Guilquist Manor
Soft strains of cello and viola weaved their way through wood-panelled walls and over marble floors. They resonated from exquisitely curved window arches, bounced from vaulted ceilings and recessed walls, and flowed like fine treacle into the ears of the manor’s guests as they filed in from the cold, winter air. Reading from hand-written sheet music, the quartet of musicians kept their gazes ahead and down, respectfully avoiding the gazes of those who loved to hear the music, but hated to see those who made it.
It had been a cold and wet few weeks in the lead up to the St. Chum’s Night ball. The roads to Guilquist Manor transformed more and more convincingly into long, muddy puddles with every passing night of lingering rainfall. Winter rain in the region of the manor was a stubborn and spiteful sort. It knew itself to be unwelcome but made regular visits anyway, looking the dampened and shivering world straight in the eye while it dropped hour after hour of grey, lamentable drizzle. Summer rains at least had passion; they knew how to start and end with a bang, carrying themselves in a tropical thunderstorm, hammering the earth with an undeniable passion for saturation, and then making their way to drier plains to give the sun its chance. Not so for the winter rains. They rolled in with heavy, sun-blotting clouds to take an already short day and make it into a perpetual dusk, and then linger malevolently until all notion of light is forgotten. Over many years of meteorological trial and error the rains of winter calibrated themselves to exactly the right level of ‘just heavy enough’ to stop any activities, but not so much as to be poetically inspiring or get the whole business over and done with. With their co-conspirator the wind, they blew themselves perfectly under any shelter or awning, punishing any who sought to exist out of doors while they fell. Summer rains were momentary inconveniences. Winter rains were perpetual disappointment.
Out of this disappointment was Miss Charlotte Sallow hoping to be delivered by the St. Chum’s Night ball. It was the social event of the season, bridging the gap between the late-autumn frivolity of the harvest dance and the frosty festivities of the solstice revue. Many newcomers to the village questioned the existence of any St. Chum in scripture, local folklore or even, heaven forbid, real history, but they soon came around to the saint's core teachings of rigid social norms, tightly choreographed dances, and indulging in as much of your host's hospitality as you can get away with.
With such an appealing triumvirate of objectives, Charlotte's dull and unfulfilling winter would surely be granted a little respite. Many long days and longer evenings, courtesy of the perpetual, smothering blanket of spiteful cloud, had been spent in the same company all winter. Charlotte, her mother Jane, and her sister Beatrice would spend their days adjusting the lengths of the curtains to keep their upholstering skills sharp, reciting the same book of poetry to one another to practice their diction, and digging deep holes in the lawn in the bitter, roaring wind to keep the gardens perilous. Her father, Mr Sallow, and her brother Edmund would meanwhile go over the books of the family wheat appraisal business for the morning, and then enjoy an afternoon of running at dead trees in the manor's grounds, with the hope of eventually felling them by the concussive force of head and shoulder alone. The decision to fire the manor's gardening staff, Charlotte sometimes thought, had been a drastic oversight.
Evening time after dinner had been served, eaten, and branded tolerable by Mr Sallow, afforded Charlotte a little time to pursue her own interests. Some nights saw her painting at her easel, capturing the likeness of her sister or the carpet in oils or watercolours. Her mother often remarked on the excellent images that Charlotte rendered, even if they did end up sitting, unframed, underneath the staircase. Other nights when the light was poor or the paint had been stolen away by the jaws of a local fox, Charlotte would sing or play the family's heirloom xylophone. Some ancestor of Mr Sallow had brought it back from a long and bloody military campaign overseas, and its bright, percussive sounds had filled the family manor for many decades since. Although enjoyable in their way, these pursuits always lost their lustre during the ravages of the colder season, which precluded Charlotte from riding out into the countryside and hunting farmers for sport. A promised night of food, drink, dancing with stifled and choked creativity, and having to remember the correct honorifics for a hundred inbred nobles, was the greatest tonic for which she could hope.
Regrettably, these occasions were not all inscrutable social norms and complicated dance movements for Miss Sallow. Being a young woman of no betrothal and even fewer prospects in her local social circles, Charlotte was always on the receiving end of a barrage of well-intentioned but unsolicited pressure from her mother. It was bad enough when these were broad-spectrum attempts, applied towards any suitor who happened to be in her eyeline, but ever since the previous year's St. Chum's night ball, Mrs Sallow had gained a sole target from whom her attentions would not wander.
"Now remember, Charlotte, what we said about greeting the admiral; you need to refer to him as 'Your naval highness' or 'My liege lord of little boats and big boats alike'. None of your informal silliness could possibly be countenanced tonight if you're to secure a promise of marriage." she said, as they walked arm in arm along the boggy driveway, approaching the main entrance. Carriages littered the verges on either side, beached and stranded by those whose hubris got the better of them. No human, beast or carriage wheel could stand against the dirging, patient erosion of winter rains, and the malevolent clouds looking down upon them in the near perfect darkness of early afternoon took pride in their terrible work.
"Mother dearest please, I understand perfectly well how one must address an admiral, just like I understand the correct modes of greeting a captain, a bishop, a sergeant, a judge or one of our village’s many ranks of executioner." Charlotte replied, hoping to gloss over her mother's focus on the admiral with a blanket of equivalent formality. She shot her good friend Joy, who was attending the ball as their guest, a weary look.
"What about a labourer from the local mill?" tested her father.
"A trick question. You don't greet someone from so low a stratum. You spit in their direction and, if they insult you by speaking, you give them a taste of the iron baton." Charlotte recited, from both book, memory, and personal experience. The satisfying weight of her iron baton pulled gently at the waist of her gown.
"You are avoiding the point that the admiral's appreciation of your manners matters above all others, Charlotte." persisted her mother. "How you hope you take his hand with so careless an attitude I utterly fail to comprehend. It's just a matter of great fortune that he took so strong and fiery a liking to you at last year's ball. Your features, while delicate in their way, and more handsome than the average rainswept vestibule, will do you no favours in winning most men over."
Charlotte clenched her jaw at her mother's words.
"See? That sort of muscular rigidity in how you hold your mouth would drive away any who seek to paint a likeness of you in profile, and the most well-appointed young men do so love to work in profile when it comes to oil or watercolours."
By this stage of their mobile berating the Sallow family had reached the flagstones of Guilquist Manor, and any rebuke from Charlotte was overtaken by the welcomes of the manor’s staff. Dressed in long jackets with longer tails, which were starched so heavily that they may as well have been commissioned from a carpenter as a tailor, they still managed to take the heavy winter coats of the Sallow family with gracious and unacknowledged professionalism. Next, a team of servants with their trousers and skirts starched into a kneeling position removed the Sallows’ muddy walking boots, and replaced them with fresh, clean dancing shoes. Mr Guilquist was no fool and knew that the muddy ravages of the lane were unavoidable, even by the most experienced winter walker. He would not have that same mud spoiling his dance floor.
Paying the correct respect to the servants that social decorum demanded, which is to say none, Charlotte gave her heels a little twist to test the action of the shoes. They were exquisite, of course, and would afford no resistance to her attempts to glide freely over the dance floor, preferably as far away from Admiral Teller as was possible.
"A most becoming entryway to a home, this is." observed Mr Sallow to the family.
"Splendid." said Mrs Sallow, with a speed which could have left no time at all for genuine consideration of the entrance’s merit.
"A portal which I would be proud to call my own, father." added Edmund. "We could recreate it at home with the timbers that we push down in the new year."
Mr Sallow nodded with satisfaction at the response to his appraisal. Such praise was an observation he made of practically every entrance to every household, and one to which he expected the utmost agreement or a very solidly reasoned counterargument. If there's one thing that Mr Sallow wouldn't tolerate, and in reality there were a great many things, then it was undue criticism of the way into a person's home. Charlotte had spent many a long night pondering why that might be, but with no history in the door business and no stakes in the producers of timber or manors, she could find no reason at all. Perhaps the secret would follow the man to his grave, one in a tomb with the most remarkable entryway a mourner might ever see.
"Your thoughts, Charlotte? And yours Joy? Do you not think this a marvellously agreeable manner in which to transition from without to within?" he probed, daring them to defy his compliments.
"I do most certainly, father." agreed the daughter, seeking no quarrel or confrontation with her father on matters other than the admiral. "And I imagine that Miss Nairie here would appreciate the timberwork all the more for her father's profession."
"Oh, without room for a single doubt on the matter, yes. Any vessel worthy of being put to sea should find itself racked with lamentation if its own timbers were joined to the substandard of these." she said, a little too enthusiastically. Mr Sallow's eyes narrowed at the room for interpretation.
"By which Miss Nairie surely means that would be proud of this standard. Is that not right Joy?" said Charlotte to Joy, shooting her another ocular warning.
"Yes! A hundred times yes!" cried the latter, now more than ever aware of the need for explicit disambiguation of sentiment when it came to matters such as these.
"Ha! Quite so then!" boomed the Sallow patriarch, satisfied that all in his party could be trusted to make sound judgements on front doors. His momentary severity of features, which had directed the anger and mistrust of a hundred carpenters on his family, once again melted away into amiability and lightness. "Then we must not tarry here any longer, potentially obstructing the view of other guests and depriving ourselves of the St Chum's Night entertainments."
At his only reasonable statement since entering the building, the Sallow party and their companion Miss Nairie made quick passage through Guilquist Manor's atrium, and into the broad reception room situated behind it. Here the strings were at their loudest, the light at its brightest, and the spirits at their merriest, with all who had made swifter or sooner progress along the swamp masquerading as a lane to the Manor already indulging in refreshments, stiff dancing, and banal gossip. The mere sight of it all sent Charlotte, Edmund and Joy into fits of giggling anticipation, while Mrs Sallow’s eyes skipped over food and drink alike in their quest for Admiral Teller.
"We must find Mr Shorely for news of the family’s fortunes this last twelvemonth." said Mr Sallow. He had been in business with Mr Shorely some years prior, as Charlotte understood it, selling carriage wheels to those who found themselves unable or unwilling to part with the payment for a whole vehicle. Their expectations, and they had been good ones, were that those who purchased a wheel in isolation would better see the benefit that a second, joined to the first by an axle, might afford. This would then lead to a natural conclusion about wheels three and four, complete with their own axle and a hard coupling to the first pair. From there it was a simple step to add seating and enclosure above, and the complete carriage sale would proceed in the most natural way therefrom. Regrettably, although the business had been a success, Mr Shorely had been lured away by the siren's song of wheel manufacture and left Mr Sallow on amiable terms to continue the trade alone, alongside his very successful axle and carriage bodywork businesses, and the wheat appraisal serviecs for which the Sallow family was famed.
"I'm sure they'll be terribly interested in any news of you and betrothal, dear Charlotte." Mrs Sallow persisted, as relentless as the tide.
"You think we should wait on Charlotte securing Admiral Teller's hand before we greet the Shorely party?" enquired Mr Sallow, reading between a few too many lines for Charlotte's liking.
"I do. Why, it would be terrible for him to ask if our eldest daughter is promised yet, and for you to quite truthfully say no, only to then have news reach him later of the joyous and inevitable promise to wed of John and the future Mrs Teller. He'll understandably but wrongly think you a liar, and you're both too polite to directly confront one another on the matter, so you'll live out some elaborate farce based on this misunderstanding until a further confusing social entanglement comes to a head and resolves the conflict at the same time. It's just like the secondary plot in one of those novels that Charlotte loves to read, and I won't stand for that kind of tomfoolery getting in the way of our girl's happiness." summarised Mrs Sallow. If the father had been reading between lines, then the mother had been reading between letters and punctuation as well. Charlotte felt lamentation overtaking her. It was too much to let stand.
