Revenant Eve

by Sherwood Smith

  “I think so. Because it will match the world she understands.”

  “And then she will punish me.”

  “I think that is going to happen no matter what you say.”

  “Good.” Aurélie’s scowl deepened. “I will deserve punishment, for telling lies.”

  That’s what happened. From the second I saw the angry, smug lift to Aunt Kittredge’s upper lip, my budding dislike of the woman zapped straight to the red zone, especially when she rubbed in her power over Aurélie by making her kneel and beg pardon before the entire family. I knew she was convinced of right, and that forcing Aurélie to kneel was conventional behavior for the time, but I hated how much angry enjoyment she was getting out of her moral superiority.

  Aurélie’s head was bowed, and tears of shame dripped onto her hands, but I could see the faces of the family: Uncle Kittredge troubled, clearly wishing himself elsewhere; James equally uncomfortable; Cassandra’s chin high like her mother’s, though her puckered brow indicated ambivalence, and little Diana squinting solemnly at them all as if trying to bring them into focus.

  Aurélie was confined to the schoolroom, forbidden access to the garden for the rest of the month, and made to write out, in her best hand, a book of sermons. The only outside activity permitted was going to and from church.

  Aurélie went upstairs to mope with the intensity of the thirteen-year-old who has been wronged. I waited impatiently for her to come to the mirror again. It was finally time to begin communicating—to start the process of making sure both our futures would be secure.

  I’d kept amending my long-rehearsed speech over time, except for my opening sentence, one I was fairly sure any girl would love to hear: How would you like to marry a prince?

  The next day, Miss Oliver saw fit to deliver her own lecture, ending with, “Young ladies must remember that reputation begins in the schoolroom. Mrs. Kittredge will scarcely be able to arrange a suitable marriage if the gentleman hears whispers about fanciful tales and taradiddles, to put it no higher. No gentleman of worth could envision such a woman heading his household.”

  Cassandra looked quite saintly, knowing the lecture was not aimed at her. Aurélie dropped her head in a submissive posture, but I could see her scowl, and so I thought: Ah-ha, my moment has come.

  As was her habit, she touched the mirror when she returned to her bedchamber to dress for dinner. Before she could start in about how unfair it was to be lectured for something she had not done, I gave her my line, “How would you like to marry a prince?”

  And waited for the squee, and the “Oooh, tell me what to do!” so I could establish myself as her best bud.

  She looked at me in horror. “She wouldn’t!”

  “Who wouldn’t? And, um, wouldn’t what?”

  “Maman promised me I could choose whom I should marry for myself, as she did. She’s not going back on her word?”

  “No. That is, I don’t know any more than you do. I told you, I cannot communicate with anybody but you.”

  She looked slightly relieved, then wary. “So why would you say such a horrid thing?”

  “Horrid?” I repeated, aghast.

  “What happens to princesses? They turn into queens.” She drew her finger across her neck.

  “But not all queens end up on the guillotine,” I said, mentally flailing.

  “No. The queen of England is married to a madman. The queen of Sweden, her king was assassinated dancing at a ball. The queen of Prussia, her king is ruled by his maitresse en titre.” Aurélie paused, then said, “I am not precisely certain what that means, but Fiba and I overheard talk about it, and we know it is horrid. Who would want such a life? Not I! I want to go home, and marry a privateer.”

  I stared at her, my lovingly prepared speech as blown to bits as my expectations. When I was her age, half my classmates had fantasized about somehow getting from Los Angeles to England to marry Prince William; then again, he lived a fairy tale life—the worst battle he’d ever face would be with nosy paparazzi. Princes in Aurélie’s time weren’t always handsome, smart, or safe. And princesses didn’t get to pick whom they would marry. I should have thought this through.

  Aurélie was still regarding me warily. “Duppy Kim, why did you say that?”

  Still flailing wildly, I glanced into the room, and pointed at a schoolbook labeled The Kings of England. “I was just thinking about what it might be like for English princesses,” I said weakly.

  “I pity them,” Aurélie said seriously. “Do you think my aunt will try to arrange such a marriage for me, because my father was a marquis? But royalty must marry royalty, is that not true? I should be safe from princes.”

