Ruth Gadling smiled at her friends as they sat together at a table in the White Horse, laughing and sharing tales of the fools they'd had to deal with that week.
"Ah, but here's to Ruth, who shall die tomorrow for the sin of not covering her hair while doing the monastery's washing!" Isolde cheered, to the laughter of their friends.
"Shan't," Ruth denied with a smile. "I've figured it out, you know. We all only die because we've been told, over and over, that we shall. I've seen death. Over and over, mother and child both not surviving the birthing bed, and my brothers, all of them dead fighting under Buckingham in Burgundy. You all know what death is? It's a trick. Nobody has to die, but everybody goes along with it."
"You're a fool, Ruth," Agnes said kindly.
"Perhaps, or perhaps I'm smarter than all of you, for I shan't go along with it," Ruth quipped right back. "I've made up my mind. I'm not going to die."
Oh, there would be days she knew, she knew, that death would be as appealing as anything, but she had such thoughts often, and she beat them back just as often. Every day, Ruth found something, some new reason, to keep on going. That resolve was why she was still alive already, when all her kin were dead and her position tenuous.
The monastery's preference when employing women-folk was widows and older married women, after all, while Ruth was neither, despite her family's hopes for her marriage prospects before death had taken all of them.
"Death comes for everyone," Isolde said with a shake of her head.
"You don't know that," Ruth denied. "I wouldn't even be the first, according to what some of the novices tell me about the bible stories when I come for their linens. Who knows? I might get lucky too. There's just so much to do, so many things to see, and friends to drink with," she added, and raised her cup to all her friends at the table.
That, at least, they toasted with her.
"And what will you do with all that time? Living forever?" Agnes asked with a smirk. "Maybe finally find a man to settle down with?"
"I shall find better friends than you lot, that's for sure and certain," Ruth avowed at once, though she smirked right back so that her friend knew it was a jest. "Now pass me the stodge, before the ale starts going to my head."
A long shadowy figure quietly approached the table, but the women all figured it would pass them by. They were all of them spinners, weavers, and washer-women, according to when the work was available, and they knew that anybody dressed all in black was of a far richer stripe than themselves, and as such had no expectation that such a one would linger by them. Yet, despite such expectation, linger it did, and mutterings over the bread and ale halted as they looked up into the fair face of the man who was stood now by their table.
And oh, but it was a very fair face. Not only that it was fair in being pale, but it was finely formed, with eyes that glittered over a proud nose and strong jaw. The curtain of dark hair only seemed to emphasise how fair that face was. The body was lean, as well. A strange thing to them, between the softly-shaped, well-fed monks they served and the hardily-built working men they knew.
"Did I hear you say that you have no intention of ever dying?" the richly-dressed, fair-faced stranger asked, and his voice reminded Ruth of when she'd heard cats purring by the fire of an evening.
Ruth could no more control the blush that rose to her cheeks than she could control the wind.
"I suppose you did," she admitted with a smile. "I apologise if we were so loud as to disturb you, milord."
"You must tell me what it is like," the stranger said, the faintest of smirks upon his face before it slipped into seriousness. "Let us meet here again, Ruth Gadling, in this tavern of the White Horse, in one hundred years."
Her friends laughed at that, but Ruth did not take her eyes off the strange, fair man. Or was he a man? Ruth's family name had not been mentioned by any at the table with her this night, and yet this man, with his rich robes and pale skin and with a ruby the size of her thumb hanging about his neck... he knew her name. Without any kind of introduction.
She saw him glance across the room to someone else, a look full of weight she did not understand, before he nodded slightly and looked back at her.
"Don't mind them milord," Ruth entreated as she looked up at him. "One hundred years time. On this day?" she checked.
He nodded. Solemnly? Regally? Both.
"Then I shall see you in the year of our lord 1489, milord," Ruth said with a smile. It was a nice thought, truly, and she would certainly count it a fine thing to see the face of this stranger again.
He nodded at her once more, and without another word, departed from their company.
"Who was that then, Ruthie?" Isolde asked.
"A milord of some kind, obviously," Ruth answered, "beyond that? I haven't a clue."
"He knew who you were. Don't think I didn't notice! Ooh, a man as richly-dressed as that, knowing your name? Going up in the world, Ruth!" Agnes teased.
"Truly, I have no idea who he is," Ruth insisted with a laugh, "but I'll tell you what – I'll ask him in a hundred years time!"
Around her, her friends laughed. Ruth though, despite her joviality, felt a suspicion growing in her that she would, indeed, be meeting that man again.
~oOo~
A woman could learn a lot by being properly fascinated by whatever the novices were working on, especially if it turned out she wasn't growing old as her friends were. Which was odd, to be sure, but a smudge of cold charcoal where wrinkles ought to be, an the proper employment of a wimple so no one could see that she wasn't greying, and no one knew otherwise. Especially as she was careful to complain of aches and pains and stiffness of joints she had heard other, older women complain of before.
Her age made little difference to the novices of course. On days she forgot to line her face with false wrinkles, then she was a passably pretty woman to impress with their knowledge. On days she remembered, then she was a doting second-mother they wished to be proud of them. It was a long and very broken way of learning, but learn her letters she did, so there!
Not only was she not dying, she was also proving that women could learn book-things if they were given the chance! Ha!
There was nothing like an extra decade or five to improve ones skill with spindle and loom, either – not that either task was difficult, truly. But one needed a deft touch and understanding of getting the feel right, and the other was dashed complicated to set up. Truly, so many threads involved in setting a loom, and if you wanted to weave in a pattern? Rather than just embroider it on? Another layer of fiddle-faddle. Oh but it was always worth it. Especially when Ruth wiggled her way into learning better how to make different, richly coloured dyes for the thread she spun and the cloth she wove.
(And no, the irony of learning to dye when she was refusing to die was not lost on her. In fact, it added to her joy in the task, even as horrifically smelly as some of the dyes were.)
It meant that the coin she had to put aside for a rainy day was more than it had been, and Ruth had learned a long time ago – back when she was still the middle child of seven, instead of the only survivor of seven – to hoard things like a squirrel preparing for winter. That is to say: lots of little stores in lots of odd places that no one else would look, so that even if someone did stumble upon one of the places she hid her savings, and made off with their findings, Ruth would not be made completely bereft by the loss.
She tried her hand at new ventures as well – and more because they looked interesting than profitable. What need had she of great wealth, when she had been granted a long life to fill with great experiences instead?
Then the day came, and in the year 1489, Ruth Gadling returned to the White Horse tavern to meet a stranger fair of face and richly dressed. It was time at last to learn the cost of the boon she had been granted a century ago.
~oOo~
She rose when he approached the table she had claimed, and genuflected deeply.
"Milord," she greeted him, eyes down. "Please, take your ease," she said as she rose, and gestured to the chair opposite her own.
"Ruth Gadling," the stranger said in turn, and scarcely bent his head at her before he took the offered seat.
"Milord," Ruth said as she retook her seat, and lined up the words she had thought over a hundred times in the last fifty years. "I will not ask your name, for I am certain I am unworthy of it. I will not ask your nature, for it seems an impertinence. I ask only what is owed for this boon of life and youth that have been granted to me."
"So you still wish to live?" the stranger asked.
"Oh yes," Ruth agreed at once. "It is a great gift, milord. To have the opportunity to learn so much, to see the ways people continue to improve themselves and the world around them. Certainly there are horrors as well, but that only makes the sweet all the sweeter."
"There is no price, Ruth Gadling," the stranger said, their voice the same mesmerising purr that had seared itself into Ruth's memories. "You may live your life as you see fit. I wish only to hear of your experiences. So, every hundred years, we shall return here, and you shall tell me what has become of you since last I saw you."
Ruth smiled at that. That was not at all onerous, and something she would indeed gladly do. To be certain to meet this being – for she was certain he was no mere man – every hundred years? She was certain she would get drunk on his company if it were more often than that.
