by Kelly Link
Then my well-wishers told me they needed to go to the church.
There, my parson would smile and read his sermon
the one he read to me last night about hypocrisy
when we lay in his dust choked room.
I thought of him fondly but let the idea wash away,
because marriage, says the queen, is our right in another world, likely the next one.
A good Virgin is married only to her rifle
and mornings on the battlefield, rain wet and blood bright.
Auburn
Joanna Ruocco
The unhappily married Lady Abergavenny sat alone at the banquet table waiting for her husband. Her husband, of course, was Lord Abergavenny. The big, brave, handsome Lord Abergavenny. The night was dark. Supper had gotten a bad chill on the banquet table. The goose had goose bumps (this was unsurprising), but so did the potatoes and the turnips and the hunks of dark, sour bread, the region’s specialty.
“Ghastly,” said Lady Abergavenny. It was a word she used often. She stood to gaze out the window at the region. Somewhere in the thick, forested hills of the region, Lord Abergavenny was striding bravely, leading a black horse loaded down with nets and guns and jars of pickling liquors and cameras and tripods and astoundingly powerful truncheon-shaped gaslamps for which Lord Abergavenny was soon to apply for a patent.
Lord Abergavenny. Explorer. Inventor. Never back in time for supper.
It was difficult for Lady Abergavenny to pronounce the name of the region. The name sounded guttural and slightly wispy, like choking in the morning on the flakes of a scone. It was in the bleakest corner of the tsardom. In letters to her sister, the humble Mrs. Cottenham, Lady Abergavenny called the region “the Cold and Quaggy Waste and Woodland” and she called her situation there “that Most Unfortunate Circumstance” or “the Plight of Which You Know.” When she finished a letter she blotted her tears on the paper and signed off thusly:
Fondest Love from your Too Wretched for Further Words Sister,
The Unhappily Married Lady Abergavenny
The Abergavennys were newly arrived in the region. They had taken up residence in the summer house of an Imperial officer in a village on the edge of the forest. The Imperial officer was dead. The house was drafty and dank. The wind made it shudder and wheeze and filled the rooms with the sound of muted sobbing. Lord Abergavenny had claimed the master bedroom as his study and had taken the next largest room, the saber room, as his sleeping chamber. Lady Abergavenny slept in the attic, which wasn’t as moldy as the cellar.
Lady Abergavenny returned to the table, ate a few skinned potatoes and a dry piece of bread (the butter was too cold for spreading) and a mouthful of the lightest dark meat she could find on the goose. Then she took up the candle.
“I am quite finished,” said Lady Abergavenny to the footman. He was very large for a footman with long, dirty nails tipping his wide, hairy hands but footman he must be for every night he put the plates on the table and cleared them when Lady Abergavenny retired. The evening jacket he wore was rather like a footman’s jacket and his hair was heavily powdered (although perhaps it was floured). He nodded his head and Lady Abergavenny left the dining hall and ascended the winding stair. The guttering candle threw shadows up and down and all around.
“Ghastly,” she murmured as the shadows wheeled and swarmed. “Ghastly.”
In the attic, she put the candle on the windowsill. She lit another candle on her writing desk. The candles cast far more shadows than lights and the lights they cast were very wan indeed. When Lady Abergavenny counted her troubles (sometimes she called them her “Woes” or “Regrets”), she counted among them the fact that Lord Abergavenny’s astoundingly powerful truncheon-shaped gaslamps were not for domestic use. This was a rule of Lord Abergavenny. He used them in his research only, which is to say (as he did say), “in pursuit of science and in service to the crown.” Lady Abergavenny sat down in a rickety chair to perform her nightly labor. One hundred strokes with the boar-bristle brush through her long and shining auburn hair. This too was a rule of Lord Abergavenny.
Lady Abergavenny’s long and shining auburn hair was her one beauty. Her sole attraction. She had been born Malvina Potts, daughter of Dunston Potts, fruit and nut seller, and of Georgina Potts, wife of Dunston Potts, fruit and nut seller. The Pottses had many hard little nuts and many more hard little fruits (they didn’t sell as well as the nuts) but not very much in the way of money, living space, or good countenance to split between them. Lady Abergavenny née Potts had crooked teeth and a snub nose and hard, little eyes (this last she had inferred from a customer who compared her eyes to filberts) and she was rather freckled and short in the bargain. She was not a lovely girl after any fashion, but she was a friendly, lively sort of girl and she had always been a great favorite in the neighborhood. It was widely agreed, to her credit, that she never bagged a light pound of nuts. No one ever expected her to marry below a coal-heaver. But then no one expected her to marry above a clerk.
