PART SIX: SONGS OF A WAYFARER
While walking on the distant shore
a chorus never heard before
did sound the heavens and the earth
and in the darkness of the firth
his quest to find that music rare
in vain it was, the lady fair-
- elusive air did haunt him...
vanhunks
Music of Bach floated in the air. Quiet, background sounds that added to the atmosphere of peace and quiet, of restfulness.
Kathryn leaned heavily against Ethan as he led her to the bathroom. While she could walk unaided, she had stumbled a few times; now, holding her fragile body against him, he wondered if he were doing the right thing. After ten days, and since Kathryn had been able to walk, he had become aware of her allure. It tugged at him, forcing him to acknowledge that she was not only Captain Janeway of Voyager who had suffered a nervous breakdown, but a woman, feminine, now that she was regaining some of her strength. Yesterday he had helped her wash her hair and it smelled good as he inhaled her nearness.
"Don't come in," she said stiffly as he opened the bathroom door. She raised her face to him and he saw how embarrassed she looked. Embarrassed and stubborn at the same time. Beautiful and embarrassed and stubborn. A combination that stirred and challenged him.
"Of course not. Call me if you need help, will you?"
"I'll try not to," she said as she banged the door in his face.
Ethan gave a sigh and walked over to the couch in front of the fireplace. A log fire kept the entire cabin warm. Kathryn had given him some bad moments over the last few days. After Admiral Paris and his wife left, he had sat down in a chair next to Kathryn's bed, and for a long time he just stared at her. She had not stirred after Doctor Paris had given her an injection and he had to resist the impulse to touch her cheek, so sunken but with at least some colour in it.
It stirred something in him, something deep and dark and mysterious, something, a flower that, given a little bit of water, has begun to bloom slowly, agonisingly slowly, opening its petals with craven hesitance. It was so alien in him that even now, he still wondered what was happening. Nothing, supposedly, except that he had become intensely aware of her beauty and the tiny slivers that revealed her nature to him.
The morning after that first night, the sky had turned grey as dawn suffused the cabin. He realised then that he hadn't slept in thirty six hours and had gone to bed, first making sure that Kathryn was alright. After brushing back her hair, he had gone to sleep for a few hours. Only that night had she stirred again. Weak blue-grey eyes had opened and stared at him.
"Where am I?" she'd asked.
"You’re in Oregon. My cabin…"
"My shuttle – "
"I collected it this afternoon. You landed it quite near the edge of the cliff, Captain Janeway."
"Sorry."
"No, don't be. You're not well, you know."
"I can't seem to move…"
"Doctor Paris was here. You've been under tremendous stress the last few weeks. Your body simply couldn't cope anymore."
She'd tried to move her head again, to look the other way, but the movement caused her some discomfort and she closed her eyes.
"I just walked…no direction, no purpose. I don't do that – "
"This time you did, Captain Janeway. I found you unconscious on my property."
"There's nothing for me here…" she said, a tear rolling down her cheek.
He'd wiped her cheek with a soft cloth. "Maybe you have that wrong. You will discover it. Believe me."
"Who are you?"
He thought that he had told her his name, but given her state of depression, it had slipped from her memory.
"I am Ethan Bellamy."
"Ethan… I like the name."
"Thank you."
Then she had promptly fallen asleep. She hadn't eaten or used the bathroom and when she woke about an hour later, he'd carried her to the bathroom. She protested weakly, but it was something he had to do. She needed to soak in a tub, needed to relieve herself, needed to freshen up. It had been a source of embarrassment for her because she was still too weak to walk. He had run a bath and stayed in the bathroom, nursing her over the first few tasks before eventually lifting her into the warm water. He hadn't been fazed by her nudity. It was a job he had to do and while she couldn't look him in the eyes, while she bitterly acknowledged her own weakness and inability to brush her teeth even, he acted with complete decorum.
She had taken the soap that mercifully didn't slip through her fingers and begun her ablution.
"I'll be okay," she said, still not looking at him.
