The Last Days of Yesteryear: Chapter 21

The Wedding of Patron Edmund Moulde is regarded by historians as one of the most significant events in the history of Europe. By means of demonstration, one need look no further than the story of Her Honorable Grace, Lady Milkquise of Donturry.

After accepting the invitation to Edmund’s wedding, Lady Milkquise of Donturry chose to dress in a thick crinoline and bustle, frilled with thin lace and pearl beads. Her hair was done up with a delicate lace of birch twigs, all in all creating a picture of elegant, if ever so slightly dated, fashion.

While most onlookers considered this a somewhat daring commentary on the speedy social changes that had come about since the Great War, several other gentry made similar choices with their own dress, wearing styles and fashions that were haute couture not a year ago.

However, Lady Milkquise of Donturry had not chosen this dress out of sociopolitical anxiety, but because she had worn a dress of similar design and color three years ago, during a particularly lovely picnic alone^{1, 2} with the then eligible bachelor Lord Grumsworth of Tent. The spring rains had come early, and the two of them had been forced to separate from their chaperons to seek shelter under an old fishing hut on the edge of the lake.

She had chosen birch to frame her hair, because of what happened the next day, by the birch tree in Lord Grumsworth’s garden.

Lord Grumsworth of Tent saw what Lady Milkquise of Donturry was wearing, and hastily took off the large flower-pin he had been given two fortnights ago by the Countess of Hems in exchange for a lovely evening by the river.

This act, hasty as it was, caught the eye of Duchess Tumsburgh, who mistook the pin for a fleur-de-lis. This confirmed the rumors that had been spreading about Lord Grumsworth’s dissatisfaction with his mother, an influential French vicomtesse, and her recent escapades. Knowing the relationship between France and Britannia was at a considerably tense moment, Duchess Tumsburgh took it upon herself to charm — and hopefully ingratiate — the Marquis de Courtoisie, who had arrived earlier in the evening.

Whether through fate or misfortune, she interrupted the Marquis not seconds after he had intercepted Lady Milkquise of Donturry, and introduced himself. Lady Milkquise, who was not ignorant of social graces, was shocked by this startling interruption, momentarily lost herself, and dropped her fan.

The art of fan dropping is practiced only by the most devoted, so it is fortunate that there were no further consequences of this than Lady Illings realizing that Lord Grumsworth — whom she had taken to be an eligible bachelor — was no better than a scoundrel. Resolved to free herself from his wiles, she scandalously approached the first man she spied, who turned out to be Lord von Ribbonsfork of Danspot.

So charmed was Lord von Ribbonsfork by this audacious act, that the two began courtship that evening and were married three years later. This marriage is cited by many historians as the foundational event which ensured Lichtenstein’s neutrality in the second Great War — the consequences of which should be self evident.

This is but one of seven confirmed and twenty more speculated results of Patron Moulde’s careful planning and execution of his wedding. To detail every ramification of every important event would take far longer than would be prudent.

Especially considering the most important event occurred before the wedding even began:

---

Edmund was looking into a mirror, adjusting his tie.

A straight and narrow strip of cloth
Around the collar wrapped,
Of color blue, or red, or green,
By which gentlemen are trapped.
At once, the true and forthright course
Of cloth is turned aside,
And tied into a fancy bow,
befitting for his bride.
A man will, by this uniform,
of worth at once be known,
A husband, Patron, boy, and man,
…

He frowned. It wasn’t his best work, as evidenced by his struggle with the ending, but in the end he supposed it didn’t matter. He hadn’t written it down, so no one would ever see it.

It was his third poem of the day. It was hard to stop the words, now; they flowed like fire from his brain, erupting through his pen onto paper. He would have written his new poem down, had he not been busy with more important matters.

Edmund paused in the tying of his tie. When had he decided that dressing was more important than poetry? But for now, it was. Poems would always be there, waiting to be discovered. They were like the laws of science; all it took was a little time, attention, and luck.

That time could be spent later.

Now he had to think of other things. He had to think of his Family, and all the other families who wanted to be Mouldes. He had to think of Brackenburg and its citizens, the Nine Founding Families and theirs. He had to think of the Church and its dangers, Haggard Hill and its marvels. He had to think of Cliffside, and the treaty signed between England and Spain. He needed to think of Italy, Africa, and Russia. He needed to think of the whole world, because it was all his responsibility. As much as anyone elses.

