Work Text:
After the harrowing failure that had been the Roanoke colony, Arthur had travelled from London to oversee the workings of each new settlement thereafter on the land himself. It was an urge he could not shake, for the turning feeling of anticipation in his chest that had been forming since news of the letdown had returned home to him would not dare allow him such reprieve.
For twenty years, he had grieved the what-ifs. The idea that fulfillment had been just out of reach, that his fingertips had grazed it, reaching forth like God in the Creation of Adam, and it had slipped from him like wetness through the crevices of his desperate, burning hands. A skiddy beast; a truth that fled him. What sin need he atone for, he had wondered in the lonely mornings far across the ocean, that he must endlessly feel despair by the universe in such a dogged way?
Perhaps what had made it better first, before the true victory, was how he had felt so vindictively gratified when the attempt of a French colony, by the river they called Saint Croix, fell to failure as well. He had wanted to scream in the face of that terrible tawny-headed frog, If I may not have it, neither shall you!
There was no new attempt by the English hand until just past the turn of the new century. His new king, the king of two, had chartered dual companies to commence the settling of Virginia, as the span of coastland bridging between lower Spanish territory and upper French territory had been deemed. Arthur went upon the second sending out, and what convincing of his sovereign to bid him leave that itself had taken.
In the Popham colony of the upper north, sweetness blossomed, and he found there the answer to every tepid prayer he had relinquished to the skies since the first man had landed base in America. Where had it been, exactly that he'd heard the notion of intentionally creating a colony-child? He could not well recall anymore. One of those other dogs in Europe, perhaps Spain. It mattered not in the end, anyway, who precisely had told him of it. Only that they'd been right. He'd bent in virgin fields, flush against rushing water; he'd taken a cherub careful in his hands, writhing and bare and beautiful, and lifted him up to the light of the sun and knew that they had been right. What a wonder that was.
Like he too were apart of the autumn harvest, he, the baby, the wondrous bearing of fate, had been caked in dirt, torn grass fisted in tiny shaking hands, and his round face had been pinched up and red with the force of his obvious displeasure. But Arthur thought, even despite it all, that that baby must have been the most beautiful thing he'd ever yet seen.
For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever.
In the town, the boy was cleaned of the lingering earth and draped in a cotton gown that swallowed him. His downy head was covered by a biggin, falling just above the light shadow of his browbone. Overly hopeful as he’d been that he’d find here what he searched for, Arthur had stowed the cloth away with his own effects before he’d ventured on the ship, praying that he’d find proper use for them in the New World. Right he’d been, and glad for it, for there were no women in Popham with children that he could borrow the articles from. That meant when he travelled back down southward, he’d need to fashion a cradle on his own, or have one of the men down there do it for him.
One of the Popham settlers, who knew as the rest did that Arthur hadn’t made the trip across the sea with any sort of infant in company, had mused, "Only the Lord may know how long the foundling was out there alone. How long it may have taken for you to find him... perhaps we ought to christen him Forbearance."
Arthur had pursed his lips, but said nothing. Yes, what a thing it was for these people, naming their little children all sorts of peculiar things. When alone, he came close and asked the babe in a whisper just what he thought of the idea. Speechless as a creature of such age was ordained to be, his only response had been an indignant little snuffle, and Arthur had laughed breathily for it. When he left Popham to go down to Jamestown, and the people there asked the name of the bundle he carried on with him, he instead called his child Alfred, and he was baptized so.
An honor to his leader of old, the king of the Anglo-Saxons, his master of all masters, the heart of his heart, who had defended he and his lands from the barbarity of the Danish Vikings centuries and centuries ago. Way back then, when Arthur had still been called Wessex rather than England. Ælfrǣd, who had done good unto him. Arthur could only hope that this one would as well.
"They are not my people any longer," Arthur told him. "Now, they are yours. When you are old enough, and you may understand better of our purpose, it will be your duty to protect them. To serve and care for them, as they care for this land of yours they have come upon. It is our duty, our unshruggable burden, being what we are."
Alfred had merely stared up at Arthur as he spoke, big round eyes shining like the surface of the river he'd been found by, like the light of Heaven that blanketed them from above. Two pure, inquisitive little gems. Arthur smiled and tilted his head. "Well, I suppose you needn't worry a thing of that just yet. How lucky you are."
What chagrin had he felt at the failure of Roanoke? What anger, what pain? That he had been so close to this, this life, this truth, and it had been stolen from him... Had a baby sprouted from the soul of that settlement, too? Had it withered and died as every settler of the village disappeared? Perhaps the universe had thought Arthur had forsaken it, his child, because he'd not been there to collect it. It was not true, it couldn't be, but it was a notion he had nursed for twenty-some years, a festering wound no salve could ever pray to heal. What had he lost, or had he lost anything? Maybe it had been fated this way, that the fear of loss would bring him to this land, so that he could collect his son when he truly did sprout up.