"Call me, will you? I've replicated some sleepwear and other clothing."
It was an hour later that he heard her. He had begun to worry and was about to kick down the bathroom door when he heard her faint voice. A very large white bath towel in hand, he entered. Her eyes were closed. He could see she was again exhausted, probably just from the activity of washing herself.
He practically rolled her in the towel and then carried her to the bedroom.
"I'll be okay," she told him.
He nodded. The soft baby blue satin pyjamas had been placed neatly at the foot of the bed, as well as a matching robe. When he hesitated to move, seeing her eyes droop even before she had dried herself, she murmured, a little sob escaping her, "Leave…please…"
Sighing, he left the room, waiting almost half an hour before entering again.
"I'm sorry about this," she said. "I haven't thanked you."
"That's okay, Captain. I'm here to help you."
"You saw me naked," she said with sudden, renewed strength.
"I saw someone who needed help. Take it or leave it."
There was a long silence in which she seemed to weigh his words.
"I'll take it," she said on a sigh.
For a moment she looked like she would cry, but he admired her spunk not to. Though, to be fair, it was probably something she needed to do. To have a good cry and get some of her trauma out of her system. It was early days and she was not anywhere near recovery.
"Thank you. Call me Ethan."
"You were on the Bellerophon…"
"You checked the Federation database. Captain's level four clearance. So what else is new?"
"I'm Kathryn," she replied, ignoring his words. "I promise you I've been better."
"I have no doubt about that."
She caressed the soft satin of the pyjama jacket. "You know my size."
"If you must know, I had to recycle two pairs before I got the size right. Stupid me. I had to match it to the clothes you wore when I found you."
"I saw you at Starfleet…"
"You saw a lot of people at Starfleet, Kathryn," he said, her name rolling easily from his lips.
"With that hair?"
He sighed, running his fingers through his hair.
"There's a history there, isn't there?" she persisted and he had wondered suddenly, unfairly, how ill she really was. Of course she was desperately ill, near dying too. But, even then, he had seen the fire of strength and stubbornness lurking in her eyes despite her terribly weakened state.
"We'll get you well. I promised Admiral and Mrs Paris. No one else knows you’re here. Get better, Kathryn Janeway," he said, changing the subject.
But she had already closed her eyes again, drifting off naturally to sleep.
Late on the afternoon of the fourth day, he had been forced to administer a sedative. The music that filled the cabin every day, from Chopin's Nocturnes to Bach's Concerto for double violins, to Beethoven's 7th was something of a stroke of genius. For himself, he just let the music play while he worked. Now, he discovered how it soothed Kathryn's battered soul. Most of the time she would just lie in bed with her eyes closed, listening to the music. He knew he had found a connection to the sick woman who couldn't lift her hand when he'd found her.
Then, that day…
He thought the most complete symphony ever written was Gustav Mahler's First Symphony. Consummate in its composition, Mahler had laboured over it, from the slow, dragging first movement to the stormy finale. Infusing elements of his earlier Song Cycle - the Songs of a Wayfarer - each movement was a miniature poem within the larger work of the symphonic poem. Utterly autobiographical, Mahler's very soul, his spirit, his anguish over his doomed relationship with Johanna Richter was present in the work that spoke to him on so many levels. The third movement, funereal despite its playful tones hugging the Frere Jacques melody, almost unrecognisable but yet, subtly, intrinsically there. Like a bolt of lightning, sharp, strident, yet melodious, the instruments - horns and trumpets enter the finale, making a strong and forceful evocation of the most divine music and unlike the song cycle, ending victoriously. Did Zeus himself preside over the proceedings of Mahler's symphony, known as The Titan? Ethan never liked Mahler more than when he felt wretched himself. An old recording of the twentieth century was in his database - the Philadelphia Orchestra with Eugene Ormondy conducting. He could listen to it for hours.