“Begging your pardon, Patron, but the guests are beginning to arrive.”

Edmund dropped his hands and studied his tie. It didn’t look quite right. “Is everything prepared?”

“The food is ready,” Enga said, “prepared as best I could.” She paused, clearing her throat with the sound of an avalanche. “Mrs. Kippling was a better cook than I am, I’m afraid.”

“Did you follow the recipes?”

“I was…unfamiliar with the language, but I did my best, Patron.”

“Then I am not worried,” Edmund returned to his tie, only to stop when Enga’s thick hands gently turned him around, and began to do the job. “The musicians are set?”

“Eagerly,” Enga nodded. “They are, apparently, not highly sought after, these days.”

Edmund shrugged. “Chamber music is not a trendy style anymore.”

“Indeed,” Enga released Edmund’s throat, and brushed at his shoulders like a farm-hand grooming a horse.

“Have you seen Googoltha?” Edmund wasn’t exactly nervous, but he did know she accepted no responsibilities that she didn’t want. He had explained everything to her last night, when he had come across her crouched down in a store-room looking at a globe. She had made no sign of understanding, but she never did.

“I have, sir,” Enga turned him around to brush his back. “She was wearing the dress you set out for her…veil and all.”

Edmund winced at the reminder. It was a particularly thick veil, and the ceremony would never require its lifting. She would be a mysterious bride, as mysterious as she had ever been. He hoped she wouldn’t feel put out by the need for her to remain a secret for a time, until the Church saw the Moulde Family as beneath their attention.³

Then again, there were still rumors in town; whispers of a shadowy female figure that darted between the shadows, leapt across the rooftops, and vanished without trace. The Lady in Green. If Googoltha felt restricted by the need for stealth, she was making no sign of it.

“Patron?”

Edmund turned to see Ung filling the doorway, leaning on a cane as thick as a table-leg. “Is everything ready?”

“I’m afraid there is still a significant detail that must be addressed before the Wedding can continue.”

Edmund turned back to the mirror and stared at his reflection. It was so much older than he remembered, and so much wiser, but still nowhere near as old or as wise as he wanted. Given time, he would undoubtedly grow into himself, but regardless of how long it took or how much effort it would take…there would always be expectations.

“Tricknee cannot walk Googoltha down the aisle,” Edmund reminded him. “We still have no idea where he is.”

“Yes,” Ung nodded, “And Matron cannot stand with you, either. I wonder if, because you are not able to follow these traditions, that it would be wise to follow ones that you are able.”

“Such as?” he asked.

“Traditionally,” Ung rumbled, clasping his hands in front of him, “a child of the family will bear the rings down the aisle for the wedded couple. This is usually bestowed to either an out-of-wedlock bastard, but this is not compulsory.”

Edmund considered a moment, running through his family tree in his head. Of the entire family, when considering appropriate age, there wasn’t anyone he could think of that wouldn’t risk upsetting the delicate balance of forces he had created.

Of course, there was always the option of advancing his plans a few weeks.

He considered the ramifications for only a few moments before turning back to Ung.

“Please have the carriage pulled around.”

“Patron,” Enga protested as Ung left to obey. “The guests are already arriving.”

“They will have to wait,” Edmund said.

---

Geographically, the carriage ride was nothing more than a journey from Haggard Hill in the Squatling District, to the outskirts of Brackenburg and a little further beyond, to a small former farmhouse perched on the top of Downs Hill. There was a small wooden fence, a tiny grass yard, and a sagging building that by all rights should have fallen down years ago.

Poetically, the carriage ride was far more significant. It was a return to the world Edmund had escaped years ago. It was the reverse of a journey he had only made once before.

On instinct, Edmund sat on the opposite side of the carriage and watched as the distant memories of the Journey played backwards in his mind. There was the first street gas-lamp I ever saw. That was where the vegetable seller was. There used to be a horse-post there. I remember that house was empty, and dark. I remember the large well-dressed man who almost hit a child with his cane, standing right there. I remember the woman in pink. I remember the dog. I remember. By the time the carriage pulled to a halt, Edmund had passed backwards through a decade of history, wisdom, and growth.

