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Mina’s a pretty girl but right now she looks like a frosted pastry, white cream frills and softly pleated pink skirts. Vanessa can’t decide whether she’s charmed or annoyed by Mrs. Murray’s commitment to making her daughter the epitome of a Christmas toy store window display. Vanessa’s own holiday attire is not without its own festive flair but is far plainer, gold on cream, complimenting her sharpening profile and dark locks of hair. A chilly, gray Christmas morning—her mother had woken her with a cup of strong black tea and the small lacquer box she always used when presenting a new gift. Inside Vanessa had found the green velvet ribbon, now snug against her braids, and the new silver crucifix beneath it.
“Wear it to Mass tonight” her mother had said, pushing back Vanessa’s sleep-tangled curls.
Which meant, of course, that it would serve as a beacon announcing their Catholicism at the Murrays’ Christmas dinner gathering. Claire Ives has long stopped bothering to acknowledge those who would sneer at their supposed papism, reminding Vanessa always that she was born into a faith with more meaning and history than the priggish vicar down the lane could ever hope to understand.
Now, studying the changes to the Murray manor—lights in the eaves, the smell of sweets and spices perfuming the air, and garlands draped over every corner of the parlor—Vanessa suspects Gladys Murray’s good cheer is more in celebration of a singularly moral holiday, suitable for the lady of a proper English home. A time for the shadows of her husband’s secrets and the fetid Nile to be burned away by bright song and candlelight. Her one concession to melancholy can be found in the Christmas postcards adorning the mantel—blond girls in clean shawls against dirty London street corners, selling flowers and pity. A framed image of Father Christmas in his wreath of holly presenting an urchin with unexpected gifts. His rounded red cheeks pinch his eyes to black points of joy. More than anything, he looks so like the painting of Bacchus in the book of Classical myths she had secreted from Malcolm’s study years ago. She’d defied her mandated penance and neglected to return the book, too enchanted by accounts of the earth and heavens more ancient than her mother’s beloved Church of Rome to part with it. She wonders if the Murray dinner guests would never suspect such deviance from the quiet girl standing tall and straight as an altar candle in her crisp dress. She looks like a Vestal but feels as if she should be one of those god-mad girls with black hair tangled in the green. Mina would look so beautiful in such a state, her bare arms and curls shining gold and leaping deer-swift through the flames of a great fire, her mouth red with wine.
If the whispers (her shadow companions for over a year now) emanate from a great infernal mouth, surely that wicked mouth now grins. A low hum all day long, the whispering now becomes a warm, deep purring that vibrates her spine and makes her fingers tremble.
“Did you know,” Vanessa says to Mina, “that Bacchus also brought merriment to those he visited? He was worshiped with drink and song.”
“Van, you know I don’t care for those Greek stories. I’d much rather hear of great men and women in this world. Don’t frown. I know you think me small minded, but there is still wonder to be found in their accounts. When Father writes his I’m sure it will become just as well-regarded.”
Impulsively, pleadingly, she grabs Mina’s hand. “And dancing,” she adds, the edge of a shout in her voice.
Mina puts a finger to her lips—as if they could be heard above the din of the party—but laughs anyway. They press their palms together, a gesture more familiar to Mina than her mother’s embrace.
“Oh, Van, I wish you would stay. Can’t you go to Mass in the morning?”
“Mother’s family always went to the midnight service. We do the same.”
The other girl always wrinkles her nose at this. She has always been eminently rational child and will undoubtedly be woman of confidence and sound judgment. Vanessa envies her clarity. They’ve both admitted to the other they don’t quite see how paradise can be attained through good works and Christian charity—even the most devout will concede the latent cynicism in such an understanding of salvation. But Vanessa wonders what the ancients gained from their brutish rituals of earth and blood instead, what wonders and horrors were theirs to experience. She will ask during her next Confession, though she already has a reputation for asking too many questions.
