Chapter Text
Endeavour Morse always thought of himself as an exception. Unlike all the other little boys in the small village where he grew up, he didn't have a proper name. Didn't have a proper Dad. Didn't fancy getting muddy and roughed up by the bigger children in a game of football in the field behind the school.
So was it such a leap to think he wouldn't have a soulmate?
Most people had them, of course—everybody did. But there were exceptions to prove the rule. Documented cases where persons had no name or mark of any sort arise miraculously on their skin when they reached sixteen. And that was considered the odd thing! ‘Normal’ was a name written in the hand of one’s “true love”, appearing somewhere on the body upon the morning of the sixteenth birthday.
Whatever possible reasonable, scientific explanation could there be for such a phenomenon? The prevailing opinion was that this was definitive proof of the existence of a benevolent God, but why then were there still so many problems? Why names? Why not a more fool-proof system? Or why not people who were complete as they came and didn’t need addendums like soulmates? Once, when Endeavour was about eight, he heard an older girl at the Post Office talking about the possibility that creatures from outer space or humans from a technologically advanced future were responsible. That had kicked him into a science fiction fervour for a couple of years. But of course it didn't come close to explaining the reality.
The whole concept irked him. He liked to know the how and why of things, to figure out the rules so he couldn’t be taken off guard by life’s eventualities. But marks were so unpredictable—so unspecific! His mother had to suffer through a simple "John" in block letters anyone could have written. And his father’s reported "Ann" wasn't much better. Why hadn't naming practises evolved to make matching more efficient? He'd asked his mother, and her explanation had been that most folks figured that a more common name would lead to a better chance of finding their match. But what if it's the wrong one? Even at age ten he'd known better than to voice that thought to his disappointed, divorced mother.
Instead he'd asked if that's why she'd given him this name, so he’d know for sure.
"No," she'd said, patient as always with his questions. "That name's not for you—well, it is you of course, my bright boy, but it’s meant for the one who'll bear it. A reminder, a prayer to hold close."
Endeavour had not found that response very satisfying. It was hard to think of some faceless girl out there in the future, turning sixteen, waking up one morning and seeing his poor sad-eyed mother's prayer for a virtuous soulmate for her odd little son. Impossible, even. And so it probably wasn't worth considering.
But despite himself, he'd become more curious about the history of the marks. Had they always existed? Even before writing? Even before names? How could people know? He learned to read Latin, Greek, looking for clues and mentions. The schoolmaster took notice, and gave him special assignments. Then his mother’s fading health dissipated completely, and everything had changed.
In his hazy angry early teenage years, suffering under the scoffs and frowns of his stepmother, it grated how much of his peers' attention revolved around soulmarks—not what they really were, how they came to be, but merely who it was and when and how they'd meet. No considering how they'd know, if they were a Tommy or a Jo, that the divine had got it right—or that their frail human understanding had not led them terribly astray. Ancient philosophers had asked these questions, and Morse impressed his new teacher enough with his knowledge and cleverness that the man wrote a letter to Stamford School inquiring about scholarships.
It had pleased his stepmother well enough to have the younger Morse out from underfoot that she'd pleaded his case to his father, and so he'd gone off, off to the world of the elites where soulmarks were things still kept covered until they could be sprung like traps by important families at the many-named offspring of their peers at opportune moments. And so boys were kept to boys' schools, girls to girls' until the right moment (usually after college these days) presented itself to wily Mammas and Pappas.
Not that this segregation accounted for all the variations of soulmarkings, but then the covering meant that families could plausibly deny such awkward proclivities, and their offspring could early learn to skulk around. It worked out for everyone, in its way. The sixteenth birthday was always spent at home so that no spy from the school could catch a glimpse—it was the most dire of sins amongst the upper classes to show off a mark still unmatched. This of course didn’t stop families of eligible girls from paying servants to deliver accurate information on boys’ marks (and vice versa)--through any means necessary.
Morse of course didn't care much for any of that, but was still sent home for the occasion. He woke up to his stepmother Gwen standing over him, tugging at his nightshirt. She stared a moment down her thin nose. "Well," she said. "Would have expected something a bit more exotic for you. No Zora or Euphemia? Huh."
Then she turned and walked out of his small cold room leaving him feeling disoriented and not a little violated. It surprised him that Gwen cared enough about him, or about soulmates, as God knew she and his father were mismatched, to even check him over. Still, she was incredibly awful, so perhaps she’d thought she now had some sort of hold over him.
He looked down and there was—something, anyway. He couldn't quite see. Morse stumbled up out of bed, gangly and awkward, and over to the small glass on the back of the door. Pulling aside his nightshirt, he could see tidy black cursive on the skin over his heart, schoolgirl hand: Joan.
He blinked, disbelieving. He'd thought he was an exception. Had there been some sort of mistake? What about his rather pitiable life thus far would lead any force in the universe to think he had a match at all, and certainly not one so Joan-ish.
As was the standard at his school he would wear tight black vests from now on instead of white undershirts, thankfully without long sleeves unlike the unlucky sods with a name on their forearms. The worst possible would of course be the face, head, or neck—they had all feared that potential outcome. There was a boy, the second son of the Earl of Boxbury, who had to wear gloves at all times, and Morse was grateful he wouldn't be in the same boat. Thankfully, new undergarments notwithstanding, his life changed very little.
He did his best to forget about it, to never look at it, and to apply himself to other great questions of human existence. He succeeded until his final year at Lonsdale College when the Hon. Sussanah Joan Estella de Mercier came on the scene at Lady Mathilda's and he lost his head, his heart, and his scholarship in quick succession.