The Home for Wayward Lads and Ladies had changed drastically. It was much smaller than it had been; the familiar wooden fence now made of mere twigs instead of the thick posts they had been in his memory. The children playing in the yard were tiny, smaller than the orphans he remembered.

The door was unfamiliar — he had never seen it from the outside — but he knocked on it anyway.

When the door opened, Edmund was astounded to see how much Mrs. Mapleberry had changed. Her hair was now pure white, and her eyes blinked behind thick glasses. Her dress was cleaner than Edmund remembered, and the lines in her face were deeper, her skin saggier.

“Yes?” she said in the same voice.

Edmund opened his mouth, and then closed it. All he had ever thought of her rolled around in his head like a whirlwind. This woman who had tormented him for eight years, giving him unreachable goals and rules and teaching him how to behave properly…lessons he had tossed aside years ago. She had cared about him, and kept him alive, and made sure he never thought he was doomed to a life of isolation…

“Patron Moulde?”

Edmund blinked himself out of his thoughts to see Mrs. Mapleberry staring wide-eyed at his carriage and the spread-eagled raven molded on its side. She looked back at Edmund with a panic and awe he could never once remember seeing on her face.

Did she recognize him? It had been ten years, and such time could change anyone beyond recognition, but had Edmund been so unmemorable? Had Matron’s visit been so irrelevant? Even if she had forgotten, the arrival of the Moulde carriage a second time must have sparked something.

But it didn’t. Or rather, if it had, Mrs. Mapleberry had found it improper to comment on.

“You…are looking for directions?” she asked.

“I am looking for an orphan.”

The panic and awe didn’t fade as Mrs. Mapleberry ushered Edmund inside. Memory took over as Edmund stepped in the exact right places to avoid the creaking foot-boards, twisting planks, and rusty nails. He didn’t make a single sound as he followed Mrs. Mapleberry to the room.

It was even more cramped than he remembered, filled with old donated furniture. In the center of the room was a three-legged table that was so short, none of the mismatched chairs could fit under it. He didn’t recognize two of the chairs, undoubtedly replacements for the two chairs he remembered but were nowhere to be seen.

Edmund carefully crossed the room and sat in the same chair Matron had sat in ten years ago.

“What…sort of orphan are you looking for?” Mrs. Mapleberry managed to choke out.

Edmund opened his mouth…

What could he say?

Bring me your quietest child, was something Edmund did not say. He may have been quiet when he was young, but he had not been the only shy child in the Orphanage. Besides, quiet didn’t mean observant, or intelligent, or kind…and did he even want a child like that?

Bring me the child who has been here the longest was also something he didn’t say. It had taken him years to learn that age was inconsequential for the needs of a family. A child of eight could be wiser than a man of eighty. A woman aged sixty years could be sprier than a girl of twelve.

Bring me the child no one else wants did not pass his lips. There were plenty of reasons why a child might not be adopted, and she might bring him a troublesome child who would be too willful to learn, too stubborn to listen, or too selfish to grow.

What did Matron ask for? He never thought to wonder.

“Bring me a child,” he said.

When it became clear that no further description would be forthcoming, Mrs. Mapleberry bustled out of the room, clattering down the hallway at a break-neck speed.

Moments later, she returned with a young girl no older than seven, gripping a notebook in her dark hands.

Edmund waited as she sat down across from him.

“This is Belamy,” Mrs. Mapleberry said.

He stared at her, and she stared at him. Her deep brown eyes were sharp and clear, staring at Edmund through her thick black curls with the attentive and curious focus of a bird of prey.

What should he say? He didn’t know how to talk to children. He barely knew how to talk to adults. Given time, he could have planned a few words or phrases, but the experience of returning to the Orphanage had occupied his mind, and now he was sitting in front of a child he was looking to adopt with nothing to say.

He was about to ask this girl to become a member of the Moulde Family. That was a terrible burden to put on another.

Should he carry on with this madness, or leave now and spare this child from a life of uncertainty, responsibility, and strife? He wasn’t sure he could bare the burden himself, to ask it of a child of seven…

Suddenly, Belamy opened her notebook, flipped to a page near the middle, and held it out to Edmund.

