"My Dear Devil"

November 16, 1914

My Dear Devil,

Am finding that, contrary to all current popular mythology, leave is not nearly as exciting when one has no one to see, and that no one wants to see you.

Arrived home in the middle of an infernal gale that made me question why I’d ever disparaged the heat of the lovely English summer sun. The only person awake was Mrs. Crockett, dear soul, and she proceeded to cry over me more than the Mater had in our twenty years of co-habitation. Since then, it’s been dull meetings. One after the other until my head aches. Have only been twice to the theater, and both times rather disappointed--everyone seems to be substituting furious merriment for actualy artistry these days.
Find myself unused to be alone now, despite being willing to sell my soul for a little peace during the whole endless weeks of drilling.

And what of you, Devil? I’ve no idea if this is indeed your address, but Allington said this was where you could be reached. How in the world did you end up that far north? Are you near Gibson Gardens? The Pater had some interests around there in former years. Have you seen polar bears? Does the postman even deliver to those parts anymore?

And A--? Not to pry, of course. Simply tell me when we are next sitting in a damp hole somewhere that she is…or isn't. And I shall be content.

Well, we’re off, so I’m told. Minnie Walker (the brunette, if you remember) has attached herself to my side this week to make sure this sentence of enforced gaiety is carried out to its fullest extent. How I wish they has warned us that the worst part of military training is in the leaving of it.
Until Friday, then, I suppose.
B.R.

The second document wasn’t a letter. It was a will.
It was standard for a solider to carry a will in his pay book, so that if his proverbial number came due, there would be some record of his last wishes. They were fairly informal and unwitnessed, more a precaution than a formal document. Later in the war, official forms with witnesses became a bit more common. Form B.243 allowed the benefactor to name one beneficiary--usually his mother, but occasionally it was a sibling or a wife. Form B.244, which was a rarety in my experience, was used when more than one beneficiary was listed. Most of the men who filled out these forms were too young to have many possessions or funds that required dispersal. The formal documents were left with the commanding officer so there was no risk of them being destroyed, but it wasn’t uncommon to find them jumbled up among the maze of paperwork that the war left behind.

There were myriad superstitions among soldiers, and some of the more gruesome came from the First World War. I’d read a few diaries and letters where men stated in no uncertain terms that those who carried their own wills were all but inviting a smiting from the Almighty. Others believed that to write one at all was requesting a bit too much attention from unfeeling fate, while a few others said that, just as you put your life in your comrades’ hands, it was symbolic to hand them your will, as well. While the policy may have let some men sleep better, it also meant that wills were frequently lost or mutilated and any worldly goods were simply forwarded to the next of kin, even if the particular signatory had designated otherwise. Thus, I wasn’t overly surprised to find that Barnaby Rutledge’s will was in L. Thomas’ collection. Perhaps he had believed in passing on his paperwork for safekeeping. It could very well have been a complete mix-up somewhere along the line, as well, so I decided not to worry about the presence of the will in the collection, at least until I’d read it. The signature on the form was similar to the one on the letter, but looked as if the writer had been running through a hurricane at the time of signing. The pen had punctured the paper twice in the signing, and the ink ran from a few places where the paper had been soaked through at some point in the past. It was dated October 1917. It specified that, in the event of the death of the below signed Barnaby Francis Rutledge left all his worldly goods, including items specified with his solicitor, to one Lieutenant L. Nathaniel Thomas. The money in his account and his books were left to one Alice Thomas (with a provision in case her name changed due to marriage), of Green Lanes, Haringey, London.

The Beginning, Again...