"I can assure you both that there is no need to stand on ceremony and delay your conviviality with Mr Shorely for even a moment on my part. The matter of Admiral Teller and I is as firmly closed now as it ever was, which is to say that there isn't, wasn't, and won't be any chance of any betrothal between he and I. I do wish you would drop this inane obsession, mother. Focus on getting Edmund married instead; at least that would come with a dowry."
Mrs Sallow's hand and handkerchief came up together in a unified display of fraught indignation.
"I won't hear it, Charlotte. It won't do for a young woman like you to talk herself down so. Of course there's a prospect for you and the admiral; we all saw his reaction to you last year when you and Edmund approached. That tiny flicker of true love on his lip. You might not think yourself to be his equal but he clearly thinks enough of you to throw himself bodily at your mercy. I have no doubt that the good man will ask you to marry him here tonight."
"But I don't want to marry him, mother. You aren't listening."
"But I am hearing, my dear," she replied, thinking she sounded rather more clever than she actually did, "and what I hear is someone so intimidated by a bachelor of the admiral's calibre that they'd rather pretend not to be interested than be rejected. And as for your brother he is only nine and twenty; no man so young needs to be finding love or settling down. But you, why, you're already one and twenty! No woman so old or late in securing a promise should delay for a moment, least of all when a man like Admiral John Teller is on the hook."
Charlotte let out a low, rumbling growl of frustration. Her mother had made fine art of delusion, taking the reason that would poke holes in her perspective, grinding it down into a paste, and slathering it on top of her nonsense to disguise it as reality. It would have been a wonderful gift if applied to something more desirable like persuading Mr Sallow to buy them each a pony, but for the time being Mrs Sallow seemed determined to use her powers for evil.
"Mother, heed my words I beg you." pleaded the put-upon daughter while accepting a canapé, quite without acknowledgement of the server. "I am not intimidated by the admiral, nor do I think myself unworthy, nor am I too old to be flippant about these things. I am in no rush to marry anyone, and if I were I still don't think that annual contact at a St Chum's Night ball is a particularly good basis for a lifelong, exclusive commitment. I would far rather marry Mary Teller than the admiral; at least she has good taste in art and a passion for the outdoors."
Mr Sallow laughed.
"Ah, yes. She would be a worthy sister-in-law for you, and in many ways you do marry her as well when you marry John. I have always said that you are in essence married to my sisters as much as me, haven't I Mrs Sallow?"
She nodded curtly. Charlotte rolled her eyes. It felt futile to continue arguing.
"The next round of dancing is about to begin; come Joy, let us join in and leave this idle, deluded fantasising behind." said the daughter, snatching up her friend's hand and dragging her away for the dance. Joy had time only to give Mrs Sallow a polite, helpless smile before disappearing into the crowd.
"I think this may already be as much as I can stand of talk about the admiral." Charlotte said to her friend, bringing the maligned subject back up herself. Joy felt decidedly conflicted about whether to respond or speak with feigned ignorance on another topic, so that her own contribution to the matter did not tip Miss Sallow over the edge.
"Do you know the choreography for the night's dancing, Miss Sallow?" she asked, steering conversation as deftly as a captain might steer their ship from a storm.
"I should say so, yes." replied Charlotte, frustration edging her voice ever less with each word. "We studied together all those nights together this week, and I have been sure to read and rehearse the steps by myself each morning before breakfast. I feel assured that I might be able to perform the dance blindfolded, without music, aboard the roof of a carriage that was sinking into the deep, muddy recesses of the lane.”
“Delightful confidence! I’m sure it will shine out in your performance.”
In their scalloped alcove, the string quartet’s music swelled to a crescendo, and signalled their preparation to switch from one piece to another. Charlotte and Joy pressed their way towards the centre of the room, hand-in-hand, and took their place within the lines of dancers. There were half a dozen neat columns of well-to-do dandies, military leaders, and the types of people whose wealth earned them a living somehow, and the young women took their rightful place among them. Charlotte had Colonel Abringham on her right, and Joy had Mr Orpett on her left, but thankfully neither man was terribly interested in engaging them in terribly uninteresting conversation.
“Could you imagine the admiral joining in with one of these dances?” Charlotte sniggered as she and Joy touched elbows once, twice and then a third time, as the choreography demanded.
“You’d see more fluid and flexible movement from a door.” laughed Joy, whirling around so that her dress fanned theatrically, as did every other dancer on her specific dancing sub-grid. Dance rehearsals had involved learning a lot of conflicting co-ordinate systems. “It would be like watching an oak tree try to stoop for a daisy.”
In perfect time and synchronisation with the other dancers, Charlotte stepped into Joy’s cupped hands and then onto her shoulders. Joy, with the broad shoulders and strong back of a quarry labourer, easily pushed back up to her feet, but many of the other, more foppish guests struggled to perform this simple lift; a great many bodies crashed to the solid wooden floor in a manner that the choreography didn’t call for at any stage of the proceedings. Several loud tuts told of the general feeling of condemnation.
“Looks like old Mrs Willowisp didn’t manage to make the lift of Sir Leadbelly.” Charlotte informed Joy, from her position of vantage atop Miss Nairie’s shoulders. “I suppose that neither of them committed sufficient time to rehearsals like we did.”
“Isn’t she approaching eighty years of age? It’s impressive she’s dancing at all.”
“She won’t be doing again, by the look of things.”
“Shame.”
“But what’s this? Mary Teller is holding up Captain Goldacre with sublime grace. Such powerful arms must make a person feel awfully secure.” Charlotte said, wondering if she would feel better atop Mary’s shoulders than Joy’s.
“What about the Admiral? How does he fare?”
The hypothesised lift from Mary came crashing back down again at the mention of her seafaring brother.
“Oh I wish you wouldn’t bring him up.”
“We must see how he compares to his sister, Charlotte. How could you be sincere in your assertions about marital preference between the siblings if you don’t compare their capabilities wherever possible?”
It was difficult to argue with that logic. Miss Sallow began scanning the room in much the same way as her mother, but with a different end goal, and eventually saw him standing, like a jagged spur of rock stoically defying the rising tide, at the edge of the room.
“He’s not even joined in the dance.” Charlotte called down, her voice dripping with derision as she raised her arms and felt Joy prance below her. Despite the carnage below, the dance could not be stopped. “Mary moves with the grace and precision of a guest who takes the duty of dance rehearsal seriously; a wonderfully desirable trait. The admiral, by contrast, stands aloof by the edges. His face betrays nothing of shame or embarrassment at his refusal to join in. Mary is clearly the superior.”
“A robustly argued case. Surely even your mother could not argue with such exquisite logic.”
Performing a humble and demure somersault, Charlotte tumbled her way down from Joy’s shoulders.
“My mother could argue with the tide that it has never once come in, all the while watching her ankles grow deeper under the water.” sighed Miss Sallow. Realising the avenue for disrespect that she’d unwittingly opened up, Joy rushed to change course again.
"Let us not speak poorly of your mother when we could sing the praises of Mary. Grace and strength together make for a welcome prospect. She would certainly be able to bear you across the threshold by the sound of it."
"As could you, clearly. But you don't propose to marry me, do you? The ability to carry me also doesn't form the necessary criterion for marriage."
"Ha! You know full well that I am promised to Mr Sanderling, the bird-keeper at Woolerton. He and I will spend our days flying his falcons, robins and herons all around the grounds. It's good, honest work with a respectable income from his estate to top it up. But the strength to carry one's spouse in times of joy or trouble is an important factor to consider."
Charlotte tried considering Mary carrying her, and then did the same with the admiral. The latter would never be able to bend and lift her, so again Mary was the clear victor.
"Fine. I concede it to be a desirable trait, as is her delicacy of features and her renown for sculpture."
Joy and Charlotte span back to back, joined hands in a complicated way which would cause arthritis if performed frequently, and began to shimmy in time with the music.
"You could while away married evenings in the pursuit of arts, her sculpting you while you paint her."
"That… that would be most agreeable. Bah, but the admiral also has artistic pursuits, if you listen to mother." sighed Charlotte.
"Ah yes, his willingness to tolerate an evening of harp music. What a virtuoso."
"How she could picture me falling for such a cliff face of a man I have no idea."
"Especially with Mary so close by for comparison." Joy observed.
"Aye, she does cause his failings to be amplified by her remarkably many advantages. Now that I come to think of it, I have always seen the admiral in the company of his sister, and subsequently I’ve been quite unable to judge him through any lens but inferiority."
“Nor have you been able to judge Mary without her brother’s presence tarnishing your perception.” added Miss Nairie, speaking in time with the choreographed high-kicks she was performing. The dance floor was a sea of surprising hip flexibility.
“You know, Joy, you’re quite right on that. Why, I’ve probably judged her with unfair harshness for all this time, even if that judgement still led her to be high in my estimation. We should seek out an opportunity to speak to her in his absence, and thereby allow her full light to shine upon us.”
“Charlotte!” cried Mrs Sallow, narrowly avoiding the windmilling arms of Colonel Abringham. “You must act quickly, my girl! I’ve spotted Admiral Teller! He surely awaits a partner to invite him to dance, and clearly only you will do for him. He is smitten with you and I know it to be true, so go; over there, by the cove in the wall that overlooks grey stone walls in the gardens.”
“I’m aware of his location in the room, mother. I just have no interest in speaking to him.”
“But you must, and you must hurry, for I’ve seen that wretched Elizabeth Dalton speaking to him already. Surely she’ll be spinning her disgusting web and trying to secure a dance for herself.” Mrs Sallow declared with appreciable dismay. “Although she makes for a poor rival compared to you, my love, we must not let the admiral be led astray. Men are simple and easily confused in these sorts of things.”
“Let him be led and let her take him far away from me. I’ve no interest in him, I told you.” Charlotte snapped.
“It would be an act of the greatest discourtesy to allow a man of his status to be led astray by his own misstep of judgement, if indeed he can be led by a vapid swamp of a woman like Miss Dalton. What could she ever offer him for a good and worthwhile marriage? Her paintings are disappointing facsimiles of what she thinks she sees at best, but one could, I suppose, discern a certain attempt at a likeness if approaching with a kind and conciliatory eye like the admiral surely would. Her singing voice is like the sound of a quarry in wartime, and her features could be most kindly described as sheer, rugged, or weather-beaten. In short, it would be criminal not to intervene and let the admiral find happiness with your far superior gifts and advantages.”
“And what of the happiness I should be allowed to find?”
“His tolerance of the harp and his steady income are the greatest happiness that you could hope to achieve, Charlotte. Now come along; Miss Dalton has gone away to powder her nose, so I will bring you to him and help him to make the right decision about a dance with you instead.”
“Wait for the return of Miss Dalton, her nose billowing with powder like a mountain during a blizzard as it always is, and teach her to be the wife you want him to have.” defied Charlotte. She caught Joy’s eye flitting uncomfortably from mother to daughter.
