Work Text:
December 1st, 1818
Rushton Manor, Essex
Dearest Kate,
It seems tremendously odd to be spending a winter at Rushton Manor once more, after a year of married life; but with my dear James, and without my dear Kate! I had never dreamed that taking a house, and then setting up a household, would necessitate so many calamities and errors, much less that it would take such a long time. Rushton Manor itself has not escaped the need for repairs, such things were blessedly not required to intrude on my notice as an unmarried girl. Now, I regret to say, I am privy to the whole panoply of dishonest tradesmen, mistaken wallpaper orders, and rising damp that what Aunt Elizabeth calls my "expanded sphere of existence" is heir to.
Therefore, given the necessity of celebrating Christmas and the faint and horrifying chance that, having taken a house ("being taken by one," James remarks), we might be expected to host our own festivities, we have returned to the bosom of the family, a dutiful daughter and son-in-law convening with our dearest kindred. All but the kindred we wanted to see most, for you and Thomas have been summoned (I do not use the word lightly) to attend his mother in London. I will be miffed if she is to carry you both back to Paris with you for some adventure without me and James.
As I said before, it is odd to be wintering at Rushton Manor again. Papa is not put out at all, of course -- he spends all day in his study -- but I know Aunt Elizabeth is finding our presence trying, with everything so much the same and yet so very different. I collect that last year's Christmas was a much smaller affair while we were out of the way in Italy. Mr Wrexton appears to be a great comfort to her in this time of trial.
Now do write back immediately and let us know what Lady Sylvia wants. I have enclosed a pair of knitted socks apiece: they have no hidden meaning beyond my need to have something to do with my hands while being carolled at and put to the question by neighbours.
James and Aunt Elizabeth send their love, and I mine. I am sure Papa would send his own, were he not hiding among the Hittites like a cat up the curtains.
Yours,
Celia.
December 10th, 1818
London
Dear Cecy,
Thank you for the socks and the greetings. My deepest apologies for how long it has taken me to post my reply and assuage your curiosity, but I hope this letter will make up for it, for Thomas and I will follow it in short order. It has been an odd and trying week, but we are ready to return now.
Lady Sylvia did not march us straight to Dover to return with her to France, but where we ended up was even stranger. When we arrived at Schofield House, she took us both directly to a little attic room (I have always wondered: why is the top of the house called an attic? Is there something especially Grecian about it?) in which there were trunks and old tapestries and books everywhere, and furniture at least ten years behind the fashion.
As I sneezed from the dust, she rolled up one of the tapestries hanging on the wall to reveal a bare white doorway, plastered over. Now, this was the south wall of the attic, and there was plainly not a room beyond it, so I could not see why there should have been a doorway built there, nor why it had since been plastered over. But Lady Sylvia took out a pencil and wrote some words on it in an alphabet I could not read; and shortly after that the words vanished, and then so did the doorway.
It was a portal, of course. She beckoned us through it, and I thought perhaps we were in Scotland, because of the snow. It was a thick white blanket everywhere, so different to the thin grey half-melted matter I had brushed off my shoes on entering Schofield House. When at last I lifted my eyes to the trees, I felt that perhaps it was not Scotland but somewhere more foreign, possibly Scandinavia.
It was then that the bear approached us. He was dressed very handsomely in the Tudor style, with rather the look of a Yeoman of the Guard, but with rather more facial hair. He was a white bear, such as are described in the Voyage towards the North Pole of Baron Mulgrave. He carried a pike, although I would have thought his claws and teeth perfectly sufficient for any matter of self-defense he needed to undertake.
"Katherine," Lady Sylvia said pleasantly, "may I present Sir Wojtek? Sir Wojtek, my daughter-in-law, Lady Schofield."
"How do you do," I said automatically. He bowed in return.
"Sir Wojtek, my son the Marquis of Schofield," she went on.
He bowed again, and I had only a moment to wonder if he could speak before he replied "How do you do?" in a low growl.
Then we stood expectantly in the snow for a moment or so before Sir Wojtek growled "I would be honoured if you would all accompany to my village. It is ten miles north of here."
"Thank you for the invitation," Thomas said uncertainly. "How are we to get there?"
"My sleigh," Sir Wojtek said, and gestured. I am almost sure that the large, red, four-man sleigh had not been there before he had gestured, but possibly the spectacle of a talking bear diverted my attention.
