Being a gentlewoman of quality, and having been much accustomed to getting her way as the baby of the family, Lavinia found that she alternately loved and despaired of Sister Marival’s methods. Mrs Parrish, of course, felt that too much education was not quite the thing to do with a girl child, but Mr Parrish, ever-doting, was amused by Lavinia’s insistence, as was the rest of the family.
It was during this same time that Lavinia’s father’s father, old Reginaldo Lann Parrish, also came to stay with the his son’s family. Old Reginaldo had been the spoiled grandson of the self-made Juan Diego Dormouth Parrish, an unrepentant robber baron who had made the original Parrish wealth in coal and railroads crisscrossing the windswept pampas and investing in the new mechanical inventions coming out of the New Wales colony in Puerto Madryn. Although Reginaldo’s father had been embarrassed by the newness of the family money, Reginaldo Lann himself had never known anything else, and it showed.
Widowed for a second time recently, and willful forever, Reginaldo, upon learning that Lavinia would be at home for at least a term, declared that he was leaving his estate in the north to come to the capital and spend time with his favorite granddaughter. Besides, he had been ill, and his physician demanded that he see a specialist in the city.
Upon learning what her father-in-law intended, Mrs Parrish had informed her family that it was past time that she took Lavinia’s sisters on a grand tour of the great cities of the continent, and so with a farewell kiss on her forehead she had bade Lavinia goodbye, with plans to delay her return until Reginaldo Lann Parrish went back to his own estates.
Thus abandoned by her health and her mother, Lavinia learned to endure—and even like—both her lessons and her grandfather. (Truth to tell, Lavinia adored her grandfather and that he doted on her so outrageously. It drove her sisters batty, but they had their mother’s favor, so Lavinia felt it only fair.)
Later, when Lavinia’s health had improved sufficiently that she could go out on her own, Sister Marival assigned her work that required Lavinia to visit the city’s libraries, or on occasion, the Royal University, where her brother had studied and she aspired to as well.
Returning one late summer day from an excursion to the main library and wondering how she would adapt to pursuing her studies at the University, Lavinia saw the woman that she knew she would marry. The woman had left the library about the same time as she had and was walking a few paces ahead, looking back occasionally. The woman was tall and looked to be exactly Lavinia’s own age, and she had dark skin the color of the fertile earth loved by the farmers in the river valleys in the northeast of the country. Her hair was a black nimbus of tight curls, and she had high cheekbones, a pointed chin, and a broad nose above wide, thick lips that made Lavinia blush to admit she wished to kiss. The young woman’s dark eyes sparkled whenever she glanced back, and Lavinia was certain that she was the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen. That thought made her pause for a moment, and consider. The memories of two other pairs of eyes flashed and then receded in a wave of earnest childhood longing, but she thought the woman most lovely.
The young woman was dressed in a University student’s robe, which gave Lavinia, as a prospective student, a plausible excuse to approach her. As they walked separately but on the same path, Lavinia noticed that other walkers on the banquettes and streets simply maneuvered around the space the ebon beauty inhabited without acknowledging her.
That bothered Lavinia, but she was not certain why, so she pushed the thought away without further examination. She wanted to speak to the young woman, and if the woman spoke back to her, Lavinia felt, outrageous though it be, that she might even propose.
Lavinia quickened her step, but the young woman in the scholar’s gown remained ahead of her by the same margin as before. Running, Lavinia was sure, would help neither her nor her plight. The beautiful young woman tossed a look over her shoulder at Lavinia when she thought that, and winked. That was when Lavinia knew that the woman would not be caught unless she decided that she wanted to be.
Lavinia laughed out loud, and at the sound the dark woman paused her march and kindly stopped, waiting for Lavinia to catch up.
With a smile on her face, Lavinia said, “Hello, I’m Lavinia Parrish, and you are the most beautiful woman in the world.” Lavinia hadn’t quite meant to say that second part out loud, but the truth of it escaped past her lips, and she smiled as she found that she didn’t mind that it had done so.
