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best-wishes · 2 months

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Don’t Look Back Part 2: First Iteration

CW: Major Character Death, Doubting reality, Terminal illness, Mourning, Referenced Domestic Violence, Referenced Alcohol Abuse, Imprisonment, Interrogation

For the master post, go here Hob gasped. He took one breath, two, fast, frantic. He breathed air again, sweet, warm air, soothing his airways. He stopped breathing.

He was not wet. He was not cold either, he was in warm clothes. He was inside, in a bed underneath the covers, head on a soft clean pillow. He didn’t know how long it had been since he last slept in a bed so comfortable. Had he since Robyn had died? Maybe for the first months after his death, when Rose, the maid, was still there. Before they all fled from the manor, chased by his continual drinking, taking with them most of the gold. He had cursed them then, but he had understood. He would have done the same and worse, a century back in time. After that, he had lived in filth and cobwebs, until the day they came for him with pitches and forks, and he had been forced to sleep on the ground in his cell.

Hob opened his eyes. The sun was already high in the sky, tracing golden rays across the floor. The room was large and rather richly decorated. Coloured curtains, a thick carpet on the wood floor, ornate furniture, everything in the room was showing off money.

Hob knew this room. He had stayed there before, only once, but for a fortnight. This was the largest, most expensive room of the White Horse Inn, the one he had rented to wait for his mysterious benefactor in 1589 from the 27th of May, just in case Death was a Catholic and used the new calendar that the pope had decreed in 1582. Apparently Death didn’t care much for the pope, as they had shown up on the expected 7th of June of the old calendar, after Hob had waited for eleven long days.

Hob knew where he was, but he still ignored how, or why he was there. He had told them about the White Horse, during his interrogation, as the place where he met Death every hundred years. Was it a trap? Was it ironic? Were they going to keep him here, having survived his trial, as a bait for his patron in witchcraft?

It must be the reason. They had seen with their own eyes the reality of his infernal deal, now they were after the creature that had granted him immortality. Hob didn’t think it would work. The stranger had never shown up outside their appointments, and the next one wasn’t due for another seventy years. If they intended to keep him in the inn for the next seven decades, well it beat being in a cell, and Hob would likely find a way to escape before then.

Getting out of the bed, Hob went to the nearby chair, upon which clothes had been thrown. Hob recognized the doublet instantly. He’d spent months choosing the fabric, deciding on the cut with his tailor, so that he had the most impressive outfit for his centennial meeting. How was it even possible? The original had been lost to time. How long had passed since he was dunked into the water? Weeks ? Months? 

Not daring to dress in the fated garment, Hob chose another set from the closet, less ostentatious. The clean water, soap and towel were a welcome luxury he had had to do with for too long. Touching his beard, Hob was puzzled again. It was short, well cut. The last time he’d checked, his beard was a tangled mess, sticky and stinking. Same with his hair, which was now cleaned, brushed and cut shorter.

What was happening? 

He finished dressing up hastily and went to the door. Hand over the door handle, he hesitated. Would he be allowed to get out, or would he find guards outside? Only one way to find out. Hob clasped the latch and pushed the door.

It opened. Hob crossed the threshold to find an empty corridor, silent except for the distant bustling of the main room downstairs. From the position of the sun, Hob guessed morning was halfway through, not the most busy hour for the inn. He continued to the stairs at the end of the corridor leading to the main room, if he remembered correctly.

The main room was, as predicted, not very busy. Scattered groups of men were sharing a meal or a drink, while the inn’s crew was preparing for noon. The smell escaping from the kitchen triggered an avid response from Hob’s stomach. After weeks eating nothing but stale bread and water, he was salivating just from the idea of a hot, hearty meal, a soup, or even better a stew. With eggs on the side, bread and butter, milk!

Hob did not even make two steps into the room before he was accosted by one of the maids, smiling at him and guiding him by the elbow.

"Good Sir Gadlen, I hope you had the most excellent night. We have prepared a princely breakfast for you, as you ordered yesterday. Please take place," she guided him toward a large table, the same large table he had filled with the best food money could buy so he could welcome his mysterious patron as they deserved. For naught, as the stranger had not touched a single piece of food at his disposal. Hob should have guessed.

Hob sat and soon the table was covered in plates and pitchers: milk, oats, eggs, bread, butter and the like. Others had him double take. They were the same food Hob had chosen for the feast for his stranger. When they had left, Hob had kept eating, not wanting to waste it. Savouring it like he always savoured his immortal life, without care for the opinion of the source of it. But even he could not eat that much in one sitting.

Hob suddenly realised the maid was chatting at him, while he sat petrified as she piled plate after plate in front of him.

"Excuse me, miss?" he interrupted her.

"Sir?"

"What day is it?"

"June 8th, Sir."

June? Yesterday was November! Had he been unconscious, with no recollection of the last eight months? 

"June 8th, 1622?" he repeated, to confirm the unbelievable date.

She laughed, as if he was absurd.

"June 8th, 1589, Sir."

---

Her words hit him like his old printing press crushing the leaded letters on the paper, leaving an indelible mark behind.

This was impossible. There was only one possible conclusion to this date. This, the inn, the food, the clothes, everything was but a dream. A desperate makeshift reality cooked by his brain to avoid the dreadful reality, one of drowning in the cold water until the witch hunters deemed him immortal.

Hob caught a piece of pork with his knife and brought it to his mouth. He savoured the salty flavour of the meat, seasoned with herbs, tender and juicy. He focused on the warmth spreading from his mouth. If it was a dream, it was assuredly a great one. Hob was going to revel in it for as long as he could.

He dug in, eating morsels of everything, eager to remember some of the best foods he had ever gathered on a table, except maybe when he had welcomed the Queen in his home. He dug in like it was eating his last meal on earth, shoving food into his mouth to fill the emptiness inside himself, drinking hot soup to warm the ice in his heart. He dug in to forget to wake up.

This was a dream, yet the banquet ended. Hob was not blessed with an infinite stream of plates nor with a bottomless stomach. When the last plate was empty, he sat there, stomach bursting, unable to conceive what should come next.

He didn’t know how long he stayed there, contemplating the reliefs of his gargantuan breakfast. What did you do, when nothing was real? When nothing made sense?  Hob didn’t want to go back to reality.

His attention drifted to the conversations of the tavern. A group of old men, greying hair and impressive beards, were playing cards in a corner. Cards were a pretext to sitting together and spending a moment together, yet the game was lively. Hob didn’t remember playing this variant before, and he took some time observing them, inferring the rules. They were playing in two teams of two, the pairs bickering like couples do to show a decade old fondness. Hob’s first card partner had been the same, one of the smartest lads he had ever met. He was long dead of course, but his company had been a highlight of the fifteenth century. When his strange benefactor had asked him what could make living forever worthwhile, Hob had answered "playing cards", because of the lively company of the people he had sat with, day in, day out, to share a nice moment around a game. That was life was made for: sharing simple moments of joy with others.

Hob’s observation came to an end as one of the players pushed back his chair and announced:

"I have to go, mates. The wife at home will hit me with the ladle if I come back late."

"Afraid of her, are you not? A small slip of a woman like her?" His partner mocked, and they all laughed.

Hob didn’t catch what they said next; his brain had stopped in its tracks.

He knew where he needed to be next, why he was there at all. It was 1589. *She* was waiting for him at home. She was there, only a short horse ride away. Eleanor.

It was too much for Hob. He ran up the stairs, assembling the bare minimum for his ride home, his boots, his coat, his gloves. It was a dream, there was no need to pack his stuff and bring it home. What matters was that he could go home, and not find an empty mansion colonised by spiders and rats.

He rode like the Devil was on his tail. Who cared about the dream’s horse when the animal would be erased as soon as it left Hob’s field of view? The journey seemed to last forever, yet be over instantly. Hob’s mind was elsewhere, elated at the idea of having his beloved back, if only for a day. He had to remember everything he ever thought he should have told her before her passing, every moment of Robyn’s childhood they never got to share, all the love he could never shower over her. How he had missed her, every day for nineteen long years.

The mansion was magnificent. Hob had forgotten, after years of abuse and disrepair. This was the house he had built with the aim of welcoming the Queen of England, with the accumulated wealth of three generations of Robert Gadlen investing their money into the most profitable ventures of the whole century. A grandiose mansion, with the latest architectural prowess of the time, to proclaim a social standing that Hob Gadling would never have been able to achieve. The vestige of a happier time, hollowed out when Eleanor and Robyn had deserted it, leaving Hob living alone in a constant reminder of their absence.

