Chapter Text
In the biblical story of God ’s creation of the world, it begins simply. In the beginning, there was nothing. For me, it was about the same except for the ridiculous abundance of sand. I still remember the taste and grit of it between my teeth and how it got everywhere. The middle east wasn’t exactly the best place for a man of my complexion to begin his journey, but that’s where I was. That’s where I woke up. That’s how my world began.
There was sand.
So much sand that it rose like mountains; like giant waves with gritty peaks that blew in the wind. Carried off a grain at a time to build more dunes and shift the landscape.
There was no wind that day. Just the sand, the glaring sun overhead, and a boy.
Where he had come from was a mystery. Born from the dunes? Cast down from the heavens? It was a question that would ultimately never be answered for certain.
Abandoned was the theory. Stripped down and tossed into the wide expanse of desert to die. It was easy to guess why he would have been exiled.
The sun had left his skin blistered and red, but the white shocks of hair on his head were easy to spot. When the sand had been washed from his eyes, the man who had found him discovered an even queerer sight.
The boy had eyes as red as blood. When the sunlight shone on his gaze just right, his irises lit up like flames.
“Send him back.”
“Are you mad? He’s but a child!”
“And he was left in the desert to die for a reason, Sibrand. Look at him! Those eyes—”
“Are simply eyes he uses to see as every other living creature does.”
The boy, in fact, could not see; not at that time, at least. The desert winds had left him sightless. So much sand had buffeted his face—his eyes—and left everything in a haze of nothing but muted colors that shifted back and forth.
He could hear, more or less. Noises seemed to come from everywhere. Noises he couldn’t recognize. His mouth was so dry, his throat so parched, that he couldn’t speak. His lips had split like the dry desert ground. Blisters and sores covered him all over.
“He needs our help,” the voice the boy had come to recognize as Sibrand spoke. “We are men of God, not heathens. This boy is under my protection.”
Sibrand, the boy decided, was a good man.
─── ⊰⋅✠⋅⊱ ───
It took three days for the boy’s sight to return, and another week before he was able to speak and move about freely. The dead skin sloughing from his blisters made him look as if he were molting.
“Do you have a name, boy?” Sibrand asked. The boy shook his head mutely. “Can you speak?”
“I think so.” His voice cracked. His throat still felt as if he had been gargling glass. The boy blinked, looking a little startled. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose I can.”
Sibrand smiled amusedly. “At least you can do that much. No name then?”
“No.”
“Did your parents not give you one?”
“My what?”
No parents to speak of. No memory, even, of having been exiled. Nothing. Just the moment he woke half buried in the sand.
How had he gotten there? Who was he? Why was he alone?
Only one of those questions would ever truly be answered.
He had no name, so they gave him one.
Gilbert.
His name was Gilbert.
He was a child of perhaps eight, and he was under the care of Sibrand; a merchant who had traveled from the far north in order to help his brethren reclaim the Holy Lands.
“You speak German,” Sibrand remarked. “Perhaps you are from there yourself? Only the Lord could possibly know how you ended up here.”
The boy named Gilbert simply shrugged.
Master Sibrand tutored me in those days. At the time, he was the closest I had to a father. He was my protector. My sponsor, I guess you could say, because without him to vouch for me, I would have been lynched on the spot. Or worse.
Being Albino, I stuck out like a sore thumb in a place like Jerusalem. I stick out like a sore thumb anywhere, except maybe Antarctica. I think Alfred once made the joke that if I just put on a tuxedo, I ’d blend right in with the penguins.
The people of Acre weren ’t so light hearted.
They called him devil-spawn, and it took five years to truly understand why.
“You haven’t aged a day since we found you.”
Gilbert blinked, his red eyes boring into Sibrand. “Is that bad?” He asked.
“It’s…not normal,” Sibrand replied slowly.
Gilbert didn’t seem to take offense. He shrugged and went back to practicing his letters. He knew them well, by that point, but it was his penmanship that needed practice.
“Being not normal is sort of normal for me.” Gilbert scowled at the scroll in front of him. He chanced a glance toward Sibrand, saw that the elder’s gaze was elsewhere, and moved his quill to the left hand. “Half the city won’t even look my direction.”
“Half the city has been plagued by your stubborn attitude and juvenile delinquency. Put that quill in the correct hand, boy. You’re not as sly as you think.”
“But it’s easier—”
“It’s not about easy, Gilbert, it’s about what’s right.” Sibrand caught a quirk of the boy’s lips, could hear the remark about to be made before it was even voiced. Gilbert always had a knack for catching those silly similarities in words. There. They’re. Write. Right. “Silence. No more speaking.”