Nothing of any importance took place on Sunday. Mitch had two shows for which he had to usher, and I realized that, if I failed all my courses, it wouldn’t matter very much who Barnaby Rutledge and his mysterious female shadow might be, as I would be on the next plane to Boston. So I read about the role of women in the British Empire and took dutiful notes on whether woman had “agency” or a “voice” in the course of their current events or in the creation of their history. And by that evening, I’d given myself such a headache that the only thing I was fit for was bed.
The next morning, I was up early enough to not only make coffee, but to stop in to see Sergey. As soon as the bell over the door chimed my entry, he was poking his head around the side of a rack of bread and brandishing the stack of photocopies I’d given him the day earlier.
“My dear Kipling!” He smiled, but his eyes were worried. “I read, as you asked.”
I shivered. The weather was chill and the damp seemed to have found its way through my sweater and between my ribs. “And?”
“Not mad, my friend.”
He said it so grimly that I took a step closer, suddenly worried.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that this…Rutledge,” he over-enunciated each syllable of the unfamiliar word. “He is not mad. I read your notes. On the side. Here.” He pointed to the list of oddities I’d scribbled. “And he is not mad. But you are right. This girl. It is the same girl. And she is very important. Very…” And his eyes suddenly fixed on the counter. His eyebrows drew together and he murmured something too low for me to hear.
“What is it?”
“Beatrice.” The words came out with an Italianate trill.
I felt my own eyebrows rising skywards before I realized what he was talking about.
“You mean—like Dante?”
“Indeed. The woman he wrote to. And wrote for, I suppose. If he writes her, she doesn’t die. Not completely. You understand?”
“I think so.” The shiver came back. “The only biographical information I could find—about his life, not his writing—was that he died alone. With no one.”
“He had her.” Sergey held up the paper. He had put brackets around one of the first descriptions of the woman from one of the stories.
“I guess so.” I took the papers and slid them in my bag.
A crisp paper bag was waiting for me on the counter when I looked back up.
“If you keep handing out free food,” I warned with a forced smile, before realizing I had no end to the threat. “It’s probably not the best business sense.”
“I will give you food until you stop looking so…tragic.”
That brought out a laugh. “I’m not tragic. Just…I don’t know. I hate the thought of him going nuts over a dead girl. It’s…it’s just awful.”

The elevators in the building where our seminar was being held were undergoing another round of closures, with signs bedecking the walls promising that they would be over shortly. I scanned the lobby in the hopes of seeing a workman, or even a few discarded tools, and saw nothing. I was about to resign myself to the ten-storey climb when the chime from the one working elevator sounded behind me. I turned toward the sound of the swushing doors and nearly collided with a blonde woman coming out.
“I’m so sorry!” I blurted before realizing quite what was happened.
“Oh honestly,” she hissed under her breath. Not loud enough to cause a scene, but certainly loud enough to let me know I’d just ruined her entire day.
I took a quick look at her. She was shorter than me. This didn’t surprise me, seeing as how most women (and a fair amount of men) were shorter than me. She was startling—and naturally blonde, with a tiny waist, ice blue eyes and treacherously high cheekbones.
“Are you alright?” I asked meekly, feeling like the most enormous, clumsy human being in the city.
“Quite,” she sniffed, then fixed me with a glacial smile and snapped away on her little kitten heels.
Thoroughly humiliated, I stepped through the doors of the elevator, only to be greeted by Damien and his growing smirk.
“Are you alright?” He managed without chuckling.
“Umm…yeah.” If my cheeks could have heated anymore, I think my face might have become radioactive. I turned around swiftly and faced the doors—which I realized too late were completely reflective—and sighed. “Yikes.”
Behind me, Damien kept grinning until the doors opened again.

The day did not improve. I found myself at odds over women and “agency” and history, not only with the rest of the class, but with my professor, who was apparently a new-age feminist with an axe to grind. I held my own, but by the time we left two hours later, I felt like I’d just gone twelve rounds with a steam shovel. When Damien had spoken, which wasn’t frequently, he usually came down on my side, which was a relief, but the rest of the time, he kept his eyes trained on me while I spoke, which only made me feel even more awkward.
He hung back to discuss an upcoming research paper with the professor, so I quickly slid through the doors to the stairs in order to avoid the rest of the class who was heading toward the single overworked elevator. I needed my desk, I needed some old diaries, and I needed to be left alone.
And, of course, there was a visiting researching who was making use of my desk when I arrived. He was short and thick, with round glasses and an Adam’s apple large enough to make him look like he was trying unsuccessfully to swallow a golf ball.
“Sorry, Kip,” Rich said quietly as I stared in dazed confusion at the person filling my seat. “I kept meaning to call, but the day just got away from me.”
“It’s ok,” I was physically unable to stay angry at Rich for long, so I merely hefted my bag again and snatched my teacup off the corner of the desk, startling the bespeckled squatter, who muttered a useless apology and went back to reading.
“The Room at the End of the Hall is open.” Rich offered. The room was usually used for meetings with Museum officials or members of the public donating major collections. Fitted out with a tea pot and a china set, it was where we went to impress people. I think it was technically referred to as a Conference Room, but The Room at the End of the Hall was its most common title. It was also the farthest from any office in the department, and seldom used during normal hours.
“Perfect,” I said, and Rich gave me a confused little smile when he realized I meant it. “Do you mind if I start the Thomas Collection today?”
“Still all tied up with Rutledge?”
“You could say that.”
Rich grinned and liberated the fat folder from the stack on his desk. “Have at it.”