He approached the gates, and they were opened for him, a stable hand coming to meet him. Hob gave the boy the reins and ran up the stairs to the front door.

"Good day, Rose," he said joyously. "Would you mind directing me to my dear Lady Eleanor?"

"She is in the garden, painting, my Lord." The maid answered, pointing toward the back.

Striding through the hall, Hob could not contain his anticipation. His hands were clammy all of a sudden, his heart beating heavily in his chest. What if he woke up when he saw her? What if she was mad at him for letting their son die so young? What if she despised him for falling so low after their death?

His steps slowed down. Getting out of the building through the back door, he took care to move silently, stealthily, toward the place where Eleanor was painting.

Her hair was the first part of her he saw. Her magnificent golden hair, that was so often covered outside, but that she only attached in a bun in the privacy of their home. She let them loose for Hob only, letting him slide his fingers through the soft and shining waves.

She was standing, her back to him, turned toward the easel. The palette in her left hand was filled with green hues, with touches of deep red. The tree she was painting was a large cherry tree that Hob had planted three generations ago, when the fruit first went in fashion. It had grown beautifully, giving a bountiful harvest at the start of every summer. The cherries were nearly ripe, their bright red colour a striking contrast against the green foliage. It was, Hob had no doubt what had driven Eleanor to paint it today.

Hob stood there, watching the graceful motion of her wrist guiding the brush, one leaf at a time. As much as he had clutched to his memories of her desperately, the mind forgets the small things with time. The fine details of her face had faded, erased until the few paintings he had of her were all he could recall. She loved painting, but despised being depicted by another, meaning Hob had only a handful of portraits. The motions, how she kept removing a rebellious strand of hair from her eyes, how she tipped her head when she was deep in thought, all of this was revealed to Hob’s eyes as if he was seeing her for the first time. She was perfect and ethereal, and he could not consider disturbing her, lest she disappeared like a bubble bursting as soon as one touched it.

She swore, furious at a clumsy stroke.

Hob could not prevent himself from laughing. He had forgotten, how unlady-like she would be, as soon as no one was there to watch her. How she’d known not nearly as many swear words as Hob did, but a fair number of them. It had been one of the things that had drawn them together, back when she was a young lady and he pretended to be Sir Gadlen the Third, son of the late Sir Gadlen the Second. He had heard her swear, and had laughed about it. Then he’d raised the ante with a whole new supply of curses, and she had laughed in turn. They had exchanged their worst vocabulary, hidden in a corner of her parents’ garden, until they were finally found by her chaperone. Their letters had been of the same mould, and after a few months of correspondence, some of them had been hot enough to make a sailor blush.

Eleanor turned, surprised by his laugh, and Hob felt the air leave his lungs. Suspended, he waited for the bubble to burst. Surely he would wake from the dream, just as she was about to talk to him. Surely the universe was so cruel as to use her just to take her back at the last minute.

Instead, he was too busy feasting on the sight of her face. Her clear green eyes, matching the soft leaves at the tip of the threes, the paler ones that were the new leaves made in spring. The freckles on her cheeks and brow, barely appearing with the start of the summer, that would stand out more and more with the long sunny days. The dip on her right cheek, the one Robyn had inherited and that melted the heart of every maiden after he was fifteen. Her pointy nose always turned red as soon as the weather went cold.

So intent he was as he stared at her that he missed what she was telling him entirely. Now she was looking at him expectantly, and he had no idea what he was supposed to answer.

"I am deeply sorry, o love of my life, I did not hear you above the deafening sound of your beauty."

"Thank you, Robert, what a gratifying way of telling me you did not pay a modicum of attention," she scolded him, but the corners of her mouth gave her away.

He bowed deeply, flowery apologies on his lips. He remembered, now, how he had come back during his life. Dejected at his patron’s disdain, he had come back in a foul mood, brooding for days while Eleanor wondered what had happened. What a waste. She was all that mattered, here and now. Even if he could only live this dream for a day, he would live it to the fullest.

---

Hob had lived what would have been, had it been real, one of the best days of his long life. He spent his time pampering his wife and spoiling his baby son, both of whom he had mourned for years. When he went to bed that night, he only regretted that it could only last for one day, as he would surely wake up as he went to sleep within the dream.

The thought kept him awake for the whole span of the first sleep. When Robyn started fussing, in the middle of the night, he went to get him, and brought him to Eleanor for breastfeeding, and brought him back to his crib once the baby had gone back to sleep.

"Have you slept?" she asked as he slid under the covers.

Hob shook his head, before he remembered she could not see him in the penumbra.

"No."

"Why?"

The silence stretched. Hidden in the shadow, unveiling his fears felt a little safer than in the bright daylight. Like fate wouldn’t hear him, if he spoke in the secrecy of his own bed.

"Because I didn’t want this day to end. It was the best day I’ve lived in…I don’t know, it feels like forever. I had forgotten so many of the ordinary little joys life has to offer. If I could only have one day…I wish it would never end."

She didn’t answer. She snaked her arm around his shoulders and, bringing her hand up to his temple to push him gently down until his head rested upon her chest. He stayed there, listening to the miracle of her beating heart, to the soft recess of her breathing rising and falling like the tide, wishing it would never end. Wishing, like him, that she could live forever, so that he would never lose her. He knew it was impossible, but the heart never cared. He had berated himself, at first, when he had fallen for her. One didn’t go about their immortal life falling in love and founding a family, that was not how one could safely disappear after a while, leaving with no regrets to new horizons. He’d thrown every care to the wind, telling himself an immortal had to experiment everything life had to offer at least once, even family life. Lying to himself that he would be able to bear it gracefully, when time came to fake his death and depart. Wearing blinds, every day, that it would be later. How spectacularly it had failed.

And even then. Even knowing what it would cost, he regretted none of it. He could not contemplate not marrying Eleanor, or leaving her one second earlier than he had to. If decades of despair were the price to pay, he would pay them gladly, for the years with Eleanor and Robyn.

"It does not matter, dear heart, that it ends today," she mutters in his hair. "What matters is that you can live it again tomorrow."

His breathing fell into step with hers, and he drifted into sleep, content, in her arms.

---

Hob tapped Eleanor’s sweating forehead with a cool cloth, as she let another scream rise in her chest. He didn’t remember the events happening so fast for Robyn’s birth. The midwife had warned them that a second baby could arrive faster than the first, but Hob had not anticipated it going that swiftly. He had sent the son of the neighbour to fetch the midwife and Eleanor’s mother, but they had yet to arrive. Meanwhile, he was on his own, encouraging his wife, trying not to show how distraught he felt. Seeing her suffer helplessly was worse than torture. Hob would know.

"Are you ready to tell us about your pact with the Devil, now, Gadlen?"

Hob would have known this voice amongst a thousand. Edward, the priest, the cursed investigator of Hob’s witch trial. He was the one torturing Eleanor with childbirth, using her pain to coerce him to talk.

Eleanor opened her eyes, and looked at him with determination. "Do not tell him, Robert!"

Edward smirked, and Eleanor cried again.

"Eleanor, sweetheart, I cannot. I have to tell him, or you’re going to die. I know, I lived it already."

She was shaking her head, unable to speak as she gritted her teeth through the pain.

Suddenly, there was blood, too much of it. Hob couldn’t see where it came from.

"Talk, Gadlen, or she is going to die in your arms! You may be immortal, but she is not."

"I don’t know! I didn’t make any deal, I mouthed off! The guy said there was no price to pay, only a meeting every century!"

"We both know you’re lying. There’s always a price to pay. To me, it looks like your family was the price, weren’t they?"

Hob woke with a start, heart beating fast. The room was dark, it was still night time. For a moment he thought he was alone in the bed, house empty like in the last decade before his trial. Just as he was about to cry for the end of the dream, he heard a faint snoring. He froze. Slowly, fighting the creeping fear of revealing an illusion, he moved his hand toward the other end of the bed.

It hit something soft and warm. In the shadows, his eyes distinguished the shape of another sleeper in the bed. In response to his touch, Eleanor turned around, making a small noise.

She was there.

It was now three days, since Hob had woken up in the White Horse, and the dream still had not ended. After the first day, Hob had gone to bed convinced he would wake up in 1621. He had not. When he had resurfaced again, Eleanor was leaving the bed to answer Robyn’s call. It was still 1589. He had lived this second day in a confused haze, unsure of what exactly was happening, but determined to enjoy it to the fullest. He had spent most of his day with Robyn, postponing any business. The weather was sunny and warm, perfect to bring the little boy outside to practise walking in the soft grass.

