by Jeannette Ng
Mr Benjamin grew no more or less disconcerting the more I knew him. He exuded a sense of earthy familiarity that made it hard to stare for too long, but his warmth felt genuine. He even offered a little of his past, speaking of his time as a miner of azote at the far reaches of Arcadia.
“It’s very, very cold out there. The sun is too far to make light and so the azote and vital air form seas and mountains. We mine it and cart it back to Pivot.”
“What is azote?”
“Air,” he replied, oblivious to my incredulity. “The winds blow outwards, see? So it all congeals at sides. Solid wind and solid air. So we mined it and brought it back. But the Lady of Iron closed the mines.” The gnome’s features drooped despondently, but lifted as he said, “Then I came here.”
His conversion he spoke of with but sparse detail, but he would sometimes allude to his companions from his miner days. It seemed that they had all come to speak to the prior Reverend together, but only Mr Benjamin stayed. He prided himself on being the mission’s only convert and often came to me with odd questions.
“I was thinking, Miss Helstone,” Mr Benjamin said. “Could I ask a question?”
“Yes?”
“So, Jesus Christ the Ever Anointed Son of God, Hallowed Be His Name…” His voice trailed off. He took off his spectacles and cleaned them nervously. “I mean to ask, Miss Helstone, the question is: Why does the parentage of the Holy Cuckold matter if he’s the Holy Cuckold?”
“Pardon?” It took me a moment to realise he meant Joseph and before I could correct him, he rattled on.
“The Genealogy of Jesus is given twice in the book Mr Benjamin was given by the Reverend. By two of the writers… Their names be…” he paused, clicking his tongue, thinking. He scratched his jutting chin. “Luke and Matthew, yes, yes. That be. The two writers say Jesus is of David’s line through Joseph, which is to say the Holy Cuckold. I recall this. Luke said: And Jesus himself began to be about twenty years of age, being (as supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli… And Matthew wrote: And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.” Mr Benjamin was panting, breathless at his barrage of words. “You see what I mean?”
“I do follow,” I said. It was a question I had asked before, at Clergy Daughters’ School. My palms stung for days afterwards as I was whipped for impertinence. I gritted my teeth through the pain as I wrote to Laon about it, my letters curling all wonky. Looking back, the pain and my injured sense of justice distracted me from the question. I never found an answer.
“So… so, why matters Joseph’s parentage?”
“Well,” I swallowed, mind blanking at the abruptness of the question. “That is a very interesting question.”
The answers I had toyed with as a child started bickering in my mind like geese. Maybe Matthew and Luke were both mistaken and it was Mary who was related to David (but if they can be wrong about this one detail, what else might they be wrong about?). Maybe the fact that Joseph can be said to have adopted Jesus and he is thus of his house (but even then the two genealogies diverged significantly, which suggests one must be wrong). Maybe Matthew and Luke were reporting it for the benefit of those who thought the Messiah had to be from the House of David (and if so, how wrong is a falsehood told to support something true?).
I remembered Laon’s letter back to me, filled with condolence and encouragement. His hand had been shaking too, though I knew it to have been from anger rather than pain.
My mind wandered back to the rose window at the Whitehead chapel, panelled to suggest the inside of a ship, a curving hull and arced wooden beams. It was dedicated to martyred missionaries. I had always thought that it was where Laon had his epiphany, though he never really said as much. That chapel’s window, however, had nothing to do with missionaries. It depicted the lineage of Jesus, with David in the centre and each of the ancestors upon the petals of the rose, each name picked out in black – barely legible – gothic lettering. But its vivid splendour held no answers.
“Miss Helstone?”
Mr Benjamin looked up at me with his large brown eyes, expectant and trusting, like the sloping eyes of a dog.
He cocked his head to one side. Waiting.
“I… I think, I think you should ask Laon when he gets back.”
“Very wise. I will ask the Reverend!” The gnome nodded his head and pottered off, seeming to accept my answer.
But I was not content. The question continued to haunt me. I wondered where my brother’s books were; I knew he had a copy of Cruden’s Concordance. But I had been unable to locate my brother’s study, or any sort of house library – even the room in which I found those dusty documents.
I was left to scour my own Bible, turning back and forth between the pages of the testaments. Before I had sufficient time to content myself with all the particulars of the two lineages of Joseph, did Mr Benjamin totter up to me with another theological quandary.
“Miss Helstone, is it possible to make restitution for sins one doesn’t repent?
“Has the fig tree been forgiven by Jesus? Should we stop eating figs altogether or is it just that one tree that got cursed?
“If the Christ Our Lord was made wholly human in order to bear human sin, does that mean he must also have been wholly fae to bear our sins? Or is that the Covenant with the divine been extended to both fae and humans the way it encompasses more than simply Abraham’s descendants?”
My brother’s house became to me a place of questions without answers. Over time, the lineage of the Redeemer simply became one of the many questions that haunted my sleep.
Miss Davenport appeared each day to keep me company. For the first few days, I politely indulged her desire to sit in the solar and knit, making conversation about the idiosyncrasies of her gauge and teaching her how to turn a heel on a sock.
