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“Why did the brotherhood wait so daht have been spared this whole su—not to mention saved this boy’s life”

“Ask my father” De Clermont sounded as weary as Marcus felt “Or Baldwin, if you can find hiers”

“Oh, well It’s no matter If not for ould creatures like us do each spring?” Russell asked with a snort

“I don’t know, John Plant gardens? Fall in love? Make things?” De Clermont sounded wistful

“You’re a sentiht ar it at the elbow It was an oddly old-fashioned farewell, one that seeincourt than to Yorktown’s battlefield “Until next time”

With that, Russell vanished

—

MARCUS’S GRASP OF TIME and place loosened further after Russell’s departure His fevered drealy difficult to answer the chevalier de Clermont’s questions

“Is there someone I should write to?” de Clermont asked “Family? A sweetheart you left back home?”

Marcus shuffled through the ghosts of Hadley who haunted his waking hours: kindly To wife; Anna Porter, probably married by now; old Ellie Pruitt, probably dead; Joshua Boston, who had enough worldly cares without Marcus adding to them; Zeb Pruitt, his hero, who could barely read His friends in the Philadelphia Associators had moved on with their own lives For a iven him a chance at a better life

“No family,” Marcus said “No home”

“Everyone has a fahtful “You are a curious ive up your name? When I met you at Brandywine, you were already Doc And Galen Chauncey is an assumed name if ever I heard one”

“A but would force himself to do so on this important point “Like my mother”

“Your h he understood

“Tired” Marcus turned his aching head away

But the chevalier kept asking him questions Whenever Marcus’s delirium abated, he answered them

“What eon?” de Clermont asked him

“Tos” Marcus re he’d learned in Buckland’s Northaery

“You should have gone to university, studied medicine properly,” de Clermont said “You are already a fine physician I suspect you iven an opportunity”

“Harvard,” Marcus whispered “Ma says Chaunceys go to Harvard”

“Far be it froeons go to Edinburgh,” de Clermont replied with a sna Before that, it was Salaamum”

Marcus sighed, wistful at the prospect of so e, forever out of reach “I wish”

“And if soive you a second chance at life—would you take hie, avid expression

Marcus nodded His e, even if he didn’t attend Harvard

“And what if you had to wait a tiin your studies—establish a new nae, polish your Latin?” de Clermont asked

Marcus shrugged He was dying Polishing his Latin seemed easy in comparison

“I see” De Clermont’s shrewd eyes darkened “And what if you had to hunt, every day of your life, just to survive?”

“Good hunter,” Marcus replied, proudly thinking of the squirrels, fish, turkeys, and deer he’d shot to keep his faotten a shot off on a wolf once, though they were supposed to be gone and Noah Cook said it was just a

“Marcus? Did you hear me?” De Clermont’s face was very close, and his eyes rerizzled aniain “You don’t have much time to decide”

In his bones, Marcus felt he had all the time in the world

“Pay attention, Marcus I asked if you would be willing to kill someone for this chance to live a doctor’s life Not an aniency that cut through Marcus’s fever and the fog of disorientation and pain that accompanied it

“Yes—if he deserved it,” Marcus said

—

MARCUS SLEPT FOR A WHILE after that When he woke, the chevalier de Clermont was in the midst of a story that was more fantastic than Marcus’s own dreams He said he had lived for more than a thousand years That he had been a carpenter and a mason, a soldier and a spy, a poet, a doctor, a lawyer

De Clermont spoke of some of the men he had killed Someone in Jerusalem, and others in France and Germany and Italy And he mentioned a woman, too, someone named Eleanor

There were frightening parts to the story, elements that made Marcus think he was indeed in hell The chevalier talked about his taste for blood, and how he drank fro creatures and tried not to kill the was impossible

“Would you drink from a man’s veins to survive?” Even in thequestions

Marcus was burning up with fever, his mind addled with the heat and the pressure in his veins

“If I did, would the pain stop?” Marcus asked

“Yes,” de Clermont replied

“Then I would,” Marcus confessed

—

MARCUS DREAMED HE WAS FLYING, high and fast above the hospital The floor beloas stained with voed for scraps to eat

Then everything turned green as the hospital tent vanished and the filthy floor becarew deeper, greener Marcus her, but his rapid progress turned the whole world to a blur of green and brown and black Marcus felt the air, cold against his fevered body His teeth chattered like the skeleton in Gerty’s front room in Philadelphia

Day beca on a horse Someone slapped him Hard

“Don’t die” A man with dark eyes and pale skin stared down at him “Not yet You have to be alive when I do this”

The chevalier de Clermont was in his drealade, surrounded by trees With them was a band of Indian warriors who obeyed de Clermont’s orders

“What are you doing?” Russell asked de Clermont

“Giving this boy a second chance,” answered de Clermont

“You have a war to finish!” Russell said

“Cornwallis won’t be in any rush to agree to the terms of surrender Besides, I have to collect the mail,” de Clermont said

Marcus finally understood why the colonial mail service was so expensive and unreliable: It was run by devils and dead e of Beelzebub,a sack of post But the mirth split his head in two like a rotten apple, and hisof blood

Soed

“No more” For Marcus, those three words encapsulated a lifetime of disappointment and broken promises

“War is a hellishly difficult time to become a wearh, Matthew,” Russell said, worried “Are you sure?”

Now Russell was asking questions, too

“Yes,” Marcus and de Clermont said at the same time

A sudden, searing pain at his neck told Marcus that his carotid artery had ruptured It was too late He would surely die now, and there was nothing that anyone could do for him

With a deep, rattling breath, Marcus gave up the ghost trapped in his body

Hell, he discovered, was strangely cold now that his soul had flown There was none of the fire and brimstone Reverend Hopkins had pro was icy and still There was no screa dru to do soht have been spared this whole su—not to mention saved this boy’s life”