Chapter 36 #2
It pleased Kendrick to see Genevieve wearing one of her fine dresses and a matching cloak.
He had told her to order a ballgown and whatever other finery she liked from the new seamstresses they had set up in the Ossuary, and this was in a lovely shade of rose.
It made her glow, and the fashionable hat—carefully secured, since she did not have a pile of hair in which to anchor a formidable hat pin—was offset to give her face a bit of a gamine look.
He had put aside his everyday wear and put on a suit of superfine wool. He left the sword in their bedchamber.
At the door, he donned a hat and handed her a pretty fur muff. She stared down at it and then up at him with wide eyes.
“I know you don’t need it, Jenny, but it completes your outfit nicely,” he said. He offered her his arm.
The street was dark, but the night was clear; horses’ harnesses jingled with bells and an air of festive cheer was in the air.
It was a short walk to the church, and they joined the other parishioners who filed in and found places in the pews.
They garnered some stares, as neighborhood churches knew most of their attendees, but Kendrick turned away the most avid looks with a quick flick of his eyes.
Genevieve paid no attention to the humans around them. Her face was entirely concerned with the threshold, as if she were on a hunter and it was a particularly tricky jump. He was unaccountably proud of her when she stepped forward into the church with only a slight hesitation.
It was not a particularly remarkable church building—rather rundown, in fact, not much noticed or attended by any of the finer inhabitants of the neighborhood.
But the vicar had a good voice and stepped into the pulpit with a smile to wish his congregants a joyous yuletide.
The altar boasted a wooden nativity scene, perhaps carved by one of the parishioners.
As they rose to sing a hymn, Kendrick held the hymn book for Genevieve.
He was not sure she heard more than one word in three that the vicar had uttered so far, but he hoped this was what she needed.
How very humbling, he thought ruefully. The man who has lived so long and done so many things has finally found one thing he cannot accomplish through persuasion or reason or sheer force of will: heal the hurts of the heart.
The church smelled of evergreens and flowers, candlewax and stone. Christmas. It had been so long.
She sat in the pew, her hands tightly clasped. The vicar’s words came to her through a roaring in her ears. Her heart did not beat, which was the only reason it was not hammering out of her chest.
Only Kendrick’s hand under her elbow helped her stand, and even then, she stared unseeing at the hymnal until the words finally penetrated her mind:
O holy night, the stars are brightly shining;
It is the night of the dear Saviour’s birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.
As the music swelled, sung by cheerful men and women slightly off-key and just behind tempo as the church organist struggled to keep pace, Genevieve’s throat closed.
She hadn’t realized she had been so afraid to step into the ordinary holiness.
For years, she had firmly believed the lie that she—that all vampires—were banned from all of this.
She had carried bitterness in her heart because of it.
How could a good God bar her from Himself, who had come to redeem all the hurts of the world?
Was she trapped in an existence too far from what He’d intended with His creation?
Did that make her hurts too deep, too blighted for His work?
Was she and all those like her too far away for His grace to reach?
But no. That had been a lie, like so many others.
Had Paul not said, “For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”?
Even if she was undead?
Even if that creature was a vampire?
Nothing kept her from stepping forward now except her own bitterness.
And in the candlelight, assailed by the peace of the season, what place did that bitterness have now?
I have believed a lie, and I doubted what I knew of the Lord, she admitted. The flaw was in me, and not in Him.
Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Kendrick set one solid hand over hers, and she clung to it and closed her eyes as the second verse washed over her.
The King of kings lay thus in lowly manger,
In all our trials born to be our friend.
He knows our need, to our weakness no stranger.
Behold your King, before Him lowly bend!
Behold your King, your King, before Him lowly bend!
At the close of the song, the vicar stood and read the Annunciation from Luke, the same verses she had read for Hannah and Peter weeks before. “For with God, nothing shall be impossible.”
In the ruins of her shattered hopes and grieving heart, she hadn’t known what lay ahead. Genevieve hadn’t believed this kind of change had been possible for the Ossuary. She hadn’t even believed her heart could warm so quickly. But it had.
She straightened and turned to Kendrick. He met her eyes and raised an eyebrow in inquiry. She bit her lip and tightened her hand around his.
At the close of the service, Genevieve stepped out of the church in a daze. She felt curiously light. Around her, people exclaimed in delight.
“Look. It’s snowing,” Kendrick said, pointing with his free hand to the flakes softly falling, settling on the street and the houses all around, dusting everything in a coating of white.
“Snow on Christmas?” a woman exclaimed in surprise. “Unheard of!”
“Nothing is impossible, it seems,” Genevieve murmured.
“It’s snowing, mum!” Fletcher crowed as Kendrick and Genevieve returned, handing their snow-dusted capes and hats to Robbie, who was manning the door. “D’you think it will be there tomorrow?” he asked wistfully.
“If it falls steadily, it should be,” Kendrick said. “You will have to make snow angels and snowmen in the park, where we can see them at dusk.”
Fletcher bit his lip. “Wish you and missus could be there, guv.”
Kendrick reached out and ruffled his hair. “We’ll have a snowball fight at dusk. How about that?”
Fletcher brightened. “I think the nippers would like that. We can build fortifications, like against the Vikings!” He dashed off to the family parlor to impart the news.
Genevieve shot Kendrick a look. “Have you been telling him more stories?”
