Chapter Text
Although you arrived early, there is darkness beyond the windows of the long, cold foyer of Odom Borson’s mansion. A thousand fires burn in his iron mills, but very few, it seems, in his home. You shiver, your black skirts and your single carpetbag dripping slightly melted snow onto the blood-red Turkish rug. Your late father’s coachman, who had brought you here, has left a startling amount of slushy footprints on the ebony-dark floor before leaving; will it give the Borsons a poor first impression of you?. Are the they home? The footman who answered the door has left the hallway, saying that he would learn if they were.
Mrs. Borson has said you should come this day. Your late stepmother’s sister, she has offered you a home--much needed, triply orphaned and unbetrothed as were. And you were not been meant to arrive until that night; but James, the coachman, decided to depart at five in the morning….
You shiver again, wishing the foyer were warmer and lighter. Deer’s heads mourn in the darkness above you, looking alive--save for their decapitated state. A door creaks, somewhere too your left where it is too dark to see if it was opening on closing, or if it exists.
A man’s voice, above you. Footsteps on stairs, two persons.’
“...I wish for no more sentimental objections, Freda. He no longer requires the room; it is furnished; you shall place her in it. You should be grateful that I am permitting this connection of yours to join our family.”
“I am grateful, Odom.” A woman’s voice, as soft as a piece of paper that has been crumpled in a fist a hundred times. You expect her to object again, but she does not.
Another woman laughs behind you, wryly, scarcely audibly. You start and look over your shoulder, but there is nobody; there are only the triple-barred doors. Sound must travel oddly in this foyer. You look at the stairs again and see Mrs. Borson and her husband descending them. She is a tall woman in a black crepe gown, red-gold waves of hair under a white lace cap, a sweet, sad smile, arched brows. She sees you and silently gasps in surprise. Her husband frowns, a small man in a fine black coat and gold waistcoat, with silvery white hair combed back from his forehead and a thick white moustache. “You were not supposed to arrive until this night,” he states.
“I beg your pardon,” you say quietly, your heart beginning to beat faster. You have nowhere to go if he refuses to let you stay. Your father died in debt. “My departed father’s coachman chose to leave early, despite my remonstrances.”
“It’s almost impossible to estimate arrival to a place one has never visited,” Mrs. Borson says before Mr. Borson answers. She takes her hand of his arm and lifts her skirt enough to hurry down the stairs and pull you into an embrace. “Welcome, my dear. I hope you’ll call me Aunt Freda.”
You return the embrace, glad to be welcomed, and glad to have a family member again, even if she is unrelated to you. “Thank you, Aunt Freda,” you whisper, and have to stop talking because tears are in your eyes. Since your parents died, you have often had to break sentences in the middle.
Aunt Freda gives you a reassuring smile. “I shall be glad to have your company. Odom, meet our niece.”
He bows curtly to you and strides toward the door as you curtsey. “Delighted. I’ll return tonight at ten, Freda.” He puts a top hat on his head like a frustrated cook might put a lid on a pot, and vanishes through the doors as soon as the reentered footman opens them.
Aunt Freda leads you up the stairs, insisting on carrying your carpetbag. You wonder if the mansion is maidless; it would be very unconventional….
Three portraits hang on the wall at the top of the staircase, visible thanks to a candelabra that burns on the console under them. One of Odom Borson and one of Freda Borson; they are facing each other. And one more, facing away from them in a way that screams that there should be a fourth portrait, a beaming young man with fair hair and the form of Hercules. “My son Thornton,” Aunt Freda says, smiling up at it. “He is attending a university in France--he’ll return home at Christmas.” Her eyes flicker toward the place beside it where a fourth portrait should face it, and her smile vanishes. She walks silently, several steps down the dark hallway, and coughs quietly. “My husband and I did have another son, and while his story is not fit for a young lady’s ears, all in this shire know it.” She sighs, and then she adds, “And you will be occupying his room.”
Ah. You wince, aware that she wishes you were not--and wishing yourself that you were not. “I’m sorry, Aunt—”
“No, my dear. I cannot think of him without pain, but I am glad his room will not be empty.” A few more silent steps. The walls are covered in dark gold paper with thorny rose canes printed on it, and every ebony door is closed. “Locke was a good son,” Aunt Freda says, her voice low. “But--a brain fever--after he discovered he was by birth the...the natural son of my husband’s bitter rival…. He was judged not guilty by reason of insanity,” she says, very quickly. “But he stabbed his father in the heart, one night, and incinerated his mill--the skeleton was found in the ashes with his seal ring on his finger and my son’s letter-opener in his heart….”
You almost trip, so terrible is this story. “The mill-workers? Did they--burn?”
She shakes her head vehemently. “No, he burnt it after they had gone home. There were five guards that night. Two escaped…. He was judged insane, and he...he died a few days after he was given into my husband’s keeping.”
You do not dare to ask why he died. Silently, you follow Aunt Freda to your room-- his room. She opens the door, revealing near blackness, and then strikes a match and begins to light the candles of another candelabra.
A bed, covered by a heavy green velvet comforter. A stained glass window taking up most of one wall, too dark for you to understand what it is depicting. Another wall hidden by a tapestry with a terrified unicorn fleeing across a black meadow from a lion. Another with two bookcases, dark and tall, and between them a black marble fireplace and above it, on a green-papered wall, an agonized metal crucifix, that reminds you in the midst of all your unease at being in the room of a lethal madman that the Borsons are a Roman Catholic family--and that your mother had been baptized into the Roman Catholic church when she was an infant.
You put your carpetbag down on the smooth ebony floor, where it looks like a beggar’s hat on the floor of a royal tomb.
“I think he would be glad his room was retenanted,” Aunt Freda murmurs, blowing out the match. There are tears on her cheeks. “Half of the furnishings are from the Renaissance, or of greater antiquity. Shall I help you unpack? Our maids left ereyesterday."
“Thank you, Aunt Freda, but it will not take me long, and I should like to change,” you say, surprised at how calm you sound, and she smiles, puts a motherly kiss on your cheek, and walks away, closing the door behind her.
You pull your shoulders back and bend and open your carpet bag. Locke Borson’s story was a horrid tragedy, but that does not mean his room is fearful. It will be lovely tomorrow when the sun shines through the stained glass. Perhaps your companionship will aid Aunt Freda in recovering from her grief.
A sound above you like a woman laughing behind a fan.