I was settled in The Room at the End of the Hall with a mug of tea and took my first deep breath in what felt like hours. The room was equipped with a computer, and I pulled up a Word document in order to start making a list of the contents of the folder. There were a handful of letters in a feminine hand addressed to “Lt Nathaniel Thomas” in Egypt, then Salonika, and finally, one address to him in France. There was a clutch of letters from Rutledge. All written in a very small, neat hand. None were more than a page, front and back, but the writing was compact enough that they were sure to hold a good deal of information. I just had to hope that it was significant information. More often than I cared to admit, letters to and from soldiers tended to be filled with inside jokes, personal references and the most mundane of information about the war. Usually, it was about food, but just as frequently, it was about women.
Seeing his writing was oddly jarring. I’d been expecting a Poe-like hand, so tiny and scrabbled that every word was an effort to decipher; perhaps even a John Wilkes-Booth kind of grandiose scrawl that could cover an entire page in a handful of words. This, though…this was neat and precise and showed not only education, but patience. The return addresses were nearly all from somewhere near a front. If Barnaby Rutledge had taken the time to make his writing so neat and orderly in that kind of chaos, he certainly was not an emotional hysteric, as I had at first wondered. Nor was he a compulsive. The bridges between his letters were all level and rounded. Most of all, they were done quickly. He wasn’t laboring over each letter, they way Poe did, making the reader feel still and suffocated under the weight of the pen.
This writer, I realized, squinting again at the little letters, was perfectly, and utterly sane.

Diversions

The sun was shining when I woke up, which went a good way to lifting my spirits from their depths of the previous night, despite the fact that I was freezing cold and couldn’t feel my feet. Mitch had laid claim to the vast majority of the blankets over the course of the night, and looked thoroughly comfortable, borrowed so deep beneath them that the only thing that could be clearly seen was his hair, sticking out from the top of the blanket as if trying to make a bid for freedom.

Slowly, with devious caution, I slid my feet back under the blanket and beneath the hem of his shirt.

“Kipling Philby,” he muttered, jerking forward, “so help me, but if you ever touch me with those cold feet again, they won’t be able to find enough of you to identify your body.” He didn’t open his eyes at all, but I could see a grin fighting to make its presence known.

“Let’s go to Portobello Road Market.”

He pulled his arm to his face, and hazarded a one-eyed squint at the watch he had forgotten to remove last night.

“It’s…seven fucking thirty. What?”

“You. Me. Portobello Road.”

“Why?”

“Books.”

“Surprise, surprise.”

“Come on! I want to get there before the crazies descend.”

“Oh trust me,” he threw the blankets off his shoulders and finally turned over enough for me to see his face, creased and wrinkled with sofa-marks, “once you get there, there will be plenty enough crazy for everyone. Make me coffee. I’ll be back soon.”

When he clumped up the stairs a bit later, he was wearing jeans and a button-down shirt beneath an engulfing green cardigan that covered his hands completely. I froze in the act of handing him a mug of coffee and considered the elbow patches on the sleeves, which in themselves were large enough to cover most of his forearms.

“Umm…”

“It was my Uncle Samuel’s. One word and I swear…”

I giggled and set the coffee on the table. Mitch swooped down on it like an ungainly green buzzard.

“So last night’s little literary-fest wasn’t enough for you?” He took a hesitant sip and quickly pulled his head back, rubbing ruefully at his upper lip.

“Not a chance,” I replied, stirring in sugar meditatively. “I made this list last night of all the similarities in the stories and I think there’s more going on here than just shell-shock?”

“You mean the girl with the eyes?”

“You caught that, too?”

“How could you not?”

I made a non-verbal sound of agreement into my cup.

“I wonder if he really—“ Mitch’s comment was cut short by my mobile waking up and jittering spastically across the dining room table.

“Hello?” I said, catching it just before it crashed to the floor and flipping it open with my thumb.

“Kipling?” The voice was muffled by the several other shouts on its end of the line.

“Toni! How are you?” I kept my own voice cheerful while making a face of frustrated anguish for Mitch’s benefit.

Antonia and her husband, Eric, owned the house in which I was currently squatting. They were lovely people, but seemed to have a professional talent for calling at exactly the wrong time and proposing inopportune visits to collect their mail, let Eric make nice with his London-based colleagues, and generally make sure I hadn’t yet allowed the house to erupt into flames.

