Chapter Text
Adam drew the curtains of the window seat around him as quietly as he could, basking in the warmth of the afternoon sun. In his arms he held his forbidden treasure: a book that he had received just this morning from a passing stranger. It was worn, tattered, just like the cramped cottage he shared with his parents in their equally worn and tattered tiny village in Gateshead. This little alcove was the only place he could find any privacy, and despite its heat in summer and drafts in winter, here was where he snuck off to when his father drank too much beer. It was his heaven in what was otherwise his hell.
He stroked the cover gently, feeling the embossed faded gold letters ripple under his fingers. Sonnets from the Portuguese. A book of poetry. This was what Adam loved more than anything in the world: the freedom of words, of entire universes yearning to be set free in his imagination, far, far away from his sad and hungry little world. It was an indulgence that he very rarely found the means for, and this made the happenstance more thrilling.
Adam held his breath as he cracked open the thick tome, doing his best to keep quiet and still in the face of the sheer excitement racing through his form. It would not do to be discovered. His own parents did not believe in reading frippery novels. They were not useful for a boy his age -- or of any age, really. Men should work with their hands, not work with their minds. That was for the nobles who languished away in their high towers, wasting away their days with idle entertainments and foppish fashions, not for the common folk who knew better. Books didn’t put food on the table or beer in his father’s belly.
Quietly, he began to read, biting his lip against any noises and breathing in the comforting scent of the old book, falling into the rhythm with ease. He hadn’t been able to put his hands on much poetry, and these poems in particular were making something deep in his chest throb with a strange mixture of discomfort and want.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Love. What a strange and foreign concept to Adam, who was poor in many ways, love being one of them. The concept of giving oneself up to another so entirely, so completely, was somewhat terrifying. Would he ever fall in love? Would he even live long enough in this provincial poverty to find out? He had been lucky enough to learn to read these words on these pages at the parish-run school, but that was about as lucky as he got to be. For however long he had to live, would he have the free time to even think about love? What a comfortable thing it would be, not to work day after day, dusk to dawn as a farm boy, a kitchen boy, an errand boy, and to have the luxury of a warm bed, a hearty meal, and someone kind to share it all with.
Adam was wrenched from his reverie by the sound of heavy and uneven footsteps trudging up the path. His heart began to beat as his body stilled. It was so very, very loud in his ears-- he would know, he would hear it and find him here, he would find the book--
The front door slammed open. Adam froze, sure he hadn’t enough time to hide the book before his father saw, and so he held his breath and clutched the book tight to his chest, curling up to make himself as small as possible. The heavy footsteps crossed nearer and nearer to the room he was hidden in, and Adam’s heartbeat ratcheted skyward, so loud he thought it must surely give away his location.
“Adam! Where is that boy…” He could hear the slurred syllables of his father’s drunken shouting and felt any happiness he’d gained shrivel into nothing. If he was home this early, and already drunk...that meant that something had happened with his job. And his father’s sour moods were the worst. He didn’t know where his mother was, but she was also most likely doing her best to stay out of her husband’s way, as always.
Despite his best efforts, Adam’s father still found him. The cottage wasn’t big, and by now he knew all of Adam’s best hiding spots. The heavy footsteps came into the room, though Adam couldn’t see on account of him having clenched his eyes shut in a desperate attempt to shut the world out.
“There you are.” There was menace in every word, every step closer a stone dropping into his gut. Adam wished for leniency, for some sort of divine intervention, for his mother to step in and stop his father -- anything that could stop the hurt before it arrived. But there was nothing -- was never anything that could stop Mr. Parrish when he was angry. The flimsy curtain was flung to the side, just as the heavy stink of alcohol burned at Adam’s nostrils. “What the devil are you doing hiding in here, boy? You get into trouble?” His reddened eyes alighted on the book clutched in Adam’s trembling fingers and narrowed. “What’s that you got? A book? The hell you need that for, eh? Think you’re smart enough to read that thing?”
His father snorted derisively, reaching out for it and snatching it up, breaking Adam’s hold easily. He held it like one would hold garbage, sneering down at it with offense. “This is rot. Utter useless nonsense. You dare bring this into the house when you should be bringing in food? Money? Something useful!” His father’s voice roared in his ears, raising into a shout by the end of his sentence. “Disgraceful little fuck, where did you even get this, did you steal it? Stealing worthless junk like this while your mother and I slave away to keep you fed and clothed?! Look at me, you cowardly shit!”
