Chapter 11

Who He was

His belief in God was unshakeable, impossible to destroy. It was the glowing light that directed his every action, his every thought.

Edward had been a priest for less than half a decade and he still loved God in the pure, glorious, righteous way reserved even in the clergy only for the very young.

His black robes were only clothes; his faith was his armour, and Edward cut through the sea of unbelievers around him without a fear in the world.

Bella resisted this vision, incredulous. Edward, a priest? It was impossible, this being who seemed so utterly comfortable with his vampire nature.

Edward reminded her again not to fight the trance. Sit, watch, understand.

His parents. Mother, hair blonde, eyes blue, tall and broad through the shoulders. Lithe but full at the bust and hips, she was a picture of beauty standing at the window in Edward's tiny room, singing lullabies, whispering softly to her young child where they might someday go, what they might someday see.

Father, dark in hair, green eyes, like Edward himself. Grecian in ancestry, but without the wiry curls, which had been ironed from his head by the passing of generations.

Edward, child of no more than a year, black hair, green eyes, his mother's pale skin, the face a combination of features that would someday serve to make him a handsome young man.

His face would make women shake their heads behind his back. A priest? Looking like that? A waste.

Edward did not know if his memories of this time were accurate, or fabricated from stories and assumptions.

He believed them to be honest recollection, but would never truly know. In these memories, mother and father fight sometimes. Living is difficult.

The house is small, drafty, uncomfortable. The theatre has not called in weeks. They have no roles.

In London, though, there is work. Father makes trips there, auditions repeatedly, desperate, despairing.

The alcohol is beginning to take hold of him even now. He is granted reprieve when the notice finally arrives. An actor is needed. He has been called.

At three years of age, Edward said goodbye to the land of his birth, a land he would never see again.

Never? Bella asked, pulling back from the vision momentarily, never in so many years? Never has there been time, nor did any great desire, Edward answer.

It was a happy childhood. London before the industrial revolution, a thriving metropolis, dirty to be certain but still possessed of a remarkable charm Bella could find no words to describe.

Edward, age nine, running through the streets ahead of his mother and father. Running to see the players in the square, the Italian entertainers with their puppets and music and dancing.

Laughing and running, never seeing the horse bearing down on him, its rider as distracted by the sights and sounds as Edward himself. The horse tried to clear him, but failed.

Edward remembered the sharp crack of its hoof against his forehead, the blooming brightness in front of his vision.

He remembered the second hit, coming as the back of his head connected with the cobblestones. The force of the impact was tremendous.

He imagined that everyone in the world must have heard the sound of it. All of this was clear in his mind, but Edward remembered no pain.

Only the flat, hard cracking sound and then rolling horrified faces rushing toward him, the world greying, fading.

His mother, tears pouring from her eyes, pulling at her own hair as if somehow in injuring herself she might heal her son.

It's all right, mamma, he wanted to say. It doesn't hurt.

Darkness, then. The clip-clop noise of horse hooves, but this time he moved along with them.

There were rushed, babbling voices, more weeping, a rough hand holding his. Even Edward could not entirely piece together the events that followed. Vast blank spaces lay in his memory, interrupted by photo-flashes of consciousness.

A bed somewhere, his father sitting in a chair, looking out into cold London rain and weeping without realizing it. Rough shadow of a beard, unkempt hair. Staring and weeping.

It was the most frightening vision Edward could recall, worse even than when the bottle finally took hold of the man for good.

Edward had never seen the man looking so forlorn, would never see him so again.

Another period of blankness, and then his mother, leaning over him, wiping his forehead with a damp cloth. She was singing to him, those old lullabies.

He'd asked for the songs to stop some years ago, a young man in a child's body, no longer needing the comfort they brought. But now? Oh, now they were comfort eternal.

He was so frightened. These periods of blankness terrified him. There was nothing, except the knowledge of nothing, and he thought for the first time in his mortal life that he might be coming to understand what death was.

Ah, if he could have cried out, he would have wailed. Little heart racing at the thought that there was nothing more, that there was no heaven, no God waiting for him at the gates, ready to embrace him and comfort him and help him to understand what it all meant, this mortal life.

More grey.

Then the vision. A doctor, a nurse, and his mother. She was arguing, fighting, weeping again. The doctor looked sympathetic, but firm.

"There is nothing we can do. We have bled him, tried every potent tonic known to raise one from unconsciousness. There is nothing we can do. He will drink broth, if we pour it down his throat, but he does not awaken. There is nothing we can do." Over and over.

A litany, a chant, a curse. Behind them, like the coming of the dawn, a light was growing, so bright it burned his eyes.

How could they not notice this? How could they go on squabbling with each other when faced with such a thing?

Through their arguing, he heard the sound, building and building. A rushing, driving sound that seemed to swell until it was near unbearable, as if all of the voices in the world whispered at once.

The light throbbed and pulsed. Edward wept. Fear, awe, confusion. Was this death, then?

Perhaps his acceptance into heaven after his stay in grey purgatory?

Is that what you wish, then? It was all voices, no voices, a whisper on the wind, a chorus of screams.

Edward's temples throbbed with it. He tried to shake his head. No. No, this was not what he wanted.

Death? He was nine years old. There was still so much to do, to explore, to see, to know.

You would live? Edward found he could answer the voice, could have spoken to it all along. Yes. I would live. Until I am dragged, kicking and screaming, to my death, I would live.

So be it. Speak, Edward. Call to them. I cannot. But he could, and did, opening his mouth, stretching his throat, peering desperate from his bed as the light and the noise receded.

"Mother …" The word cut across the room, stopping his mother mid-sentence. She turned, the doctor and nurse staring with frank disbelief. There were tears again; now, welling in his mother's eyes, but not those of anger and frustration and sorrow shed just moments ago.

Edward sat up, blinked, tried his voice again. He looked his mother in her eyes, took in her joyful weeping with that same calm that would be with him for all his life.

He spoke from his bed, spoke for the first time since the horse had hit him, spoke for the first time since he had descended into the depths of coma, five months before.

"Mother, I wish to go to church."

And….

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Chantinique