“Miss Sallow, if I may, I see that Mary Teller has moved to join her brother; maybe it would be a pleasant happenstance for all five of us to make a party and talk for a short while.” said Joy, desperately trying to find a way of keeping both the Sallows happy. The younger looked at her friend through narrowed eyes, but the elder was sold immediately.
Taking Charlotte’s elbow in one hand, her fingers like bulrushes left to grow untamed by the side of a wild river, Mrs Sallow led her daughter away from the ranks of dancers and towards the edge of the room, with Joy Nairie close behind.
The high kicks, Charlotte remembered, signalled the crescendo of that particular dance, and so it was not wholly unexpected that Mary should be returning to her brother's side at that moment. It would also make the Sallow party's departure from the dance floor seem less rude and jarring, even if it did involve a physical escort.
Admiral Teller, just as both Charlotte and her mother had seen him, was standing perfectly upright and perfectly still at the edge of the room, his uniform pressed and pristine, and his face betraying no emotion, no movement, and worryingly little recognition that he was even at a ball. In one hand was clasped an untouched glass of wine, looking rather like someone had placed it there for him to make his presence seem less out of place.
Even when Mary returned, slightly red faced and out of breath from her frivolity, he showed no sign of stirring. He was a storm-battered coastline of a man, as unyielding and immovable as the rocky outcrops that lighthouses tend to warn sailors about. A decent hull could have been scuttled on the clench lines of his jaw alone, and still not remove the five o'clock shadow from his face.
Mary's delicate features, on the other hand, would have launched those selfsame ships and kept them safe from all storms and obstacles of nature, Charlotte couldn't help thinking. Although reddened from dance and from her famous love of rooftop vigils in the wintertime, it had none of the look of the scarred and collapsed earth that her brother's exemplified. She was, to put it succinctly, distinctly pleasant. It made Charlotte smile despite herself.
"Admiral Teller! Mary! How wonderful it is to see you both!" cried Mrs Salllow, as she dragged her romantically agnostic daughter into position. "Oh but look how happy Charlotte is to see you admiral." she added, upon seeing and promptly misinterpreting the warm countenance of her daughter.
The admiral regarded them back in the same way that a boulder might regard a hill, watching patiently for change over the next million or so years. He'd not turned his head or so much as flicked his eyes in their direction to do so, of course; they'd positioned themselves in his eye line like a lizard moving from shade to sunlight.
Admiral Teller was not an expressive or over emotive type of gentleman. One could readily expect to get a stronger reaction from a bag of flour or iron bucket. The majority of people who spoke to him took this unresponsive stoicism to mean that he was aloof, disinterested or saw himself as too important for them. Others worried that they had wasted their time talking to a particularly convincing statue of a naval commander. Mrs Sallow merely took it as a challenge to spot any micro-movement and take it as a firm sign of his utter infatuation with her daughter. Mrs Sallow was, it is fair to say, an optimist, as well as ignorant of her daughter’s romantic choices.
It was the result of such intense scrutiny at the previous year’s St. Chum’s Night ball that Mrs Sallow had first deduced the admiral’s deep love for Charlotte. The whole Sallow party had been walking through the main hall, parents at the fore with their children behind, when they had happened to pass the Teller party. The Tellers were seated at the edge of the room in conversation and observation of the year’s dance when Mrs Sallow had happened to look behind herself. She caught the Admiral’s eye scandalously resting on Miss Sallow, which was already fairly strong evidence of an intent to propose marriage, but knew that all doubts could be cast aside when she saw a minute twitch of the jaw muscle. Such a flagrant loss of self-control was tantamount to any other man throwing himself at her feet and publicly forgoing a dowry.
Slowly and deliberately the dmiral's eyes rotated to look between Charlotte and her mother. The younger could almost hear the sound of a millstone grinding as he moved.
"It's a pleasure to see you again." he said. The man spoke with an absolute minimum of facial movement. Had Charlotte and her mother not been examining his face so carefully they might have suspected the presence of a hidden ventriloquist. "What news from Cullerton over this last year? Did adjustments to the tax brackets have an impact on the upkeep of roads maintained by the Crown?"
Charlotte rolled her eyes. He'd found a way to become even more boring than a statue.
"Oh, a noticeable one!" Mrs Sallow lied. She'd not paid attention to the state of any road in her life, but no truth was more important than the one she wished to create for Charlotte. "I've never twisted my ankle so little in an autumn, or lost fewer carriage wheels to potholes, raised bricks and road gremlins."
A lesser man, with a more flexible face, would have raised an eyebrow at the mention of road gremlins, a largely debunked urban legend about creatures who stalk the roadsides and pull the wheels from unsuspecting carriages, but not Admiral Teller. His eyebrows were raised by a full crew of sailors working a capstan, or not at all.
"Glad to hear it."
Silence, like the song of a sealed cave.
"Don't you think Charlotte looks wonderful tonight?" Mrs Sallow finally offered, willing to fill the Admiral's mouth with words since he neglected to take the initiative. "This gown was bought from the seamstresses on Fletching Row, you know. Fits her perfectly."
"Yes, to be sure. You look delightful, Miss Sallow, and I am glad that you chose not to wear a dress which doesn't fit you."
Mrs Sallow nudged her daughter for a response, while Joy continued smiling politely.
"Most grateful." replied Charlotte, rivalling Admiral Teller for a lack of feeling. "But of course, Mary looks wonderful tonight as well. And I was most impressed by your dancing, too, Miss Teller."
"You are very kind, Miss Sallow. I like to learn the dances well, and to keep myself strong and fit enough to do them justice. It's a wonderful way to express and to feel with maximum movement and life."
She was a tonic to every poison of her brother's character, a wellspring of vivacity, and in no way the object of Mrs Sallow's attention. In short, Charlotte began to strongly suspect that Mary was everything she'd ever wanted.
"I think so too, Miss Teller. Joy and I practiced the dance for a clear week to be sure that we did not let down the symmetry of the lines. It is a shame that the same cannot be said for poor, squashed Mrs Willowisp."
"Leadbelly was too heavy for her. It was not a good idea for someone in her condition to try to pick him up, and she let us all down as he hit the ground." agreed Mary, not giving in to the fallacy of sympathy for such poor decisions in dancing partner and role.
"Speaking of dancing, you and the admiral should take the next dance together, Charlotte. A strong military man could surely lift you well." beamed Mrs Sallow, believing herself to be terribly devious in uniting the threads of dances just enjoyed and dances about to begin.
"It would be my pleasure." the admiral intoned, with the warmth and malleability of a tomb. “I have been encouraged by my sister to try this dancing, and Charlotte will do as well as any other for a partner.”
In a kinder, gentler world, Charlotte would have slapped the admiral and felt the moss-blanketed stonework of his cheek stinging her hand as recompense. Not only was he encouraging her mother’s delusions and stealing her away from the wonderful Mary Teller, but he insulted her in the process. As well as any other indeed. She had proven by word and deed that her dancing was exemplary, just like his own sister’s, and he himself was merely ‘trying’ the dance. Yes, a slap would be the thing he deserved most in the world at that moment, but it was not something that her manners would allow. The best she could manage was to nod her head lazily, roll her eyes to Joy, and allow her hand to be taken by the stone man from the seas.
The singular, small consolation of this happenstance was the event of actually seeing Admiral Teller move. Charlotte fully expected that there would be a great grinding at his joints, as of a glacier carving the land, with sediment and sand deposited over many years tumbling freely to the floor, for some nameless servant or other to clear up. She anticipated that they would see cracks forming all over his surface like those she’d read about during earthquakes in far-off lands. He could not even give her that satisfaction.
Contrary to the graceful motions of beloved Mary, the greatest of the Tellers by a margin the same length as the list of her merits, Admiral Teller moved as if he were a loom being tested by its manufacturer. His every movement was even, measured and ponderous; smooth without the sense of elegance, controlled without the advantage of performance, and steady without the illusion of care. There was an unseen carpenter pushing every limb along its axis of motion to check for knots, bumps or imperfections, proving the parts to be functional without that motion, in and of itself, doing anything. He took Charlotte mechanically by the elbow, in the manner of one who has had the processed described to them by a disinterested neighbour, and together they walked towards the ranks of synchronised dancers. The silence held by Admiral Teller was nothing remarkable, but that from Charlotte was monument to disappointment, resentment, and resignation.
In a grim parody of her arrival in the ranks with Joy, Charlotte and the admiral took their places with two stony faces. John Teller, the marionette of a man, lifted his rigid arms with as little joy as a mainsail facing a headwind and left them in position for Miss Sallow to take. Perfunctorily she accepted the offer.
“I assume that I shall lead. That is the role with lifting, correct?” he asked.
Charlotte allowed a groan of despair to escape her throat.
“Yes, my liege lord of big boats and little boats alike.” she answered. “Although I am forced to assume from such a question, and from your admission that you dance only by the pressures of your sister, that you have not studied the choreography of this dance, nor practiced any of the moves required to perform it?”
“You are quite correct, Miss Sallow, but how hard can it be? I will simply observe the other dancers and do as they do. It is not unlike reading the waves of the ocean and the way of the wind when leading a dozen ships into battle.” he replied. “Assimilation of data on hostile landscapes, such as a dance floor, is something that I may carry out with solemn competence thanks to my years of service.”
It was an emotionless statement, emotionlessly made, and perfectly fitting for an emotionless dance to follow. True enough to his word the Admiral was able to tolerably emulate the actions of those around him, but necessarily at a delay which pushed him just off the beat. Charlotte, who was caught between the worlds of synchronicity with the room and syncopation with her maligned partner, felt like the victim of a grain kernel caught in the millstone of Admiral Teller’s joints. More and more her thoughts turned to how different this dance would have felt with Mary, and how much she resented John for not being her.
“You move out of time with the others of your role, my naval highness. I fear that when I must ascend into your lift you shall not be ready to receive me.”
“Your fears are unfounded.”
“I fear they are not.”
“That fear is also unfounded.”
“Do not speak to your dance partner with such mistrust, Charlotte.” said the voice of Mrs Sallow, swinging past. Charlotte jerked her head around, in time with the swell of violins, to see her mother dancing alongside her in the adjacent line. At the next twirl she continued. “You’ll never secure his affections when you criticise him.” Another rotation. “Ask if he enjoys the dance. He will surely say yes.”
“Are you enjoying this dance, commander of the ships? Does it bring you happiness to be sharing this experience with me?” snapped Charlotte, pouring a breaching wave of disdain over the decks of Admiral Teller.
“Very much. It is a most agreeable way to pass the time.”
“You see, he is very much smitten with you.” Mrs Sallow insisted on a swing-by.
“You do not smile to show it, Admiral.” said Miss Sallow, her ire growing with every passing second.
“My emotions are felt inside, not worn on the outside like a greatcoat. But rest assured a dance with a member of the Sallow party is all that I had wanted when arriving here.”
A sinking sickness emerged in Charlotte’s stomach. It sounded dreadfully like her mother may have been correct about the intentions of this barely-living boulder of a man. Nightmare visions of being trapped with him, like a fossilised skeleton crushed within the heart of a mountain.
“Then you do intend to marry into my family?” she asked with horror.
“I… that is something I…” he stammered, like a pebble bouncing down a hillside.
“I should wish that I was dancing with Mary instead. I would marry her in a heartbeat, but how could I ever wish to betroth myself to an expressionless mast of a human in her stead?”