Going to bed that night had been a surreal experience. Hob did not know what to believe anymore, if he was going to remain in the dream again, or wake up in a dreadful reality. It was the first. Now, it was the middle of the third night. Eleanor was still at his side, and Hob was starting to consider he had been mistaken.

A thought so daring, he was terrified of formulating it, yet could not stop forming it in his mind. An idea that would make sense of his current situation.

Maybe everything he thought he had lived after June 8th 1589 had been an elaborate dream. Maybe, the real world was the one he was living in now.

Hob had no idea who his secretive patron was, or what he held power over. He had made Hob immortal, but what other magic was his to command? Hob had heard a bit of what he had said to Shaxberd before he had left with the playwright. Something about the "dreams of men". Was it within his purview to send dreams to inspire others, like Hob, to a different life? To warn them, advise them? Was the life Hob had lived a tale to learn from?

It would make sense. It would explain why he wouldn’t wake up, again and again, night after night. This world was real, and the lesson Hob had learnt was clear in his mind. He was to enjoy the presence of his wife and his son in his life. He was to avert their premature death.

---

Hob heard the voice before he saw the face. It was the voice that haunted his nightmares, the one asking question after question while Hob suffered. Hob turned around to face his tormentor. He was welcomed, not by the balding, greying man, but by a young face with chestnut hair.

"Father Edward," he growled. Robyn squeaked as Hob’s hand clenched on his little fingers. Hob immediately let go with a word of excuse.

"I am sorry, good sir, have we met?" the wretched man asked, the picture of innocence.

How could he have the gall? Playing innocent after what he had…never done to Hob in this life. This man was not the one haunting his dreams. He might be a despicable human being, but he had not even met Robert Gadlen yet. Fuck.

The man was still expecting an answer, curiosity piqued.

"We have now," Hob forced a smile upon his face. He probably looked dreadful. Father Edward did not seem reassured in the slightest. "I heard your name from someone announcing your arrival, that’s all."

"Curious, who?"

Hob could contain his emotions, but it would surely not last if the guy started asking questions.

"Unfortunately, I am unable to remember." Hob evaded.

Before the priest could ask another question, Hob grabbed Robyn’s hand once again.

"I regret, we are running terribly late. I wish you a good time settling in the neighbourhood."

Hastily, he all but dragged his son to a nearby street. He was not exactly running, but not far. Poor Robyn with his small legs was struggling to follow.

"Dad, stop! You’re going too fast! Dad!" the child protested.

It took four streets and three crossroads before Hob slowed down.

"Dad, who was this guy?"

Hob stopped in the middle of the busy street, turning to face Robyn and stooping down to his level.

"Listen, Robyn, it’s important. The man we just met, he’s not to be trusted. I want you to avoid being alone with him if you are able. Should he ask you questions, I want you to tell me. He’s dangerous."

"How would you know? You said you hadn’t met him before?"

"I know his type. He’s the kind of person that will repeat that they want to help you, then take every word that you tell them and twist them to hurt you. You are never to trust him with anything. Promise me."

"Alright, dad, I promise!"

Something finally calmed down inside Hob’s chest. Father Edward was far. Hob knew not to trust him. He could warn Eleanor and Robyn. Everything was going to be OK. He would heed the warning from his dream, and the harm would be averted.

They went home at a more subdued pace, none of them speaking a word. Hob’s frantic flight had brought them farther from home, the list of purchases asked by Eleanor wholly forgotten. Hob stopped Robyn just as they were climbing the steps to the front door of the mansion.

"Robyn? Not a word to your mother, OK? I want to explain this to her myself."

Robyn nodded and bolted. Hob remained for a few minutes before he entered his home. He was going to devise a way to live with the presence of this man around, nightmares be damned.

That night, Hob was, once again, plagued by nightmares of his interrogation, the one that had led to his witch trial and his unexpected death. The haunting voice followed him everywhere one again, and he kept asking Eleanor to repeat what she was saying as he was distracted.

It lasted until Sunday morning, when Eleanor, Robyn and him joined the rest of the neighbourhood for the mass. The priest introduced Father Edward, who would take over the church duties as himself would be promoted to a more prestigious position within the clergy. For the entire ceremony, Hob could not keep his eyes from coming back on the young man, so much younger than in Hob’s memories.

This was not the same man. This one had not hurt Hob. But he would, another voice added in his head. He’s so young, said another. He could grow to be better than his other self.

Slowly, like the dendrites of ice growing on a window on a winter night, the idea grew inside Hob’s head. The past could be changed, he had seen it. It also meant that Hob could encourage people to be better versions of themselves.

Father Edward had never really trusted Hob, in their first life. Sir Gadlen was not very interested in Godly matters. He had experienced something more, something transcendent. He had won immortality on a fluke. What did it mean about the existence of God? Hob had no idea. He also knew he would not need to worry about hell or heaven, as he would go to neither. Was his existence a bet between God and the Devil, like Job’s? The result of an unwitting pact with the Devil? (the man had said he was not. Yet, wouldn’t that be what the Devil would say?) The proof that there were other powers in the universe that could bend the rules? Hob did not know, but most importantly, he did not care, most days. He lived forever, and that was all that had mattered then.

The result of this was that Hob was not very regular at church. After Eleanor’s first death, he had stopped going, irritated by the discourse on the necessity and inevitability of death. Hob knew better, lived better. Death was a mug’s game, no one needed to die. They just all went along with it. Eleanor could have been immortal, could have lived at Hob’s side forever. And she would never.

Eleanor’s hand took Hob’s, reminding him that in this reality, she was there. She passed along her handkerchief. Hob felt with surprise the wetness of his cheeks; he was crying. The perfume in the handkerchief that had been transferred from her wrists when she was carrying the small piece of cloth inside her sleeve, brought more tears to Hob’s eyes. After Eleanor’s death, Hob had kept the bottle, and sprayed some on his pillow every week to keep her scent close to him. When the bottle had emptied, and the apothecary proved unable to recreate the same perfume, Hob had exploded in rage.

The mass ended as Hob was still deep in thought. He went through the motions machinally, until he reached the entrance of the church.

"Do you feel right, Sir Gadlen?"

It was Father Edward. His infernal voice. His young, clean shaved face. He started speaking again.

"I could not stop myself from noticing that you were moved by my sermon earlier, and that it left you in deep reflection. I am flattered that I could trigger such a reaction. I strive to suscitate a true understanding of the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. And, unlike most people, I am convinced that true understanding can only be achieved by questioning and by doubt. If I made you think so profoundly about the Holy Word, more than half my work is done."

Inside Hob’s brain, panicking, was screaming at him that it was all lies, falsehood to draw the heretic views of Hob to the surface to better drown him.

Outside, Sir Gadlen was the perfect knight, letting nothing of his internal struggle on the outside.

"You are correct, Father Edward, your sermon was food for thought. I realised as you were talking that one of the most beautiful parts of our Lord Jesus’ message is that we can always change for the better. No matter how low we fall, how wrong we were, there is a second chance if we want to make ourselves better, if we change our ways."

"That is very true, my friend."

Edward kept talking, expanding on repentance and forgiveness, while Hob’s thoughts crystallised on the word, friend.

In his last life, all that had existed between Hob and him had been contempt and distrust. How different would Hob’s fate be, if the man was an ally, instead of an enemy? Someone who trusted Hob, who was not as inclined to see the Devil in each of his oddities? 

Hob needed to make a friend of this man. He had to build trust and care between them, so that the witch trials Edward would lead never came to pass. He needed to befriend the priest, all the while being constantly on edge around him.

All these thoughts ran through Hob’s head while his face was machinally nodding and smiling at the right moments.

Hob made a real effort to have a meaningful conversation about change, and what it meant to become someone different from who one was before. It was a subject on which he had pondered a lot, along his two centuries of life, evolving from his soldiering past to his noble present. Sir Gadlen was not the same man as Hob Gadling had been. He had learnt and grown since his early days, or at least he hoped. He had learnt a lot as well from dying and living the same life again, about the consequences of his choices. Without saying as much, he poured a lot of his experience in this dialog with the priest.

It was only when he arrived home with Eleanor and Robyn that he finally crashed down from the adrenaline high. With trembling hands, he poured himself a glass of wine and settled in a chair. He remained there until he was called for dinner, unable to move or talk, the memory of chains heavy on his wrists.

---

The advent of 1594 marked the return of Hob’s nightmares.