The woman arched her right eyebrow at Lavinia, and a mostly-suppressed smirk of amusement quirked her lips.
“Yes, I know who you are,” she said. “We’ve met before.”
The beautiful young black woman started to walk forward again, while Lavinia puzzled over what she had said. Surely not—Lavinia would have remembered meeting such a beautiful girl. Lavinia remembered every beautiful girl she had ever met: all the lovely lights of the capital society scene and the years of boarding school crushes.
Realizing that the young woman was going on without her, Lavinia bounded after. “But I would recall that!”
“If you say so, Miss Parrish.”
“I do! We haven’t met here or at the Museum of Natural Histories, have we, my lady? Seeing you now, I must admit that I was emboldened to approach because I saw your scholar’s robe… I wish to study at the University, too.”
“That’s a very noble thing, Miss Parrish. I commend you.” The strange woman smiled. It was a small, half-secret smile that hinted at private approval and a vast but encouraging amusement.
Lavinia flushed, and went on before she grew tongue-tied. “I insisted that my father allow me the same education that my brother received. My sisters think me silly, and my mother despairs of me ever making a match, but I insist upon it.”
“I can see that you are a very persistent woman, Miss Parrish. That’s a very fine quality.” The dark beauty paused her step and met Lavinia’s eyes for a dizzying moment. “I would never make a match with someone who wasn’t prepared to persist.”
“I…”
“Yes?” Another half-secret smile ghosted across the berry-dark lips.
Groaning inwardly but assailing another gambit, Lavinia said, “I persist, then, in ignorance, my lady—for I cannot say that I recall our prior acquaintance.”
“’Tis great pity, then, Miss Parrish, for I recall it vividly.” The strange woman went onward, leaving Lavinia a small, awkward craft in her magnificent wake.
Stunned again but determined, Lavinia embraced the challenge presented by this beautiful stranger who claimed to know her, and caught up with her. “Surely, my lady, I should then be able to recall it as vividly? Have you changed your fine attire so very much since first we met?”
“Is not a lady permitted to change her style to keep with fashion?” the woman asked as they walked. “Do you not do so yourself?” Giving Lavinia a sidelong look that gleamed with open humor, she added, “Just so, me.”
“My lady, I am certain I would recognize you in whatever style you adopted. Your beauty and your intelligence,” she said, sweeping a hand to gesture at the woman’s University robe, “would shine forth no matter what.”
“I would certainly like to believe that, Miss Parrish, but I do not. You have not recognized me, and I would hazard that you do not even know my name despite our meeting twice before.”
Not daring to let herself be flummoxed by the young woman’s continued claim of prior acquaintance, Lavinia imitated her brother Miguel at his most rakish and retorted, “Oh, indeed, my lady? Then let us put that to the hazard. I will tell you your name…”
“I suspect a ploy, Miss Parrish.”
“…provided that there is a forfeit when I do, for your lack of faith in me.”
“And what forfeit might you claim, miss?”
“A kiss, of course, my lady,” Lavinia said before a lifetime of propriety and deportment lessons could naysay her. “I believe that is the forfeit currently in fashion. And must not a lady keep with fashion?”
“And you say we have met twice before today?”
“Yes, Miss Parrish, we have.”
“But you kept a different style then.”
“Oh, yes. Radically.”
“Radically?”
“Quite.”
“Hm. Might I have a hint?”
“I suppose that you might. Very well: each time we have met, it might have felt to you as if it were the first time you saw me,” said the beautiful woman. And then, softly, as if murmuring to herself in curious wonder, she added, “To tell you truly, I don’t understand how you saw me to begin with.”
Entranced by the woman’s graceful profile, Lavinia caught only the first statement. “My lady, every time I look at you, I feel it is the first I see you.”
“Flatterer.”
Lavinia smiled, and sallied another question. “Might we have met at a ball? Perhaps when my cousin, Tansy, had her debut last year?”
“No, not then.”
“Would it be unfair to know when we might have met, my lady?”
