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Part VII: 1846- On Whose Bones We Built Our Glory
"Could you shut the fuck up?" Beth demanded, "What is going on? Why am I here? Where did the others go? What happens when the other governess shows up?"
-Beth
"You are here to investigate but one link in the chain of la mort," Galdamez explained, fanning himself delicately to stave off the heat. "As have your friends. I assure you, your situation is cozier than some of your other companions. You should be counting your lucky stars, mon cher." He turned his attention to the mirror to make sure his makeup wasn't melting in this sweltering sauna. "As for the governess, who knows? Maybe she shows up tomorrow, maybe she shows up next week, maybe she doesn't show at all." Galdamez glanced Beth, a devilish glimmer in his eye. "Or maybe...she has already arrived."
"Wait..." Beth's eyes widened, "What? Are you saying..."
-Beth
Galdamez smiled knowingly, his gold incisors shining suggestively.
"Oh, drop it, man!" Beth almost threw the soap again, but figured things wouldn't go well for either of them if any of this house's freakish inhabitants decided to come back.
"What is this? Like...okay, I get it, I've traveled back in time about a century and a half or so. So Einstein was wrong and you can go to the past. That's fine. We all make mistakes. But what kind of time travel is this? Like, if I went downstairs, found the little kid I'm supposed to be teaching, and drowned him in the tub, would I have just wiped the Maddoxes out forever? Like, is my being here already creating a different timeline? Or is this one of those closed loops where everything that's happened happened, and I was always supposed to be here and nothing I do has any bearing on the future?"
She grabbed Galdamez by the doilied sleeves, "Can I get back?"
-Beth
"Oh, you can get back," Galdamez assured the girly. "If you find the mystery behind this particular link of the chain of la mort. Otherwise, you'll be trapped in this time...forever." He waved his arms mystically, as if to emphasize the severity of the situation.
"Okay, can you stop with the gratuitous French? It's insufferable. You can call it the chain of death. Nobody's going to call you stupid."
She rolled her eyes, "Wait...since you're the guy who, like, saw the chain and everything, doesn't that mean you already know what happens in all the links?"
-Beth
"I only saw that there was a chain," Galdamez clarified. "The particularities of the links are a mystery even to me!" He began to slowly walk backwards out of the bathroom, speaking in a ghostly voice. "Solve the mystery of 1846, Beth! Discover the secret of on whose bones we built our glory! Solve, Beth! Discover, Beth! Realize and internalize! Internalize! INTERNALIZE!!!"
And he was gone from the bathroom.
"Wait!" Beth called, "Wait, where are you going? Galdamez! Galdamez, you miserable son of a..."
She raced into the passage and nearly collided with a wide-eyed slave girl, who looked at her as though she'd grown a second hand. There was no sign of anybody else.
"Um..." Beth cleared her throat awkwardly, "Sorry about that."
She looked around nervously, slowly stepping back into her room and closing the door behind her with a deep, mournful sigh.
"Solve the mystery," she muttered to herself, "What fucking mystery?"
***
Beth eventually did figure out which of her underpants went on in which order, and she even developed enough of a sense of self-loathing to put her bonnet on. She was about to be the most punk rock girl on the Antebellum club circuit, if she didn't walk into the lake first.
She emerged from the service corridor into the main hall, racking her brain for the location of the dining room, for what was apparently to be her only dinner with the venerable Maddoxes.
"Okay, so the brass slave guy," Beth rubbed the little statue's head as if for luck, "Is guarding the way to the parlor. And the baby slave oil painting," she turned to the portrait in question on the opposite end of the room, "Is next to the conservatory. Which means the dining room is..."
"Do you always talk to yourself, or only when there are prying ears?"
There was a girl on the stair landing looking down at her. Thin and puckishly pretty, with bright blond ringlets (she and Galdamez had the same hairstyle, Beth thought) under a comically small hat. She observed Beth over the lip of a paper fan on which had been painted a turquoise hummingbird flitting over a turquoise garden. The fan, in turn, complemented the girl's turquoise dress, which was a more elaborate bit of costumery than even Delilah's.
