Chapter Seven
It is a warm day, and something about that fact feels right to Samantha. A cool breeze allows the scattered array of tiny leaves and pockets of pollen to dance and twirl in the air. A few of those seed pods she loved, the ones which whirl and spin as they find their way to the ground, make her feel nostalgic in a way she couldn't, and wouldn't explain. Though, it was entirely possible that the grips of mild melancholy and fond memories which nestled against her were not the seeds' doing.
It had been difficult to stare up at the small, square, upright stone. She'd sat in the grass for what must have been a quarter hour before she could truly take it in. She had visited before, of course, but it had been years. She stopped letting herself count the anniversaries some time ago, though was never quite sure when. She hadn't brought flowers, or left a note since before even then.
Samantha pushes the air out of her nose, feeling, on the one hand, dejected for neglecting this duty, and on the other, peaceful to honor it again today. She tugs at the strands of grass peeking up through the small rows of gravel around her, wondering and wondering why it feels so different this year. She knows why, of course, but it feels right to be sure.
Here lies Susanna Holm,
Mother, Servant, Friend.
Taken too early by illness.
God be with her.
It wasn't the fanciest gravestone, but it was a miracle. When the fever had swept her mother out from the world which she so loved, the world which she still had business in, it was an unfathomable kindness that Katherine Jones did not kick Samantha out upon the street. She and Susanna had been great friends, just as her daughter, Cordelia, and Samantha were. Katherine, the mistress of one Lord Hastings, petitioned him to purchase a plot to bury her longtime servant and friend, and to Samantha's surprise and relief, he was willing.
"Oh, what would you think of me?" She says aloud. It feels strange, and if the graveyard had not been tucked away into a quiet part of Bellchester where she could be alone and unheard, Samantha would never bring herself to speak at a stone. She sighs and shakes her head, wondering if the Sister's were really right that her mother was still out there somewhere, existing in Heaven or whatever it might be. Her voice tickles as it leaves her throat, soft and shameful in its wish to be heard.
"I'm not a collar, I didn't stay in the life of a servant," she says like it was an accomplishment. In sight of her mother's name, it feels hollow. "I used to think you'd be so proud I was a Lady. I escaped the hardships we faced." Samantha pauses, shaking her head only slightly as she thinks. "Now? Now, I'm not so sure. Maybe you'd be glad I left that world."
Left... Even at a grave she still struggles to admit the depth of her failure. Her mother would understand, she tells herself. Though, Samantha never was much good at hiding things from her, her honest eyes always pulling the truth out of her one way or another. How wretched it would be to allow her mother to discover the person nobility turned her into, how painful it would be to admit she never found love, or joy, or happiness, or any of the things Susanna would have respected. She never quite felt wrong for having cheated on her husband, Revier was never much a person who cared for her beyond appearances either, but there's pangs of remorse for all the women she picked up and discarded.
"Sometimes..." She attempts to continue, pausing for a moment until the inertia of speaking resumes. "Sometimes, when I was with Revier, just lying there and resenting him... not even sex, just listening to him snore... I'd wonder if that feeling in me was what you felt with my father. Maybe you were also secretly glad to be rid of him."
She tucks her legs under herself, sitting with them crossed and her back bending forward a little. "Were you also like me?" Samantha asks, narrowly avoiding the words catching in her throat. She doesn't need to cry, at least as far as she can tell, but the whispers of tears threaten an appearance. "When things first began with Cordelia and I..." She furrows her brow, tilting her head to the side as she thinks. "I wondered if you and Katherine felt the same about one another, wondered if that was just what friends did. Looking back, it feels impossible to know.
"Did I inherit this from you?" Samantha drops her hands down frightfully into her lap, laying them down with her words like an accusation. "Is it passed along like some sort of disease? Was your mother also always struggling to find her place in this wretched world of men?" She can feel her throat constrict, her mouth drying out as she croaks, "Did she also only feel alive with a woman's touch?"