It started a few days after the New Year, when Robyn lost the first of his front teeth. Hob, Eleanor and him gathered by the fire, so that he could burn it. As Robyn threw the tooth into the flames, Hob was brutally reminded of a night, about a week after Eleanor’s funeral, when Robyn had lost another tooth, and they had gathered for the first time without her to burn it. It had been a bleak occasion for both of them, neither talking much. The moment had been haunted by the absence, all joy impossible. The aim of burning the teeth, avoiding childhood hardships, was beside the point.

It had become a ritual, after, to dispose of every tooth in silence, as an homage, as every step took them farther and farther from Eleanor. A recognition that time went on, with or without her.

With the tooth, Hob was suddenly reminded that the date of Eleanor’s passing drew nearer with every day. He hid all the darkest garments of Robyn that he had worn when they were mourning. As if to defy fate, he bought his son only bright colours to replace the mysteriously lost dark clothes with yellows, reds and greens. If Eleanor was put out by the disappearance, Robyn was elated to get new things.

Hob threw himself in new ventures, things he had postponed in 1594 because of the planned arrival of a new baby. He spent two months in Ireland, setting up some business partnerships. In his last life, this opportunity had never come to pass, delayed and then abandoned as Hob would not dare to leave Robyn. When he was back, he spent more time involving himself in Court, organising his land, looking for trips to the colony to fund. The increase in activity let him run ragged, especially as the quality of his sleep decreased steadily.

After another night where Hob had left the bed before the end of first sleep, Eleanor joined him in front of the fire he was tending to.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Hmm?"

"Do you think I did not notice? It’s the third time this week I wake up and you’re already gone. What keeps you awake?"

"It’s nothing."

"It most certainly is not. You have been getting more and more tired, and sleeping less and less."

Hob remained silent. He didn’t know what to say. *I dream of your death again and again* did not sound like the right answer. It was a dream, he kept repeating himself. But what if it was not? What if it was a warning? Telling himself it was only a dream could not hold, not when he had known Father Edward’s name.

"I am having bad dreams, that's all."

"And what are they about?" she nudges.

He doesn’t answer.

"Hob, I am worried. You hardly talk to me anymore. You barely sleep. Something is wrong."

She grabs his hand.

"Please let me help."

He smiles sadly at her.

"You are helping, love. You are helping because you are here. It is true that I am worried. About our future, about whichever woes are to come."

"What are you afraid of?"

"Of losing it all. Of losing you."

"You won’t lose me, Hob."

Hob couldn’t answer. The memory of losing her was too real, too raw. He had lost her. He had not. Every moment, he was dancing on the two lives he had lived and was living, not sure which one was the truest, which one was real. Years ago, when he had first ended up here, in this version of reality, he had concluded he did not care. He wanted to indulge. And indulged, he had. Yet, now the time was approaching where he might be asked to pay the cost. He dared not hope. He couldn’t stop hoping. Caught between the two, his mind ran in circles.

"Hey, come here."

The hug she gave him was a balm where it should be a burn. It was a reminder of everything that he stood to lose. It was a reminder of everything that was worth living for. Maybe, he could do this, maybe he could have it all. After all, why would he be given a portentous dream, if it wasn’t to correct his course and save the ones he loved? 

---

As 1595, Eleanor’s year of death, drew near, Hob started planning more and more carefully. There was one sure way to avoid Eleanor’s death in childbirth: to avoid her being pregnant altogether. Hob had been attentive to her periods, trying his best to travel as often as possible when she was in her most fertile days, so that she would not notice that he was avoiding intimacy. The rest of the time, the nightmares were a good excuse. The dark hour between the first and second sleep was a favoured time for sex. If Hob was not in the marriage bed, nothing could come of it.

Unfortunately, it was also the opinion of her parents], and they were not afraid to voice it.

"Of course, there is no sign of another grandchild, your husband is gallivanting God knows where for months on end!" Eleanor’s mother kept telling her daughter.

Eleanor’s parents lived a few miles away from where Hob and her had built their mansion, and visited frequently, to Hob’s displeasure. They had never entirely accepted that their only daughter would marry a man who, despite his fortune, was of lesser birth. No matter that they had a plethora of sons fighting for the inheritance, and that Eleanor’s was, thanks to her marriage with Hob, richer than all of them combined.

For the last year, the constant topic of conversation had been the lack of any brothers and sisters for poor little Robyn, and of course the innumerable reason why it was entirely Hob’s fault.

It would have been vexing, if it had not been the exact truth.

As usual, Eleanor came to the defence of his honour, and to remind her parents that everything was as God willed it. From there, the conversation would usually devolve to encouraging Eleanor to go on a pilgrimage to one saint or another that would favour conception.

Nothing usual came from these conversations, and that was why Hob did not watch out after this one.

As soon as her parents had left in their carriage, Eleanor turned to her husband, face closed off.

"Are you, Robert Gadlen, avoiding my bed with the explicit purpose of me not getting pregnant?" she accused.

"My sweet, I do not understand what you are insinuating. I am hurt. I have been nothing but a faithful and devoted husband."

"Have you now?"

"I have. I was nothing but faithful, my love, and I dare you to find one woman to whom I ever gave one envious look or one loving word. You are my sun and moon, and were I a poet, I would not be able to stop declaring my love for you. Alas, I am but a poor knight, faithful yet ill suited to the game of love."

"Faithful, I am ready to believe. But have you been devoted, Hob? Have you, when you have been absent more often than not for the last year, riding and sailing around the realm as some knight errant? Have you, when you do not share my bed most nights, too haunted by nightmares?"

"My love…"

"You have not been devoted, Robert Gadlen. And I would go farther than that. You have been deliberately avoiding getting me with child, as is your sacred duty as a husband. The rare times when you joined me in your bed, you refused me your body. You distracted me, with clever fingers or a clever mouth, to make me forget that it is my duty to bear a child."

"I have not…"

"Do not take me for a fool." she warned.

He shut up. Nothing good could be said for his case. She was entirely right, and even though he could argue his travels were only ill timed, nothing so convenient could be said about his refusal to perform his husbandly duties.

"Did you, or did you not, do your utmost so that I would not get pregnant with another child?"

He remained silent, and it was as good as an answer.

"You know what? I have had enough of your mutism. If you avoiding me, deserting our bed, and distrusting me is all I get from this marriage, I would as well go back to my parents. At least I won’t be alone or being duped by a liar. You would do well to use this time to think."

And with these words, Eleanor was organising her departure. Hob knew better than to dissuade her, not in such a state of mind. Until she would cool off, he should make himself scarce. He watched, dismayed, as she commanded the servants to pack for a short stay at her parents’. He was, as ever, admirative of her efficiency, less than one hour later, she was in a carriage with Robyn and her trunk. Hob’s son was enchanted at the prospect of spending a week at his grandparents, oblivious of his parents’ conflict.

The empty manor did nothing to curb Hob’s anxiety. It was too easy, in the silence, to be reminded of the gloom of his years of solitude, after Robyn’s death. He had remedied to his dark thoughts with liquor, until he could think no more, feel no more. It was tempting, even now, though it was easier to resist it. Eleanor was not gone forever, she was only mad at him. She would come back eventually, if he could find the right words so that she would pardon him.

---

Eleanor Gadling died on the twenty fifth of September, 1589, after a long illness.

She died on the exact same day as she had during Hob’s dreamt life. Nothing he had done, nothing he had changed could divert fate from its implacable march.

Hob never knew exactly, when he abandoned the idea of her possible survival. It was a gradual thing, a certainly settling rattled breath after rattled breath, when the fever would not break, when she stopped having the energy to talk to him.

Some of the staff had, at one point, sent for the priest. Hob had left the room, too overwhelmed with his loathing of the man, but not wanting to deny Eleanor the last visitation for the sick. If the man tried to comfort him, Hob did not trust himself to refrain from killing him with his bare hands.

Then Hob had gone to get Robyn. The boy deserved what he never had in his part life, a chance to say goodbye to his mother.

He found his son playing without enthusiasm in front of the fire.

"Robyn?"

How was he to say it? Was there even a good way to break the news?

He sat in front of Robyn, who had stopped playing and was watching his father with a serious face.

"Robyn, you know your mother has been very ill."

Robyn nodded.

"And you know she has not been getting better."

Robyn nodded again. He looked like he wanted to speak, but dared not.

"We think she will not get better. Would you like to come with me and tell her goodbye?"

Robyn stood up, his doll tightly hugged against his chest. It was a small rabbit that Eleanor had sown herself when he was a toddler. Robyn had latched to it with a renewed strength since his mother’s illness.

Without looking up to Hob, he searched for his father’s hand. It was as cold and sweaty as Hob’s. With Robyn looking at his feet, Hob could not see his eyes, but there was no mistaking the fat tears rolling down his cheeks.