“Yes, Master Sibrand.” Gilbert ducked his head down and concentrated on his work; a crude rendition of a verse from Psalms. The state of his writing was awful, apart from a few lines where he had switched hands.
The silence lasted about a minute.
“Why can’t I write left-handed? What’s so bad about it?”
“Gilbert—”
“Everything else about me is wrong enough anyway,” he continued. “What’s it matter if I write my letters with the other hand?”
“It’s wrong.”
“Who decided?”
“It simply is, boy.” Sibrand snapped the tome in his hands shut, setting it aside on his desk. “People are unnerved by you enough. Those eyes of yours alone were near enough to have tossed you back into the desert and left for dead.”
Gilbert flinched, but then his features scrunched up in a scowl. “I can’t help the way I look!” He slammed his fist down on the table. The anger that had appeared so suddenly evaporated when he realized he’d knocked over his inkwell. Startled, he bolted to his feet, knocking his chair back and rattling the table; which only served to make the mess worse. He cursed under his breath.
Sibrand sighed heavily. “But you can control how you act ,” he said, voice softer. “You are a peculiar boy with many strange qualities and incredible talents. You are such a bright child, Gilbert. You know so many things some men my age don’t even know. You learn quick.”
“And that scares people?” Gilbert snorted. “I’m smart. So what?”
“You mouth off,” Sibrand said. “And make others feel…simple-minded.”
Gilbert stared, incredulous. “So they’re upset because I know things and they don’t?”
Sibrand rested his elbows on his desk, fingers massaging at his temples. He was quiet for a few moments, choosing his words wisely.
“People fear the unknown, Gilbert. The strange, and the foreign. You, my boy, are all three.
“Unknown,” he said, and held up a single finger. “Found alone and nameless with no recollection of any sort of previous life.
“Strange,” a second finger extended. “Your looks alone are considered queer by anyone’s standards. You look like a child but speak like an elder. You look no older than the day we found you when you should be growing into a young man.
“Foreign,” a third finger joined the others. “No one has any inkling as to where you came from. You simply appeared.”
Gilbert stood silent next to his writing desk. His hands were stained with ink, his papers blotted out. He’d contained the mess as best he could, but his tunic was ruined entirely.
“No one knows who you are or what to make of you.” Sibrand folded his hands together, leaning forward to get a better look at Gilbert through the candle light. “You scare them.”
Gilbert chewed on the inside of his cheek, shoulders slumping. He seemed put out. The small spark of defiance had dwindled to less than kindling. He wiped his nose with his sleeve, smearing a blotch of ink over his cheek.
“Do I scare you, Master?”
Sibrand leaned back in his seat, the wood creaking under his weight. “Go clean yourself up, boy. It’s nearly time for supper.”
I remember how the Teutonic Order had come into being. It started off as nothing more than some tent pitched up outside of Acre in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. When I showed up, it wasn ’t the most glamorous place. The Templar’s were in the midst of a siege. There was sickness and death everywhere.
But Sibrand held his group together. He and his men, and eventually myself, helped alongside the Hospitallers to tend to the wounded.
We moved into the city. We founded our headquarters. And from there, we grew.
Master Sibrand never actually took up the mantel of “Grandmaster”, and you won’t find much about him in the history books, but in the beginning, he was the heart and soul of that place. He was the only reason I lasted so long before things turned sour.
Because Acre wasn ’t our city. We simply resided in it.
Sibrand could only protect Gilbert for so long. He had taken the boy in as his ward. Even so, his authority could only go so far. The Knights he had gathered over the years were a paltry bunch; disciplined, but few in number.
All those within the Order had come to know Gilbert personally. He was young, but finally starting to show some signs of aging—however subtle they were. He was thin and lanky, but quick and light on his feet; an expert at getting into trouble and out of it just as fast.
He studied and trained alongside the Knights, though he was only ever allowed a wooden sword to practice with.
Most of the city of Acre knew of him, but the battles and sieges that continued in the Holy Land constantly brought in new men seeking glory, riches, or amnesty.
Most newcomers steered clear of the odd pale boy with the blood red eyes. Some watched from a distance. Others were more brazen.
It started with a rock, and ended with two broken noses and an arm in a sling. One of the two boy’s had stubbed his toe and sprained an ankle in a fall, but Gilbert remained adamant that it was the own boy’s fault for being careless.
