Snow (8 page)

The evening was grown-up time. Once in a great while Jessica would be called in after her dinner to recite what she had learned that day, or to kiss her father and the duchess good night, or, rarely, to share a cup of hot chocolate with them before they had their own dinner. In the books Jessica was now forced to read—though secretly she liked them—glamorous people like the duchess and rich people like her father threw parties and had giant dinners and constantly invited streams of guests through their houses, but no such events ever occurred at Kenigh Hall.

At first the arrangement suited both Jessica and the duchess. Jessica loved getting all of the attention of the beautiful and glamorous older woman, even if she wasn’t
exactly
a mother.

Years passed. The duchess spent more and more time “napping” or “reading,” and Alan was sent to gather stranger and stranger things, many of which Jessica was able to help him with, but some things he seemed unable to even tell her about. Otherwise, little changed.

Life at Kenigh Hall continued pleasantly for everyone, it seemed.

Dearest Claire,

I hope this note finds its way to you. While my dreams of playing in sunny palaces in Europe—in gardens filled with lemon trees and honeysuckle—remain undiminished, they are for a while delayed. I have managed to secure a position with some minor duke in Wales, of all places. You were right; making enquiries with about-to-be-married royalty has paid off. I am a “gift” to his new bride. No, no, nothing like that.

The place where I ended up—Kenigh, if you ever happen by—is almost as pretty as the Highlands. A pleasant little town not unlike where we grew up, removed from time. The estate is only middle-sized, I am told, but large enough for everyone back home. If there are any more Roman (or English!) invasions I have no doubt we will be quite safe—the weather and rocks are most forbidding. They gave me a snug little room in the servants’ quarters, far away from everyone so I can practice. Ha! Remember when you and Elsie were mad because I got my own room at home?

The duke is, well, I suppose like all dukes—his prime pastimes are being dead stiff boring when he is not putting on airs.

Everyone is too busy bothering themselves about the new duchess to concern themselves with a violinist. I sort of take second fiddle—pardon the pun—around here next to the flurry over her. Which is good; they don’t seem to be used to outsiders.

The duchess herself seems pleasant enough—cold, and
beautiful in an older woman sort of way. Very polite. She has agreed to take me on and be my patron—yesf a real patron!—in return for doing other things for her as well. Minor things, like rearranging furniture to her contentment, and other tasks, hard to describe. No … I take that back. It seems I can write them, just not talk about them…. And those were her exact words:
“Tell
anyone …”

Claire, this is very strange—don’t be telling Mum or Da. The duchess has me all over the countryside looking for strange things—she wants a baby and cannot, so far. At first it was herbs and roots and leaves, but now it’s other things … animals, and—I fear to even talk about the others.

But that’s just it, Sis—she gave me a golden necklace with a fiddle charm; it would be pretty if it weren’t so strange. Since putting it on I cannot talk about the things I do for her. Almost like magic. She says it’s not, though, something about magnets and mesmerism. Science, she says. Spiritualism, I say!

But she has bought me music and strings and done nothing improper. She plans on taking me to a real symphony this month! It is my first real job, and I’ll take what I can get.

I hope you and Elsie are well, and Jo and Emma and Katherine, and do pass this on to Sabrina if you get the chance! I miss her so. Tell her that her big brother thinks about her every day. I would send something for Mum and Da, but I trust the people carrying this message about as far as I can throw them. It’s just as well that royalty doesn’t expect a common fiddler to be educated in the ways of proper letters.

Lots of love to the entire family,

Alan

J
essica’s life was coming to an end.

Snow
could accurately count back to this time as the final days of her happy childhood.

One hot summer day, bored, she went to the stable to find Davey and his friend Michael, both of whom took care of the horses and, when by themselves, smoked and played cards like adults. “Do you want to go to the stream today?” she asked them.

“Oh, aw,” Davey said, kicking some straw at his feet. “I dunno, Jess. I have t’ do some stuff with the horses.”

She frowned and looked at the other boy. “Michael?”