Adam flinched, hunching his shoulders and daring to brave a look up at his father. The anger twisting the man’s face was all too familiar, and Adam involuntarily let out a small whimper. He watched his father raise the thick book in his hand, and the next thing Adam knew was pain. It slammed into him like a wall, the whole left side of his face burning with agony. He was on the ground, unable to think of how he got there, unable to think at all, except to scrabble at his ear where there was a high pitched ringing and nothing else. Fear and pain made him pant and grasp for purchase, the threadbare carpet beneath his searching fingers giving no support. He could still hear his father shouting at him from above, but it felt distant, muffled, strange, second to the cacophony of thunder firing in his brain. There was nothing else. He couldn’t stand, couldn’t get his legs under him, everything was off, and tilted, and--
--
The jolt of carriage wheels skimming over a rock jolted Adam from his reverie. Disoriented for a second, he struggled to piece together where he was. He glanced around at the carriage and rubbed his eyes. How he had managed to come even close to drifting off in the midst of the violent jerking of the carriage was a mystery, and the uneasiness of the memory clenched his already rolling stomach.
He held his hand almost unconsciously to his left ear, long deaf after the beating with the book all those years prior. A long time had passed since then, and he had left his home for Lowood School not too long afterwards. Straight from one hell into another, Adam remarked bitterly to himself.
But no more. No longer. Adam was taking hold of his future-- he had advertised, and was leaving his miserable past behind. No more teaching at the school that reminded him so much of the place he was born. He was going to be a tutor to a Miss Opal of the Lynch Family. He would save money, and maybe, one day, open a school of his own.
“Sir! Sir, off there, in the distance, do you see it?” Cried the driver. “It’s Thornfield Barns!”
A huge, rambling house-- no, palace-- emerged from the low hills. It was all towers and gothic windows, imposing, grand, with gardens that burst forth from it in a verdant sprawl, and beyond that stables and fields-- a great number of them-- spread as far as the eye could see. This was the sort of wealth that seemed so remote from Adam, a kind of money he scarcely dared even imagine existed. He felt in quick succession awed and uplifted, then small and dirty. After all, none of this was his. He hadn’t earned an ounce of it. He was living in borrowed splendor as the help.
The carriage trundled through the lane, past fields of dreamy-eyed cows and grazing horses, growing closer to the huge house. The carriage at last breached the front gate-- a peculiar wrought iron and gilt one, set in a tall somber grey cobblestone wall, overflowing with what appeared to be ravens of all kinds. Some were flying, some perched, some grooming the others, some fighting. It sent shivers down his spine-- really, ravens as decoration?
Flowers he had never seen in any of his books bloomed throughout the gardens. A particularly strange and impossible blue lily grabbed his eyes, a huge field of it spread before the mansion. As he grew closer and closer to their manor house, more details came into view: towering stained glass windows, strange animals carved from colorful stones peeking out from peculiar places. The whole place had the strange fanciful feeling of a dream, which was no less dimmed by the massive wood door bedecked with wings, flowers, and strange creatures Adam couldn’t identify. His eye caught on particularly strange bird-man-like creature that he had never seen in any book on fairies or mythology as the carriage drew to a halt. He was so transfixed by the scene on the door that it took him a second to register a person-- a very short, very spiky-haired person-- standing with their arms crossed right in front of it.
Adam jolted a little -- first in shock at seeing this person, second because this small person was also very beautiful, spikes and all. His insides flipped over lightly, and he ducked his head against a flush rising to his cheeks.
“Mr. Parrish, I presume? I’m Blue, the housekeeper of Thornfield Barns, though I’m not anyone’s keeper otherwise.” She gave a quick grin, “Come inside and I can show you to your room, and then we’ll take a tour of the house. You can meet Opal tomorrow.”
Adam opened his mouth to speak, got a cutting ‘hurry up’ look, and instead gripped his bag tight and hastened to follow Blue inside. Her brusqueness didn’t bother him as much as the schoolmistresses that he had grown up with. There was an altogether different feel to it. Not directed toward him per say, but at the world in general? Whatever it was, it was not unpleasant, and so he followed Blue further into the house, looking around with an awe he wished he didn’t feel. The mansion was beautiful, and richly furnished, though as Adam looked closer, he could see that there was a strangeness to the architecture and decorations just as there had been around the outside of the palace.
The tables lining the halls were draped in more exotic flowers, candelabras shaped like strange, mythical creatures, with large, sweeping windows between them. The windows were hung with a strange cloth that shimmered green--no, purple-- or was it blue? Everytime he blinked it seemed to shift color into something new and wondrously beautiful. There were sofas with strange animal feet and trinkets everywhere, both luxurious and banal. There were ornate foreign-looking vases and wooden spoons, strange masks and a broken carriage wheel, fantastic and somewhat menacing paintings of brooding men in armor and somber women in chitons and monsters and racehorses and one of an empty room.
The thing that most impressed upon Adam was the sheer quantity of things. It wasn’t the kind of wealth he had expected -- but wealth it indeed was. A kind of confident wealth that didn’t feel the need to show off. It set a gnawing feeling deep inside his stomach.
As they progressed through the twist and turns of hallways of varying ages, colors, and states of repair, Adam was suddenly struck by one image that was different than the rest. It looked to be a family portrait, set in a giant gilt frame, swathed in red velvet curtains. A father, sharp and darkly handsome, a mother, golden haired and beautiful, and three boys, two dark like their father and the smallest as golden as the woman. Their heads were all topped by cherubic curls, and they glowed happily. The eldest sat straight next to his father, the youngest half sat on his mother’s lap looking at her adoringly, and while the middle child, smiling, clasped the hands of both his parents.