Silently, they climbed up the stairs to Eleanor’s room. She had slept all morning; Hob had chosen noon for bringing Robyn in, knowing it was when she had the strength to talk.

The room was as brightly lit as the weakening autumn sun would permit, which was not much. Hob had lighted additional candles when he had visited, to give his wife as much light as he could. Eleanor was in a half sit position upon a pile of pillows. She was awake and smiled when she saw Robyn was with Hob.

Robyn was hesitating between rushing toward her, or being careful. Hob watched him choose to be careful, taking in his mother’s unfocused gaze and tired breaths. With deliberate attention, he climbed into the bed next to his mother, and settled under her arm. Hob followed and grabbed the book on the nightstand. It was one of Robyn’s favourite books of tales, on which Hob had taught him his letters. Hob had printed it himself, long ago in another life, and Robyn had laughed at the similarity between his name and the printer’s.

Hob gave the book to Robyn. Opening it at the page of Eleanor’s favourite tale, the boy started reading it to his mother. His constant progress with his letters had been the highlight of her last months. It was a reassurance that Hob and Robyn’s life would continue without her.

Hob watched them, engraving this moment in his memory, a moment that he could not have given any of them in his last life. Robyn talked with Eleanor after his reading, about his studies and his daily life. She made him promise not to be always good and always serious. She made him promise to enjoy life, instead, and for them both to take care of each other when she could not anymore.

Her declining forces made her speech more and more slurred, and Robyn and her exchanged less and less words. After a while, they both settled for a long hug. Eleanor’s breath slowed down as she went asleep hugging her son.

Robyn was not sleeping, but he remained there for a long time. He cried, softly, in her arms, until he could no more. Finally, when he was ready, he placed a kiss upon his mother’s brow.

"Goodbye, Mum."

And he was gone.

Hob placed the book back on the nightstand, and settled himself, next to his sleeping wife. He took her into his embrace, and told her how much he loved her. It was all he could do, now every possibility was spent: be there with her until the end, making her feel loved every step of the way as she departed.

He felt her heart beat more and more slowly, her breathing harder and harder. Every time, he expected it to be her last. When she did not draw the next one, he was not surprised. He simply broke. Nothing held him together anymore, no one needed him to be strong. He cried in her arms, for her premature death that seemed so inescapable that he had to face it twice. He cried for Robyn. He cried for himself, who would forever be alone at the end of the journey.

In the midst of his tears, he thought he saw a vague shape, a familiar and comforting presence. He heard the sound of wings and lifted his head. Nothing. Nothing, but Eleanor in his arms.

He could not detach his eyes from her gaunt face, so pale against the pillow. Her golden hair had lost nothing of their bright hue, insolently defying even death. Her vibrant green eyes had lost their hue, her skin had gained a waxy texture, yet her hair was as perfect as ever. How incongruous.

He kept watching, as if, by looking away, he would miss the instant she would blink, twitch, breathe. She did not. The moment stretched, for how long, Hob could not, would not say.

Hob was alone again.

---

"Father, stop it! Ever since mother died, you have been like this! Always behind me, always shadowing my steps and sheltering me! I am a man, not a little boy anymore!"

"You are not less mortal for it, Robyn! I will watch over you for as long as I feel you are not cautious enough, not before. I won’t lose you because of your own stupidity."

"Father, it’s a play! We are going to see a play with my friends, I am not enrolling for the crusades, for God’s sake!"

"I know your friends, lad, I have seen their sort before. They are good for nothing, drunkards and layabouts. I will not have you in their company."

"I do not care, Father. I am twenty, and I am my own man. I do not need your approval to go out and see a play. Because you became a recluse after Mother’s death means I have to follow your steps. I mean to live my life, as she would have wanted, and you should too."

"I should forget the memory of your mother, that is your advice, son?"

"Are you even listening to me? Are you even listening to anyone but the bottom of a bottle these days, Father?"

Hob moves too fast in anger. The bottle that was sitting on the table in front of him crashes on the ground and spills the remainder of the wine on the carpet. Hob swears as he starts to clean it up.

"I forbid you to go!" He snarls, desperate. He needs to stop Robyn from going, lest he…

"You forbid me? I am a man, Father, and it is time you start considering me as such. I am going to this play, whether you want it or not. When I am back, we shall talk about it again. I hope you use the respite to think about what Mother would say, and respect her memory."

"You cannot go!"

"Watch me!" Robyn defies.

"You will never come back, Robyn. You will die, you will leave me all alone, like your mother before you. Please Robyn, listen to me."

"Listen to you? Father, you are mad. I will not die from going to a tavern to see a play with my friend. This is crazy. I am going."

Hob pleads again, in vain. As he watches his son’s back, he knows he will never see him alive again.

Hob woke up with a start. The room is silent, and dreadfully empty. He is alone in the large bed.

Urgently, he got out of the bed and lit a candle up from the embers of the fire. He hurried in the corridor.

In front of Robyn’s door, he hesitated. What if it was empty as well? What if it was too late?

When he finally pushed the door, his heart was beating harder than ever in his chest. He could not breathe.

Robyn was there, sleeping messily half out of the covers, mouth opened.

Step by step, Hob approached his slumbering son. Very slowly, he touched the boy’s hand with the tip of his finger.

His heart finally settled and he sighed in relief. It was not too late.

Or was it?

The thought plagued Hobs waking and sleeping mind from this day on. As he organised his wife’s funeral, as he fumbled through the daily toil of managing the house on his own, as he was there for his son, he could not let go of the sense of impending doom. Robyn’s death had not happened for fourteen more years, yet Hob felt as if he would lose his son tomorrow.

Hob had changed Eleanor’s fate. Because of his interference, she had not gotten pregnant, and thus she had not died in childbirth. Yet, she had died all the same, exactly at the same time as she had in Hob’s prophetic dream, from another cause. Hob would have expected that fate, if there was fate, would be immutable. That no matter what Hob tried, Eleanor would always get pregnant and die from it. Instead, it was as if the laws ruling fate and death were separated. Hob could affect fate, he could shape the future events with his choices, and the outcome would be different. Yet, he could not affect death. Death would come regardless of what Hob had changed, at the time that was written.

It was only one occurrence. Maybe Hob had not tried hard enough to fend off Death, maybe if he was more thorough, or did it right, he could succeed.

A plan was taking shape in his head, as he was going through the familiar motions of being Sir Gadlen for the day. When night came, in the quiet and lonely moment in the middle of the night, Hob started writing. He was feverishly focused on it. It prevented him from thinking too much about who was missing from this closeted moment.

Hob wrote on paper every death he could remember, with the date, the name of the victim and cause of death. For some, he could remember very well the cause and person, but had only vague clues about the year it had taken place. For others, he could remember precisely the date and cause, but the identity of the dead was forgotten. He left blanks, in case he would be reminded with more clarity later on.

One death was perfectly remembered and occurring soon. Sir John Puckering was going to die, on the 30th of April 1596, from a bad horse fall during a hunt Sir Gadlen would be part of.

If Hob’s understanding was correct, should the horse not be available for the day, or should the hunting party be postponed to another date, then Sir Puckering would die from another cause, on the same day.

All Hob had to do, then, was to find a way for the hunt not to happen, or for the man not to be part of it. Would another man die, instead of Sir Puckering? Or would Sir Puckering die from another cause? 

In the end, Hob’s plan worked magnificently. He had expected a resistance from the universe, against his interference. It would have seemed right, if luck had conspired against Hob changing the fate of a man. Hob had even planned several contingency plans, in case the first one, or more, would fail. He had not needed them.

He had only conspired so that Sir Puckering would not be invited to this particular hunting party.

The hunting party had gone remarkably smoothly. They had caught the game, everyone was very merry, and no one had fallen, or gotten any kind of injury. As the afternoon went by, Hob was invaded by a sense of dread. It was too calm, it had to mean that things were not going that well in town.

And he was right, when the hunting party went home, they were greeted by the terrible news, Sir Puckering had died falling in the stairs of his manor, breaking his neck.

An icy cold caught Hob’s heart. He did not particularly care for Sir Puckering, he cared about what it meant: avoiding the original cause of the death of someone was not enough to save them. They would die of another cause, right on time.

Hob needed to find another way. He had to, or Robyn would die again.

---

One by one, everyone on Hob’s list died.

Some of them, he did not even try to prevent: people dying from disease or old age, all of whom Hob could not see a way to save.

For every other, he tried his best, even as he was, day after day, submerged with the evidence that it would never matter.