“I punched him,” Gilbert confessed. “But he tripped on his own.” His voice was wet and nasally. One of the noses broken had happened to be his own.
“You broke the other boy’s arm.” A city elder stood before him. To one side of Gilbert, the two boys stood shoulder to shoulder. One had a swollen nose and a bandaged foot. He stood glaring at Gilbert. The other had his arm cradled against his chest, crying.
Around them, a crowd had gathered.
“He threw the rock,” Gilbert justified, pointing to a large, bleeding bruise that had stained his hair red. “I broke his arm.”
“And I suppose it was a nose for a nose, was it?”
“Yes.” From behind, Gilbert heard someone clear their throat audibly. He straightened. “Yes, My Lord,” he corrected hastily.
“He chased us down!” The boy with the broken nose snapped. “Like a beast!”
“You chucked a stone at my head!” Gilbert snarled, turning his furious gaze on the boys. Even the pedestrians behind them edged away. “Did you expect me to do nothing?” He snapped.
“It was not your place to punish them,” the Elder interrupted, voice rising. “If you expect a fair trial—”
Gilbert’s temper only flared. His lips curled back over his teeth, his gaze zeroing in on the Elder. “Trial? For what ? Standing up for myself? People laughed when that stone hit me. They laughed and did nothing!”
“Watch yourself, boy—”
“I’m no boy!” Gilbert shouted, his entire body shaking with anger. His hands were fisted by his sides, trembling and bruised from the scuffle.
There was silence. Complete and utter silence as the crowd stood, gaping at the young boy with eyes so red they seemed to glow in the afternoon light; an otherworldly sort of glimmer. Sharp. Dangerous. Lethal.
All it took was one woman uttering two words for everything to go wrong.
“He’s posessed…”
─── ⊰⋅✠⋅⊱ ───
Gilbert knew fear.
He’d been chased off by stray dogs and cranky old women. He’d stumbled while walking the ramparts of the city. The fear of slipping up during training and ending up with more splinters than he could count.
He did not know terror.
People were like sheep. You scare one, you scare them all. People were stupid and careless. They didn’t think, they acted .
The woman had made her remark, and all the anger seemed to be leeched right out of him. Gilbert’s jaw went slack. His mouth hung open in shock at the accusation. His now uncurled fists started to rise, fingers spread in a placating manner.
The anger was gone, replaced with something else entirely. He felt his gut twist. His mouth went dry. He felt sick and everything seemed off balance so suddenly.
“Gilbert!”
It was Sibrand who had called for him, but wherever he was in the crowd, Gilbert could not find him.
He felt hands seize him so tightly by the arms that his fingers started to go numb.
“Wait!” His voice cracked. “Hold on! I’m not—”
He was forced to his knees with a hard kick to the back of his legs. He crumpled with a grunt, eyes squeezing shut. He felt like his lungs had shrunk to the size of prunes. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t even muster up a single rational thought. His mind was simply blank; filled only with the palpitating heartbeat that flooded his eardrums.
Then, quite suddenly, he couldn’t feel a thing.
He was aware of the ringing in his ears. He could still see when he opened his eyes; but he couldn’t seem to process what it was he was looking at.
Faces. Angry faces. Scared faces with mouths open, screaming.
He felt a strange tugging sensation in his middle. His whole body seemed to tremble and move with it, lurching forward.
He saw the glistening red tip of a pike stretch before him, extending out until the point of the blade touched the ground.
His senses washed back over him in a tidal wave.
The ringing in his ears gave way to shouting and screaming; the wailing of women and angry men. The startled cries of children. “Mercy on the boy!” he heard, only to have another voice drown it out with the call of “be gone with him!”. They called for Justice. For God’s will. For calm. He heard his name mixed in there somewhere, but he couldn’t concentrate enough to find it.
The pain that erupted from his middle pulled a strangled yell from his lips. The front of his tunic was rapidly becoming soaked in blood. He could feel the warmth of it spread and he shuddered. He could taste bile and the sickly tartness of copper that shouldn’t have been there.
“You went too far!”
“What have you done?”
“Kill the demon now before he damns us all!”
Gilbert could feel the pike twist uncomfortably, and watched as it slipped back toward him, disappearing into his gut. He felt the tug of it as it came free out the other side. Somehow, it hurt worse now that it was gone.
Gilbert closed his eyes, choking back a sob from the agony. His body was wracked in pain, trying to retch the blood now flowing freely through his insides. He felt it fill his mouth, thick and coppery. When he tried to breathe in, he choked and spattered bloody spittle on the ground before him.
