The Child In Uniform
The ticking of the clock seemed to stabilize the sheer enormity
of the silence in the house; to give it order. To Adam, it was like a general,
issuing orders. Marching soldiers. Rumbling drums. The whistle of the teapot
was a mortar-shell. His thoughts were out of place, here, and he knew that he
may as well have been a fish in the desert. He was a soldier. Yet, he very much
wanted to not have to think like one any longer.
For a while, he was grateful only to escape the cannonball
sounds of horse’s hooves on the street, only to find that they were slowly
returning in militant regiments.
“I remember my husband acting similarly, when he came back
from the war against the Gaeling Throne.” Adam looked up from tea that was
going cold and hands too rough for his tidy clothes. Lady Rosa was smiling at
him, across the table, in that way of hers. The wrinkles beside her eyes were
lined up like ranks, all pulling together to make that smile, like sailors
trying to drag a ship onto shore.
He had to recycle her statement in his mind to understand it,
before he frowned. “I am sorry, My Lady. I must be awful company.”
She shook her head—slightly, for nothing she did was
drastic—and she sipped from her teacup again, before setting it down. “The silence
of contemplation is to me as sweet a sanctitude as the joy of conversation. And
you have much indeed to contemplate, Adam.”
He nodded a bit at this, and took another drink. A smile
found him. “Your tea is very good,” he allowed.
She raised her eyebrows. “I had begun to wonder if you were
going to drink any of it. I am glad that you decided to indulge me. And yes, I
suppose after what you are used to, it would taste splendid. My husband used to
tell stories of straining his coffee through old stockings.”
The smile that had found him out made itself fully at home, now.
“Nothing quite that dramatic, my lady.”
“No,” she mirrored his expression, but hers was so much
brighter, her teeth so much whiter. She had been giving that smile for years,
many times a day, practicing and polishing. She was a professional. Adam was
still a novice in training. And now, without his beard, his smile felt strange
and exposed. Vulnerable. He had not yet gotten used to his own dimples.
“I thought about you often, while I was away,” he said after
another few moments of silence. “About the Hall and the lawns. About all the
time I spent here. Of course, the house was louder in my daydreams, and the
streets quieter. Like it used to be.”
She enjoyed his sentiment immensely, by the glow in her
eyes, and she turned, to eye the house. “Yes, it has been quiet. I can no
longer afford to keep the house filled. I have thought, of course, about simply
having the maids live here, just for the pleasure of their company. But they
all have families to return to, of course.”
“I am sorry, My Lady,” he said quietly.
She waved it off. Then, for the briefest moment, a look of
annoyed humor entered those marvelously auburn eyes as her thoughts changed.
“Of course… once Emilia returns, you will see that not all of the house is
doomed to eternal silence. She does more than her fair share to hold the quiet
at bay; while, I suppose, I do little for myself.”
“Emilia,” he smiled, nodding fondly. “She must have grown so
much since I was here last. She was a child, then.”
“So were you,” Lady Rosa reminded him. “But you were a child
in uniform and she was a child still playing with dolls.”
“And here I am still a child in uniform,” he stated. “Does
she still play with dolls?”
“Young men, mostly,” Lady Rosa rolled her eyes towards the
roof. “And you should see some of the rabble that follow her home, now and
then. Gracious, if her father was here...” She chuckled mildly at the thought,
before changing the attention. “Can I get you something to eat? My cook, dear
sweet Lila, got married two months ago, and while she doesn’t grace us with her
presence—for which I am quite sorry—she does keep our larders filled. Scones?
Cakes?”
Adam shook his head. “No, thank you, My Lady.”
“Well I shall help myself, then, if you don’t mind,” she
added as she rose from the table and swept into the kitchen. That was how she
always moved, Adam thought to himself, and how she always had. She didn’t walk;
she swept about. She glided in her long skirts, never bobbing. A lady surely never bobbed. Soldiers
bobbed. They swayed and swaggered, with loud steps. She was silent. “I find
that a small dose of sugar in the afternoon does set me on a better course by
evening,” she declared.
Adam’s smile returned. “I do remember your propensity for
chocolate, My Lady.”
“And I remember your propensity for stealing my chocolate,”
she replied.
Humor filled his distracted eyes. “I always assumed that you
knew I had taken it. I wondered that you never brought it up.”
“You needed it more than I, at the time,” said she. “Joy is
deserved of the youth. Although now, mind you,” she narrowed her eyes at him as
she worked, “I guard my chocolate with such ferocity that I doubt even your
weathered eyes have seen, on the other side of the River.”
His laugh, so unused in its sound, so stiff and inflexible,
was still a joy to the rafters and the unlit chandelier. As the lady returned
and sat pleasantly across from him, he turned his gaze out to the large front
window. White sunlight was waltzing in, spilled from the cracks in the dusted
gray clouds, and he could see, from there, the careful white fence and bright
green lawns. He had played there, once, before the uniform.
“I thought of Emilia, too, while I was gone,” he said
quietly. “I often wondered what kind of woman she would become.”
“I still wonder,” said the lady with dampened skepticism,
always tainted with her good nature, as she drank again. She pursed her lips
for a few moments before speaking again. “And what about Laurena? Do you think
of her, as well?”
Adam’s smile did not disappear; but it seemed uncertain. It
was there because he had not taken it down yet, not because he wanted it there.
