Page 146 of Malady

When I turn towards her, she is already speaking, eyes wide.

“Now, I know they aren't actually buried here,” she says hastily. “But I couldn't find proper records for Piers or Joan, and nobody seemed to know where Margery was laid to rest. I know I ought to have asked you before having it made, but I thought you might like somewhere to come and remember them. Somewhere other than that road.” Her voice falters as she looks down at the flowers. “I hope you don't mind.”

I look at her, my hand still resting against the names carved into the stone, and my heart aches at the thought of how much care she has taken over something so precious to me. For a moment, I cannot trust myself to speak, so I reach for her instead, drawing her into my arms and holding her close. She makes a small, startled noise before embracing me in return, and I bury my face in her hair as her hands move gently over my back.

“My darling,” I whisper, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “How could you possibly think I would be angry with you?”

“Well, I didn't know, did I?” she murmurs against my coat. “It's a rather personal thing to go arranging behind somebody's back.”

I laugh through my tears, keeping her close a little longer before curiosity gets the better of me. “And how long have you been going behind my back?”

She draws away, wiping her damp cheeks with the back of her hand. “A hundred years or so. Perhaps a little longer.”

“A hundred years?”

“Well, not every day, obviously. I've had other things to be getting on with.” She gives me a sheepish smile. “But you know what I'm like once I've got something into my head.”

I do indeed, and as I look at her, I remember the countless evenings she has returned home from some library or archive with ink upon her fingers, complaining about illegible handwriting and records that made no earthly sense. How often have I sat beside her, listening to her grumble about some troublesome old document, never knowing that the names she was searching for belonged to my own family?

All those evenings together, all the places we have travelled, and somewhere among them she has quietly been piecing together the lives of people I thought lost to me forever.

I turn towards the memorial, where their names stand newly carved beneath the yews, and take her hand once more.

“You have spent a century doing this for me.”

“Oh, don't make it sound quite so dramatic. I enjoyed some of it, actually. Apart from the bloody Latin. Whoever decided monks ought to write everything in Latin deserves a good kicking.”

I chuckle wetly and sniff.

“I just wanted you to know what happened to them,” she says. “You've spent so long remembering that awful night, and I thought you deserved to know something of the life she had afterwards.”

I bend to kiss her, drawing her close beneath the yews, where we remain together until my tears have eased. After a while, she stoops to straighten one of the flowers at the foot of the memorial, and when she rises, I take her damp fingers between my hands and gently rub some warmth into them.

Long ago, the stranger who made me what I am told me that we take from those who are finished, to stitch up the ones who are not. I have carried those words through every century since, believing them to concern the souls we gather and the suffering we ease among the living. I never imagined that I might be one of those still in need of mending, or that the woman I love would spend her time tending to a sorrow I had long since accepted as part of myself.

“Shall we?” she asks, slipping her hand into mine.

I look once more at the memorial, my eyes lingering on Avis's name before I turn towards her. “Yes, Ophelia.”

She gathers her skirts, and we make our way along the narrow path towards the churchyard gates, where the sounds of the town gradually return to us. The Abbey bells have fallen quiet, and somewhere beyond the rooftops, a locomotive sounds its whistle.

“Oh, I meant to tell you,” she says as we reach the gates. “There's been word of a rather nasty fever in a village outside Gloucester.”

“Has there?”

“Apparently they've had several deaths already, and their physician's been taken ill himself.” She glances up at me, looking rather hopeful. “I thought perhaps we might stop on our way home. See whether there's anything we can do.”

I cannot help smiling. Even after all these centuries, I ought to have known she would have found somebody else in need of tending before we had even finished our journey.

“I should like that very much.”

“Good, because I've already made enquiries about somewhere to stay.” She squeezes my hand as we leave the Abbey and its ancient churchyard behind us.

There was a time when I believed the years ahead of me would be little more than an endless succession of deaths, each one carrying me farther from the life I had lost. Yet more than three hundred years have passed since an obstinate apothecary caught me by the cloak in a dead village called Merewick and demanded I come to Beswick, and I have spent every one of them grateful that she did.

I look down at my wife, who is already telling me everything she has managed to learn about the fever, and listen as we make our way towards the waiting carriage.

There is still so much of the world we have yet to see, and so much good we might do while we are here.

And I cannot imagine spending a single year of it without her.