“Quite well, thank you. And you?”

“Oh, things here are fine.”

“Ah, good. Listen, Kipling,” I braced myself for the inevitable, “we’re in the car and I thought it would be nice to come down and check in on things. Would that be alright with you?”

“Of course,” I said, banging my head silently against the table, as Mitch smothered a chuckle in the expanse of his sweater.

“Hi Kipling!!” Came a fearsomely high screech, followed by a few grunts and a scratching noise. Then Toni’s patient reminder to her two kids in the backseat that they could be evacuated at any time to find their way home, should their continued presence prove too trying.

“Sorry about that, Kipling.”

“It’s ok. Tell Ned and Lily I can’t wait to see them, too.”

Ned was ten years old and introduced me to his friends as his ‘rental sister’. Lily was twelve and a phenomenal artist and already far too cool for the likes of me. I am unashamed to admit that I bought my way into her good graces by letting her wear my mascara and eye shadow to the movies, to see a film that required a guardian for anyone under thirteen. Since then, I have not only been upgraded to “cool”, I even got invited to her birthday party in Kent in the spring.

The message was conveyed, to another round of squeals and thumps, before Toni came back.

“Right, well, we’re on the road now, so—perhaps an three quarters of an hour or so?”

Which meant about an hour and a half. I was never in what time zone Toni operated, but it must be really quite fun.

“Great,” I said, looking at Mitch. “Would you like me to have anything ready for you.” He nodded forcefully.

“Oh, you don’t have to! That would be lovely!” Ah, the fatal challenge of contradictions.

“Great,” I said again. “It’ll be a pleasure.”

We bantered for a bit, during which I watched the minute hand on the clock on the wall spin faster and faster. When Toni was done telling me about the trees they were passing and cows grazing on the field, I was down to one hour and ten minutes.

“You blinking liar,” Mitch said flatly when I finally closed the phone.

“What?”

“It’ll be a pleasure’. What, pray tell, are you going to whip up? A nice bowl of Frosties? Some apples and yogurt? Because I think that’s the extent of your pantry, Friend-O.”

“Shit.” He was right, of course. Flingpot has consumed the last of my groceries. I eyed the clock again and sighed.

“We’ll have to hit the Farmer’s Market,” I said, more to myself than to Mitch. “And I’m sure Sergey’s open by now. I’ll get some bread and something fattening and call it a day.”

“What is this ‘we’ all about?”

“Do you want to eat today?”

“Not if the little people are going to be here.” He grimaced. “I don’t do the little people.”

“Excellent,” I said, trying very hard not to laugh. “I’ll just tell them you’re my imaginary friend.”

“Works for me.”

And, thus liberated from a day of book-buying, Mitch stood, swung his arms until his sweater released his hands, and headed back home. Before descending the basement steps, he turned and nearly slammed my head with the door.

“Umm…oops. Anyway, bring those stories to Sergey. See what he says.”

“Good idea.” I said, stopping the mad whirlwind of cleaning and clearing.

“But take a shower first, ok?”

“Wherever would I be without you?” I replied dryly and ran upstairs to the bathroom.

Stoke Newington holds this tiny little farmer’s market every Saturday morning in the local school’s recess yard. It means that Church Street is nearly impassible by car until about 2pm, but there aren’t too many other places where you can see whole fish on ice next to a table of homemade gooseberry jam next to buckets of dirt-covered, moony mushrooms, next to the cupcake lady, who sells baby cupcakes for 75p, next to the enormous cheese wheel, next to the Cajun guy who sings while brewing coffee, who works beside the curmudgeonly Irish baker, who stands behind a table heaped with enough bread to make it hard to see his head over the crusty mountain.

Twenty minutes after Mitch’s departure, I was ducking through the gates of the William Patton school, politely taking a leaflet from a short women with enormous dreadlocks bundled on top of her head, admonishing me to abstain from buying produce from some foreign country that was doing something not-nice to some other foreign nation. I shoved the leaflet in my bag, where it met its friends from weeks past, and buzzed the circle of breads and veggies, deciding to skip on the aquatic life, since I had neither the time to cook it nor the inclination to kill us all with salmonella.

Once I had enough to make a passable vegetable and cheese dish, I zipped down toward the Green, sidestepping slower pedestrians and nearly colliding with a young blonde with a baby carriage as I rounded the corner.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, not stopping long enough to give the words any meaning.

Sergey was leaning against the door frame of the shop, absorbing the thinning sunlight, a dough-flecked copy of The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes in his hands. He looked up at the sound of my rustling bags, and a brilliant smile broke out across his face.