Here’s a secret about Vanessa Ives, the girl in the cream-colored dress: despite the sacrilege, Mina is her true Confessor. She has always told Mina her doubts, has done so many times. Vanessa can’t help but feel tonight’s revels should celebrate a God of living and dying and the promise of blood, not the comfort of hearth and home nor blessings of abundance. She feels a sense of regret that there will be no torchlight procession through the forest, no great fire before the feast. Just the line of black carriages pulling up to the chapel and the anxious wave of parishioners rushing towards the open door beckoning warmth and duty. Vanessa knows her father will fall asleep during the homily only sit up sharply and stand tall as if he’d been waiting eagerly to do so.
But Vanessa also knows that during tonight’s festivities—an evening when too much drink is consumed and small sins enacted are immediately ignored or forgiven—the walls of propriety between Malcolm and her mother, newly erected since their last rendezvous, will begin to crack and crumble once more. They’ll all drink a health to the birth of Christ, to the Queen, to the coming New Year. And all the while the great explorer and her mother will be planning their own private ritual, every glass of wine a deeper understanding, the steps of a dance they have learned together.
--
Watching the glow of candles fight the black outside, Vanessa imagines the fog across the sea to be a crowd of forgotten lost souls sweeping the waters. She envisions their slow creep across the beach and the cliffs to smother the park land. Even now they wrap themselves throughout the hedge maze like cobwebs. Have they found the spot where the act was committed? Do they crave a taste of transgression to remember the feel of blood in their veins? The warmth of a body?
The dinner guests have gathered around the young solicitor from the village as he belts out carol after carol from the piano. She hears her mother’s clear singing rise above the jangling keys to join Malcolm’s deep baritone. Complicit in the harmony, Vanessa finds herself softly mouthing the words to each duet. Far from manhood, Peter has hidden himself in Sir Malcolm’s study. Whenever Malcolm is home he prowls like a great cat—caged, resigned. Always looking for the next opportunity to escape his confines. But he’s distracted now, so Peter takes his chance to slip into his father’s world of books and maps and prized kills to pretend. Better that he is not part of this: Vanessa takes Mina’s warm hand in hers once more as they slip past the oblivious party guests and dash down the stairs, past the servant quarters, through the dark corridors to the kitchen.
With an eye to the Murrays’ cook dozing in the corner, they listen to the shouts and carols and carousing of the staff echoing from the hallway beyond. Vanessa ladles a cup of the mulled wine bubbling over the open flames in the hearth and hands it to Mina. Raising her own cup above her head, she offers a proclamation, mock solemn: With this drink we do honor to Bacchus, the Lord of Misrule. Mina laughs loud enough to wake the sleeper and downs her first cup in one sip.
Three more cups each and they are spinning, spinning in each other’s arms. Mina is as flushed as a rose. Like a drunken Silenus the cook merely snores and grunts.
--
A half hour to midnight and the other guests make no overt signs of preparing to leave, though more than one sits dozing by the fire. She finds Mina tucked back into her favorite alcove, propped up by overstuffed cushions as her feet tangle together on the rug. “Mina, Mina” she says, giving the girl a gentle shake. Mina does not open her eyes, but sighs out Vanessa’s name.
“Have you gone yet?”
“Soon. Father has called for his coat and cane.”
“Please stay,” she breathes. Vanessa puts a palm to Mina’s pink cheek.
“Give me a kiss,” she says. An old game of theirs. Kiss me on the cheek, and I’ll give you a penny. Kiss me on the lips, and I’ll give you a pound. Taste me and I’ll give you everything. Mina giggles softly as she always does, love her gentle heart, so obliging. Mina opens her mouth for Vanessa to taste its honey and the new memory of stolen wine light on her tongue. The whispers rise once more, nearly thunderous in Vanessa’s skull: she is tumbling, tumbling and no one puts out a hand to catch or keep her. And still this unutterable delight from her Confessor’s lips. If Mina is Ignorance, then she is all Want. Her bones are impoverished with the wanting. Her dark twin will take pleasure in licking them clean, waiting for His own feast of God’s castoffs.