That she married Lord Abergavenny is still the talk of Market Street and of the wives of fruit and nut sellers everywhere.
Their courtship was brief. Lord Abergavenny stopped at the corner where the future Lady Abergavenny stood selling fruits and nuts and asked for a lock of her hair.
“Oh no, sir,” the future Lady Abergavenny had said. “It’s attached to me head!” In those days, she was less refined in her speech.
“Very well,” replied Lord Abergavenny. “I’ll take the head as well.” And he married her straight off. The wedding was a happy event (the marriages of even the unhappily married often are) and even though Lady Abergavenny didn’t know very much of her Lord, she knew he was big, brave, and handsome and that was plenty. On the wedding night, Lord Abergavenny had handed Lady Abergavenny out of the carriage in front of his mansion in Belgravia (a rolling stop) and the carriage, with Lord Abergavenny inside of it, rattled away across the cobblestones. Lady Abergavenny had sat up waiting for him, eating wedding cake in the kitchen with Mrs. Howard, the housekeeper.
“I never expected my husband to carry me across the threshold,” said Lady Abergavenny as Mrs. Howard polished a set of silver eggcups. “But I did expect that he’d cross the threshold himself and not disappear into the night as soon as the vows were spoken without so much as a by your leave. Maybe I’m over-sensitive?”
Mrs. Howard frowned.
“I’m not over-sensitive?” asked Lady Abergavenny.
“That’s your fourth piece of cake, my lady,” said Mrs. Howard.
“I have heard a lady should eat a like a bird,” said Lady Abergavenny thoughtfully. “But I’ve also heard a lady should do what she wants. I’m not sure how to reconcile those two principles. Perhaps once I’ve been a lady for longer . . .” She picked an icing flower from the top of her cake and popped it in her mouth.
“You might not be a lady for long,” said Mrs. Howard. She gave Lady Abergavenny a significant look. “But it’s not for me to say.” She dropped her polish rag and stood, rattling her keys.
“You shouldn’t be downstairs,” she said. “I will take you to your chambers.”
“There’s still more cake,” said Lady Abergavenny. “And if Lord Abergavenny returns I want to know right away.”
“He won’t return,” said Mrs. Howard curtly. “Not tonight. He’s gone to his country estate to set his affairs in order. He’ll meet you on the steamer tomorrow evening.”
“The steamer,” echoed Lady Abergavenny.
“To America,” said Mrs. Howard, staring at her with something like pity. “You do seem rather stout . . .”
Lady Abergavenny snorted and cut another even larger wedge of cake.
“Of heart,” continued Mrs. Howard. “You may last longer than I’d imagine. Longer than the previous Ladies Abergavenny.”
Lady Abergavenny examined her fork.
“Longer than all of them?” she asked, licking the tines with a great show of unconcern. “Surely not all of
them.”
“I said may,” said Mrs. Howard.
“But there were quite of few of them?” prodded Lady Abergavenny. “Four?”
“Nine,” said Mrs. Howard.
“Oh yes, now I remember,” said Lady Abergavenny. “That’s what Lord Abergavenny had told me.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Howard. “I’ll see if your fire has been properly laid. Betty will bring you up when you’re ready.”
And so began the unhappy phase of Lady Abergavenny’s marriage. Betty never came to fetch her and Lady Abergavenny slept at the kitchen table and finished the wedding cake for breakfast. At eleven, the carriage arrived and she was whisked away to the steamer and off to America.
Now, a year later, Lady Abergavenny had no idea whether or not she had lasted longer than the other Ladies Abergavenny. Lord Abergavenny didn’t mention them, or much of anything else.
Ninety-nine, one hundred. Lady Abergavenny laid down the boar-bristle brush. She blew out the candle on the windowsill, changed out of her high-necked gown into an equally high-necked nightdress, and climbed into bed. Somewhere in the region, Lord Abergavenny was still striding. A wolf howled. Lady Abergavenny slept.