Reaching out with a thin hand, Edmund accepted the notebook and stared at the picture she was showing him.

It was beautiful. The lines were straight and clean, the shading and perspective precise. She had captured not just the look of the hallway outside, but its essence as well. The chipped plaster, the bare wooden —

Edmund’s eyes narrowed. Was that the golden spiral?

When he saw it, he couldn’t avoid it. Her picture had been drawn with astonishingly mathematical accuracy. The Golden Spiral had been discovered by the ancient Greeks; if she knew about it, she must have read about them in a book.

It was all there; the curved warp of the slats in the windows, the location of holes in the wall, the single weevil crawling along the side of the clock — the tall clock that still sat and likely chimed the same tinny chime he remembered…

But no, the clock was wrong. Now that he saw the mathematical precision of her drawing, he realized the clock was out of place. It didn’t fit into the ratios and formulas that guided her composition.

His eye fell on the picture’s title; Misplaced Ticks.

He turned the page.

He could hear Belamy shift in her chair as he scanned the next pages of her notebook. Every picture was a new and marvelous exploration of mathematical equations and artistic expressions. It was easy to tell with each picture that this girl saw the world differently than Edmund.

“You drew this?” he asked, looking back at the girl.

“I did,” she nodded.

“How old are you?”

“Seven.”

“Are you neat and tidy? Can you do what you’re told?”

Mrs. Mapleberry stepped forward, placing her meaty hand on the back of her charge’s chair. “Oh, Belamy is one of the —”

“I am asking the child.”

Mrs. Mapleberry gasped, and fell silent.

“Yes,” Belamy said. “I don’t have much to make a mess with. I can do what I’m told, if I know how to do what I’m told to do.”

“Do you know anything about politics? Have you heard of South Dunkin?”

“Yes I have,” her eyes widened slightly.

“If you got into a fight, what would you do?”

Belamy paused for a moment, blinked once, and then gave a quick nod. “I’d learn.”

Edmund closed the notebook and rested it back on the table. “Excellent,” he nodded. “Fetch me her things, I’ll take her at once.”

Not another word was said; not through the signing of the papers, nor as Edmund and Belamy left the orphanage and climbed into the waiting carriage. Belamy stared out the window as they began to move, eyes wide with bemused amazement.

The poor girl. She would have a great deal to overcome as she grew. She would have to survive Grimm’s School for the Erratically Gifted, the ire of eight other Founding Families, the reputation of the Mouldes, and the stigma of Edmund’s purported failures.

Was it right, what he had done? Did he have the right to pluck a child with a future ahead of her and saddle her with the unexpected expectations that were due to every Moulde? Perhaps not. Perhaps it was too late. Either way, he would allow her to make up her own mind.

“Excuse me?”

Edmund blinked. “What?”

“What is my name?”

Edmund opened his mouth, and then closed it. “I believe it is Belamy.”

“That’s my first name, but I don’t have a second name. Or rather, I do now, but I don’t know what it is because Mrs. Mapleberry never told me.”

Edmund frowned. Of course, he would try to convince her to be a Moulde, but in the end, he wouldn’t force anything on her. That wasn’t his right at all. She could be whomever she wished to become.

He had been trained by Matron, but now he realized he was a different breed of Moulde. And if she was lucky, Belamy would be a different breed again. She would become her own kind of Moulde, and do what she thought was best. Eventually, some day, she might even become something other than a Moulde. What would she call herself then?

“My name is Patron Edmund Moulde. You may call yourself whatever you wish, I imagine.”

Belamy thought for a moment, tasting the name in her head, and then gave a small shrug before turning back to the window.

“I’ve never been a daughter, before,” she said.

“I’ve never had one. You will have a lot of expectations to live up to, I’m afraid.”

“Like what?”

“Like my wedding today. There will be a great many important people there, and they are expecting to see a ring-bearer. If you don’t preform as they expect, they will think I am a buffoon of a gentleman, and there will be a great scandal.”

“Then I’ll go back to the orphanage?” she asked. “Parents do that sometimes; adopt a child for a day or two and then send them back.”

“Let’s call this…a trial run.”

Belamy nodded, apparently satisfied, and settled back into her seat as the carriage continued down the road into Brackenburg.