had scolded Peter, but not very hard. Not nearly the way she'd lectured Edmund about being neighborly.

"She cried all night," Peter had made a point of informing him.

Edmund had told him to shut up. He hoped his words had made it clear to Mr. Stephens that he wasn't wanted. Even if no one else appreciated it.

###

Cautiously, Edmund cracked open the door to his parents' room. He wasn't concerned about running into his mother. She was currently downstairs trying to draft everyone in the family into cleaning the house. The door had a tendency to creak; however, and if Peter or Susan overheard, they'd be certain to ask what he was sneaking off for. Just before the holiday, Brimlow had lent Edmund his old copy of In the Teeth of the Evidence, and Edmund was still only halfway through. With the rest distracted, this was the perfect time to finish. Dad had left behind an old electric torch, and there was a space in the back of his and Mum's closet that was ideal for hiding out with a book.

The closet door was already cracked open which was a bad sign. Mother was scrupulous about closing doors. Edmund had glimpsed Susan dusting the curtains and Peter moving chairs for Mother to dust behind, which meant there was only one possibility.

"Edmund?" said Lucy's voice.

"What are you doing in here?" he demanded, pushing the door open wider.

"I know I should be out helping," said Lucy. She had Mother's fur stole wrapped around her shoulders and Father's fedora perched on her knees with her hands clutching the brim. "I was just thinking about Dad."

Edmund scoffed. "Dad's not in a smelly old closet," he said. "He's fighting in France, not hiding like a little girl."

A large damp circle appeared on the crown of the hat, but Lucy's expression was fierce through the tears when she looked up. "When did you get to be so mean all the time?" she asked.

Edmund crossed his arms, tucking the torch under his arm and making sure that the paperback stayed well hidden in his back pocket. "I'm just looking out for you. You can't keep being such a baby. Don't you know that there's a war on?"

Lucy wrinkled her nose at him. Red-faced and tear-stained she didn't look anything like the little angel the neighbors called her. She stood up and pushed past him, shedding the borrowed finery she'd wrapped herself in. "Peter's a much nicer brother than you," she said, the most withering retort an eight-year-old could make.

Everyone liked Peter better. "Go on," said Edmund, shoving her lightly towards the door of the room.

When she was gone, he sighed with relief, switched on the torch and sat down with his book.

He only made it through one story before Peter appeared in the doorway, arms crossed, to loom over him. "Edmund."

Stupid little girls. "I didn't do anything," said Edmund immediately. "Lucy's lying whatever she says."

Peter looked at the clothes on the floor, and then back at Edmund, his jaw tightening. "Lucy didn't say anything at all," he said, although his voice promised that more would be said later. "We have a visitor downstairs."

###

True to Peter's word, the vicar of St. Mary's sat puffing in the parlor as if he'd run all the way from the church. Didn't he have anything else to do with his time?

"Pardon me," said the vicar. "Mrs. Pevensie, I meant to have more of a word with you after the service. How are the five of you doing? Have you had any word from your husband recently?"

"Unfortunately, not since he was sent to the front," said Mother, her face falling a little. Edmund scowled at the vicar when he saw this, and Peter elbowed him. "We're hoping for a letter soon, however."

"I'm sorry to hear that," said the vicar looking almost as disappointed. Was that sort of acting something that vicars studied in school, Edmund wondered. "Is there anything I can do to help in the meantime? Have you been able to have any time to yourself? Visit with the other ladies of the vicarage?"

"Here and there," said Mother. "We all do our part. It's been a bit busy."

"And the children?" asked the vicar as if the four of them were not sitting right there. He had the air of hinting around something. Surely, he had an Easter meal waiting for him? "How are they doing without their father?"

"We do our part as well, sir," said Peter, earnestly.

Edmund coughed into his hand at this blatant brown-nosing, but the vicar smiled approvingly. "I'm glad to hear it."

The man cleared his throat, and turned back to Mother. "Mrs. Pevensie, I'm afraid there is another matter I must discuss with you," he said, delicately. Edmund braced warily. That tone from an adult nearly always meant trouble.

Mother's shoulders straightened. "Is something wrong?" she asked.

The vicar inclined his head in something that was neither a nod nor a shake, as if he were reluctant to commit to an answer. "The church custodian noticed something while tidying up after the service. It appears someone has been vandalising the pews. Some inappropriate words were carved into the row where your family sits."

Typically, but entirely unfairly, everyone looked at Edmund. He scowled indignantly. "I didn't do it! I don't even have a knife!"

"I do," said Peter grimly. "I thought I'd lost it. I didn't figure you'd actually steal it."

Mother shook her head sadly. "Edmund."

"I didn't!" said Edmund, but it didn't make any difference. They were all against him.

###

Edmund's disgrace lasted for the entirety of the holiday. He spent the remaining days sanding profanities (most of which he had not been responsible for, not that anyone believed him) off the church pews, under the eye of the church custodian while the others took their long delayed outing to the park. Peter made a point of reclaiming his pocket knife and then the pumice stone Edmund attempted to use for the work. The last resulted in an additional scolding from Susan to whom Grandmother Powell had given the stone as a birthday present the previous year.