"I have learned so many wondrous things, milord," Ruth said at once. "I have even defied all expectations held of my sex and station by learning to read! Oh, I'm not quick at it, but that is certainly more than the monks ever believed a woman, especially a washer-woman and spinster, was capable of doing. And it is well I did, I think, for I have been so fortunate as to meet a fellow who has brought from the continent a new way to make books..."
Ruth spoke with rapture of all she had learned and experienced since their first, brief, meeting, and was aware that the stranger looked at her as she did in the same ways that the alchemists watched their chemicals – something strange and not understood, but still fascinating for that, whatever the smells – but she did not let that bother her a wit.
She had been granted a boon, and the only cost to her was to live her life and recount it to this being every hundred years. Truly, she was blessed.
~oOo~
Henry the Eighth deciding that Roman Catholic monasteries were out, and his own new Church of England was in had quite up-turned a few of Ruth's jobs. Could hardly do the linens or the baking for the monks if there weren't any monks to wash and bake for, after all. What she could do instead was get in quick in the buy-up when absolutely everything the monasteries owned – and that the Crown did not lay first claim to – was put up for sale.
Ruth bought a bit of land. Nothing so grand as some folks with coin bought for themselves, but Ruth had already been hiding her agelessness under the noses of monks for over a hundred years by now. She knew not to draw too much attention to herself. Still, that didn't mean she wanted to be someone else's tenant forever. So she bought land, and she built – with her own two hands! And a bit of help from some strapping young men who needed the coin themselves – a cottage with a dairy, and a room to work and dye fibres into thread and cloth, and a garden full of plants that worked for food and for medicine, and a shed for poultry and a pig pen.
It was hard work, but it was glorious, and it was hers. All hers. It was, perhaps, dangerously close to dragon-type hoarding, but Ruth still had little caches in other places as well, just in case. The last thing she wanted right now was to be accused of witchcraft. She didn't fancy being drowned or burned or any of that. Just to be sure though, Ruth even indulged in getting herself a dog. Nice big boar hound to help keep the pigs in line. Ruth had heard plenty of stories about the animals that witches did keep, and dogs weren't on that list. Not so far as she knew, anyway.
~oOo~
Ruth brought one of her dogs – Hob, named for one of her long-gone siblings – to her next meeting with the fair stranger. A lady alone at night was at risk, for all that every man insists during the hours of daylight that they would never do such a thing as endanger a woman alone. Ruth was resolved to be safe, rather than sorry, and there's nothing to put off a man like a boar hound walking loyally at his mistress's side.
She ordered a bone and dish of water for Hob, and bread and wine for herself and her eventual guest – for she had certainly arrived before him.
"Milord," Ruth greeted happily, and with less uncertainty than she had upon their last meeting, when he arrived. She rose, and curtsied deeply. "I trust you are well, milord?"
"I am, Ruth Gadling," the stranger answered with a slow incline of his head before he took the seat that waited him. "And who is this?" he asked, his star-bright eyes drifted down to her hound.
"That's Hob," Ruth answered with a smile. "Among the many other wonderful things I have seen and done since last we met, I have taken up the breeding of hounds. Hob's a good lad, and a good guard against manner-less knaves when I'm walking the streets after sunset."
"A wise precaution," the stranger said. "You can still be hurt or captured."
"I know it," Ruth said with a heavy sigh. "The number of girls I've helped this past century who had been brutalised by men, well. Even one is too many, truly, but I do what I can to help them."
"Do you still wish to live, Ruth Gadling? Having seen such things?"
"Of course," Ruth answered at once. "I can't help much, but I can't help the poor things at all if I'm dead, now can I? Besides that, there's so much else happening these days! Inventions, arts, travel! Goodness, travel to the continent is something I may soon be able to do myself! I shan't need to be some soldier off to fight someone else's war, or someone's wife taken from my home to theirs, but I shall soon be able to go on my own authority. I am looking forward to the adventure, and in the meantime, there is the theatre, which rather brings the world to me a little bit."
"Have you a playwright you favour?" the stranger asked.
"I wish I could write like you!" came the loud lament from a couple of tables over.
Ruth, who had been about to answer, huffed.
"That," Ruth said, and rolled her eyes at the table the exclamation had come from, "is Will Shaxberd. A poor actor and worse playwright. His dining companion is Christopher Marlowe. A fair hand at writing plays, if just a touch drear for my taste."
The stranger had not taken his eyes from the table across the way where the two playwrights were talking.
"Will I be losing your company tonight already, milord?" she asked.
He looked at her from across the table, and Ruth drank in every alteration in his appearance. His rich black clothing was cut for the time, as it always was. Though, also as always, it was nevertheless just the slightest bit off from what the common man – and by that, Ruth meant men who were not otherworldly beings – wore. His ruby hung from a red chord about his neck, the only colour on his person that wasn't gleaming metal buttons or the heavens in his eyes. His hair was... not exactly fashionable, but Ruth herself was not exactly fashionable either, so she'd no judgement there. Besides, it suited him that his hair looked as if he'd only just rolled out of bed and run his fingers through twice it to tame it. The single, small hoop earring of some strange black metal in his left ear likewise suited him. It certainly drew the eye. Or hers, at least.
It lent an air of wildness to him. A hint of danger, as if anybody sensible needed such a warning when they looked at him. But then, there were a good many people about who were not in the least bit sensible. Part of why she had Hob at her feet gnawing upon a bone even now. (Part of why she was, herself, still alive a goodly two centuries after she had first met him.)
"Are you happy, Ruth Gadling?" he asked.
"Immeasurably," she answered. "It won't last, of course, and I know that, but right now? Yes. Yes milord, I am happy."
"Then, I have other business to be about, tonight," he said, and stood. "I shall see you in one hundred years, Ruth Gadling."
Ruth sighed to watch him go, and allowed herself to pout a little when he went to Shaxberd. She could not help but wonder what drew the stranger to Shaxberd, and such thoughts in turn demanded she wonder what had drawn him to her, those centuries ago.
Alone but for Hob, Ruth finished off the bread and her cup of wine, and then urged Hob to collect his bone. The stranger would not return to her that night. It was time she left.
~oOo~
It was, Ruth decided, a damn fine thing that she had settled things with the bank and that lovely young couple to rent her property when she had. She was looking at ships that would take her off to see some other, exotic part of the world when she heard people talking about a witch in the same shire she had just left. Heard them talking about finding her and drowning her for her evil practices of black magic.
Ruth immediately found herself a ship bound for the continent. She would wander around France a while, she decided. Maybe travel to Italy, and if she'd gone that far, then she might as well go to Jerusalem as well. Goodness, why not follow the old Silk Road to the farthest reaches? She was at heart a spinster and weaver and washer-woman, and anybody with access to silk was certain to be doing interesting things with it. Cloth and thread and the different fibres used to make them would probably always be her favoured trade. She hoped to learn how to spin silk for herself, that was certain.
~oOo~
Ruth squelched unpleasantly as she walked up to the door of the White Horse this time.
"I'm sorry madam, but we do not serve... your kind... here," said the man at the door.
"Sir, I have just escaped from a rake by jumping off his boat and into the Thames. In this dress. I assure you, you do indeed serve my kind here. It is only that my kind are not usually coming here for an appointment so very directly from horrific encounters such as I have just experienced," Ruth answered him.
"Let her in," said a familiar voice, the purr she was used to replaced with a commanding tone as sure and certain of obedience as any man of power Ruth had ever heard. "She is my guest."
"Hello, milord," Ruth greeted, and pulled out a purse from one of her pockets. "A towel, at least, sir," she said. "A full bath of hot water and attendance from a washer woman and a dressmaker if you can find such at this hour."
The proprietor stammered, but closed his hand around the two guineas she had pressed upon him all the same.
