Midnight's Song (11 page)

“My name?” I confusedly
echoed in response.

“Yes, your name.
Beeti has made it known that she believes you are better suited by
your middle name; Celeste
.”
I could sense reluctance in her tone. “She has
told me – and I must respect her wishes – that Elissa is not a
fitting name for someone of the 3
^rd
caste.”

My heart dropped. Is that
why Beeti hadn’t called me by my birth name? Truly, this couldn’t
be the case. Grandmamma had called me by my name, completely
unbothered.

“There’s nothing wrong with my name!”
I shot back, “It was the name of my grandmother on my father’s
side!”

Beeti suddenly walked into
the room. Where had she been all this time? Obviously, she had been
listening to us. How long had the woman been waiting to reprimand
me?

“Precisely!” Beeti
remarked, “It was the name of your grandmother on your
father’s
side! That is
why it’s not fitting of a Devereaux!”

I averted my eyes from
Monica, who was clearly distancing herself from the situation. What
a confusing moment this must have been with her – to see the woman
she was working with stab me in such a way. I suppose she felt it
best to remain quiet at this point.

“Perhaps it’s not
fitting for a Devereaux; but my grandmother was a good woman! She
raised my father – and she raised him to be a
good man!”
My eyes narrowed, as did
Beeti’s.

“She raised
your
father –
a
person far from being a good man!” Beeti shot, clearly intending to
wound. “He was raised to be a dirty, 10
^th
caste peasant with no
regard for his place! Raised by a woman who would bring him up to
believe it was alright to steal away my sister in the dead of night
and impregnate her before the two were even wed!”

Her accusation was one of
the most severe crimes under magisterial law. I knew for certain
that what she said was false – for I was born by in my home by a
midwife! I wasn’t destroyed by government mandate or birthed in a
jail cell. I stood back, speechless for a few of those moments
before I mustered up enough anger to give me the strength and
courage to stand up.

“You spit lies!” I
told Beeti boldly. “My mother was not pregnant before she married
my father. Even if she had been – that is no reason to spite me. I
am the same flesh and blood that she is, and she is the same flesh
and blood that you are! But – even in that case – she
did not
have me before
she was wed.” I narrowed my eyes at her further. “I was born by a
midwife,
not
a
prison doctor!”

“Very well then,”
Beeti remarked, obviously surprised at my boldness. “But you still
may not be called by your first name when you are with me or Dr.
Blackwood. And when you are announced and presented publicly; you
will be referred to as
Celeste
Devereaux.
” I saw a twinge in her eye,
the last part of her sentence being her own stabbing, sweet picture
of revenge. “Elissa is the name of a
peasant.”

That was the very
first time that I escaped to the garden.

Overwhelmed with conflicting emotions,
I ran away from these people at the first opportunity to. I ran up
and down an interlacing circuit of hallways until I found myself
standing at the same corridor that I had many nights ago. Without
making a second thought, I shoved the door open and ran.

In the warmth of the afternoon, I was
met with a sweet symphony of birds chirping and basking in the
daylight. In the day, I could see now what I had failed to pay
attention to every time I’d passed by here. Roses bloomed one each
side of the cobblestone walkway where I stood. The trees were hung
with wind chimes and bird houses of all kinds and colors. Moths
flew from flower to flower and small squirrels scurried up the
trees.

Like the ocean, it calmed
me.

I decided to wander a bit further into
the place than I had the last time; enamored with the sights and
sounds around me. They helped my cares to melt away. I wandered
past the gate and into the hedge maze, getting lost in its
enclosing walls until I found my way into its center. When I came
to the heart of the maze, I was met with a grand, marble fountain
that stood as its centerpiece. Water squirted up from top of the
fountain, raining down on a group of joyous, dancing angels that
were eerily frozen in place and scattered to the very
top.

The repetitive, mesmerizing
pitter-patter of the water droplets hitting the surface of the
water brought me back to the sounds of the nighttime waves that I
had nearly forgotten about. It echoed the very ocean I had loved
and reminded me of my once happy – but now changed and distant
home. I felt the tears well up in my eyes, realizing how far that
dream was from me now.

I suddenly heard leaves rustle against
a wall of the hedge maze. I closed my eyes, averting my attention
from whatever it must have been. A hand suddenly set itself softly
on my shoulder from behind. The person – still out of view –
slipped an envelope into my hand. I glanced at the address. It was
Una’s.

“It came today,” a familiar voice
echoed behind me.

I looked up to see who had delivered
the letter. It was Monica Blackwood. She took a handkerchief and
wiped my tears.

“I’m sorry about
Beeti. I’m sorry about what I did myself. I am still a servant to
her…you see...but that is still no excuse for my behavior. I should
have put my foot down. I have no problem with your name – and no
2
^nd
caste linguist or academic can put a price on your value
based on that.”

I knew in that moment that Monica was
a different person from the one that she had always seemed. The
teacher that she was to me was only the role that Beeti had her
playing. It was a role of the Magistrate – the same person who had
continued insisting that all of this hardship was the result of
witchcraft. That moment led me to wonder exactly who this woman
could have been underneath it all.

“What does the letter say?” I asked,
dumbfounded.

“Dear, it hasn’t been
opened yet.”

