Chapter Text
Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day;
But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.
Hymn to Proserpine (After the Proclamation in Rome of the Christian Faith)
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Even now, so long later, I cannot say exactly what happened during that terrible year. At the time I saw events as through a misted window, vague shapes shifting, only brief glimpses of clarity. Now the glass is shattered, and I must attempt to fit together the pieces as their sharp edges cut my hands. I remember the dreams, the conversations, the way fabric clings to skin when sodden with blood; I do not remember, always, the times between these. Even at the time I did not.
Yet I remember enough of that year for it to haunt me still; all the confusion, all the suffering, all the people I watched die. Perhaps if I set the story down in words, their memories will rest on the page, rather than in my soul. Perhaps.
I shall begin with the day I met the Widow and her daughter. Of course, I had lived for seventeen years before then, but much of that is immaterial, and thankfully we live in times modern enough to permit a woman her privacy. I propose that it is more important to introduce the setting: the peaceful town of Averno, set in the Kentish countryside some thirty miles south of London. This part of Kent is built on bones of chalk, and at the time of Averno’s founding, it was the fashion to cut large white wounds into the earth. The chalk would be quarried and used for bricks as London repeatedly grew past its borders. One of these quarries had hit an artery; an underground river became overground in a matter of days. The resulting lake was named Avernus, after the lake in Campania that the Romans believed to be a portal to Hades. At the time of Averno’s founding, this sort of mythology was also in fashion; the men who had witnessed the breaching of the river had described how the ground split open like Hell itself.
But if you have ever heard of Averno - which becomes less probable as time goes on, and its ruins fall further into obscurity - you will know it for its orphanage, All Saints’ Home for Children, the largest in Kent and possibly the largest in England. The owner of the quarry had set it up in thanks for the miracle of the lake. The name is accurate in some regards - it was indeed a home, and the sisters and brothers who ran it had the charming habit of praying to every saint that has ever been recorded, with every inch of the place devoted to a different martyr. It was not only for children, though, and its wards were welcome to stay until the age of eighteen, at which point they would either marry, go into service, or already be buried in the churchyard of Saint Laurence’s. For reasons that are likely implied by the name of the institution, I lived there for a time.
In the spring of 1868, my stay at All Saints’ was coming to an end, and I had begun an apprenticeship in Avernus with the hope of going into service in London when I turned eighteen. Marriage, I thought then, was out of the question for me; I saw myself as a plain girl, with hair so red that I was often turned away from potential employment for apparently being Irish, and a face marred with freckles from long days harvesting crops in the Kentish sun. I disliked the skirts of the time, for I liked to run and the crinolines got in the way, and often the sisters would scold me for surreptitiously swapping my clothes with the boys’. They said I would never find a husband if I continued to misbehave so, and that pleased me, so I continued quite happily. After all, I could always find a husband in London, if I ever found myself in need of one, which I was determined not to do - if I could be in service to a good home, I would have housing and money of my own.
I planned to leave that summer. I could have left sooner, but I loved my friends at All Saints’, and I fancied myself rather indisposable there. Some of the children were difficult, and I prided myself in being able to calm them when the sisters and brothers could not. They had entrusted me with a tiny room of my own when I turned sixteen, and sometimes they even allowed me to teach. Imagining All Saints’ without me made my heart ache - who would calm Cordelia in one of her fits? Who would encourage Alex out of his bed? Who would look out for sweet little Alina? And the question that troubled me most: who would take my bedroom, and would they take care of it as I had done? I hated to think of Juno breaking the door in anger, or Xander forgetting to water the little pot of mint in the window, or Nathan letting a frog loose inside. Perhaps it would have been better if I had left when people began getting sick. It had started in Averno, that winter, a few doors down from where I served as apprentice, and by February two of the orphanage’s inhabitants had begun to feel unwell. I should have left then, if I had known what I know now; but I did not, and thus stayed.
