La Nocturne

Elaine walked the full three shameful blocks home with dirt on her hands and dress, and salt crystallizing on her cheeks. She felt as if she were walking in a dream - each step felt both light and heavy, as if she were simultaneously ascending into the air and sinking into the ground. She knew that everyone that passed her stared, and felt those stares on her skin like a hundred cold hands. Elaine imagined how she must have looked - eyes reddened, hair worked free of its plait, dress soiled, and alone on the street - and found to her surprise that she did not care. It didn't matter anymore. She could never be one of them, anyway. A frigid weight settled in her chest then, and she felt terribly weary. When she finally walked back through the front gates to the house, she realized that it was the feeling of giving up.

As Elaine stepped onto the portico, a shaft of sunlight suddenly broke through the clouds and illuminated the marble, seemingly making it glow from within. Something about this small spectacle moved Elaine greatly. Hope and resolve filled her leaden limbs again and she remembered her mission. Not wasting a second, she went inside the house, calling for her governess with a false tone of urgency in her voice. Miss Marrovy soon came rushing round, her skirts rustling. "Yes, Lady Elaine? What is it?"

Elaine had always been good at making up stories, and this time was no different. The words seemed to come to her as if they had been waiting for her all along. "Oh, I've just received word that my Aunt Mary is terribly ill! She's all on her own, and Mother and Father are out of town. Oh, I'm so worried for her - I must go and take care of her. There's no one else who can do it."

Miss Marrovy looked slightly overwhelmed at this bit of news. "Oh, dear," she said. "Well, you certainly must go to her, then. But I should come with you."

"No!" said Elaine suddenly. Quickly recomposing herself, she amended, "I mean, but you mustn't. Who will take care of the house while I'm gone? We can't just leave the servants on their own. And what if someone important decides to come and finds no one home?"

"Well, I suppose you're right," Miss Marrovy conceded grudgingly, though a pinched expression still haunted her face.

"It shall be all right," Elaine assured her warmly. "I'll take some of the maids with me, and besides, Aunt Mary's house really isn't that far - it's only an hour and a half's drive away."

As Elaine went upstairs to pack her carpetbag, she noticed that Miss Marrovy still hadn't looked very happy, even after she had allowed her to go. But that's fine, she thought. She doesn't have to be happy about it.

From upstairs, Elaine snuck to the servants' quarters and found Franz's room. She had been dreading walking into his room and invading his privacy even though he wasn't there, but found to her vast relief that one of the laundresses had just finished ironing one of Franz's coachman's suits and had hung it on his door. She took it down surreptitiously, folded it over her arm, and went to her bedroom. Since her and Franz were about the same height and her body was flat and slender, she was able to fit rather well into the coachman's suit. Elaine pinned her hair up into a bun atop her head and pulled the matching black hat down over her brows. After haphazardly throwing a few extra dresses, petticoats, stockings, a shawl, a cloak, and anything else she thought she might need into a carpetbag, Elaine uttered a small prayer for good luck and headed out to the stables. As she passed through the kitchen, she grabbed some bread and a few apples and carrots to share with her horses. Elaine hitched Darcy and Heathcliff up to the carriage just as she had done yesterday, put her carpetbag and a bag of feed inside the body, and made sure no one was watching before she mounted the coachman's seat. She shook the reins, and the horses started moving.

Elaine made sure to take the lesser-known routes out of town to avoid being seen. When she had to take a more major road, she made sure to keep her head bent low as possible, hoping the hat she was wearing would conceal enough of her face to avoid suspicion. Finally, after what seemed an eternity of bending her head, hunching her shoulders, and driving with painstaking care, Elaine reached the open road. She sighed in relief, unbent her neck, and allowed her horses to go a bit faster. I'm doing it, she thought. I am really, really doing it. She could not decide whether to be ecstatic or terrified.

Though it had been cloudy earlier, the sky was clearing and it was turning out to be a fine day. The sun shone warmly down on Elaine and over the fields and trees passing by. There was nobody else on the road, giving it a pleasant sort of solitude. Occasionally, she would pass by small, bubbling creeks, weathered farmhouses and barns, or a family spread out on a quilt, having a picnic. These were nice, calming scenes and with each mile that Elaine drove on, she became a little bit more assured.

She had not been on the road two hours when a thought suddenly struck her - robbers and bandits. They were known to lurk around roads like the one she was on, roads leading away from cities. She had heard the stories - men being robbed of everything save the clothes on their back. Men being robbed, then murdered. Women and children kidnapped. Fear surged through her, and she almost turned the horses straight around and went back. Elaine had a fine carriage, and anyone who saw it knew what it spoke of her family's social standing. And she was alone. She hadn't brought anything to defend herself with, either; it had never entered her mind before then. In that moment, the only thing keeping Elaine from turning back and forgetting about everything was that she couldn't be sure whether it was a shorter distance to go back home or to go on to Elsinore. So she blindly led her horses on, watching the scenery slip by in her peripheral vision and imagining eyes following her from every tree. Despite the sun, her body went cold in terror. Every rustle of grass or leaves conjured images of sinister men in masks jumping out at her wielding knives.

Eventually, all of Elaine's energy was channeled into two things - trying not to break down completely, and keeping her carriage on the road. She found, however, a small niche of strength in her horses. She had to stay calm for their sake; they couldn't know that anything might be wrong, or they would start getting nervous as well. Also, they were very nice horses, healthy and well-bred. Elaine was confident they would be able to outrun any robbers or bandits. Robbers or bandits on foot, at least.

Time slipped by in long, numbing stretches. The sun climbed higher in the sky. Elaine took off the hat she wore and fanned herself with it as she held the reins with her other hand. Finally, she thought she saw tiny spots of color in the distance, fading in and out of the breeze. She might have heard the neighing of horses. A few minutes later, Elaine saw the shapes of narrow wooden stalls rising from the ground, colored flags strung between them. There were people crowding around the stalls, trying to snatch the best deal. Off to the side, coachmen were tying up their horses. In the meadow beyond the market, children chased each through the tall grass, their calls and cries like the music of tiny instruments.

Elaine felt such giddy relief, she could have fallen off the coachman's box. She closed her eyes; sounds enveloped her, human sounds like miracles, and she felt like she had returned to civilization after spending half her life on a desert island. And she'd swum herself the entire way.