Kathryn had been lying awake after he had seen to her lunch. The first few times he had to feed her so weak she was, but by the fourth day she was able to help herself, even if she struggled stubbornly. Schubert's String Quintet, Die Forelle, had just finished. He had gone back to his office just off the lounge on the opposite side of Kathryn's bedroom, to programme the next few selections. On a whim, he decided to go for something more forceful, more intense.
And while the first notes, slow and heavy, were introducing the later upsurge of violins, horns, piccolos and flutes, he heard an anguished cry, so shrill that he rocked up and rushed to her. Kathryn's eyes were wide, her face stricken.
"Kathryn! Good God, what is wrong?"
Her body shuddered
"No…no… not Mahler…please.."
She was so distressed that her body shook, large wracking sobs already violating her emaciated frame. Momentary indecision kept him rooted as Kathryn's face showed all the horror of something terrible, a memory triggered by the Mahler. He had run back to his office and halted the entire selection. When he returned, Kathryn was trying to lift herself off the bed. He caught her just as she pitched forward.
She wept. He had lost track of how long he held her. His shirt front was soaked and he had given her his handkerchief to blow her nose, which she had done often during the bout of sobbing and crying. When he pressed her carefully back against the pillows, her face looked ravaged, haggard - a far, far cry from the captain who had defended herself with absolute self-possession during the court-martial.
He sat back in his chair but held her hand, rubbing the back of it gently. Her hair looked mussed and with his free hand he tucked her hair behind her ears.
"I'm sorry, Kathryn. I didn't know. Mahler obviously upsets you."
"He played Mahler. On Voyager…"
"Explain."
"No. It's alright. Don't worry - "
"Kathryn, look, you're distraught. Tell me at least so that I know what not to play next time."
"Said too much already."
"You haven't said a thing. I'm not going anywhere and if you're to recover, maybe you should revisit that part of the past you don't like."
"Are you my preacher?"
That was when he felt like throttling her. Of course she was right. Why had he been so high-handed, telling her what to do when he found himself incapable of doing the same thing? But, he had been angry at her retort.
"Kathryn, I found you unconscious and so weak you couldn't open your eyes for at least two days. Your body - a machine, if you don't mind, didn't only malfunction, it ceased some of its primary functions. You would have been dead lying there another night in the bitter cold. You had absolutely no strength to lift your head, or to move a finger, or move your eyelids. If I hadn't seen your shuttle in my space, I might never have gone to investigate, looking for life signs. I carried you into my bathroom and cleaned you, for God's sake, you were that helpless. Like a newborn baby. Now you're telling me I shouldn't preach to you?"
He had been angry and sorry that he spoke like that to her. No one liked to be reminded of what others had done for them in their times of need. But he couldn't help it. Kathryn's reaction, after her stormy bout of crying, had just rubbed him the wrong way.
"Fine," she said at length. "Mahler… It's my favourite symphony, but after the Devore…"
"Devore?"
"Alien race of soldiers who hated telepaths. We hid some of them on Voyager to take them to a place of safety. The...Devore came…twice, thrice, stripped my ship, took my ship, left me with almost nothing. They searched, mutilated, did everything to get what they wanted…"
Kathryn had closed her eyes again. A memory he knew that was wrenching hard.
"Kashyk was their leader… Inspector Kashyk."
"What did he do…?"
Her eyes flew open. He thought absently how she had been able to move her eyelids with ease after almost four days. The fire of hate burned in her eyes in those moments.
"All the time, he played my Mahler. I couldn't wake without hearing that music. Everywhere I walked, sat, convened, slept... After that, I hated the music. I remembered too much. Hated him, hated Voyager, hated…Chakotay…"
"They don't know what you suffered, Kathryn Janeway…and there was no one with whom you could share your pain, not even Chakotay. Shame does that to a person. You thought Chakotay would pity you. You could deal with his hate, but not his pity..."
All movement ceased as Kathryn stared straight at him, her eyes stricken again.
"You…understand…?"
She had tried to lift herself to a sitting position and when he assisted her, she fell against him, holding him for a long time. He thought she had fallen asleep, but when she stirred finally, it was to lie back against the pillows.
