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She burns it all down—literally.
Appleyard College and all of the mysteries left inside it are nothing more than a smoking crumble of ash. Hester slips onto a boat with her hair tucked up inside of a cap, a vice grip on the arm of the squirming child at her side.
It’s a rash decision, as many of her decisions have been of late. Lock a child in a tower; confide to them your innermost secrets; nearly push that child to her death; climb up an ancient rock thinking (with great hubris) that perhaps you can claw those girls back from that fetid earth with your own bare hands—and nearly jump off the rock to escape it all, yourself.
Her foot had teetered on the edge, the slightest waiver. The breath of non-commitment. I don’t want to die, Hester had thought, I want to escape it all.
There are other means of escape. She’s done it once before.
The last time, she didn’t rip out one of her own teeth, cut her arm and drip blood onto the stones before setting the place alight.
(She didn’t make the snap decision to grab a child out of a tower and do the same to her last time, either).
Sara doesn’t come quietly. Hester almost calls it a wash. Almost pushes the child back into the burning building and be done with it all; fuck it, she’ll only make Hester’s life harder, it’s not worth it.
But then Sara looks at her. Looks at her, and sees the thought; there isn’t any of Sara’s usual spitfire resistance on her face, then, instead—cutting and deep and horribly familiar—it’s resignation. Hester grabs her, and yanks her tight, and then slaps her on the face. “Quiet,” she hisses. “Stop struggling. I’m trying to help you.”
“No, you’re not,” Sara snaps, but she stops fighting back. She’s smart, when she needs to be. A survivor. It’s why of all of them, Hester sometimes likes her.
(For now though; Hester’s not an idiot. Sara Waybourne mostly hates her).
They slip onto the ship as inconspicuously as they can. Hester dresses them both up as men, exaggerates and deepens her old cockney accent, playing at embodying Arthur. She’s almost baffled when it works. Men never expect such cleverness from women. They think there is nothing in the world as brilliant as they are. In their minds, a woman would never even try, let alone succeed in playing at them.
(It almost makes it fun).
Sara seems dulled enough to cooperate for now, and she glares when Hester tells her to pretend to be her brother—but she does it. Hester can tell, the movements are practiced and specific enough that she’s remembering someone and mimicking them. Same as Hester.
Hester thought that another continent would save her, only a few years ago. She was wrong, but maybe she simply chose poorly. Australia is too tightly linked to England, still. America, however, has shucked the empire as loudly as it can.
Apparently, California is as large some of the countries in Europe. And their boat is headed that way.
…
…
“What’s the plan?” Sara asks, two days into their journey. Some of her resilience has come back to her, and she’s been testing out fighting back at Hester in public. Hester has considered pushing her overboard and being done with it more than once.
“Get to America and disappear,” Hester snaps back.
“Because you’re a murderer,” Sara hisses underneath her breath.
“I’m not,” Hester says simply. “I made sure that there was no one inside the college when I lit the match. I certainly didn’t do anything to the girls up on that rock. What murder do you think that I’m culpable for, Samuel?” she adds, pointedly.
Sara rolls her eyes, but remembers to deepen the register of her voice. “Henry,” she says, “you told me that man Arthur died because of you.”
“I didn’t shoot him,” Hester says with a tired sigh. “I took advantage of a clusterfuck and got away. Everything in Arthur’s life previous led to him getting shot. Including taking me from an orphanage when I was a child.”
“Every knave shall have his slave. You or I must be she,” Sara whispers into her lap, with far too much understanding than Hester would like, frankly.
Hester deeply regrets her drunken confessions that night in the tower. Sara has looked at her differently ever since. Where there was once nothing but childish spite and superiority, there’s now an undercurrent of pity and confusion. Sara doesn’t know how to feel, anymore.
Hester detests that she is in rather the same predicament. It’s nothing new, for her. Since the moment that Sara Waybourne graced the steps of her college’s door, Hester hasn’t known what to make of her conflicting feelings on the child. Sometimes the girl feels like a mirror to the past being held up to Hester—horrible, inspiring fury, disgust, empathy, and anger all at once. Of everyone at the college, Sara was the only one who might have ever understood her—truly. Hester craves and detests that all in one breath.
