Chapter Text
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
-Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Lord Byron
Labuan 1841
“Where is Marianna?” Lady Frances demanded, as she strode through the doorway into the sitting room that adjoined Marianna and Elizabeth’s bed chambers in the consulate.
“Is she not with you?” Elizabeth Smith replied, setting her embroidery hoop down on the small table next to the divan.
“You know very well…” Lady Frances began, raising her voice in consternation.
“My lady,” Sani replied from her perch in the corner of the room, “I last saw her a quarter of an hour ago, departing the consulate with Seargent Murray. She said she meant to gather some flowers to perfume her hair with, to better please Sir William when they meet for tea later today.”
“But Sir William is already here! He is expecting Marianna at tea at half past.”
“Shall we set out into the jungle after them and bring her back?” Elizabeth drawled, one eyebrow raised.
“Of course not! I shall just have to take matters into my own hands. Yet again,” Lady Frances fumed, storming out of the room as abruptly as the winds of her temper had blown her in.
“You risk yourself, protecting the Lady Marianna from her aunt so, Miss Elizabeth,” Sani said quietly, after a moment.
“Perhaps, but how else am I to amuse myself in this gilded cage we inhabit?” Elizabeth sighed, and gesturing at the open space on the divan next to her said “Come, Sani, sit with me. The old bird will be tied up with Sir William until Marianna saunters home. She will not disturb us.”
Sani sat upon the divan, back straight and rigid and palms clasped tightly together in her lap.
“How long to do you think she will keep her aunt and Sir William waiting?” Sani said.
“So long as she pleases, I imagine. Or long enough to make a point of her refusal to be matched with anyone her aunt might deem suitable,” Elizabeth replied with a wave of her hand. “Marianna is stubborn, and as daughter of the consul her stubbornness has gone entirely unchecked.”
“Lady Marianna is kind.”
“Kind, yes, but she is also blind to the realities of the world and others around her. Marianna lives her life as the Pearl of Labuan, doted upon and adored. People are good to her because of who she is, and so she believes that people are good. Life is kind to her and without difficulty, and so she believes that all is well. No one raises a hand to punish her, and so she believes her actions are of little consequence and that there is no risk in, say, angering her aunt.”
“The Lady Marianna is your friend!” Sani protested at Elizabeth’s overly frank words.
“In some ways, yes. But I must never forget, and nor will Lord Guillonk and Lady Frances let me forget, that I am a servant here. I serve at their pleasure as companion to Marianna. I have no status in my own right, being a bastard of some unknown nobleman who has never claimed me and whom I have never known. Indeed, dear Sani, though I am afforded more privileges in some ways, my station is much closer to your own than that of Marianna.”
“Is Lady Marianna truly so much more willful than other English women? Among my people, women are expected to be just as willful and independent as men. Can English women truly be so different?”
“I suspect we English women are made of the same stuff as women the wide world ‘round. It is just that the rules of English society and propriety demand that we leave such things behind in our childhood, and soften ourselves in will and tone, in preparation for marriage and our future roles as wives and mothers. It is more so for women of rank and station. I have met many a fierce and independent woman in the lower classes, but it is unheard of in women of Marianna’s station. Her future husband will not bear to see her half so wild and free as she is now. Mark my words,” Elizabeth said, sadly.
“She must break her spirit to earn her husband’s love, then?”
“If he even sees fit to love her.”
“What woman would choose marriage under such terms?”
“One that has such a choice in the first place. Do not pity her, Sani, when you do not even get the luxury to choose your fate.”
Silence settled heavily over the sitting room.
“Sani! Sani!” came a familiar shout from the corridor.
Marianna had returned. She stumbled into the sitting room, mud caked several inches up the hem of her skirts, sweat plastering her golden hair to her brow.
“Is Sir William already arrived?” Marianna asked, her voice filled with mirth and exhilaration.
“Yes, my lady,” Sani replied, rising from the divan.
“Your lady aunt was practically apoplectic upon finding that you were not powdered, pressed, and waiting upon his arrival,” Elizabeth added.
“Oh, dear. Sani, will you help me dress? I’d best get down to tea before my aunt suffers a volcanic eruption,” Marianna said with a giggle, floating across the room to her bed chamber with Sani close behind.
The door to Marianna’s chamber closed and Elizabeth was left alone. She toyed with the idea of taking up her embroidery again, with a view to completing a sort of decorative pelisse to wear to Marianna’s birthday party. However, she was no longer in the mood.