"You understand," she said again with a kind of wonder in her eyes.
He had given a sigh, then on an impulse, leaned forward and kissed her on her forehead.
"I understand, Kathryn."
"After that, it was hard to open up, harder than it had ever been. I couldn't think of that music and not remember a time when my crew wasn't mine, my ship wasn't mine, my body wasn't mine."
"But you love Chakotay."
He had said it as a statement, a hard to admit statement, harder because he suddenly wanted to keep Kathryn away from every man who wanted her, to protect her, to shield her from the wind, the rain, the snow, the tears, the sorrow, or, at best, to be there with her and for her. It was a gut-wrenching painful admission. He suddenly hated the Native American whom he had seen only in passing during the debriefing period. But questions had been asked, assumptions made, tongues wagged and some of the wagging had lapped at him.
"He married Seven of Nine, can you believe that?"
"Weren't Chakotay and Janeway lovers once?"
"That was way back, on New Earth."
"She's still in love with him."
"But why did he marry Seven of Nine? He doesn't love Seven half as much as he loves Captain Janeway…"
"Yes… Yes," Kathryn replied forlornly, "I love him…"
He hadn't failed to notice how Kathryn spoke of her love in the present tense. And why not? Could she stop loving a man she'd loved for perhaps seven years in just a moment? Inspector Kashyk had imprisoned her body while she loved her first officer. And this, just one event in an entire range of things that happened and which brought back painful memories.
"So, no more Mahler, huh?" he said, in an attempt to lighten her mood.
And then Kathryn had raised her hand and her palm had rested against his cheek. Strange, strange, surreal wandering in the forests, over undulating landscape, his spirit sailing over the moonlit lake which lay protected by the surrounding mountains. His eyes closed of their own volition. What power, what strength he had, he used to place his own hand over hers and place it gently back against her bosom.
"One day, maybe, Ethan."
And her eyes had gone dark with remembrance.
********
He felt a light tug at his ear and was shocked out of his reverie. He never even saw her and these days, so attuned to her, even her smell, he was always acutely aware of her presence. Kathryn stood before him, looking warm and snug in her sleepwear and gown; she was smiling and it transformed her features instantly. She had walked unaided to where he was sitting; the close to an hour she'd spent in the tub must have relaxed her more than he expected. Her face looked scrubbed, her hair wet and combed back.
"You're dreaming, Bellamy."
"I was thinking of you," he retorted, sounding uncommonly sharp.
"Not nice thoughts, judging by the way you pulled your face just now."
"How long have you been watching me?"
He took her hand and pulled her down to sit next to him. Her hair was already beginning to dry naturally and when he glanced sideways at her, he felt the tug again somewhere in his chest.
"Long enough."
With that he had to be satisfied. They were quiet a few moments.
"I feel strong now," she said, breaking the silence.
How did she know what he was thinking?
Muted were the notes of Debussy's Reverie. He loved Debussy this time of the evening. It had rained the last three days and the cello stood in the corner in the living room. He didn't know if Kathryn had ever heard him play since she had been so totally out of it, too ill to take notice of things around her, too ill to object when he had to take her to the bathroom to help her and wash her, too ill... And since her appearance in his home, he hadn't played much and those times he did, Kathryn had been sleeping. The haunting notes of the reverie were the balm he always welcomed. It tempered his runaway thoughts, thoughts that Kathryn would speak words precisely as she did now.
"Kathryn, I think you need a few more days. Maybe even two or three weeks."
"Commander Bellamy," Admiral Paris had ordered three days ago, "keep Kathryn there as long as you can..."
"Three weeks?"
He wanted to keep her there anyway, hold her as long as he legally could. If she wanted to go, he couldn't stop her. He was convinced that a longer period would leave her re-energized and her broken spirit would be healed; she would then have recovered enough to resume her duties at Starfleet. But in the evenings especially, she had been dour, unresponsive, locked away in a world of her own. He worried then that she was regressing to that state she'd been in on the first day. The day of the Mahler symphony he had given her a sedative and she had lain there afterwards and quietly drifted off to sleep. When he wanted to release the hand that clung to his, she didn't want to let go and he stayed like that until she was deeply asleep.