"I do apologise for the offence to the senses I must be, milord," Ruth said as she followed him into the tavern. "It has been... difficult, lately."
"Tell me," he instructed her, even as he took one seat and gestured her to another.
"Well, I narrowly avoided being drowned as a witch about ten years after our last meeting," Ruth began, "and I took myself off to the continent. Where of course, because I took myself off so hastily, I had the wrong coin. Some people took it, coin is coin, but I now know what it is so starve to death without actually dying of it. I do not recommend it, milord. At all. Dying of thirst, again without actually dying, isn't any better, for the record. Faster, but not better. And neither is the sickness that comes with drinking truly filthy water, just so the thirst goes away for a short while."
A man came with a towel for Ruth then, and she stood from her chair so that she could unbind her hair and properly wring it out. She hadn't really cut it since the fourteenth century, save to keep the ends tidy, so it was quite long. It had more or less stopped getting longer upon its reaching her thighs.
"Oh yes, and being stoned because your head is uncovered in a place where it is apparently illegal for the women there to go about without a veil. Didn't enjoy that, either, but I learned that lesson quickly, and the Arabian countries were much better enjoyed once no one wanted to kill me just for being dressed as a foreigner," Ruth continued. "Lucky me, my natural complexion is just dark enough that once I was dressed right, I wasn't bothered near so much."
"You have suffered much, since I saw you last," the stranger noted.
"Mm," Ruth agreed. "Skipped being drowned as a witch. Still got drowned. This very day. Because some rake was determined I was pretty enough to satisfy his appetites, so he stole me onto his boat on the Thames, and this dress is heavy when it's wet, but I wasn't going to let him rape me, it's the only indignity I'd managed to avoid this century, and I wasn't going to submit to it now, so over the side I went. As choosing between horrible fates goes, I'll take breathing water over letting someone else have such power over me, every time. No matter how desperately uncomfortable breathing water, and then coughing it up again, is. It is, by the by, even worse than starvation or thirst."
Ruth picked up the hair comb that had been a decorative piece, and used it to comb her drier – if not cleaner – hair into order, then sat down on the towel and set about braiding her hair. A temporary fix, but certainly enough for now.
"Do you still wish to live?" the stranger asked, and seemed saddened to be asking it.
"Begging your pardon, milord, but are you crazy? Of course I do!" Ruth insisted, eyes flashing with passion as she looked back up at him.
It surprised her then to see him relax slightly back in his seat, and Ruth took in the changes of this time at last, while her fingers set about the automatic task of sectioning and weaving her hair into a braid. His hair was longer than she'd ever seen it, and straight rather than fashionably curled and powdered. He wore sumptuous black, as ever, and his ruby was set right at the base of his collar, apparently pinned there rather than hanging from a chord or chain.
"The years since we last met have been the most horrific years of my life to date, I grant that easily, but I have so much still to live for!" Ruth insisted. "I have so much still to see and do. Though, in the future, I will be sure to have company of some human kind. Apparently, having only a dog for a companion, even a fine boar hound, is not enough to always keep a woman safe."
"And how long did Hob last, after we parted ways?"
Ruth smiled that he remembered the dog she'd introduced him to one hundred years ago.
"Hob fathered six litters before he died at the fine old age of thirty-two," Ruth said fondly.
~oOo~
After the stranger left, Ruth got her hot bath, as well as attentions from both a washer-woman and a dressmaker. Both were functions that she could have performed herself, but presently she had only coin. No cloth or thread, nor soaps and tubs. So, until she could dig up one of her hidden caches and establish herself as a person of Some Quality again, Ruth would have to first spread a little of her remaining money about, and act the part even if she had very little to back it up.
The property she had long ago leased to that lovely couple was still hers, by way of the bank as they held the papers of ownership in trust for her. While she had been on the continent, she had kept up correspondence with the bank – to know how the property was being maintained, and what changes she needed to approve of and so on. As such, reclaiming control of the property would not be difficult. She'd written them some two decades ago of leaving the estate to her 'granddaughter', who was named for her. Had written them a decade ago of her own death, and signed that letter with 'the second' after her name.
In between all the horrible things, that is. And as letters actually managed to travel so far. Couriers from Rome to London were not cheap.
For now, Ruth would stay at home for a decade or two. Rest. Recover herself from her travels and copy everything from horribly damaged diaries into much more carefully curated journals.
She imported fashions from France, because she liked them. Truly, pockets large enough to carry an entire litter of new-born pups in was wonderful, and she hoped no one ever told her she had to give them up. She wasn't sure that she would, even if fashion might dictate that she ought. She would see how things went, as always.
Ruth invested in shipping, and then took the ship she had invested in to India, which she had not reached in her previous travels, and there she hired a local gentleman to be her personal guard, and she became a student of how to properly process silk. She also learned how to ride an elephant, which was quite fun, and even how to fight with a sword like her guard carried around at his hip. He'd been reluctant to teach her at first, but she'd doubled his pay and offered to employ the rest of his family at the same wage if he would teach her – and if his wife would teach her how to properly cook with all the wonderful spices of their country.
Truly, India had been a wonderful place to live for those seventeen years.
When Ruth finally left India, it was to see China, and Russia. Oh, China was fascinating, and Russia was – quite apart from freezing – a glittering jewel to see the high society of. She stopped again in China and India on her way back to England, and bought several trays of silk worms and ten mulberry saplings to take with her. Just to see if she could do it. Once home again, it didn't take too long for her to start breeding her own silk moths, spinning her own silk thread, and weaving her own silk cloth. It wasn't a patch on what the orientals could do with the stuff, of course not. They'd been working with silk much longer than she had. But she had time, and she had tea, and she even had potatoes!
All wonderful things that had come so newly to her home country. Well, not time. That wasn't new, though the clocks were certainly becoming more intricate and clever.
By the time Ruth was satisfied with her little bit of silk production, the cotton industry had picked up and momentum had carried it around the southern end of Africa and across to the new colonies in the Americas. More to the point, the cotton industry had collected slave labour from Africa and deposited it in the Americas to work the cotton farms.
There was little to nothing she could do about that. She could buy slaves to free them, but that would make the slave-takers richer, and they would continue taking slaves because they would insist that there continued to be a demand for them. When she voyaged to the Americas, she went to the slave quarters and let it be known that any slave that ran from their situation to her ship would be granted sanctuary there, and passage back to their homes should they wish it.
Not all of them did. Sea travel hadn't always agreed with them, after all. Better to make new lives in some other part of the Americas where they were not slaves, than to risk another lengthy sea-voyage.
She did what she could, where she could, for who she could. Freeing slaves, rescuing women, and always, always, always, finding something new to learn and marvel at. A recipe from an African woman. A lace pattern from a young Irish woman who had inherited it from her grandmother. A song, a dance, a story. Ruth even tried to learn the tricky way the African people could make words click in the middle. They laughed at her attempts, so she clearly continued to not get it right, but they didn't seem to mind, and she enjoyed trying to learn. It was all so impressive and amazing.
The natives of the Americas were harder to talk to. Some of them wanted nothing to do with those they saw as trespassers and invaders. Ruth didn't blame them. She set sail instead for another colony – Australia. She did not stay long though. She had an appointment to keep.
~oOo~
Oh, but the milord was a beautiful sight to see that evening. Truly, the fashion of the day suited him most becomingly. From the ribbon in his hair to the buckles upon his shoes. Still, that same ruby the only colour on him apart from his eyes.
She curtsied. He didn't bow in return. But then, what did human manners mean to a being such as him?
"It is good to see you again, milord," Ruth greeted with a smile.
"It is certainly good to see you less distressed, Ruth Gadling," he returned. "Come and tell me what you have been doing since I saw you last."