When she woke, the cold summer sun was sending pale rays through the attic window. She rose. She performed her morning labor. One hundred strokes with the boar-bristle brush through her long and shining auburn hair. She changed from her high-necked nightdress into an equally high-necked gown, and descended the stair to breakfast alone at the banquet table on goose croquettes and tea that tasted of smoke.
“It’s a fine day,” said Lady Abergavenny to the footman. He was standing exactly where he had been standing the night before. He had large, wet sea-green eyes that he blinked at her as he scratched his beard with his long, dirty nails. His beard was powdered white as his hair, which struck Lady Abergavenny as excessively formal given his generally uncleanly and disheveled appearance.
“You never can tell what counts as propriety in foreign lands,” thought Lady Abergavenny. “In some places a footman’s livery includes beard powder, in other places it really doesn’t do to have any beard at all.” The footman’s chest was very broad and he must have once attempted to button his coat and so popped the buttons off. His undershirt was white and looked puffed up like a freshly filled down pillow.
“Sun,” said Lady Abergavenny. “The rays of the sun are so heartening, a boon to the soul in despond.” She smiled a non-desponding smile (unconvincing) at the footman but he was not looking at her. He never looked at her. He plucked a louse from his beard and crushed it beneath his boot. Lady Abergavenny sighed. When she counted her Woes, she counted “dearth of conversation” among them. As Malvina Potts, daughter of Dunston Potts, fruit and nut seller, she had conversed on many topics of interest to the buyers of fruits and nuts, on the qualities and availabilities of various fruits and nuts certainly, but also on other things, horses, rakes, music hall stars, the weather, hair oils, steamships, crime, the Protestant succession, what have you. It had been so enjoyable.
She heard creaking above her head and knew that Lord Abergavenny was pacing in his study, dictating the findings from the previous night to his secretary, Mr. Middleton. It was Lord Abergavenny’s habit to dictate in his study before heading out again into the region to recommence his striding.
“I believe Lord Abergavenny suffers from the monomania,” said Lady Abergavenny to the footman. She usually reserved this type of commentary for her letters to her sister, the humble Mrs. Cottenham, but the footman was in closer proximity than her sister. Plus he never scolded her for complaining of life with a lord.
“Pardon me, Malvina,” the humble Mrs. Cottenham had written in her last letter. “But how you can go on and on about your Unfortunate Circumstance and your Woes and the Bitter Draughts that Blast the Buds on the Nuptial Bower is quite beyond my humble powers of comprehension. You are married, let me remind you, to a PEER of the realm and though he has taken you beyond the boundaries of said realm you are nonetheless maintained in a state of LUXURY and INDOLENCE unimaginable to your poor relations who are, let me remind you, working their fingers to the bones to make ends meet as this has been an IMPOSSIBLE YEAR FOR NUTS and your very own father has been reduced to selling ballads he writes himself about LURID EVENTS and your very own mother his wife is dying of shame and Mr. Cottenham and James and Matilda and I are working downriver for the aniline dyers and our hands are a dreadful PURPLE color that can’t be washed off and Matilda is always itching her face and her face is now SPOTTED WITH PURPLE. When you are sitting to your supper at a great big table laid with turbots and turtles and lobsters and truffles and sauces and jellies and creams and pasties and clarets and coffees and everything nice and Regretting this and Lamenting that remember if you can that you might be BREAKING YOUR TEETH on old nuts and that your face and hands are not purple and remember your sister who bears her own WOES without so much as a fiddle-dee-dee.”
The humble Mrs. Cottenham had written this letter in purple ink and enclosed a ballad. The ballad was very lurid, about a woman in Newcastle who fell in love with a veal cutlet.
Moving on.
“He is singularly focused on his research,” continued Lady Abergavenny to the footman. “Even among naturalists, explorers, and inventors, I do believe such dedication is uncommon. Before we arrived in this region, we spent two months in the Amazon jungles, and before that we spent two months in the Himalayas and before that two months in the North American forests. Lord Abergavenny is searching for a particular kind of bird, of course. The Boffin bird.”
