The Tor - 16. Chapter 16

Christopher expected the memories would come as they had before.

One life. One death.

A single thread unravelled slowly enough for him to follow.

Instead they began arriving without warning, colliding with the present so violently that he no longer knew where one existence ended and another began. It started three days after his conversation with Marco.

He was standing in the queue at the bakery before work when the woman ahead of him asked for a cottage loaf. The words struck him like a blow. For an instant the warm shop vanished.

He stood instead within the cool stone walls of a monastery, the smell of beeswax and damp wool filling the air. A young monk copied illuminated letters beneath the narrow light of a high window while another brother crossed the cloister carrying a basket of herbs. Someone laughed softly. Christopher knew the sound before he saw the face.

Marco.

His hair was shorter then, hidden beneath a simple hood, though his eyes remained exactly the same. He reached across the table to steady Marco's ink pot before it tipped onto the manuscript between them. The touch had lasted only a moment. Warm fingers. Ink-stained skin.

Familiarity so complete it needed no words.

Then the vision shifted. The monastery bell rang. The laughter ceased. Voices echoed through the cloister. One of the brothers had begun coughing again.

Christopher felt terror before he understood why. Within days they were carrying bodies from the infirmary. Within weeks there were no bells left to ring. He heard Marco calling his name across the deserted cloister.

Then someone behind him in the bakery asked whether he intended to order.

The warmth of fresh bread rushed back around him. Christopher realised he was gripping the edge of the counter so tightly his fingers hurt.

The assistant looked at him with polite concern. "Are you all right?"

Christopher nodded automatically. "I think so."

The answer sounded uncertain even to him.

*

The memories refused to remain contained. Each day some ordinary detail opened another forgotten door. The smell of tar along the harbour became salt spray striking the deck of a naval brig. The cry of gulls became the shrill whistle of a boatswain somewhere far above him. He was hauling at wet rope beneath a slate-grey sky.

His hands were broader. His shoulders stronger. Canvas snapped overhead while waves crashed across the deck. Gunfire rolled somewhere beyond the mist.

Marco stood beside him in a lieutenant's coat, his dark hair plastered against his forehead by rain.

"Keep your head down," he shouted.

Then came splintering timber. Smoke. The smell of burnt powder.

The ship lurched violently beneath their feet. Someone screamed. Christopher turned.

Too slowly.

A length of shattered mast came crashing across the deck.

The harbour returned.

Christopher found himself standing motionless beside his car, one hand resting upon the roof. A fisherman loading crates nearby gave him a curious glance before returning to his work.

Christopher closed his eyes. His ribs still ached.

There was no wound.

Only memory.

*

The following afternoon he escaped to the Tor. The autumn wind swept across the grass, carrying the smell of earth and sea. For a while the silence steadied him.

He began to believe the worst had passed. Then he saw a butterfly settle upon a patch of late flowering thyme.

Its wings were pale blue, delicate, almost translucent.

Without warning another life unfolded.

He stood upon the cliffs carrying a leather satchel filled with notebooks. Specimens lay carefully wrapped inside wooden boxes, pressed flowers, fragments of shell, strange insects collected from the shoreline.

The nineteenth century.

Marco walked a little ahead, smiling as Christopher knelt to examine a patch of rare orchids growing among the limestone.

"You'll miss the tide."

Christopher scarcely looked up. "It'll still be here tomorrow."

Marco's smile carried an affection born of hearing the same answer many times before. "They may."

Christopher reached for the flowers. Pain tore through his chest. His hand froze.

The memory lurched forwards.

He was lying in bed. The room smelled faintly of camphor. Rain tapped against the window. His breathing had become shallow.

Marco sat beside him holding his hand.

Neither of them spoke. There was nothing left to say.

Christopher opened his eyes upon the Tor with tears already running down his face.

The butterfly had flown.

Only the wind remained.

------------------

That evening, while searching through an old drawer for a spare battery, Christopher found a faded photograph tucked between yellowing papers. Children stood outside a village school, each with a small suitcase at their feet. He recognised the clothes at once. Gas-mask boxes. Knitted hats. Cardboard labels tied to coat buttons.

The photograph trembled in his hands. The room disappeared.