Getting up, Elizabeth walked to the consul’s library. She always felt at peace in the library. It was a quiet place, mostly untouched by the inhabitants of the great house, with the exception of the books of maps which the consul and his men consulted from time to time in their business. Though most of the titles were rather dated, there were several that she found herself turning to time and again, wearing at the corners of the pages with her fingers: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, The Italian, The Romance of the Forest, Persuasion, Lyrical Ballads, several works of Shakespeare and a collection of Petrarch’s sonnets. Elizabeth suspected that they had once belonged to Marianna’s mother and reflected her Italian tastes. These books had been her excitement and her solace, keeping her company while she kept Marianna company.
Elizabeth’s role within the household to serve as a proper, English companion to Marianna, and be a civilizing influence in the wilderness of Labuan. She was not quite a governess, not quite a peer, but something in between. Someone who one day Marianna could speak of or write to without shame of revealing all her other acquaintances had foreign names. She served to help create the image of Marianna as a proper English rose, though growing in an exotic hothouse abroad, so that she might someday pass muster with her suitors and their families.
So, she would try to entice Marianna to read or sew or play music, though Marianna much preferred to be out of doors in the thick of the jungle examining plants and picking up specimens as varied as they were terrifying. And upon failing to exert any proper influence over Marianna, Elizabeth would retire to the library and retreat into the stories these books held.
She had just begun to lose herself in The Mysteries of Udolpho when she heard an all mighty commotion from the sitting room below. Setting aside the novel, Elizabeth made her way to the banister just in time to see Sir William hurrying out the door, appearing discomfited in the extreme. This was followed by shrill admonitions from Lady Frances, from which Elizabeth surmised that Sir William’s retreat could be attributed to some unbecoming behaviour of Marianna’s.
She knew not how Marianna was meant to get on in London, and wondered if she knew that her outbursts would not save her from returning to England. Indeed, quite the opposite. With each display of unladylike behaviour, the Guillonks’ only became far more likely to conclude that Marianna had been far too long in the wild and ought to be returned to the civilizing bosom of England to tame her into the sort of woman a respectable man could marry.
And what would happen to Elizabeth then? She doubted she could be returned to England quite so easily, and the consul would have no more need of her without Marianna. If she could be sent to England alongside Marianna, then what would happen to her once Marianna was wed? A hot knot of unease flared in her belly at the thought, and tears pricked behind her eyes at the knowledge that she was entirely powerless to change whatever course would be selected for her by those who held power over her life. Elizabeth gripped the banister tightly, trying to regain her composure.
Suddenly, a shout arose from outside.
“The Sultan’s ship is the harbour!”
There was a cacophony of voices then, but Elizabeth distinctly heard someone say “Set upon by pirates… crew in need of aid…”
And the next thing she knew, Marianna had grabbed her, insisting that they make haste for the infirmary to tend to Her Majesty’s wounded men, for it would not take much for the small Labuan infirmary to be overrun. Once in the infirmary, she and Marianna immediately went to work, preparing compresses and bandages for the sailors. In between the work, Elizabeth overheard fragments of conversation:
“… pirates…”
“The Portuguese from the posters…”
“… and another with dark eyes like the devil himself, face covered…”
“… knives and pistols…”
“They overcame us in moments… fought as if possessed…”
“How long until they reach Labuan? Who will keep us safe then?”
“…devils, devils all!”
“What can be done?”
“Her Majesty has commissioned Captain James Brooke… he will be here within a fortnight…”
“…fought like devils…”
Elizabeth felt a nudge at her shoulder.
“Bess, take this broth to the man in bed 6, it should help improve his colour,” Marianna instructed handing her a carved wooden bowl and spoon.
Elizabeth nodded and made her way over to the man. Both of his hands had been bandaged heavily and he’d suffered a deep cut near his left temple. Elizabeth bent down and brought a spoonful of broth up to his mouth and he sipped. As Elizabeth began to withdraw the spoon to fill it again, the sailor leaned forward abruptly and whispered in her ear, insinuating several lewd things he’d like to do to her once his hands were healed enough to hold her down and force himself upon her. These men would not dare to say such things to Marianna, the precious Pearl of Labuan, but she was without the protection of a powerful father and thus they thought it was their right to torment her thus.
It took all of her strength and fortitude not to scream and dump the bowl full of broth upon his head. Shaking with a combination of rage and fear, Elizabeth put the bowl down upon the table next to the sailor’s cot and retreated as quickly as she could, only to immediately back in to the chaplain who was tending to the souls of the injured.
“Miss Elizabeth!” the Chaplain exclaimed, “Would you do me the honour of reciting some prayers at the bedside of number 2. He is poorly and the Lord may take well to your intercessions on his behalf…”
Elizabeth did not stop to give him a response, fleeing as fast as her feet would take her from the infirmary.