God played strange games. Sometimes, cruel games. But it did not matter anymore; the baby was here, and Arthur would raise him with all the love he himself had never been granted, and all would be well. He would have one person, finally, who would never spurn him, never betray him, never leave him.
Where England had always been a rather dismal thing—even strong and assured as his kingdom was—something of overcast and rain and dreary chill, America seemed the precise opposite. The first span of cold in Jamestown was not by any means an easy one, nor even the next one—Attacks from the nearby tribe of Powhatan natives caused a need for a replenishing of men from England, but the supply ships that came to stock the settlement of both food and men in the early months of 1608 did well enough about the matter. But as spring came after, the cold melted to warm rain and flowers, and then summer brought forth an embracing swelter so unlike home. In that, Alfred’s most sunny disposition was revealed more with each day. He was a gleeful boy, smiling gummy each time Arthur came before his eyes. It was the highlight of Arthur’s every morning, leaning over the wood of the cradle that had been fashioned upon their arrival and seeing the skies looking back up at him, loving and trusting and wholly innocent. Arthur had never in all his long life felt an adoration so pure as that which he felt for the bairn he had been granted; the poppet from Popham. For a great many months, there was no feeling that could compare to it.
(Perhaps only the despair he later felt in watching his child suffer so, when the third wintertide finally drew its pitiless claws upon Virginia.)
Time dragged on. There were certain issues that sprung about here and there, inconveniences that turned direr with age. In the droughtless April of the next year, a bout of dampness and infestation destroyed all of the provisions the colonists had long stocked up, and they were left fending hand-to-mouth with the meager upturnings of the second summer’s harvest. It was then, during that parlous spell of heat, that Arthur first felt the arising worry that would soon grow to be his common bedfellow in the fast approaching months.
Jamestown was saved, ephemerally, by the arrival of Captain Argall of the London Company and his ship and credit. With all that he could spare, he resupplied the village with food and wine and informed the settlers that he was not far ahead of another supply and a new governor, which lightened the dark spirits that had hung over the people since the spring. Argall informed Arthur privately of what had become of Popham since he’d gone. Half of the colonists had fled back to England in December of 1607, not more than just a few months after they’d all arrived, and not more than two after Arthur had left to make the trip down southward. The leader of the colony had died the next February, and the second had returned too to England in September to claim his awaiting inheritance. When it became so that the colony was inherently sponsorless, the remaining men abandoned on the last ship that arrived, and Popham was no more.
This whole time, he had wondered how much better or worse they fared than their southern partners. This whole time, he had prayed that they prospered, that the fertile land in which his son had sprouted did well even without him. To think that he’d been pondering for nearly two years, and they’d all been gone almost the entire time.
How wonderful, Arthur had thought cynically. What labor spent, and all for naught.
Throughout the August of 1609, some six more ships carrying English passengers had arrived upon the river, and the last did in later October. There were women in the colony then, and children as well, but a number of the newcomers were ill, and they hadn’t much supplies with them. Argall stayed until the middle of the autumn, leaving with the assurance that help would be soon to come, but nothing did. The captain left with the four of the seven ships that returned to England, purportedly to inform the others there of the settlement’s plight, and Arthur was left wondering what could have possibly happened to the others out at sea. It would likely be long before he received any word, if he ever even did at all. As the others upon the vessels that had arrived had all said the ship with all of the provisions was not far behind them, Arthur most logically concluded that the craft had been put to sea with no issue, and only lost course somewhere far out on the water. But still, what good did that serve to them stuck here and furnishless?
The colonists of Jamestown grew steadily restless once again, and as the temperature began to chill, worry struck in Arthur’s chest like the beating of a bell. The unknown was a vast thing, one he could scarcely bear, and it unsettled him immensely. He was used to knowing the workings of all matters, used to knowing all that went on regarding his country and his people. It was his right as a Nation, the figure of a new fledgling empire. But, far away as he was from the homeland, and with no way to contact the ship… It did not befit him to be so clueless, and he hated it. They all looked to him for answers—Arthur’s people, Alfred’s people—just as stuck here and unknowing as he was, and Arthur had none to give to them.
At times, he wondered if it wouldn’t just be better to call the whole thing quits and return home. He had gotten what he’d come here for, so what other reason was there to stay? He’d failed to leave with Argall and the four ships in the fall, but there were still three boats that had been left stationed in Jamestown. If he really wanted to, surely he could demand the makings of another voyage home.