"I finally got into shipping, sort of," Ruth said as she set about pouring tea for both of them. Even if he wouldn't drink, it was proper courtesy. There were tarts to nibble as well, though Ruth was sure they would go untouched by her guest. "Went to India, learned about silk, went to China and Russia, and the Americas. Did what I could where I could, as I always try to."
His face grew solemn.
"You are not dealing in slaves, I hope," he said. "Your life is yours to live as you choose, but I would hope you would not rob others of that same right."
"No milord," Ruth assured him. "I've done my best to free slaves where I could, can't always, but I try. Not a lot an untitled, unmarried woman, however much wealth I might accrue, can actually do about these things. Even pretending to be a man doesn't always get me very far, and I have tried."
He nodded, and the air about him eased.
"I only got back to England myself two months past," Ruth admitted. "I've had some fun training the new hounds in my kennels, and adapting myself to the London fashions again. I even went to the theatre last night. They tried to give King Lear a happy ending."
"That will not last," he said. "The great stories will always return to their original forms."
"I am not sure how I feel about that," Ruth admitted. "I have been blessed to learn so many new stories this past century, and to have known so many more even before that. I can see threads of similarity between them now. Common themes. The names change, the reasons or lessons might change even, especially if the ending changes. But that there are still the same tales told today as have been told even before my life began... ah, now I feel humbled," she said with a smile. "But I do like new stories so, and new twists on old ones. I think I do not mind the changes, nor the reversion to the original form, so long as there are always stories to be told, and good company to share them with," she decided, and toasted him with her teacup.
He nodded his head regally in acceptance.
"Are you in any stories, milord?" Ruth dared to ask.
"I know one he's in," a new voice interrupted, and a woman strode into the White Horse. "Do not trouble yourselves to rise. These are Michael and Tobias. Smugglers by trade, although they're only too glad to augment their earnings by slitting throats. If you move, they'll slit yours."
Ruth eyed the men, and rather wished she'd brought her dogs in with her, rather than leaving them with large bones in the stable yard.
"They tell a tale, in these London parts, that the Devil -" the unfamiliar woman cut a glance at Ruth's guest, "- and a Jewish Witch -" she glanced briefly at Ruth, "- meet once every century in a tavern."
Ruth and her guest exchanged a slow look at those titles. Ruth did not know what her guest was, she had made a point of not asking, but she was quite certain he was no devil. As for the accusations levelled at her own person. Well. Ridiculous.
"Two years past, sewn into the shirt of a dead man, I found this," the woman said, and set an aged piece of paper with a fine ink caricature on the table between them.
Ruth bent to look.
"Is that meant to be me?" she asked. "Oh, I look like a drowned cat. Then again, you look remarkably like a crow in this, milord, so I shall hope it bears little resemblance to how either of us looked that day."
"You return to this pub every hundred years," the woman said, and it seemed to Ruth the woman was fixated on Ruth's guest, for all the woman's words could be meant for both of them. "Striking bargains with men, granting gifts. Immortality. Which you will now share with me. Well? Have you nothing to say?"
"I am no devil," her guest said, perhaps the straightest answer he had ever given, and still it did not plainly inform on his nature. Good to have the solid denial of that one though, not that Ruth had entertained that suspicion since the fourteen hundreds, herself.
"And I'm not a witch. Or Jewish, for that matter," Ruth added.
"Fie. What manner of creatures are you then?" the woman demanded, and still her eyes were fixed on Ruth's guest.
"Who is asking?" Ruth asked pointedly.
"I'm Lady Johanna Constantine," the woman said, and finally turned to look at Ruth. "You will both follow me, as my coach is without. I can see there is so much you can tell me. So much I can learn."
"And then what? You burn me at the stake as the witch I am not, and from him to try to wrest... I'm going to guess immortality, since you mentioned that before, hm?" Ruth guessed.
"I would be made immortal, yes, but your burning need not happen. If you cooperate," Lady Constantine assured them.
"No," Ruth's guest said, and his purr had become something more dangerous. "No, I think not."
Lady Constantine turned then, and with a smile she stepped away as her two associates neared and levelled their daggers at Ruth's throat and her guest's ruby-covered collar.
"Get up," one of them ordered.
Ruth threw her tea into the face of the one threatening her guest, and then the cup itself into the face of the one threatening her. She twisted the knife from his hand, and raised her knee sharply into the fork of his trousers. While he went down, she grabbed the hair of the first and smashed it against the table.
When she turned to Lady Constantine, she had a very shiny little dagger directly in Ruth's face.
"Hm," Ruth hummed, for her own stolen dagger was pointed at the meeting place between stays and skirts.
"Wait," her guest said, and Ruth glanced over her shoulder to see him rise from his chair.
More to the point, Lady Constantine looked over, though she continued to hold her blade pointed at Ruth's nose.
Her guest uncurled one hand, blew across it, and sand drifted out and towards Lady Constantine. It, whatever it was, had an immediate affect. Lady Constantine's eyes went completely white, and her fingers went slack around the knife before she slowly knelt where she stood, pleading with people Ruth could not see. A quick check of the two thugs showed that they both slept, though Ruth was sure she had barely concussed one, and only caused the other to curl in on themselves from pain.
She put that down to her guest as well.
"Am I allowed to know what you have done?" Ruth asked cautiously.
"She has old ghosts that I have shown to her," he answered.
Ruth gestured to the two sleeping men. And they were sleeping, now, which her actions had certainly not caused.
He lowered his eyes, briefly.
"You need not have come to my defence," he said.
However, Ruth thought she saw a hint of a smile in the form of his mouth as he said that. As though he enjoyed her having done so, despite it not being needed.
"Clearly," Ruth agreed with a smile of her own, much more openly worn. "I just moved a little faster this time, that's all. Besides, I've no wish to sit here alone in a hundred years just because I did nothing."
"It will not be safe for you here," her guest warned.
"I'm perfectly safe," Ruth denied. "I can't die, remember?"
"Aye, but you can be hurt, you can be captured," he reminded her, concern writ clear in his tone and expression. Well, if one knew what to look for. "You must be cautious."
Ruth nodded, and let her smile shrink.
"Always," she promised. "I learned a bit of how to fight, this century, I hadn't got to tell you that part yet, though I suppose you got to see," she said with a brief smile before she looked back down at where Lady Constantine was still kneeling, white-eyed and trembling, on the floor. "While I was in India, learning about silk. I hired a local gentleman and his family, and he guarded me and taught me how to better guard myself as well. Still..." Ruth turned back to their table and picked up the century-old caricature.
She stared at the thing a moment, recalled how desperately improper that particular meeting was, from an outside perspective, and tucked it away into a pocket.
"We should perhaps find a different pub for the night?" she suggested. "Probably be a good idea to rent out a private room, actually. I can't imagine that anybody overhearing our conversations helped these rumours."
It would be desperately improper, for a woman to be alone in a room behind closed doors with a man who was neither husband nor family, but it would hardly be the first time Ruth had been in a technically improper situation with her guest, and he had not seemed to at all mind the last one.
"I shall take my leave," he said, and shook his head.
"A hundred years, then," Ruth said.
"A hundred years," he agreed.
He nodded in his regal way, and Ruth stifled a sigh as she watched him leave. Truly, whatever else he was or wasn't, he cut a very fine figure in the fashions of the day.
But now it was left to her to get rid of Lady Constantine's insensate thugs, tidy up the mess, and see to Lady Constantine herself. Or at least pay the proprietor to have some of his lads take the men out back, as Ruth might be sturdy, but lifting a grown man was perhaps beyond her.
Gently, Ruth got Lady Constantine to her feet, and moved her to settle in a chair away from the mess and the slumbering smugglers. The woman was still gripped by whatever vision only she could see, but guiding hands were at least able to move her, and the proprietor's lads were able to remove the thugs.
