Necessary Evil (Milkweed Triptych) (29 page)

Will tried to recover as best he could. He crossed the room, stuck out his hand. “A pleasure,” he said.

“Likewise,” said the commander. A stiff and cordial handshake. “Olivia speaks highly of you. Lord William.”

“Just Will, if you prefer.”

“I wouldn’t presume to be so familiar.”

The commander was rigid. Uncomfortable. As well he ought. Just what the devil was he doing here?

“I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything important.”

Liv said, “Heavens, no. The commander had kindly offered to mend the kitchen sink, but when you knocked I was just explaining that I’m saving that for Raybould. It’s one of the first things I’ll have him do when he returns. Even if I have to chain him in the kitchen until it’s done. He’ll spend hours in that garden of his, but ask him to mend a leaky faucet and you’d think I asked him to wrestle down the moon. But you don’t care to hear about that.” She motioned Will to sit, pointed at the tea service. “Cup?”

Will declined. “I won’t be long.”

The commander said, “Indeed? Then what brings you by, Lord William?”

“Oh, I like to check on our Olivia and little Agnes from time to time. Especially now that the Luftwaffe has taken to visiting so regularly,” said Will. He again turned to Liv. “I had a bit of a scare in the taxi just now. Did you know there was a hit just a few streets over?”

Liv nodded, sadly. “We felt it in the shelter.”

We?
Now
that
was interesting. At least the commander had the grace to look embarrassed.

“Perhaps,” Will said, “you should consider what I said about visiting your aunt.”

The commander sat ramrod straight, fast enough to slop tea over the lip of his cup. “No!”

Will and Liv both turned to stare at him. He wiped his hand on his trousers, rasping, “I think that’s a bad idea.”

Liv explained, gently, “The commander thinks we’re better off in London.”

Ah. So that’s it. That’s why Liv hasn’t seen fit to leave the city for a while. Liv’s obstinacy isn’t the issue. It’s the commander. But why?

“Does he, now?” Will pointed to the window. “Excuse me, but have you seen it out there?”

But the commander’s attention had fallen on sleeping Agnes. He laid his hand on the bassinet again, slowly rocking it forward and back. “Williton isn’t safe,” he said.

“Really? Is there a second bombing campaign we’ve not heard about? Because unless that’s the case, I think you’re talking nonsense.”

The commander said, “Olivia and Agnes mustn’t leave London.”

“Her husband would want her to leave,” said Will.

“Since when does she do everything her husband wants?”

“I happen to know,” Will said, “from several conversations with him, that he’s always felt she should leave the city if and when the Jerries started bombing. Which, if you haven’t been paying attention, they have.”

“She isn’t—”

“
She
would like to say something!” Liv looked back and forth between Will and the commander. “It’s my decision. I’ll evacuate if absolutely necessary. But I’m not having Raybould come home to an empty house if I can avoid it.” She looked down, and just for a moment her resolve faltered. Liv bit away the trembling of her lower lip, though not before Will and the commander both saw it. “He’s been gone long enough. I want to know the moment he’s back.”

She collected the tea service, the commander’s cup, and herself. “I can see I was wrong about the both of you. You’re getting on like a pair of caged badgers. I hope you get it worked through by the time I return or I’m putting you both out on the street. Especially if you upset Agnes.”

She went to the kitchen. Will rounded on the commander. His whisper came out like a hiss.

“What on earth have you done? You’ve poisoned her against all reason.”

The commander started to rise from his chair. But, with visible effort, he stopped himself. He looked to Agnes. His own whisper was like the grinding of rocks. “I’m trying to help her. Help them both.”

“Then for God’s sake, man, tell her to leave!”

“Why must you be so pigheaded?”

“Are you completely mad?” Will said. “They’re safer outside London.”

“You don’t know that!” said the commander. His attempted whisper had become a low rumble; Will had got under his skin. “You’re guessing! You don’t know what may come.” He paused, shaking his head. “Nobody does.”

His gaze went inward. Very far away. “You don’t understand,” he said.

Will started to respond, but just then the commander did something quite unexpected.