She can see the same conflicting emotions waring across Sara’s face now, too. Both of them are wading out into the unknown, unsure of where they will eventually land when their ship docks in San Francisco.
Hester grabbed what money and valuables she had access to before she lit the match, but it’s not much, all things considered. It’s certainly not ‘start a girls’ school’ money. Frankly, she’s tired of the making of young girls into respectable ladies of society, anyway.
…
…
“I have a plan,” Sara says, nearly two weeks into their voyage.
Hester quirks an eyebrow and finishes sipping her water. “Do you, now?” she indulges. Can’t hurt to hear what she’s come up with.
“I’ve heard about gold mines in America,” she starts, excitedly. “Some of the sailors have been talking about it.”
“Don’t go off and talk to the sailors,” Hester snaps, an irritating protective fear rising in her gut. “If they found you out for a girl, they’d hurt you."
“You don’t know that,” Sara retorts, proving her naivety twice over. The girl has trusted and loved her brother over all else, feels indebted and rescued by Mr Cosgrove, and thinks that men are protective, kind, and fun. She truly has no real idea.
“I do,” Hester insists. The memories assault her: standing on the stage in front of jeering men, barely Sara’s age. She balls her hands into fists, her nails digging into the soft skin of her palms. After a moment, Sara’s hand—ever so hesitantly—rests on her own, tugging it open. Hester yanks it away and bends down to hiss at Sara. “Listen to me, or let them have their way with you. I won’t come to your rescue if you behave foolishly.”
Sara stares back at her, the familiar defiant, spitfire glare back on her face. “I don’t need you to,” she taunts.
“If you want to be an idiot, then be my guest,” Hester says, rising and smoothing down her vest. Her hair is giving her a headache. These clothes are far more comfortable than her usual, but the tight bun she has to constantly keep up and tucked into a cap is tugging at her skull. She longs to let her hair loose.
She leaves without hearing Sara’s plan. The girl is still scowling after her as Hester dips back below deck.
…
…
Sara looks poised to jump up and try to help. Hester grabs her forearm with a death grip and holds her back behind her. The woman screams—a ragged, horrible yowl of pent up injustice, and bone deep pain—and the sailor beside her, standing with his captain, both of them still leering, hides a smirk. He’ll get away with it, he knows it, and so does everyone else. Hester wants to scream, too. She wants everyone on this fucking ship to scream. She stands, rigid and silent, and uses every bit of her energy to keep the impulsive child at her side from flinging herself into more danger.
“Madame, are you sure, that he—”
“Yes,” the woman gasps in shock. Well off enough that she is unused to not being immediately believed by men like him. Or, lucky enough to have never been in the situation where she had to find out that she wouldn’t be. The parts of Hester that haven’t calcified over ping with sympathy. She pushes it down. It won’t help anyone.
“We have to—” Sara starts.
”No,” Hester says, turning to drag Sara away like many of the other guests are moving to do.
“They think we’re men,” Sara insists. Thankfully, remembering to lower her voice. “We can help.”
Hester pauses. Momentarily, she considers it. Maybe years ago, a better, younger, still hopeful Hester might have tried. She doesn’t have the luxury of being that girl, anymore. “That will only draw unwanted attention to ourselves,” she says, surprised at the regret that seeps into her tone. She shakes it off.
Clever little Sara catches it, though. “No, we’re getting good, they won’t. We can—”
”We really can’t,” Hester says, allowing all the exhausted frustration to show. She’s realizing the way to get Sara to do what you want is to be as truthful as possible. The girl sees through bravado and lies—Hester’s especially so.
Fucking irritating, that.
“We can,” Sara insists. “You’re just scared.”
“Of course I’m scared,” Hester hisses into her ear. “Whatever they’re about to to do that poor woman is only a fraction of what they’ll do to us if they find us out. We have three days left. We are not ruining it on some rich woman who was stupid enough to get herself alone with a sailor whom we don’t even know!”
Sara gives her a look of utter fury and stomps away. Hester releases a shuddering breath. She doesn’t glance back at the woman, but her face haunts Hester’s dreams that night, all the same. She pictures her, interchangeably with Miranda’s shocked, panicked face in the barn. She wakes sweaty and uncomfortable. A measure of relief that Sara is asleep beside her in their bunk.
