Methos walked along the harbour side. The rain had eased to a steady drizzle. He hardly noticed it. His hair was plastered to his head and his clothes seemed to have absorbed more than their fair share of moisture, but he was intent on unscrambling his thoughts and had no time to acknowledge either the weather or his discomfort.
His concern for Catriona was mounting. It had been obvious to anyone with eyes to see that she had been holding herself carefully in check during the ride home. She had been fatigued and wary of doing or saying anything that would hurt him, but she had seemed to be covering a deep pain of her own in addition to having had the deep mire of his memories clawing at her. He didn't know yet how he felt about her having all that knowledge. He had meant it when he told Joe he trusted her, but it still made him uncomfortable knowing that she had inside knowledge, greater than anyone else's, of Methos, all that he was and all that he had been.
He could not blame her for what had happened. He could not persuade himself to be angry with her as Mac had been. It surprised him slightly that Mac should have been so vehement in his condemnation of her, except that Mac was so good at judging people without thinking through his actions. He knew that well from his own perspective. He also knew how hard it was to convince the stubborn Scot of the folly of his approach. He was loyal to a fault but he was the most judgmental person he knew too. To have his friendship meant that he would defended you to the hilt, his honour demanded it, but to lose that friendship could leave you out in the cold with little or no hope of reprieve. Methos had found himself in that Arctic wasteland when Kronos had reappeared, bringing with him the full horror of his past life as a Horseman. Only that fact that he had saved Cassandra from Kronos and from Silas had leant him any redemption. That and the shared quickening when he and Mac had won through simultaneously against Kronos and Silas.
The spark of quickening that had passed between Mac and Methos had linked them forever. The full implications of that had yet to be seen. One benefit had been that they could each single out the other's signature. Another had been that Mac had eventually been able to reconcile the Methos he knew with the Methos of the Horseman period. They had never addressed the issue since that day at Bordeaux, but Mac had finally come to a point where he had been able to speak to Methos again without letting the past come between them. It had taken a long time, nearly eight months had passed before he had even been able to speak to Methos, and if there was still the occasional air of unease between them it was only to be expected Methos mused.
He would hate to see Catriona subject to the same level of ostracism he had been privy to. Nothing she had done demanded it. Not only that but her distress at what had happened had been real. If he could spare her further pain because of his past he would do so. But the thought of what that might involve filled him with trepidation. So many years he had spent trying to push past the wall of his amnesia, sure that he could remember everything that he had lost if he only tried hard enough, but the recent encounter with Kronos had brought back sharply the memories of his time as a Horseman that he had fought so long to subdue. He found it difficult now to forget his crimes during that period. Not only that but other memories he had thought long buried came back to haunt his dreams and his waking hours.
Fatigued, he headed for a nearby bench next to the sea wall and shrugged his coat up around his shoulders trying to marshal what little warmth his body retained. He sat in this position, staring out to sea and trying to decide what he should do next. Before he knew it his eyes had closed and he had passed into a torpid slumber. Then the dreams began
Bergen-Belsen December 1944
It was so cold and the rain came harder, the tents which had 'temporarily' housed them for the past eighteen months had collapsed under the onslaught of the gale force winds. At first the howling seemed to be an integral part of the storm until he realised it was the sound of human voices keening. Frail voices, young voices. Looking around he located the source of the sound. The two young boys had been sent to the men's camp rather than going with the rest of the younger children to the women's camp. It was unusual for there to be boys under the age of sixteen here. These two were much younger. He guessed they were around five and seven years old. No one was paying them any attention . No one had any energy to spare for being concerned about any one but themselves. There was no shelter and the wind cut through the thin striped uniforms like a knife. The material clung to the skeletal frames of the men and boys accentuating the ghastly aspect of their undernourished bodies.
"Hey , Hey help us here!" One of the men was frantically calling up to the guard tower. His claw like fingers threaded through the wire of the fence seemingly the only thing that kept him on his feet. "Bastards, give us shelter. Hey you up there."
Methos winced, he knew it was a futile request on the man's part, he also knew what would follow such behaviour. The tower window opened and one of the guards looked down on the assembled group of men.
"Schweigen Jude!" (Silence Jew!)The command came, harsh as always.
The man continued to shout, he had lost all reason now and only knew that he was cold and starving and wanted someone to help him. Methos tried to reason with him in Yiddish.
"For God's sake man be still, they will not help us we are nothing to them "
He made to move toward the man but before he had gone more than two steps he heard the report of a rifle and saw the man fall, a hole in the centre of his forehead. The tower window was slammed shut and the laughter of the men inside could be clearly heard. Shuddering he turned away. Life had been one long nightmare since he had been captured early in 1941 with the rest of his group of resistance workers. Caught in the act of forging documents that would enable others to escape Nazi occupied Europe. With the others he had originally been sent to Auschwitz only to be moved at a later date to make room for newer transports from Poland. He had been here, in Belsen itself, for eighteen long months.