“I, uh, I dunno.” He looked up at her and blushed, then looked down. “What if we get caught?”

“That never used to bother you!” There was something in the air, an embarrassment, a tension, that was new and undeniable. She looked hard into the faces of her old friends. They looked away.

“Is it because I’m a duchess?” she asked bluntly. “That was never a problem before.”

“You’re no duchess,” Davey spat, with a little of their old fierce friendship back. “Not yet, anyhow. Naw—its just, you know, others might, you know, look funny.”

“Oh.” She had lost some strange little fight and hadn’t even known there was one. “Well,” she said nervously,“maybe another day, then?”

“Sure—when the masters away, maybe.”

“And his witch,” Michael added.

“She’s
not
a witch!” Jessica stamped her foot, glad to have something real to argue about. “Everyone’s always saying that. She’s a
scientist
.”

“No such thing as lady scientists,” Michael muttered under his breath.

“What’s a
scientist
got Alan all over the countryside picking poisonous herbs for?” Davey demanded.

“They’re not poisonous,” she tried again. “You should see her laboratory. It’s real, with tubes, and metal, and glassware—there’s no cauldron or
anything
witchy.”

“All I know is I wouldn’t want her catching us together.”

“You’re a big coward, David Allen!” Jessica stamped her foot again and stomped off. As soon as she was out of the stables she thought of something better and meaner to say, and she turned around to deliver it with the cold haughtiness of a duchess. But when she turned around she saw Gwen enter the stables from the other way. Something made Jessica hide and watch.

She couldn’t hear what was being said but could see the three figures silhouetted against the wide stable door. Both boys leaped up when she came in—
sauntered
in, Jessica realized, remembering the
new vocabulary word. Gwen smiled and put her hands on her hips, tossing her long blond braids over her back. She laughed easily, high and ringing. The boys took off their hats and spoke eagerly.

Jessica wandered away, sad and confused.
They like her better
. But that didn’t seem quite right.
They like
talking
to her better
. She thought about the way Gwen looked; peaches-and-cream skin compared to Jessica’s freckly face, her rounded body glowing. Jessica’s was more stout and muscled, and not shaped quite right. Breasts, yes, but like mushrooms, popping out and away from each other.

They said they would never like girls
. She remembered a pact made by the stream years ago. They admitted that they didn’t think of Jessica as a girl, something she had taken as a point of pride.

She wandered back to the estate, not caring if anyone saw her in her secret play clothes. She couldn’t even talk to Alan; the duchess had taken him to a concert at the Edgars that afternoon. It seemed as if the duchess liked Alan more than her—or at least paid more attention to him, a mere servant.

Jessica decided to drown her sorrows in a book, something juicy and French that she probably shouldn’t have been reading. She went upstairs to change into acceptable clothes and went into the library. At least if she were caught she would be dressed properly. She pushed open the door as quietly as she could, dreaming of secret doors, which Kenigh Hall seemed to lack in prodigious numbers.
She and her
old
friends had spent hours looking for them.

The library appeared to be off limits: Her father was present, in a gigantic chair in front of the dead fireplace. That was unfortunate and unusual; the duke never seemed to read, unlike Anne. Jessica peeped her head in as far as she dared to see what he was doing. The duke had his hand out and was staring at some object in it. Jessica leaned a little more and caught her breath when she saw what it was: a locket identical to the one she wore around her neck, with an identical miniature of her mother in it. As she watched, a single tear formed in the middle of each of his eyes, and they coursed their way silently down his cheeks.

Jessica watched with mixed feelings. Didn’t he love the duchess now? If he missed Mary so much, why did he marry Anne? If he loved his wife, why couldn’t he love his daughter?
Why does he hide this?
Closing the door quietly, she realized it was the closest she and her father had ever really been.

I miss her too. And I never even knew her.