“It is good to make things with one’s own hands sometimes,” she had said. “Other methods simply don’t have the same tactile satisfaction.”
The yarn she had brought was ethereally light and frothed around the needles as I wound it round and round. Every clicking stitch I made was a step back to Yorkshire and the confinement of my previous positions. I remembered sitting with Miss Lousia March when I was her companion and after, for all my stated title of governess, I spent as much time darning socks as educating young minds.
The solar was bright. Had this been a mortal castle I would have guessed that the curved wall was evidence that it had been a chapel in the past, but this was no such thing. The thick stone was interrupted with stained glass windows that were obvious additions. One spiralled dark medieval colours, fragmenting the dust-dancing light into flecks of oxblood red. Another showed a knight battling a web of serpents. Given their diverse styles and shapes, the windows had probably been taken from another place and installed here by one of the castle’s previous masters. I wondered who had lived here before Laon, before the Reverend Roche, and what they called it then.
“The windows here remind me a little of Ariel Davenport’s home. In Spitalfields,” she said. “It weren’t stained glass, of course, but we had latticed windows all along the front of the house. So there could be enough light to weave. We had three looms to keep all our hands busy.”
Perhaps it was simply out of a desire to avoid other subjects, but she often spoke of her past in the mortal world. Sometimes I thought it merely a distraction, but at others, it genuinely seemed as though she wanted more.
“What did you weave?” I asked, feeling provincial. Having grown up in the strange uncivilised little place that was Birdforth, Spitalfields and London itself was an unimaginable world away.
“Silk. Everyone was in the silk trade round those parts. The littles would quill it and pick it. I wanted so much to be useful. I begged and begged to be taught weaving early. I remember my arms being barely long enough to reach the end of the loom and I was learning how to weave.”
“They must have been proud of you.”
&nb
sp; Miss Davenport gave a brief laugh. “Got me nothing but beatings. I was awful at it. Wasted so much good silk.”
I smiled at her humour, but added gently, “I wasn’t much of a quick learner either.”
“Ariel Davenport’s father always talked about getting a fourth loom, but I was never good enough. The rooms were cold with all the windows, but it was always awash with light.” Her eyes were no longer looking at me, but past me to the flock of dark birds on the stained glass. “We worked to the sound of birdsong. Our roof was lined with traps, you see.”
“Traps?” I was confused.
“Weavers are good at making traps, I suppose. Nimble fingers and all that. Ariel Davenport’s father liked to listen to birdsong whilst we worked.”
“What did you do with all the birds?” I asked. I turned my knitting, and glancing over my completed stitches, my fingers counted their diaphanous flow.
“Sold them. Songbirds are worth a pretty penny, especially the pretty ones. Though I’d prize more one with a pretty voice. I assume the London gentry like to keep them about. We did, filled the house with song. We’d drop all arguments when the right bird sang.”
“Sounds beautiful.”
“I wasn’t much good at weaving traps, but I could train the birds. We’d have one of ours call the others down. I thought their song loveliest then. When they’re tricking their kin.”
“You… You must have caught many birds then,” I said, haltingly. I was no stranger to baiting traps (moles were a perpetual menace, after all), but I couldn’t help but be reminded of the warnings in Captain Cook’s memoirs, of how the fae were inherently a duplicitous race.
“I didn’t like it much, but you can’t really argue with beauty. They just sang best then.” Ariel was lost to her memories and she heaved a sigh. She smoothed a hand over her knitting, fingers dwelling lovingly on each stitch. “Ariel Davenport’s mother always wanted me to learn to braid pillow lace. Kept lying to me about it being simpler than weaving. And there’s better money in selling lace, she always said. You’d never be hungry if you had a proper trade.”
“I know that sentiment,” I murmured. I gave a bitter smile, glancing down at my trade-less hands. A clergyman’s daughter is genteel enough to be educated and accomplished, but never useful. Caught between the world of labour and that of letters, I had lamented my lack of employment under my brother’s room. Those were long months of inactivity.
“I’d always retort that you can knit lace as well, which would earn me a cuff to the ears. You don’t really knit silk, you know,” said Miss Davenport. She held her knitting up to the light, squinting at the sun’s weave through the intricate pattern. “I just don’t have the hands for pillow lace. Too many bobbins.”
“I wasn’t ever taught lace-making.”
“It involves a hundred bobbins. And a pillow. Because there’s nothing more precious than partly made lace that it needs its own pillow.” She gave a huff. “It’s a horrid art.”
“You must miss them all terribly.”
“Sorry?” she said, confused and startled out of her memory.
“Your – I mean, Ariel Davenport’s family. You must miss them.”
“No, I don’t. Not really,” she said, shaking her head. “I do not miss them at all.”
“But you speak of them often.”
“It’s good that you think I might miss them. I like that.” Miss Davenport smiled weakly. “Not many here understand why I might miss them. Why I could miss them. The others, they’re just not made that way. Much like my hands. I could try to make the shapes for lace-making, pass the threads over one another, and something like lace sometimes results. But it’s not quite the same. Doesn’t come naturally.”
