Clive skidded to a halt outside Isabella’s room. Urgency was all, but he still took his moment to straighten his doublet and run his fingers through his hair. If he was going to lose the only woman he had ever – would ever – love, he was going to do it with some dignity!
He put his hand to the bedroom door knob, and pushed.
Isabella was abed, her father kneeling and crimson beside her. For a woman dying from one of the most pernicious maladies known to human history, she looked fantastic. Her skin was whiter than white, whiter even than it had ever been before, which only threw her nose into starker contrast, for her delicate beak was now black as soot. As were her fingertips, come to think of it. The effect was rather poupée. Cute? An effect somewhat spoilt by the perfect ringlet of throbbing blue buboes about her neck. Her lips were chapped and she was breathing too fast, a sheen of sweat upon her brow.
The Alchemist looked up suddenly. He may have been dozing. “Well?”
Clive walked towards the bed. “It’s over.” His voice did not sound like his own. “How is she?”
The Alchemist rose. He did not look Clive in the eye. “It won’t be long now. I think she can still hear us.” His one hand gestured limply towards his daughter. His other swatted at an eye.268 “I’ll be in the laboratory if you need me... If only everything weren’t ruined perhaps I could have... anyway.” And then, head shrunken back into his hood, he swept past Clive and was gone.
Clive stepped up to the bed, and placed one hand upon Isabella’s blackened claw. If it were his fate to contract that same disease that he had helped propagate, then so be it: Clive no longer cared.
Isabella stirred, and moaned.
Clive: “Shhh. It’s me.”
Her eyes cracked, and then she saw him at last: “Clive! You came!”
She tried to rise but Clive pushed her down firmly. Perhaps a little too firmly: Isabella wheezed weakly.
But Clive was determined. He needed to get something off his chest.269 “Don’t try and speak! Just listen. Issy, there’s so much I want to say, so many things that–”
Isabella stopped him with a dull smile. “Clive. Wherever you’ve been, whatever you’ve done, it’s all okay now! Everything’s okay! I can close my eyes and sleep peacefully... You’re here now, and that’s all I need to know!”
Suddenly levering Clive’s arm away with the unholy vigour of the damned, Isabella bolted upright in a fit of fevered, hawking coughing! Ladylike to the end, she covered her hand with her mouth. The resultant phlegm was green and flecked with red: she wiped her hand upon Clive’s outstretched sleeve as she settled back into his embrace, smearing her vital slime down his sable coat.
Still she had more to say... or, sing??
“The skies above begin to clear...
My eyes have cried their final tear!
I’m not alone now... you’re near!”
Clive pushed his nose into the hair at her crown. She was burning up. Every inch of her was on fire. Every inch. He blushed. Gentleman that he was, he adjusted where his hands had fallen.
Clearly though, his affections were wasted... Isabella grabbed at the gates of his arms again and threw them open! Leaping to her feet, she whirled suddenly in a delirious gypsy dervish that defied her imminent demise! She began to holler at the top of her lungs:
“Takes more than a hand of cards
to see what the future will hold!
Don’t have to be an alchemist
to turn each day into gold!”
Clive weakly ushered at her to return to bed... but she ignored him completely:
“Oh no! What we have together
shines like the sun at dawn!”
Her whirling rendition came to an end as she overbalanced and fell heavily upon the bed and facedown into Clive’s lap. Clive, logically fearing the worst (but hoping for the best), grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her up to face him:
“Issy, please just try! Oh god, please don’t die!”
He shook her violently, quite oblivious to the fact that he was singing now too.271 “I need you!”
She seemed to come back for a moment, smiling weakly, only to join him in harmony:
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
“All is well, now you’re here with me!”
“Is-sy!”
“I can close my eyes–”
“Don’t close your eyes!”
“–sleep peacefully!”
“Time to be strong now!”
“I know!”
“I won’t leave your side!”
“You’re here now!”
“We’ll turn back the tide!”
“You’re here now!”
Clive’s tears were free-flowing now: “I love you, Issy!”
“I–” Isabella suddenly pointed past Clive, as if seeing something wondrous or terrible, and then her head sank, and she flopped, lifeless, into Clive’s arms.
Clive stared down at her head, wild-eyed and disbelieving. “No!” And then, throwing back his head, he roared! “NOOOOOO!”
For a moment, he was certain his soul had left his body through his gorge. But then, he seemed to descend, back down into the salty stuff of mortal suffering, heaved as it was with wracking heavenless sobs, only to suddenly realise he was not alone.
The room darkened. A fierce sourceless wind whipped through the bedchamber, slamming the inner shutters upon the windows. Untouched by the draft, following its own stately pace, a mist crept across the floor, smothering all until the bed upon which Clive and Isabella lay seemed to be floating in a sea of cloud.
The cowled shape in the doorway was not the Alchemist, for it was not red in the slightest. It was black, and very very tall.
Death stepped forward.
Her huge scythe was somewhat impractical for the small bedchamber, and the tip tapped against a window pane on the far side. Thinking better of it, and lacking for a Jerry, She left it propped against the wall. Relieving Herself of Her hood, the tall valkyrie observed the pitiful scene with a stern gaze. And then that gaze fell upon Clive.