“Yes, Miss Parrish, it would be. But you do have such a charming smile that I shall tell you regardless: we met when you were a little girl, and then again before you went off to school.”
Lavinia could not imagine that the young woman walking next to her would have made a less striking or lovely figure at any other age, and although there were quite a few girls of her complexion among their social class, Lavinia recognized none of their faces in the young woman’s. The woman’s beauty was on a level beyond most mortals, but in addition to her looks, the sense of her amusement was singular. It felt worldly but not unkind, and Lavinia felt herself both newborn and a woman-grown in the strange beauty’s presence.
“I’m sorry, my lady,” she said, “but regardless of the style you might have kept before, I know that I do not recognize your face.”
“Ah. I suppose that I must tell you, Miss Parrish, that perhaps you might not recognize my face, but rather my office. We met whilst I was in the course of my duties.”
Lavinia grew more puzzled; had this beautiful creature just admitted to working?
The young woman stopped walking and faced Lavinia directly with a look of annoyed amusement. “It’s honest work, Miss Parrish, and important, and I am remarkably good at it.”
Lavinia had the grace to blush.
“But you were at work when we were children?” Lavinia asked, concerned for the young woman’s sake (and, although she didn’t like to admit it, her own station).
“I said when you were a little girl, Miss Parrish. I never said anything about me,” came the woman’s arch reply.
“But my lady! We’re the same age! Aren’t we?”
“Oh, Miss Parrish,” the woman sighed. “I thought you knew better than to ask on another lady’s age.”
Confused and with a little regard for them both, Lavinia exclaimed, “You will be the death of me!”
“Brava, Miss Parrish!” the strange woman said, eyes sparkling with real pleasure. “That’s exactly right.”
It was then that Lavinia Parrish understood what the woman meant and realized that she had met her before, a tea-brown girl in a pinafore dress and a pale girl with rose-pink lips, and when. Her health still delicate, Lavinia did the only thing she could do, and swooned.
Surprised, Death caught Lavinia in her arms.
When she came to, awoken by the sound of pained coughing, Lavinia was lying on the violet leather chaise longue in her father’s study. Her grandfather sat next to the window in the club chair opposite her, reading a book of natural philosophy entitled “Sobre la muerte y otros misterios” in the late afternoon light, with a glass of fine Mendoza red in one hand. A blood-spotted handkerchief lay in his lap.
It was not the most auspicious awakening.
“How do you feel? Gave the cook a hot buggery shock when that girl of yours showed up at the service door, carrying you like a sack of potatoes.” Reginaldo Lann paused, taking a sip of his wine, then added approvingly, “Sturdy lass, that one. Good hips.”
“Grandfather… I—”
“Oh, no need to be coy about it. Your Great-aunt Virginia was the same way, and she was my favorite sister. She had herself a lady from Santiago, Susana; they were together until Virginia died. If I’ve learned anything from my sister about loving women, it’s that you should seize joy with both hands, and if she lets you get a leg over, so much the better.” Reginaldo Lann coughed and took another sip of wine. “Your miss is a beauty, and a University girl, at that. You could do worse.”
Lavinia still felt muzzy from swooning like an idiot, but the sense of her grandfather’s words penetrated the fog like sunshine. “You saw her?”
“Of course I did. Who wouldn’t notice a fine girl like that?” His Northern accent made two syllables of girl: gar-rul, but the glint of frank admiration in his blue eyes made Lavinia blush. “Huh. Now I think on it, Mrs Begas was rather shocked when I pointed her out. I don’t know why she’d be upset, seeing such a fine girl. Ye’d think that Mrs Begas wasn’t just as black as she is, the way she blanched.”
Lavinia didn’t know what to make of it. She was certain that the young woman was Death. She thought she should have been afraid; she wasn’t, she was sure of it.
She was also certain that she still felt like marrying her.
Her mother would not approve of Lavinia marrying another girl (such things were not unheard of, but were only done quietly, as they still could be a nine-days scandal if not done right), much less marrying someone who worked for a living. Lavinia guessed that Death’s actual rank would please her mother. How would the precedence work out, anyway?
