Lizzie's Song

Chapter 28- New

A/N:  This chapter contains some explicit material.

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Rebecca does not sleep. She burns sacred herbs in Lizzie's workshop to calm the couple in the bedroom and asks the forces of nature, her gods and goddesses, to let them find rest. Her people were once from Scotland, heathens hidden for centuries from the church, practicing in secret to avoid death. Hadrian's wall separated the family and made them English in region, but not in their hearts. So they witched on.

She bakes, too, a magic of its own, making sure there will be food without work for them in the morning. And then she dozes in the chair when the light is just greying the sky. When it is dawn and the sun streams through the windows, she wakes. She hears movement in the bedroom and creeps to the door, opening it only a crack. They move together, intertwined under the sheets. She closes the door without noise, a smile on her face. She stokes the fire then wraps herself in a heavy shawl and steps out into the snow, her footprints the first in the six inches of accumulation. She walks to her own home, the day brightening as the sun lifts fully over the horizon.

She opens the back door; Thaddeus is at the kitchen table with coffee, "Good morning, Bec. How does your patient fare?"

"She's not my patient." She passes him and pours herself a cup. She usually sits with him at the table in the morning, coffee after breakfast, but she stands at the window instead.

"Bec? What's going on? You're not telling me something."

"Does a witch ever tell everything?"

"Come on, darling. Talk to me."

But she doesn't. She sips her coffee at the window and watches the world wake up.

Thaddeus stands and walks to her, his coffee left behind. He puts a hand on her shoulder, "Please-"

She whirls around and slaps him hard, "No. You stand down, Thaddeus Doyle. I heard every word last night. Every. Single. Word. And it was cruelty at its finest to interrogate him so. I swear, by all the forces of this world and every other, that if you were the architect of this hare-brained scheme, I will take you apart piece by piece."

"Rebecca, please. We had to know if she'd gone mad."

"Not that way. To assume from the start that he'd hurt her, even after all these years... Thad, it's been 25 years since he gained his freedom from Allerdale Hall. A quarter century. He's loved her for nearly all of it, been free for over the past decade...and yet you accused him of such a grievous sin..." She pushes by him and drops into a chair at the table, "How would you be feeling if it were me, out there on the moors that you'd just rescued, and the only friends you'd ever had came in asking such a thing? Really, Thad- did you think this at all through?"

He slowly sits down across from her, "There's a reason Mal did most of the speaking. He'd been worried about Lizzie for years. She's well past the age her mother was when she died, but we just don't know what happened to Magdaline. Was the madness in her blood? Did it come on because of Lord Sharpe? We can't say."

"And were it to come on our Lizzie, what then? Would you cage her? Take a pike to her brain and hope it relieved her without stealing her from her own head? Or would you let her lover care for her with all his heart? He's dealt with madness before and survived her. Not well, mind you, but he's walked that path. And were she mad, he wouldn't be alone in the handling of it. Or he wasn't, until last night. Lord knows if he'll trust us again."

"Are you saying that we shouldn't care?"

"No. I'm saying you should mind your own damned business and let the girl grieve her father. Let him, too. Reg, Lizzie, Nate- their the boy's only blood family. He's lost the only elder he's ever had who didn't treat him cruelly. Who never wanted him to die so they would be rid of a disappointment. What does that do to a man? A child? To grow up that way? And now Reg is gone and Thomas is carrying Lizzie's grief heavy on his shoulders, trying to ignore his own so he can care for her. And there you boys went to add to that burden..."