“My Kipling! I have missed you!”

An older man walking past on the opposite side of the street looked over warily—a true Londoner, I thought fleetingly. Frightened of any loud noises or real emotion.

“Hello Sergey,” I panted, setting my bags just inside the shop and shrugging off my sweater.

“How are you, my friend, how are you?”

“I’m ok—in a bit of a rush today,” I explained Toni and Erik’s unexpected incursion into my weekend.

“I see, I see.” He nodded, as if contemplating the fate of nations, rather than my culinary crisis. “You will need Blini. To wrap them. Yes. Definitely.”

“I am in your hands.” He chuckled and began wrapping a stack of whisper-thin pancakes in crackling brown paper.

“Have you brought me anything?” When he raised his eyebrow at me, I noticed it was coated with flour.

“Sort of,” I yanked the photocopies from my bag, where they had wrapped themselves adoringly around a zucchini. “It’s not a book, but a friend of mine gave this to me.” I put the papers on the counter and realized the list was still in the margin, devil horns and all. Sergey followed my eyes and scrutinized my artistic renderings.

“You have been giving this much thought, yes?”

I nodded. “I don’t know what to make of him yet. You let me know what you think, alright?”

“Absolutely.” He over-enunciated all the syllables with guttural relish. “I love a good mystery.”

I thanked him profusely and buzzed home. A quick check of my watch as I opened the door showed I had exactly twenty-five minutes left.

Mitch was sitting at my kitchen table, rubbing resin on his violin bow.

“If I help you cook, can I have some later?”

“Do you really need to ask?” I dumped the contents of the bags on the table as he snatched his bow out of the field of fire.

“I’ll chop. Turn the oven on.”

“You turn it on. I’m afraid of it.”

“He picked up an eggplant and eyed me warily.

“You what?”

“It growls at me!”

“It’s a convection oven! That’s the fan!”

“It wants to eat me.”

“Oh for mercy’s sake…” He crossed the kitchen in two steps and flicked a few switched and the oven roared to life

“Have I mentioned that I absolutely adore you?”

“Yup. Just now. I heard you.” He threw a dishrag at me that landed on my shoulder. “Wash your face. How did you get flour on you?”

We made it. Barely, but we made it. Just as I was taking the baked veggies and cheese out of the oven—which Mitch had turned off before scurrying off home—the door banged open and the hallway was filled with happy screeches.

“Children, children,” Erik was chiding. “Kipling is going to think that we have a rodent problem!”

“Kipling!” Ned launched himself at my hip nearly sent the pan flying.

“Hey, you!” I grinned. It was nice to be missed. “What’s up?”

“Mum said we could go to Victoria Park this afternoon—wanna come?”

“Definitely.”

Lily sauntered in and plopped down into a chair. “What smells good?”

“Veggies and cheese. And blinis to wrap them. Want some?”

“Oh my God, yes. I’m starving. I didn’t get any breakfast because Ned ate the last of the eggs this morning.”

“But if you were up earlier, you could have—“

“I was tired. I was sleeping in. That’s what you do on weekends. Not go on some big expedi—nice shoes, Kip.”

“Thanks.” I set plates before both of them. “Dig in.”

And thus the day progressed. We ate, then Erik and Toni went over the house, ostensibly to retrieve various books and scarves and sneakers, but I was fairly sure they were looking for scorch marks, or Satanic ritualistic markings carved into the railings, or drunken Hobos napping in the bathtub. As ever, I passed inspection, and we spent a fairly pleasant afternoon in Victoria Park, marred only slightly by a dog who tried to remove Ned’s shoe while we were sitting under a tree, eliciting a storm of hysteria and by a butterfly that landed on Toni’s bag, which necessitated a detailed, half-hour lecture on lepidoptery. That and the consistent requests for tag and hide and seek and catch the grasshopper that I couldn’t, in good conscience, refuse. Seeing as how I was the cool one, and all.

I spent the time sitting in the shade of a chestnut tree and wondering about Barnaby Rutledge and watching people stroll or jog or amble past, examining each face for a pair of eyes that could be as arresting as the ones he’d described.

They took off again about five, and as soon as they were out of sight, I flopped on the couch, savoring the return of silence. Silence that was broken about three minutes later when there was a resounding bang on the floor beneath my feet and the cellar door opened to the sound of a violin, faintly playing the Hallelujah Chorus.

“I completely agree,” I smiled. “There’s plenty in the fridge. Go nuts.”