Death stares at all men in the end. In their faces, She had observed every expression compatible with the human visage, and a few that frankly just weren’t. But the expression that sat upon Clive’s face right now, She had seen in only a handful before.
Fury. Absolute bloody fury. Not at the event. At Her.
“Get thee gone!” Clive snarled. “You can’t have her!”
Death did not move. Nor did She speak.
Clive rose, fists clenched. Mist curled around his legs. Isabella’s lifeless body fell off the bed onto the floor with a thud. But Clive heeded it not. His entire focus was upon the shadowy spirit before him. He advanced...
“Didn’t you hear me? She’s not yours to take!”
When She spoke, Death’s voice was barely a whisper: “Clive, your defiance is misplaced! Zere is nusing you can do! She is dead. Dead! Dead.”
“Screw you!” Clive thrust a finger. “You wear the vestments of a maid! But black is a colour I see through! You’re cold! Cold as a... really cold thing! In winter! When it’s frozen!”
Death raised an arresting hand at that. It’s hard to say whether She was piqued by his words, or simply wished to curtail his sorry search for a simile. Either way, Her reply stopped Clive in his tracks. “It’s true!”
Clive arched. “What?”
“It’s true! Ja. I am cold! Cold as ze dark zat lies in ze echoes between ze stars!!”
Clive scanned that momentarily (it was a highly superior comparison).
And then the Reaper did something so infinitely incomprehensible that it left Clive without a heartbeat for several seconds.
She hesitated.
“But... Clive you have done as I asked! And zough all hope did seem to drown, ze Elixir of Life from ze river did spread... and saved all London town!”272
Clive scanned this for a moment too. Of course! The Elixir had fallen into the river after the King had tossed it away... the same river in which the Alchemist had dropped the Plague! The life-sustaining liquid had spread through the same currents, the same channels and streams, the same rivulets and funnels, cisterns and wells... it had seeped into the very aquifer upon which Londinium, in its founder’s wisdom, had been built, quenching the contagion within the bellies of all who had drunk of her diluted divinity! Inescapable death and immortal life, each neutralising the other in alchemical counterpoise! No more would the Plague kill, yet, equally, the Elixir would grant no more life than was due!
The logic was inescapable.273 Still, Clive felt the need to check: “You mean?”
“You’ve saved zis town!”
“Oh!” Clive tried to feel happy, victorious even. But the Elixir’s boon was useless to those who had already passed... Or fallen off a bed onto the floorboards! Isabella’s final resting pose was hardly dignified: both her legs were over her head!
But Death had not finished. “And so I’m left in ze pickle!” She looked down at Isabella’s body. It was oddly easy to project feeling upon Death’s austere beauty, even when Clive knew She felt none. “Zere’s still a job zat I must do! Omega is my name, and nature true!” Again, though, She raised a hand, a gesture to halt the moon, if She so chose. “Yet, even I get tired of death! But, as my vork I’ll never leave, understand now, zat I’m granting – only granting… a reprieve!”
And then, to Clive’s wide-eyed astonishment, Death raised an elegant palm towards Isabella, and began to sing. She opened Her mouth, and actually sang. Not with words. Not even exactly a melody. More a feeling: a rise, a change, a turning, a burning, a stirring: a season! A beginning: a sigh, a gasp, a laugh, a path, a hill, a pool, a star, a devil, a fool!
Death backed towards the door, singing all the while. “Ahhhh! Ah-haaahhh! Ahhhh! Ah-haahhh! Ahhhh! Ah-haahhh!” She collected her scythe in passing.
Something in the quality of the light began to change...
The Alchemist, Milly and Jerry poured into the room through the doorway, barging past Death.
“Clive, you–” Jerry screeched to a halt as he noticed the black-clad valkyrie slow-marching backwards towards the door. “Oh ’ello!” On a whim as old as instinct itself, he joined her, his voice raised in tandem, his hand raised in selfsame benediction, backing towards the door in lockstep with his muse–
Until Milly turned about and, quite unamused, caught him black-handed. “Oh no, you don’t!” She grabbed the incautious coffin-maker and shoved him towards Clive, and out of range of the siren spell of the retreating Reaper.
“Aw!” groaned Jerry in disappointment.
Milly knocked him about the ears. “You want to meet your maker, Muldoon, it’s gonna be at my hand, and not some truculent trollop with a pair of lungs on ’er!”
The Alchemist, however, had eyes only for his daughter. “Look!”
Clive turned. Isabella’s left leg – had it just moved? But it hardly mattered... For her eyes were wide open, and she was looking right at him!
“Issy, you’re alive!”
Issy grimaced. “Of course I’m alive, Clive! What else would I be? The real question is... why are my ankles over my head?”
Drunk on joy and relief, but finally realising he should perhaps do something about her undignified posture, Clive took hold of her feet and laid them gently to the floor. The skin of her cool ankles in his warm hands felt like buttery sin. But that was nothing beside her warm embrace as she wrapped her arms around his neck, and pulled him down for a smouch!
Pity her nose was still black. Like a puppy. Oh well! It would grow on him!