Steam drifted beneath the high roof of a railway station. Children clustered along the platform, watched over by teachers whose smiles looked painfully rehearsed. Mothers clung to sons they had already begun to lose. Fathers spoke too brightly, as though cheerfulness alone might keep fear at bay.

Christopher stood apart from them all. He was no older than thirty. A schoolmaster, perhaps. Thin from rationing, his coat shiny at the elbows. Around him the children waited to board the train that would carry them west, away from the bombing.

Marco stood among them. He bent to tighten a little boy's scarf before lifting a battered suitcase into the carriage. The children trusted him.

Christopher scarcely noticed them.

His whole attention rested upon Marco.

"So that's it."

Marco turned. "You know it isn't."

"The train leaves, you go with them, and I'm supposed to stand here and wave."

"I have to."

Christopher laughed, the sound sharp with anger. "You don't."

"I do."

"The government hasn't ordered you onto that train."

Marco's expression tightened. "They've ordered every Italian national to report home."

"They've invited you."

"They will imprison me if I refuse."

Christopher took a step towards him. "And what do you think happens if you go back?"

Marco said nothing. The whistle sounded somewhere farther along the platform. Passengers began climbing aboard.

"They'll call you up," Christopher said. "Or they'll decide they don't trust you either. You'll disappear into another war."

"I know."

"You know." Christopher stared at him in disbelief. "And you're still going."

Marco looked suddenly exhausted. "If I remain here after Italy enters the war, I shall almost certainly be interned."

Christopher's anger had burned so fiercely that it scarcely felt like anger any longer. It felt like abandonment.

Neither of them spoke.

A little girl tugged at Marco's sleeve. "Sir?"

Marco smiled gently at her. "I'll be there in a moment."

She nodded and climbed aboard.

Christopher watched the exchange with a bitterness that shamed him even as he felt it. Everyone needed something from Marco. Everyone except him seemed to receive it.

The guard's whistle sounded again.

Marco reached for his hand.

Christopher drew back. "No." The word came quietly. "I won't make this easier for you."

Pain flickered across Marco's face. "I understand."

"No, you don't." Christopher's voice trembled. "You are choosing to leave."

"I am choosing the only road that gives us any chance of meeting again."

Christopher scarcely heard him. All he knew was that Marco was walking away.

The train began to move. Marco climbed aboard as the children crowded the windows, waving excitedly at families on the platform.

He stood in the open doorway, one hand gripping the rail.

Christopher remained where he was. He did not wave.

For a long moment their eyes held.

Then the train gathered speed. Steam swallowed the last carriage.

Marco was gone. The station dissolved.

Christopher found himself standing once more in his kitchen, the photograph still clutched in his hands.

His pulse hammered painfully against his ribs. Until now the memories had ended with death. This one ended with something almost worse.

This was before the bombing. He knew that now. Before the air raid. Before the rubble.

But he had already lived the ending.

He had felt the building come down around him. He had felt the weight of the debris crushing the breath from his lungs. He had heard Marco calling his name as he searched through the ruins.

How could he remember dying in a life that had not yet reached its end?

Christopher stared at the photograph.

Perhaps the memories were not returning in order.

Or perhaps they had never belonged to a sequence he could understand.

Until now, he had assumed each memory was a fragment of a life moving towards its inevitable conclusion. Now he was no longer certain.

That knowledge frightened him almost as much as the memory itself.

For the first time Christopher realised that not every memory hurt because it ended.

Some hurt because, for a little while, they had been happy.

---------------

Another memory came without warning, Marco in a doublet with slashed sleeves and a starched ruff for a collar.

Christopher reached to catch the sheet before the wind carried it from the table. Marco looked up from his quill just in time to see the page rescued from certain ruin.

"I had that nearly finished."

"You had left it balanced on the edge."

"I had confidence in Providence."

"You had confidence in poor furniture."

Marco laughed, accepting the page back before weighing it beneath a smooth river stone. The open windows admitted the mild warmth of a June afternoon. Beyond them the little market town drifted lazily through its ordinary business. Somewhere below, a blacksmith's hammer rang against iron. Children shouted in the lane before their voices disappeared towards the green.

Christopher returned to trimming goose feathers into fresh quills. He had become unexpectedly good at it. When they had first rented the upper rooms above the stationer's shop nearly six years earlier, he had ruined half a dozen feathers before producing one Marco considered usable. Now his hands worked almost without thought, the little knife moving with practised confidence.

