“Of course, the Landrys have always led the Uprisen and so the choice to assemble them is yours,” the old man said. “If you are right, this is trouble like none we’ve ever seen.”
Father considered this for a moment before answering. “I will wait for now, but I expect you and the others to be in touch. In the meantime, I intend to suppress any resistance in my city.”
After the man signed off the screen, Father sat silently in his study. I remained near the door, pondering the idea of summoning the Uprisen from all corners of the country. I thought about the spate of rebellions cropping up in the South, of my father’s fear that the Rootless were restless and losing their respect for the established order of things.
If Father was thinking about summoning the Uprisen, he must be worried indeed.
I tried to quell the wave of nervousness this realization created. I wanted to trust Father. People like Father kept our world elegant and ordered. But the cost of elegance and order shouldn’t be punishing someone for a crime they didn’t commit.
And with that thought came the disorienting feeling of being unmoored, cut loose and cast off from the things and people I’d always thought of as certainties. Doubt was fractal, and no matter how many times I tried to stop it, uncertainty threaded through me in recursive loops, permeating everything.
The creak of Father’s chair coupled with the rustling of paper reminded me that I needed to leave before I was discovered. I gathered the hem of my dress and crept away, hoping the soft padding of my flats would go unnoticed. I made it to the foyer and breathed a sigh of relief, ready to escape to my room and think over all I’d just heard.
But as I mounted the stairs, a large brass plaque caught my eye. Set into the wall next to a bust of Jacob Landry, it displayed a snippet of his most famous speech, delivered a few weeks after the end of the Last War. I leaned forward to read the words of the Nobel-winning scientist, even though its inscription was as familiar to me as a nightly prayer.
WE WILL CREATE ORDER, ELEGANCE, AND PROSPERITY IN OUR WORLD. HOWEVER, THERE IS ONE CLASS OF PEOPLE WE DENY THIS NEW ORDERED LIFE. THOSE WHO FOUGHT THE MOST VICIOUSLY AGAINST US, WHO KILLED OUR WOMEN AND CHILDREN, AND WHO DIDN’T SURRENDER AT THE END. THEY SHALL NEVER OWN LAND OR A HOUSE, THEY SHALL NOT BENEFIT FROM OUR SCHOOLS OR OUR DOCTORS. THEY WILL BE LIKE BUGS ON THE GROUND, WITHOUT A FUTURE AND FOREVER ROOTLESS. . . .
While Father contemplated suppression and control, Mother contemplated another type of combat altogether: courtship. That very next morning Mother informed us that she planned to host an emergency dinner party.
“Whatever for?” Father asked impatiently, setting down his tablet.
“Haven’t you heard? Christine Dana and her son, David, arrived in town early—David himself was spotted at Marianne’s debut. And to think, we haven’t even introduced ourselves or invited him over! He must already be drowning in young women, and if he is to marry Madeline one day, we need to make her as visible to him as possible.”
“I’m not marrying David Dana,” I announced.
Father turned to me. “Don’t be so certain about what the future will bring. But,” he said, looking at Mother, “I’m not sure I see the necessity of a dinner party.”
“Of course, it’s necessary!” Mother said. “We’ve already missed a valuable opportunity at Marianne’s debut. We need to display Landry Park and display Madeline and make a good first impression.”
Father frowned, but his tablet began chiming. Excusing himself, he left to take the call.
The talk of marriage and good impressions made my head ache and my stomach churn.
But perhaps tonight wouldn’t be a total loss. Addison would never miss an opportunity to flaunt her daughter in front of the city’s newest bachelor, and if Cara came, I could finally talk to her. I finished my lavender tea and went back to my room, rehearsing my conversation with Cara as I walked.
• • •
Mother invited over twenty-four families for the impromptu dinner and sent Cook into the city center to purchase carloads of food and hire extra servants for the evening. I spent the day in my room being fussed over by a seamstress and watching servants and gardeners trot in and out of the house, filling every corner with fresh flowers. Smells of dinner began wafting into the upper stories by noon.