But Alfred was too small, too weak to make the taxing journey; especially now, with every problem wrought upon the land that he had spawned from. It seemed a wonder that, for as long as they had been in the settlement, none of the other villagers had taken notice of the fact that Alfred did not seem to grow very much at all. Perhaps they chalked it up to malnutrition having stunted his growth, or something of that sort, or maybe they just weren’t very observant at all—too caught up in their own matters as they were to notice anything outside of that. No one else here was all so hale and hearty either, and they’d not been for a good long while. It was a convenient excuse, at least, but Arthur still did not make it a habit to have Alfred in common view of the colonists anyhow. Best not to test his luck.
If things continued as they were, Alfred would only grow sicker, no matter how far away from the New World he was. And then, at the same time, being so far away from his land might only make it worse. Arthur couldn’t be sure, and he didn’t want to risk anything by testing half-hearted theories. Alfred couldn’t leave yet, not until things stabilized. He wasn’t ready, that was the bottom line, and Arthur would be damned if he left him to the care of these fickle, ineffectual humans. So, as much as he disliked it, as much as he craved for the familiar comforts of home, he remained in the settlement anyway.
By December, frost had hardened the ground, making farming an impossible endeavor. The effects were merciless, even as people did all they could to stay sustained. Arthur watched as it all coalesced upon the baby, every hardship and agony. Though they were settlers of Arthur’s, they had formed an identity of this land. That they had not left, returned to the homeland—what did that make them now but Americans? And so the land suffered, and the people suffered, and the representative of it all suffered for it far more than Arthur did. The hunger for him was not so awful; such grappling abilities came with age, he presumed. He could cope with it, survive through it, and make it out on the other side unmarred. The boy could not.
No matter how close to the hearth Arthur held him, frail little Alfred would not stop shivering. He cried more often than not, mewling like a wounded animal all throughout the day. Gone was his sun and joy of the kinder beginning, stolen and replaced by hunger and need. He suffered, as the people did, and Arthur suffered watching him. Before the fire, he held his child to his chest, small and blanketed in every scrap of fabric he could conjure up, and whispered, “I would take every hurt from you, if I could, and bear them all myself.”
Alfred had only looked up at him, wide eyes glistening with tears, and whimpered out his pains. Too exhausted was he most times to wail anymore.
“I would do it gladly,” Arthur told him, as tenderly as he could through the stinging of his throat, “if only you may never feel this torment again.”
But he could not.
He awoke on a brisk morning in the dead of winter to a suffocating, inescapable feeling of dread. Pure and unadulterated, a disquietude that sat heavy on his chest, oozing viscous on his every trembling bone. A faint draft came in through the window, even past the drawn curtains, and he could feel a bundled little mass curled against his side under the blanket. He shuddered once and opened his eyes.
He had taken to bringing Alfred into sharing the bed with him, rather than leaving him by his lonesome in the cradle, in hopes that the warmth of his own body would help to counteract some of the shivering the cold and agues brought upon the baby’s ropy frame. And it helped them both to sleep, Arthur thought, at a time when the aches of starvation kept Alfred up all hours, and the pain of hearing the pathetic cries of his child did Arthur. He turned his head into the softness of the blond tufts resting against his shoulder and pushed the feeling away. He had no use for it now, and no explanation.
One hand smoothed down Alfred’s bony back, tracing through his clothing the curve of his jutting spine where he lay curled slightly forward. The poor child, how macilent he had become. For all that Arthur did his best to keep him fed, foregoing all he could himself for the sake of giving everything spare to the boy, there was very little to go around here anymore, and far too many mouths to feed. Alfred would starve for as long as his people did, and there was nothing Arthur could do to save him from it.
“Good morning, poppet,” he murmured. “How are you today?”
It was a courtesy question, more than anything, for he knew Alfred likely fared just as poorly as he had the previous days, if not worse, and it was not as though he could answer him intelligibly anyway. But Arthur had been told that it was good to speak to infants as though they could understand you, that it helped them in their linguistic development or something of that sort. So he spent much of his time chatting idly these days with no expectation for response. It served as a good distraction as any, he supposed.
“What shall we do today, do you think?” Perhaps read some, maybe see if they could not find any lingering game left out in the forests. Arthur could speak mindlessly more of home back in England, where he’d take Alfred once the trip was feasible. Anything to keep the mind off of the more obvious troubles. Arthur adjusted, and his larger hand came to meet the exposed skin of Alfred’s tiny elbow, where the sleeve of his gown had ridden up in the night. “Goodness, look how cold you are. Is the draft really so bad?”