There were no horses to draw the sled, nor were we to push it: Sir Wojtek clearly had powerful magic to animate his sleigh. Sir Wojtek sat in the front and steered the craft, with Thomas behind him and me and Lady Sylvia bringing up the rear. The sleigh travelled faster than natural means could have sped it. There was barely enough time for Thomas to twist precariously back to shout in my ear while we flew across the snow, "Can it be a bear is driving us?" and for me to shout back "I've driven with worse. Oliver, when he first took the curricle's reins..." Fortunately, the wind was too loud for Sir Wojtek to hear us.
The village was decorated with coloured lanterns, boughs, and candles, in a way that would have put Vauxhall to shame. "Your people are Christians!" I blurted out to Sir Wojtek, immediately mortified at my own indelicacy in discussing a stranger's religion.
If a bear could look wry, Sir Wojtek did. "We share your world's festivals, yes," he said. "But their Yuletide measures owe more to the feast's pagan beginnings than to your Christ."
I was chastened.
Before I had time to try to respond, a crowd of brightly-dressed bears approached, reproachfully. "Wojtek, you brought them here?" said a bear wearing an Elizabethan ruff and a gown of burnished bronze.
"I thought it best," he said. "You wish to invade their country. You should speak to them in peace first."
The bear with the ruff seemed most annoyed, perhaps more that he had divulged an invasion plan to its object than at his irenic philosophy.
Another bear, who was wearing a black waistcoat with silver buttons and carrying a rod of office, and whom I immediately decided was their Alderman (or rather, their Alderbear,) spoke up. "Strangers, come and drink with us and tell us a tale of your people."
We gathered around a large outdoor fire pit, sitting on wrought iron benches. We drank mead, and I devoutly hope Aunt Charlotte never hears that I imbibed of such an unladylike beverage, but there was really no hope for it. Indeed, I didn't like it very much, but the smoke from the fire and the gleaming eyes of our ursine companions added a certain savour.
As the hosts, the bear villagers selected their storyteller to go first. He was a young bear with a very lovely tenor voice, and the tale he told was hideous, full of blood and conquest. I sensed that he would have been proud to count Napoleon among his species. I did also have the suspicion that he was attempting to impress upon us his people's great prowess in battle.
When he at last finished (it could not have been longer than an hour, but it seemed to go on forever) the Alderbear turned to Thomas and said "And now you must tell us your best tale."
Thomas immediately replied "If you want our best storyteller, that is my wife Kate."
I would have kicked him, but it was too obvious.
I took a deep breath, stood up, and opened my mouth. You know what it's like when I tell bouncers. I never know what I'm going to say in advance. In this case, I spun them the tale that your Papa's friend Mr Southey used to tell us, before he became Poet Laureate. I refined a lot upon it, of course: instead of an ugly old vagrant woman, I made her a Viking maiden, all flaxen hair and valour. And the bears in the tale were a royal family, not three bachelors - I am ever glad that our aunts were never present when your Papa let us come to his study to hear the folktales. They would never have permitted such impropriety as a lady (or vagrant) intruding upon three bachelor bears.
I can't remember all the words I used, but I remember saying "the smallest portion she rejected as not befitting her stature, and the kingly portion she declined as too grand."
After I concluded, with my Viking maiden defeating the bears in single combat - the prince with a soft blow, the queen with a stronger blow, and the king with the mightiest blow of all - there was a long silence, and then a lot of muttering bears.
Finally the Alderbear stepped forward, and Thomas and Lady Sylvia stood up, flanking me, and then the Alderbear bowed deeply to me. "You have told a worthy tale, Lady Skald," he said. I suppose Skald was his contraction of Schofield, though I seem to remember from your Papa's books that it's a term for a bard. "I am glad to have shared mead with your people. It is to be hoped that we will do so again in peace, many more times."
So then Sir Wojtek drove us back to where we had arrived, and after he left us, I turned to Lady Sylvia and said "Was that what you wanted us for?" and she said "Yes, indeed it was." And now, having disposed of the bears, we may return to Rushton Manor to celebrate our own Yuletide more peacefully than we feared!
I will send this now by the last post; it is too late to travel tonight, but we will set off for Essex tomorrow, and hope to see you very soon.
In haste,
Kate.