Ruth cleaned up the remaining mess herself. She had seen, to some extent, what her guest had done to their intruders, and a gesture to Lady Constantine's state had the proprietor scurrying fearfully away rather than offering to clean up himself. Just as she had wished. Ruth didn't know if whatever... sand – and it was sand – remained would continue to affect people so, but as she had been standing right by Lady Constantine when she was affected, and was herself not, Ruth assumed she would be fine to at least clean it up safely, which others might not.
Carefully, Ruth swept the sand into the black silk handkerchief that she'd made in hopes of gifting it to the being she saw but once a century. Obviously, that had not happened, but now it came in useful for her, and in relation to him. Sort of.
With the sand collected in the middle of the black silk square, Ruth folded it over a few times, to ensure no grains would escape, before she tucked the little bundle away. (It was not in any way as fancy or beautiful as the paper folding that she had seen in China, an art she was told had in fact come from Japan, a country whose borders were, at present, very much closed to foreigners. Not that China had been particularly open, but they did have at least one port that had let her land, and there had been a lot to see and do there.)
With a final sigh, Ruth tucked the few remaining undamaged tarts into the opposite pocket, and once assured that Lady Constantine would be escorted to her carriage, left out the back way to fetch her dogs, and have her horses hitched once more to her curricle.
~oOo~
Ruth had been careful to learn Lady Constantine's address from her driver, and had visited the grand lady's home some few years later. Oh, she didn't doubt that time would not have softened the woman's ardour for dangerous knowledge, nor her inclination towards dangerous doings, but Ruth had decided that it was better to meet the woman peaceably and on her own terms. More to the point, Ruth had decided it would be well for her to have some greater knowledge on what rumours were spread about herself and the milord she met with every hundred years.
It turned into a pleasant enough exchange of knowledge. Ruth was able to correct a few things that Lady Constantine had assumed, Lady Constantine was able to inform Ruth of things occult she had never before cared to know. Lady Constantine even told Ruth of the milord coming to her for aid in a task over in France some few months after their initial meeting.
A task that further informed Ruth's knowledge of her centennial companion, despite the scarcity of information that he himself imparted during their meetings.
Ruth stayed with Lady Constantine for two years, playing lady's maid and seamstress, all while learning from the younger woman. Things like how to perform exorcisms properly (and as safely as it was ever possible to perform such a task), how to write runes and circles of protection in ways that were actually meaningful, and how to find certain types of things using means not generally available to the uninitiated – whether that meant supernatural things, or black market things. An area that Ruth had previously not bothered herself with overmuch.
One thing they learned together was which of the old traditions Ruth remembered from her youth, and which had otherwise been lost to time, actually worked at keeping a person safe from supernatural matters. Well, approximately.
When the two women agreed to part ways, it was with a promise on Ruth's part to keep an half an eye on Lady Constantine's line, as they were sure to continue to get themselves into all sorts of strife. In return, they would aid her how they could in keeping her immortality a secret from the world in general.
oOo~
"You gave us a start, sir. For a second I thought you was Bloody Jack 'isself. Don't look so put out sir, jus' joshin' ya. 'Ow'd you like to buy a girl a drain a pale? An' maybe a quick bum dance? Give us an 'ard ride wiv yer cream stick."
Inside, Ruth sighed to herself. She'd tried to help Lou before, but the woman was oddly resistant to charity from a fellow woman. She seemed to prefer the predictability of taking advantage of a man and his lusts. Ruth wouldn't join those who condemned Lou for her habits, she just wished the girl would let her help.
"I think not," a familiar, smooth voice answered.
Ruth, as politely as it was possible to, dashed for the door.
"I bet you ain't got it in you anyway you skinny chicken leerie," Lou snapped suddenly.
"Lou," Ruth cut the other woman off. "Not this one."
"Ooh, you got dibs 'ave ya, Miss Gadlin'?" Lou asked, eyebrow raised. "Never woulda thought it of you, meeting a man at a pub so late? Thought you were all too virtuous to be the sort for an evenin' dalliance."
"I'll buy your pint, and a meal to go with it Lou, if you'll keep your manners tonight," Ruth bargained, and presented the other woman with a shining silver shilling.
Lou grinned, showing off where some teeth were missing.
"You'll not hear a peep from me for a week, Miss Gadlin'," Lou promised as she swiped the offered coin and headed past Ruth, inside and up to the bar.
"Please come in, milord," Ruth bid with a more gracious curtsy than she thought her nerves from dealing with Lou in front of her milord would have let her.
Once out of the rain, he allowed her to take his hat, coat, and gloves for him as she escorted him to the table she had reserved for them – and meanwhile told her more of Lou's history than she was sure Lou herself appreciated being spoken of. It did allow Ruth a greater understanding of the situation though, and a bubble of sympathy swelled in her for the coarse young woman.
"People are almost always better than you think they are," Ruth noted. "Or more complicated, at least. Not me though," she added with a self-depreciating grin. "I like to keep things simple."
"I think perhaps you've changed," the ever-handsome, ever darkly dressed figure said.
"I shall hope that's a compliment, milord," Ruth said with a smaller, but more genuinely happy, smile. "Stagnation is bad for the soul, I'm sure, and I would certainly hope I have learned from all the mistakes I've made over the centuries."
Ruth frowned, just a little, to herself as she picked up her teacup.
"Can't seem to stop making them though," she admitted ruefully, "but at least they're usually new, different mistakes. Keeps things interesting."
For some reason, that made her milord smile. Oh, it was a subtle thing, but it was beautiful, as everything about him was. Beautiful, and ephemeral. Like the smile of da Vinci's Mona Lisa – Ruth had gotten to see that this century. Taken herself on a bit of a tour of the galleries of the world, and gotten herself some lessons in how to make her own art.
The initial run in with Lady Constantine and her century-old caricature had rather highlighted to Ruth that she had no other, finer, more complimentary pictures of the milord who visited her every hundred years. She now had several sketch books dedicated exclusively to the many attempts she had made to reproduce his likeness, and had a great loom set up and ready to begin weaving a tapestry in the wake of this meeting. When her memory of his face was freshest and she would hopefully be best able to accurately represent him in her sketches and paintings, and in turn translate the best of those into cloth.
"And what mistakes have you made these past hundred years, Ruth Gadling?" he asked.
"Oh, I was an assistant occultist to Lady Constantine for a few years," Ruth revealed. "That was likely very foolish of me, but I learned a great deal from it. I embroider protective circles on my all of handkerchiefs these days. Oh, and I made one for you, milord," she said, and quickly moved to pull the black silk square from her pocket. "Though I'm sure it is a mere trifle and unneeded by one as august as yourself."
There was something in his face as he accepted the gift. A very subtle sort of surprise and confusion, as though he did not know what to make of such a thing, nor what to do or the correct reaction. Nevertheless, he examined the circle she had so carefully embroidered on the cloth. Black silk thread on black silk cloth, with just the occasional wink of silver thread – like starlight in the blackness – forming the tiny embroidered runes.
"I saw her again too," he said as he looked her work over. "I had her do a job for me. She was most capable."
"Forgive me, milord, but the Lady Constantine told me of that herself, while I was a member of her household," Ruth admitted, quietly pleased, indeed, warmed all the way to her core, to see him finally tuck the gifted silk kerchief into his breast pocket.
The conversation meandered. Ruth spoke of how, after her time with Lady Constantine, Ruth had met some interesting writers.
"Certainly better," she said archly, "than Shakespeare, however enjoyable his works were after he received milord's patronage in 1589."
Her companion of the evening smiled at that, too. Perhaps it entertained him that she would hold any kind of grudge over losing his company when they only met for one evening in a century, but that only made their rare time together that much more precious to her.