The tears do push forth now, gentle and steady, tickling her cheekbones and causing her to wipe them away hastily, as though in leaving them there the gravestone would scorn her sorrow. She swallows, trying to keep up appearances, though she wasn't sure for who. "You would have liked Esther, I can tell. The two of you have the same optimism, the same belief in the goodness of people," she says fondly. "I don't know if you would have approved of... of this... but the child in me thinks you would." She gives it a moment of thought, then nods resolutely. "I like that idea. I think you would. You believed in love enough that you wouldn't care who it was, so long as I loved her.
"I do," she croaks, mildly embarrassed to feel it summon forth such depth of emotion from her. She gives up the battle of wiping away tears. "I feel almost ridiculous saying it but I love her so much it aches. To see her across a room and not kiss her, not hold her so tightly we can't breathe... it feels like the greatest sin I could possibly commit.
"Speaking of which," she mutters, chuckling to herself in disbelief. "Maybe you wouldn't have approved of my ascension to nobility, but would you have blessed my entrance into cloistered life?"
Samantha laughs a little more, letting herself fall onto her back and lay on the ground. She stares at the sky, bemused and baffled that this was the decision tearing through her defenses, setting her heart beating like there was monument to even the consideration of the idea. To be with Esther, to love her and hold her and kiss her, that made sense to Samantha. It was natural to her mind. The offer Sister Pullwater made her was alien.
A few moments later she finds herself sitting up again, reading the chiseled stone over and over again. "You were always so happy," she muses. "I never understood how. Even with all the money and status and influence I could acquire I felt empty." She shakes her head again, shrugging only to drop her shoulders back down. "But, being with Esther, being around the children... Jesus, it's almost embarrassing to admit it all makes me happy.
"I feel maternal," she grumbles. "Christ, I thought I killed that wretched instinct ages ago. Maternal," she chews on the word, spitting it out like it was an insult to be wielded. "Esther is exciting and sincere and beautiful. I understand why she makes me happy. The kids?"
Samantha thinks of the orphanage this morning, excited to see her bring breakfast out to each one of them. She'd sung a little jingle as she did it, and not even one that her mother had repeated so often it lodged itself forever in her mind; she'd made one up on the spot. And then she joined them to eat, laughing and talking and asking Wendy if she ever thought she'd travel and telling Judith the secrets of how to act poised and...
"It feels an embarrassingly trivial answer, 'Just have kids, that will give your life purpose,'" she mocks, baffled by all the women around her who insisted on having children if only to occupy their empty, vapid days. None of the noblewomen even raised their kids, they outsourced that work to their collars. "I cried with relief when I learned I was barren. Best news I ever received." She looks away, once more spitting out, "Maternal."
She sighs. "It's just the way it makes me feel like you," she tells the stone, hoping the sentiment made sense. "Your husband was a piece of shit who left you; you were happy. You sold yourself into servitude just to feed the daughter I never knew if you planned on having; you sang to me constantly anyway. You were poor as can be, far from your birth home, estranged from your family... your life meant nothing in the grand scheme of society. Revier's friends... and my friends, we all would have mocked you endlessly."
Her legs grow stiff from being tucked underneath her and she stretches them out, muttering, "And you were content. All of that against you, all the reasons I'm supposed to think less of you for.... But the more I act like how I remember you did, the better I feel."
She sits forward and drops her head into her hands, massaging her palms across her temples. "Christ, do I actually want this? I'd hate the robes, I'd hate the rules, I'd probably even hate most of the rituals... but..." She allows her sentence, and her brief confidence in the idea, to fade away. "No. No, it's foolish," she decides.
Taking a final comforting look at the gravestone, Samantha rises to her feet, resolving to see what the rest of her day had in store for her. She gazes up at the sky, looking past the clouds and the patches of blue, and declares, "If that doesn't count as a prayer I don't know what does."
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