There was silence amongst the rest of the pathetically bedraggled crowd of men, but the keening of the two young boys only increased. They were shivering uncontrollably from a combination of fear, fever, hunger and cold. Their shaved heads offering no protection from the elements and their clothes in rags. It was highly unlikely that they would survive for much longer.
No one else appeared to notice the boys, certainly no one would look at them. Methos sighed. If this was his punishment for transgressions past he could bear it, what he could not bear was the suffering of others around him. Railing in his mind against whatever gods there were he walked toward the boys. At least he could atone a little by giving what comfort he could to these small scraps of humanity.
"Hush boys, come here." He said kindly. Kneeling down to their level, ignoring the mud and filth. He held out his arms to the boys.
Uncertainly the oldest boy looked at him. He was holding the younger boy (his brother by the look of him) close and trying not to cry himself as he sought to comfort him. "Where is my Papa?" He asked Methos in Rumanian. "He told us to wait for him, but he hasn't come back yet."
Methos' heart was ripped open by the simple question. How could any one deny these small boys comfort and hope? How could any one group of people decide to reduce another to this level? Of course he knew the answer only too well. It was done because it could be done and because it gave those who did it power. He knew only too well the addiction that power bred for he had once been in its thrall too. Swallowing heavily he stroked the older boy's face gently and spoke, also in Rumanian. " I am Michel Legrand. Your Papa had some other business to attend to and has been held up, he asked me to look after you until he could get here." He lied. "What are your names boys?"
"I am Tobias and my brother is David." Tobias held out his hand solemnly to Methos, who equally solemnly took it. The hand was clammy and the boy's skin was feverish, his eyes unnaturally bright and his breathing rattled. Like his brother he had the classic symptoms of the typhus than ran rife throughout the camp.
"We must keep together Tobias, David, we need to share our warmth..here let us huddle here by the fence." So saying he took the two boys by the hand and walked them to the fence where he sat in the mud - his back to the wind and, taking both children into his lap he curled protectively around them offering as much shelter from the ferocity of the storm as he could - his own thin frame being little enough protection.
It was clear that David was almost delirious with fever from lack of food and exposure, his crying never entirely ceased but it eased to a light whimper when Methos held him. Closing his eyes Methos tried to remember other times when he had held children in his arms and soothed them to sleep. A long forgotten lullaby came to his mind, it was in Aramaic but that would hardly matter now. He began humming softly at first, and then to sing. As he did so he felt the tension begin to lessen in the two small bodies he held. The boys' breathing deepened as they surrendered their fears for the time being and drifted into sleep.
Methos continued to rock the boys back and forth as he sang the song again and again. How long he sat there with Tobias and David in his arms he could not have said but he knew the moment when one after the other the boys' fragile hold on life finally slipped. He could not prevent the sobs that wracked his body, nor could he be persuaded to release the boys from his hold until the moment that the guards came and called Apell. Even then it took three of the guards to prise his hold on the bodies and many beatings before he seemed to become aware of where he was and another day in hell began.
The head count at Apell lasted five and a half hours. At the end of this time a further twelve men had collapsed and died. No one moved to disturb the bodies but left them where they fell. The rain continued and no shelter being available groups of men huddled together trying to conserve some semblance of warmth.
The morning meal, such as it was, consisted of ersatz coffee. It was the only real means of heat obtainable apart from the watery turnip soup they would receive at mid-day. If they were lucky there would be bread, but there had been none for the past five days. The endless grinding relentlessness of it all had resulted in a loss of will amongst the inmates of the camp. The spark of life shown by the protesting man after the destruction of the tents was unusual in the extreme.
By the time the liberation force arrived at Belsen on April 15th 1945 there were thirteen thousand unburied rotting corpses in the camp. There had been no food or water for five days and the three water tanks in the compound were contaminated with dead bodies. Methos and the others who still lived had been forced to work twelve hours a day digging mass graves and attempting to bury the dead. All of them were so weak that it took four men to move a corpse. If it had not been for the fact that they were still moving it would have been impossible to tell the living from the dead amongst the dense mass of emaciated, apathetic scarecrows. The anger the liberating soldiers had felt on discovering the unopened stores of food and medicine (enough to feed every inmate of the camp for two weeks and antibiotics which would have cured the typhus) in the SS compound had led to many acts of reprisal against the guards.
This contradiction, this warring of his own innermost emotions had, once again, been his constant companion since Bordeaux. He had tried to lose himself in academic work. He had tried cutting himself off as far as possible from human contact, until in the end he had found he craved it more than anything else. Craved it, but known only one place where he could feel comfortable with that contact. Only one group of people with whom he could feel he need not put up a front. It was this that had driven him to Seacouver, to Joe, to Mac. Now there was another who knew him intimately. What he did not know was how that knowledge would colour her view of him. Nor did he know if he had the courage to discover that, or to uncover his past. Sighing he rose and turned his collar up. Retracing his steps he headed back the way he had come so many hours before.