Only Sofia-Elisabete

by Robin Kobayashi

  “We must search for your father, whom Lord Scapeton won’t let me see.”

  “Lord Scapeton, you say.” He scowled as though he remembered that he detested his brother.

  “Then, once we achieve that, I aim to find Emmerence.”

  “Emmerence?”

  I groaned at him. “Emmerence Odet, my governess.”

  “Oh, the little Swiss miss who befriended you ten years ago.”

  I double groaned. “She’s a young woman now, living somewhere in Paris. But Lord Scapeton won’t tell me anything more. So, we have serious work to do.”

  A glint appeared in his eyes. “Must Munro come with us?”

  If I hadn’t become such a proper young lady, I would have thrown a bed-pillow at him, and the two of us would have fought pillow to pillow until our sides ached from laughter. It’s at times like these when I almost wished I hadn’t grown up. But then, I wouldn’t have my Kitt, would I?

  Not long after, my father surprised everyone by proposing to Aggie on bended knee. He promised to be her loving husband once more, despite his occasional fits of mania, which turned him into his own doppel-ganger of the worst sort. “But worry not, Aggie,” he assured her. “My true self will re-emerge if you promise to wait for me here”—he tapped his forehead—“in the safe corner of my mind.” Aggie nodded tearfully, quite beside herself. And that is how my father and step-mamma became husband and wife again.

  It was now December, and the swallows had long ago flown south for the winter, except for one steadfast swallow who remained in Scarbro’ to love me. The weather challenging us, my handsome swallow and I set out early on a bracing walk to our special place, Cornelian Bay. As usual, we rambled on the cliff-walk for a few miles, braving the blasts of cold rough winds, and then we took to the sands, after scrambling down the clay cliffs often damp from rain.

  Low tide at mid-day made for a tolerable stroll. Moon-shaped blobs of jelly-fish had washed up on the shore, along with sea-stars and tangled strings of seaweed. We stopped to search for the carnelians and the jaspers and moss-agates that hid themselves amongst the pebbles. Kitt, being lucky this time, found a rare carnelian, and he vowed to have it made into a pendant for me, so that we would always remember our visit to Cornelian Bay.

  He said, “A new necklace to help us begin anew.”

  “With new hopes, new memories,” I added.

  Having traversed the sands, we eventually came to Osgodby Point—a hump-back headland at the southern end of the bay. Scattered round its base were clumsy masses of rectangular boulders washed over with brine and too treacherous to walk upon. On the other side of Osgodby Point lay Cayton Bay, but we had never seen it, because something, either the incoming tide or the setting sun, inevitably prevented our going there. It always left us with regret.

  “There must be a way to climb over Osgodby Point,” he muttered.

  I sensed his restlessness for a new challenge, a fresh start somewhere.

  “The last time we came here, a spotted dog clambered up the side where that landslip is.”

  Kitt found a faint path there. Slowly we ascended Osgodby Point, picking our way up a rocky surface patched with vegetation, and then crossing over the headland on a slope very much exposed and buffeted by the wind. We stopped to admire the views. As if to warn me of something, the red beads on my neck became suffused with warmth, making me wonder what was going to happen.

  The rushing wind suddenly settled down. Overhead the sunbeams that darted through the high white cloud lit up the sky. And the sun spoke to me: “Fiery and constant I am. But, oh!—unite me with a cloud, I become positively magnificent.” A double halo then formed round the sun, the outer circle being red, the inner one being blue. I could only have imagined such heavenly hues before this.

  “The glories!” Kitt sang out in a strong clear voice. Like a sun worshipper, he reached for the light to absorb its effects and to become completely cured of his throat ailment.

  I raised my arms likewise and cheered, “The glories!”

  When, eventually, this celestial miracle faded from view, the sun still shone brightly through the luminous clouds. Kitt, having found a reasonable path, helped me to descend the headland to a paradise of smooth wide sands backed by an undercliff and cliffs dense with undergrowth. This Cayton Bay, being deserted, belonged only to us. Kitt leapt high as he loped down the shore. Once he had gone far enough, he circled back to where I now stood, and he twirled me three times round.

