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“Next! And you are?”
“Humphrey de Bohun.” He adjusted the tag on his clothes. 1584. Just in case you couldn’t put Tudor clothes and a lack of head together—spelt right out for any onlookers. “Elizabethan courtier.”
“Seen it, mate. Look, if it’s a sword up the bottom again, I can do it properly this time. Real pain in the arse, isn’t it?”
He winced, playing with the ruff. “No, er, I think you’ve got me confused with someone else. You see—” His body yanked his head off, holding it up for Death to see. “Hey, not yet! We were supposed to wait until I finished that sentence, you prat!”
“Oh, so it is a pain in the neck this time!”
“Would’ve been funnier if you’d just waited for me to tell you that,” Humphrey muttered.
“Alright, but how’d you actually die? Beheading’s hardly that stupid on its own.”
“Well, erm…”
“Just spit it out, mate, I haven’t got all day.”
“I was involved in a plot—”
“Yes, yes, I’ve seen the wife.”
“You’ve seen my wife?” Humphrey blinked. “So you know how this goes?”
“Can you believe this guy?” Death said, to the plastic skeleton next to him. Or maybe they were real bones.
He shuddered. Unfortunately, this meant that his body let go of him.
“As if I remember every—you alright down there?”
“Ouch—ouch—oof,” he said, as he rolled to a stop in front of Death. “I’m just fine, thanks.”
“So how’d you die?” Death once again prompted.
“Well, as you know, it wasn’t my plot, it was my wife’s. So I told her to go, and I held off the guards, so that she could escape—”
“Did you hear that, Louis?” Death elbowed the skeleton. “So romantic!”
“Not really. Anyway, I’m there guarding the door, and it clicks pretty quickly that—hey! You can’t just leave, you twat, you can’t go through without me!”
“Still not stupid enough.”
“Alright, alright … so I stop guarding the door, you know, try to defend myself, and I pick up a candle—bad move—tried some swords over the mantelpiece, but that didn’t work either … anyway, in my panic, I hid in the chimney.”
“And…?”
“Well, I got out of the fireplace, and I was feeling quite good about myself, frankly, so I tapped the mantelpiece and—well, you can probably connect the dots yourself.”
“No, no, do go on. We have an audience, don’t we?”
“Fine. I thumped the mantelpiece, the swords swung down, and now I’m like this.”
“Headless Humphrey. Oh, that’s brilliant! A real bone-a fide mistake, eh?”
“Haven’t got the best head on my shoulders, no.”
“Oh, finally someone who’ll reciprocate the puns. You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for that.”
“All of human history?”
“Eh, not far off. Anyway, the judges agree—that was a pretty stupid way to go, even by our standards. You’re through to the afterlife!”
“Thanks, I … think.”
“Oh, and if you turn left, you should find the missus hanging around somewhere. Good luck!”
“Lovely, but, er, how am I supposed to get through to the afterlife without my body?”
“Use that head of yours—it’s not like you’ve got much else!” He slapped his knees, bursting into laughter. “God, I’m hilarious. Tough crowd, though, you three.”
“Could you at least reattach me…?”
“Alright, alright, fine.” Death threw him over to his body—which caught him, and then subsequently dropped him.
“Oh, for the love of—!”
“Next!”
“Listen, if you could just pick me up—that’s it, much better.” Humphrey pulled his ruff up. Maybe that would keep his head on a little longer. It looked terribly stupid, but at least he might stay in one piece. “Where was it … oh yes, left a bit.”
He rounded the corner, and was met with someone he hadn’t thought about in a long time.
“Humphrey?”
His head wobbled dangerously. He scowled in what he hoped was a very intimidating manner at his hands, daring them to disobey him. Then he realised that looked very stupid, and stopped.
“Yeah, it’s me,” he said. “It’s been a while.”
“Five hundred years,” Sophie said. “You’re late.”
He checked the tag on her dress. 1592. Oh, and it was spattered in blood, along with most of her chest, and her hands, which were positively dripping with the stuff.
Yuck.
“Yeah, well, it was a long queue.”
“The English love queueing, no?” She sighed. “I don’t know what I should say … you gave your life for me.”
“Bit of a mood killer.”
“Precisely. And I suspect to apologise to a dead man would fall a little flat. I am sorry, though, that they beheaded you.”
“Yeah, that’s definitely how it happened,” he lied.
“You weren’t—?”
“No, not really,” Humphrey admitted. “I beheaded myself. You know the swords hanging around the place?”
“Yes, I thought they were quite tasteful.”
“I got got by those.”
“I see why you were in the stupid deaths queue, then,” she said. “I always heard you were executed.”
“No, it was—that was wrong.”
“I see,” she said sadly.
“It was a real pain in the neck,” he said.
She snickered at that. He probably should have been offended, but her smile made her instantly more beautiful: it was the difference between an all-too-familiar scowl and a genuinely radiant woman.
“I’d ask how you died, but I don’t think I need to.”
“Murder,” she said. “It didn’t qualify for stupid, thankfully.”
“How long have you been here?”
“In the afterlife? Not very long. Waiting for the afterlife … forever.”
He chuckled. “You should try doing it without your body. Absolutely interminable, and half the time I was only picked up so I could be a football.”
“A football?” she said, in a dangerous voice. “Who was doing this?”
“I don’t know what you’re planning on doing about it. They’re on a different plane to us.”
“Oh yes,” Sophie said, relaxing, “so they are.”
“What exactly were you thinking of doing, anyway?”
She brandished a bloodied dagger. “Retribution.”
He swallowed. They hadn’t liked each other. He shouldn’t have found the sight of her threatening to stab his friends—to protect him—so appealing.
“You are a good man, Humphrey; you should not have been made into a joke.”
“Good man? My body’s a right prat.”