"S'pose not," she said at length, continuing down the steps, "You know, it's unseemly for a girl to talk to herself. One might begin thinking she's mad," she alighted the stairs, bursting as she did into a peal of uneven giggles, her fan chopping at the air as though it knew it had to get the most out of its productivity as possible before some jerk used electricity to make it redundant.
"Heh, right," Beth forced a laugh, "Do you know the way to the..."
"How do you do?"
"What?"
"It is customary, don't you know, to greet a stranger with how do you do and, of course, to introduce yourself ahead of time."
"Uh-huh. Yeah, I'm, uh, Beth. The new governess."
The girl continued fanning herself. Beth sighed, "How do you do?"
"Excellently," she closed the fan with a flourish, revealing a pretty, if pinched face, "I am Marianne Maddox. How do you do?"
Beth blinked, wondering what would happen if she said something honest like, 'Oh, great. I've just been hurled through time and space and now I have to put up with the trials and tribs of Jane Austen.
"Awesome, thanks."
"I must say, I wonder how anyone would've wanted to take up a job with my brat of a brother. He's enough to turn any girl's hair white."
"Well, you know what they say about children: they're the future."
"If Ellis is our future, Miss Beth, we might as well put on sackcloth and go rolling in the hay. But you'll meet him soon enough, and mark my words, you'll know what I'm saying then, just so."
"...just so. Right. So, is he like, weird in the head or something, or what's going on with..."
"Oh, there's my other brother now," Marianne rolled her eyes, "And I've blown my chance at escape."
"What, you mean Everett?"
Marianne gave her a scandalized look, "I am sure my mother's told you we don't abide the help to use Christian names," though she seemed privately thrilled, "I wouldn't get my hopes up for Everett, though. He's about as marriageable as a beanpole, and more rigid," in another voice, she lifted her folded-up fan to flag down her elder sibling, "Everett! I was just getting acquainted with your new friend."
-Beth and Marianne
Everett had just finished washing up, after returning Sally to the stables, he had seen they needed cleaning out. Seeing his sister with the new governess and decided that he would save her from that torture.
"I see, not giving the lady too hard of a time I hope?"
He asked, nodding his head in the direction of Beth.
"Oh, hold your tongue!" Marianne giggled, again, causing Beth to wonder if this was some sort of period appropriate female weapon of war, "I was just warning her about the perils of her new position."
"Very politely," Beth interjected with a fixed smile, "Everybody seems very determined that I know what a bad idea it was to take this job."
"She's funny too," said Marianne, "God bless her. You need a sense of humor..."
"If I'm going to be undoing the knots in your little brother's tail. Yes, I gathered."
Marianne giggled. Beth screamed internally.
-Marianne and Beth
"he can be quite the handful, but I think he'll grow out of it, all boys do. They become strong men, and the Maddox men are the strongest of the bunch."
Everett said proudly, remembering the speeches his father would give him.
"Miss Beth, I hope you don't think the worst of us, I know some in this family can be quite...eccentric."
Marianne (get this) giggled again, "I hope you don't mean me, brother dear. I'm about as orthodox as a linen handkerchief."
"You people really know how to turn a phrase, huh?" Beth asked dryly.
Delilah had none-too-subtly implied she thought Beth had designs on Everett. This was stupid for several reasons, not least of which Beth was 99.9% sure Delilah's dandy firstborn was trapped in a quaint antebellum closet. As a sidenote, Beth wasn't interested enough in men where she came from to even be contemplating fucking up the space time continuum for some sausage and eggs.
"Well, I think I'll just reserve my judgments until after dinner," said Beth at length, "Just to see."
"Oh, and see you will!" Marianne did some sort of elaborate arabesque with her fan, "It'll be heaps of fun. We never have guests at dinner. Ellis might just die from excitement!"
She sounded like this would be an event tantamount to Christmas, which did nothing for Beth's appetite.
-Beth and Marianne
The Maddoxes-and-Beth assembled in the formal dining room: an airy place with huge windows that looked out onto the fields beyond the house. The table was big enough to sit two dozen and looked very ridiculous seating just five.