I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of cutlery on porcelain and the patient beeping of the microwave. Then there was the smell of melting cheese and the weight of another body on the couch beside me. I opened one eye and watched Mitch digging into his enormous plate with relish.

“You know,” he said between mouthfuls, “I was thinking.”

“Really? Well done.”

“Hush, you.” He put a folded-up blini in the hand that was lying in my lap and I found the energy to bring it to my mouth. “Anyway,” swallowed and sat back, “you know that Lost Angel story you brought home last week?”

“Yeah?”

“What was she listening for?”

“What?” I sat forward, something in my brain clicking very loudly into place.

“There was a line that—“

“I know, I know, wait a second.” I knelt down and started rummaging under the couch, where I’d thrown everything that would fit during my morning cleaning fit. The copies of the Rutledge manuscript were jammed under an unidentified show, but I managed to get it out relatively undamaged.

“Here…” I flipped the pages until I came to the line, “De-dah, de-dah, circles of the damned, words held no power over her, de-dah de-dah, umm….right. ‘The song had been made in the secret darkness of the night, and carried in it the spice of spring rain and the lonely chill of autumn winds. It was a song to hold her and keep her as no words ever could, as he would never be able to himself. And so he cast his spell in song, trapping her soul in his melody’…and then… she goes around the ward and, let’s see….’in her head played endlessly the promise of paradise and the lost wonder of eternity ‘”.

“Yikes. Right.” Mitch mumbled and swallowed. “And how about the mountain man?”

“I gave the copies to Sergey, but…”

I looked up to see Mitch nodding, a very serious expression on his face.

“It’s the same song, isn’t it?”

He nodded even more emphatically. “It’s got to be. I mean, it’s the same girl, isn’t it?”

“You think so, too?”

“Well,” he slid his empty plate to the side and started plucking fitfully at the strings on his violin, “if it’s not the same girl in each story, each girl in each story has to be based on one girl. Does that make sense?”

“Totally.” My mind was firing like an engine, racing ahead of this one clue to make a thousand more connections. But without more evidence, without any more stories, it was just consuming itself.

“I wonder who she was,” Mitch asked his violin. It gave a little chirp in response.

I stared at the photocopy in my lap, at the little note in Rutledge’s quick, sharp hand, and remembered.

“Whoever she was, he never found her.” Mitch’s hands stopped moving, but he didn’t look up. “The biography in Damien’s copies,” my voice sounded oddly far away, “said he died without family.” Died? I thought nervously.

“Alone.” Mitch whispered.

It was one of those words that didn’t need any answer.

In Which I Get Suspicions.....

I finished reading and dropped the photocopy to my lap. Mitch was asleep, sprawling out over most of the couch, his head lolling awkwardly over the arm. It looked totally and absolutely normal. I desperately wanted to wake him up and make him tell me it was ok. To tell me this guy had died at least sixty years ago and there was no rational reason for me to be as freaked out as I currently was.

I didn’t know what it was about his writing, but something about each of these stories was setting off a who cacophony of alarm bells, both the professional ones and otherwise. From a professional standpoint, having spent years reading historical documents, there was something about Rutledge’s writing that made me incredibly uncomfortable. And it wasn’t just that he sounded like someone who was nuttier than a peanut butter factory.

I had spent a few months working on a collection of spy correspondence in college. They were letters written by an American diplomat who got stuck on the wrong side of the continent at the outbreak of the war. He was granted permission to receive letters from his “Maiden Sister in Dorchester”, over whom he had full responsibility following their parent's death. No matter that she was in her mid-thirties and apparently nearly six feet tall and built like a water tank. Not only that, it turned out later that the sister was an old acquaintance of Howard Burnham, an American who spied for France during the war. It did appear that there was some kind of code, or linguistic understanding between the siblings before the diplomat’s departure, since there was never any cipher discovered, either in the collection of their correspondence, or in that of Burnham that any of us could find. It took about two years, but we finally figured out (or thought we figured out) that it wasn’t so much what they were saying, but the order in which they were saying things, and the way in which they said it. Each letter had passed the censors in Vienna because, as far as they were concerned, the sister was merely writing about her cat chasing moths and her love of opera and the apple pastries she had baked that afternoon—simple stories of a crazy-old-cat-lady, cooped up in her house and knitting herself into obscurity.