He felt suddenly selfish and wondered how he could experience such a dichotomy of emotions.
"That way I can have you all to myself," he quipped.
"I'd be a hedonist then."
"Admiral Janeway, you are under orders to be a hedonist."
"According to the gospel of Ethan Bellamy?"
"Admiral Paris."
"Of course. How could I forget?"
"Well, then, enjoy your recovery. You’re looking much better than last night."
"I've known you a scrappy ten days and I can tell you're lying, Bellamy."
"Okay," he said, chuckling, "since that first day. You looked like death."
"Thank you very much."
"You asked."
"Fair enough. Your eyes are green like pines," she said, a complete about turn of their conversation.
"I didn't have a choice. My mother gave them to me."
"That's very funny, Ethan. But seriously, I feel stronger now."
"Kathryn...please, what shall I tell Admiral Paris and his wife?"
"That I can leave your cabin and go home. I haven't been - "
"I know," he cut in. "Listen to me, will you? You need time, more time than you care to admit. Give it to yourself," he pleaded.
She studied him long. Strange that he felt no discomfiture under that stare. Then she nodded and stood up, for the first time making a tour of the room, a lot steadier now than before. Other times when he'd brought her to sit in front of the fireplace, she had been uncommunicative, unresponsive, lacking motivation to move, staring into the fire with eyes that were glazed. He felt safe then. His own bedroom, the only room on the upper level, was safe from her. The rest of the house, except the bathroom, had been safe from her. Now she was embarking on a different journey of discovery and he dreaded the next moment.
He held his breath. She knew the cello stood in the corner, just in front of the French door that opened on the deck. But a small alcove that contained a ceiling to floor shelf remained hidden from view from Kathryn's bedroom end.
She was a Starfleet captain. Curiosity was built-in. He released his breath, then drew in deeply again. It was going to be inevitable. Kathryn Janeway, hardly ten days in his safe haven, the domain he jealously guarded against any kind of intrusion, was chipping away at his defences, the impenetrable wall that kept anyone out who dared to come too close.
Kathryn was coming too close. He wanted to take her home to Indiana and he wanted to keep her here. If she stayed, he was in danger. If she left, he was also in danger.
"Ethan..."
He didn't look around, just knowing that she was standing in front of the bookshelf. She was probably holding a book in her dainty little hands.
"Yes," he sighed.
"You have books - replicas of twentieth century publications and editions."
"And?"
"You’re a reader."
"I'm a collector."
"No, a reader. These books are well-thumbed."
He sighed. If she cast her eyes a little higher, just above her own height, she would find the other books. He joined her, standing just behind her so that she had to turn to look up at him.
"What can I say?" he retorted. "I always liked War and Peace."
"And a few other well-thumbed books here… Anna Karenina…Man in the Iron Mask…Wuthering Heights…Jane Eyre…Martin Chuzzlewit…"
"You've discovered my darkest - "
"Ethan!"
He held his breath. Kathryn put War and Peace back and now stood holding another novel in her hand. He had deliberately placed some books out of reach of too short women like Kathryn Janeway. He didn't imagine the sharp intake of breath coming from her.
"Songs of a Wayfarer by Henry F. Marchand! I read this the first time about nine years ago. I had a copy on Voyager. It's one of the great literary works of our century! A man who journeys far in search of the intangible. On the one level, a man loves a woman who destroys him by leaving him, and the underlying theme of the artist not being understood, always searching for that which… Oh, here's another by Henry F. Marchand I read. Just before I left for the Badlands - A Thousand Voices!"
