“Like Dickens?” Marcus made a soft sound of amusement. “Chapter one, ‘I am born’？”
The usual biographical template of birth, childhood, marriage, and death might be too narrow and conventional for a vampire, I had to admit.
“Chapter two, I died. Chapter three, I was reborn.” Marcus shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s not so simple a tale, Diana. Strange, minor things stand out so clearly to me, and I can barely recall the dates of major events.”
“Matthew warned me that vampire memories might be tricky,” I said. “Why don’t we start with something easy, like your name?” He went by Marcus Whitmore now, but there was no telling what it had been originally.
Marcus’s darkening expression told me that my simple question didn’t have an easy answer.
“Vampires don’t normally share that information. Names are important, mon coeur,” Matthew reminded me.
For historians as well as vampires—which is why I’d asked. With a name, it would be possible for me to trace Marcus’s past in archives and libraries.
Marcus took a steadying breath, and the black threads surrounding him bristled with agitation. I exchanged a worried look with Matthew.
I did warn you, said Matthew’s expression.
“Marcus MacNeil.” Marcus blurted out the name.
Marcus MacNeil of Hadley, born August 1757. A name, a date, a place—these were the building blocks of most historical research. Even if Marcus were to stop there, I could probably find out more about him.
“My mother was Catherine Chauncey of Boston, and my father . . .” Marcus’s throat closed, shutting off the words. He cleared it and started again. “My father was Obadiah MacNeil from the nearby town of Pelham.”
“Did you have any brothers or sisters?” I asked.
“One sister. Her name was Patience.” Marcus’s face had turned ashen. Matthew poured him some more wine.
“Older or younger?” I wanted to get as much out of Marcus as possible in case tonight was the only chance I had to gather information from him.
“Younger.”
“Where did you live in Hadley?” I steered the conversation away from his family, which was clearly a painful subject.
“A house on the western road out of town.”
“What do you remember about the house?”
“Not much.” Marcus looked surprised that I was interested in such a thing. “The door was red. There was a lilac bush outside, and the scent came through the open windows in May. The more my mother neglected it, the more it bloomed. And there was a black clock on the mantel. In the parlor. It came down to her through the Chauncey family, and she wouldn’t let anyone touch it.”
As Marcus recalled small details of his past, his memory—which had grown rusty and sepia toned from disuse—began to operate more freely.
“There were geese everywhere in Hadley,” Marcus continued. “They were vicious, and roamed all over town frightening the children. And I remember there was a brass rooster atop the meetinghouse steeple. Zeb put it up there. God, I haven’t thought about that rooster in ages.”
“Zeb?” I asked, less interested in the town’s weather vane.
“Zeb Pruitt. My friend. My hero, really,” Marcus said slowly.
Time chimed in warning, the sound echoing in my ears.
“What’s your earliest memory of him?” I prompted Marcus.
“He taught me how to march like a soldier,” Marcus whispered. “In the barn. I was five or six. My father caught him. He didn’t let me spend much time with Zeb after that.”
A red door.
A lilac bush.
A wayward flock of geese.
A rooster on the meetinghouse steeple.
A friend who played make-believe soldier with him.
These charming fragments were part of the larger mosaic of Marcus’s life, but they weren’t enough to form a coherent picture of his past, or reveal some larger historical truth.
I opened my mouth to ask another question. Matthew shook his head, warning me not to interfere in the story but to let Marcus take it in whatever direction he needed to go.
“My father was a soldier. He was in the militia, and fought at Ft. William Henry. He didn’t see me for months after I was born,” Marcus said, his voice dropping. “I always wondered whether things would have been different if only he had come home sooner from the war, or never gone at all.”
Marcus shivered and I felt a flicker of unease.
“War changed him. It changes everybody, of course. But my father believed in God and country first, and rules and discipline second.” Marcus cocked his head to the side as if he were considering a proposition. “I suppose that’s one of the reasons why I don’t have much faith in rules. They don’t always keep you safe, like my father believed.”