Charlotte felt the admiral’s hands tense on her own. His eyes widened and his mouth twitched. With a fluidity that she would never have believed could come from that puppet of a body he scooped an arm further around her shoulders and whisked her, in a single sustained twirl, several ranks away from her mother through the melee of dancing.
“What did you say? You would happily marry Mary?” he asked in urgent, hushed tones, holding her closer than the dance strictly called for.
“I did.” Charlotte responded, defiantly. “I have no intention to accept your proposal of marriage and I will fight it at every step.”
“I do not wish to marry you, Charlotte. Please do not be insulted, but also do not flatter yourself that I could be won over so easily by a dance at a yearly ball.” announced Admiral Teller, like stones eroding away at a submarine shelf.
“But you claimed so not a moment ago!”
“I wish to marry Edmund Sallow.” he hissed, with something like a pleading light in his eyes for the first time all evening. “A dance with you was one step closer to meeting with him. I had hoped to find some masterful work of strategy, navigating my fleet of feelings around your blockade of sour-faced femininity, but it seems that we could be working towards the same goals. You wish to find some entanglement with Mary, and I wish to find time with Edmund. We can orchestrate this together.”
In her shock, Charlotte forgot everything she knew about the dance. This rendered it rather surprising when, at her turn to speak in their budding conspiracy, she found herself to be suspended in mid-air.
“Do you speak truly? You would hand me over to Mary for the next dance?”
“If you would lead me to your brother first then yes, I would.”
Charlotte’s feet touched the polished wooden boards once more.
“How might we do so?” she asked.
“We need simply to return to your party, and then to mine, hand-in-hand from the dance floor.” Admiral Teller proposed, while sinking low in a shockingly well executed full splits. Charlotte never would have thought his uniform to be sufficiently loose or elastic to allow such a fearsome movement, but it was a credit to his tailor. “We may then separate to hold these conversations, or confessions, or whatever they may turn out to be, in privacy while we have the chance.”
Miss Sallow, power-sliding on her knees in a circle around the Admiral just like the other dancing pairs, pictured a whole new future opening before her eyes. Not one with cold, lonely years spent by an extinguished fireplace while her husband led stony-faced battles at sea, but one with smiles and light and excellently rehearsed dancing from Mary. What’s more, it would wind her mother up something rotten. There could be no refusal.
“My liege lord of big boats and little boats, we have an accord. Let us make good on these plans while we have the chance.”
As the cellists held their final triumphant chords, Admiral Teller led Charlotte by the hand back to the waiting Edmund and Mr Sallow, who were deep in conversation about the hornbeam they intended to push over during the next summer.
“Father? Edmund? This is Admiral John Teller as I’m sure you know.” said Miss Sallow, curtly. “It is his wish that Edmund should join his sister and I in a turn about the room, to better discuss all matters of potential matrimony and kinship.”
Mr Sallow’s moustache nearly fell from his head in shock.
“Are there congratulations to be offered?”
“Not yet, but hopefully very soon.” replied the admiral. “Assuming that our discussions as a party of four, two pairs of siblings in an agreeable union, go well.”
“Hm. It would not serve me to stand in the way of such a merry party, especially when a turn about the room would show you so many of its exemplary entrances. Please, Edmund, join them. I shall be here awaiting your mother and Beatrice.”
“As you say father, I should happily join with the admiral and Charlotte for a while.” said the younger of the Mr Sallows, nodding reverentially to his father and then rubbing slightly at his tree-injured shoulder.
"Charlotte!" cried Mrs Sallow, in a booming, room-filling conspiratorial whisper from across the dance floor. It was the kind of whisper that didn't hide from prying ears but told them that they really shouldn't be listening.
Scrunching her eyes for a moment, Miss Sallow turned towards the subtle sound of her mother, receiving a thumbs up and a mouthed "Don't drive him away with your coldness and indifference" for the pleasure. This could barely dampen her spirits or slow her accelerating heartbeat, however. No matter the depths of the darkness into which Mrs Sallow tried to plunge her daughter, there was now a shimmering lighthouse of hope, standing by the window that overlooked a wall.
"Hello again, Mary. We had a most wonderfully illuminating dance." said the admiral, releasing Charlotte's hand and taking up Edmund’s, much to the young Mr Sallow's momentary surprise. He then assumed it to be a traditional military practice and considered the matter closed. "Mr Sallow and I have much to discuss, and I believe that Miss Sallow, whom I'm sure you will agree to look most tolerable this evening, would enjoy some company from your good self. We shall retire to a quiet corner, Mr Sallow."
"Very well, John. We shall reconvene for canapés." Mary said to her brother's retreating back, before turning to Miss Sallow. Charlotte, suddenly faced with the reality of proposing marriage to Mary Teller on the basis of an observed dance and comparison to her brother, found herself at something of a loss for rational words. Miss Teller looked at her quietly and expectantly.
"You, er, danced tremendously." she managed.
"As did you, Miss Sallow. I was watching from here. It confused me when John dragged you half way across the dance floor, because that isn't in the dance at all. Or if it was, everyone else decided not to do it. Very hard to see what he was up to there."
"He, erm, he wished to speak to me away from the ears of my mother, because I confided in him something which made him confide something in me. He and I are both inextricably in each other's confidence now."
Mary pondered this and shook her head.
"And yet I’m not in anyone's confidence. Unless you count your explanation of events to me as a secret to be kept, which I suppose it might be with regards to your mother."
"Yes, I suppose you're right. Is there a secluded place where I might be able to take you into my confidence, then? It is rather relevant to the full situation." Charlotte suggested.
"It is? We had best do so then. I know of the perfect spot; come with me." said Mary, offering an arm for Charlotte to take. It was like a snake wrestling a tree trunk inside the sleeve of a dancing gown, which was not something that St. Chum’s Night festivities generally encouraged. Ruminations on how a selection of serpents and lumber would change the atmosphere of the ball rattled around Charlotte’s head, distracting her from the route along which Mary led her through Guilquist Manor, until the familiar cold blast of winter’s greeting struck her face and brought her back into the present.
Miss Sallow and Miss Teller were standing by an open window in one of the upper corridors of the manor, overlooking the gardens and sitting just above the roof of a small sheltered walkway below. Rain slick tiles glistened in the light of torches from various windows around the manor, as if the whole roof had been harrowingly grouted with fireflies.
“It’s a wonderful view.” Charlotte said, making a reasonable leap of logic as to why they were standing in such a spot.
“This is nothing. Come along.” replied Mary, stepping out of the window and onto the tiles below. “It’s only a short climb up to the top.”
Miss Sallow wasn’t much of a climber in her day-to-day life, much less on the rooftops of stately homes like her prospective companion. Climbing a tree was a perfectly agreeable treat during a summer holiday or an uneventful springtime, but rarely did structures get involved. Mary’s encouragement, however, did a lot to make Charlotte forgo the usual.
Carefully gathering the many skirts of her dancing gown, Mary lifted one leg over the windowsill and onto the roof below. Although wet, it was not as slippery as she’d feared, and with Mary’s steadying arm she was able to complete her exodus from the interior. Fully outside, the bite of the cold winter air was sharper and stronger, driven through all of her layers by the wind. It whipped at Mary’s hair. She seemed even more alive out there.
Taking Charlotte’s hand to lead the way, Mary shimmied along the narrow roof until they reached a series of short, sturdy buttresses, with gargoyles for the hands to grab and stony lips on which the feet might perch. Together they made the climb up to the apex of the roof, a broad, shallow-pitched expanse of tile, replete with smoking chimneys and offering a vista over much of the surrounding village.
“This is a nice spot to talk and to just be.” said Mary, standing with her feet either side of a peak tile. “I love rooftops; they make me feel so close to the wind.”
“It’s certainly a most becoming and bracing environment for a clandestine rendezvous.” agreed Miss Sallow, unable to bring herself to enjoy being so terribly cold at the hands of the blustery air. “I hear that you stand up on your roof often.”
“Daily. And nightly, I suppose.” Mary replied, taking a deep breath through her nose. She looked as if her nostrils could have inhaled the moon and the stars.
“Oh, I see. A very accomplished climber and enthusiast of altitude.”
“What was it you wanted to talk to me about?” Mary asked directly, with an innocent curiosity in her eye. The moonlight picked out every contour of her face in white, leaving their shadows to find perfect blackness in the rest of the night.
“I… I was hoping to express my affection to you. Affections which might extend to a preference for marriage between you and myself, having seen you dance so wonderfully, and heard your attitude to choreography, and felt the strength and grace of your movement.” Charlotte said, the confession spilling out of her as if she were a coal scuttle with a shattered base. Hopefully what had come pouring out of her would be less incendiary. Mary held Charlotte’s eye, her expression unchanged. "It might sound sudden, I suppose, but I suggested the notion to my friend, Joy, as a rebellion against mother’s wishes that I should court the admiral, and I have come to realise that it was the greatest idea I could have had. You are certainly much better suited to my humours, my pastimes, my opinions, my… well, my me, than your brother could ever be. Than anyone else I’ve met, in fact. You like to dance, you sculpt beautifully by all accounts, you have the spirit of adventure in you. Climbing to the roof is such fun! Much better than a stuffy, safe, run of the mill naval battle on a stormy sea.”
Mary nodded slowly, but still said nothing.
“So, as silly as it might sound, I would ask you to marry me, if you’ll have me. We might both be freed from the shackles of marital pressure by our families, and find far greater happiness in our undoubtedly well-matched countenances with each other.” Charlotte finished, biting her top lip in anxious anticipation of what was to come. The wind continued to pull at her clothes and hair and spill ice into her skin, but she couldn’t feel it for the moment. The chattering in her teeth and the shivering of her core were happening to someone else. There was nothing but the silence between her and Mary Teller, the woman with whom she’d been in love for three, four, perhaps even five minutes, and to whom she was finally confessing her feelings.
“I am flattered that you’d like to marry me, Miss Sallow, but I do not have any romantic interest in anyone. It’s nothing personal, and I will happily accept friendly companionship in whichever form you offer it, but I can’t marry you. The cold, biting winds of winter while stood upon the roof of my home are all the marriage I need.” she said, without remorse, spite or gloating. “I little free time in my life when my sculptures need me, and years of driving the sea into cliff faces, carving them into whichever shape it pleases, make the wind an excellent partner for that. I hope you understand, and aren’t upset by this.”
Charlotte stood in the shelter of chimney and still didn’t feel the cold. She didn’t feel much of anything for a short while. Mary held her eye, still wearing the mask of good-faith, innocent interest. There was no malice, and an abundance of sincerity; nothing at which to be angry or affronted, but a lot by which to be disappointed.
“I see.” Miss Sallow said, quietly. “Well, I thank you for your candour, and for letting me down both quickly and gently.” she added, remembering her manners.
“You’re welcome. I would like to share the roof with you still, if you wish to remain up here with me.”
The wind flapped Charlotte’s dancing gown unpredictably, and she started to feel the chill again, but she had very little desire to head back inside, to her mother’s confused company.
“Yes, I think I would like that, thank you.” she said. Gradually, some acceptance started to creep into Miss Sallow’s mind that a woman who loves cold wind, and its effects on stone over thousands of years, might not be a great romantic partner. She could certainly cope with that from a friend, but from a spouse it didn’t scream of long-term success, and was yet another nail in the coffin for annual balls as a way to determine candidacy for marriage.