Lady Abergavenny more or less believed this. Why not a Boffin bird? Monomaniacs could fixate on just about anything. Lord Abergavenny had shipped several corrugated, perforated black metal crates back to London over the course of their travels and when she had once asked him, “My lord, what creature bellows so horribly to find itself enclosed in that crate?” he had answered immediately, “The Boffin bird,” and gone striding off to attend to a windlass. Lady Abergavenny had never dared to press her eye to a perforation in the crate but she gathered from the din that Boffin birds were very, very big. Big and not too pleased with the accommodations the big, brave, handsome Lord Abergavenny had seen fit to provide.
The footman’s nose was slightly askew and he had a finger in his ear but the ear without the finger inside of it was cocked in her direction. Lady Abergavenny felt encouraged.
“The Boffin bird is of great value to science,” she said. “Lord Abergavenny hunts this bird on royal commission. Why, you ask?”
The footman had not asked. He never asked. He was the silent type. But Lady Abergavenny was warming to her theme. “Something about its wings is of the utmost importance.” She hooked her thumbs and flapped her fingers to emphasize the point. She was proud of the point, as it was entirely of her own surmise. “Examining the wings of live Boffin birds will enable humans to unlock the mystery of flight.”
“Lady Abergavenny!” A deep baritone interrupted Lady Abergavenny’s speech, the deep baritone that issued from the chest of Lord Abergavenny. He was standing in the doorway in his dun-colored research jacket and buff-colored trousers and kid-colored boots of soft kid. His black hair waved around his handsome face and his blue eyes were narrowed. “It is half ten. You should be in the clearing in the forest, not yammering to a Mongolian butler.”
Lady Abergavenny stood quickly and fell back into the chair with a cry. Tears leapt to her eyes. She had been sitting on her long and shining auburn hair and it had jerked her neck horribly.
“You were sitting on your hair,” observed Lord Abergavenny.
“I wasn’t,” said Lady Abergavenny.
“You were,” said Lord Abergavenny. “Did you loosen any strands?”
“Not a one,” said Lady Abergavenny standing slowly with an odd torsion of her hips. Her hair swung free behind her. Lord Abergavenny was still regarding her narrowly, his finely modeled lips pressed together.
“Perhaps you would like a
croquette?” asked Lady Abergavenny. “And some tea? The footman,” she hesitated.
“Max,” she said. She rather thought his name would be something like Max.
“Max our first footman could pour you some tea.”
Lord Abergavenny now chose to curl his finely modeled lips. “I have a flagon of tea and a tin of biscuits in my saddlebags. A man does not pursue science and serve the crown by taking tea in a drawing room and neither does a man’s wife.” He waved to the footman who was hanging his head, playing with the buttonholes in his jacket. “Clear these plates,” said Lord Abergavenny. “Lady Abergavenny is off to the forest.” And he strode into the room, gripped her am, and steered her through the door. He released her in the front hall where she donned her green cloak and picked up The Foxes of Silicon Fen, a sentimental novel that kept her company throughout her long, dull hours in the forest.
Outside, Lord Abergavenny bowed abruptly.
“Good day, Lady Abergavenny,” he said and mounted his horse and thundered away down the road through the dark wooden houses of the village, toward the mountains.
The day really was fine by the standards of the region. The sky was cloudless and white and the wind was blunt and harmless and didn’t claw at the throat of Lady Abergavenny’s cloak.
“I am happily married,” thought Lady Abergavenny as she walked through the village, turning off on a footpath into the forest. “My hands are not purple and my face is not purple and my husband is a peer of the realm. He loves me in his way, or at least he loves my hair, which is rather my crowning glory. While he strides in search of the Boffin bird, I bask in luxury and indolence, which is preferable to standing on cobbles shelling walnuts. I never eat mincemeat but instead exotic foods such as geese and bison and fermented fish and creamy rice dishes richly spiced. My husband requires me to sit each day for hours in a wooded place so that my constitution is improved by the strengthening vapors of the forest. It is all perfectly lovely and I couldn’t be happier. I do rather miss green plums and almonds and I do rather miss long chats with Minda Travers and Jill Baker on Market Street and I do rather miss book shops and sweet shops and music halls and the circus but I am of course very grateful that I am peeress Lady Abergavenny and not plain Malvina Potts. I do rather miss Malvina Potts.”