He convinced the old John to stop repairing rooftops by hiring the man to work for him as a gardener. Old John was supposed to die falling from the roof of the church after a summer storm had carried away some of the tiles. Hob had wondered, after convincing John, if he had sentenced another man to die in John’s stead on the church’s roof. He had not. Old John had died from a bad cut that had infected, on the exact day Hob remembered.

He talked to Margaret, who would die two weeks after her stillborn son, only one year after her wedding. He had needed the influence of Father Edward, or Ned as Hob now called him, to help him convince her to become a nun instead. Margaret had always loved drawing and painting, a passion she had shared with Eleanor, despite their age difference. Hob had found contacts, to make sure young woman would be able to learn how to illuminate, and she had taken the veil enthusiastically. She had died from food poisoning.

Every episode brought Hob and Ned closer. Initially, Hob had not planned to include him in his plans to persuade people who were going to die to deviate from their course. Yet, every time, it was so much easier to call to the influence of a man of the cloth. Sir Gadlen, local nobleman who had hosted the Queen herself, could give advice and be listened to. Father Edward, a godly man, would give advice and be obeyed. It became a two-men act, Hob suggesting the initial impulse, and Ned validating it. At one point, it stopped being an investigation on how to save the people. They died anyway. It became a game Hob played with an old friend.

And Hob’s sense of security was lulled, because Ned was a fun and charming fellow.

One of the last deaths Hob had remembered before Robyn’s was an old friend of Eleanor. In Hob’s memories, she had died, killed by her husband, a disgraceful brute. The man had escaped the death sentence, arguing he had found his wife being unfaithful and been overwhelmed by jealousy. Hob had not believed it for a second.

Lady Anne had been Eleanor’s confidant as they embroidered together. When Robyn was born, it was Anne who came the most often to help Eleanor and keep her company. When Eleanor had died, Anne had taken upon herself to be there for Hob and Robyn. When, as he was sorting through Eleanor’s stuff, Hob had found her embroidery basket, Hob had gifted it to Anne. They had both laughed and cried together when they had discovered, at the bottom of the basket, a handkerchief embroidered with lovely letters forming the most horrendous swear words.

As their friendship grew, Hob discovered a woman who was quick and funny, married to a stern man she had tried to love, long ago. He was an old friend of her father, and she had not know him well when they had wed. It would come later; her mother had told her.

Instead, she had found a man quick to dismiss her intelligence at every turn, who asserted that she had to be content with the closeted life he chose for him. As he was fifteen years older than she was, and very ugly, he was consumed by jealousy as soon as she talked to any man younger than himself.

Her only relief was that his business would often lead him out of town for several days in a row, affording her a small amount of freedom. It was then that she and Hob would meet and reminisce about Eleanor, share the gossip of nobility, and Anne would complain about her absent husband.

At first, Hob would only sympathise, and try his best to cheer her up while they could. Lately, though, he could not settle for that anymore, not knowing what would become of her.

"Anne, you know he will not change. It’s too late for that."

"He’ll die sooner or later, Robert. More likely sooner than later, at his age. I can wait until then. I’ll be a patient and dutiful wife, right up to when I’ll finally be a jolly widow."

"Only if you outlive him, Anne."

"Hob, he’s getting older by the day. I may not look as young as you do, God only knows how you look barely older than the day you married Eleanor, but I am younger than you are."

Hob swore internally. It was starting already.

"Or I could make you a widow faster…" Hob suggested, half as a joke.

"Don’t you dare, Robert Gadlen. Don’t you dare become a murderer on my behalf, do you hear me?"

Wouldn’t it be neat, though? Eliminating the husband, to ultimately save the wife? 

Would it work? It was one thing Hob had not tried: a life for a life. An exchange, so that Death would not be cheated.

After that conversation, Hob could not think about anything else. How would he do it, so that he was not caught? Should he arrange an accident? No, Hob would have no way to ensure the man was really dead. He had to be there, to make sure his victim could not survive. To force the hand of destiny, he could not let anything to chance. He had to murder the man right before Anne’s death. Too early, and he would risk that the bargain was not understood.

How to strike a bargain with Death, though? Hob had one, or at least he supposed he had. How else would he be immortal? Did that mean that Death would be open to additional offers? Would Hob had to frame his murder the right way so that it could be accepted as an offering.

Hob started looking up about Death in every book he came across, to find the most likely answers to his questions.

When the day came, he was not ready, but he was out of time. He had set up a business travel for Robert Gadlen. Seen by everyone, he had left his home early in the morning, two days prior. He had ridden alone, until he was far enough, and alone in the woods. Then, he had left his horse, changed his clothes, and doubled back.

He had felt a strange discordance, at being Hob Gadling, cutthroat once again. Like returning where he came from, it had some sort of significance: he was back to being the person who had mocked Death and got eternal life in payment, and he was doing it in the hope of striking a similar deal.

Hob knew Anne’s house well enough to know how to enter undetected, and he had been, in his time, a good enough scoundrel to move undetected in the dark. It was the second sleep; the moon was setting.

Anne and her husband slept in different bedrooms, which was very convenient for Hob. He only had to slip into the man’s bedroom, silent as a cat. He approached the bed, and drew his dagger.

---

"Sir Blackwell, please describe the events of the night of the 21st of April, 1608," the judge ordered.

The man made a show to get up with difficulty, huffing as he rose slowly in front of the Court. From where Hob was seated, on the other side of the room, he could see the bandage underneath the man's shirt, where Hob had missed him. A shame.

Hob tried to focus through the haze of the migraine and hunger that was gnawing at him. He could not remember clearly how that night had ended. He recalled entering the house silently and preparing to strike, and then, waking up in prison, he never knew how many days later. The pain at the back of his head told him he had likely blacked out from a blow.

The judge made a sign to allow Sir Blackwell to remain seated, and the man began.

"Thank you, my Lord. I was sleeping in my own bed, when I was suddenly awakened by the loudest ruckus. I did not know it then, but it was the noise of the guards that were coming to my help, and they certainly saved me, for as I opened my eyes, I saw this man, Sir Gadlen," and he pointed his finger towards Hob, "who was holding a knife above my head. He had mad eyes, and he was constantly muttering things that I could not understand about death and a sacrifice, like some sort of demonic prayer."

Shit, it was likely true, Hob swore at himself. He was so determined to have this swap of the dead work, he might have been praying that Death, or Destiny, would finally accept his offering and let him save someone.

"When he saw that my eyes were opened, he plunged his blade into me. Fortunately, I am still swift from my jousting days, and I could dodge his blow so that it hit my shoulder instead of my throat. If I had not, I would not be here to tell the tale, I assure you!"

The judge nodded.

"Sir Gadlen, as soon as he noticed he had missed, tried to draw his knife back to strike again, but luckily, the blade was stuck in my shoulder blade. The surgeon had the hardest time removing it later when he was tending to my wound, and we believe there is still a bit of the tip of the blade in my bone."

The man insisted to show his wound to the judge. It was a miracle that he had survived the blow.

"When he saw that he could not get his blade again, Sir Gadlen tried to strangle me next. Hopefully, the guards arrived just in time, God bless them, and one of them hit him hard behind the head. He was knocked out instantly."

So that’s what had happened to Hob’s poor head. The migraine was pounding relentlessly.

"What happened next?"

"Next, Father Edward arrived, from what I learned later, he was the one to warn the guards that someone shady had broken into our home. The guards left with Sir Gadlen to secure him, and Father Edward helped me to get to the surgeon's house. He said I was very lucky that the blade was stuck into my shoulder, because it slowed the bleeding. Otherwise, I would have bled to death. I was still a very close thing once he removed the blade."

Hob could not prevent himself from glaring at Sir Blackwell who was parading his wound like a war hero, to make sure Hob would be sent to the gallows.

"None of you, when leaving the building, noticed the start of the fire?"

"No, my Lord. We were all very distracted by the evil acts of Sir Gadlen, and none of us noticed anything. I am certain the fire is Sir Gadlen's doing, like the rest. He must have set the house on fire before trying to kill me, so that he could disguise his crime as an accidental death. My poor Anne, who trusted and liked him so much, this is how this devil thanked her."

The conversation continued, but Hob had stopped listening. Anne was dead. She had died exactly when she was supposed to, and her husband had not. Hob had failed once again. Not only he had lost one of his best friends, he had lost the lost hope he still had to save Robyn.

He sat there, head empty, until he heard a new voice rising above the rumble of the proceedings. The voice of nightmares. The voice of friendship. The voice of treason.