Well, he’d light the hearth again; quite simple. It would help a bit, at least, and even a little something was better than nothing. He took the blanket from off of himself to wrap the slack entirely around the smaller, to let him warm a bit before the heat came through. Not to worry, dearest.
Arthur rose slowly, making certain not to tousle Aflred too much upon the paltry mattress as he stood. Even through the floorcloth, he could feel the chill of the ground on his bare feet, and so he moved quickly toward the window, drawing the curtains as tightly as they’d go together, and then going from the bedroom into the common space to make up the fire.
When the flame lit, Arthur stood for one moment before it, rubbing his hands together, before he turned back toward the bedroom. Alfred was still where he’d been left upon the mattress, not having moved even with all of the disruption. Arthur frowned slightly and took the bundle into his arms, cocoon of a blanket and all. What exhaustion, the poor thing.
“Come now,” he said to the babe as he led him from the room, cradling him as though he were made of porcelain, careful and conscious, “we’ll warm you up yet.”
On his knees before the hearth, Arthur adjusted the blanket to reveal more of the child in his arms, in part so that the developing warmth of the flame could reach his skin more easily, and in part so that he merely could look upon him. He looked peaceful in slumber, for once. There was no furrow of his little brow, cavernous creases of elevens in the glabella. No twitching of his mouth or hands, no quick quiver of his body from anxieties too big for his elfin self. It was reassuring, almost, to Arthur. Maybe that meant that things would get better.
Alfred did not warm so quickly, even right by the fire. The light coming off from the flames danced across his still face, over the long blond lashes that rested on the pink apples of his cheeks, past the little o-shape that his pale, puckered lips made. He looked so fragile there, cold and sheltered in Arthur’s gawky arms; like an ornate doll, a most beautiful jewel.
He bowed his head until the breath of his words could almost trace the shell of the boy’s ear. “I shall raise you well,” he promised, “and bring you up strong. This shall not be the end, bitter as it seems right now. For as many terrible things I had been through in my youth, I made it through despite all. And you are mine, so there must be resilience in your blood as well.”
Arthur adjusted the body in his hold, and the baby’s limp head came to rest against his chest with the softest of thuds. “I like that you are quiet now,” he said after a moment, offhand and slow. “It is a balm to ease this burden, I think. I take no pleasure in your misery; it pulls at my heart. Is that a very twee thing to say?”
Oh, if only his foes should hear him being so sentimental; he’d never be able to escape their mockery. For some strange reason, it did not bother him as much as it ought to have. God forbid he was growing soft already, when it had only been a handful of scant, short years… But even still, there was a joy in it that the others did not know, that they couldn’t possibly. The workings of child-rearing, and the miracle of the apparition itself. Perhaps that made it worth it, in the end, only as long as he did not forget the importance of potency and strength. Tough exterior, softer innards. God, what was he, some shelled animal?
Alfred made no response to any of Arthur’s questions or statements, but Arthur smiled anyway, humored despite himself at his own thought-up notions. “Well, let not Francis or Antonio know of it, blasted creatures they are, and I think we’ll be quite alright.”
The warmth of the fire had penetrated more of the cottage by then, and so Arthur rose slowly from his knees, child still in his steady hold, and continued nattering on mindlessly as he returned into the bedroom to dress. “You do not know of them, of course. Consider that a blessing, little one, and pray you do not for a long time yet. Their absence shall save you from many a headache.”
His finer habiliments remained across the ocean in England, but the clothing he donned now would be well enough to combat the chill that hung heavy outside. Woolen stockings and a high-collared doublet to cover up his neck were more than some people here had, anyway. When he made a sliver of a gap in the curtains, he could see outside some idlers already beginning to wearily make about their day.
He turned to look at Alfred, who he had lain upon the bed again, as he pulled his second arm through the free sleeve of his jerkin. The boy’s eyes were closed still, and his skin was lambent in the low light like the glaze of an oil painting. Arthur hummed a short thing, contemplating. When the trip home to London was something more doable, Arthur thought maybe he ought to have a portrait done sometime. Chewing pleasedly on the idea, Arthur bundled him appropriately next.
Church was one of the very few occasions that Arthur actually took the baby out of the house. It would be wrong of him not to, especially on the Sabbath day, and it would send the others talking amongst themselves, bringing in attention he was sure he did not want. Though newborns were not expected to attend service, Alfred had no mother that he could stay home with, and Arthur was not in such a position that he himself could fill that role without question. Plus, if the villagers were meant to believe Alfred a toddler, only small, then he would have to show up regardless, as was customary. There was nothing to be done about it. But if Alfred continued to remain as quiet as he had the rest of the morning, then all seemed likely to be well.