  “Ha, ha!” we laughed together.

  Shortly afterwards, the weather changed yet again. We had been enjoying ourselves too much to take notice of the cold blue wind that had returned and the sun that longed to set in the sky. Kitt roamed the tidal sands, absorbed in his reveries, while I, gazing up the coast to Scarborough Castle, contemplated our brilliant futures. In Edinburgh next autumn, Kitt would begin his studies in medicine, and I would be tutored in chemistry and botany. We would become the heroes of reason and imagination, and save lives. Nothing from our troubled pasts could stop us, not even a mother who wasn’t always a good mother, and not even a father or stepfather who behaved very badly and put us in danger. And if the current of the past pulled us back, we knew what to do. A current always ends in calmer waters. The dolphin at Iona had shown us that.

  So ran my thoughts about how to survive the past by not fighting it. All at once, the wind began to hiss and it snarled out, “Loca de amor! It happened as I predicted: your tale wandered into the shadows and light.”

  Was that the voice of One-Eyed Lincelada? I looked round for the gypsy fortune-teller in the form of a lynx. Though I saw nothing, I knew it was her.

  The churlish wind whipped about. It tousled my hair and snapped my necklace.

  “Oh, no, no, no!”

  “What happened?” Kitt inquired from afar.

  “Ay! They are lost!”

  Red beads tumbled down the wet sands towards a rising tide. Kitt gave chase to them, frantically waving his hat and shouting into the wind, “Come back, you miscreants!” His wild-arm attempts to rescue them amused One-Eyed Lincelada, whose merry cackles faded into the sea. Within seconds, the beads vanished into the breaking waves. Fishes and sea-creatures would soon gobble them down.

  “All gone,” Kitt informed me, with a sorrowful look.

  I clasped my hands at my neck, wondering how I would survive without my gypsy beads. Who or what would guide me to warn me of things, to urge me on? I suppose I must be like everyone else now, relying on my reason and good sense, with an ear listening to the Almighty. But had my precious imagination fled with the beads too? The thought of it increased my anguish.

  “Ah! All not gone,” I told Kitt. Because there, on the sands, a mischievous bead had lodged itself in a clump of seaweed. The lone bead twinkled at me in the waning sunlight, daring me to save it.

  Just a few months ago, the girl I once was would have pounced on it. The young lady I had become knelt gracefully instead. Having recovered it, though, I knew not what to do with it, this fiery red bead seasoned with briny water and dotted with gritty sand. And so, I placed it on the tip of my tongue, where it dissolved into my heart.

  Historical & Literary Notes

  This work of fiction draws inspiration from historical figures as well as a Jane Austen character. I have taken some liberties—I hope forgivable—of incorporating them into Sofia-Elisabete’s story.

  Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828), the great Spanish painter and printmaker, was a bold commentator, a critic of his era. Some of the dialogue for Goya in this story came directly from his letters and etchings, as well as from his friends’ letters. He created the artworks attributed to him here, with the exception of Luna de Miel, the portrait of Sofia-Elisabete. This fictional painting was inspired, in part, by The Milkmaid of Bordeaux—a proto-Impressionist masterpiece, which may or may not have been painted by him. In 1793, after a prolonged mysterious illness, Goya became completely deaf. He emigrated to France in 1824, where, in Bord
eaux, he lived with his companion, Leocadia Zorilla, and her children, Guillermo and Rosario. It is unknown whether Rosario was, in fact, his natural daughter.

  Leandro Fernández de Moratín (1760-1828) was a major poet, dramatist and man of letters of the Spanish Enlightenment. His plays include the comedy The Old Man and the Young Girl, in which he denounces the custom of arranged marriages for money and also the strict religious upbringing of the young. Granted, he himself, at the age of twenty, had wished to marry his fifteen-year-old childhood sweetheart but she, Sabina, married a much older man—her cousin, the Count Giambattista. Goya painted Moratín’s portrait in 1799 and then again in 1824. Like his friend Goya, he lived in self-imposed exile after Ferdinand VII was restored to absolute power in 1823.