Lavinia realized that her grandfather was still talking and focused her attention back on the conversation at hand.
“—and she said that she’d call this evening. Something about unfinished business.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t look so glum, granddaughter, she said she was sorry that she couldn’t stay to see you awake.”
“I…did she say anything else, sir?”
“Aye. She mentioned that she owes you a forfeit.”
Later that evening, Lavinia waited in the garden for Death to arrive. After the sun set, she did not keep Lavinia waiting long.
This time, Death kept the lovely dark face Lavinia had last seen her wear, but she had donned a rosy evening dress that any woman of Lavinia’s class with good taste might choose. Lavinia’s sisters would have approved and discreetly inquired after her dressmaker.
Lavinia went to the wrought iron gate herself to let Death in and then sat with her on the new small bench (a love seat, the gardener called it) by the rose arbor.
“You promised to be my friend,” Lavinia started.
“I did. I am. Forever.”
“But you killed Rose-Martha de Clare, and that boy that Lucy liked, what was his name—”
“Tick.”
“Yes, that’s right. And Grandfather said you had unfinished business tonight, so I suppose that now you’re here to kill me.” Lavinia was proud that she sounded so calm. Her hands were cold and she could feel sweat beading on the small of her back.
“No, Miss Parrish, I am not here for you tonight, and I do not kill anyone. I am simply there when they must die. I’m there for everyone, whether they go in glory, or alone. I am always there, and like a dear but difficult friend, I might not always be welcome, but I am always dependable. And,” she added with the sly look a person might give a longtime companion whose foibles amused, “it’s a living.”
Lavinia winced.
“Too sharp, Miss Parrish?” she asked.
“Perhaps,” Lavinia admitted.
There was a long moment of quiet where all Lavinia did was look at her hands. She had questions, but she knew that the answers didn’t matter. She realized she had already made the decision a long time ago when she was a little girl. That child’s foolish fancies
seemed so bright and small to her now, with her heart beating staccato rhythms in her chest and passion running in her veins. She had thought herself unafraid before, but now she understood that she had been mistaken. Lavinia took a breath and screwed her courage up.
“Being who you are,” Lavinia said, “I think it likely that you know my heart.”
“Being who you are,” Death said, “the contents of your heart are written on your face. But yes, I do.”
“And if I were to ask the question?”
“I should prefer that you not.”
“Oh.”
“A lady must be wooed, miss.”
“Oh!”
“Also, I must inform you, Miss Parrish, that I am here for duty tonight, as well as this conversation.”
Lavinia grew still. “If not for me, then who?”
Death gave Lavinia a steady look, not unlike the one Sister Marival gave her when she was being dense about an obvious subject.
“Grandfather,” Lavinia said in one exhaled rush. The old man had done his best to ignore it, but he hadn’t been well since his wife had died. “No.”
“There is no question,” Death said. “Nor am I asking for permission. This is my office, Miss Parrish, and if you would be my suitor, you should know that one day I will be there for everyone you have ever known and everyone you have ever loved. Everyone, my dear friend.”
“Can you give him more time? He liked you.”
A pained expression flickered across Death’s dark face. “No, I don’t have that power. I am Death, Miss Parrish, not Fate, and not God.”
“Can’t you ask them? For me?”
“Oh, my dear Lavinia, I’ve never met either. In all honesty, I am not sure I believe in them.”
To this, then, Lavinia had no reply.
Death took her hand then and held it until the sky turned black and starry. Then she stood and walked toward the manor. Lavinia stayed in the garden. No door could deny Death, and the scent of late-blooming roses was a comfort.
The mortuary instructions left by Mr Reginaldo Lann Parrish were precise and detailed, and they most prominently involved securing a coffin from a certain Mr de Borba that had been made to particular and exacting specifications, setting the old man adrift in said coffin on a funeral boat on his favorite lake on his summer estate in Patagonia, and then having his favorite grandchild set it ablaze with a flaming arrow shot from the shore. Lavinia had less than a week to practice her archery.
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