He cracked his knuckles against his jaw.

*

I caught my mistake a half second too late. I pulled my hand away from my face, but Will had already seen it. My tick, the thing I did unconsciously when I was agitated, or deep in thought. As at that moment, when I was both.

Will had known me for years. He’d seen me do this—seen his friend Pip do this—a hundred times.

His eyes went so wide it seemed there was nothing left to keep them in. I saw the wheels turning. Yes. He knew.

Our eyes met.

His mouth fell open, but no sound came out. I must have looked much the same. Liv returned before I could corral my scattered thoughts.

She said, “Well. You’re not biting each other, so I gather it’s safe to return.”

I stood. Shakily. “Indeed. It’s been a pleasure, but I must be off.”

Will leapt to his feet. It knocked his bowler to the floor. It rolled along the brim, came to a rest behind the bassinet. “I’ll share a taxi with you.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Liv asked, “Commander, will I see you tomorrow?”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Will watching me with Liv. Now his eyes narrowed.

“I … can’t say. I don’t know. Thank you for the tea. Good day.”

I was out the door before Will had gathered his hat. Behind me, I heard Liv say, “Are you certain you must go? You’ve only just arrived.”

“I’m afraid I must,” he said. I didn’t hear the rest because I was already on the pavement, heading for a taxi parked up the street. Behind me, Will bid Liv good afternoon. I picked up my pace. Practically hurled myself into the taxi. It woke the driver, who had been snoring.

“Bermondsey,” I said.

The driver craned around to look at me. “Can’t, mate. Already waiting on a fare.”

“He changed his mind.”

“No, there he is. See? Just coming along now.”

Will’s shoes crunched along the pavement, louder with each step. I fished in my pocket, tossed a few coins to the driver. Don’t know how much. “Just drive, man!”

He collected the cash. Added it together. “The other bloke paid me a flimsy just to wait.”

My fingers felt around for more coins, but by then it was too late. Will opened the suicide door and settled in beside me, just as calmly as though we hadn’t been on the hairy edge of a footrace moments earlier.

“Ah, there’s a good chap,” he said to the driver. “Thank you for waiting. Take us to Kensington, if you please.” He recited his address.

I considered jumping out. But I knew it would have been a pointless and foolish gesture.

The taxi pulled onto the street. Will relaxed into his seat. He looked at me. I mean, really looked at me. But I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t bear it.

“It seems an odd thing to say,” he said, with a quick glance out the rear window to Liv’s house, receding in the distance, “but I suspect you’re quite a long way from home.” His attention snapped back to me, and it had an intensity I hadn’t often seen in Will. Not in the early days.

“Aren’t you, Pip?”

interlude: gretel

The fog does not dissipate. How curious.

It exists in every future, like a pearlescent shroud; every sequence of choices leads to the impenetrable primordial chaos. The birth cries of the new time line and its universe have yet to wreak a coalescence of discrete future possibilities. This is not the enraged oblivion of the Eidolons. Of that she is certain. It is the dull homogeneity of a trillion indistinct maybes.

Sometimes, late at night, if she strains her Willenskräfte in a way not done since those first feverish glimpses of the future, she perceives movement in the fog. She lies awake at night, watching it swirl, watching it engulf the distant threads of gossamer possibility. She drains whole batteries this way.

It is
not
moving closer. She is
not
worried.

She wants to see the entire web again. Wants to watch it glisten and sparkle, infinite in all directions. But the fog is opaque. She wants to watch the glorious coruscations as the future reconfigures itself. Wants to make it dance to the music of her whimsy. It does, but only as far as the fog. The fog does not succumb to her Willenskräfte.

She examines it merely to sate her own curiosity. She is
not
revisiting Raybould’s return from Berlin. She is
not
wondering what has taken so long. She is
not
wondering when they will be together again. He will be back soon. Of course he will. Because she planned it so.