"Sorry," Edmund grumbled. The stone hadn't been as useful as he'd expected, anyway. It was far softer than the sandpaper the custodian had provided, and contact with the wooden pews quickly wore it down to a nub. "It's not as if you're grown up enough to even use it."

"It was a present, Edmund," Susan said. "The last one Grandmother gave me."

"Didn't I say I was sorry?"

###

Mother escorted them to the station herself this time, accompanied by the grocer who made a point of generously excusing Edmund's insults. The former, at least, would have been all right, if it hadn't be clear that she was doing so only because she had no other choice, and anyway, the damage had already been done. Fifteen minutes into the train ride, Spencer Elliott and Ethan Wilkes cornered him outside the lavatory and demanded to know what his family had been doing accepting rides from the likes of the Stephenses.

"It wasn't my idea," Edmund said. He looked around for assistance. "Where's Brimlow?"

"Out for the rest of term," said Wilkes. "Milton didn't make it." Milton was the sailor brother. He'd been injured in a sea battle before Christmas, but the last Edmund heard he'd been recovering. It was awful in every way, and not just for Brimlow.

"Your poor old man," said Elliott. "I wonder how he feels about his wife being friendly with someone who doesn't even have the guts to go and fight. Or does he even know?"

Edmund bristled. "Don't talk about my dad." Since when had Spencer had anything good to say about Mr. Pevensie? He started to walk past.

Elliott stopped him with a hand on his shoulder and sneered. "I notice you didn't say anything about your mum. Must be awful knowing she's a-"

"Shut up!" Why couldn't Brimlow be here? It wasn't that Edmund didn't feel bad for Thomas. He did. But he'd only ever heard of Milton, not met him, and Brimlow's absence from school meant there was no one to keep Spencer in check. He should be here.

Or even stupid Peter. But Edmund's brother only cared when he thought Edmund was in the wrong. He wasn't really any different from Spencer. He just chose a different way to lord things over a fellow.

"Just admit it," said Spencer. His fingers dug hard into Edmund's arm. "You'll feel better. Say, 'My mum's a coward lover and a spy.'"

Edmund's reply would have gotten his mouth washed out with soap if he were home, and a lecture from one of the masters if they were at school, but he felt the situation deserved it. He was going to end up just like Herbert. "Who made you king?"

"Language," said Wilkes, as if he never used the same words. He looked more bored than invested in Spencer's fun, however. "Let him go, Elliott."

Spencer narrowed his eyes at the wealthier boy. "I'm waiting on an answer." He didn't let go of Edmund's shoulder, but his grip loosened slightly, and Edmund's heart beat faster. Ethan had never liked Edmund as much as Brimlow did, but he was too proud of his family's money to let a nobody from Finchley like Spencer call all the shots, either. If the two were going to start arguing over who took Brimlow's place, Edmund was happy to let them. The older boys watched each other..Edmund could tell when the balance shifted.

Wilkes nodded at the lavatory door. "You can go," he said.

Edmund shook off Spencer's hand. Spencer crossed his arms, but did not stop him. He had his hand on the door when Wilkes stepped in front of it. "When you say the password."

###

"But I don't know any password," said Appleby. He was a scrawny year four with a reputation for an overactive bladder which, from the way he was bouncing from foot to foot, was probably deserved. "Please, I'm late for-"

"Boys who wet the bed shouldn't drink so much at mealtime," said Edmund.

It was really only good advice for the boy to remember, and all he had to do was show he'd learned the lesson if he wanted to pass. Instead, he stuttered and shifted and turned red. "I-"

"What's going on?" Appleby's eyes widened at Peter's voice, but he kept them fixed on Edmund nervously. Edmund scowled over the smaller boy's head at his brother. "Edmund?"

What was Peter doing down this hall anyway? "You're supposed to be with the Second Form," said Edmund. Perfect Peter Pevensie out of his dorm at this time in the evening was unheard of.

Appleby was still dancing about nervously. Peter gave him the smile he reserved for his admirers. "If you'll excuse my brother and I." Grim soberness replaced the smile as he turned back to Edmund. "Ed."

Edmund scowled. He turned the glare on Appleby, but followed Peter. He could hear the smaller boy darting for the lavatory as they walked away. "What is it?"

"There was a special assembly for all the boys living in London," said Peter. "You missed it."

"No, I didn't," said Edmund, trying to think what he had been doing not to have heard the call. He'd been avoiding Wilkes and Elliott (Spencer was utterly out of control in Brimlow's absence, and Edmund was looking forward to the end of term more than ever before), but he still should have known. Appleby should have said something. Missing an assembly had greater consequences than a lecture from his older brother. Edmund would have to have a word with him later. He didn't intend to be the only boy to catch it. "How would you know anyway?"

Peter's forehead creased the same way Father's did when he was frustrated. "I looked for you," he said. "The Germans have started bombing London. We're going to be evacuated."

###

A/N: Coming: Chapter Five: To Endless Night.