If nothing else, Charlotte could take solace in the freedom that the admiral had delivered to her. She stood there on the roof with her new friend, buffeted by the incoming storm and frozen by the icy air. She was as romantically lonely as she had originally hoped to be by the end of the night, and only a little more bereaved by it than she might have expected.
It had been a cold and wet few weeks in the lead up to the St. Chum’s Night ball. The roads to Guilquist Manor transformed more and more convincingly into long, muddy puddles with every passing night of lingering rainfall. Winter rain in the region of the manor was a stubborn and spiteful sort. It knew itself to be unwelcome but made regular visits anyway, looking the dampened and shivering world straight in the eye while it dropped hour after hour of grey, lamentable drizzle. Summer rains at least had passion; they knew how to start and end with a bang, carrying themselves in a tropical thunderstorm, hammering the earth with an undeniable passion for saturation, and then making their way to drier plains to give the sun its chance. Not so for the winter rains. They rolled in with heavy, sun-blotting clouds to take an already short day and make it into a perpetual dusk, and then linger malevolently until all notion of light is forgotten. Over many years of meteorological trial and error the rains of winter calibrated themselves to exactly the right level of ‘just heavy enough’ to stop any activities, but not so much as to be poetically inspiring or get the whole business over and done with. With their co-conspirator the wind, they blew themselves perfectly under any shelter or awning, punishing any who sought to exist out of doors while they fell. Summer rains were momentary inconveniences. Winter rains were perpetual disappointment.
Out of this disappointment was Miss Charlotte Sallow hoping to be delivered by the St. Chum’s Night ball. It was the social event of the season, bridging the gap between the late-autumn frivolity of the harvest dance and the frosty festivities of the solstice revue. Many newcomers to the village questioned the existence of any St. Chum in scripture, local folklore or even, heaven forbid, real history, but they soon came around to the saint's core teachings of rigid social norms, tightly choreographed dances, and indulging in as much of your host's hospitality as you can get away with.
With such an appealing triumvirate of objectives, Charlotte's dull and unfulfilling winter would surely be granted a little respite. Many long days and longer evenings, courtesy of the perpetual, smothering blanket of spiteful cloud, had been spent in the same company all winter. Charlotte, her mother Jane, and her sister Beatrice would spend their days adjusting the lengths of the curtains to keep their upholstering skills sharp, reciting the same book of poetry to one another to practice their diction, and digging deep holes in the lawn in the bitter, roaring wind to keep the gardens perilous. Her father, Mr Sallow, and her brother Edmund would meanwhile go over the books of the family wheat appraisal business for the morning, and then enjoy an afternoon of running at dead trees in the manor's grounds, with the hope of eventually felling them by the concussive force of head and shoulder alone. The decision to fire the manor's gardening staff, Charlotte sometimes thought, had been a drastic oversight.
Evening time after dinner had been served, eaten, and branded tolerable by Mr Sallow, afforded Charlotte a little time to pursue her own interests. Some nights saw her painting at her easel, capturing the likeness of her sister or the carpet in oils or watercolours. Her mother often remarked on the excellent images that Charlotte rendered, even if they did end up sitting, unframed, underneath the staircase. Other nights when the light was poor or the paint had been stolen away by the jaws of a local fox, Charlotte would sing or play the family's heirloom xylophone. Some ancestor of Mr Sallow had brought it back from a long and bloody military campaign overseas, and its bright, percussive sounds had filled the family manor for many decades since. Although enjoyable in their way, these pursuits always lost their lustre during the ravages of the colder season, which precluded Charlotte from riding out into the countryside and hunting farmers for sport. A promised night of food, drink, dancing with stifled and choked creativity, and having to remember the correct honorifics for a hundred inbred nobles, was the greatest tonic for which she could hope.
Regrettably, these occasions were not all inscrutable social norms and complicated dance movements for Miss Sallow. Being a young woman of no betrothal and even fewer prospects in her local social circles, Charlotte was always on the receiving end of a barrage of well-intentioned but unsolicited pressure from her mother. It was bad enough when these were broad-spectrum attempts, applied towards any suitor who happened to be in her eyeline, but ever since the previous year's St. Chum's night ball, Mrs Sallow had gained a sole target from whom her attentions would not wander.
"Now remember, Charlotte, what we said about greeting the admiral; you need to refer to him as 'Your naval highness' or 'My liege lord of little boats and big boats alike'. None of your informal silliness could possibly be countenanced tonight if you're to secure a promise of marriage." she said, as they walked arm in arm along the boggy driveway, approaching the main entrance. Carriages littered the verges on either side, beached and stranded by those whose hubris got the better of them. No human, beast or carriage wheel could stand against the dirging, patient erosion of winter rains, and the malevolent clouds looking down upon them in the near perfect darkness of early afternoon took pride in their terrible work.
"Mother dearest please, I understand perfectly well how one must address an admiral, just like I understand the correct modes of greeting a captain, a bishop, a sergeant, a judge or one of our village’s many ranks of executioner." Charlotte replied, hoping to gloss over her mother's focus on the admiral with a blanket of equivalent formality. She shot her good friend Joy, who was attending the ball as their guest, a weary look.
"What about a labourer from the local mill?" tested her father.
"A trick question. You don't greet someone from so low a stratum. You spit in their direction and, if they insult you by speaking, you give them a taste of the iron baton." Charlotte recited, from both book, memory, and personal experience. The satisfying weight of her iron baton pulled gently at the waist of her gown.
"You are avoiding the point that the admiral's appreciation of your manners matters above all others, Charlotte." persisted her mother. "How you hope you take his hand with so careless an attitude I utterly fail to comprehend. It's just a matter of great fortune that he took so strong and fiery a liking to you at last year's ball. Your features, while delicate in their way, and more handsome than the average rainswept vestibule, will do you no favours in winning most men over."
Charlotte clenched her jaw at her mother's words.
"See? That sort of muscular rigidity in how you hold your mouth would drive away any who seek to paint a likeness of you in profile, and the most well-appointed young men do so love to work in profile when it comes to oil or watercolours."
By this stage of their mobile berating the Sallow family had reached the flagstones of Guilquist Manor, and any rebuke from Charlotte was overtaken by the welcomes of the manor’s staff. Dressed in long jackets with longer tails, which were starched so heavily that they may as well have been commissioned from a carpenter as a tailor, they still managed to take the heavy winter coats of the Sallow family with gracious and unacknowledged professionalism. Next, a team of servants with their trousers and skirts starched into a kneeling position removed the Sallows’ muddy walking boots, and replaced them with fresh, clean dancing shoes. Mr Guilquist was no fool and knew that the muddy ravages of the lane were unavoidable, even by the most experienced winter walker. He would not have that same mud spoiling his dance floor.
Paying the correct respect to the servants that social decorum demanded, which is to say none, Charlotte gave her heels a little twist to test the action of the shoes. They were exquisite, of course, and would afford no resistance to her attempts to glide freely over the dance floor, preferably as far away from Admiral Teller as was possible.
"A most becoming entryway to a home, this is." observed Mr Sallow to the family.
"Splendid." said Mrs Sallow, with a speed which could have left no time at all for genuine consideration of the entrance’s merit.
"A portal which I would be proud to call my own, father." added Edmund. "We could recreate it at home with the timbers that we push down in the new year."
Mr Sallow nodded with satisfaction at the response to his appraisal. Such praise was an observation he made of practically every entrance to every household, and one to which he expected the utmost agreement or a very solidly reasoned counterargument. If there's one thing that Mr Sallow wouldn't tolerate, and in reality there were a great many things, then it was undue criticism of the way into a person's home. Charlotte had spent many a long night pondering why that might be, but with no history in the door business and no stakes in the producers of timber or manors, she could find no reason at all. Perhaps the secret would follow the man to his grave, one in a tomb with the most remarkable entryway a mourner might ever see.
"Your thoughts, Charlotte? And yours Joy? Do you not think this a marvellously agreeable manner in which to transition from without to within?" he probed, daring them to defy his compliments.
"I do most certainly, father." agreed the daughter, seeking no quarrel or confrontation with her father on matters other than the admiral. "And I imagine that Miss Nairie here would appreciate the timberwork all the more for her father's profession."
"Oh, without room for a single doubt on the matter, yes. Any vessel worthy of being put to sea should find itself racked with lamentation if its own timbers were joined to the substandard of these." she said, a little too enthusiastically. Mr Sallow's eyes narrowed at the room for interpretation.
"By which Miss Nairie surely means that would be proud of this standard. Is that not right Joy?" said Charlotte to Joy, shooting her another ocular warning.
"Yes! A hundred times yes!" cried the latter, now more than ever aware of the need for explicit disambiguation of sentiment when it came to matters such as these.
"Ha! Quite so then!" boomed the Sallow patriarch, satisfied that all in his party could be trusted to make sound judgements on front doors. His momentary severity of features, which had directed the anger and mistrust of a hundred carpenters on his family, once again melted away into amiability and lightness. "Then we must not tarry here any longer, potentially obstructing the view of other guests and depriving ourselves of the St Chum's Night entertainments."
At his only reasonable statement since entering the building, the Sallow party and their companion Miss Nairie made quick passage through Guilquist Manor's atrium, and into the broad reception room situated behind it. Here the strings were at their loudest, the light at its brightest, and the spirits at their merriest, with all who had made swifter or sooner progress along the swamp masquerading as a lane to the Manor already indulging in refreshments, stiff dancing, and banal gossip. The mere sight of it all sent Charlotte, Edmund and Joy into fits of giggling anticipation, while Mrs Sallow’s eyes skipped over food and drink alike in their quest for Admiral Teller.
"We must find Mr Shorely for news of the family’s fortunes this last twelvemonth." said Mr Sallow. He had been in business with Mr Shorely some years prior, as Charlotte understood it, selling carriage wheels to those who found themselves unable or unwilling to part with the payment for a whole vehicle. Their expectations, and they had been good ones, were that those who purchased a wheel in isolation would better see the benefit that a second, joined to the first by an axle, might afford. This would then lead to a natural conclusion about wheels three and four, complete with their own axle and a hard coupling to the first pair. From there it was a simple step to add seating and enclosure above, and the complete carriage sale would proceed in the most natural way therefrom. Regrettably, although the business had been a success, Mr Shorely had been lured away by the siren's song of wheel manufacture and left Mr Sallow on amiable terms to continue the trade alone, alongside his very successful axle and carriage bodywork businesses, and the wheat appraisal serviecs for which the Sallow family was famed.
"I'm sure they'll be terribly interested in any news of you and betrothal, dear Charlotte." Mrs Sallow persisted, as relentless as the tide.
"You think we should wait on Charlotte securing Admiral Teller's hand before we greet the Shorely party?" enquired Mr Sallow, reading between a few too many lines for Charlotte's liking.
"I do. Why, it would be terrible for him to ask if our eldest daughter is promised yet, and for you to quite truthfully say no, only to then have news reach him later of the joyous and inevitable promise to wed of John and the future Mrs Teller. He'll understandably but wrongly think you a liar, and you're both too polite to directly confront one another on the matter, so you'll live out some elaborate farce based on this misunderstanding until a further confusing social entanglement comes to a head and resolves the conflict at the same time. It's just like the secondary plot in one of those novels that Charlotte loves to read, and I won't stand for that kind of tomfoolery getting in the way of our girl's happiness." summarised Mrs Sallow. If the father had been reading between lines, then the mother had been reading between letters and punctuation as well. Charlotte felt lamentation overtaking her. It was too much to let stand.