“Then good head.”
He bit back a snort.
“What?”
“Nothing, nothing … I’m only surprised you think so highly of me.”
“I had a lot of time alone—a lot of time with some of the most irritating people imaginable—”
“Story of my life,” Humphrey said. “Life, death … whatever.”
“I met people,” she scowled, “who wanted to talk about feelings. Unbearable.”
“Well, I had my portrait ruined by a stuffed bear. Even more unbearable.”
“How…?”
“Er, it had a glass lens thingy—a monocle, that’s the word—and it burnt through my portrait,” he said. “Long story.”
“Wait,” she said, understanding dawning on her. “Un … bear … able. That was a pun!”
“I like to think it was funny, even,” Humphrey said, chuckling. “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” he said, as his body lost what little control it had had, sending him tumbling. “I’m so sorry you have to see this,” he said at her feet. “It doesn’t normally happen this much.”
Sophie graciously picked him up, returning him to his neck. “How come? You do not exactly have the best balance.”
“Well, like I say, most of the time I just wasn’t attached to my body.” He shrugged, and then realised his mistake. “I swear to God, will you stop doing that!”
His body stood there innocently. For his own part, he once again came to a halt before Sophie—only his momentum took him slightly further, and on instinct he closed his eyes. After centuries of ending up under unknowing women’s skirts and/or Julian, it was pure habit.
Except, well—this time it was his wife, who did know he was there, and she didn’t seem to be complaining.
“Really very sorry,” he said, when Sophie again helped him back up. “The bastard’s got a mind of its own.”
“And you spent all your time headless?” she said, eyes narrowing. “Nobody ever reattached your head?”
“Nope, not really,” Humphrey said. “Got left in an airing cupboard for six days … a field for five weeks … spent all of 1707 in an oven.” He laughed. “It was the eighteenth century, I wasn’t missing much.”
“And not one person thought to find you.”
“On the contrary, Robin helped put me in that oven,” he said.
“How do I find your so-called friend?” she said. “I have a dagger to introduce to this Robin’s face.”
“I’m not sure you’ll ever meet him,” Humphrey said. “He’s been there for … oh, thirty, forty thousand years, I don’t know if he’ll ever get sucked off.”
“I’m sure he has been sucked off plenty of times,” Sophie said. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Oh, er, where I was, it also meant—you know, moving on,” he said. “You should’ve seen my mate Alison’s face every time anyone said that with a straight face. I think the best one was, ‘I dream of the day I’ll be sucked off.’”
“How did you ever survive that?” she said. “I would have laughed in the face of anyone who said that to me.”
“From underneath the bed, most of the time.”
“It’s not right,” she said, folding her arms, “that you were mistreated like that.”
“It wasn’t that bad…”
“It was,” she said hotly, “and I don’t know why you won’t admit to it. Did they not think? Have you not learnt? I knew I could never undo the damage I did, but five hundred years—five centuries—and you are telling me that not one person even tried—”
Sophie was getting increasingly distressed, and, as per usual, he had no clue how to comfort her.
“I thought,” she said, “when I left you to die”—no, he didn’t say, it was my sacrifice, it was my own choice—“you would at least be at peace. If I had known the fate I was consigning you to, I never would have let you stay.”
“I didn’t know,” Humphrey said, slowly, for fear that the hot emotion pricking behind his eyes would unravel on his tongue, “that you cared.”
“I was never very good at it,” she said, “but I did.”
Her hands travelled up to his neck, the first thing to secure it in place for a very long time. It was as symbolic as it was useful.
“I loved you,” she said, “not well enough, not in the way we were supposed to—but it has been a very long time, and I have missed you.”
It made his head spin, and he’d had quite enough of that for one day, if they even had days in this place. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, meeting his long-gone wife for the first time in centuries—he hadn’t been expecting to see her at all—but whatever he’d been imagining, it certainly wasn’t this.
“I,” he said, and then realised he had nothing to say. This was, most likely, the closest they had ever been to each other—physically and emotionally. Her fingers curled against the gash which split head and body—one he had been stupid enough to think might be fixable, in the afterlife, but alas had no cure. Her hands were sticky, as it happened—bloodied and still-warm. They were both still dead, eternally fucked up; there was no going back.
So when she closed gap, and pulled down the final wall between them, Humphrey was surprised by how alive he felt.
There was only so long they could stand there, staring at each other: Sophie put them both out of their misery, and kissed him. He remembered the fleeting last kiss she had given him, a goodbye against his cheek; he had recalled it many times remembering his death, alone and with a spectacular view of the carpet, or the floorboards, or, occasionally, fish.
Thomas was right about the lake, if nothing else. It was quite peaceful to be left alone there, and just watch the fish go by, unbothered by the severed head below them. In the shallows, at least, the sunlight would reflect off their scales, dappling the water.
And somebody would find him, eventually.
He had never missed not needing to breathe, and he in particular had never had to worry about having lungs, since they were invariably on the opposite side of the house to him. But now, this whole breathing thing was coming back to him, as he kissed her back. There were five centuries of regrets between them, five centuries of misplaced guilt and the hope of closure that never came. This, though, was good enough: to know that she had lived a few years longer than she might have otherwise; to know that she was happy enough now, that she did not utterly hate him, and that, Christ, she must have had practice, because she was a far better kisser than he was, with his awkward fumbling.
He stumbled back, into a wall, surprisingly out of breath. “I,” he said, once again, and wondered when he’d got so bad with words, “that was, ah, nice.”
“I should hope so,” Sophie said. “I gather you have not had many nice things in recent times.”
“Some funky glasses from a friend … but not much otherwise, no.”
“I have good news for you, then,” Sophie said, taking his hand.
“And that is…?”
“We have all the time in the world,” she said, smiling.
And as usual, he could not deny her.