Before he could get an even better look at the picture, Blue was hurrying him along with an impatient tsk. It was amazing how fast she could move on such short legs.
The residential wing was just as large as Adam would have expected, but it had a homier feel to it. Lived in, well loved, less cluttered and more carefully curated. Adam was waiting to be shown through a narrow passageway to what was surely the quarters for the help, but instead Blue stopped in front of a heavy wooden door in the main wing, pulling out a key from the pocket of her well-pressed trousers, and unlocking the door.
“Here’s your room for the duration of your stay. You can rearrange it if you wish, but all I ask is that you keep it clean. It’s been the unused guest room for years, so it’s a bit sparse, but if you require anything else, just let me know and I’ll fix you right up.” Adam blinked at her in shock, because surely this could not be his room? His room? The bedroom itself was nearly the size of his whole cottage growing up. How could he possibly feel comfortable here? As always, his throat constricted with guilt as he looked upon the finery in the room. It had been years since he had lived under his parents’ tyrannical wing, but the effects were long-lasting. Having things of his very own that he didn’t immediately give up or share with long-gone parental figures felt strange, felt wrong. Adam still lived an incredibly spare life, despite his best efforts to break from the stranglehold that had been impressed upon him from such a young age.
Guilt crawled thickly up his throat as his father and mother’s voices hissed in his ears, You don’t deserve this grand room and this grand life, it’s not meant for dirt like you. How dare you try to move up in the world and leave us, the people who raised an ungrateful little sack of shit like you, behind?
“Mr. Parrish?”
Adam blinked and gasped, shaking his head to clear his mind. “I apologize. I was...surprised. Is this really where I’m meant to stay? The serving quarters would be more than adequate, I assure you.”
“Mr, Lynch cares less than a whit about the distinction of class and wealth in his own home.” The look Blue gave him was searching, almost as if she could see into his mind and discern what sort of memories Adam had been reliving. Adam feels his ears flush red under her scrutiny. The attention of beautiful young women was something he was unused to, and didn’t particularly enjoy in this context. “We don’t have servants’ quarters here anymore. They’ve been renovated into indoor nurseries, workrooms, and playrooms for Miss Opal. We all stay in separate rooms in the residential wing here. I’m around the corner, and Mr Lynch himself abides a few doors down.”
“Mr. Lynch...sounds like a very progressive man.”
“Mr. Lynch is a man who cares little for the expectations of society. Or the expectations of anyone at all, really.” Blue smiled sharply up at him, mischief clear in her expression, “He also doesn’t care for keeping a tight fist on the household, so I can do what I like with the place. Anything that makes it so that he can spend the least amount of time worrying about affairs he could care less about, and more time tending to his favorite animals and the fields and sleeping the day away.”
Blue painted a picture of a very strange and eccentric man, and Adam could not help but imagine what he will be like when he meets him. A middle-aged dowd with bristling moustaches and several cats, perhaps. The image made him want to smile, but he controlled himself. “I look forward to meeting him.” Was all he said. “And Miss Opal?”
Blue’s grin was wide and openly fond, “She’s a complete menace, but everyone loves her. A complete handful. Never wants to sit still, always running around outside in the mud, trying to eat anything and everything she can put in her mouth. But she’s also bright and full of life and loves Mr. Lynch fiercely, and he her.”
“Then I look forward to meeting her as well. She’s Mr. Lynch’s...daughter? Granddaughter?”
Blue blinked, surprised at the question, and then shook her head. “Oh, no, she’s much too old for that, and he too young. Granddaughter.” She snickered openly, displaying decorum only when she felt, and treated him more as a friend than an employee. “Ronan will be barking when he hears!”
Adam just stood and twisted the strap of his bag within his fist, unsure of what to say. Blue chuckled for a few moments before collecting herself, smile still firmly affixed to her lips, eyes bright with mirth.
“Opal is Mr. Lynch’s ward. He takes care of her as best he can, but he has...business that he must attend to and so cannot spend all the time he wants with her. His schooling also was not...the most reliable and so really, your job here is to save Miss Opal from becoming a strange person like Mr. Lynch.”
Blue’s smile was infectious, and so Adam allowed a small uptick to his own lips in return, “I look forward to it. I’ll do my best.”
“Excellent. Well!” Blue gathered herself up, moving back towards the door and slowly moving down the hall. “Dinner will be ready in about an hour, so just get yourself settled in and then come down when you’re ready. It’ll just be us tonight, as everyone else has already eaten and Mr. Lynch is away, but tomorrow you can meet Opal and take a proper tour of the grounds.” And then she disappeared around the corner and left Adam hovering in the doorway of his new room. Turning, he took a deep breath, told himself that he had earned this, that he belonged here, and started to unpack.