It was the cat stories that gave it away, actually. We noticed—no, I noticed, damn it—that the cat was an Abyssinian. When I realized that Burnham had been sent on an expedition to Algeria, which was a French colony that had become a bit too friendly with the Germans, things started to fall into place. Especially when the poor cat was "pushed from the window by the moths, taking all its friends with it, and we were lucky to get him back in one piece". Burnham's team was captured in Germany and alone was able to return to France. It was all quite cleverly done, and no one suspected a thing for nearly eighty years. Truth be told, I've still no concrete proof that I didn't make the whole thing up, but it paid the bills for a bit and I got my name in the paper.

Anyway, the point of it all that is that these stories were setting off the same alarm-bells that the story about the cat had when I was working on the diplomat’s letters. There was an emphasis on certain images or themes that seemed far too obvious. Because the rest of the writing was so lyrical, these bits stuck out like someone singing the wrong notes in the Hallelujah Chorus. And thinking about these little dissonances was keeping me from sleeping with the lights on for a month after reading Rutledge’s ravings.

I reached for a pencil on the coffee table and pulled the pages back up against my thigh. Using the side of the pencil that still had lead exposed and grimacing at the teeth marks that dotted the metal band around the eraser, I wrote, as neatly as possible under the circumstances, a heading in the margin:

“Many Deaths + Down/Mountain + Angel”

Drawing a line, I began a shorthand list of the similarities that recalled themselves to me.

“Fire” I wrote, and underlined the “fire somewhere in France”, the “Wicked Man” who was born in the fire, and the Coward who was “left behind with the fire”. Flipping to the back of the story, I drew a big arrow to Barnaby Rutledge’s death in the flame. The arrow wrinkled the paper and when I tried to make it more emphatic, it looked like it had grown hair instead from all the errant lines around it. The Lost Angel had been looking for her love who had been “lost in the fire”. The piano player had looked at his love, I remembered, “and he wished that he had died in the cold or in the flames or in the filth”…

Next on the list, I added “Eyes”. Not just any eyes, I realized. There was someone—or, more to the point, a specific person’s eyes. That Angel in the hospital and the woman in the nightclub…were they the same person? They had both been listening for to a song, and the only feature that Rutledge had felt the need to mention on both of them was…their eyes. And in this one, there was “the salvation that can live in a pair of human eyes”. Not just any eyes, I was willing to bet.

Looking at the word “salvation” gave me a thought, and I added “damnation” to my list. The letters from the Angel’s missing soldier-love talked about those who walked the “circle of the damned”, and the same line was nearly repeated in this story, as well. And there was the continued reference to the ‘Fallen Angel’. I wrote “Lucifer?” beside “damnation”. Then, because I was getting slightly creeped out, I gave the word horns and made an attempt at a forked tail, which much more closely resembled an artistic rendition of a squashed fly. The piano-player—he was in hell by the story’s end, wasn’t he?

Below my mangled devil-word-doodle, I added “salvation—no”. Because each character could see the thing that could save them—usually music of some kind, it would seem, or eyes. Or the release of death. And none of them were able to do more than glimpse it, making the hell in which they existed even crueler.

I frowned at the list and tapped the nibbled pencil against my chin. There was another aspect to Mr. Rutledge’s writing that was bothering me as much as the stories themselves. They made sense. They weren’t stream of consciousness and they weren’t hallucinations or dreams or maniac rantings. They were sane and they were well-written. Barnaby Rutledge wasn’t writing to cure himself of shell-shock; I’d bet the vast majority of my paltry pay check on it. He was writing with a much more definite purpose. I just hadn’t—yet—figured out what it was.

And seeing as how all the libraries in the vicinity would be closed for another six to seven hours, it didn’t seem like I was going to be making much progress in that direction anytime soon. Not to mention the fact that Mitch had rolled over, pinning my legs beneath him.

I thought about kicking my way free and heading to bed. Then I thought about the darkness at the top of the stairs, and the way the wind sometimes made the walls creak like someone was walking along the landing, and decided that I had a very over-active imagination.

“Mitch,” I whispered sternly, “move. Mitch—move! Mitch,” I thunked his arm with the side of my foot, “move.” He made a high, sighing sound and rolled back, liberating my feet, and curled up his legs, leaving me a bit more than a cushion of couch.

“Thanks,” I muttered, and tugged some of the blanket back from his clenched hands. I scooted my perpetually cold feet between his legs and against the couch, hoping his body heat would keep them warm, and tucked my head against the arm of the couch. I shut my eyes and listened to his breathing for a long time before I finally fell asleep, too weary by then to dream about angels or fires or madmen at all.

