summer held with it its own softness — not the grey streaked rains of spring or the chill of autumn, but the sensation ( the memory ) of countryside visits and estate travelling; of warm linens under sun dappled patches of grass, shaded by weeping willows and bending oaks. christopher mercy stands upon the threshold of it, as he does with so many things ( the season, the world, youth, life itself; perhaps ); lingering as the sun does come dusk, stretching longer into the evenings now as surely as he grows taller every day ( or so his mother said ); gangly and all limb, no muscle. alexander teased him something awful for it, ever the prince without a throne or palace to his name — father had embraced him, told him he had been just the same at his age; and to not take such things to heart. if the lord had not expected siblings to argue, the story of cain and abel would never have become a cautionary tale.
and if the lord had intended for christopher to grow broad and strong, perhaps he would not have given him a penchant for knowledge; a hunger for it, ambition to match; too. you are so very like me, my son. his mother’s voice sickly sweet in his ear, curling, turning — i am not, he thinks; shoes scuffing against the worn stone of the sheltered terrace of fifty-nine lancaster gate. i am myself, entirely. whatever that meant; for while his siblings, his father, his mother ( his tutors, his mentor, too ) all seemed to know their place in the world; be it within the threads of a larger tapestry or the weaver, the purchaser; god help anyone who tried to tell them otherwise — he did not; and where did that leave a second son of a third son? seventeen seemed much too young to know much of anything.
but, seventeen was not too young to know routine — breakfast with his family, squabbling and loud ( and now, much fretting of packing; what to bring and who to visit, and just how quick summer will pass ); dressed and washed on his way to sixty-one lancaster gate before lunch, to stand in the dark and cavernous, crumbling halls of a man of whom, christopher had decided, had little scruples. a land of silence, of slow and twisted things. talent alone cannot open the door to oxford, boy. as if the selling of one’s soul could, either. he knew lighter things, too; the sound of a rarely used laugh and just when the princess might be let out from her tower ( or a canary let out from her cage and to the aviary, alone and solitary — to be watched by a collector ). three taps to the iron wrought gate; ivy and roses ( all his mother’s, prized and lush; compared to the sparseness that he knew lay beyond his own sanctuary. not so much a garden as it was a desert, swallowed by the smoke and fog of london.
tap, tap, tap. three taps to greet; four to run. his knuckles against the iron, the sound ringing out like the bells of saint paul’s. “ miss barker? ” never johanna; never so familiar despite having known each other all their short lives. it would be too familiar, he thinks. too forward. and miss barker is a dear friend, the gentlest of souls — it is why he is here, after all; pressed to the shrubbery, away from the prying eyes and meddling fingers of his mother, and the cold stare of the judge; stealing just a few precious moments in what time was left to them both outside of sunday dinners and sermons. “ i am surprised you are out today — the sun is high. ” i am surprised you were let out at all. “ not that – not that i am ungrateful, @skywaits. in truth i was hoping that you might — that i might see you a moment longer before we are to travel east prawle and quit london before the heat comes. ”