"I can assure you both that there is no need to stand on ceremony and delay your conviviality with Mr Shorely for even a moment on my part. The matter of Admiral Teller and I is as firmly closed now as it ever was, which is to say that there isn't, wasn't, and won't be any chance of any betrothal between he and I. I do wish you would drop this inane obsession, mother. Focus on getting Edmund married instead; at least that would come with a dowry."
Mrs Sallow's hand and handkerchief came up together in a unified display of fraught indignation.
"I won't hear it, Charlotte. It won't do for a young woman like you to talk herself down so. Of course there's a prospect for you and the admiral; we all saw his reaction to you last year when you and Edmund approached. That tiny flicker of true love on his lip. You might not think yourself to be his equal but he clearly thinks enough of you to throw himself bodily at your mercy. I have no doubt that the good man will ask you to marry him here tonight."
"But I don't want to marry him, mother. You aren't listening."
"But I am hearing, my dear," she replied, thinking she sounded rather more clever than she actually did, "and what I hear is someone so intimidated by a bachelor of the admiral's calibre that they'd rather pretend not to be interested than be rejected. And as for your brother he is only nine and twenty; no man so young needs to be finding love or settling down. But you, why, you're already one and twenty! No woman so old or late in securing a promise should delay for a moment, least of all when a man like Admiral John Teller is on the hook."
Charlotte let out a low, rumbling growl of frustration. Her mother had made fine art of delusion, taking the reason that would poke holes in her perspective, grinding it down into a paste, and slathering it on top of her nonsense to disguise it as reality. It would have been a wonderful gift if applied to something more desirable like persuading Mr Sallow to buy them each a pony, but for the time being Mrs Sallow seemed determined to use her powers for evil.
"Mother, heed my words I beg you." pleaded the put-upon daughter while accepting a canapé, quite without acknowledgement of the server. "I am not intimidated by the admiral, nor do I think myself unworthy, nor am I too old to be flippant about these things. I am in no rush to marry anyone, and if I were I still don't think that annual contact at a St Chum's Night ball is a particularly good basis for a lifelong, exclusive commitment. I would far rather marry Mary Teller than the admiral; at least she has good taste in art and a passion for the outdoors."
Mr Sallow laughed.
"Ah, yes. She would be a worthy sister-in-law for you, and in many ways you do marry her as well when you marry John. I have always said that you are in essence married to my sisters as much as me, haven't I Mrs Sallow?"
She nodded curtly. Charlotte rolled her eyes. It felt futile to continue arguing.
"The next round of dancing is about to begin; come Joy, let us join in and leave this idle, deluded fantasising behind." said the daughter, snatching up her friend's hand and dragging her away for the dance. Joy had time only to give Mrs Sallow a polite, helpless smile before disappearing into the crowd.
"I think this may already be as much as I can stand of talk about the admiral." Charlotte said to her friend, bringing the maligned subject back up herself. Joy felt decidedly conflicted about whether to respond or speak with feigned ignorance on another topic, so that her own contribution to the matter did not tip Miss Sallow over the edge.
"Do you know the choreography for the night's dancing, Miss Sallow?" she asked, steering conversation as deftly as a captain might steer their ship from a storm.
"I should say so, yes." replied Charlotte, frustration edging her voice ever less with each word. "We studied together all those nights together this week, and I have been sure to read and rehearse the steps by myself each morning before breakfast. I feel assured that I might be able to perform the dance blindfolded, without music, aboard the roof of a carriage that was sinking into the deep, muddy recesses of the lane.”
“Delightful confidence! I’m sure it will shine out in your performance.”
In their scalloped alcove, the string quartet’s music swelled to a crescendo, and signalled their preparation to switch from one piece to another. Charlotte and Joy pressed their way towards the centre of the room, hand-in-hand, and took their place within the lines of dancers. There were half a dozen neat columns of well-to-do dandies, military leaders, and the types of people whose wealth earned them a living somehow, and the young women took their rightful place among them. Charlotte had Colonel Abringham on her right, and Joy had Mr Orpett on her left, but thankfully neither man was terribly interested in engaging them in terribly uninteresting conversation.
“Could you imagine the admiral joining in with one of these dances?” Charlotte sniggered as she and Joy touched elbows once, twice and then a third time, as the choreography demanded.
“You’d see more fluid and flexible movement from a door.” laughed Joy, whirling around so that her dress fanned theatrically, as did every other dancer on her specific dancing sub-grid. Dance rehearsals had involved learning a lot of conflicting co-ordinate systems. “It would be like watching an oak tree try to stoop for a daisy.”
In perfect time and synchronisation with the other dancers, Charlotte stepped into Joy’s cupped hands and then onto her shoulders. Joy, with the broad shoulders and strong back of a quarry labourer, easily pushed back up to her feet, but many of the other, more foppish guests struggled to perform this simple lift; a great many bodies crashed to the solid wooden floor in a manner that the choreography didn’t call for at any stage of the proceedings. Several loud tuts told of the general feeling of condemnation.
“Looks like old Mrs Willowisp didn’t manage to make the lift of Sir Leadbelly.” Charlotte informed Joy, from her position of vantage atop Miss Nairie’s shoulders. “I suppose that neither of them committed sufficient time to rehearsals like we did.”
“Isn’t she approaching eighty years of age? It’s impressive she’s dancing at all.”
“She won’t be doing again, by the look of things.”
“Shame.”
“But what’s this? Mary Teller is holding up Captain Goldacre with sublime grace. Such powerful arms must make a person feel awfully secure.” Charlotte said, wondering if she would feel better atop Mary’s shoulders than Joy’s.
“What about the Admiral? How does he fare?”
The hypothesised lift from Mary came crashing back down again at the mention of her seafaring brother.
“Oh I wish you wouldn’t bring him up.”
“We must see how he compares to his sister, Charlotte. How could you be sincere in your assertions about marital preference between the siblings if you don’t compare their capabilities wherever possible?”
It was difficult to argue with that logic. Miss Sallow began scanning the room in much the same way as her mother, but with a different end goal, and eventually saw him standing, like a jagged spur of rock stoically defying the rising tide, at the edge of the room.
“He’s not even joined in the dance.” Charlotte called down, her voice dripping with derision as she raised her arms and felt Joy prance below her. Despite the carnage below, the dance could not be stopped. “Mary moves with the grace and precision of a guest who takes the duty of dance rehearsal seriously; a wonderfully desirable trait. The admiral, by contrast, stands aloof by the edges. His face betrays nothing of shame or embarrassment at his refusal to join in. Mary is clearly the superior.”
“A robustly argued case. Surely even your mother could not argue with such exquisite logic.”
Performing a humble and demure somersault, Charlotte tumbled her way down from Joy’s shoulders.
“My mother could argue with the tide that it has never once come in, all the while watching her ankles grow deeper under the water.” sighed Miss Sallow. Realising the avenue for disrespect that she’d unwittingly opened up, Joy rushed to change course again.
"Let us not speak poorly of your mother when we could sing the praises of Mary. Grace and strength together make for a welcome prospect. She would certainly be able to bear you across the threshold by the sound of it."
"As could you, clearly. But you don't propose to marry me, do you? The ability to carry me also doesn't form the necessary criterion for marriage."
"Ha! You know full well that I am promised to Mr Sanderling, the bird-keeper at Woolerton. He and I will spend our days flying his falcons, robins and herons all around the grounds. It's good, honest work with a respectable income from his estate to top it up. But the strength to carry one's spouse in times of joy or trouble is an important factor to consider."
Charlotte tried considering Mary carrying her, and then did the same with the admiral. The latter would never be able to bend and lift her, so again Mary was the clear victor.
"Fine. I concede it to be a desirable trait, as is her delicacy of features and her renown for sculpture."
Joy and Charlotte span back to back, joined hands in a complicated way which would cause arthritis if performed frequently, and began to shimmy in time with the music.
"You could while away married evenings in the pursuit of arts, her sculpting you while you paint her."
"That… that would be most agreeable. Bah, but the admiral also has artistic pursuits, if you listen to mother." sighed Charlotte.
"Ah yes, his willingness to tolerate an evening of harp music. What a virtuoso."
"How she could picture me falling for such a cliff face of a man I have no idea."
"Especially with Mary so close by for comparison." Joy observed.
"Aye, she does cause his failings to be amplified by her remarkably many advantages. Now that I come to think of it, I have always seen the admiral in the company of his sister, and subsequently I’ve been quite unable to judge him through any lens but inferiority."
“Nor have you been able to judge Mary without her brother’s presence tarnishing your perception.” added Miss Nairie, speaking in time with the choreographed high-kicks she was performing. The dance floor was a sea of surprising hip flexibility.
“You know, Joy, you’re quite right on that. Why, I’ve probably judged her with unfair harshness for all this time, even if that judgement still led her to be high in my estimation. We should seek out an opportunity to speak to her in his absence, and thereby allow her full light to shine upon us.”
“Charlotte!” cried Mrs Sallow, narrowly avoiding the windmilling arms of Colonel Abringham. “You must act quickly, my girl! I’ve spotted Admiral Teller! He surely awaits a partner to invite him to dance, and clearly only you will do for him. He is smitten with you and I know it to be true, so go; over there, by the cove in the wall that overlooks grey stone walls in the gardens.”
“I’m aware of his location in the room, mother. I just have no interest in speaking to him.”
“But you must, and you must hurry, for I’ve seen that wretched Elizabeth Dalton speaking to him already. Surely she’ll be spinning her disgusting web and trying to secure a dance for herself.” Mrs Sallow declared with appreciable dismay. “Although she makes for a poor rival compared to you, my love, we must not let the admiral be led astray. Men are simple and easily confused in these sorts of things.”
“Let him be led and let her take him far away from me. I’ve no interest in him, I told you.” Charlotte snapped.
“It would be an act of the greatest discourtesy to allow a man of his status to be led astray by his own misstep of judgement, if indeed he can be led by a vapid swamp of a woman like Miss Dalton. What could she ever offer him for a good and worthwhile marriage? Her paintings are disappointing facsimiles of what she thinks she sees at best, but one could, I suppose, discern a certain attempt at a likeness if approaching with a kind and conciliatory eye like the admiral surely would. Her singing voice is like the sound of a quarry in wartime, and her features could be most kindly described as sheer, rugged, or weather-beaten. In short, it would be criminal not to intervene and let the admiral find happiness with your far superior gifts and advantages.”
“And what of the happiness I should be allowed to find?”
“His tolerance of the harp and his steady income are the greatest happiness that you could hope to achieve, Charlotte. Now come along; Miss Dalton has gone away to powder her nose, so I will bring you to him and help him to make the right decision about a dance with you instead.”
“Wait for the return of Miss Dalton, her nose billowing with powder like a mountain during a blizzard as it always is, and teach her to be the wife you want him to have.” defied Charlotte. She caught Joy’s eye flitting uncomfortably from mother to daughter.
“Miss Sallow, if I may, I see that Mary Teller has moved to join her brother; maybe it would be a pleasant happenstance for all five of us to make a party and talk for a short while.” said Joy, desperately trying to find a way of keeping both the Sallows happy. The younger looked at her friend through narrowed eyes, but the elder was sold immediately.
