#In case I didn't telegraph it enough Miss Walter at the end is Christopher the groundkeeper's daughter all grown up.

[theimpossiblescheme]

May We Know Them

(Or: How Clarisse de Cagliostro Lived Outside Her Tower)

There was a story Christopher told her once, on an evening lit with fireflies and heavy with the day’s fatigue, over matching cups of hot chocolate.  A story about a man whose wife had disappeared.

“He never saw much of her during the day, truth be told,” Christopher said quietly, gazing just past her out the open window.  “He was always busy tending the grounds, keeping the trees healthy, polishing the flagstones… and she stayed home with the children.  She wanted to work, too, but there was never time.  Besides, her--her health was never the best.”

He took a long drink before continuing, as if the chocolate were some fortifying liquor.  “He appreciated her for it, really.  She worked just as hard as he did, just differently.  It let him be away from home more, not worry so much.  So he could focus on making the place beautiful again.  But one day, he… he got home, and she wasn’t there.  The children weren’t there either.”  Shaking, gnarled hands replaced the cup on the endtable.  “Never knew what happened to the children… he never even saw her die.  One minute she was there, beautiful as anything, and then the next… gone.  Just gone.”

Clarisse’s hands tightened around her own cup as she puzzled over this.  “Even when she was sick, she was still beautiful?”

Christopher’s eyes flickered, as if startled to notice her there beside him, before dropping into his lap.  “She was always beautiful… he couldn’t imagine her any other way.”

“Would he have still loved her if she wasn’t?”

At first, no answer.  Then Christopher got to his feet, knees creaking, and picked his cup back up.  “Let me get us some more chocolate, Princess.”

That was all the answer Clarisse needed.

In her travels across her new kingdom, she had met many such women.  Women with tired eyes, bruised hands, and resigned smiles hiding a small army of children behind their skirts, who talked endlessly about the amazing and arduous work their husbands, brothers, and fathers did.  Who never failed to mention how proud they were, how much more beautiful Cagliostro would become thanks to their toil.  But who never talked about themselves except in passing, selflessly denigrating their own struggles in comparison and never wishing to be a burden on their loved ones.  Even if their babies cried all night no matter how much they tried to calm them, or their gardens withered after a hard winter, or their chests heaved with bitter coughs that never seemed to go away.  It was all worth it, they insisted, for their families and their country--it was a burden they would gladly shoulder.

Clarisse always figured that if their husbands, brothers, and fathers truly loved them, they would share that burden instead of leaving it miles behind.  And if less beauty in Cagliostro meant fewer of these tired-eyed, quietly suffering women, she would gladly accept that bargain.

She’d been in very real danger of becoming one of those women herself, she knew.  The Count toyed with the life of a young girl like a boy threatening to rip the arms off a doll, and in the best case scenario he would have let it shrivel to nothing in the darkness of her tower while he stayed below and continued his counterfeiting.  After her rescue, Clarisse tried to follow Lupin instead, leaning toward his kindness like a neglected sunflower and blinded by the prospect of becoming the student of a world-renowned thief.  He’d seen this foolish wish for what it was and turned her away, and in retrospect she found herself very glad he had.  

She was more than a doll or a sunflower, or the lovely gem locked in the topmost tower, or the child in the garden.  And lives, especially young lives, were not traded away so rashly.

Since taking her throne, Clarisse had spent many sleepless nights writing speeches, drafting new laws with one or two trusted counselors, burning so many candles she could have collected the wax and melted them together into one giant candle.  She ruined countless dresses wading in the tepid water of the catacombs, collected human remains for proper dignified burials, and traded her slippers for boots as she knelt to scrub graffiti from the walls.  Her hair smelled like burnt metal for days after the destruction of the printing presses, and her fingernails stayed short and blunt as the space was slowly transformed into a shelter for the poor and homeless.  These were all jobs for the men, but she refused to stay at home, delicate and neglected, as they were carried out.  Many boys her age--tradesmen’s apprentices, flush and swaggering with pride at working alongside their heroes--gave her glowing, grinning compliments after she helped them dismantle some machine or corrected the angle of a beam they were erecting.  Clarisse paid them little mind.  Her work was not for them.  It was for her country.  It was long and difficult and made her arms and calves ache for days, but it was necessary, and she picked up extra duties wherever she could.  So more of these men could go home to their wives, sisters, and mothers for a change.

And when the sun set, even if they were underground and couldn’t see it, she bade them all go home and rest anyway.  Nothing, no matter how beautiful or useful, came before their health.  Every so often, one of the workers would invite her over for dinner, and she always came with a basket of anything she could swipe from the kitchens.  But she seldom sat around boasting with the men and boys.  Instead, Clarisse would fill a few new bowls to hand around to all the women and girls sitting near the kitchen before pulling up a chair close to them.  To them, she was never “Your Highness”, “Princess”, or even “Little Miss”.  She was just “Clarisse.”  And she was loved.  Not admired, not envied--loved.  Even with dirt under her nails.

She wished no less for any of them in return.  She’d always been the kind of person who used the word “love” liberally, to the point where it stopped feeling like a word and more like another essential syllable, and she always meant it.  And she hoped she’d be the same with grey hair and arthritic fingers.

Between restorations and visits across Cagliostro, Clarisse had taken to writing her own stories, all about these women and girls.  So they might never be seen only as beautiful distant objects again, secondary to the men in their lives.

(She briefly considered writing about Lupin, but he must already have so many pages dedicated to him by now.  There were enough stories about thieves, even heroic ones, and not enough about the stolen hearts and lives.)

The first person she showed them to was her new friend, a woman called Fio--once starstruck by her own brave hero, now forging her own path as an engineer and mechanic.  Fio loved every sentence and urged her to keep writing.  “Save me an advance copy when you get published,” she’d said on another firefly-lit evening over another pair of hot chocolates.  “And let me know when you’re working on the next one!”

Clarisse knew exactly what to do for the next one.

After several weeks of asking for every tidbit and tale anyone could offer, turning everything Christopher had said that night over in her mind, she found herself in front of an old thatched cottage.  A once-proud shed slouched in the back, and over the door swung a sign that read Walter Masonry.  When she knocked at the door, the sound of a grindstone came to a stop, and one of the shop workers came out to greet her.  Her dark hair was trying to escape its practical bun and falling in limp strands around her (familiar, broad, bushy-browed) face, but when she realized who it was, she hurriedly tucked them behind her ears.  “Oh--Your Highne--er, Clarisse!”

Before she could curtsey or apologize for the mess, Clarisse just smiled.  “It’s all right, I’m not exactly dressed for a ball either,” she said, gesturing down at her grass-stained skirt and muddy boots.

Miss Walter managed a weak laugh as she pulled off her gloves and tucked them into her front apron pocket.  “I’m almost done, anyway.  You’re welcome to come in while I finish, and then I’ll put some tea on for us.”

“That sounds wonderful.  And actually, when you’re done… I wanted to ask you about your mother.”

Miss Walter’s eyes widened, and her first attempt at speaking stuck in her throat.  “What… What do you want to know about her?”  It wasn’t suspicion or even grief in her voice.  Just genuine surprise.

Clarisse’s smile widened in turn, and she reached out to take the other young woman’s hand.  “Everything you can tell me.”