She detailed her tours of the galleries of the world (and her care in choosing which countries to go to, as there were all sorts of wars about this and that going on intermittently about the continent). She mentioned her own attempts at creating art – beyond embroidery, she clarified, when he complimented her fine stitches on the handkerchief she had just gifted him. She spoke of how slavery was officially abolished, and her efforts to help those who suffered under its yoke despite that abolition. Ruth talked about learning to ride this wonderful new contraption called a bicycle, and the wonderfully liberating feeling of the wind rushing past her cheeks as she did. A feeling she knew from driving her curricle, of course, but it was different when it was under her own power, so very completely.
"I imagine it must be something like what flying feels like," she said, "and my dogs love to run along side me when I'm out on it as well."
Ruth also expounded on how she was buying up land in the countryside, as more and more people were migrating to the cities for work. She was now well able to farm sheep and silk worms and flax, and provide employment to those in need of such – either on her farms, or in her small factories. A great deal of the raw wool, silk, and linen fibres was sold on to larger factories, which bought from farms other than hers as well, but Ruth did still so enjoy textiles and keeping her hand in with what was going on there. And the colours and prints people could make now!
"So you still wish to live, Ruth Gadling."
"Milord, really," Ruth said with a smile and a giggle (a giggle of the kind that would have Lou smirking at her for being so much a young girl under the eye of a handsome man). "I should think by now you would know me well enough to know what my answer to that is."
"You still do not seek death," he acknowledged with a slow, regal inclination of his head.
"And I do not think I ever will," Ruth added with an easy smile, a faint shrug, and a light shake of her head. "Truly, I wonder that you ask at all, though I suppose it is tradition, at this point. If nothing else, I suppose the centennial requirement to ask is a good excuse for seeking some companionship."
The smile on his face, faint though it was, dropped abruptly.
"You dare," he breathed.
"Milord?" Ruth queried.
"You dare suggest one such as I might need your companionship?" he demanded.
"Want, milord," Ruth said, "not need. I do not presume to know your nature and the needs of your kind, whatever that may be. I am not even totally convinced you need air to breathe, milord."
"Want," he repeated, a hint of sneer on his pretty face, "your company."
"Is it so terrible, milord?" Ruth asked, "to admit to a want for companionship?"
He stood abruptly.
"I shall take my leave of you and prove you wrong," he declared.
Ruth stood quickly and followed him out of the White Horse.
"I will be here next century," she promised as the rain poured down upon them both, and as she watched him march away down the street – straight backed and without the hat or coat he had arrived with. "You may deny it, milord, but I hold you as my friend, and I shall wait for you!"
His form, clad in black, and getting darker as the rain soaked him, vanished into the shadows of the night.
Resigned, Ruth headed back in. She had to collect her own hat, gloves, and coat, as well as, it seemed, his, for he had indeed left them behind. They had not vanished in his absence. The cloth of the coat was fine, the leather of the gloves was soft, and the hat was a fine, elegant thing. With a sigh, she headed up the stairs to the room she had rented herself for the night – with Jack the Ripper about, it was safer to travel only in the light of day – and carefully set the clothing of the stranger in her own luggage. Then she withdrew her sketchbook and charcoal, and set about doing her very best to capture his likeness upon the page.
~oOo~
The Great War, they called it. The war to end all wars. Piffle, and Ruth knew it. All it was, really, was the first war since the invention of the aeroplane. This, more than any other factor, allowed for violence to be committed from and across greater distances. It was a good time to be a woman, at least. If she were a man, she might have been compelled to become a soldier. Instead, Ruth had her farms, and was able to keep well out of the violence when it happened.
She had woven her tapestry, the life-sized representation of her centennial companion in all his beauty, and was very proud of it. Not that she showed it off to anybody. She didn't need the awkward questions.
When the soldiers returned from the war, shell-shocked and changed by the war – with its gasses, and trenches, and bombs, and tanks, and losses beyond anything they had ever known – Ruth opened her farms to them. Places of quiet and peace, places where the traumatised men could recover and build themselves back up into men they at least half-recognised as themselves.
And then the sleepy sickness came.
And Ruth, who was in London for charitable purposes, saw a woman who was wearing a very familiar ruby.
"Ma'am," she called, and reached a hand out. "Pardon me, ma'am."
"Yes?" the woman said, confused to be addressed.
"Ma'am, I don't suppose you would be willing to sell me that ruby?" Ruth asked. "Only, it bears great resemblance to one that my great-grandmother painted on her lost beloved."
The woman's hand went to her throat, but not defensively.
"Well, I suppose... of course, that would depend on the price."
Ruth took in the woman's appearance again, apart from the ruby.
"Would fifty pounds be enough?" Ruth asked, and opened her purse.
The young woman's eyes boggled a little, to be offered fifty pounds on the street for the ruby at her neck. Fifty pounds was, after all, quite a lot of money in the 1920s.
"Yes, certainly," the young woman said, and reached up to unclasp the necklace from about her throat.
Ruth removed the fifty pound note from her purse, and traded it to the young woman for that so-familiar ruby. As they parted ways though, Ruth worried. She knew this gem. She knew it as well as the face of the one who wore it. She had drawn studies. So many studies. Ruth did not believe for a moment that he would be parted from this so easily as he had left behind his hat, gloves, and coat after their last meeting.
Ruth would have to get in touch with the Constantines, and see what they knew, if anything. For now, she would return to her home and set the ruby in the same case that held a black silk handkerchief that contained strange grains of sand, as well as a certain hat, coat, and pair of gloves. A case that was in a room with paintings and a certain tapestry hung upon the walls. A room that Ruth had called herself silly for even having, several times, and yet could not bring herself to remove a single thing from it.
~oOo~
It was during the second world-wide conflict (she had known that The Great War would not, in fact, be the war to end all wars, and if there had been anybody to bet on with, she'd have won that one) that the current Constantine directed her to something that might be more than another attempted demon summoning gone wrong.
Rodrick Burgess, it was said, had the devil trapped in his basement.
Personally, Ruth doubted it. So did Constantine, and his informants. Couple of supernatural beings who went by A. Z. Fell and Anthony J. Crowley, and the latter of whom Constantine would have been inclined to exorcise except that Fell (who had previously provided him with some truly excellent holy water) had vouched for him. To Constantine's grandfather.
Ruth had very much enjoyed meeting them. They were delightful in completely different ways, except of course that they both enjoyed a good bottle of wine. Both a bit busy at the moment though, and more inclined to the city than the countryside where Ruth usually based herself.
Back to the matter at hand though. Burgess was the type to hold grand parties so that the masses might pander to his ego - in particular, his ego as an occultist. According to Constantine's informants, Burgess insisted that everybody address him as 'Magus'. Constantine and Ruth both agreed it was pretentious (Fell thought it was a bit much, and Crowley that it was so ridiculous he was surprised Burgess hadn't tried to patent it yet). It also likely meant that he had summoned and trapped something.
Something that either needed to be freed, or banished, depending on what they found when they eventually got down there. Fell and Crowley could only assure them that there was something, apparently neither could actually get close enough to determine what, exactly, it was. Not without risking their own corporeal forms, anyway. And they were nice chaps, so Ruth didn't want them risking that. She and Constantine could find their own ways down into Burgess's basement.
And they would get down there.
A man who held grand parties in a grand house would need cleaning staff, and Ruth was well accustomed to that sort of work. Being a cleaning lady was always good for a fall-back occupation, or something to fill the hours. Whether that cleaning was of floors or linens or clothing. Ruth wound her way about the large house with a bottle of chloroform and a clean cloth in one of her pockets, hidden beneath her apron. Any person she crossed paths with who was not her Constantine conspirator was a quick victim of the substance, and was then gagged and tied up for good measure.
Room by room, Ruth and Constantine cleared the house for extra threats. When they found Rodrick Burgess's office and library, Constantine checked over the books there thoroughly, and tucked more than a few into the laundry bag attached to Ruth's cleaning trolley. They were going for subtle still, after all. But some of those books should simply not be left lying about. (Even if 'locked away in a glass case' or 'hidden in a safe' weren't exactly 'lying about'... technically.) Ruth spotted a few that she tucked into the laundry bag as well.
