When word of my afflictions spread, old companions came to Dalewick. I thought, foolishly, that they had come to lift me from despair. I believed their faces would bring comfort, their voices balm. Instead, their presence was salt poured upon open wounds.
First came Sir Rowan, once my dearest confidant from the university halls of London. He was a man of keen wit and sharper tongue, who loved to debate the nature of Providence and reason. In my youth, I trusted him as one trusts a brother.
With him arrived Thaddeus Crane, a merchant grown rich through trade in tobacco and rum, whose ships had often shared harbor with my own. He was a man of numbers and accounts, seeing fortune as a matter of balance sheets.
And lastly, Ephraim Cole, a preacher of stern conviction, who had once baptized my eldest son. His sermons had filled our chapel with fire, though often more fear than hope.
They entered my chamber with grave faces, as though my illness were a crime they had come to investigate. Rowan was first to speak.
"Alaric," he said, clasping my frail hand, "I scarcely knew you when I entered this room. You are reduced, old friend. Reduced by more than fever, I think. Tell us—what secret grief festers in you?"
I shook my head. "No secret. Only loss. Fire, raiders, sickness. Calamity upon calamity, and I do not know why."
Rowan's eyes narrowed. "And yet you question the very existence of Providence? I hear whispers of your doubt. Surely, if you blaspheme against the Almighty, you draw His hand against you."
I turned away from him, anger stirring faintly. "If there is such a hand, Rowan, it has struck unjustly. I did not wrong my children. They were innocent."
Ephraim Cole stiffened at my words, his voice low and heavy. "God does not strike without cause. If you suffer so greatly, it must be for sin unconfessed. Search your heart, Alaric. Repent, and perhaps mercy will yet find you."
"Sin?" I coughed, the taste of iron on my tongue. "Tell me, Ephraim, what sin was it that my youngest daughter committed, that her bones should be blackened by flame? What transgression did she know, save the laughter of children? Was her play blasphemy?"
The preacher's lips thinned, but he did not answer.
Thaddeus then cleared his throat, ever the merchant weighing scales. "Suffering, Alaric, often follows folly. You were too generous, too trusting. Your barns unguarded, your debts unpaid. Misfortune is but poor management wearing the mask of fate."
I tried to sit upright, but the sickness pulled me down again. "So you would make my ruin a ledger, Crane? Fire does not ask for balances. Raiders do not demand receipts. You speak as though I invited them to slaughter my household with ink and quill."
He raised his hands in mock surrender. "I only mean that the world punishes weakness. Providence or no, we make our own luck, and yours has run out."
Their words carved at me, each stroke deeper than the last. I had prayed for comfort, but they brought accusation. I had longed for understanding, but they gave judgment.
At last, Rowan leaned close, his breath hot upon my cheek. "Confess, Alaric. If you name your hidden sin, perhaps Heaven will relent. But if you persist in pride, I fear you are lost already."
Something in me broke then. Weak as I was, I summoned the strength to whisper, "If Heaven punishes without cause, then it is not Heaven at all. If Providence delights in suffering, then it deserves no praise. And if there is no guiding hand, then tell me, Rowan, why should the wicked thrive while the righteous rot?"
They stared at me as if I had spat venom. Ephraim recoiled, muttering a prayer under his breath. Thaddeus shook his head in disgust. And Rowan, once my brother in learning, looked at me with sorrow edged by contempt.
"You have become bitter," he said, rising from my side. "Bitter, and blind. I came to bring comfort, but I see now you would rather cling to defiance than to faith."
The three of them left soon after, their footsteps echoing in the hall like the toll of a funeral bell.
Alone again, I whispered to the empty room, "Why, where did it all go wrong?"
The silence answered me, as it always did.
Yet I knew this much: I was betrayed not only by raiders, not only by fortune, but by friends who came with honeyed words and left me with poison.
And in that betrayal, my solitude became complete.