“It was a tangent from Sigestan.”
“You’ve been reading? Without me?” she teased.
“We can’t resist a good tale.” He smiled and led her into the parlor.
Sally had set a fire in the fireplace and lit the candles placed on the tree—with a handy bucket of water nearby, Genevieve noted. The children’s cut-out ornaments and strung popcorn and paper chains festooned the tree, which smelled strongly of evergreen. Much like the church.
“Is it time for presents?” Hannah whispered.
“I think Kendrick and I would like to see you open the presents from us,” Genevieve said with a smile.
“Mum’s presents are tomorrow,” Peter said, looking very serious with his hair slicked down over his face.
“How wonderful, to have Christmas twice!” Elspeth said, alighting on a small stool. Robbie followed her into the room and put his free hand on her shoulder.
“Peter, would you like to hand out the gifts?” Kendrick asked.
The boy obediently handed colorfully wrapped packages to Hannah and Fletcher and his mother, ending with one in front of him. Genevieve nearly beamed with pride watching how he hadn’t hesitated over the letters.
At a nod from Kendrick, the children pulled the paper free from their gifts.
Hannah gasped at the porcelain doll in a silk dress.
Peter exclaimed over a set of toy soldiers and immediately began setting them up on the rug, and they chorused ‘thank you’ when prompted by their mother.
Wulfric was very interested in the pitched battle that soon began over the floral rosettes in the rug.
Fletcher looked up from unwrapping his long and skinny gift in wonder. “A real sword?” he breathed.
“It’s a practice foil, so it isn’t sharp,” Genevieve hastened to say. She had stipulated that it not be sharp when Kendrick had suggested the idea of giving the boy his own sword. “And you’ll have to learn when it is appropriate to use and when not.”
“A real sword,” Fletcher repeated. He hadn’t heard a word, eyes eating up the practice foil and sword belt with sheaths for both the foil and the silvered knife that Kendrick had passed to all the human members of the household a few days before.
Most regarded the bequest with puzzlement.
Fletcher was the only one who wished to keep his knife on his person.
Genevieve chose to regard that as a quirk of his history rather than an indictment of their household.
Kendrick set his hand over Fletcher’s. “The first thing a man learns is how to respect that he holds a weapon and not a toy. This isn’t for chasing someone through hallways or hacking at innocent bannisters. But if you promise to use it well, I will teach you how to fence with it.”
“I promise, guv,” Fletcher swore fervently.
“Good lad.”
“He’s still going to do those things,” Genevieve murmured at a register Fletcher wouldn’t be able to hear.
“He will,” Kendrick acknowledged. “But now he will do them less often.”
“Now you, Mummy,” Hannah said, stroking her doll’s hair.
“I already had my gift, missus. You didn’t need to get me anything else,” Sally said, flushing at the package Peter pushed towards her.
“This is more a joint gift from Elspeth and me,” Genevieve assured her. “You run the house for half the day, Sally. That’s no small task, and we appreciate you looking after it. After us,” she amended.
Sally unwrapped the paper and exclaimed over the fine lace collar that Genevieve had commissioned Elspeth to make. “I’ve never had anything so fine! Thank you.” She showed it to her children, and Hannah reached out a hand to stroke the tiny stitches.
Looking up from the enchanted daze his foil and its accompanying sword belt had put him in, Fletcher stood up and bowed to Genevieve and Kendrick. “I didn’t have anything to get you, missus, but I reckon if you’re still wanting to teach me to read…that would be all right.”
Genevieve beamed. “I would love to teach you, Fletcher. What a wonderful Christmas this is.”
“And you haven’t even gotten to the end of your presents yet,” Kendrick said, smirking. He set a small, flat box in her lap. “And before you tell me I didn’t need to give you anything—it gives me pleasure to see you happy.”
Genevieve opened the box and breathed out a shaky breath, staring down at the circular, golden brooch with the raised figure of a fox head surrounded by ivy leaves. “Is it…?”
“As near an approximation I could find,” Kendrick said.
Genevieve lifted it out of the plush satin and cradled it in her hands. “I won’t say you shouldn’t have,” she murmured, “because I love it.”
He smiled and took it to pin at the neck of her gown.
“This is from my very favorite of my father’s books,” she explained to the children.
“Wynnflaed’s Knight. Her lover gives her a brooch very much like this, though that brooch was used as a cloak pin and fastened at the shoulder.
Thank you,” she told Kendrick, and kissed him on the cheek.
“My gift to you is twofold. Fletcher, will you hand me the last package?”
Fletcher handed over the squarish package to Kendrick.
“This is the first part,” she said, feeling unaccountably nervous as he unwrapped the gift.
“Phantastes by George MacDonald,” he read, his eyes sparking at the title.
“I remember it being enjoyable—a bit like The Faerie Queene, a bit like… well, nothing I can think of.” She laughed. “I did not see it in our library.”
“No, I have not read it. Thank you,” he said, turning it over in his hands. “I did not think there was much myth-making in this era.”
She cleared her throat. “The second part isn’t something I could wrap, but… you did say I could pick the name. Our name,” she said as his gaze sharpened. “To usher in a new era for all of us.”
“What did you pick?”
“Well… what would you think of Stewart? To emblematize what we want to accomplish for the Ossuary as a whole.”
He smiled. “House Guardian. I think that will do very well, Mrs. Stewart.”