With the rest of the house cleared, they headed down to the basement. Well, once Constantine had taken the books from Ruth's cleaning trolley and stashed them in under the lining of the boot of his car, anyway. Then they headed down to the basement.
Constantine went first. If it was a demon of some kind, he would wave for Ruth to leave the matter to him. Oh, she was capable, but she was seeking one individual in particular, and Constantine knew it.
Her breath hitched when he waved her forward to join him at the bottom of the stairs. Then again, she had suspected already that they had found him. The great black robe she had found when checking that none of the wardrobes were secret passages... it had the same feel as the cloak he'd left behind, and the same strange, universe-like lining. It still rested in the laundry bag of her cleaning trolley, at hand to be immediately returned to him.
"I'll go fetch a sledgehammer to break the glass," Constantine whispered to her. "If you can handle the guard and breaking up the binding circle?"
Ruth nodded, and poured some more chloroform onto her cloth before she tip-toed past Constantine and towards the room beyond.
~oOo~
Because of the war going on, a lot of able-bodied young men were off soldiering. A lot of able-bodied older men too. Conscription was a hell of a thing, and Ruth herself didn't so much as dodge it as she did excuse herself. She was over the conscription age by a considerable margin, after all, and had farms to run besides. She had opened her farms to widows and veterans after the last war, and opened her farms now also to families eager to get their children out of the cities, as cities were more likely to be bombed.
What this meant for Ruth right that very moment, however, was that the guard looked of an age with some of the veterans who Ruth had once opened the peace of her farms to. Someone who was likely quite tough, but was getting on in years in a way that Ruth herself hadn't been since the fourteenth century.
Ruth removed her shoes, and tiptoed over in only her stockings (sensible wool stockings that she had knitted and kept darned herself) until she stood behind the guard. At which point she was quick to smother the man with the cloth and chloroform, and hold tight. He was armed, after all, and Ruth had experienced many ways by which a normal person might die, but she'd yet to be shot, and she didn't fancy adding that experience to her list just now either.
At last, the guard slumped, and Ruth was quick to gag him with his own neck tie and tie him up with his belt, braces, and shoelaces.
She'd just finished doing that when the sound of a flushing toilet (marvellous invention) reached her, and Ruth had enough time to hide her victim and herself in the shadows before a second guard, of an age with the first, entered the chamber.
She dealt with him the way she'd dealt with his compatriot, and everybody else in the building who had crossed her path.
"The latest Constantine is fetching a sledgehammer do deal with the glass," Ruth said once that was done and she was able to feel secure in fetching her shoes and cleaning trolley. "Your coat is in the bag," she added with a gesture to the laundry bag, even as she grabbed a scrub brush with very stiff bristles and a bottle of the strongest solvent a woman could buy over the counter.
She stepped across the moat-thing, and splashed some of the solvent over the binding circle. Then she got down on her knees and started scrubbing.
"Do you know how hard it was to find you?" Ruth asked as she scrubbed. "I wouldn't have even known you needed looking for if I hadn't seen a woman in the street wearing your ruby. I'd know it anywhere. Of course I bought it from her on the spot, and then I went to the Constantines. We've been looking for you for over a decade. The number of demon summonings gone wrong that we stumbled across while we were looking for you, it was truly ridiculous. Still, he let me question every demon we found on the way, just in case. Not that it was much of a questioning. I would hold up a sketch of you, ask what, if anything, they knew of your whereabouts, and most of them just sneered that they knew nothing of the location of the King of Dreams and Nightmares. Which was generally unhelpful, but did give me a title for you, even when I'd been so careful to leave your naming of yourself to your own discretion. Sorry about that, finding out your title from a third party."
She was rambling. She knew she was rambling. But she was very conscious of the fact that the being she'd been meeting every century was both revered as some kind of royalty by demons, and was very naked behind that glass. Ruth had, until that point, never seen a naked man who wasn't her own kin, and that had been a very long time ago, and back when said kin were more boys than men.
"And then one of the wretched things laughs and proclaims he is the King of Dreams and Nightmares now, because he has your helm, traded to him fair and square. Well, of course I couldn't let that stand. I explained that he could either surrender it, fair and square, and even keep all of his limbs before Constantine exorcised him back to Hell, or he could be completely humiliated before the entirety of Hell when you came to fetch it from his limbless remains yourself," Ruth continued. Still scrubbing, and determinedly not looking up.
The glass was perfectly clear, however thick it looked to be, and from this angle? No. She would not look.
"As I had by that point traded my sketch of your likeness for the very sharp sword I'd learned to use in India, and which a different Constantine had consecrated and blessed for me some sixty-odd years ago, my threat did rather carry some weight," Ruth said. "So I've also got your helm at my house, safely stored away and waiting for you. Constantine argued that too many things of yours in one place when you, yourself, were missing and unable to personally take charge of them was not the best of ideas, but conceded that it wouldn't look well for him to have it either. He's a member of the clergy, you see. It really is a good thing that Constantine is a member of the clergy, or he'd have been called up to be a soldier in the war that's going on, and then I'd have had a much harder time finding you."
Finally, the golden sigils on the floor were scrubbed away. Ruth closed her eyes, and sat up on her heels. Her hands went to her back and cracked her spine through her corset – being hunched over was never kind to one's back. No matter what kind of underpinnings a person was or wasn't wearing.
"What else was there? Oh yes. Everyone in the house is still alive, milord. Unconscious, tied up, and awaiting whatever vengeance or justice you wish to measure out upon them," Ruth concluded.
"Found the sledgehammer!" Constantine called as he strode into the basement, the named implement held aloft above his head. "You'd best move out of the way, Miss Gadling, or you'll catch a shower of glass in the face. And you'd best brace yourself as well as you can," he added to the captured being within.
Ruth obediently got to her feet, turned before she opened her eyes, crossed the moat-thing again, and went to her cleaning trolley. She kept her back to them as she removed the cloak from the laundry hamper and shook it out in readiness for its owner while Constantine swung the sledgehammer at the glass.
There was a great shattering.
"I thank you, John Constantine."
"Miss Gadling's already paid for my help in this," Constantine said. "If you need more of my help, then she knows how to find me and I expect you do as well. Now, I'm off. Books full of dangerous knowledge that need dealing with, and all. Ta."
And there was a quiet crunch of footsteps and Constantine nodded to Ruth as he passed her, sledgehammer slung over his shoulder. She nodded back.
"Milord," Ruth said, and held out the cloak as well as she could without looking upon the naked flesh of her oldest (literally) friend.
She felt it lifted from her hands, and heard the gentle rustling of fabric.
"Ruth Gadling," he called softly.
She turned.
She was relieved to see he was clothed. She was surprised by how close to her he stood.
The King of Dreams and Nightmares bent his head to rest his brow against hers. Ruth kept her eyes lowered, but felt him breathe deeply in. She could not imagine how stale the air in that wretched glass bubble must have been, and she did not want to.
"I thank you, my friend," he said softly and with great solemnity as his hands caught hers. He did not move away. "You know not the service you have done not only me, but the worlds."
It was an apology as much as it was thanks, Ruth knew. An apology for how their last meeting had ended, when he had denied that what they shared could be called friendship. Now he acknowledged that the title, however lowly, was indeed hers as she had claimed.
"Anything for a friend, milord," Ruth answered softly.
"Dream," he said, and straightened once more. He did not move away, as such, and he did not release his hold on her hands, but their faces were no longer so close together as to share their breaths. "My name is Dream of the Endless. I have been called Kai'ckul, Oneiros, Morpheus, Prince of Stories, Shaper of Forms, King of Dreams, Nightmares, and the Dreaming, Master of the Realm of Sleep, and the Sandman. I am the personification of all the worlds' unconscious thought. I would have you call me by my truest name, Ruth Gadling. I would have you call me Dream."