Taking Charlotte’s elbow in one hand, her fingers like bulrushes left to grow untamed by the side of a wild river, Mrs Sallow led her daughter away from the ranks of dancers and towards the edge of the room, with Joy Nairie close behind.
The high kicks, Charlotte remembered, signalled the crescendo of that particular dance, and so it was not wholly unexpected that Mary should be returning to her brother's side at that moment. It would also make the Sallow party's departure from the dance floor seem less rude and jarring, even if it did involve a physical escort.
Admiral Teller, just as both Charlotte and her mother had seen him, was standing perfectly upright and perfectly still at the edge of the room, his uniform pressed and pristine, and his face betraying no emotion, no movement, and worryingly little recognition that he was even at a ball. In one hand was clasped an untouched glass of wine, looking rather like someone had placed it there for him to make his presence seem less out of place.
Even when Mary returned, slightly red faced and out of breath from her frivolity, he showed no sign of stirring. He was a storm-battered coastline of a man, as unyielding and immovable as the rocky outcrops that lighthouses tend to warn sailors about. A decent hull could have been scuttled on the clench lines of his jaw alone, and still not remove the five o'clock shadow from his face.
Mary's delicate features, on the other hand, would have launched those selfsame ships and kept them safe from all storms and obstacles of nature, Charlotte couldn't help thinking. Although reddened from dance and from her famous love of rooftop vigils in the wintertime, it had none of the look of the scarred and collapsed earth that her brother's exemplified. She was, to put it succinctly, distinctly pleasant. It made Charlotte smile despite herself.
"Admiral Teller! Mary! How wonderful it is to see you both!" cried Mrs Salllow, as she dragged her romantically agnostic daughter into position. "Oh but look how happy Charlotte is to see you admiral." she added, upon seeing and promptly misinterpreting the warm countenance of her daughter.
The admiral regarded them back in the same way that a boulder might regard a hill, watching patiently for change over the next million or so years. He'd not turned his head or so much as flicked his eyes in their direction to do so, of course; they'd positioned themselves in his eye line like a lizard moving from shade to sunlight.
Admiral Teller was not an expressive or over emotive type of gentleman. One could readily expect to get a stronger reaction from a bag of flour or iron bucket. The majority of people who spoke to him took this unresponsive stoicism to mean that he was aloof, disinterested or saw himself as too important for them. Others worried that they had wasted their time talking to a particularly convincing statue of a naval commander. Mrs Sallow merely took it as a challenge to spot any micro-movement and take it as a firm sign of his utter infatuation with her daughter. Mrs Sallow was, it is fair to say, an optimist, as well as ignorant of her daughter’s romantic choices.
It was the result of such intense scrutiny at the previous year’s St. Chum’s Night ball that Mrs Sallow had first deduced the admiral’s deep love for Charlotte. The whole Sallow party had been walking through the main hall, parents at the fore with their children behind, when they had happened to pass the Teller party. The Tellers were seated at the edge of the room in conversation and observation of the year’s dance when Mrs Sallow had happened to look behind herself. She caught the Admiral’s eye scandalously resting on Miss Sallow, which was already fairly strong evidence of an intent to propose marriage, but knew that all doubts could be cast aside when she saw a minute twitch of the jaw muscle. Such a flagrant loss of self-control was tantamount to any other man throwing himself at her feet and publicly forgoing a dowry.
Slowly and deliberately the dmiral's eyes rotated to look between Charlotte and her mother. The younger could almost hear the sound of a millstone grinding as he moved.
"It's a pleasure to see you again." he said. The man spoke with an absolute minimum of facial movement. Had Charlotte and her mother not been examining his face so carefully they might have suspected the presence of a hidden ventriloquist. "What news from Cullerton over this last year? Did adjustments to the tax brackets have an impact on the upkeep of roads maintained by the Crown?"
Charlotte rolled her eyes. He'd found a way to become even more boring than a statue.
"Oh, a noticeable one!" Mrs Sallow lied. She'd not paid attention to the state of any road in her life, but no truth was more important than the one she wished to create for Charlotte. "I've never twisted my ankle so little in an autumn, or lost fewer carriage wheels to potholes, raised bricks and road gremlins."
A lesser man, with a more flexible face, would have raised an eyebrow at the mention of road gremlins, a largely debunked urban legend about creatures who stalk the roadsides and pull the wheels from unsuspecting carriages, but not Admiral Teller. His eyebrows were raised by a full crew of sailors working a capstan, or not at all.
"Glad to hear it."
Silence, like the song of a sealed cave.
"Don't you think Charlotte looks wonderful tonight?" Mrs Sallow finally offered, willing to fill the Admiral's mouth with words since he neglected to take the initiative. "This gown was bought from the seamstresses on Fletching Row, you know. Fits her perfectly."
"Yes, to be sure. You look delightful, Miss Sallow, and I am glad that you chose not to wear a dress which doesn't fit you."
Mrs Sallow nudged her daughter for a response, while Joy continued smiling politely.
"Most grateful." replied Charlotte, rivalling Admiral Teller for a lack of feeling. "But of course, Mary looks wonderful tonight as well. And I was most impressed by your dancing, too, Miss Teller."
"You are very kind, Miss Sallow. I like to learn the dances well, and to keep myself strong and fit enough to do them justice. It's a wonderful way to express and to feel with maximum movement and life."
She was a tonic to every poison of her brother's character, a wellspring of vivacity, and in no way the object of Mrs Sallow's attention. In short, Charlotte began to strongly suspect that Mary was everything she'd ever wanted.
"I think so too, Miss Teller. Joy and I practiced the dance for a clear week to be sure that we did not let down the symmetry of the lines. It is a shame that the same cannot be said for poor, squashed Mrs Willowisp."
"Leadbelly was too heavy for her. It was not a good idea for someone in her condition to try to pick him up, and she let us all down as he hit the ground." agreed Mary, not giving in to the fallacy of sympathy for such poor decisions in dancing partner and role.
"Speaking of dancing, you and the admiral should take the next dance together, Charlotte. A strong military man could surely lift you well." beamed Mrs Sallow, believing herself to be terribly devious in uniting the threads of dances just enjoyed and dances about to begin.
"It would be my pleasure." the admiral intoned, with the warmth and malleability of a tomb. “I have been encouraged by my sister to try this dancing, and Charlotte will do as well as any other for a partner.”
In a kinder, gentler world, Charlotte would have slapped the admiral and felt the moss-blanketed stonework of his cheek stinging her hand as recompense. Not only was he encouraging her mother’s delusions and stealing her away from the wonderful Mary Teller, but he insulted her in the process. As well as any other indeed. She had proven by word and deed that her dancing was exemplary, just like his own sister’s, and he himself was merely ‘trying’ the dance. Yes, a slap would be the thing he deserved most in the world at that moment, but it was not something that her manners would allow. The best she could manage was to nod her head lazily, roll her eyes to Joy, and allow her hand to be taken by the stone man from the seas.
The singular, small consolation of this happenstance was the event of actually seeing Admiral Teller move. Charlotte fully expected that there would be a great grinding at his joints, as of a glacier carving the land, with sediment and sand deposited over many years tumbling freely to the floor, for some nameless servant or other to clear up. She anticipated that they would see cracks forming all over his surface like those she’d read about during earthquakes in far-off lands. He could not even give her that satisfaction.
Contrary to the graceful motions of beloved Mary, the greatest of the Tellers by a margin the same length as the list of her merits, Admiral Teller moved as if he were a loom being tested by its manufacturer. His every movement was even, measured and ponderous; smooth without the sense of elegance, controlled without the advantage of performance, and steady without the illusion of care. There was an unseen carpenter pushing every limb along its axis of motion to check for knots, bumps or imperfections, proving the parts to be functional without that motion, in and of itself, doing anything. He took Charlotte mechanically by the elbow, in the manner of one who has had the processed described to them by a disinterested neighbour, and together they walked towards the ranks of synchronised dancers. The silence held by Admiral Teller was nothing remarkable, but that from Charlotte was monument to disappointment, resentment, and resignation.
In a grim parody of her arrival in the ranks with Joy, Charlotte and the admiral took their places with two stony faces. John Teller, the marionette of a man, lifted his rigid arms with as little joy as a mainsail facing a headwind and left them in position for Miss Sallow to take. Perfunctorily she accepted the offer.
“I assume that I shall lead. That is the role with lifting, correct?” he asked.
Charlotte allowed a groan of despair to escape her throat.
“Yes, my liege lord of big boats and little boats alike.” she answered. “Although I am forced to assume from such a question, and from your admission that you dance only by the pressures of your sister, that you have not studied the choreography of this dance, nor practiced any of the moves required to perform it?”
“You are quite correct, Miss Sallow, but how hard can it be? I will simply observe the other dancers and do as they do. It is not unlike reading the waves of the ocean and the way of the wind when leading a dozen ships into battle.” he replied. “Assimilation of data on hostile landscapes, such as a dance floor, is something that I may carry out with solemn competence thanks to my years of service.”
It was an emotionless statement, emotionlessly made, and perfectly fitting for an emotionless dance to follow. True enough to his word the Admiral was able to tolerably emulate the actions of those around him, but necessarily at a delay which pushed him just off the beat. Charlotte, who was caught between the worlds of synchronicity with the room and syncopation with her maligned partner, felt like the victim of a grain kernel caught in the millstone of Admiral Teller’s joints. More and more her thoughts turned to how different this dance would have felt with Mary, and how much she resented John for not being her.
“You move out of time with the others of your role, my naval highness. I fear that when I must ascend into your lift you shall not be ready to receive me.”
“Your fears are unfounded.”
“I fear they are not.”
“That fear is also unfounded.”
“Do not speak to your dance partner with such mistrust, Charlotte.” said the voice of Mrs Sallow, swinging past. Charlotte jerked her head around, in time with the swell of violins, to see her mother dancing alongside her in the adjacent line. At the next twirl she continued. “You’ll never secure his affections when you criticise him.” Another rotation. “Ask if he enjoys the dance. He will surely say yes.”
“Are you enjoying this dance, commander of the ships? Does it bring you happiness to be sharing this experience with me?” snapped Charlotte, pouring a breaching wave of disdain over the decks of Admiral Teller.
“Very much. It is a most agreeable way to pass the time.”
“You see, he is very much smitten with you.” Mrs Sallow insisted on a swing-by.
“You do not smile to show it, Admiral.” said Miss Sallow, her ire growing with every passing second.
“My emotions are felt inside, not worn on the outside like a greatcoat. But rest assured a dance with a member of the Sallow party is all that I had wanted when arriving here.”
A sinking sickness emerged in Charlotte’s stomach. It sounded dreadfully like her mother may have been correct about the intentions of this barely-living boulder of a man. Nightmare visions of being trapped with him, like a fossilised skeleton crushed within the heart of a mountain.
“Then you do intend to marry into my family?” she asked with horror.
“I… that is something I…” he stammered, like a pebble bouncing down a hillside.
“I should wish that I was dancing with Mary instead. I would marry her in a heartbeat, but how could I ever wish to betroth myself to an expressionless mast of a human in her stead?”
Charlotte felt the admiral’s hands tense on her own. His eyes widened and his mouth twitched. With a fluidity that she would never have believed could come from that puppet of a body he scooped an arm further around her shoulders and whisked her, in a single sustained twirl, several ranks away from her mother through the melee of dancing.