The warlocks try to find him. She recognizes their work because the Eidolons’ attention makes the lines of future possibility thrum like electrified violin strings. They vibrate and bifurcate and tangle and thrum with the terrible music of uncreation until the entire tapestry threatens to shred into disparate pockets of unreality and she is cast into the void screaming screaming screaming into the between place outside the time lines where dark things lurk and they see her ohGodtheyseeher—

She must prepare for Raybould’s return to the farm.

He will return in
six days
four months
two weeks. She will bring him
lunch in the flower field breakfast at
dinner in the forest. He will be
furious
violently enraged
angry at her for sending him to Berlin. He will call her
a bloody miserable bitch a bloody miserable bitch
a bloody miserable bitch. He will be ravenous and she will take care of him. They will
picnic among the butterflies
huddle in the dark. She will bring him a coat because he is cold. He will
be grateful and lay her down among the wildflowers
shiver in the snow and ask about Olivia.

Olivia, freckled tart.

Olivia, who laughs like an overpriced courtesan.

Olivia is the most upsetting problem of all. But dealing with her is straightforward. That particular course is well charted.

Olivia will not be a problem forever.

eleven

12 October 1940

Kensington, London, England

Though he didn’t partake of it himself, Will had often found it worthwhile to keep a bottle on hand at the Kensington flat. The sherry proved useful when visitors dropped in. Such as his brother, or a time traveler.

Marsh had drained a glass and had started on another, sinking deeper into the green baize armchair with each sip. Will let him take his time. His own thoughts were twisted about like myriad strands in a ball of twine and he couldn’t untangle them. He’d always been rubbish with knots.

This aged man sitting before him. This scarred, battered, and aged man sitting before him. It was Marsh. And yet, it wasn’t. Clearly it wasn’t.

Finally, Marsh spoke, mostly to himself: “Damn.”

“I don’t even know where to begin with my questions.”

“Let me start, then. Yes. I am Raybould Phillip Marsh. Whom you call Pip.”

“But … you’re clearly not the Marsh that
I
know. You’re not the fellow I met at Oxford.”

“Oh, I am. But that was much longer ago for me.”

Will’s speculations had been inching in this direction. But to hear it confirmed so straighforwardly … It was too abrupt. He had to come at it sideways, from the edges, lest it send him reeling. Well, it did that anyway.

The tension lay so heavy it threatened to suffocate them both. Something had to be done about that; this promised to be a long conversation.

“I see,” said Will. He made a show of looking Marsh over. “Did you come back a hundred years?”

Marsh scowled. But Will allowed himself a little laugh, just to test the ice, and the scowl faltered. Became laughter of a sort. Sharp, gulping laughter, just this side of weeping. Will let him have his space. Marsh regained himself, and when he did, his grimace touched the corners of haunted weary eyes. And thus the ice was broken.

Marsh said, “Feels like it some days.” He shook his head. “Twenty-three. I departed from the summer of nineteen sixty-three.”

“You used the Eidolons, I presume.”

“Yes.”

“Who sent you back?”

“You did.”

Will started. To think he’d still be speaking Enochian decades from now. Would he be conducting negotiations for many years to come?
What a horrifying thought.
“That’s a surprise. Am I … well? In the future?”

Marsh gave a little nod. (Tinged with sadness, or was that Will’s imagination?) “Happily married.”

“Pull the other one.”

“Things were good for you in sixty-three,” said Marsh. It looked like he was about to add something, but stopped.

“Quite an extreme measure, sending you back.” Will paused, afraid to say it. “We lost the war.”

“No. We won. In large part owing to you and the other warlocks. But it was bloody expensive, and the victory changed everything. Changed the way Britain fought wars, changed the way it defended itself.”

“Why, then? I can’t imagine what forced you to this.”

“Your one unbreakable rule. We broke it … I broke it. I’ve seen what happens when the Eidolons extract their own blood prices. You’re right to say you can’t imagine it. The end of the world,” said Marsh.

He drained his glass. His hand shook. He turned inward again, gazing at some atrocity that only he could see. Will turned away, to give Marsh a bit of privacy while he contemplated private horrors.

He said, “You know, I’m tempted to join you in that. Normally I wouldn’t, of course. But perhaps an allowance can be made, just this once.” He rose to fetch a glass for himself.