They upheld service because they believed that God might, if only they beseeched Him enough, free them from this torturous plight. That if they continued their show of faith, they might be saved.
When Arthur prayed, it was not so much for them as it was, really, for the situation as a whole. Alfred would not be fully better until the entire miserable ordeal was over and done with, and everyone was happy and fed once more. When he called up for the bountiful sprouting of crops, for good and blessed weather, for no more thieving rodents to disrupt their stock, it was all for reasons entirely selfish. Simply because he could not bear to lose his child.
Because I have no one if not you, he thought. Perhaps the impression would be plucked by the nimble fingers of the universe, and there transferred into the subconscious soul of the baby to convey to him what Arthur’s own verbal words could not. What they failed to, what he was too scared to say, here before the ever-watching eyes of his people and of God. That it would express the sincerity and the truth, that Arthur needed nothing else and wanted for nothing else. That the child he had made slotted right into the open hole of his heart, the missing piece, and that he was perfect. But he hoped that it would tell to him only the good, and forgo the evil verity hidden far within: that Arthur was self-seeking, that he was unknowing, unready, and that he was utterly weak with lonesomeness. Alfred could never know it, lest it soured him irrevocably.
Almighty God and Father, said the human people. We cry to you in our need. In your great compassion, have mercy on us.
He came from the meeting house some hours later, once the service concluded. The shabby little chapel lacking of anything considerable or ornate, standing stark and square against the fog-soaked horizon. There was a small gathering bunched together near the stoop, a man and two women, both of whom looked especially fraught. When Arthur stepped from the entranceway, he seemed to have come into their peripheral vision, for one of the women called out to him then, “Lord Kirkland!”
He twisted his lips and approached hesitantly, adjusting his hold on the bundle in his arms, which did not go unnoticed by the three. “Is that young Alfred?” asked the man. With as little people as there were left in the settlement, everyone knew of everyone by name, even the rarely seen. This was Richard Barrow, a common man who had arrived in Jamestown last spring, and the first woman who’d spoken was his wife, Temperance. “How fare he in these striving times?”
Arthur answered simply, vaguely, “As do we all, the best that we are able.”
The other woman, a terribly nervous little waif named Jane Pierce, whose father had been aboard one of the lost ships, asked tepidly, “Do any of us fare so well?”
At a suss look from the Goodman, Pierce stumbled to go on, “I mean, it is only… trying. I should say. That we must do such untoward things to go on.”
Goodwife Barrow tsked and swatted lightly at the younger girl’s hand to silence her. “But it matters not, only that we do.” She turned to look at Arthur again, “I am glad to hear you both are well, then, or as well as may be. He is much soothed by the sounds of it. How did you compass such a feat?”
He hadn’t done anything. Alfred was only quiet today, and it was of his own accord. He did not search too deeply into it; why look a gift horse in the mouth?
When he said as much to Temperance Barrow, a strange look came upon her face, and before he could stop her, she had gone up on her toes and used the crook of her finger to pull back the coverings shielding Alfred’s head from the chill. When she took stock of him, only a few seconds before Arthur gathered his wits enough to jerk away, the energy dimmed from her eyes, and she pulled back, knowing. It confounded him a great deal, and the old feeling from the early morning returned.
“He sleeps,” Arthur excused. The two women shared a fleeting look. “What? What is it?”
“Nothing,” Goody Barrow said, stepping away. “Well, ‘tis good to have some quiet at whiles, I suppose. We ought to go. God be with ye, sir.”
She nodded once to him, then turned and began away, gesturing after her husband, who cleared his throat wetly into his fraying handkercher before bidding him too farewell. Jane Pierce, awkward, bobbed a hasty little curtsey to Arthur before dashing off the opposite way, leaving him standing there alone. He watched her figure grow smaller and thought again of her previous words, and the shrewd look she had shared with Goodwife Barrow.
“That we must do untoward things to go on...”
He mouthed the words silently, over and over again, until they ceased to make any sense. He glanced down once to Alfred, whose face was still uncovered from Goody Barrow’s peeking, and took in the preternatural sight of the doll-like figure of him. His round cheeks were hallowed just so with hunger, and Arthur could trace with his eyes the intricate webbing of veins, so close to the surface of his sallow skin that one touch might rupture them. With a slow and trembling hand, Arthur brushed back the few tresses of his honey blond hair, limp and lusterless. The feeling advanced, drawing tenfold, and all he could see in his mind’s eye was the expression Goody Barrow had held upon her face before she’d looked on him. And in his own, at that, was foreboding.
No. Do not tell me.
