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Scars

~That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept
Or one could weep because another wept.~

-W.H. Auden, ~The Shield of Achilles~

*~*

1853.

The sunlight never cuts through.

London's skies are choked with a haze of yellow and gray, speaking or screaming the hint of rain.  Rickety
buildings of stone and wood cut into a fog that does not alleviate all day.  The boy is six, small for his age, all unkempt brown hair and rag-tag clothing. Sharp blue eyes cut across the scene, missing nothing, as he runs pell-mell down cobblestone streets.

"Stop!  Stop, thief!"

The constable is quick and he knows these streets well, but the boy knows them better.  He ducks into an alleyway that stinks of rats and sewage until the chase passes him by.  Dark shadows play across his pale, sharp-boned face as he glances down at empty hands.  The purse he had snatched from an unsuspecting belt has long ago been dropped as he dashed, panicked, through city streets.  He chews his lower lip nervously, staring at his hands.  Dust and grime, scratches, calluses, that is all they hold.  He has nothing now.  Nothing but his hunger and his fear.

A nearby bell rings the hour of five and his heart quakes in trepidation.  He knows he must be getting home.  He does not know how to read.  But he learned early how to count.  The numbers are important and they all add up to nothing.

The house is tiny, one-up-one-down, built of wood and thatch.  Hot in summer and cold in winter.  Dust and dirt, empty cupboards and bare floors, unspoken terrors.  The two children line up before a cold fireplace.  She is eight and can better play the game than he.  A brother, three years his senior, is long dead of a fever, his ghost haunting the upstairs bedroom where he was left to die.  The baby, another girl, slumbers against a gaunt breast.  The woman stares out a dirty window, her face decorated with bruises, devoid of expression.

"What've ya got?"

His voice is bigger than the room, his figure larger than Hunger and Death.  He reeks of sweat and liquor, the dark god of lost childhoods who demands a daily sacrifice.  He stands before them, feet planted firmly in the dirt floor, fists clenched in preparation at his sides.  The boy does not look up to stare into the unforgiving visage, marked with anger and greed.  He does not wish to know this face.  He does not call him Father.

The girl digs into the pocket of her tattered dress. "Sixpence."  She lies, but she does it well, almost as well as she begs and steals.  The rest is hidden in a crack in the stone wall of a nearby churchyard.  She will buy bread for her brother with it, milk for the baby.  She has dark curls and wide green eyes.  She will die of syphilis, a whore, at the age of twenty-two.

"That's all?"

She nods.  The giant hand flies through the air like an emissary of Doom, knocking her to the floor before it pockets the money.  She gets up again quickly and blinks away tears.  She will take her beatings and keep her money.  She plays the game well.

The baby starts against her mother's breast, yawns, opens sleepy eyes.  She is too young to see the ghosts of hunger and fear that hover around her; she is Innocence.  The second husband will beat her to death with a broken cane shortly before her twelfth birthday.

The great figure comes to stand before the boy, hands planted firmly on hips.  The heart in his small body races with terror, but he does not move.  He stares past the man, at the dust-smeared window.  A moth beats desperately against the glass, trying to escape the dark, dirty shadows within the room in favor of the empty gray skies outside.  Better the devil you know?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

"What about you, Will?"

The boy says nothing; any sounds that would fall from his lips would be meaningless, harmful, doing nothing to prevent the inevitable.  He will fall to an Irishman's kiss in a back alley not far from here at the age of twenty-six.  But his death will be but a sleep and a dreaming.  His body quakes in fear, but he knows he will not die today, nor tomorrow.  Already, at the age of six, he suspects that there is nothing that he has not seen, nothing which can defeat him.

"Answer me, boy."

The moth falls, dazed, to the dirt floor.

She prods her younger brother with a sharp elbow, afraid for his safety, and her own.  "Give it, Will."

After a few moments, the lace-winged insect flutters, flaps, ascends to race towards the window again.

He raises his eyes and his gaze meets that of the Monster.

"Nothing."

The fists clench, the brow furrows in a familiar attitude of rage.

"What did you say?"

"I 'aven't got nothing today."

The first punch will only knock him to the ground.  He is being given another chance.  A chance to answer the question correctly.  He stands slowly, less frightened now.  He knows what is going to happen.  He knows how this works.  A bruise blooms on his pale cheek.  He is six years old and nothing surprises him.

"Hand it over, Will."

"I don't 'ave nothin', sir."

The second punch knocks him into the wall, which shakes in protest.  The girl cowers, terrified, in the corner.  The woman stares blankly out the window; she does not see the delicate, lace-winged moth that struggles against the glass.  The baby begins to cry.

"Where is it?"

"Nothin' today, sir."

"And why not?"

"I got a purse but they cried thief and I ran.  I dropped it."  The monster's gaze is filled with fury; failure is not an option.  Now comes the time for punishment.  He closes his eyes and waits for it to be over.

With an angry cry, the man lifts the small boy effortlessly and throws him across the room.  He courses through the still air, his thoughts scattering in the split second before impact, and someday, he thinks, someday he will be grown-up and strong, stronger than the man, stronger than Death, too strong for anyone to hurt him ever again.  But for now there is only the moment and the pain as he collides with a small, rickety wooden table.  It shatters beneath him as a sharp corner slices a deep gash through his left eyebrow.

And for a while there is darkness.

He awakes to the sight and smell and taste of blood. It pours out of the cut over his eye, obscuring his vision and running down one side of his face in thick rivulets.  He sits up and looks around him.  The baby has stopped crying; the woman lifts her eyes momentarily and gazes at her son.  Her countenance bespeaks sorrow and fear.  She looks away again.

The girl kneels beside him, quiet, complacent, gathering up the broken shards of wood and clearing them away.  Her single bruise is already fading; she plays the game better than he.  He stands slowly, his thin body aching from the collision with furniture and floor.  The room dips and spins as he is overcome with a wave of dizziness; the side of his head aches so badly that he can scarcely breathe.  He falls to his knees.

"Get up, boy."

He lifts his eyes and sees the man standing before him, clutching his heavy leather belt in one merciless hand.  The woman closes her eyes.  The boy does not. Better the devil you know?  Not necessarily.  He knows what to expect.  He knows what will happen if he stays.  But he likes surprises.

The belt makes contact with empty air as he ducks beneath it.  It misses him by only inches; he can feel the rush of air over his bleeding brow as he dodges its brutal touch and tears from the room.  The man is strong, but he is also big, stupid, drunk; the boy is out the door and halfway down the street before he realizes what has happened.  He begins to make chase, but soon his target is nowhere in sight, so he returns to the house.  He is not concerned about the loss.  One less mouth to starve.  The numbers are important and they all add up to nothing.  The girl sobs, silently, in the corner.  The woman stares out
the window, her face calm.  Her heart is filled with broken joy.  She is glad for the boy.  Better the devil you know?  No.  Not this time.

That night he sleeps in a pile of rags no colder than the bed he had known.  The jagged laceration that cuts through his left eyebrow knits together, tries to heal.  He will always carry the scar with him.  Just as he will always carry this memory.  But he sleeps deeply, without dreaming.  His safety is not assured; there will always be Monsters.  But there will no longer be Fear.  He can fight;  he can run.  He is given the choice.

In the cold London streets that night, a small, frightened child withers and dies.  And William the Bloody is born.