"I have known Sir Robert Gadlen for close to fifteen years. We met when I first arrived in my parish, and we got along immediately. He was witty and well read, and always willing to expand his and my horizons by discussing philosophy. We rarely agreed, and it was what I liked the most."

Hob could not bear to look at Edward, not knowing which of them would feel the most betrayed.

"A few years after we met, he tragically lost his wife, Eleanor, and I offered my support. I visited often then. It was during one of those visits that I discovered a curious document."

Edward stopped theatrically, sliding a hand inside his vest to draw a piece of parchment from his pocket. He unfolded it, and passed it along to the judge.

"It was a list of names, most of which I knew belonged to members of my parish. Next to each name, was a date set in the future, and next to the date," he pauses, " a cause of death."

The silence in the courtroom was deafening. Edward, consummate preacher, kept his audience on the edge of their seats.

"I must confess, I breached that day the confidence that should exist between friends. What could my good friend Robert do with such a dreadful list? I looked at the names, and I memorized the first few of them, with the date, and let it at that."

"It was only later that I was really hit by the nature of this morbid list. Less than six months after, Sir Puckering, who was the first on the list, died suddenly from a bad fall in his stairs. He died on the exact same day written on this list.

"From this day, this list of names became an obsession. How could Robert Gadlen have known that Sir Puckering would die on this exact day, months before it happened?

"I would be ashamed, in any other circumstances, to admit that the next time I went to visit my friend Robert, I looked for the same piece of parchment in his office. I found it, and this time I copied the entire list. I had to know if death would strike where and when the list predicted it.

The preacher turned to the audience, as if taking all of them as witnesses.

"And, my Lords and Ladies, it did. Every person on this fateful list died on the exact same day that was predicted, though the cause of deaths would sometimes deviate from what was announced. Every one including the late Anne Blackwell, the wife of Sir Blackwell here.

"Father Edward, do you mean to imply that Sir Robert Gadlen is gifted with the power of prophecy?" the judge asked, flabbergasted.

"That is a possibility I considered as well, my Lord," Edward answered silkily. "Yet, there is a much more likely hypothesis: in an unnatural death, there is always one person who can always predict when and who death will strike.”

A woman in the back rows let a squeak out and was immediately silenced by her neighbours. Every person in the room was hanging on Edwards every word, including Hob who couldn't wait to hear what was more probable than the truth.

"The assassin."

Gasps in the audience. Hob had to admit, the assertion was sound. It was more likely to encounter a murder than a prophet, and the last of his actions did not speak well for him.

"This," Edwards claimed, brandishing the list, "is not a prophecy, this is a list of targets. A list of sacrificial lambs, to be killed on a set date. Some of these deaths look like accidents. Yet, someone can be pushed down the stairs. Poison can look like an illness.

"Year after year, I have watched Sir Gadlen closely, every time a new death on the list was close. He was always nervous when one of them was approaching. Several times, he told me about his next victim, enlisting me to help him prepare his crime. Each time I watched him, and until now, I never could catch him in the act, I never knew how he would do it. "

Hob listened distractedly as Edwards explained how he had followed Sir Gadlen on the day he had been caught, and seen him double back in disguise. Knowing that a death was supposed to occur, he had fetched a pair of guards and forced his way inside to try and save the last victim.

"Alas," Edwards exclaimed, "the devil is in the details, and I could not be up to the task. On the list, Sir Gadlen had only written the name Blackwell. As I thought that we had stopped fate in its tracks by saving Sir Blackwell, the devil, or its instrument Robert Gadlen, knocked a candle over out of our sight, and thus killed by fire the unfortunate Lady Anne Blackwell that I had tried to save. May she pardon me and rest in peace."

This was a disaster. Hob Gadling had thought he had deflected the danger that Edward posed by befriending the man. He had been convinced that the man would trust him. Instead, letting the man close had allowed him to find out Hob’s secrets and spy on him. The Robert Gadlen in the dream had never been convicted so early.

What would become of him? Hob knew Edward from the dream, he knew how vicious and vindictive he could be against one he saw as an instrument of the devil. What would he do to a man that he had seen as a close friend, to a man that he thought had murdered a dozen of innocent people without remorse, under his nose?

Worse, Hob knew that everyone had to die on the same day as they had in the dream, and Hob was not supposed to die for more than a decade from now. What would happen to Hob, for the next ten years, if he was convicted today?

In a moment of madness, Hob looked up to where Edward was seated, on the other side of the room. Their eyes met.

All Hob could see was the promise of ten years of suffering, of unending questions about his agelessness and his bargain with the devil, questions to which Hob had no answers, even when he was willing to provide some.

He barely heard as the judge declaimed the list of crimes he was accused of, attempted murder, arson, witchcraft.

"Sir Gadlen, how do you plead?" the judge repeated, louder.

Hob could not detach his eyes from Edward.

"Guilty."

---

"Father, on everything that is sacred, are you mad?" Robyn spit at him from the other side of the bars.

After the trial, Hob had been brought back to his detention cell. He had no idea how long ago this was, day, night, everything was confused. He was in a permanent state of daze, walking through his already ending life in a fog of pain and despair.

Robyn must have found a way to visit his father one last time before his execution.

Hob did not know what would happen, he was not supposed to be dying now. He was supposed to see Robyn die first. Hob really hoped he would die on the day he was executed, then he would escape the pain of living through his son's funeral a second time.

"Father, are you even listening to me?"

"Yes, Robyn, I am listening."

"What were you thinking, pleading guilty to murder and witchcraft? You know if you plead guilty they have to execute you, don't you? They can only commute your sentence if you pleaded not guilty, you dumbass!"

Hob nodded. Robyn was right, it made no sense, from the outside. Hob had died before, he had lived for centuries. He knew things he had no way to know. It made sense from his point of view, to try and haste his death, knowing it could not happen.

"Do not worry, Robyn," he tried to reassure his son. "I am not going to be executed soon. I cannot die before November 1621, it's OK."

"Father, you are not making any sense. They are not going to wait ten years to execute your sentence. I have tried to appeal to the King's mercy. Please, can you promise me you won't do anything stupid in the mean time?"

"Robyn, listen to me, I am not the one I am worried about. You are the next on the list. He did not say it, the vicious cunt, because it would have seemed strange that your name was on the list. Robyn you have to promise me you are going to be very, very careful from now on."

"Father, what are you even talking about? I am worried about you. You are the one in prison waiting to be hanged, not me."

"No, I want you to promise me two things, son. Will you?"

Robyn sighed and relented.

"Good, now I want you to promise you are going to be careful, first. Second, I want you to promise me that I will be executed on the 5th of May 1608. Or after, I'm not that picky, but not before. Could you do that for me son?"

Maybe exchanging a death against another one did not work. Or maybe it was always Hob who was intended to be the sacrifice. He would do it. He would die on the day Robyn should, and maybe then Robyn would be saved. What else could he try? Why else would he have been gifted this vision, if not to find a way to save his son?

"Father, I promise I am prudent, and I promise I am doing my best to ensure you are not executed at all, do you hear me?"

"Yes, great. Great."

---

"Robert."

"Edward."

An eerie sense of calm filled Hob at the arrival of his old nemesis. He was chained and sat on the cold stone. Everything was finally as it should be. No pretence of friendship, not danger of being unmasked. Only the bare truth of a man that hated everything Hob represented.

Ned had brought a wooden chair for himself, clearly intending to stay for a long chat. He had always loved to hear himself talking. He sat on the chair, crossing both hands over his knees. In the penumbra of the cell, his dark outfit turned him into a floating head.

The silence stretched. Hob had nothing to say. Let the man talk.

Ned smiled at Hob's silence, and started.

"I must say, this was not how I thought I would finally catch you. I figured a grand revelation, an epiphany where I would finally understand and everything would make sense. I would catch you thanks to my intellect, in a cunning ruse you would not have seen coming. Instead, you just…threw the game off.

"Did a decade of success make you complacent? Did you grow tired of the chase? Did you get caught on purpose?"

Hob watched him, mute. He had not grown complacent, he'd grown desperate. Robyn was twenty already. Hob needed a solution, and he needed it now.

Ned grin became wider.

"You were always a mystery. You are an intelligent man, witty, unconventional, but the mystery was ever more alluring than you were. First, you knew my name, before I told anyone. It intrigued me. Then I saw something strange in your eyes. You feared me, that much was clear, but nonetheless, you came to me, again and again, asking, begging to be my friend. Why, when you clearly detested me even as you shouldn't have known me at all?”

Befriending this madman was probably the worst fucking decision Hob Gadling had ever taken. The stupidest shot in his own foot ever.