A few days later, when Richard Barrow died of fever and there was no corpse left to bury by the time anyone else found out, Arthur came to realize just what exactly Temperance and Jane had meant.
Enlightenment came upon him. Or maybe he had known the entire time.
13 February, 1610.
All that in which I have long suffered has not a thing commensurate to the pain which has been wrought upon me these past days.
As this winter has descended upon us, the people of Jamestown have called their trials an appraisal by the Lord. Yet I have awoken to-day and now know better. God has abandoned me.
I know that I have done evil, much evil in my prolonged life, and that I have brought about much pain and much torment. I know that I have spilled blood bountifully. But know that I do only that which is commanded of me, that which is looked for in those of mine own kind. I am what I was created to be, and I act in accordance. I live to serve my people, and my nation, for I am it and it is I, so long as we both still exist. I have held my faith in God evermore, throughout all and everything, and He has forsaken me, and He has brought me to this. I marvel, have I not already sorrowed enow, in the grief which I shouldered for some two decades past? Need I repent my every sin for all the rest of my days?
Speak, Good Lord, and I shall obey. Tell me of Thy commands, and I shall do whatsoever Thou bid me, if only Thou should restore to me the sole good I have e'er possessed in this sanguinary world. Again, I beg everything again.
In the beginning, they feasted of the animals. They ripped meat from muscle like the savages outside the walls. They splintered open every bone, large or thin, and scraped and sucked the marrow dry. The game, and then the domesticated, and then the pests. The paths were soiled with hides.
When that was out, they turned to what had once been animal before. They boiled leather in brackish river water, pounding it between stones and then between their teeth until their muscles burned and their jaws ached and it had suffered and softened enough for consumption. They ate through belts, through shoes, through anything they could get their bony, weary hands upon. The tanning chemicals sickened them all the more, but they did not care.
When that was out, they ate each other.
One could last be seen at church on Saturday, purportedly pass on Monday, and their corpse stripped entirely before the evening’s end of that very same day. It had happened. It was happening, actively, all around him. Goodman Barrow’s death and absence were what made Arthur come to understand the reality of it, but he was sure that the settlers had already been doing it for much longer under his nose. Or, perhaps they had thought him aware already. What had little Pierce’s words been but a testing? And their look…
Goody Barrow had said nothing of it, of the aberrant state of the child in Arthur’s possession, when she had peered upon him that midday at the meeting house stoop. She’d only had that knowing glint in her eyes, lightless and accepting.
The realization came to Arthur before he knew how to stop it.
She thought I was going to eat him.
The very idea of it made him sick. Violently so, and he was sure that he must have spent a considerable amount of time dry-heaving whenever he thought on the notion again. She had believed him so secretive and so protective of the baby, only because in her mind, he was so greedy that he wanted the tiny body all for his own consumption. Maybe that he carried him around all to spend the last amount of time with him that he could, because when he would be finished, just as it was with Goodman Barrow, there would be nothing of Alfred left to mourn.
That he would ever, ever…
“I wouldn’t,” Arthur whispered, knelt in the dark, the still body lain limp upon his lap. “I would sooner rend my own body so that you might satisfy yourself. I would, Alfred; whatever you require of me, I would do. I wish I had known.”
As religiously fanatical as mortal people were in these times, Arthur wondered if they truly comprehended the gravity of the sin that they committed by desecrating their fellow man’s flesh in the ways that they did. He wondered at the same time when it had started, for how long it had been going on while he had been none the wiser, while he had struggled to keep sustained with leather and paper and roots he pulled from the ground. He wondered, sickly, why he had not thought of it in all the nights he had spent soothing the starving child in his care.
“Anything you wish,” he professed, so softly. And it was entirely true, and he thought that he might even be happy to do it, in fact. “I will do whatever you need, whatever you want, if only you come back to me.”
What went unsaid: I need you. You are the only one who trusts me, who loves me. Who has never harmed me, nor tricked or betrayed me. The only thing entrusted to me that I may rely wholly on, that I may put my faith in the innocence of. The only person I feel I can trust shall not leave me as well.
And what did not: “You are all that I have.”
All my life, I have been othered. I am the black sheep of Europe; that is what they all call me. I am sick, and I am alone. I am so, so alone. All I have is my country, which has killed me over and over again, for people who shall die before I can blink into waking afresh. I have only myself, my bitter self, and you, my child.
“Am I a fool to play family,” Arthur questioned himself. But it was more a statement than a question, really, like perhaps he already knew the answer himself without needing ask. “To believe that I might relish in the same joys of the mortal people.” He looked to the skies, to the numen, the creator, and asked Him next, “Is this my penance, Lord? Why must the child, the innocent child, suffer for all my own wrongdoings? What grace is this?”