“This is ridiculous, going to all this trouble,” I protested to Elinor, who shrugged as she handed the seamstress a tape measure.
“He is supposed to be very handsome, miss,” she said.
“But Mother hates Christine! Why would she want to be related to her by marriage?”
“Maybe it would be some sort of victory for her. Christine may still hold some power over your father, but in the end, you will conquer her son.”
I gazed out the window, where the tops of the budding apple trees rustled in a cool breeze. “Marriage is not supposed to be like war.”
Elinor came over to help the seamstress pull my corset tighter. “With the gentry, everything is like war.” She pulled the stays tight, leaving me breathless.
After another three hours of standing blue-lipped before the mirrors, my dress was complete enough for me to leave. “Don’t forget to have Elinor do your hair,” the seamstress reminded me, a needle held in the corner of her mouth. “Or your mother will have my head.”
Elinor laughed. “And she’ll have yours, too, Miss Madeline, frizzy waves and all.”
She tied the wide silk sash of my lace gown and plucked at the princess sleeves to make them fuller. Her own slim figure was hidden under a long black dress and starched white apron, making her look older than her nineteen years. Every once in a while, a soft sigh would come from her mouth as she adjusted my dress.
“Do you think there will be lots of dancing tonight?” she asked wistfully.
“Probably,” I said. “You know Mother would never miss a chance to turn a dinner into a full-blown party. And she invited practically everyone in town.” I dreaded going down; with the academy finished for the year, the drinking and flirting would be much worse than usual.
Late spring and early summer traditionally marked a period of frenzied social activity for the young gentry. The heirs were free from any responsibility save for marrying, and the unluckier second and third children hadn’t yet begun their toil at the university or at finding a mate who could support them. If they failed to find a good position or make a good match, they risked sinking into the middle class, albeit with a considerable amount of respectability.
Between the bottom rungs of the gentry and the upper levels of the middle class, there was some fluidity of movement, especially when large sums of cash or impoverished but ancient parcels of land were involved. Likewise, there was some movement between the middle and the working class. My own maid Elinor was born to a middle-class family, but her parents’ early deaths meant that she had to seek employment at a young age. For a girl of six, it’s either the textile mills or service, but luckily Elinor had been going to a school and learning to read. So her teacher found her a comfortable position, training as a lady’s maid. As my lady’s maid.
Money was the real determinant. With enough money, you could purchase the illusion of respectability and after a few generations, the origin of your fortune would be forgiven and your family could move within the highest circles. Without it, one slowly fell through the ranks to the working class—the people who labored in factories or farmed small chunks of land.
Only one class was a sentence for life—the Rootless.
If only Elinor and I could trade places—I’d happily hide upstairs while she danced with every bachelor in town. My fantasy evaporated the moment Elinor resumed the talk about fixing my hair. I made my escape when she went to search for the silver-handled brush and the hairpins—my mother’s chosen instruments of torture.
Not for the first time, I wished I could talk to Mother seriously about going to the university, but every time I even mentioned the thought of delaying marriage, she would scold me into silence. I
suppose that since she had devoted her life to marrying well and since it had paid such massive dividends, she wanted the same for me. But sometimes I felt like I could barely reach her through this wall between us, even when I wanted nothing more than to lay my head in her lap and sob in frustration that the house I loved was growing into a prison.
I wandered downstairs to wait for Mother to finish dressing. I let my fingers trail along the silk-covered wall as I made my way back to the darkened ballroom. A wall of windows and French doors overlooked a wide patio with shallow stairs leading down to a vast lawn, currently patchworked with unrelenting clumps of snow. The atomic symbol—our family crest—was rendered in platinum and inlaid into the marble of the patio. It gleamed dully in the low light.
