Chapter 21 #3
Clearing my throat, I start again. “Whatever the informant was about to tell him, we never found out, so three people died that night for absolutely nothing at all. I remember watching them load his body on a commercial cargo flight, no flag, no airmen to escort him to Dover, and thinking that we’d agreed to this, he and I.
We’d joined the agency knowing that we could die doing something the world would never know about, that our songs might go unsung and all that bullshit, but what I’d never considered is that we might die for nothing .
And then I thought…if we could be dying for nothing…
maybe we could be killing for nothing too. ”
She’s somehow shivering and utterly still at the same time. A barely anchored boat on choppy water.
“The year I left college for the Army, I was happy to go to war,” I continue.
“I guess you could say that I’d felt called to it.
You’ve been to Morois. You’ve seen the Trevena family chapel and the little cemetery.
The Trevenas and cousins of Trevenas and neighbors of the cousins of Trevenas—the men who went across the Channel were the small gods of our woods.
My grandfather wore a poppy pin every time he left the house.
Maybe I had a different flag sewn to my jacket, but I felt like my destiny had finally come, like I was doing what I was made for.
That my country needed me and our allies needed us, and that if any virtue was synonymous with holiness in our day and age, it would be patriotism.
Courage painted in bright colors—red, white, and blue.
I believed in that then like you believe in God now. ”
She moves a little against me but doesn’t speak.
“It was different in the Rangers, but only by degree. If the missions were more complicated morally, the fervor and belief in our cause were tenfold. We couldn’t be doing the wrong thing, because we were the right people.
It was easy to squash out those little flares of curiosity, of concern, the rare unsavory moment.
” I sigh. “And then came the agency. Their invitation. They’d already gotten Melody.
They’d already noticed that I was more like my MI6 grandfather than my heroic soldier ancestors.
They knew that my conscience was…different.
I was a man with muffled morals who’d made a god out of his country, so they offered me an altar to sacrifice on.
I said yes, because I believed that every threat, theft, murder, and criminal damage to property was a step toward an endpoint we’d all agreed on.
It made sense to me, my grandfather’s grandson, that you had to fight darkness with darkness, and better me than some sweet recruit who just wanted to study Pashtun or Korean for the linguistic thrill, because it wouldn’t hurt me to do the things that couldn’t be written down in the reports.
I didn’t lose sleep at night over them.”
“Until Eliot,” she says.
“I know it makes me trite and solipsistic, but yes, the alley Eliot died in was my road to Damascus, the scales falling from my eyes, et cetera, et cetera, because they put my husband on a plane without a single honor and all for a mistake, a lapse in communication, for an empty and hollow nothing . And if that nothing was there then, maybe it had been there before. Maybe it had always been there. And I don’t mean in every single skirmish or firefight, and I don’t even necessarily think it pervaded the whole war, but it was a slither along the edges of it the entire time.
A whisper on the pillows after the lights went out.
And then—” I pull in a tight breath. “And then it was worse than everything being for nothing. The dying and the killing, it was for something. It was for John Lackland and for Ys. For money and for business done half a world away over artistically plated scallops and wine bought by the bottle. I think I would have rather had all the horrors of my life stem from primates fighting for hilltops than know it was all to make the same handful of people marginally wealthier, bit by bit. I would rather have Eliot’s death mean nothing than know that it was for sale to the highest bidder in an auction none of us knew we were in. ”
I stare up at the ceiling, where the rain has almost completely turned to sleet, slowly blocking out the light.
“You say my sins are at least my own, but that isn’t true, Isolde.
They were stolen from me. My own actions were stolen from me.
My life was a lie in the most fundamental sense because I didn’t even know I was lying.
I’ve been where you are, and I can’t make this easier for you, but I can tell you that there is a tiny seed cupped in your palm right now, and that seed is from this moment on, no more .
And like the mustard seed in the Bible, you can use it to move mountains. ”
For a moment, all is quiet save for the sleet pecking at the glass. And then Isolde shifts and sits up. I sit up too, but I don’t touch her right away. I merely watch the shadows ripple across her back as she breathes.
“It’s not enough,” she says to the cold air and not to me. “I’d have to move mountains for the rest of my life if even one of the people my uncle had me kill didn’t deserve it.”
“I know about many of the people you’ve killed, and the world certainly isn’t worse off for them being dead. Maybe you’ll only have to move hills instead.” I think for a moment and then say carefully, “You asked Dinah about the trial by iron.”
“I don’t even know what it is, and yet when I asked Dinah about it, she looked at me like I was asking to harvest an organ on stage.”
“It’s a sadistic display—and I mean sadistic literally—that used to happen at a club here in DC.
I put the club out of business after I opened Lyonesse and poached many of its members, and I intentionally did not incorporate the old club’s customs into ours.
I don’t want to hear any more about a trial by iron from anyone, and I especially don’t want you thinking about it while you’re digesting what unholy things you’ve done in the name of holiness.
And then getting some very Catholic ideas about punishment and forgiveness. ”
She turns in profile, a dent at the corner of her mouth. “You think you know me so well.”
I run my fingers down the valley of her spine. “Not well enough. Never well enough.”
My phone rings from across the room, and with a displeased exhale, I stop touching my wife and leave the bed to answer it.
It’s Melody.
“Blanche just called,” my twin says. “Tristan’s father is dead.”