"And then, I found the list. The mysterious list of deaths, that proved true every time. By the third death, I was utterly enamoured with the mystery you provided. I swore I would catch you at it.

"So I started by trying to find out about your life. I dug into the registers, found where you were supposed to have been born. Son of Sir Robert Gadlen the Second, and Margaret Gadlen. I looked for someone who had known you as a child. And the more I looked, the stranger it was. No one has ever seen you, Robert Gadlen, as a boy or as a babe. In the parish where your birth is recorded, no child by your name is remembered by anyone."

Here was where Hob had been complacent. Overconfident. No one had ever tried to dig up the childhood of Robert Gadlen before, not even the Ned in the dream.

"Robert Gadlen is a work of fiction, the disguise of a man who grew up under another name, in another life. Who are you, truly, Robert? Was Robert ever your name? Come on, the gig is up anyway. Are you going to die without ever telling a soul? Do you wish to be buried under the fiction of Robert Gadlen? Wouldn't you like someone to know you for who you are, once, before you expire?"

Hob couldn't stop himself. He laughed. He laughed maniacally, until tears were sliding down his cheeks. Chuckles turned into ugly sobs at some point.

"Well, what do you have to say?" Ned asked again.

"You're asking, but you won't believe me when I tell you."

"Why wouldn't I? I'm here for answers, I am fully ready to listen to you."

"It's not a guess, I know it for certain. You never believed me, last time, I don't see why you would this time."

"What do you mean, last time? When have I not believed you?"

Why was he doing this? Why talk to him? It could never end well anyway. Hob was a fool for ever trying. He should have remained silent. He should remain silent.

Hob didn't answer. Ned stood up lazily, and paced around the room. He stretched. Hob would have killed to be able to stretch like that. He couldn't with the chains on. He wouldn't be freed from the chains until Ned was gone again. Ned wouldn't go until either Hob talk, or the day was over. Hob couldn't see much of the sun from his cell, but he knew that it was still early in the morning. It would be a long day today, and it would be a longer day tomorrow.

The man wouldn't relent, even after Hob spilled his guts. He would always come for more.

"You can, of course, remain silent and carry your secret to the grave. But why? Why would it matter?"

That was a good question. Would it even matter? Was this still a dream? Would Hob wake up again after they executed him? Or would he, somehow escape death by some machination of the Fates?

Ned stopped his pacing in front of Hob. He sat down on the ground, crossing his legs. His eyes searched for Hob's.

"Maybe I should switch my tactics. After all, there is someone that knows you better than I do, someone who could be privy to your secrets. I wonder how much he is like you, young Master Robyn."

Hob looked up, panicked and met Ned's malicious eyes. He could not. Robyn was supposed to die soon. What if Ned was what would befall him? Ned, who had made Hob last life a living hell before finally killing him?

"No…No I'll talk to you. I'll tell you what you want. I only want one thing in exchange, one small thing."

Ned smirked, and nodded.

"I want you to come back on the 5th of May, and give me the means to end my life."

"And in exchange, you promise to answer my every question truthfully?"

"Yes."

---

"Here, look, I have all the paperwork. See here, the official seal, and everything. It is a royal pardon for Sir Gadlen, in memory of his family's service to the Crown. Now I am here to take my father back home where he belongs. I demand that you open the cell."

It was Robyn's voice. Hob woke up, and for the first time in days? - weeks? - he rose to his feet in a clinging sound of chains.

He scratched his head. His whole body itched, from the dirt and from the lice that infested the prison.

Robyn, Robyn was here. What day was it? What month? Hob had no idea. He lost his sense of time somewhere before this cell. How long was it supposed to be, before Robyn's death?

The voices in the corridor were rising in anger now. Hob could hear Robyn's, though he could not discern what he was saying as the guard was shouting at the same time.

There was a sudden gurgling sound, and a loud thud.

"Fuck, Rob, what the hell?"

This was another voice, one that Hob knew without being able to find whose.

"We don't have time. The forgery is OK, but I'm not sure it's good enough to pass the inspection of a real high judge. Now we go forward, and fast, and everything is going to be alright."

Everything was not going to be alright, Hob already knew it. If it was May, it was going to go very wrong, very fast, he suspected.

"Help me! Let's drag him to the cell, we'll switch him with my father."

There was a rumbling noise in the corridor. Hob tried to see something through the small barred window in his door, to no avail.

Soon he heard the click of the lock opening, and Robyn and his friend Georges appeared at the door of Hob's cell.

As soon as he saw his father, Robyn let the arm of the guard down and rushed to his side.

"Father, how are you feeling? Are you well enough to walk? We are here to get you out."

Hob stood there, dumbstruck, as Georges laboriously dragged the guard inside the cell. As he got close, Hob could see the wide gash in the man's throat, surrounded by wet cooling blood. Georges dropped the corpse in the middle of Hob's small cell, and wiped his bloody hands on the tabard.

"I don't think we can use the guard's outfit without raising too many questions, Rob. It's drenched in blood, thanks to you. Why couldn't you knock him out instead?"

"I improvised! A blow to the head is not reliable anyway. I wanted him dead, not screaming like a banshee for everyone in the tower to hear. We don't need his outfit anyway. Let's stick to the plan."

"Stick to the plan? The plan never mentioned slitting throats."

"It did not mention not slitting one either. Now let's go."

Robyn reached out to Hob's elbow, carefully. It was the gentlest touch Hob had felt since…since he had hugged Robyn before going on his fake business trip, nearly a lifetime ago.

Hob could have told Robyn that he should never have come, that he should run for his life right now. His eyes fell on the dead guard's body. It was too late. The best he could do for his son was to be there with him, to try and take his place before he died.

"I can walk, though not very fast," he managed to utter, his voice hoarse with disuse and thirst.

"Great. Here, I brought some of your clothes from home so that you would look inconspicuous."

Robyn stood there awkwardly, as Hob divested himself from the filthy rags his clothes had become through his imprisonment. It was a shame putting on clean clothes while so dirty, but it felt good all the same. Hob felt like a human being for the first time since Robyn's last visit.

Robyn guided Hob out of the cell and down the corridor, as Georges locked the cell again with the guard's body inside.

Surprisingly, it went well at first. They met two guards at the entrance of the level of the prison, and Robyn convinced them that his royal pardon was legitimate and already approved, and look, do you think we could have gotten him out of his cell if everything was not properly certified?

The guards were not very scrupulous, and they were happy to opt for believing Robyn if it meant less work for them.

Everything would have been perfect, if they had not run into Father Edward at the main gate.

As usual, Hob noticed his voice before seeing him. He looked up, and Edward looked up at the same time from the register he was signing.

"What on earth is happening here?" The priest exclaimed immediately.

Hob heard Robyn swear under his breath. His son placed himself between Edward and Hob.

"What's happening is that we are bringing my father home after he was granted a royal pardon."

"I don't believe it for one second. This is most irregular. Any pardon should have been processed through the magistrate’s office. I was there less than an hour ago, to prepare my visit, and they told me the execution was going to proceed as scheduled. This is not a liberation, this is a break out."

At these words, Robyn and Georges snapped into action. The guards were not as fast in realising what was unfolding.

The boys lost no time, drawing their daggers and rushing toward the pair of guards at the door. In seconds, they were already too close for the soldiers' long weapons. Robyn plunged his blade into the hole under his opponent's armpit, ruthlessly efficient. Georges was blunter and crushed his guards nose with the hilt of his dagger before slashing through his throat.

Georges ran into the street, hailing someone Hob could not see. He rushed after the two others, and as he caught back to them, they were joined by another of Robyn's friends holding the reins of four horses.

For a moment, Hob thought it would work, against all hopes.

Then an arrow went through Robyn's throat as he was mounting on his horse.

Hob caught him in his arms as he fell.

"Go! Save yourselves!" He yelled at the others.

They didn't hesitate. The three of them mounted their horses and bolted.

Hob knelt on the ground with his son's body in his arms. The arrow had opened the carotid artery, blood was flowing fast from the wound. There was no hope. Robyn was not dead yet, but he would be in a minute. Hob held his son tightly against his chest. He kissed his brow.

"I love you, son. I am with you, don't be afraid. I will be with you all along. I love you."

He kept talking and caressing his son's temple until he could not feel his heartbeat anymore.

When he opened his eyes again, Edward was watching him.

"Today is the 5th of May 1608," Hob said. "and I failed everything I tried."

---

Hob Gadling died for the second time on the 8th of May 1608, hanged.

---

For the masterpost and the next part, go here

#the sandman #fanfiction #centennial husbands #centennial husbands big bang 2024 #don’t look back

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