For all my restlessness, I was unable to leave the castle. I was beginning to regret not looking about the bustling port of my first day. Though the strange sights I had seen then fuelled my daydreams, they were fast fading into fantasy.
As consolation of sorts, Miss Davenport took me walking around the courtyard. She seemed to dislike the gardens. Miss Davenport explained that until Laon returned, the protections that bound the inhabitants of the Faelands to not harm him would not extend to me.
“Blood binds blood,” she said, a little primly. “And blood knows blood. You can’t expect mortal salt to do all the work. You need to keep yourself out of harm’s way too.”
I winced; Miss Davenport was developing a habit of reprimanding me for carelessness, all dark warnings and strange taboos.
“There’s a geas that knows you.”
“A geas?”
“A ban, though some call it fate. It keeps your brother and those of his blood safe. The Pale Queen has promised him that he and those of his blood would not die in these walls and it protects you because you’re staying within them. They can’t touch you here, no matter how much they want to. So you really shouldn’t go wandering about out there by yourself, Miss Helstone.”
“Who do you mean by they?” I stopped to turn and look directly at her, hoping to read something in her disconcertingly human eyes.
She gave a half shrug, avoiding my gaze. “Simply what is beyond the castle walls.”
“Then what is beyond the walls?” I said, my voice rising in frustration. “What should I be afraid of?”
“I’m not sure I could, that is to say, should–”
“I saw faces,” I said. At the crossing of her brows, I hurried an elaboration: “In the mist. The day I arrived. There were faces, figures in the mist.”
“It was probably just your imagination running wild. You… you shouldn’t be so curious,” she said. “Remember what happened to the original missionary.”
“No one’s ever told me what happened to Roche.”
She stopped herself, rolled the unspoken words over her tongue like a boiled sweet and swallowed. She cleared her throat and without a hint of sheepishness, said, “Best you don’t know.”
“I would rather know, Miss Davenport.” I jutted out my chin stubbornly.
“That may be the case, Miss Helstone, and I may rather tell you, but I fear I cannot.”
“You haven’t even told me who Laon is petitioning or what you’re hoping to achieve by keeping me here.”
“Secrets keep you safe.”
I wanted to argue with her, to press her further for the truth. But given how she was one of the only two people I knew in Arcadia, it seemed short-sighted to cross her.
We walked in silence for a while after that, a coldness settling between us despite the closeness of the pendulum sun.
It was Miss Davenport who spoke first. I looked at her, noting a disconcerting, deceptive humanity in her eyes. A smile wavered at her lips and she spoke quite gently, as though her words were actually a reconciliation. “Not all knowledge brings joy.”
Miss Davenport reached a reassuring hand towards me and I took it. I nodded and offered her a smile, trying to bury my discontentment.
Eyes suddenly faraway, she added: “There are things I wish I didn’t know.”
With peace so recently restored, I allowed her that cryptic remark, though one day, I promised myself, I would have answers.
“You are a lot like your brother,” said Miss Davenport. “He was also full of questions. He couldn’t just accept the way things worked.”
Laon had been particularly distant during his first days abroad.
“You seem very familiar with Laon,” I said, and asked if she had similarly acted as his guide and companion.
“It was rather different with your brother,” she said. She never called Laon by his name or even referred to him by title; he was always your brother. “Being a companion to a man is not exactly the same thing as being that to a woman.”
I had the decency to blush, but for all my flustered feelings it wasn’t until afterwards that I realised how opaque she was being. She had not actually answered my question. Surely any indigence was akin to a refutation.
When I reconsidered the impudence of my qu
estion, I came to realise that for all her outward appearance of humanity – she even took her food and drink with salt – I had never quite forgotten her to be fae. Thus I had entirely not considered her to be a woman.
Still, the imagination was a traitorous thing and, after that it took a force of will not to imagine her with my brother. Perhaps to goad me, she spoke more often of him – always, always in those terms, your brother – and yet these scraps, these glimpses of Laon did little to satiate my curiosity.
Whenever we sat together she would allude to him, holding up her knitting as though a veil between us as she spoke. She had thoroughly mastered the art of saying a multitude of words without any substance. In passing, she would tell me that my brother was careless on his first day, or that he had gotten lost in the blue wing, but such detail gave me no sense of his whole. I continued to worry about him and his curt letters, and my own harsh words at his decision to become a missionary echoed within me.
I could not now bear to articulate the hopes that I had when first setting foot on The Quiet at Dover, but I had not thought that I would be again sitting in a solar, needlework in my hands, empty conversation in my ears, waiting.
Chapter 5
The Changeling in the Chapel
Hymn 47. Trichinopoly. P. M. (7’s & 6’s, double.)
From Greenland’s icy mountains,
From India’s coral strand,
Where Afric’s sunny fountains
Roll down their golden sand;
From many an ancient river,
From many a palmy plain,
They call us to deliver
Their land from error’s chain.
In newly discover’d Elphane
Long shrouded from our sight
Where creatures strange ‘n’ profane
Have never known his light.
Salvation! Oh, Salvation!
The joyful sound proclaim
Till each remotest nation