“You’re one of Basque’s girls, aren’t you?”
“Down at the Polite Society. I’ve seen you.”
Sister Cressida’s round face crinkled with an intimate smile, a lunar body made blood moon by the dying embers of a late hearth painting her weathered features warm and ruddy. The boarding house had historically seen its share of late-night wraiths milling through its drafty halls well after midnight, sleepy women with lingering scent trails of busy kitchens, stables, and smithies. Present for the nightly comings and goings of late-shift workers were a handful of watchful sisters who would keep the lanterns lit and stewpots bubbling, but weren’t particularly given to conversation not just as a matter of the late hour, but also of an innate distance they held on purpose from their impoverished wards. But not Cressida.
A delayed, incredulous laugh punctuates Delphine’s response as she searches the elder’s face for signs of jest. “Forgive me, I just never expected one of the good sisters to make a joke like that.”
“Who’s spinning comedy here, little girl? I’ve seen you hustling into that building before, first by happenstance, but then because I was curious to know if what I’d seen was true, and it was. So I ask you again: You’re one of Basque’s girls, aren’t you?”
The younger of the two grows wary and lapses to silence that stretches uncomfortably until there seems no choice but to confess under her unflinching gaze. “Yes, I am, but I resent that phrasing. I’m waiting tables until the baby comes, nothing more. It was the only place that would hire me in this state. I promise you, there’s nothing untoward happening.”
“Nevermind that,” the wizened woman grunts with a brusque wave of her hand. “How do you protect yourself?”
“Protect myself? Well, I don’t think that’s necessary, the area is fairly quiet. I know it’s not the safest to be out and about after midnight, but I’ve never felt threatened.”
“And how do you protect yourself inside the club?”
Delphine falters, her mouth twisting to one side in soft dismay. “There are guards posted throughout who keep watch over it all. They seem reliable, but I’ve never had need. I’m a cheerful drinkmaid, nothing more. Most patrons can see that I’m pregnant and give me a hard time but it’s all in good fun. They’ve been a little raucous, but never a threat.”
Cressida sits back in her seat with a low creak from the wood shifting, her knobbed fingers folding together over the slope of her belly. Her posture is casual, but her pointed question strikes with a killer’s aim. “Do you think they’ll want you to keep serving drinks when your belly shrinks again and they no longer have to feel sorry for the single mother at the gentleman’s club?”
Delphine plays host to silence in response, her brow sinking heavily at the implication. The glowing hollow of a burnt log crackles quietly in the hearth, offering little filler for the uncomfortable, wordless stretch. She wallows in the indignity raised by Cressida’s implications, ruminating on her objections just to find that there are only uncomfortable truths waiting for her. An unborn baby was both a shield and a vulnerability; a precious token that placed her as something to protect just as long as it remained visible every bit as much as it revealed her most obvious weakness like guts torn open for a gathering omen of vultures. She wears the troubling thought as plain as day on her face, but the sister appears to take no pleasure in having evoked it. “I don’t envy you,” the elder finally states, breaking their impasse. “You’re set up like dominoes for a life of pain that we can’t shield you from.”
“Oh, to have made all the right choices,” the younger shoots back, bittered. “If this is the price of your help, then I suppose I’ve got to let it happen, but I’ll have you know that it wasn’t so long ago that I thought I’d be living like you instead of like me.”
“It is. I was in love with the whole, grand image of the church. I loved the ceremony and pomp of it all, the chants and candles. I thought it a fairytale to marry yourself to heaven, and heavens forgive me that I married a fool, instead.”
A scraping laugh makes her jump. “To be young and dreaming again,” the sister guffaws, tilting her head back to look up at the soft light painting the ceiling above. “What have I been doing all these years when I could have been spending it huffing the candles.”
“I’m not joking. I had every intention of devoting myself before—you know, all of this. I wanted to swear myself to the sisterhood. I had just started preparing myself to read the sacred polities when I met him and it all went sideways.”
“He was either terribly charming to overcome the fire of duty burning in your heart, or the fire was about as strong as a match in a gale.”
“That’s not funny,” the young woman protests, shooting a look of disapproval to her blunt companion.
“Which part of it is true? I’ve struck a nerve.”
“It was the former, alright? I fell for him so suddenly that I didn’t know what was happening. I’d never had someone take a shine to me like that, and he painted this beautiful future for us that felt so real to me. How was I supposed to know any better? He kept strange hours, but I didn’t care because the time we did have together was pure magic.”
“You couldn’t imagine the gifts, sister. Flowers by the dozens, more than I could find vases for. Enough perfume to clear an auditorium, fine jewelry…” She pauses at a particular recollection and laughs incredulously, shaking her head. “A basket of kittens. Six little cats, only just opened their eyes. I said, ‘Niels, they are so precious, but who is going to take care of them all?’ and he said, ‘Don’t worry honey, I’ll hire someone. A kitten nanny, so all you have to do is enjoy them’. Well, I don’t have to tell you that he didn’t hire anyone, and I was heartbroken when I had to give them away. I was renting only a single room, barely enough space for me and my belongings—”
“And your burgeoning indoor garden,” Cressida interjects dryly.
Delphine sighs wistfully and leans back in order to rest her hands over the steep hill of her growing belly. “I should have seen that as a sign. Who does that? Who brings home an entire basket of kittens?”
The conversation trails off without an answer to that lingering question, leaving them both to their thoughts and the occasional sound of a wooden door opening and closing again with a heavy thud. Delphine’s recollections made the memories she’d shared feel years in the past, but the ever-present reminder attached to her body was a grounding anchor attesting that barely any time had passed at all. Her eyes meander over to the sister’s reclining figure at the sound of a deep exhale, expecting the older woman to have gently nodded off, but instead her counterpart gazes pensively into the fireplace, soundlessly tapping her fingers against the wooden arm of her seat.