Alfred was a purposeless weight in his arms, not more than a few meager pounds. Like the straw dummies Arthur had practiced his broadsword against as a lad. A jute sack a farmer may store the tidings of his land with. A lithic bust, hard and fragile. Something trivial and insentient; not something alive, something that had breathed and smiled and screamed in the wretched pains of human-borne hunger. He bowed his head to kiss the cold skin of that being before him, what had once been living, and found it mawkish with death. Arthur tasted copper, slick and hot, coming up in the back of his mouth. Indeed, maybe he had known all along, from the very moment he had awoken the Sabbath morning to the chill and the dread.
When those of their kind died, it was no miracle when they revived again shortly thereafter. It was expected, which was why—even for all the pain that death and reanimation brought—it was no big matter for any of them to slay or wound mortally another in battle. England had slain some himself, and had been felled in ways similar. It meant little to naught: so long as their nation lived on, so too would they. The most powerful could arise the same day, mere hours later, but even the weaker ones returned after a time. It was a rarity that they did not, an infrequent phenomenon. Arthur had only ever heard of it secondhand, in the stories of the ancients passed down through the eras. If there was no polity to return to, no people left to lead, then there was no use for them. It had happened to Rome, lives and lives ago. It had happened to his mother.
The amount of people left in Jamestown now compared to the amount that there had been before the winter was a stark, vile difference. If things continued as they were, at the meteoric pace that they did, then there was no certainty to be held that this land’s personification would ever revive himself. If the universe found no need for him, it would not bring him back. Arthur did not know well how these things worked. Would he have to bury the boy like he was human? Return him to the Earth from whence he had come, dust to dust? Or would he simply cease to be altogether? Would Arthur fall to sleep one night and awake the next morning to find no trace of him? Would it be as though he had never existed at all?
Despite perhaps his better inhibitions, he turned his mind back to Roanoke. Arthur had not thought of it, the failed colony and the child he might have had from it, since he had collected Alfred from the riverbed in Popham those three some years ago, but now, he could not help it. He wondered, if there really had been a child, what had happened to its derelict corpse, and if history was doomed to repeat itself evermore. If all that he did in this New World was damned by the fates to sputter and die.
The holy son, the Lord Jesus, had awoken from the clutches of quietus on the third day. For all that Arthur well knew that he was certainly no God himself, he could not help but hope that his own son might do something of the same.
A piercing cry cut through the silence, and he snapped anew into consciousness.
Arthur was lain in the bed again, as he’d been that black Saturday some mornings before, cooled by draft and wracked with fitfulness. The baby was not with him, for there was nothing that could be done to warm him, and upon the realization, the feeling of the spiritless figure of him curled into Arthur’s side did nothing to soothe him any longer.
And so, a few paces away, rested the body in the cradle. Arthur craned his head up slightly, ignoring the slight crick the awkward position gave him, and wondered briefly if the sound was not just some lingering remnant of a half-spun dream.
When he heard it again, he came from the mattress in such a tumble that he nearly tripped and hit the floor flat. He righted himself quickly, weak-kneed, and closed the distance in three.
In the rocking hold of the carved wood, the baby writhed. Alive, beautifully alive, with those sky blue eyes of his staring up at Arthur like they hadn’t in so many long, agonizing days.
Gramercy!
“Oh God,” he said. His voice shuddered against the sudden lump in his throat, and his hands shook too as he reached into the cradle to place them there upon the boy. The skies traced his every move, glassy with tears unshed, but Alfred smiled his sweet gummy smile anyhow—though wavering as it was with emotion overtaking—when Arthur finally picked him up. In revival, he looked healthier, his skin less pallid and his cheeks not so sunken, rather rounded again with the plumpness of soft baby fat. But it would not remain so for long, not if Arthur failed to act with haste appropriate.
He had made his decision, deep in the depths of the lonely night, when all he had left with him was the sharp pang of emptiness and his own dark thoughts. He had said before that he would do whatever he had to, whatever Alfred needed, if only he came back. And he had.
“They should have called you Fortitude instead,” he said to the boy, who surely couldn’t understand a thing of what that meant. But Arthur did, and he laughed breathlessly at his own words. “But maybe they were right, with Forbearance. Your tolerance knows no bounds to be able to withstand this. And I surely could never be so patient.”
Fortitude, the strength that enables one to handle difficulty and adversity with courage. How brave, his sweet boy. How strong.
Now, it was his turn.