"Ooh, they put out the finger bowls for you, Miss Beth," Marianne simpered, sinking into a seat, "They must want to keep you around..."
"Marianne!"
"Sorry, Mother," Marianne cleared her throat. Delilah looked from her daughter to Beth, "You'll have to forgive her fancies."
Marianne giggled again. Beth looked down at the scented water in the bowl before her, "So, um...is this soup?"
"It's a fingerbowl," said Delilah curtly, "Do they not have fingerbowls at Miss Bodycote's?"
"I'm sure if you asked her nicely."
"Here, now, I'll show you," Marianne demonstrated, dipping her fingers into the bowl.
"So...it's like washing your hands?"
"Beg pardon?"
Beth blinked, "Right. Guess they haven't gotten around to that yet."
-Beth, Delilah, and Marianne
"Well the Patterson's may think that a little manure never hurt a dish, but the Maddox family is quite a few stations above hog farmers."
Everett said as he dipped his fingers.
Delwyn entered the dining sweating profusely, wearing wrinkled clothes, and suffering from somewhat blurry vision. This was because that, unbeknownst to his fellow housemates, he was returning from a fap of epic proportions.
"Ah say, ah say...." He sputtered, taking his seat at the head of cartoonish long table. "This is quite a display. The food, it looks spectacular." Delwyn dipped his hands into the finger bowl with a bit too much gusto, causing the water to splash everywhere. As he did this, his eyes turned to the newcomer. "Oh. Miss Beth. I see you've found more appropriate, er...gahments. Quite..." He side-eyed Delilah, partly out of spite, partly out of fear.
"And of course," Delwyn looked to his daughter before his wife could chide him. "Mah daughter, glowing as bright as a shinin' stah."
"Oh, Fath-uh!" Marianne giggled as Beth mustered all the will she possessed not to drown herself in the fingerbowl. She resigned herself to the sad fact that everybody at this table was probably too frightened of the patriarch to point out the tremendous jizz stain on his trousers.
"So, um...where's the little guy?"
-Beth
"Oh, he'll be coming along shohtly," Delwyn replied. "He's just playing in his room, indulging in some childish...fantasies..." He swallowed hard, realizing that Miss Beth was staring at his nether-regions.
And of course she was! It was clear she was observing his impressive girth. Delywn then thought of a clever trick...
He "accidentally" spilt the finger bowl water on his trousers! "Lordy, lordy, the wat-uh! I have done made a mess of myself, by Gahge. Oh..." Delwyn took his napkin and began to dry himself...by rubbing himself!
You truly are a rascally devil, Delywn! He thought to himself, quite proud. And the family will be none the wiser regahding yoah...urges.
"Oh Jesus Christ," Beth averted her eyes.
"Oh, is it time for grace already?" asked Marianne, taking Beth and Everett's hands, "Oh, thank you God, for these thy gifts..."
"Delwyn!" Delilah snapped curtly, "Restrain yourself!"
-Beth, Marianne, and Delilah
"What?" Delwyn snapped back defensively. "I can't help my pants are wet..."
The doors creaked open. In walked a young boy, guided along by an elder slave woman.
"Oh. Ellis." Delwyn gestured to the table. "Come. Take yoah place."
"Yes, father," Ellis replied, wrenching himself free from the woman's gasp and walking along. However, he slowed down when he spotted a new face at the table. "Who are you?"
-Delwyn and Ellis
You certainly can help it, if only you'd find some use for your idle hands..."
Delilah's recriminations were cut short by the arrival of the little boy.
Beth found herself immediately withering under the kid's attention, "Who am I?" she repeated.
Very fucking sorry.
But she said, "Well...little fella...I'm Beth. Your new governess."
-Delilah and Beth
"Oh." Ellis scowled. "Have you heard what happened to the last governess?"
"Well, as a matter of fact, nobody seems to want to..."
"She left," emphasized Delilah, "Come now, Ellis, and sit at your place. You are delaying the soup."