The men holding his now limp body released him, and he crumpled to the ground bonelessly, still struggling to suck in a single breath only to spit up more blood from his mouth and nose. His fingers curled, clawing uselessly at the ground. Somehow the grit of the sand and stone biting at his nails was comforting, but it wasn’t enough.
He could do nothing but lay there, eyes stinging with tears as he prayed for an end to it. If it took another pike through the skull, that would be fine; he simply wanted it to stop .
His vision began to flicker, but he could see the world move as his body was rolled onto it’s back. A face hovered over him, features blurred and unfocused.
The muted voice of Sibrand was the last thing he heard before the darkness consumed him.
“My foolish boy,” Sibrand had cried, cradling Gilbert’s face between his hands. “What have they done to you?”
─── ⊰⋅✠⋅⊱ ───
They always made death out to be some sort of terrible, wonderful thing.
Gilbert could remember bodies bobbing in the motes surrounding Acre during the siege. He remembered the bitter stench of rotting corpses and body fluids so rancid he could almost taste it.
It was vile, but they were “with God now”, and would be judged accordingly.
“Where do they go?” Gilbert had asked in the first few weeks of having been taken in from the desert. “After judgment.” His gaze was lingering on a line of sickbeds hosting both the wounded and the ill.
Sibrand was crouched in front of him, dabbing a smelly salve on what sores were left from his burns.
“Should they be judged righteous and good, they pass on to heaven where they may walk alongside the Good Lord himself.”
Gilbert flinched when Sibrand began to unwrap the old bandages on his feet.
“And if not?”
“If they are judged otherwise;, if they are deemed sinners, then they pass on to the realm of the Devil.”
“And that’s bad…?”
“Very.”
Heaven was peaceful. Sunny. Made up of pearly gates and golden streets. No hunger. No sickness.
It seemed silly. Why have streets paved in gold? Why fancy gates? What if someone was neither good, nor bad, or equal parts both?
“You ask too many questions, boy,” chided Sibrand. “Some things we just aren’t meant to have the answers to.”
That was also silly. Every question had an answer.
The answer to what it was like to die was somehow even more disappointing than not knowing.
Death was nothing.
It was empty. Dark. Most surprisingly of all, it wasn’t as permanent as Gilbert had expected.
He was dead, and then he was not; as if he’d just laid down for a nap and awoken a few hours later.
It wasn’t a very peaceful awakening. When his consciousness began to drift back, he became acutely aware of a burning sensation in his lungs. They hurt. He needed to breathe. So he sucked in a full breath and exhaled deeply, expelling the stale air that had stagnated in his just previously decaying lungs.
Then, quite abruptly, Gilbert rolled onto his side and hacked up a lump of clotted blood and bile. Pain erupted from his middle as his gut started to spasm, heaving what little had been left inside him after his initial death.
The pain was blinding and nauseating, but his disorientation was much worse. He was on a raised dais, laid out with a sheet draped over his body. Except now he was tangled up in it, sliding to the floor head first into his own vomit.
The screams were the least of his concerns.
“Water,” he wheezed, grappling with the shroud as he choked back another mouthful of foul tasting muck.
The sheet was yanked away and everything went white. Gilbert squinted, blinking back tears from the sudden overexposure to every sense imaginable.
“What sort of foolish trick is—” the voice that had started off furious went silent. A few long moments passed wherein Gilbert’s eyes adjusted to the light, and the Grandmaster of the Teutonic Order of Saint Mary came into view. His bushy brows had risen clear to his hairline, his jaw slack from shock.
“Gilbert…?”
“Grandmaster Walpot,” Gilbert croaked, slumping back to the floor with a groan. “Where am I? What happened?”
There was a long silence before Walpot answered.
“You…You died, boy,” Walpot said slowly. “This is—was—your funeral.”
I ’m sure you remember the first time you “died”. Everyone does. But it’s the stories of waking up from a stone cold death, scaring the humans witless that have always been a guilty pleasure of mine.
It ’s always an adjustment, though. You always come back feeling…different. But not. Like you’ve gone on vacation for a while and come back relaxed and easy-going, only to have the real world slap you in the face with a hard dose of reality.
People don ’t come back from the dead. It’s just a basic law of nature. What’s dead is dead and it should stay dead.
But, as you know, our kind have a tendency to disobey those intrinsic laws of nature. I could write a whole dissertation on it, and maybe I ’ll touch on it later, but for now, the focus is how the Order handled my miraculous undeath.
Which is, surprisingly, that they took it rather well.
Sort of.