The 14th of February was a bitter day, that year; when I left bed for my daily trip around the lake, the air bit at my fingers, nuzzled ice against my throat and my cheeks. It did not rain, but the waters of the lake rose up as mist, and by the time I had circled Avernus, the lower half of my day dress was dark. I headed back to the main hall of All Saints’, pulling my shawl over my head to avoid the rain; it was in this undignified state that I first met the Widow and her daughter.
I call her the Widow for though I believe I know her name, I cannot bring myself to use it. Old suspicions say that to speak of something is to summon it; and anyway, I later came to learn she had used several names in her long, long life. As I crunched up the path, the Widow turned to face me. I had the distinct impression of her eyes taking me in and swallowing me whole. The girl beside her did not turn. I had hung back, then, for a simple glance had told me that the two were not of a class that typically cared to deal directly with half-sodden orphans. It was common for rich people to come and soothe their souls by donating a few pounds, or perhaps to look upon the faces of the children and sate their appetite for pity. I waited for them to disappear inside, and then I dashed for the door myself, snuck through the shadows, and ran to my room to change.
It was a Friday, and on Fridays I was assigned to help in the kitchens. As one of the oldest children, I was afforded relative freedom, and so I took my bucket of potatoes and set to peeling them in one of my favourite spots of All Saints’, a little niche under the eastern stairway that usually remained undisturbed for a long stretch of the morning as my companions attended classes or did their own chores, save the footsteps of the younger children on the stairs. That day, it was not so.
A voice echoing in the stone: “I believe in your capabilities. You will prove yourself, and then you will be rewarded. That is how the world works, is it not?”
“I know,” came a quieter voice. “Please, mother. I know - “
“You have done worse,” and the voice curled in such a way that I knew its owner was smiling, “and you shall do far worse still.”
Their footsteps grew closer, and I hurriedly raked my knife over the potato in my hand, possessed by the foolish notion that I needed to complete peeling it before I could set it down. I wondered briefly if I should hide, or pretend I hadn’t heard -
“Ah,” said the Widow kindly, “you’re the girl I saw outside.”
For a moment I could not speak - I simply looked at them both and attempted to work out how best to address them.
The Widow was a tall woman, thin and birdlike; the way she walked recalled some winged creature, and she stood as if perched. Her skin was pale, but warm, and it looked paler still in contrast to the deep black of her mourning clothes. She wore a pendant of Whitby jet, and her sleeves were embroidered with little jet beads, and her eyes were deep jet black; the effect of her white skin and her black dress and the black hair framing her face in neatly arranged ringlets was to draw even more attention to the jewels of her eyes. Something about the set of her nose and the arch of her eyebrows reminded me of the Greek statues the sisters liked to show us engravings of.
Her daughter was a pale imitation of her. Where the Widow had full cheeks, slightly pink as if touched with the lightest stroke of paint, the daughter’s face was pale and waxen. Her hair was pale brown to the Widow’s black, and her eyes were reddish-brown. She wore thin glasses, and watched me through them intensely, as if I were a specimen being prepared for dissection. On her, the black of the dress seemed too harsh; it was difficult to look at her face without the eye being naturally drawn down to the black ribbon around her neck, and then down to her chest.
I scrambled to my feet - “Madam!” I exclaimed, “I apologize - “ and then I paused, glancing between them, for while I had been trained to apologize whenever my existence inconvenienced my betters, I often struggled with exactly what I was apologizing for - “Miss,” I said, nodding my head to the girl. “Can I help you?”
“No need to apologize,” the Widow said, inclining her head, “we are the ones intruding, after all. What is your name, child?”
“Sam - Samantha, Madam.” I decided I should curtsy, which earned an amused exhale from the girl, and earned her a frown from me.
“Samantha,” drawled the Widow. “How old are you?”
“Seventeen, madam. Eighteen in a month.”
Her eyes narrowed a little, and she looked towards her daughter, then back at me. “My daughter is eighteen today. She is a terribly lonely child; since we arrived in Averno some time ago she has failed to make a single friend. I asked the sisters about you, and they said you were almost as well bestowed with friends as you were with a hundred other good qualities.”
