Before Ever After (16 page)

“It took some time before the good doctors finally discovered the elusive cure for the deadly disease,” Max said. “After all, who would have even suspected that the most effective remedy for homesickness was to send the patient home? Genius. Draining off his blood until his lips turned deathly white made much more sense. Unfortunately for Uri, he was born before the disease was even diagnosed, and in his case, not even returning home could cure his affliction. In fact, it made things more difficult.”

Shelley looked up at the scene of the young family welcoming their father home. “But how could coming home make things worse?”

“You can’t return to a place that no longer exists, luv.”

T
he battle was over, at least for Uri. He limped along with a dusty column of broken men. He had been gone for many months, but now, together with the remnants of the Swiss mercenary army, he was heading home. He wiped the sweat from his brow. A cloud drifted overhead. The air cooled enough for a breath of hope. He had left as a husband and a father, but on each return he felt more and more like a stranger. Maybe this reunion with his family would be different. The sun broke through. Salt dripped into his eyes. More welled in them.

His sons did not know him. His wife, though she lay next to him in bed, felt more distant than when he was lying alone in camp, yearning for her body. He ached for his family every second that he was away, but now, as he grew closer to his farm and his fears, he wanted to run away. A white-hot pain shot through his leg, reminding him why he could not. He could barely walk, much less run.

Uri’s leg had been hurt when his captain fell on him during their assault of the Spanish imperial lines. It was the only reason he was alive.

He had been in the thick of one of the two massive Swiss pike columns that had led the charge against the advice of their French employers.
Their unit had not yet been paid for their previous services and had threatened to leave if the battle was not swiftly concluded. They ignored the scouts’ warnings that Bicocca’s ditch-riddled terrain would not favor their infantry tactics.

More than eight thousand Swiss soldiers rushed into battle. A downpour of artillery slashed their ranks in half, turning the battlefield into a swamp of the dead and dying. The Basilisk lay among his men in the red mud.

Uri remembered the captain he had served under since his first campaign. He had never grown to like the grim man whose only joy seemed to be skewering his enemies, but respect came more easily. The Basilisk would stare death in the face and defy it time and time again, giving his men the courage to do the same.

But not this time. Uri could still feel the weight of his captain’s body. It had fallen against him, shoving him into an irrigation ditch. He heard his ankle bone crack before feeling the pain of it breaking. He tried to push the Basilisk off him, but the captain’s body wedged him to the ground. It shielded him from the hail of artillery. Another body fell over his leg. He screamed. It grew dark.

His dreams were darker. He was naked. Hands grabbed at him. They dressed him in his uniform of patchwork silk, cut from the spoils of war. They raised a needle and sewed the cloth into his flesh. Crimson thread ran under his skin. He clawed at it. The pain forced his eyes open. He woke inside another dream. He was being carried away from battle. He looked up. The Basilisk’s amber eyes stared into his. Uri held his breath. He did not turn to stone.

The morning found him at camp, his leg set in a cast of wheat-paste-and-egg-white plaster. He hobbled on it now, each step heavier than the next.

U
ri lay on the grass, his face contorted by grief. The children had not run to welcome him. They were not waiting at the farm’s gates nor did they peek shyly at him from behind their mother’s skirts. They were here. Underneath the grass. He was now forever a stranger to them, unable to make up for lost time.

“How did this happen?” Uri’s tears watered their graves.

“It was a fever … a few weeks after you left. It took other children as well.” Esther wept and embraced her husband.

Uri froze. He could not bear the feel of her skin. She was cold, as if only sorrow ran through her veins. He shrank from her.

Esther held him tighter.

He pushed her away. He was an open wound, flayed raw by the grass that covered his boys. “Woman, leave me alone.”

At first, his wife begged him for words. Failing that, she pleaded for his touch. As the days passed, she simply implored him to look at her. But Uri could not. He was blind to everything but his own pain. He regretted not dying in Bicocca. Whoever had saved him had not done him any favor. He had lived only to lose something worse than his own life: his past and his future.

There was not an inch of his house in which he did not feel the absence of his sons. An empty chair. A quiet room. A cold bed. There was no yesterday he could wade through that did not drown him in tears. To remember how his boys laughed when he carried them on his shoulders only made their silence echo louder. But turning his thoughts to tomorrow was even crueler. The years ahead held only promises he could no longer keep, memories that would never be made, and dreams that had turned into dust.

He looked across the table at where his eldest used to sit and ask for
more watered-down stew. His heart had broken a thousand times when he had to tell him the pot was empty. He had hired himself out to fight other people’s wars so that he would not have to see his children go hungry. Now, because he had not been at their sides when they needed him the most, he would never see them at all. But maybe what he could not do for them in life, he could do for them in death. Porridge for Hans. Fruit for Peter. And bread. Stew. Meat. Milk. Their table would never be bare again. He picked up his paintbrush. Pie.

The light from his oil lamp flickered on the planks of the barn’s ceiling. Uri moved closer to the scaffolding’s edge. He dipped his brush into one of his pots and painted over the yellow glow.

“Good evening, Uri.”

Uri bolted upright, hitting his head on a beam. Wet paint streaked his matted hair. “Who … who’s there?”