Father stood at one of the doors looking out. The May twilight made his dark red hair look even darker, like wine or blood . . . redder than Mars, redder than the roses that grew in the English garden outside. He stood at least a head taller than me, but I knew we looked like a matched set standing so close, all gray eyes and pale skin.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Father said. And it was: the spring evening was blossoming into stars, while tendrils of faint orange light still reached over the lawn. To the north, the breeze tossed the slender branches of the apple and peach trees, sending storms of slush and ice crashing to the thawing ground. To the northeast, the skyline downtown lit the sky into a gentle lavender, and to the south and the west, the blazing lights of gentry estates looked like candles in the dusk.
I breathed in deeply. I could happily stand on this patio forever, surveying our land.
Mother came downstairs, slim and dark-haired like all Lawrences were, wearing a yellow silk gown embellished with crystals. It set off her deep brown eyes and dusky skin. “Are you two ready?”
Father extended an arm to me, and I took it. We both took a longing look back at the patio, with the gentle aspect fading into rapid darkness, and made our way to the front, where doors would be opened and the dinner guests admitted to Landry Park.
• • •
The band played a cheerful march while we greeted the guests. Nights like tonight were the reason the gentry relied so heavily on nuclear power. The powerful charges created enough energy for every bright light in every room and for the massive kitchen with its walk-in freezers and rows of stoves and ovens. Even when the winds turned bitter and icy, our houses stayed snug and warm. Solar power would never be able to sustain a proper winter season in a gentry house, nor would wind power. Only those little nuclear boxes could make an estate like Landry Park light up with glamour and music three to four times a week.
Strange to think that two or three hundred years ago, people still burned coal and gas for electricity, and that it took something as cataclysmic as the Eastern invasion and the ensuing treaty barring carbon emissions and oil trading to spark the new technology.
Power generation quickly became the delineator of class. Wind power, with its industrial nature, took root among the poor, with homemade turbines decorating every tiny house, factory, and small farm. The middle class favored solar power because it was easy to maintain, reliable, and more discreet than the noisy turbines. The nuclear charge—portable and immensely powerful—became the favorite of the rich, but the raw materials needed to produce it was rare, and by ten or fifteen years after the Last War, the gentry alone could afford to purchase the charges.
Mother and Father greeted the guests, and I was forced to stand in a dress I didn’t want to wear, with flyaway hair and stray locks that blew in the chilly breeze coming from the open doors.
Addison and Cara glided into the open doors, arms linked like girlfriends walking around a ballroom, the candlelight glinting off their blond hair. They were the type of mother and daughter who were routinely mistaken for sisters. Only Cara’s untamed nature set her apart; the feral streak that made her ride horses at a breakneck pace and dive naked into rivers and challenge the boys to fights, which she always won.
As they got closer, I could see that Addison’s other hand gripped Cara tightly around the elbow, as if she was forcing her ahead. I thought I could just barely detect traces of greenish-purple along Cara’s throat under heavy layers of makeup, and a slight limp hampered her normally confident gait.
Addison wouldn’t want to miss a chance to have Cara meet David though, no matter how battered or in need of rest Cara might be. Jamie had once remarked that Addison lived through her daughter, and seeing Addison force her along like an injured horse, I couldn’t help but agree. The Westoffs hardly needed the money from a marriage to the Danas, but that wouldn’t make Addison’s pursuit of David for Cara any less vicious. Especially when she was competing against my mother.
I felt a moment of intense kinship with Cara. We would both inherit fortunes, but those fortunes deprived of us of any agency we might have wanted in our lives, our loves, or our marriages. And I couldn’t imagine being paraded in front of a potential suitor after what she had been through this week.
Despite the hidden bruises and scratches, however, Cara looked stunning, and no less haughty or regal than usual. She wore a very tight gold dress that showed off her back and arms, toned and sun-kissed, as if she existed in a world without winter
“What are you staring at?” she asked, noticing my gaze.
“Nothing.” I looked away.
Addison gave my mother a warm hug and my father a kiss on the cheek that left a scarlet stain.
