Sophia’s purview was strictly shoulders up and wrists down. The older nurses did the earthier duties, the bedpans and the washing and the changing of dressings. They were rushed and dismissive, and it frustrated me, honestly, to be at their mercy. My head was so full of experiences, opinions. I had lived in ancient cities and sailed across the world and read books on the first parchment in the library of Pergamum, and I needed a bedpan. They saw me for what I was: another eighteen-year-old soldier with a ravaged body.

I wasn’t used to being gravely injured. I had wounds and aches in all my lives that dogged me, like anyone else. But the serious wounds I died of. Medical science wasn’t what it is now. There wasn’t usually a long transition or a lot of fanfare between life and death, as there is now.

But apart from impatience at my own weakness, I confess that it interested me. Huge advances were being made in medical care, and I paid attention. It set the theme for my next few lives. I have a natural bent for science, but probably the real reason I turned to medicine is because the care I got in that hospital came from such beloved hands.

Now that I was awake and no longer had the freshest of wounds, I was moved to a room upstairs. It was a large chamber with yellow walls and four other beds. It looked out onto a garden. I could see a slice of green mixed with autumn red if I sat up tall in my bed. The windows were large and let in a beautiful leafy light, even when it rained. Somewhere under the smell of antiseptic and ammonia, I smelled a faint trace of Sophia and I held on to it, the thinnest thread of it, through my feverish dreams.

At nights my fever was worst, but I didn’t mind it, because Sophia sometimes came to sit with me.

“Sophia,” I murmured as she held my hand. It was the third night in my new room.

“Constance,” she whispered back.

I looked up at her. “Your eyes are blue now.”

“They were always blue.”

“No, they were once black.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, and equally beautiful.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Your hair was longer last time, and not in those . . . things you wear.”

“Combs?”

“Yes. It was darker, but your eyes were really the same.”

“I thought they were black.”

“Yes, different color but the same. Same in the important ways. Same person when you looked into them.”

She nodded. My fevers went so high that she humored me in everything.

“I saw you last when you were a very small girl. I think you were six.”

“How could that be? You didn’t grow up here in Kent, did you?” she asked.

“No, it was in Greece that I saw you.”

“I’ve never been to Greece.”

“Yes, you have. You had an awful time.” My fever was like a truth serum. I felt tears filling my eyes, but I didn’t let them go. “I tried to help you.” I had a thought. “Let me see your arm.” I closed my eyes and tried to picture it. “Your left arm.”

She put it out reluctantly.

“Lift your sleeve. You have a mark there, I am sure. Right there.” I pointed to the spot on the sleeve of her sweater.

She looked at me carefully. The patients weren’t supposed to be asking her to show more of her skin, and she wasn’t supposed to be doing it. But she was curious. She took off her cardigan sweater, nice English green wool, and lifted her cotton sleeve high up on her arm to show me. I was watching her so hard I made her blush.

On the delicate underside of her arm, a little ways below her armpit, was a brown birthmark laid out lengthwise along the curve. I wanted to touch it, but I held back. It is an intimate stretch of a person’s skin, rarely out and about, especially for an English girl.

“How did you know?” she asked. “Did you see it before?”

“How could I have seen it before?”

She shrugged. “In Greece.”

I laughed as much as my lungs allowed. “Yes. It was worse then.” I felt the tears again. A fever combined with a girl you’ve loved and haven’t seen in five hundred years can just lay you bare.

“What happened?”

I didn’t really want to tell her about it. “I hate to think. I don’t know. You must have had a negligent mother, if you had one at all.”

She was struck by that. “And now?”

“Your mother?”

She looked solemn. “No, the birthmark. Why do I have it now?”

“Well. It’s a strange thing. With each birth your body starts out fresh and mostly blank, but then you print yourself on it, over time. You hold on to old experiences: injuries, injustices, and great love affairs, too.” I glanced up at her. “And you hold them in your joints and your organs, and wear them on your skin. You carry your past with you even if you don’t remember any of it.”

“You do.” She was giving me that same look of indulgence, but it was less confident.

“We all do.”

“Because we live again and again?”

“Most of us.”

“Not all of us?” Her face showed more signs of genuinely wanting to know.

“Some live only once. Some a very few times. And some just go on and on and on.”

“Why?”

I put my head back on my pillow. “That’s hard to explain. I’m not sure I really know.”

“And you?”

“I’ve lived many times.”

“And you remember them?”

“Yes. That’s where I’m different than most people.”

“I’ll say. And what about me?” She looked as though she wasn’t going to believe the answer but slightly feared it anyway.

“You’ve also lived many times. But your memory is just average.”

“Clearly.” She laughed. “Have you known me for all of them?”

“I’ve tried. But no, not all.”

“And why can’t I remember?”

“You can, more than you think. Those memories are in there somewhere. You act on them in ways you don’t realize. They determine how you respond to people, the things you love and the things you fear. A lot of our irrational behavior would look more rational if you could see it in the context of your whole long life.”

It was amazing the things I was willing to say if she was willing to listen, and she was. I touched the hem of her sleeve. “I know enough about you to know you love horses and you probably dream about them. You probably dream of the desert sometimes, and maybe of taking a bath outdoors. Your nightmares are usually about fire. You have problems with your voice and your throat sometimes—that was always your weak spot . . .”

Her face was rapt. “Why?”

“You were strangled a long time ago.”

Her alarm was a mix of real and pretend. “By whom?”

“Your husband.”

“Awful. Why did I marry him?”

“You didn’t have a choice.”

“And you knew this man?”

“He was my brother.”

“Long dead, I hope.”

“Yes, but bearing a grudge through history, I fear.”

I could see by her face, she was trying to figure out where to put all of this. “Are you a psychic?” she asked.

I smiled and shook my head. “Although most psychics, if they are any good, do have some memory of old lives. And so do most of the people we consider insane. An asylum is about the densest concentration of people with partial memory you will ever find. They get flashes and visions but usually not in the right order.”

She looked at me sympathetically, wondering if that’s where I belonged. “And is that what you do?”

“No. I remember everything.”