It was a leaning painting. He looked out the window for a while more, then took
up his tea again. “Only when I can’t help it.”
“Have you heard anything from her?” Lady Rosa inquired
delicately.
He shook his head. “Nothing from her. But I have a friend,
in Avor, who said that he saw her with a man, a month ago. She has a child.”
The lady said nothing, but she had that look in her eyes
that he recognized, from his childhood; it was the look she gave when she knew
that he had stolen the chocolates, but did not say. It was the look that said
that she already knew, and was only acting like this was news. It was a look
she wore frequently.
“Yes, well,” she finally said, “Avor is a ways off. At least
you won’t run into her. I imagine that would be an unpleasantly awkward sort of
reunion.” Her eyes were apologetic.
Adam said nothing. Soon, his tea was gone, and the cup was
on the table. Small talk held little joy to him, and Lady Rosa had no
objections to his quiet demeanor. The clock marched on, in the next room. The smell
of tea and scones and upside-down-herbs hanging in the pantry were pleasant to
the soldier, and the gentle humming of the woman calming. He could not be
angry, here. Of course, there was little to be angry about any more.
In description, the pain he felt was rather like the pain
felt by a man who had been stung by a huge hornet. Eventually, the agony went
away, but the barb remained, hanging in his arm. Whenever the name of Laurena
was mentioned, someone struck it. The barb jerked, and the wound hurt again.
But here, the pain was so subtle, he hardly noticed. Not in
Elbraum House.
Somewhere, in the rear corridor at the end of the kitchen, a
door slammed, as though some hurricane wind was set to rip it from its hinges.
Lady Rosa did not turn to face it; instead, she met Adam’s eyes and smiled
tiredly, managing the words, “Brace yourself.”
Emilia stormed into the house, her muddy boots stomping the
innocent tiles to death. Her face was furiously red when she came around the
corner and into the kitchen, hair plastered to her face from rain or tears,
either way messier than it was supposed to be and had been that morning. There
was mud on the hem of her bright dress. “Mother,” she declared in a heavy,
decisive tone, much too loud for the old house, and even the commanding clock
to stand up to. “I have decided.”
“Decided what, Dear?” Replied the mother, without looking
up.
“I have grown entirely exhausted of wretched human emotions.
In fact, I have come to believe them to be entirely worthless and troublesome.
They only on very rare occasions bring about anything worth bringing about, and
most frequently they do the opposite. Furthermore, I do believe them to be
constricting, disabling and counterproductive. In short, they are of no use to
me any longer, as I refuse to be exasperated, bullied, or made a fool of by
them ever again. Indeed, emotions are the foulest, vilest, most repulsive and devilest
of all devils, and I shall have no part of them.”
As though this was of no surprise whatsoever, the mother
spoke. “You’ve had your heart broken by that boy again, haven’t you?”
Emilia’s anger was gone, and instantly replaced by a display
of drama so intense that Adam was sure only a talented few could muster at will,
as she threw herself into a chair and draped herself over the table like a limp
towel.
“Thomas, wasn’t it?” Lady Rosa asked with skewed eyebrows.
“Jacque,” she sobbed. “Oh, mother, why does it hurt? Oh
please, just let me die.” Her whimpers continued as she buried her face in her
arms. Adam, completely overlooked, stayed where he was, as though he was
one of the oversized paintings hung in the gallery.
The mother patted her on the back of the head, speaking in
the same tone as always. “Alright, I shall. But first some nice tea, and you
can get cleaned up, and I can introduce you to an old friend who is visiting
from the east. And then, if you still want to die, you may have my
blessing.”
“Oh thank you mother,” she beamed. “You truly are a
saint.”
“Yes dear,” Rosa said calmly. And then, without hesitating,
she gestured across the table. “You remember Adam, surely?” She asked.
Emilia looked up. For a moment, in her tear-glowing eyes,
there was no sign of recognition. And then, after several long blinks, sheer
terror filled them. She looked from Adam’s hard eyebrows to his soft smile, to
his uniform and the medals on his chest, the sword ceremoniously included at
his side.
She stood up so abruptly that her chair nearly fell over
behind her. “Mother!” She squealed.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” She seemed to have completely forgotten any prior
offense that had ever been done her, in light of this new betrayal, as she
darted out of the room as quickly as she could. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She
repeated. “I am not ready for company! Have you seen what I’m wearing?”
Lady Rosa replied in a sigh that she pointed down the hall.
“I told you that Adam was coming this morning.”
“But not that Adam!”
She replied from the top of a stairs. “And not in uniform!”
Adam’s smile returned, real and thorough. Lady Rosa was
smiling back at him. “You may find that she has not much changed,” she said.
Adam shook his head. “Nothing changes here,” he said, which
could just as well have been replaced by “I would like to stay here.” But he
didn’t say that. The sound of marching died, and was replaced by the sound of a
clock. There were no more mortars whistling on the oven or cannonballs trotting
by outside. He was happy, and as close to home as he had been in eight years.
He forgot the River, and the terrible Shadow of that Wall.
There was joy in the silence. Contentedness in the small
packages of breaths.
He was a child in uniform. And this was the place he had
stolen chocolate from. There were memories, so long stuffed into his pockets,
which he could polish to brightness again.