I blushed politely, and turned towards the daughter. “Then I am delighted to meet you, miss…?”
“Sef,” she said in a whisper, and then glanced towards her mother and said slightly louder, “ - Persephone.”
“There, Persephone, a friend already! That wasn’t so hard,” the Widow said. “What will you do when you turn eighteen, Samantha? Will you go into service?”
“Yes, madam. I plan to go to London; I am already training as a maid.” I was defensive, perhaps; I knew I was a little old to not be in service already, and had been delaying leaving my home. The Widow recognized this, I am sure, for her next words were:
“Would you not prefer to stay in Averno?”
Of course I would; but it had always seemed an impossibility. Averno was a larger town then than it is now, but it was never large enough for all the children from the orphanage to go into service there, there were too few rich families to support that unless each was willing to have a hundred members of staff; when I turned eighteen I would go to London, I had known that for years. And yet I was tempted.
The Widow took my silence as agreement, and continued: “My daughter needs a companion like you; especially one well acquainted with the people here. You could live with us as long as you want, and would not have to go into service yet; if you choose to later, I can give you good references for your character. You would be taken care of.”
As the Widow spoke, I perceived Persephone’s eyes widen, and her languid body went stiff. She glanced towards her mother, and then her gaze fixed itself on my hands, though she seemed to be looking past them, rather than on them; her chest rose and fell with shallow breaths. I looked down at my fingers and noticed that I had nicked my palm with the knife as I had scrambled to hand; I tried to wipe the blood away before either of them noticed and thought less of me for my clumsiness.
“That is kind of you, Madam,” I said in a hurry, “but I am not sure I can accept. I do not wish to impose on you.”
“It would not be an imposition, not at all. You would be welcome in our house; Persephone has already taken a liking to you, anyway, and I’m sure it would break her heart if you refused.” She waved her hand, then clasped both hands together, smiling, “of course, you need not decide now, I understand it is a difficult decision - and who knows, perhaps we will find someone more eager - but how exquisite of fate to arrange that you two girls should meet today, of such a similar age and so perfectly suited to our needs!”
I looked at Persephone then, and she pretended she had not been watching me intensely and made a show of pulling at her sleeves. Then she looked at me again, through her eyelashes, as if she could not bear to meet my gaze directly; I noted for the first time colour in her cheeks, and the faint pink of her lips. How could I have resisted sympathy for such a creature? As they left together, her eyes lingered on me, and I saw such loneliness in them that I wished I could ask her to stay at All Saints’ so that I could look after her as I did for those I knew.
Later, over the companionable scrubbing of dishes, I told Xander all about the strange visit; he said that he had also seen the Widow and her daughter in the halls, and that they had spoken to him briefly, but seemed really more interested in the windows; he teased me by asking what they could possibly have seen in me.
“Do you think I should go with them?” I asked, and Xander seemed at war with himself.
“You would stay in Averno?”
“Yes,” I said, “they live in town, not far from Saint Mary Magdalene’s. Though I could still move to London if I ever wished - “
“Yes, then.” he said, suddenly fierce, and then he seemed rather ashamed to have spoken with such ferocity, turning to sort some plates that surely needed very little sorting. “As long as you promise to visit us.”
“Oh, I shall,” I nodded, “that girl is in need of good companions, and who have I known here that would not make a good companion?” I had intended that with humor, since there were at least a few that would make frankly dreadful friends, especially for one so delicate, but Xander's response seemed utterly serious.
“Good,” he said, surprisingly gruffly; when he turned back to me he was smiling. “Then you have my blessing. But you must come back and tell me all.”
I needed no further encouragement; I went to the sisters and asked them if they could send a message to the Widow for me, and I thanked them for the years I had been there, and later I told all the children what a wonderful house I was going to live in now, and a great argument arose, of course, over who was going to get my room.