The Many Deaths of Barnaby Rutledge: Prologue

The Many Deaths of Barnaby Rutledge

(as transcribed by Mitchell Berenson)

Prologue:

Three men sat huddled before a fire somewhere in France. One was a coward, who was too afraid to live, one was a man who was far too wicked to die, and one man was Barnaby Rutledge.

The Coward had spent the day with a French battalion, organizing the handover of a local trench and thus had nothing to speak about but the smell of burnt sausages and the salacious reading material matted to the walls of the trench and smeared with too-many filthy thumbprints. Every time a shell ruptured the sky, he ducked his head and tried to hide the tremors in his hands and his mouth. But it wasn’t this that made him a Coward. But if I were to tell you all my secrets, there would be no way to keep you near me.

The Wicked Man was, like the fallen angel himself, born in fire and had heard the music of angels, and now inhabited the circles of the damned. There were very few who knew anything of this man’s story, and it was Barnaby Rutledge alone who knew it all. All men will try and gain immortality by telling their story, and there are none so insistent as those into whose eyes Death had stared. Their voices filled the night, lonely souls, seeking the comfort of ghosts. But for these two, it was different. For Barnaby Rutledge had already lived too many lives for one man, and it was in his power alone to save the Angel from the fires into which he was born to perish.

The Coward slept eventually, his naturally dull mind further tamed by the liberal application of French whiskey. He was far too well-bred to snore, but, like all men who had seen war, his sleep was broken by frantic words that even the wind had learned to ignore. And as he slept, the blessed unconsciousness that is the only haven, the Fallen Angel watched the flames, and spoke to Barnaby Rutledge. He explained to him about the songs that the winter whispers in the fall of the snow and showed him the path that is trod by dreams and the limping lope of nightmares, and of the salvation that can live in a pair of human eyes. He told him the truth. For Barnaby Rutledge was to die that night, once again.

Once again and once again.

It happened at dawn, as somehow all deaths must. Barnaby Rutledge and his wicked companion had risen, and were walking through the mud and the stench that was a mockery of farmer’s fields and children’s gardens. The Coward had been left behind in the fire and neither man remaining could even remember his name. They were lost and they were cold and neither had slept in nearly three days. And still, their battalion was no where in site. The earth was filled with men and with parts of men and yet, for all the faces they saw and all the faces they tried not to see, the men for whom they searched remained utterly elusive.

How many do you think there are, whispered Barnaby Rutledge to The Wicked One.

As many as there are grains of sand on the shore, and all of them worth no more than that combined. Came the hushed reply from a dry and rasping throat.

But Barnaby Rutledge knew this could not be. For Barnaby Rutledge could see the men behind the mud and the fear and the blood and the mask of stupid indifference that a life in the earth casts on each face. And it was because Barnaby Rutledge saw a man, or the helmet of one, at least, pass along the top of a nearby ridge that he climbed to the top and peered over. And then the sky was lit with a fire brighter than the dawn; a fire known far too well to the wicked man. Whether the fire came from the sky like an arm of the vengeful sun or from the ground where the demons dwelled who had once been men, no one had time to tell. For before the eye could see the spark or the ear hear the scream of triumph, Barnaby Rutledge was consumed by the fire. And Barnaby Rutledge died, once again.

It was not a sensation he feared, for Death had grown fond of Barnaby Rutledge. There was, indeed, a sort of relief in knowing that the worst that humankind could conceive was not merely tolerable. It was a blessing. For there were so many ways to die in the cloying mud of France. The fire sang and shrieked with joy when it burned, and the sound of its song drowned out the voice of the men. Its heat warmed him in places he didn’t know existed. It made him feel as if he had a soul.

And so Barnaby Rutledge closed his eyes and thought of how his next death should be and from where the fire would next descend. And he studied the eyes of the wicked man below him. He could have saved him, he thought, as the flames traced the blue of his eyes. The Wicked Man watched the fire with guilty envy. And he watched Death take Barnaby Rutledge and lead him away from the trenches and the things that lived in them. And in Death, he saw a familiar face; one that he had known from his first days, but a face that had never looked at him with anything but contempt. And he wondered why it was that he was never permitted to follow. And when the last chorus of the flames had floated away, the wicked man looked at the earth that now held the best of a good man, and he spit and he walked away, alone.

He would find Barnaby Rutledge again, one day, he knew. And he would whisper to him of the song of rain on a windowpane, or the hushed frenzies of dried autumn leaves. And he would watch him die. Once again.

Once again and once again.