“Oh, Madeline!” Addison cooed. “I barely saw you there, you little imp!”
Ever since Cara and I were children, Addison had never missed a chance to point out how scrawny and short I was compared to her buxom daughter, as if we were puppies in a litter of hunting hounds. I suddenly recalled one of Jacob Landry’s speeches about breeding healthy, intelligent children, children who themselves could bear more children, and thus the upper class would be able to stem the tide of the inferior and sickly children issuing from the poor. I wonder how he would feel now, knowing that almost all of the Landrys had been plagued with fevers and debilitating illnesses in their adolescence. That almost all of us had been born thin and pale, red-haired and flinty-eyed.
Addison came over to me and fingered the strap of my dress. “This gown is darling on you. It really shows off your . . .” she looked from my scant chest to my face “ . . . eyes.”
The dress was gray. This could be true.
“And your hair,” she continued. “How natural of you to leave it down.”
Her deconstruction of my flaws was interrupted by the guest of honor, Christine Dana, her red dress rustling as she walked in, looking like a fairy-tale queen. All that was missing was the crown. The men in the room turned, and even the footmen glanced away from the floor, their eyes tracing her slim waist and long neck. This was the first time I’d seen her, and I had to admit she was striking. Her face was all angles, with wide eyes, and hair black as onyx.
“Christine!” Addison simpered. “How wonderful to see you! I know Olivia and Alexander have missed you so much.”
I was surprised Addison couldn’t feel my mother’s glare pierce through her skin.
“Where is David?” Cara asked casually.
Christine waved a hand. “On his way. He wanted to drive himself and he left a little after me. I’m sure he’ll be here any minute.”
Father checked his watch. “Let’s go inside and begin. No point in keeping everybody hungry over a teenage boy.”
“Right as always, Alexander,” Christine agreed. “Eighteen years, and you are still sharp as a knife.”
My father gave her a fleeting smile. Mother looked livid. She let the others go ahead into the ballroom, then seized my arm. She looked me up and down, as if looking for something else to be angry about. “Why didn’t you fix your hair?” she demanded.
“I—”
“Leave,” she interrupted. “Go fix your hair. If you hurry, you could be back before David even arrives.”
“I—”
“Go,” she seethed, and off I went.
I never liked having Mother angry with me, but I was more than happy to leave the stuffy dinner before it began. My remarks as a younger girl had cost my father more than one business deal, and so he no longer allowed me to sit near his colleagues or potential business partners. “You think you’re so clever,” he’d said, after one particularly awkward meal. “But everything you say has a price. When the man next to you asks if you enjoy the orchards and you tell him that the harvest has been poor for three years running, or when you mention that half our livestock died from disease—these things all have a cost.”
“I’m only telling the truth,” I had protested. “You always say that the gentry are supposed to honest and dignified no matter what.”
“There are matters more important than the truth. You do not want to get a reputation for being difficult, do you?”
“I don’t care if people think I’m difficult.”
“You will if it means you can’t marry.”
“But I don’t want to marry,” I’d objected. “I want to go to the university. Other gentry heirs have—why can’t I?”
“Because they were not Landrys,” he’d said simply. “Landry Park must have an heir dedicated to its survival. If you had an older brother or sister, it would be different.”
That ever-wanted older sibling of mine. My whole life revolved around their absence.
I shook off these bad memories and went into my room to find Elinor, who was spreading a new bedspread across the bed. I saw a flash of silver thread—the Landry crest stitched into the silk.
I stared at the delicate cluster of the embroidered nucleus as Elinor quickly pinned up my hair. Several minutes later, I realized she had finished and was back to straightening my room, and I stood. In the mirror, I saw an antique hair comb nestled in my hair . . . the atomic symbol, wrought in platinum, diamonds sparkling from the nucleus. My house, my bed, my hair—it all belonged to my family. To my father.
Landry Park Page 4