…
…
America is loud.
Sara gapes at everything as they walk along the pier into the city proper. It’s bustling and she’s nearly knocked down before Hester snaps at her to keep up and grabs her hand.
“There are hardly any women,” Sara acknowledges, later that night once they’ve gotten a hotel room and a meal in their bellies.
“Men came for the gold rush,” Hester shrugs. “Women can’t participate. Not worth bringing wives and families out for a chance that might not come to anything. Apparently they’re still building up the ratio.”
“Are we going to stay men, then?” Sara asks, warily.
“We?” Hester asks, quirking an eyebrow. She reaches up and shakes her hair loose with a sigh of relief.
“I… yes?” Sara says, sounding unsure. “I don’t… I don't have anyone else.” Her face goes hard and mean. “Neither do you.”
Hester meets her gaze. Her own just as mean. “I don’t need you, though.”
Sara leans forward. “Nobody’s home. We’re all alone. Mousy, you and I.”
Hester snorts inelegantly and shoves herself up out of the chair. Undoing the buttons on her vest as she goes, leaving a trail of clothes as she slips down to her underthings and climbs into the bed. Sara follows her lead. They’ve had the unfortunate financial situation of being forced to share for the entire three month journey—they’re used to it by now. At first, Sara kicked, and Hester nearly strangled her in her sleep for it, but she settled after the first week or so. Hester has even woken up in the night with the girl’s hot little body wrapped around her own in sleep.
Fuck’s sake, Sara feels safe with her. Safer, at least. God knows why.
“You do, though,” Sara finally whispers once they've turned down the lamps.
“Do what?” Hester asks, tired and regretful about ever bringing this child with her.
“Need me,” she says. She doesn’t sound unsure anymore.
(How utterly embarrassing).
“I don’t.”
”You do,” Sara insists. She sits up, leaning on her elbow and looking at Hester. This bed isn’t any bigger than their bunk on the ship, they’re pressed right up against each other. It’s easy for Sara to look into Hester’s eyes, even in the dark. “You couldn’t do it by yourself. You messed up.” Hester opens her mouth to protest and Sara cuts her off. “I’m not saying that the rock was your fault,” she says, almost reluctantly. She wants it to be as simple as blaming Hester, but she’s cleverer than that. “People don’t like a woman on her own doing whatever she wants,” Sara says, telling Hester that she has been paying somewhat attention, at the very least.
“They’ll accept it, though,” Hester argues. “If you play it right.”
“You played it wrong.”
“I did not.”
“Well… you can play it better, ” Sara adds with a huff.
Hester is not going to admit aloud that Sara is right. Though, she is .
“What’s your proposal?” Hester asks instead. Business-like. Deals and bargains she understands. She’s been playing at them since she was nine years old and Arthur plucked her out of the orphanage.
Sara recognizes it, too. Deals between children were common there, as well. Hester understood Arthur because she already spoke the language.
Sara speaks it, too.
“We’re partners,” Sara says. Hester opens her mouth yet again, head already shaking to tell her off when Sara quickly amends, “but you can be the one to make more decisions, since you’re older.” Her face twists up, confused and childlike as she asks, “how old are you, anyway?”
“None of your business.”
“How come?” Sara asks. “You’re obviously older than Miranda. Are you the same as Mademoiselle? Are you a lot older than Bertie? You don’t seem very old.”
“Stop talking or I will chuck you out that window.”
Sara laughs. As though the threat is absurd and not absolutely what Hester currently wants to do.
Fuck’s sake, she does trust Hester, now. Or, she trusts herself enough to get away from Hester. Either option means that Hester is losing control. Not a thought she particularly enjoys.
“I’m old enough. And young enough.”
Sara screws up her face. Hester smoothes out her forehead. “Don’t, you’ll be more likely to get wrinkles when you’re older.”
“So what?”
“So, men don’t like old women.”
“I don’t like men,” Sara says with an easy shrug.
Yes, Hester had wondered about that. Sara’s affection for Miranda was obvious to everyone at the college. It’s not abnormal for girls to have more intense friendships than men. It’s discouraged heavily for men to show their emotions to each other—to anyone, really. Sara is young enough and lonely enough that she might have simply latched onto the first kind girl to smile at her. But, Hester’s wondered.