"Dream," Ruth repeated with a smile.
~oOo~
"You count vengeance and justice as different things," Dream said as they left the basement behind and journeyed into the parts of the house where Ruth had left people bound, gagged, and unconscious. "How do you differentiate them?"
Ruth hummed in thought. It was a delicate question to answer, especially given the current situation.
"Justice should be satisfying, and allow you to put the offender from your mind and never think of them again. Vengeance that is not justice, but merely repaying pain for pain, frequently isn't satisfying, often sparks a cycle of violence rather than ending it, and an avenger might dwell on the ways they were wronged long after they have taken their vengeance. Justice cannot be passionate," Ruth said, "and should not be personal if it can be helped. Vengeance is almost always both of those things."
"And you would counsel justice in this instance?" Dream asked.
Ruth shrugged.
"I counsel that your vengeance be just," Ruth corrected gently. "It is certainly justified. It is only that vengeance often brings harm to both parties, and I would not see you hurt further by any person, in any way. I would especially not see you bring harm to yourself after all that you have already suffered here."
Of course, she knew from experience that trauma was never so accommodating as that, but a lingering distaste for glass windows was a whole different thing to being haunted by memories of the cries of people begging for mercy. Especially when one had been on both sides of that.
"You are a good and wise friend, Ruth Gadling," Dream said, his eyes shining with the depths of the galaxies and multitudes he contained. "Truly."
Ruth had no answer for that, though it warmed her heart to hear it. So, silently, she guided Dream to where each sleeper waited for his judgement, whatever that may be. It was not Ruth's place to judge them, condemn them, defend them, or attempt to absolve them. It was only her place to stand in support of Dream, her friend, who they had most foully wronged.
When it was done, Ruth led Dream out to her car – as Constantine had already left in his, eager to deal with those dangerous books. Ruth had other concerns. She had no desire to remind Dream of the glass prison he had so recently been liberated from, but cars had glass windows. If she had known the nature of his prison, she'd have brought her curricle instead (yes, she still had it, maintained it, and kept a couple of horses for it as well), and damn every strange look she'd get in the street for driving a horse down the street in this day and age.
All she could do was roll all of the windows down for him before she invited him to sit upon the dark leather upholstery.
Dream bore the car ride well, though he did lean his head to the side in such a way as to catch more wind on his face than he would have if he'd sat straight in the passenger seat.
~oOo~
"Come and be welcome, know that my door is always open to you, and that my home is yours for as long as you wish," Ruth said as she opened the door of her home for Dream. "When you must leave, leave in good health and be safe on your travels, that you may return and be welcomed once more."
Dream smiled at her, and bowed his head in silent thanks. His smile was warm and soft and wondering, for all it was also a little sad, and certainly not the largest smile Ruth had ever seen upon his face. Still, as all his smiles were, it was beautiful.
Ah.
Right.
His things were in the room that was also where she kept her sketches, paintings, and the great tapestry she had done of him. Well. There would be no hiding them, and it would be best not to delay, either. Still, perhaps she could delay her own mortification at his reaction?
Ruth pulled the key for the room from her chatelaine, and held it out to Dream.
"The room your things are in is the fifth on the right," she said, "behind the only door I've painted black. I'm going to fetch some sandwiches and something for us to drink from my cold box. I expect you don't need to eat, but I would swear you are thinner than the last I saw you, so I doubt it would hurt for you to have something. Unless you have a preference?"
Dream bent his head regally and accepted the key.
"I... an omelette?" he asked.
"Easy enough," Ruth agreed with a gentle smile.
~oOo~
Ruth held the tray of food carefully balanced, took a deep, bracing breath, and pushed open the door.
His ruby was resting at his neck once more, and he had apparently also picked up the little black silk handkerchief that held the remains of the sand he had once used upon Lady Constantine and her thugs, for Ruth could see how he rubbed the tiny folded silk beneath his thumb as he... stared around the room at Ruth's own artistic efforts.
The helm was nowhere to be seen, but as Ruth had herself hidden it in a safe in a cavity in the wall behind another painting of him, she wasn't surprised.
Ruth set the tray of food down on the little table by the wing-backed chair she had purchased with thoughts of him – covered in black upholstery velvet and with a matching ottoman.
"I'm sorry that it took so long to find you," Ruth said quietly as she swung aside the painting that hid the safe.
"I thank you that you came at all, and that you survived the rescue attempt," Dream answered, sadness in his mien as he moved from looking at the tapestry of him to consider the top hat, gloves, and coat that Ruth had collected and kept after their last parting. "They killed Jessamy for hers."
Ruth froze.
"Milord?" she asked.
"Jessamy was my raven. She had found her way to me, and was trying to break the glass. Alexander Burgess shot her. Her blood stayed on the glass of my prison for some time. Alexander Burgess had her body stuffed and mounted," Dream explained, his eyes red-rimmed and glassy with tears he fought against releasing.
Ruth swallowed tightly. Dream had stopped in their journey through the Burgess house to stare at, and then fold into his cloak, a stuffed bird that was mounted on one of the walls. She got back to the matter of opening the safe that held Dream's helm.
Ruth did not have the power to return to him everything he had been robbed of, but what she could, she would do as swiftly as she was able.
"I do not say this to trouble you, Ruth Gadling," Dream assured her gently from behind her. From very close behind her. His hands gently held her elbows as she turned the dial of the safe. "I say this so that you might better understand my feelings at this time. When Jessamy came to me, for the first time in years I felt hope. When she was killed before me, I trod the border of my sister Despair's domain. I truly thought that I would be trapped down there for decades yet to come. I feared that I would still be trapped there when I should have been meeting you at the White Horse. I feared that you would be wroth with me for missing that meeting, when I eventually did gain my freedom again."
"Never," Ruth said at once as she opened the door of the safe, and then turned in his arms to stare fiercely up at him. "I would wait for you for a thousand years, if that was what it took, and I would welcome you with gladness."
"Such loyalty," Dream breathed admiringly, a small, wondering smile on his face. "Such... devotion," he added, one side of his smile ticking up just enough to be called a smirk, as his gaze flicked briefly sideways to one of the many portraits of him that adorned the walls.
Ruth's cheeks burned. She dropped her gaze and bowed her head.
"It isn't like that, milord," she murmured.
"Dream," he corrected her gently. "And it isn't like what, Ruth Gadling?"
"It isn't lustful," Ruth said, eyes fixed on the space between them where she was twisting her fingers together. "It's never been lustful. Do I admire your beauty? Yes milord, Dream, yes. You are beautiful. I could be blind and still know you are beautiful. Do I hold you as precious in my heart? Of course I do. How could I know you and not? But I hold no carnal lusts in me. Not even in my dreams."
Dream caught her chin with one hand and tilted her head up, forcing her to look at him. He bent his head kissed her brow gently in benediction. He bent his head further, and trailed his nose from her hairline to the tip of her own nose. Softly, he kissed her lips with his.
Ruth shivered, and melted against him when Dream slid his other arm around her waist and gently pulled her closer to him.
"Okay," she breathed, voice shaking, when Dream released her lips. "Lust may begin to figure into things going forward, a little," she allowed.
Dream smiled down at her.
"My Ruth," he said, his eyes sparkling with star-shine. "I thank you, for your care. I commend you, for your rescue of me and retrieval of my ruby and my helm. I must still retrieve a pouch of sand that Rodrick Burgess took from me when I was captured, and I must return to the Dreaming and tend to my duties, but know that I, too, hold you in my heart as precious."
Ruth nodded.
"Go and come back safely," she said. "Only eat before you go, please?"
"Of course," Dream agreed.
~The End~