I realized my folly and
nodded, using my finger to tear its seal. It was a short letter,
taking me no more than a minute or so to read. I was gone and safe,
so father was eating at least somewhat adequately. He’d gotten my
rations, I supposed. I knew from the tone of the letter that Una
was writing in an attempt not to alarm me – but still trying not to
lie about it all the same. The last part of the letter sent a pang
of distress over me.

My papa’s mental health was failing –
and he had begun going missing for periods of several days at a
time. Una assured me that he would be in good care and that she
would always watch over him; but urged me to devote prayer to the
matter. After promising she would write again, she closed her
letter. A feeling of melancholy resounded within me.

I held my breath and sucked in my
tears. Monica and I were silent to each other, but an unspoken
understanding grew between us. She led me back to the house,
shooing Beeti away and continuing the rest of my lesson just as she
would continue to do for the next 3 months.

In that time, the world around me
continued to darken – yet somehow Monica taught me how to stand
tall. More letters came, and Papa’s health continually failed. And
every Friday, the Magistrate’s mandatory broadcast became filled
with more intense blame on the invisible forces of witchcraft that
were somehow plaguing our nation.

It seemed funny that he’d still pay
any mind to the fact that half the realm was in drought anyway,
considering that the rich of this district had lush gardens more
comparable to rainforests. But, the Magistrate meant business this
time. Apparently, he must have known something that we didn’t –
because although I couldn’t see any of what he did – he had already
begun the witch hunt.

Only a month after I had arrived, I
had already heard from Emily that some of her family living in my
region had known lower-caste peoples to have been arrested and
tried for witchcraft without cause. Some of them were people that
Emily had known, others just stories. She knew in her heart that
none of these people could have done such things – and I trusted
her intuition, knowing her perspective and all its
genuinity.

Soon after, there
was banter all over the servants’ quarters about people who had
family and friends back home that were beginning to see this witch
hunt take place first hand. The people lived in constant fear of
being falsely accused and tried – even
executed.
The servants worried for
their families as well; and I worried with them about my own
friends and family back on the Katie Isles.

As things progressed in the homes of
the lower castes – it seemed almost as if by coming here I had been
spared something much more devastating than drought or
hunger.

Though, my time here
would eventually offer very limited shelter from the climate
brewing outside. In no more than a blink of an eye, the servants
were beginning to worry about
themselves.
We all knew it was a
matter of time before the Magistrate not only terrorized the poor
living in other regions; but would begin rooting out the
“perpetrators,” in his
own.
And once this was realized, it was realized not
only by the servants themselves; but also by the keepers of the
manor.

Grandmamma –
beginning to fail in health herself – put her foot down and
insisted that our family became more pious. Dr. Blackwood was to
incorporate Saint History into my curriculum, and Stella was to use
her embroidery skills now
only
for the good of the church and was forbidden to
attend any social function outside of the protective bonds of our
manor or the church.

She didn’t do it out of necessity of
faith – but rather, to protect our family.

Grandmamma was a
smarter and more complex woman underneath it all than I could have
ever hoped to understand – so I trusted that it wasn’t something
she did out of siding with the Magistrate’s claims. There was
something about the fact that they had taken in a
10
^th
caste foreigner – the child of parents in direct rebellion of
“God’s intentions” – that seemed to cause Grandmamma to realize
that if the climate heated up anymore than it already had, the odds
were stacked against us.

And as for talk of things
such as the “monsters of old,” and banter about the primitive
mythologies that lower castes held dear – it all suddenly ceased.
The servants’ quarters quickly became far too quiet with fear to
breathe a word of such things. If anyone so much as breathed a word
about these things now – even if only in joking banter – the entire
room would quiet. It was as if even the most childish of fairy
tales had become toxic.

As the Magistrate’s claims progressed
– so did my training. In our third month together, the first
trimester of my lessons was nearly up. I had been taught to stand
tall and speak clearly, amongst many other things. Though, there
was still much learning to do. I was hardly ready to be presented
as “Lady” by any means. I still hadn’t quite adjusted to my new
life very well – that’s why the news that I would hear one day at
this very point in time would shake me to my core.

It had been three
months and one day since I had come to live here. I had gotten up
that morning taking note of a strange feeling in the air. Even
though I normally got up and immediately started my lessons with
Dr. Blackwood, today I was told that the family needed to see me
downstairs. It was dire news, Emily had told me upon waking, and
the family needed to see me as soon as possible. She immediately
got me up and threw me a bathrobe before she walked ahead of me,
literally
jogging
down the stairs.

When I arrived at the bottom, I could
see that everyone in the family and even some employees were
sitting at the dining room table. The doorman was absent, the door
propped wide open as if my arrival had been anxiously and openly
anticipated. Each person in the family sat around the table with an
unusually stern, distressed look on their faces. I could almost
sense the intensity – nearly reading their thoughts. If there was
one thing I could deeply sense, it was that something must have
happened in these last few hours that caused everyone in my family
to think twice about having taken me in.

If I was hardly ready to live as a
rich girl, I certainly wasn’t ready for this.

“Elissa, we received a telegram this
morning. Someone of great power has asked something of our family.”
Wren abruptly spoke up, sternly looking up from across the table.
Dr. Blackwood was there, as were Stella and Beeti and Grandmamma.
All of their prying eyes seemed to scream at me as if I was their
only living hope for salvation. At the same time, a good deal of
the room also looked at me as if I was a ticking time bomb that
would cause their downfall. Everyone but Wren remained
silent.