“You might,” she says, “when you’re older.”
Sara shakes her head and flops back down onto the bed. “I won’t. Not like that.”
Hester lies back down, too. The both of them staring up at the ceiling. “That will make life infinitely more difficult for you,” she warns. “It’s… not allowed. Women and women. Men and men. It happens, of course. Has for millennia and probably will for millennia more, but… it’s heavily discouraged.”
Sara twists her head and looks up at Hester. The lack of space in the bed means that her face is directly an inch from Hester’s own. “Why?”
Hester shrugs. “I assume it ruins the notion that women need men for everything. Protection, love, babies, money…” she trails off. “And, with two men,” she sighs. “Men think it’s unnatural. They’re taught only to be tough and brash and cruel. Being tender with each other is anathema. I think it frightens them. When men are frightened, or don’t understand something… they tend to hurt it.”
“That’s stupid,” Sara says, with all the simplicity of a child. She’s not wrong, though.
“It is,” Hester agrees. “But it’s the way of things.” She turns to face Sara head on, the two of them basically curled around each other to stay on the bed and face each other. Like children, whispering in the night. She schools her face, her voice serious. “Don’t ever let yourself get caught with another girl,” she warns. “Men are idiots, and mostly self-centered, and cannot really imagine a woman wouldn’t want them, so it’s not where their first thought will go. You’ll have some leeway, there. But don’t ever let yourself get complacent. Women notice things. You’ll have to be clever and careful and feign attraction to men from time to time to protect yourself. Do you understand me?”
“I guess, but it seems—”
“What they did to that woman on the ship,” Hester says, her voice cracking only very slightly at the reminder. “If they caught you and another girl, they would do that to both of you, worse, twice over. And then they might lock you up in an asylum forever. Or prison.”
Sara’s face goes pale with understanding. “Are you sure?” she sounds sad, her world suddenly shattered. Hester loathes to be the one to take away another innocent part of her, abruptly.
“Yes,” she says, attempting to soften her tone. It doesn’t come naturally to her.
Sara remains quiet for long enough that Hester thinks she’s fallen asleep. But then, “Okay, I’ll be careful.”
It takes Hester ages to finally fall into a fitful sleep, herself.
…
…
“So, what was your plan?” Hester asks over their small breakfast of eggs and toast.
Sara fidgets underneath her gaze. She’s been quiet and contemplative since they woke up. Hester has left her to it, mostly. But here they are: the moment where they both decide. They’ve been working on survival, up to now. Running from Australia and everything they left behind at Appleyard college, and now, they have to choose.
A very strong part of Hester wants to take Sara to the nearest orphanage and leave her there. The kinder part of herself has considered sending a telegram to Mr Cosgrove to collect her, but it puts her in danger. Not once since she grabbed Sara and climbed onto the ship has she truly considered keeping Sara with her long term.
She could, though.
A woman and a child produce more sympathies than a woman on her own. There is a certain protection with sticking together. It brings its own difficulties, though. Easier to slip away on your own. No one else to worry about. All the coin goes into your own pocket.
They’ll shave her head again, at the orphanage. Those pretty brown curls will go away once more. They’re only starting to grow out into something lovely.
Sara nibbles at her toast, gaze down on her plate. “The easiest would be to pretend we’re family and get jobs.”
“Go legit?” Hester considers. It hadn’t once crossed her mind. She’s been running some type of con since Arthur snatched her up. She had initially planned on getting in with a brothel, to start. One of the higher end ones where you got to be someone’s longtime mistress. Can’t do that with a child.
Unless you have a certain moral compass which Hester has realized she does not. She’ll do a lot, to survive. But, she’s decided that she is not going to become Arthur. It would be even worse, far more cruel, now that she knows a man is never what Sara will want. Even if she were older.
That’s it then, Hester has her line in the sand.
Interesting.
“I…” Sara frowns up at her, chewing at her bottom lip in thought. The Headmistress in her has Hester reaching out and tapping it to stop her without thinking. They both blink at each other in surprise. Sara recovers first. Embarrassing. “We wouldn’t be telling the truth,” she hedges. “You’re not my mother. So we’d be lying about that.”
Hester chokes on her tea. “You want me to pretend to be your mother?” she laughs.