Gilbert wasn’t sure if he should feel honored that they had decided to give him a proper funeral, enraged that he had essentially been murdered , or baffled by his return from the hands of death.
He rubbed absently at the puckered scar below his sternum, frowning.
“There was nothing?”
“Nothing. Complete blackness. Like a dreamless sleep.”
Grandmaster Walpot paced back and forth, hands clasped behind his back. Sibrand stood beside Gilbert, his form slouched and weary.
“You were dead.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“For three days your body lay lifeless. No pulse. Nothing.”
“Sounds a lot like being dead to me,” Gilbert agreed.
Sibrand had taken to mumbling to himself. “Three days,” he repeated. “And on the third day…”
That made Gilbert prickle uncomfortably. He was not keen on where Sibrand’s train of thought was wondering. Even less so what Walpot continued on with.
“It makes no sense. At death, the soul is released and sent on to the next life to be judged. But you claim nothing happened! Did your soul not leave? Perhaps you are cursed…Or have no soul?”
Gilbert cleared his throat loudly, drawing in the attention of both men.
“I think,” he said slowly, choosing his words wisely, “that it is impossible to decipher the will of God.” He fidgeted in place anxiously. “I’m as confused as everyone else, and I’m the one that got skewered by a mob.” Beside him, the color drained from Sibrand’s face, clearly thinking back on the event. “I died. I came back. That’s it. Maybe there’s something I’m meant to do? Maybe God is just trying to be funny—”
“Watch your tongue, boy.” Walpot snapped.
Gilbert whetted his lips, glancing toward his old caretaker, who had fallen quiet.
“The point is, I’m back. For whatever reason, I remain. I shouldn’t waste it. Blessing or curse, I have a second chance to do,” he fumbled for an answer, “something.” He finished lamely, shoulders sagging. “I couldn’t say why, considering how much the people distrust me already, but maybe that’s got something to do with it?”
Walpot came to a stop, turning to face them. He seemed to weigh Gilbert’s words, and then nodded in agreement. “With that said,” he began, “I think it would be… unwise to remain here.”
Sibrand bobbed his head slowly. “This will not bode well with the people. They will see it as an ill omen.”
Gilbert had mixed feelings on that notion. Acre was all he knew, yet he had wondered about the land’s to the north; the place Sibrand called home once upon a time.
Gilbert squared his shoulders, looking more resolved. “I’ll go,” he said. “My only request is that I might be allowed to stay within the brotherhood.”
“You’re not yet a sworn knight—”
“But I’ve lived with them, followed their practices. The only thing that puts me apart from them is a proper sword and title.”
“You’re too young—”
“I only look young,” Gilbert interjected. “With all due respect, Grandmaster, I believe I more than qualify.”
Walpot sucked on his teeth, brow furrowed. “And you, Sibrand? How do you feel on this matter?”
Sibrand was quiet for several long moments. His cloudy gaze lingered on the floor. “The boy is right,” he said. “But the men will not take a boy as a knight seriously.”
“I’m not asking for a commanding position,” Gilbert said hastily. “Just…a chance to be more.” He looked between the two men nervously.
Walpot deliberated, stroking his beard thoughtfully as he scowled at the floor. The silence was uncomfortably long.
“Despite my better judgment, perhaps there is reason for all this…peculiarity.” Walpot spoke slowly. “Perhaps there are greater things at work here. It is not my place to intercede with the will of God. Your fate alone is in his hands.
“And, despite your looks, you are of age. You have squired for your fellow brothers and trained alongside them. You know the code; the very heart of this Order. After all, you were there at it’s founding.” Walpot paused, scrutinizing Gilbert closely. Finally, he went on. “We are sending men north to Transylvania. Perhaps you might join them?”
“To…where?”
“Back to Europe,” Sibrand said quietly, fondly. Gilbert could hear the bit of longing in the old man’s voice.
“And,” Walpot said, pulling Gilbert’s attention back to him. “You will be knighted.” He eyed Gilbert warily. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
Gilbert bit his lip so hard he nearly drew blood. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t stop the grin that split his face. “Of course not,” he promised. “I won’t let this opportunity go to waste.” He tried to reign in his composure, cinching his features into a more serious visage. “I live and breathe for this brotherhood. I will not disappoint you, Grandmaster.”
“One more thing.”
Gilbert’s shoulders sagged just the slightest. “Yes…?”
Walpot leveled a hard look toward Gilbert, crossing his arms over his chest. “Try not to get yourself killed again.”
A promise that Gilbert was sort of able to keep.