Remembrance

“Where is Talis?” Dorothy shouted at Hugh over the noise of her father’s bellowing.

When Hugh looked at her, Dorothy wanted to shrink away, for Hugh’s eyes were bleak with despair. “They have killed the boy’s spirit. They should have taken a knife to his throat, it would have been kinder.”

“Where is he?” Dorothy demanded.

“He is in the stables. But it is as though there is no one inside him now. As though he is no longer alive.”

Holding her skirts up, Dorothy began to run, and once she reached the stables, she had to elbow her way through the crowd to get to Talis. She didn’t care that people snapped at her or told her to mind her own business.

“Come,” she said to Talis, holding out her hand to him.

Three women pushed her away, but Dorothy pushed them back in a way that was fueled by necessity. “Come!” she commanded Talis.

As though in a trance, he stood up from the little stool, took her hand, and left with her. When people began to follow them, Dorothy yelled at them to get back and they obeyed her.

They were still quite some distance from the old burned tower when Talis put his head up, as though he heard something in the cool night air. The next moment he dropped Dorothy’s hand and began to run to the tower, leaving her behind him.

Taking the steps two at a time, Talis ran up to the top. This tower was where so many things had happened to the two of them. Here they had been saved from death, here they had laughed together when he had sent her headdress and corset flying over the parapets. Here they had been happy; here they had lived.

Callie was sitting on the parapet, her hand hanging limply to one side; when she heard him, she did not turn.

“Callie,” he said, flinging himself onto her, his head on her breast. “Callie, what have you done?”

She put her hand on his head, feeling the curls of his hair, but already there was no life in her hand, no life in her body. “I am giving you freedom,” she whispered.

He was crying, his tears wetting her bosom. “I never wanted freedom. I want only you. Callie, please don’t leave me. I cannot live without you.”

“Yes,” she said. “You can live without me. You must live for me. You will be a king. You will be the greatest king the world has ever seen.”

“No,” he said, looking up at her, his eyes huge with tears. He knew without being told that she had taken something from that hideous garden of hers. With each second he could feel her life ebbing from her. “I do not want to be anything without you. Why did you not tell me? Why did you not—”

She put her fingers to his lips. “It is over now. Talis, I loved you. I loved you with all my heart, with all my soul. I could not love you more than I did. But I feel that it was not enough to make you love me in the same way. I feel that I failed somewhere.”

“No, no,” he said. “I loved you. I loved you more than—”

He could see that Callie was past hearing him. He could see that the breath was leaving her body.

How was he to live without Callie? What meaning would life have if he didn’t live it with her? He thought of years without her laughter; years without her there to tell him he was wonderful, that he could do anything, be anything.

“I am nothing without you,” he whispered. He could feel her life departing her. As though someone had stuck a needle into his vein and his blood was flowing from him, with her approaching death, he could feel his own life leaving him. Half of him, he thought. She was the other half of him and now one half of him was dying.

Carefully, he pulled her nearly lifeless body into his arms, then climbed on top of the parapets. He did not think about what he was doing. There was no need to think.

As he pressed his lips to Callie’s, she opened her eyes and looked into his. She did not have to look down to see that they were on the edge of the stone wall and it was many stories down to the ground. “No,” she whispered, but there was no strength in her protest.

With what was left in her body, she flung her arms about Talis’s neck and kissed him. And when he stepped off the wall into the open air, she did not break her connection to him. She kept her lips to his until they hit the stones below.

John Hadley arrived in time to see his beloved son crash onto the stones, then stood in stunned silence as he looked down at the two young bodies, so tightly entwined that he could not tell where one body began and the other ended. At Callie’s feet was the broken body of the little monkey, her beloved gift from Talis.

When John put back his head, the cry he let out could be heard echoing off the hills miles away. “No, God no,” he cried, flinging himself on top of the two broken people.

Two innocent young people had died because they had loved too much and others had loved too little.

41

Upon hearing that Talis was dead, it was as though both parents gave up the will to live. Alida lingered for little more than hours before she died.

“Hell is richer now,” Penella had decreed, making no attempt to conceal her hatred of her mistress.