  Luis Candelas Cajigal (1804-1837) was a celebrated bandit of Madrid. He began his life of crime at a young age, later transmuting into a sort of Don Juan, dedicated to conquering women and living at their expense. He was known for his wit, good humor, fine taste and desire to live well. The man led a double life—Luis Álvarez de Cobos, a well-respected financier, during the day, and Luis Candelas, bandit-chief, at night. He believed that fortune should be distributed equally amongst the people. After committing a string of audacious robberies, he was arrested, accused of over forty crimes, and sentenced to death by garrote. He was thirty-three. His parting words were, “As a man I have sinned, but my hands were never stained with the blood of my fellow men. I say this so that He who will receive me in His arms hears me. Goodbye, my country, be happy!”

  Agustina of Zaragoza (1786-1857) (Agustina Raimunda María Zaragoza y Domenech) was the Spanish heroine who defended the besieged city of Zaragoza during the Peninsular War. Known as the Spanish Joan of Arc, she was the Duke of Wellington’s first female officer, holding the rank of captain. She inspired many, including Goya, who etched her image in a famous print, and Lord Byron, whose Childe Harold celebrated her in several detailed verses. Sir John Carr, who met her in 1809, described how she wore military dress but with a petticoat—and a saber by her side. After the war, Agustina became a familiar sight in Zaragoza—a highly-respected matron who walked about wearing medals—which is how Sofia-Elisabete encounters her in this story.

  Colonel Fitzwilliam appears in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice as a minor character, the cousin of Fitzwilliam Darcy. In Sofia-Elisabete’s story, the colonel fought in the Peninsular War, and Sofia-Elisabete is his war-baby—his love-child with Maria Isabel Soares Belles, a Portuguese woman he met in Lisbon. The colonel eventually married an older widow named Agnes Wharton who lived in Scarborough. They raised and educated Sofia-Elisabete together until at the age of nine she went abroad to live in Seville with her natural mother, Doña Marisa—the erstwhile Maria Isabel. The colonel had planned to retrieve his daughter from Spain after two years. A tragedy befell him first.

  Songs and Poems used in this story include “The Posie,” by Robert Burns, 1791, “A Red, Red Rose,” by Robert Burns, 1794, “A Dirge,” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1824 (published posthumously), “’Tis Believed That This Harp” (A Selection of Irish Melodies, 1808-1818), and “Tha tighinn fodham éiridh,” by John McDougall McLean, 1715. Other lyrics were found in Coleccion de Coplas de Seguidillas, Boleras y Tiranas (Barcelona, 1825), Páginas olvidadas del Madrid taurino, by José Vega (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Madrileños, 1953), Spanish Legendary Tales, collected by Maria Trinidad Howard Middlemore (London, 1885), and The Highland Monthly (Inverness, Vol. IV, 1892-93).

  About the Author

  Robin Elizabeth Kobayashi is a writer living in Los Angeles County, California. She takes delight in the sublime and the ridiculous, the extraordinary and the everyday, the magical and the mystical, and the wisdom that can be extracted from it all. With her degree in law, she has focused on her legal publishing career for many years, writing and editing treatises. But her first loves are history and fiction. Her historical novel, I, Sofia-Elisabete: Love Child of Colonel Fitzwilliam (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), was named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Indie Books of 2018. Her historical novella, Twelfth-Night Cake & the Rosings Ghost, was a finalist in the 2018 Wishing Shelf Book Awards in the UK. In 2021, her short story, “Goya’s Muse,” was published in The Copperfield Review. She is a member of the Historical Novel Society, the Regency Fiction Writers, and the Magic Realism Writers.

  Join her at www.facebook.com/RobinEKobayashi and @RobinEKobayashi.