“What did you say? You would happily marry Mary?” he asked in urgent, hushed tones, holding her closer than the dance strictly called for.
“I did.” Charlotte responded, defiantly. “I have no intention to accept your proposal of marriage and I will fight it at every step.”
“I do not wish to marry you, Charlotte. Please do not be insulted, but also do not flatter yourself that I could be won over so easily by a dance at a yearly ball.” announced Admiral Teller, like stones eroding away at a submarine shelf.
“But you claimed so not a moment ago!”
“I wish to marry Edmund Sallow.” he hissed, with something like a pleading light in his eyes for the first time all evening. “A dance with you was one step closer to meeting with him. I had hoped to find some masterful work of strategy, navigating my fleet of feelings around your blockade of sour-faced femininity, but it seems that we could be working towards the same goals. You wish to find some entanglement with Mary, and I wish to find time with Edmund. We can orchestrate this together.”
In her shock, Charlotte forgot everything she knew about the dance. This rendered it rather surprising when, at her turn to speak in their budding conspiracy, she found herself to be suspended in mid-air.
“Do you speak truly? You would hand me over to Mary for the next dance?”
“If you would lead me to your brother first then yes, I would.”
Charlotte’s feet touched the polished wooden boards once more.
“How might we do so?” she asked.
“We need simply to return to your party, and then to mine, hand-in-hand from the dance floor.” Admiral Teller proposed, while sinking low in a shockingly well executed full splits. Charlotte never would have thought his uniform to be sufficiently loose or elastic to allow such a fearsome movement, but it was a credit to his tailor. “We may then separate to hold these conversations, or confessions, or whatever they may turn out to be, in privacy while we have the chance.”
Miss Sallow, power-sliding on her knees in a circle around the Admiral just like the other dancing pairs, pictured a whole new future opening before her eyes. Not one with cold, lonely years spent by an extinguished fireplace while her husband led stony-faced battles at sea, but one with smiles and light and excellently rehearsed dancing from Mary. What’s more, it would wind her mother up something rotten. There could be no refusal.
“My liege lord of big boats and little boats, we have an accord. Let us make good on these plans while we have the chance.”
As the cellists held their final triumphant chords, Admiral Teller led Charlotte by the hand back to the waiting Edmund and Mr Sallow, who were deep in conversation about the hornbeam they intended to push over during the next summer.
“Father? Edmund? This is Admiral John Teller as I’m sure you know.” said Miss Sallow, curtly. “It is his wish that Edmund should join his sister and I in a turn about the room, to better discuss all matters of potential matrimony and kinship.”
Mr Sallow’s moustache nearly fell from his head in shock.
“Are there congratulations to be offered?”
“Not yet, but hopefully very soon.” replied the admiral. “Assuming that our discussions as a party of four, two pairs of siblings in an agreeable union, go well.”
“Hm. It would not serve me to stand in the way of such a merry party, especially when a turn about the room would show you so many of its exemplary entrances. Please, Edmund, join them. I shall be here awaiting your mother and Beatrice.”
“As you say father, I should happily join with the admiral and Charlotte for a while.” said the younger of the Mr Sallows, nodding reverentially to his father and then rubbing slightly at his tree-injured shoulder.
"Charlotte!" cried Mrs Sallow, in a booming, room-filling conspiratorial whisper from across the dance floor. It was the kind of whisper that didn't hide from prying ears but told them that they really shouldn't be listening.
Scrunching her eyes for a moment, Miss Sallow turned towards the subtle sound of her mother, receiving a thumbs up and a mouthed "Don't drive him away with your coldness and indifference" for the pleasure. This could barely dampen her spirits or slow her accelerating heartbeat, however. No matter the depths of the darkness into which Mrs Sallow tried to plunge her daughter, there was now a shimmering lighthouse of hope, standing by the window that overlooked a wall.
"Hello again, Mary. We had a most wonderfully illuminating dance." said the admiral, releasing Charlotte's hand and taking up Edmund’s, much to the young Mr Sallow's momentary surprise. He then assumed it to be a traditional military practice and considered the matter closed. "Mr Sallow and I have much to discuss, and I believe that Miss Sallow, whom I'm sure you will agree to look most tolerable this evening, would enjoy some company from your good self. We shall retire to a quiet corner, Mr Sallow."
"Very well, John. We shall reconvene for canapés." Mary said to her brother's retreating back, before turning to Miss Sallow. Charlotte, suddenly faced with the reality of proposing marriage to Mary Teller on the basis of an observed dance and comparison to her brother, found herself at something of a loss for rational words. Miss Teller looked at her quietly and expectantly.
"You, er, danced tremendously." she managed.
"As did you, Miss Sallow. I was watching from here. It confused me when John dragged you half way across the dance floor, because that isn't in the dance at all. Or if it was, everyone else decided not to do it. Very hard to see what he was up to there."
"He, erm, he wished to speak to me away from the ears of my mother, because I confided in him something which made him confide something in me. He and I are both inextricably in each other's confidence now."
Mary pondered this and shook her head.
"And yet I’m not in anyone's confidence. Unless you count your explanation of events to me as a secret to be kept, which I suppose it might be with regards to your mother."
"Yes, I suppose you're right. Is there a secluded place where I might be able to take you into my confidence, then? It is rather relevant to the full situation." Charlotte suggested.
"It is? We had best do so then. I know of the perfect spot; come with me." said Mary, offering an arm for Charlotte to take. It was like a snake wrestling a tree trunk inside the sleeve of a dancing gown, which was not something that St. Chum’s Night festivities generally encouraged. Ruminations on how a selection of serpents and lumber would change the atmosphere of the ball rattled around Charlotte’s head, distracting her from the route along which Mary led her through Guilquist Manor, until the familiar cold blast of winter’s greeting struck her face and brought her back into the present.
Miss Sallow and Miss Teller were standing by an open window in one of the upper corridors of the manor, overlooking the gardens and sitting just above the roof of a small sheltered walkway below. Rain slick tiles glistened in the light of torches from various windows around the manor, as if the whole roof had been harrowingly grouted with fireflies.
“It’s a wonderful view.” Charlotte said, making a reasonable leap of logic as to why they were standing in such a spot.
“This is nothing. Come along.” replied Mary, stepping out of the window and onto the tiles below. “It’s only a short climb up to the top.”
Miss Sallow wasn’t much of a climber in her day-to-day life, much less on the rooftops of stately homes like her prospective companion. Climbing a tree was a perfectly agreeable treat during a summer holiday or an uneventful springtime, but rarely did structures get involved. Mary’s encouragement, however, did a lot to make Charlotte forgo the usual.
Carefully gathering the many skirts of her dancing gown, Mary lifted one leg over the windowsill and onto the roof below. Although wet, it was not as slippery as she’d feared, and with Mary’s steadying arm she was able to complete her exodus from the interior. Fully outside, the bite of the cold winter air was sharper and stronger, driven through all of her layers by the wind. It whipped at Mary’s hair. She seemed even more alive out there.
Taking Charlotte’s hand to lead the way, Mary shimmied along the narrow roof until they reached a series of short, sturdy buttresses, with gargoyles for the hands to grab and stony lips on which the feet might perch. Together they made the climb up to the apex of the roof, a broad, shallow-pitched expanse of tile, replete with smoking chimneys and offering a vista over much of the surrounding village.
“This is a nice spot to talk and to just be.” said Mary, standing with her feet either side of a peak tile. “I love rooftops; they make me feel so close to the wind.”
“It’s certainly a most becoming and bracing environment for a clandestine rendezvous.” agreed Miss Sallow, unable to bring herself to enjoy being so terribly cold at the hands of the blustery air. “I hear that you stand up on your roof often.”
“Daily. And nightly, I suppose.” Mary replied, taking a deep breath through her nose. She looked as if her nostrils could have inhaled the moon and the stars.
“Oh, I see. A very accomplished climber and enthusiast of altitude.”
“What was it you wanted to talk to me about?” Mary asked directly, with an innocent curiosity in her eye. The moonlight picked out every contour of her face in white, leaving their shadows to find perfect blackness in the rest of the night.
“I… I was hoping to express my affection to you. Affections which might extend to a preference for marriage between you and myself, having seen you dance so wonderfully, and heard your attitude to choreography, and felt the strength and grace of your movement.” Charlotte said, the confession spilling out of her as if she were a coal scuttle with a shattered base. Hopefully what had come pouring out of her would be less incendiary. Mary held Charlotte’s eye, her expression unchanged. "It might sound sudden, I suppose, but I suggested the notion to my friend, Joy, as a rebellion against mother’s wishes that I should court the admiral, and I have come to realise that it was the greatest idea I could have had. You are certainly much better suited to my humours, my pastimes, my opinions, my… well, my me, than your brother could ever be. Than anyone else I’ve met, in fact. You like to dance, you sculpt beautifully by all accounts, you have the spirit of adventure in you. Climbing to the roof is such fun! Much better than a stuffy, safe, run of the mill naval battle on a stormy sea.”
Mary nodded slowly, but still said nothing.
“So, as silly as it might sound, I would ask you to marry me, if you’ll have me. We might both be freed from the shackles of marital pressure by our families, and find far greater happiness in our undoubtedly well-matched countenances with each other.” Charlotte finished, biting her top lip in anxious anticipation of what was to come. The wind continued to pull at her clothes and hair and spill ice into her skin, but she couldn’t feel it for the moment. The chattering in her teeth and the shivering of her core were happening to someone else. There was nothing but the silence between her and Mary Teller, the woman with whom she’d been in love for three, four, perhaps even five minutes, and to whom she was finally confessing her feelings.
“I am flattered that you’d like to marry me, Miss Sallow, but I do not have any romantic interest in anyone. It’s nothing personal, and I will happily accept friendly companionship in whichever form you offer it, but I can’t marry you. The cold, biting winds of winter while stood upon the roof of my home are all the marriage I need.” she said, without remorse, spite or gloating. “I little free time in my life when my sculptures need me, and years of driving the sea into cliff faces, carving them into whichever shape it pleases, make the wind an excellent partner for that. I hope you understand, and aren’t upset by this.”
Charlotte stood in the shelter of chimney and still didn’t feel the cold. She didn’t feel much of anything for a short while. Mary held her eye, still wearing the mask of good-faith, innocent interest. There was no malice, and an abundance of sincerity; nothing at which to be angry or affronted, but a lot by which to be disappointed.
“I see.” Miss Sallow said, quietly. “Well, I thank you for your candour, and for letting me down both quickly and gently.” she added, remembering her manners.
“You’re welcome. I would like to share the roof with you still, if you wish to remain up here with me.”
The wind flapped Charlotte’s dancing gown unpredictably, and she started to feel the chill again, but she had very little desire to head back inside, to her mother’s confused company.
“Yes, I think I would like that, thank you.” she said. Gradually, some acceptance started to creep into Miss Sallow’s mind that a woman who loves cold wind, and its effects on stone over thousands of years, might not be a great romantic partner. She could certainly cope with that from a friend, but from a spouse it didn’t scream of long-term success, and was yet another nail in the coffin for annual balls as a way to determine candidacy for marriage.
If nothing else, Charlotte could take solace in the freedom that the admiral had delivered to her. She stood there on the roof with her new friend, buffeted by the incoming storm and frozen by the icy air. She was as romantically lonely as she had originally hoped to be by the end of the night, and only a little more bereaved by it than she might have expected.