Sara scowls at her. “You’ve already been pretending to be my father for the last few months. It’s barely any different.”
“It is absolutely different,” Hester argues. It simply is; playing at being a man to slip away was so obviously a ploy that it felt removed from any semblance of reality. Pretending to be a mother feels…
Hester doesn’t know. Beyond the unsettling feeling low in her gut that screams no, no, no over and over again.
“I suppose we could pretend to be sisters,” Sara says, looking Hester up and down again. “You don’t look that much older than Bertie.”
Hester chooses to be flattered that Sara thinks she might pass for twenty and breezes past everything else. “Beyond playing at some sort of familial relationship, what is your plan?” Hester asks.
“Get a house?”
Hester snorts and pushes up and away from the table. “With what money?” she demands, perhaps unkindly. Sara is barely twelve. “All of the money I won from Arthur I used on the college, and the last dregs of it got us here. I’ve got enough for maybe two more nights here, and a few meals, and then we have nothing, Sara.”
Sara’s face falls momentarily, but then fills with determination. “We can get jobs!”
“Doing what? ” Hester rolls her eyes. “They don’t hire women and girls for much of anything that pays well. Nothing legitimate.”
“I can… I mean, there are plenty of shops around here. Maybe a factory…”
“Those are worse than the orphanages,” Hester says, and Sara’s mouth clamps shut. “Besides, you should be in school.”
“I’m old enough to be done,” Sara argues. “Only rich girls really stay in school long enough to grow up and get married. And we’ve already established I’m not doing that,” she says, sounding—horrifyingly—a bit like Hester, herself. “What was your grand plan?” she demands. “Leave me at an orphanage and go work in a brothel or seduce some rich old man?”
Hester stiffens. Damn this child. How does she see right through Hester so easily?
“Oh,” Sara gets quieter. “That was your plan, wasn’t it?”
“Do you really think that the two of us would last long term as partners?” Hester sneers, weary of this day already and it’s not even yet nine. “It would never work.”
“Not if you’re a bitch about it, no,” Sara says. Hester reacts as if she’s been slapped, looking up at Sara in silent shock. Sara refuses to be cowed. She crosses her arms and glares back at Hester. “I grew up the same way you did,” she argues. “I just learned I couldn’t talk like that at your school without being punished.”
“And what, exactly, makes you think that I won’t punish you, now?” Hester asks, aware that her voice has gone cold and threatening of its own accord. She’s had a lot of practice disciplining the girls. It’s become second nature.
“The posture board isn’t here,” Sara says, voice still resentful and hard. “You haven’t got a switch to spank me with, and we’re in close quarters. I can holler for help way easier than at the college. I’ll tell them you kidnapped me. Which isn’t even technically a lie.”
Well… she’s got Hester, there.
She leans forward, voice still low and lethal. “If you think that I will tolerate you speaking to me like that, then you’ve got another thing coming, understood?”
“If you think that I’m going to let you hurt me anymore, then you’ve got another thing coming,” Sara counters. “Understood?”
She holds her hand out over the table between them, palm open and waiting for Hester to take it. They’ve each drawn their lines, then. Hester can grab Sara, smack her, and haul her off to the nearest orphanage and be done with it. Go back to what she knows, tricking men into giving her what she wants.
She’s tired, though. And she doesn’t really want to look back. She is, frankly, deathly sick of being alone and misunderstood.
She wants something different. She wants her past to burn in the Australian bush and never bother her again. Arthur’s dead. No one in Australia ever knew her real name.
No one but this child in front of her.
There are a lot of interesting cons to be played with a child in tow. Arthur never got creative. Hester could. Sara is quick and clever and a hateful little thing. A girl after Hester’s own heart. They could send San Francisco spinning, together. If she wanted to.
“Stick, stock, stone dead. Man in the mirror makes three,” Hester says.
“Every knave shall have its slave. You or I must be she,” Sara responds.
“You’re she,” they say in unison.
Hester reaches across the table and takes Sara’s hand in her own. Their palms grasp each other, and they stare each other down. They shake, slowly, still sizing each other up. “I don’t think that either of us should be slaves to anyone, any longer, do you?”
Sara’s face splits out into a brilliant grin, and Hester finds herself returning it.