  “Yes, you should be safe from princes,” I agreed in total defeat, as she went away to dress for dinner.

  TWELVE

  AFTER THAT DISASTER, I decided I had better bide my time and not imagine conversations based on the way girls think now. It wasn’t that I had not known about arranged marriages. I’d studied the evolution of marriage in history classes. What I hadn’t thought about was how marriage looked to girls of that time.

  Meanwhile, Aunt Kittredge announced that the Bouldeston cousins would not be invited this year after all, with a stony glance Aurélie’s way. This was also a time when several punishments and reminders for a single misdeed was considered good childrearing by many.

  For a few days Cassandra walked about like a thundercloud, for she’d been treasuring up things to show her cousins to impress them. Neither Aurélie nor Diana could speak without being snapped at, the one sharply corrected and the other scolded for being clumsy, slow, and in the way.

  Then one morning, Aunt Kittredge said to Cassandra, “Your Aunt Bouldeston writes to invite you to visit Lucretia and Lucasta in July. You have earned this treat.” Cassandra was instantly restored to good humor.

  The following morning found her downstairs singing and Miss Oliver in the front parlor, talking to Aunt Kittredge—which left Aurélie alone in the schoolroom. She was grimly laboring away at her copy-work when Diana approached her, hugging an old book tight against her front.

  “Pray look, Cousin. Here is my favorite poem. It is called ‘Aire and Angels,’” Diana whispered.

  Aurélie said, “Your favorite poem?”

  “It was writ by Doctor Donne,” Diana said softly, squinting worriedly over her shoulder at the closed door. Whoa—Donne? Diana was not quite ten.

  “Great Aunt Edith read it to me when I was small,” Diana went on. “His poems are in the book room. Nobody touches the old books, except me.” Another quick, squinting look, then Diana whispered, “Great Aunt Edith saw the fairies, you know.”

  “She did?”

  Diana nodded solemnly. “I think I saw them once.”

  “You did?”

  “I think so. I think ’twas real, and no mere dream. I was very small. It was raining, and the clouds parted, and there was a rainbow. Over the farm.” Diana’s arm lifted. “That was pretty. I turned the other way to see if the other end might be closer. There was no rainbow, but a beam of light coming down from betwixt the clouds, just beyond the rose gate. It was there that I saw them. I told everybody, and Mama and Papa scolded me and said it was a dream. Aunt Edith lived with us then. She was very old—she was born in the time of Queen Anne. She believed me. She said she saw the fairies many times when she was small, and so did her sister, who married an earl.”

  Diana issued this fact with solemn conviction, as if everyone knew that the word of a countess was to be trusted.

  “Why does no one see them now?”

  “I don’t know,” Diana said. “Only that some do. Most do not. Aunt Edith told me stories about the fairies and about magic things. Like how roses have powers against the evil ones.”

  “Evil ones? Oanga?”

  “What is that?”

  “The bad magic. Some can change from people to beast or bird.”

  “Shape-changers! I found mention of them once, in one of the books on the top shel
f.”

  Diana scanned the doorway again for lurking parental figures and whispered, “Aunt Edith told me the roses ward the evil ones who drink blood.”

  “Aunt Kittredge doesn’t know that about the roses?”

  “No. And she thinks the fairies are taradiddles.”

  “This word ‘taradiddles,’ it means lies, does it not?”

  “Stories. About things untrue. Aunt Edith said that when her father built the new house, all the old charms inside were done away with.”

  “Charms,” Aurélie breathed. “What’s that?”

  “A charm can be a carved or painted thing. Your fingers feel odd if you touch it. Aunt Edith said that the charms were to make evil go away. There are two in the stone gate by the roses. It feels like velvet when you touch the cross inside the circle, or the one like a four-petaled flower. I’m trying to find out why. Nobody reads those books on the top shelf but me,” Diana confided. “When I turned nine, I set myself a task, to read all my aunt’s books, but I must confess, I have no end of difficulties with my attempt to learn Greek and Latin. Oh, I know I’m being tedious, and Cassie always says I’m trying to put myself forward if I talk about books, though I assure you, I mean no such thing.” She took a deep breath. “Anyway, these poems, by Doctor Donne, they’re my favorites.”