"Beans and barleycorn," Marianne whispered, "It can be delayed all it likes, I declare."
-Beth, Delilah, and Marianne
Like a dog, Ellis obeyed. "Yes, mother." He turned to leave but not without a lasting glare on this new governess.
So he took his place...on his mother's lap.
Delywn treated it as business as usual. "Now, then. Let us thank the Lohd for these gifts." He outstretched hands, waiting for Beth and Delilalh to grab them.
-Ellis and Delwyn
Beth eyed Delwyn's hand long and hard, "Hey, man, maybe you wanna take another tip in the bowl, you know, just in case..."
"Oh Lord God..." Delilah began, echoing Beth's thoughts. Beth sighed, limply accepting Delwyn's hand. It squelched.
"We thank you for these bounties, and for the constant favor you have shown on our household. We endeavor in all things to attain the true the spiritual ecstasy..."
"The what?" Beth whispered.
"Embodied by your son Christ Jesus. In his name, Amen."
"A-men!" Marianne declared, as a small army of slaves brought out the soup.
-Beth, Delilah, and Marianne
"Amen!" Delwyn said as well as his beans and barley corn were plated before him. "Now, Miss Beth...this must be quite the adjustment to move to out from the city to our plain ol' countryside. You'll find here, though, that people are much kinder than some of those, er...provocative New Orleans folk."
"Oh, the difference was pretty plain, believe me," said Beth, sniffing the soup experimentally and learning that, evidently, you could have all the money in the world in this time period and still not use salt.
"Do you have any family, Miss Beth?" asked Delilah, like this was an interrogation or something.
"Not really," said Beth blithely, "I'm sort of disowned."
Delilah's eyes appeared to bulge right out of her skull, "Oh, indeed?"
"Yeah, they got really into one of those weird new religions," Beth smiled, getting into it, "I didn't want any part."
"Ah," Delilah seemed relieved, "I daresay they joined Mr. Campbell's heretical Mormon sect."
"Oh, totally. Dad must be on his sixth wife by now."
"How scandalous!" gasped Marianne delightedly.
"You bet," conning these people was easier than Beth thought. She'd essentially described a true story: she was disowned, and new religions did play into it. She'd just left out the part about her hardcore Methodist parents kicking her out of the house after discovering her grimoire and a list of people she was planning to hex with diarrhea, up to and including her father.
-Beth, Delilah, and Marianne
"Sixth wife?" Delwyn chuckled, as a good host ought to do. "Ah'd be lucky to have a second, ah say, ah say..." However, a fearing glance at Delilah put a swift end to his joking attitude. "Ah jest, of course." He cleared his throat awkwardly before returning to shoveling in his barley corn.
"Mother, I'm thirsty!" Ellis whined, tugging at his mother's sleeve.
-Delwyn and Ellis
Delilah gave her son a baleful look, "Very well, then."
"Um, there's some apple juice in this pitcher here..." Beth began, but Delilah had already hefted the boy up into her lap. Marianne turned her nose up very primly, as if she had suddenly become fascinated by the carved plaster ceiling.
"Um," Beth began uncertainly, "What's going..."
But Delilah had already opened the top portion of her dress, exposing an upsettingly heavy looking dug. Beth's eyes must have been frozen open, because there was no way she wanted to see this.
"There's some apple juice in this pitcher here..." Beth tried, more desperately this time.
But Delilah, with the air of a priest undergoing a sacred rite, paid no mind to her as she gently lowered Ellis's head to her tit to...
Suckle.
Beth gagged into her barleycorn.
"Miss Beth," Marianne whispered, "It's powerful rude to stare. And bad for the digestion besides."
She couldn't exactly argue with that.
-Beth, Delilah, and Marianne
Delwyn leaned over and said in a not-so-secret (dare he say, passive aggressive?) whisper to Miss Beth. "It's queer, isn't it? Ah say the boy's much too grown for it but who am I to debate a mothah's love, hm?" Triumphantly, he sat up and continued his meal, averting his eye's from the wife's feeding as he had trained himself to do over the years.