“I see that you’ve been busy.”

“Show yourself!” Uri reached for his lamp. His hand trembled. A pot fell to the floor. Red splattered over dirty hay.

“I didn’t know you were this … talented.”

Uri scrambled down the scaffolding.

A dark figure emerged from an empty stall. The halo of Uri’s lamp lit the amber in his eyes.

“Captain!” Uri stumbled backward. “I … I thought you were dead!”

“Consider me a ghost then, or a basilisk, if you like. That’s what you and the men used to call me, if I remember correctly.” The Basilisk stepped out of the shadows.

Uri screamed and fled the barn.

Uri stumbled on the grass at the edge of the light seeping from the barn. What was he doing? Esther … his boys … they were still in the barn—with the monster that had taken a dead captain’s shape. He shouldn’t have left them behind. He had to go back. His heart pounded against his
ribs as it had done so many times before a battle. He pulled himself to his feet and tightened his grip on his courage. War’s drumbeat thundered in his ears, urging him to advance. He flung the barn doors open.

The Basilisk was waiting for him. “I’m glad you came back.”

Uri froze. He did not have his pike.

“Come inside, Uri,” the Basilisk said.

Uri took a step closer, his empty fists trembling at his sides. His eyes darted over the Basilisk, searching for the best place to strike.

The Basilisk held up Uri’s lamp to his face. Uri held his stare, stunned—and relieved—that he did not turn to stone. The light illumined his captain’s eyes. They looked weary. Alive. “Captain, is that really you?”

“Yes,” the Basilisk said softly.

“But I saw you fall.”

“You fell, too, and yet here we both stand. Wounds heal, Uri. At least, most do.” The Basilisk glanced over at Uri’s leg. “Your leg seems to have set well.”

Uri nodded, unable to take his eyes off the man he had given up for dead. “It only hurts when it gets cold.”

“Consider yourself fortunate, then. Some pain never leaves, regardless of the weather.” The Basilisk stepped toward Uri. “I heard of your loss. I came to offer my condolences.”

“Condolences?” Uri asked, looking puzzled. “There has been no death here.” A smile warmed his face as he gazed up at the ceiling. “Forgive me. I have forgotten my manners. Captain, I’d like you to meet my wife, Esther. And these are my children, Peter and Hans.” Uri waved to the painted children. “Go on, boys, don’t be shy. Say hello to the captain.”

The Basilisk felt the ceiling close in on top of him. He was too late. Madness was a ditch he could not carry Uri out of. He wasn’t sure that he wasn’t mired in it himself. In war, they had little in common. Uri had fought to live. He had battled to die. But now they stood on the same ground. Both of them were trying to find their way home.

“Won’t you stay with us, Captain? Esther will be thrilled to have a visitor. We have a spare room.” Uri pointed to an empty barn stall.

The Basilisk looked up. Uri’s family smiled at him. He envied Uri’s painted world. It was more real than any peace he hoped to find. “Yes … thank you. I think I will.”

Uri set up the scaffolding. The captain had been staying with him for a few weeks now. Or had it been months? He wasn’t very concerned with the passing of the hours. Time didn’t matter much when you were happy to be in the second where you were. He hummed a folk song. He was working on a scene on the left side of the ceiling. Hans and Peter were carrying a large basket. A half-painted Esther waited by the barn. “It looks like a good harvest this year,” Uri said.

“Yes, it does,” the Basilisk said.

“The boys are really a big help. They are growing taller every day.” Uri climbed up on the scaffolding and waved to his sons.

“I can see that.”

“So what story shall we have today?” Uri set up his paints.

“What sort would you like to hear?” The Basilisk leaned against a stall.

“All your stories these past weeks have been very entertaining. Not that I believe any of them, though.” Uri laughed. He had never imagined that he would one day be at ease in his captain’s company or that they would trade stories late into the night. But neither had he dared to hope for such happiness in his family’s arms, and yet every day with them felt like a dream. Only better.

The Basilisk smiled. He was equally content. He could not remember speaking so openly with anyone. Uri’s loosening grip on reality was a place where his secrets could run free. “To believe my stories would be madness.”

“I told Esther about the time you spent in a monastery.” He stroked his wife’s cheek. Her blush came off on his finger. He touched up the smudge with his brush. “She enjoys your stories as much as I do.”

“Does she?” The Basilisk tried to push the image of the real Esther away. He caught glimpses of her from the barn. She never left her house
anymore and only came to the window to stare into the meadow where her children lay. He watched her cry.

“Yes, very much,” Uri said. “After hearing all your stories, it’s actually difficult to believe you are the same man the men called the Basilisk.”

“I can understand that.”

Uri finished his wife’s smile. He glanced down at the Basilisk. “But why did they name you the Basilisk, Captain?”

“They didn’t.” The Basilisk played with a blade of hay. “I gave myself that name.”

“Really? Why? I’m sure the boys would like to hear that story.”

“Because that’s what I am.”

“But you are not a monster. The children love having you around.” Uri turned to his eldest son. “Right, Hans?”

“Perhaps. But I have stared at death as many times as any basilisk.”

“Boys, go and play in the meadow while the captain and I talk.” Uri watched his sons run past the barn.