  She leaned against the arm of Aurélie’s chair and pushed a small, gilt book into her hands. “Will you tell me everything that happened with the fairies?”

  Aurélie did, leaving out only the necklace, according to her promise. When she came to the part about seeing me, Diana listened with fast breathing and, at the end, begged to be shown me in the mirror.

  I don’t know who was more disappointed, the girls or me when Diana couldn’t see me, though Aurélie could. Aurélie described my features, touching the mirror as Diana peered so closely that her breath fogged the glass. “I almost saw something. I think. Though maybe it was just the light, slanting through the window.” She turned away with resignation. “The fairies didn’t sing to me in the garden, or I would have gone with you. And I wouldn’t care about the horrid rain, if I could have seen them.”

  The girls heard the governess’s tread on the landing, and Diana scampered out.

  June was a rainy month, keeping everyone inside. On the first of July, Cassandra set off in the carriage, accompanied by the governess on her unpaid leave. Miss Oliver had to do double duty as guardian on her way, but at least she got to ride post until they reached the Bouldeston estate in Kent.

  The long stretch of bad weather confined everyone inside. That, and the fact that Cassandra and her tattling tongue were safely out of reach, inspired James to reappear. He invited Aurélie to take up fencing again.

  The rest of the time, she and Diana had the schoolroom to themselves. Diana read ferociously, either seated at the small table bowed over her books, her nose nearly touching the pages, or next to Aurélie, sometimes leaning against her in a way that made me reflect on how affection-starved they both were. Aurélie had come from a loving family. Diana’s parents cared for her, but her father was kindly from a proper distance, and Cassandra, like her mother, did not seem inclined toward the warmth of a caress or kiss.

  So the two girls sat side by side, Aurélie reading aloud to Diana when the latter’s eyes hurt from bending over the page. They read literature, history, theology—everything in the library, talking it over.

  Aurélie spent the rest of her free time practicing with James and playing music. She read sheet music downstairs, but upstairs, on the spinet, where no one but Diana could hear, she improvised entrancing melodies. Each time she introduced a new one, it was usually after she’d been sitting in the window seat, making me wonder if the fae were still trying to lure her back to the woods.

  August arrived, and with it Cassandra, accompanied by Miss Oliver. Cassandra was full of “Lucretia says.” This cousin was held to be an authority on everything fashionable, her expertise based on the Bouldestons going up to London each spring.

  Cassandra also had plenty to brag about on her own account. She and Lucretia had delighted and astonished the company by their duets, and Lucretia had taught her the steps to the Passepied and the Cotillion, which “everyone” in Kent of any importance knew how to dance.

  Cassandra kept up the Lucretia says until the head-on collision with her mother over the necessity for all new gowns, based on the fact that Lucasta, the younger cousin, had overheard Lucretia telling one of their friends that Cassandra’s wardrobe was fit only for a dowd.

  “If our generosity in sending you to your cousins is going to return a pert, ungrateful fine lady to her home in place of a dutiful daughter, then we shall know not to repeat the experiment,” Aunt Kittredge said, touching off a storm of tears, after which Cassandra backed off on the Lucretia says, to everyone’s relief.

  Aurélie continued to chat to me for a minute or two each morning, but it was inevitably about her reading, her letters home, and speculation on what might be going on in Jamaica. When would she hear back? When could she go home?

  There was no Dobrenica anywhere in sight and no way to get her there, but at least time whizzed by with the speed of a montage. I reminded myself that I could do this. I had been given a task. I would not believe what I’d seen in the fae’s glass, because they’d distorted the truth about everything else. Time was frozen at Alec’s end: I held onto that.

  As for Aurélie and her future, I decided to wait for her to ask me questions. But so far, she expressed no interest in me or my life, since I couldn’t communicate with Jamaica.

  September arrived, and James took off with his father for the hunting season. Aurélie’s spirits waned with the sun, especially as there still was no letter from her mother. Aurélie still wrote faithfully every week.