The smile left Kathryn's face when he didn't respond. Instead, he turned and went back to sit on the couch, staring out the French window, seeing and not seeing the trees, a whisper of the ocean in the distance. The noise in his head had returned and it sounded like the heave of the ocean waves during a storm. A thousand voices that cried in pain; a maelstrom of unceasing lament and cries of sorrow that were never-ending. Once upon a time he could blot them out, radically excise a part of his brain that couldn't stop conjuring up the images or recreating the incessant noise.
He sank his head in his hands. Kathryn was forgotten for the moment, and only Songs of a Wayfarer and A thousand Voices and Come the Darkness stood like sentries in his mind. Great works? Why now? He had been fine until she came along. He hadn't wanted her here, in his home , and now, achingly, stumblingly she had walked into his heart. He felt the old sense of loss upon him again, like he had ten years ago. A searing loss that left a vacuum for years with only his passion, his art, his drive that kept him alive after that. Kathryn forgotten? How could that be when her very presence, the way her hand had caressed the soft leather of the book triggered the past and opened up old wounds?
Had she been destined to arrive unannounced on his property? Was this providence, continued?
Henry F. Marchand…
He wanted to remain selfishly, obsessively incognito. It wasn't chance or a quirky self-congratulatory ego that made him take a nom de plume but the sheer necessity of becoming someone else. He needed the alternate identity; that way it was easier to imagine that Ethan Bellamy had never experienced those things, even to think that Ethan Bellamy had never existed outside of his own skin.
He was a writer. He played the cello well, but his heart and mind and soul went into the written word. It was as necessary as his breathing and it was the only way in which he could sustain himself. After Wolf 359, when he thought he'd never be human again, his brain and his heart had synchronised and challenged his soul to find expression in his writing. Those first months, he had been a man possessed of a driving, urgent need to quell the raging fires in him through words and imagery. While Songs of a Wayfarer and indeed, all his subsequent works were purely fictional, every syllable breathed of him.
Now Kathryn, holding the book in her hand, had unwittingly found his vulnerability.
A hand touched his shoulder. Butterfly light it rested there, like a salve that eased the roaring pain inside.
Kathryn knew.
He felt her sit down and sidle closer to him and this time she took his hand in hers, calmness and warmth in her touch.
There was a long silence.
"You are Henry F. Marchand," she stated softly.
He could only nod in affirmation, not looking at her but seeing the trees outside through a haze, a cloud of mist that moved, lifted, darkened. He knew, without ever thinking about it or giving it careful consideration, that it was pointless to ask "How did you know?" for Kathryn's next words were an answer to his unspoken question.
"I've known you ten days, Ethan Bellamy, ten days in which I was incapable at times of thinking, of lifting my hand, or turning my face to see the man who became my saviour. But I've come to know something of the man who never left my side during my darkest moments. Believe me when I tell you this: when my world was as black as night, the texture of the darkness as thick as ten bulkheads melted together, when touching that darkness brought with it my own unbearable traumas and caused me to sink deeper into that murky abyss, I sensed you there with me, all the time. Don't think I never heard a word of Warrior Mine you read to me while I lay sleeping. Your voice pulled me back. That man is in every line, every sentence, every paragraph and chapter in the two novels I read. I have Warrior Mine at home in Indiana. Chakotay gave it to me as a gift two weeks ago. And Mark...I don't think Mark knows who you are."
It was the longest Kathryn had spoken since she woke up from her abyss. She was breathless.
He looked up finally, gazed into her eyes. Eyes that were open, eyes that he could trust.
"No one knows," he said.
"And no one will know."
"Thank you."
There was another pause. Kathryn's hand rested on his.
"Ethan, will you tell me what happened on the Bellerophon?"
"The Bellerophon... What do you know?"
"Only that the Bellerophon's first officer had been severed from the Collective and his human DNA restored."
He smiled, remembering her own words, but also remembering how those words had sounded like a vow.
"Perhaps one day, Kathryn, I shall tell you…"
*******************
END PART SIX
PART SEVEN: TO THE DEEPEST SPRINGS OF LIFE
Notes on the Bellerophon: