challenge 12: funeral (drabble set)
Er, clearly I was way too excited for this challenge. I'm not exactly sure what the implications of that are :p
Title: Three Funerals Cora Crawley Never Attended (a set of 3 drabbles)
Author: jadeandlilac
Rating: K
Characters/Pairings: Cora, implied Cora/Robert. Very small doses of Violet, O'Brien and the girls, too.
I (That of her favorite cousin Elizabeth, dead at nineteen.)
The telegram is what wakes her and as the maid apologizes again for disturbing milady, Cora turns to see that Robert is already gone. Her eyes are still clouded with sleep and she blinks several times before understanding settles in with an impossible weight.
She had spent the night before at Haxby Park feeling positively radiant - Robert had told her she was at least a dozen times - and light as a feather as he swept her easily about the crowded ballroom. And hadn’t she thought, as the younger Russell boy gave her a roguish wink from across the room, how Beth would love this place? Half asleep on the drive home she had imagined Beth married and settled down on a nearby estate - their children would play together on the lawn just as they two had done as girls. She remembered cherry trees in bloom and the sharp breeze off the sea, Beth’s smaller hand in hers as they hid behind a curtain of willow branches.
“Only a cousin?” she hears her mother-in-law murmur that evening as they go through to dinner. “One would have thought it was a sister, at the least.” She runs her fingers repeatedly over the delicate handle of her fork, and yet she cannot convince herself that anything in this room is real.
She wants nothing more than to be there in the familiar white church, to see Beth lowered into the turned earth whose smell she can remember exactly. At least then she could be sure, could know for certain that Beth will not burst giggling from behind the garden wall or the great oak desk in her father’s library. Sunday comes and goes and Cora’s life does not change - in her mind, Beth’s laughter seems very near, as alive as ever.
II (That of the unborn son she would have called Robert, after his father.)
She must be still and calm, and she must not trouble herself or try to get up, and no, she cannot see him. Dr. Clarkson will not allow it. She means to insist but finds that she cannot do anything more than weep. Her mother-in-law says, in the closest thing to honest kindness Cora has ever known from her lips, “I must agree, my dear. I am sorry.”
Her daughters come next. First her darling Sybil - the girl’s face is an agonizing reminder of the infant she now knows to be the last of her children. When Mary sits on the edge of the bed, Cora wonders if her oldest girl remembers the secrets she whispered in her small, pink ear throughout the first months of her life. In their better moments, she has always attributed their mutual understanding to those one-sided conversations, the confessions she would make to no one else. Edith takes her hands, guarded and uncertain as ever; she was the easiest birth and the most difficult daughter - not to chivy and coax into place, but simply to understand.
They are not a comfort to her, and she would like to tell Dr. Clarkson that these are not the children she wishes to see. She intends to say, where is my son, but her lips will not shape the last words. She screams, and only O’Brien stays - not to comfort her (she is too clever to fight a losing battle), only not to leave her alone. Better O’Brien than anyone else. Somehow the other woman seems quite as miserable as she is herself, and she does not show that look of suspicious worry when Cora asks whether there will be a funeral. She shakes her head and Cora, though she grinds her teeth and shuts her eyes, is not surprised, not really. Doubtless they think it is better to pretend it never happened.
III (Her own, seen through the haze of a fever dream.)
She was born during a summer storm and she will die on a calm evening after the stretching twilight fades to black. It will be fitting, a rather obvious metaphor for the arc of her life - a youth more wild than was quite proper, then a gentle smoothing-out as of a fine garment as she grew into wife, mother, Countess last of all.
Her mother would tell her not to be silly, but her mother is not here. And when has she ever taken those words to heart? So as the fever bears down like a pair of heavy hands that seem to press the air from her lungs, she allows herself to imagine what will happen next. She can see a steady stream of black-clad bodies, the faces indistinguishable. She will be buried in all manner of finery - Edith will choose the gown and Mary the jewels; Sybil will remind them that their mother will not need these things where she is going. Her mother-in-law will see to the flower arrangements - Cora wonders if she will feel some small satisfaction, or at least a little flash of irony. Cora would want her to. It will be nice, she thinks, to be laid to rest so close to home. She would not wish to be anywhere else.
She is conscious then of O’Brien mopping her forehead with a cool flannel. Long moments pass in which there is a kind of clearing, the fever thinning like fog. She understands from the calming timbre of the maid’s voice that it is dawn, that this is not the day she will die. The grave she has dug herself refills and time stretches before her as it had used to do when she was a child, whole and waiting only for her.
Title: Three Funerals Cora Crawley Never Attended (a set of 3 drabbles)
Author: jadeandlilac
Rating: K
Characters/Pairings: Cora, implied Cora/Robert. Very small doses of Violet, O'Brien and the girls, too.
I (That of her favorite cousin Elizabeth, dead at nineteen.)
The telegram is what wakes her and as the maid apologizes again for disturbing milady, Cora turns to see that Robert is already gone. Her eyes are still clouded with sleep and she blinks several times before understanding settles in with an impossible weight.
She had spent the night before at Haxby Park feeling positively radiant - Robert had told her she was at least a dozen times - and light as a feather as he swept her easily about the crowded ballroom. And hadn’t she thought, as the younger Russell boy gave her a roguish wink from across the room, how Beth would love this place? Half asleep on the drive home she had imagined Beth married and settled down on a nearby estate - their children would play together on the lawn just as they two had done as girls. She remembered cherry trees in bloom and the sharp breeze off the sea, Beth’s smaller hand in hers as they hid behind a curtain of willow branches.
“Only a cousin?” she hears her mother-in-law murmur that evening as they go through to dinner. “One would have thought it was a sister, at the least.” She runs her fingers repeatedly over the delicate handle of her fork, and yet she cannot convince herself that anything in this room is real.
She wants nothing more than to be there in the familiar white church, to see Beth lowered into the turned earth whose smell she can remember exactly. At least then she could be sure, could know for certain that Beth will not burst giggling from behind the garden wall or the great oak desk in her father’s library. Sunday comes and goes and Cora’s life does not change - in her mind, Beth’s laughter seems very near, as alive as ever.
II (That of the unborn son she would have called Robert, after his father.)
She must be still and calm, and she must not trouble herself or try to get up, and no, she cannot see him. Dr. Clarkson will not allow it. She means to insist but finds that she cannot do anything more than weep. Her mother-in-law says, in the closest thing to honest kindness Cora has ever known from her lips, “I must agree, my dear. I am sorry.”
Her daughters come next. First her darling Sybil - the girl’s face is an agonizing reminder of the infant she now knows to be the last of her children. When Mary sits on the edge of the bed, Cora wonders if her oldest girl remembers the secrets she whispered in her small, pink ear throughout the first months of her life. In their better moments, she has always attributed their mutual understanding to those one-sided conversations, the confessions she would make to no one else. Edith takes her hands, guarded and uncertain as ever; she was the easiest birth and the most difficult daughter - not to chivy and coax into place, but simply to understand.
They are not a comfort to her, and she would like to tell Dr. Clarkson that these are not the children she wishes to see. She intends to say, where is my son, but her lips will not shape the last words. She screams, and only O’Brien stays - not to comfort her (she is too clever to fight a losing battle), only not to leave her alone. Better O’Brien than anyone else. Somehow the other woman seems quite as miserable as she is herself, and she does not show that look of suspicious worry when Cora asks whether there will be a funeral. She shakes her head and Cora, though she grinds her teeth and shuts her eyes, is not surprised, not really. Doubtless they think it is better to pretend it never happened.
III (Her own, seen through the haze of a fever dream.)
She was born during a summer storm and she will die on a calm evening after the stretching twilight fades to black. It will be fitting, a rather obvious metaphor for the arc of her life - a youth more wild than was quite proper, then a gentle smoothing-out as of a fine garment as she grew into wife, mother, Countess last of all.
Her mother would tell her not to be silly, but her mother is not here. And when has she ever taken those words to heart? So as the fever bears down like a pair of heavy hands that seem to press the air from her lungs, she allows herself to imagine what will happen next. She can see a steady stream of black-clad bodies, the faces indistinguishable. She will be buried in all manner of finery - Edith will choose the gown and Mary the jewels; Sybil will remind them that their mother will not need these things where she is going. Her mother-in-law will see to the flower arrangements - Cora wonders if she will feel some small satisfaction, or at least a little flash of irony. Cora would want her to. It will be nice, she thinks, to be laid to rest so close to home. She would not wish to be anywhere else.
She is conscious then of O’Brien mopping her forehead with a cool flannel. Long moments pass in which there is a kind of clearing, the fever thinning like fog. She understands from the calming timbre of the maid’s voice that it is dawn, that this is not the day she will die. The grave she has dug herself refills and time stretches before her as it had used to do when she was a child, whole and waiting only for her.