"You've improved," Marco observed without looking up.

Christopher smiled. "I've had an exacting teacher."

"I have always been patient."

Christopher raised an eyebrow. "You threw one across the room."

"It was a dreadful quill."

"It was my third."

"It remained dreadful."

Christopher laughed. "You are impossible."

"So you have often informed me."

The room smelled pleasantly of ink, leather bindings and drying lavender. Bundles of herbs hung from the ceiling beams to keep insects away from the manuscripts stacked neatly against one wall. Every shelf overflowed with books copied, purchased or borrowed from neighbouring households. Their landlord complained regularly that the floor would eventually collapse beneath the weight.

Marco insisted it would hold. Christopher was less certain.

He finished another quill and placed it beside the others. Outside, church bells began ringing the hour. Marco stretched stiffly, rubbing at the back of his neck.

"I have copied enough law for one lifetime."

Christopher looked over. The page before him was covered in immaculate secretary hand, every line perfectly aligned.

"You've said that every week since Michaelmas."

"I have meant it every week."

Christopher rose and crossed the room. Without asking, he gently eased Marco's shoulders with his thumbs. Marco closed his eyes immediately.

"Better?"

"A little."

"You've been bent over that desk since dawn."

"The solicitor expects the copies tomorrow."

"The solicitor," Christopher declared, "can wait until after supper."

Marco opened one eye. "He pays us."

"He will continue paying us if his contracts arrive one hour later."

"I admire your confidence."

"I admire your inability to leave your desk."

Marco smiled. "There are advantages to sharing rooms with someone stubborn."

Christopher leaned down and kissed his forehead. "There are advantages to sharing them with someone who occasionally prevents you becoming an invalid."

Marco reached up, catching his hand before Christopher could step away. Neither of them spoke. The sounds from the street drifted softly through the open window. Someone was driving cattle towards the market square. A woman sang quietly as she swept her doorstep. The whole town seemed wrapped in the golden stillness of early summer.

"We ought to walk after supper," Christopher said.

"To the river?"

"If the weather holds."

"It will rain."

"It always does when you predict sunshine."

Marco considered this with mock seriousness. "In that case, I predict dreadful storms."

Christopher laughed. "Excellent. Then we'll have a fine evening."

Still holding Christopher's hand, Marco smiled with the easy certainty of a man who believed there would always be another walk, another summer, another ordinary day. Years later, Christopher would remember almost nothing they had copied that afternoon. He would remember the warmth of the room. The scent of lavender. Marco's laughter.

And the quiet happiness of a day that had asked nothing of either of them except to be lived.

*

The last memory came after midnight.

Unable to sleep, Christopher wandered through the harbour streets. Mist drifted across the water. The old warehouses stood silent beneath scattered lamps.

He paused beside an alley scarcely wide enough for two people to pass. His breath caught. Lantern light. Barrels stacked against rough stone walls. Whispered voices. Boots upon wet cobbles.

His hands smelled of rope and tobacco. A crate changed hands beneath the cover of darkness.

Marco glanced towards the harbour entrance. "The patrol."

Christopher grinned. "We've time."

They ran laughing through the narrow lanes with excise officers close behind. The exhilaration lasted as they ducked through a low archway to a storeroom.

A shout echoed outside. Christopher could only see Marco's teeth in the dark as he grinned in triumph. Everything became strangely quiet.

He smiled. "A near miss," he whispered.

Marco's face blurred. The memory dissolved. Christopher stood alone in the mist.

His heart hammered painfully against his ribs.

The alley lay empty.

The warehouses had become restaurants and galleries. The barrels were gone.

The men who had walked these streets had long since returned to dust.

Christopher remained where he was until the church clock struck one. The memories had begun as separate lives.

They no longer felt separate.

Each one carried the same pattern. Different names. Different centuries. Different work. Different endings.

Always the same pair of souls finding one another beneath changing skies. Always the same parting.

Christopher looked towards the dark outline of the Tor rising above the sleeping town

Yet something else had begun to emerge beneath those deaths. The repeated thing was the relationship.

The lives themselves.

The laughter.

The ordinary mornings.

The conversations forgotten by history.

Those moments had always been there.

Until now grief had hidden them.

Now, at last, memories of Marco's fond smile knit the centuries together.
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