A Lady Under Siege(30)

In short order Sylvanne sat sullenly in a chair by the bedside, her hands roped together behind her back. In the fading afternoon light Thomas lit a candle and turned his attention again to his daughter Daphne, still asleep under white linen sheets, oblivious to the high drama that had just transpired.

“There there, my darling,” Thomas whispered to her. “Daddy’s here. I’ll keep a candle burning day and night. Promise me you’ll keep a candle burning too. We’ll keep a flame alive, won’t we?”

Daphne lay mute and still. He studied her thin, sallow face for a moment, watched the feeble rise and fall of her breast as she breathed. “She was once so full of life,” he whispered. “You should have seen her.”

Sylvanne was unmoved.

“I know I shouldn’t expect your sympathy,” he said to her. “But will you hear me out, let me explain myself?”

Sylvanne closed her eyes. “If I could close my ears against your voice the way I shut my eyes against the light, I would.”

“This is not what I envisioned at all,” he told her, his voice tinged with disappointment. “I sought you as an ally, and now you’ve made yourself a captive. I wanted, and still want, needed, and still need, your help.”

He waited for her to open her eyes, but she kept them shut. He fetched a chair and placed it beside hers, sat in it and leaned close to her face.

“I’m grateful that you cannot close your ears, for what I’m about to tell you requires they be wide open, and your heart and mind also.”

Sylvanne made no response. She continued to keep her eyes closed.

“So be it,” he said. “Listen to me carefully. Do you imagine that the future will be very much different than our present age?” He paused, then, realising it was futile to attend an answer, continued, his voice filled with an agitated enthusiasm. “Can you imagine that mankind might move forward, with fantastic inventions? Machines that can fly like giant birds, transporting people in their bellies, or astonishing glowing objects that make all of human knowledge available to anyone? Can you imagine such things might be possible?”

She opened her eyes at last and looked at him neutrally. Taking this as encouragement he spoke even more excitedly. “I don’t just imagine these things. I see them, in my dreams. Since the death of my dear wife some months ago I dream them every night without fail. But what I experience is more than a dream—I inhabit the body of a man. He’s a man of the future—a freeman, neither owned nor owing to anyone. An everyday man, not a great king, nor a renowned poet, nor respected physician, though I wish he were. There’s nothing remarkable about him at all. But every night when I lie down to dream I become entrapped in his thoughts and actions. I watch his world, this staggering complex world of the future, so much of which I can’t comprehend, through his eyes, from a place I occupy in his mind. Derek is his name. Does that name mean anything to you at all?”

He looked at her expectantly, and from the hard glare he received in return it was clear she thought he was insane.

“At first, on waking every morning,” he continued, with less confidence than before, “I obsessed and tormented myself as to what these night visions of mine could mean. Then, suddenly, two months ago now, a new person entered Derek’s world—my world. This person, a woman, looks exactly like you. Not like a sister, or cousin, in appearance she is you exactly. Her name is Meghan. Do you know that name? She has a daughter, Betsy, two years younger than my own. Meghan? Betsy? Derek?”

Sylvanne looked at him without comprehension. His voice became more desperate.

“Do you know what a television is? Television—wondrous machines. Have you ever, in your dreams, watched a television?”

“You’re mad,” she growled.

“You think so?”

“You’ve destroyed my life, for nothing.”

He sagged back in his chair, distressed by the thought she might be right. At that moment his daughter Daphne began to cough, softly at first, then more violently. He rose from his chair to look upon her. Just as suddenly as she had started coughing, she stopped. He watched her settle back into sleep.

“Whatever I’ve done was for her,” he said. “In the future, you see, they possess amazing medicines, and such clever interventions as to make us poor primitives look like mere beasts, poking and prodding in ignorance at our wounded flesh. I inhabit Master Derek’s head, but have no influence upon him, for if I did, I’d make him busy himself with seeking out and consulting the best medical authorities of his time and place. But I can’t—I can’t convey to him my daughter’s symptoms, or make him take any interest in the science of healing the human body. I’m merely dragged along impotently with him through the life he leads, which I can’t help but judge to be a dissolute, pointless existence. Through his eyes, from time to time I catch tantalizing glimpses of medical knowledge that might save my poor daughter’s life, but they remain mere glimpses, nothing near to specific diagnosis or remedy. The knowledge is there, tantalizingly close, yet inaccessible to me. And then, just when I began to despair at the cruelty of it, the hopelessness, I saw a woman, a beauty like yourself. Not merely like you. You. Exactly like you, she looks, in all features of face and body, and even to the graceful way you carry yourself. She, or you, came to occupy the dwelling next to his. Do you understand me? I thought if I could talk to you, you might know of this other world, of this Meghan, and have her talk to Derek—do you understand?”