  After the hunting season was over, James turned up one sleety day, invited Aurélie to take up fencing again, and that became the pattern for the next year. There was even a soundtrack, what with the fae songs Aurélie secretly practiced, shaping them into melodies of her own.

  Time blurred.

  When they turned fifteen, Aurélie and Cassandra were granted boundaries almost as wide as those given James.

  Aurélie and James transferred their practice to one of the old barns when the weather warmed. The boy clothes were kept in the loft, where Aurélie could change in decent privacy, and the fencing and pistol shooting became musket practice. Nor did it end with the warming of spring. She came to the mirror less and less often. James and Diana occupied the most of her time—the one in fighting practice and the other in reading and in talking about magic.

  Some nights she had vivid dreams, and those she always told me. Like the time she was a high-born lady with black hair as smooth as silk and skin as pale as paper. The way she described her hair and robe sounded Chinese to me, especially when she got to the detail of her tiny, aching feet. She wore an elaborate headdress and lived in a palace filled with gold. In another dream, she was a great lady as dark as Mimba, living in a house surrounded by flowers, with singing day and night.

  I knew the fae were tormenting Aurélie from afar when she stood with her face pressed to the window, tears on her cheeks as she gripped the necklace with her fingers. She’d go downstairs and work fiercely at the fortepiano, trying to capture whatever it was she heard trying to lure her.

  She was never satisfied, but the rest of the family praised her according to their personalities: Uncle Kittredge told her she was a good girl and a dab hand at the keyboard; Aunt Kittredge told her that she was a diligent pupil and that perhaps it was time to bring a real music master to train her and Cassandra; James said, “That’s a capital tune! Are there any words to it?” And Diana stood listening, her face rapt. Only she knew the truth about the inspiration behind those entrancing melodies.

  Aunt Kittredge kept her word, and hired an earnest, vague young man as a music master, who taught both fortepiano and singing. He was a pro, unlike Miss Oliver, who was a jack-of-all-trades, as g
overnesses had to be. Both girls’ performances soon showed the benefit.

  Then came Cassandra’s crowning glory. At last, at last, her mother hired a dancing master, who also taught the girls the etiquette of the ballroom. Aunt Kittredge and Miss Oliver sat in the room like a pair of twin dragons on guard as the master solemnly put the girls through their paces. He was probably older than Uncle Kittredge.

  The night of the first lesson, Aurélie came to me again, her expression wistful. “This dancing,” she said. “It’s like wearing stays. It’s not the dancing of my home, so free, like water, air, and sky, and when you dance you can be the dragonfly, the doctor bird. Everyone was one, under le bon Dieu, at home. Here? You dance in a line, your foot must be so, your hand here, your chin at this angle.”

  She sighed. “Maman said I must come here to learn, so I will learn.”

  She retired, diligently said her prayers according to Aunt Kittredge’s wishes, but then added her own fervent words in French.

  Time zipped by at freeway speed.

  James was into his late teens, and Aurélie approaching sixteen.

  She paid little attention to her looks, except to try to stay neat, but Aunt Kittredge fussed enough for them both. Stay out of the sun—her brown skin would ruin her chances—could she never keep her hair neat?—her gown was awry—must she gallop about like she was a runaway horse? At night she had to put glop on her face that was supposed to lighten her skin, and Aunt Kittredge, despairing of the contrast of white fabric (debutantes in those days wore white) even invested in powder, though she despised women who “painted.” Most of all, she criticized Aurélie and Diana for not moving like Cassandra, whose prissy, affected airs, modeled partly on her mother’s behavior, were extolled as the graceful walk and posture of a true lady.

  I felt a little sorry for Cassandra, who, what with the heavy, starchy meals and no exercise other than twirling around the parlor in dance practice or sedately walking fifty yards in the garden, was in her turn criticized by her mother for her increasingly podgy shape. She made up for it by tripping about with her wrists arched, flinging her long honey-colored curls artfully, and talking about her delicate constitution. In contrast, Aurélie, who worked out constantly, moved with the unconscious grace of a wild swan.