“Worry not, my love,” he murmured. He felt the surety in his chest like stone, immovable and unbreakable. “I’ll handle it all, as I should have this entire time. You need not suffer so again.”
It was still dark as Arthur led the both of them into the main room, and he thought it still must be very early in the morning for the sun not to be coming in through the windows yet. Haphazardly, he stoked the fire of the hearth with one hand so he would not have to let go of Alfred, who seemed perfectly content to cling to him with all the strength unprecedented from a form so little. But it was not as though Arthur minded. If anything, he relished it; what a wondrous thing, after so many days of the limpness and wilting, to feel the proof now of the boy’s vehemence. He could never let go for all the rest of time, and Arthur would hold no qualms about it.
He took from concealment his old bollock dagger, wrapped in a scrap of linen in the cast iron pot seated on the floor. Holding it up, the etched engravings of the wooden handle pressed shallow indents into his careful palm. It was an old thing, but it had served him well these many decades. With a long, calm breath, he sat slowly before the hearth, knees bent so that Alfred could rest in a near-sit against them. The trusty blade glinted in the orange light of the fire nearby, and Arthur stared at it for a long time before he ever took it to himself. He drew the thin sleeve of his nightshirt up, exposing the pale, tender flesh of his forearm. The sleek metal was stark and cold against his skin, and he thought he almost felt that more than the sharp point digging into it.
O happy dagger, this is thy sheath.
Alfred watched as Arthur took the weapon to himself, steady and unfaltering. He did not look perturbed, instead merely interested, for Arthur knew he could not grasp the full aspect of just what it was his father did for him. Perhaps that was for the better, Arthur decided, that he could not think too hard on it. It was not something one so small should bear witness to in any regular sense, the gore of self-marring—but at the same time, Alfred was not normal, as all of them were not, and he would with age likely come to see many things similar, if not far worse. The view of the carving would do him no ill, and Arthur needed him close anyhow, for more reasons than one.
Hot blood slicked his skin as he cut into his arm, making it hard to exactly ascertain how far and how deep the blade was going, but with a slight hiss, he carved from himself a piece he presumed small enough to be acceptable. It was a strange thing to hold a shred of the inside of him on the palm of his hand, but he pushed away the discomfiture to focus on grinding the meat down with the hilt of the dagger, tenderizing it enough that the baby could consume it without choking. Still small enough to lack teeth, he’d been fed in the past of thin grain gruel or broth, for Arthur could not suckle him and felt too uncertain to ask any of the women in the town to serve as a wet nurse in his place. This was the most hearty thing the boy would try yet, but hopefully the most nourishing. Arthur would do it as long as he needed, cut himself up for the sake of his son, until this terrible winter departed from them. It meant nothing. It meant everything.
When the meat he’d cut was softened to almost mush, and the his hand's heel ached with the pressure he had put upon it grinding, he scooped it onto his pointer finger and lifted it to Alfred’s small mouth. The boy opened dutifully, and seemed afterward pleased with the gift he had been given.
Arthur did not know for how long he did it, scoring pieces from his arms to feed to the child—only that, by the end, he could view the ropey pink muscle of the inside of the wound, sucked clean of blood by the baby’s eager self; and that when he wrapped the linen scrap around his forearm as a makeshift bandage, tying it tightly to help clot the injury, there was a cavernous dip of empty space in the midst of it. The limb pulsed with the pain of the mutilation, but it was no matter to him, for he knew it’d be healed near entirely over by morning, as though the dagger had never been drawn to begin with. A fresh canvas.
Slaked and stated, Alfred returned in a quick slip back to sleep. The feeling of the boy growing lax against Arthur’s lap sent a sudden strike of terror through his chest. His exhale hitched sharply, and with a quick, shaking hand, he moved to feel the delicate patter of Alfred’s beating heart beneath his ribs to reassure himself. Steady and soft, slow with sleep. Alive, still. Arthur let out the breath of anticipation he had fearfully been holding.
Painstakingly, he gathered the boy up into his uninjured arm and rose carefully to stand again. He stood for a long moment before the warmth of the hearth, staring into the dancing flames on and across the wood logs. He swayed slightly, to and fro from the balls of each bare foot, like the rocking of a ship upon the rolling ocean. Humming, there, in the still air of their home, the gentle words of Mary to Jesus in the manger.
“Lullay, mine liking, my dear son, mine sweeting,
Lullay, my dear heart, mine own dear darling.”
What divine return, as he had pleaded so readily. And now, Arthur, like Adam, rending parts of his body to further give life to the boy who, like Jesus, had revived from death after such cruelty. He had believed himself abandoned, believed himself forsaken. But then, after this, this grand mercy... maybe not.
God played strange games indeed.