Mixed emotions drained her mind and body; she spent the afternoon desultory on her bed. But when what began as a slight ache in her stomach progressed over the hours to searing, unbearable pain, Jessica was sure it wasn’t just sadness. She ran, crying with fright, to Dolly The old woman smiled when she first saw Jessica.

“Oh, Jess-me-love, I was just going to talk to you—”

“Dolly, its horrible—I think I’m dying!”

The big, sweaty woman hugged her as she cried. When Jessica could finally speak she told her how sick she was, and sad and angry, trying not to double over in pain.

Dolly laughed kindly “You’re not dying, sugar-plum. You’re just becoming a woman.”

Becoming a woman
. Jessica had heard whispered snatches and phrases here and there about such a thing, about a curse, strange mysteries. Now she finally knew the truth—and it hurt.

Dolly gave her a raspberry tart, which Jessica consumed in three bites, still sniffling and wincing from the pain. Her appetite had been far from ladylike for the past week.

“You just need a lie-down and sommat good, a medicine,” Dolly said soothingly. “Come now, stop crying, it’s not that bad…. It means you’re an adult!”

The duchess swept in at that moment, still dressed from the concert earlier. “Miss Margerson, I was wondering if you believe it’s in the kitchen’s capacity to—what on earth is going on here?”

Jessica looked miserably up at her, red-faced, sniffling, and covered in powdered sugar.

“The little miss just …” Dolly frowned, trying to think of a high-class way of saying it. “She’s all grown up,” she finally said.

“Oh.” The duchess looked at the cook and then at Jessica, as if both of them had suddenly revealed that
they were really cats, or French. “Well, I think that a mother should take this in hand, don’t you?” she asked, a trifle nervously Then she regained composure and put out her hand. “Jessica, come with me. We have to talk about this.”

An hour later in the duchess’s dressing room, a mug of tea cupped in her hands, still bent over from the pain, Jessica was even more confused than when the pain had started.

“Things will have to change, Jessica,” the duchess was saying. “You are no longer a little girl. You are a
young lady
. A …
pretty
young lady. Women will begin to hate you and men will want to—men are just terrible. You have to start acting differently, Jessica. Let me inform you right now that boys and men are not your friends. They will never be your friends again. They will want to do improper things with you if you’re
un
lucky, and to own you if you are. Marriage…” Her brow furrowed and she looked distracted for a moment. “I suppose you will get married in a few years…. I should start to work on that…. A
mother
would….” She shook her head. “That is what you will be someday, Jessica. A mother. Society only has two uses for women, remember that. Beautiful young girls and mothers.”

As the duchess spoke, she looked less and less at Jessica and more and more into the air between them. Her hand rose, seemingly of its own will, to touch her own cheek. “Be one or the other, or both, but not neither. No one wants an old hag. Or a trollop.”

And then the duchess began to cry.

Jessica had little sympathy.
But
I’m
the one in pain. Has everyone gone mad today? Or is it just me?

The duchess stood up abruptly. She didn’t wipe her eyes; the tears dried rapidly. Her face was white.

“What was I …?” She cast about, eyes flicking like a bird’s, as if she really couldn’t remember.“No matter. No more hanging out with the servants, or with boys, Jessica, Don’t think I haven’t been watching you. I just haven’t had time to do anything about it. You are a woman now, and have to obey me and your father. Now go to your room and think about it.”

“It hurts,” Jessica complained feebly.

“What does?”

The duchess really seemed to have forgotten everything they had just talked about—as if she had had a fit, Jessica pointed to her belly and rocked back and forth to show her. The older woman’s eyes widened, then narrowed.

“In some ways you are such a silly little girl,” the duchess snapped. She went to her vanity and took out a little blue glass bottle, putting some droplets in her mug of tea. “Here. This will stop the pain. Go to sleep and think about what I’ve said.” The duchess called a maid—not Gwen—to help Jessica to bed. Halfway to her room Jessica felt a wall of weariness and sleep slam her abused body; the maid almost had to carry her. Still afraid she was dying, Jessica fought it until she could do so no more, and blackness hit her like a rock.