PART ONE

“…Survival is not always the result of heroism…”

– Pete Townshend 2007

“Her credentials are good, Norman. You’ve read them yourself; you can’t argue with them,” Channer remarked, his voice a compressed echo into his glass of brandy.

“Most attractive young ladies’ are, my good friend, for who could have the heart to blacken their reputations?”

“Don’t you trust her?”

Norman shrugged his shoulders uneasily; he was aware that most any answer would offend his comrade. After a long, contemplative draw on his cigar, he began, “She sounds sweet enough, being uneducated and lowly of station as she is. Certainly she carries herself well. And heaven knows you’d be hard pressed to find a better looking young woman.”

“But?” Channer snapped.

“But I don’t know how well she’ll do with the little ones! Your children are the most important things in your life, Channer my lad, and you can’t just entrust their safety to any fetching little thing that walks down the street in a nanny’s uniform! After all, she is so young. She is a fantastic ease on the eyes and ears and any other senses I’d well imagine, but how well will she take care of your children? That is what you hired her for, isn’t it?”

“Now you listen to me,” Channer began. “When I brought my carriage to gather Miss Kassirer and her things, those children were howling and clinging to her skirts. And they in their teens!”

“Any young bucks among them?”

“Two.”

“Well, no wonder! I’d be crying if she were going to leave me, too!”

“I’ve had just about enough of this, Norman! She’s a fine employee, as several prominent houses have certified me of, and we’re keeping her!”

Deciding to remove himself from the more trite aspects of the discussion, Norman tried to steer the conversation more towards the practical aspect of things. “And what of compensation?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, my friend, you’re certainly more financially stable than many families in this city. Are you going to be paying your nanny in pecuniary means, or will room and board suffice?”

“Now there’s a fine question. I suppose we could always give her a few bills. After all, we’ve more than enough, and I’m sure the girl could use a bit of scrap cash.”

“And what of Mrs. Kenyon? Will she be agreeable to those terms?”

“Damned if I know. Or if I care. I’m the man of the house and it’s up to me whether or not the hired help is paid money or not.”

“Ah, but your wife is a fierce woman – ”

“In business only. Believe me, she’s a harmless old darling.”

“I trust your instincts, Channer.” Norman rose from his chair, stubbing out his cigar. “Well, must be returning home. Mrs. Addison’s great aunt is coming this afternoon, and I fear I must be there to meet her.”

“Don’t like her much, I take it?”

“She’s sweet enough for an old bag, but if I have to hear one more story about how she doesn’t know what the world is coming to these days and how we’re not raising our children properly, I swear I’ll wring her wrinkly neck!”

Channer laughed and stood, shaking his companion’s hand. “It’s been a pleasure, Norm. Jay will see you out, as usual. Good day.”

“Good day.”

With a contented smile at his visit, Channer walked up the stairs to the third level of his house. He took extra relish today in the feeling of his perfectly shined shoes, which had cost him a pretty sum, sinking into the plush red carpeting of his dizzyingly long staircase. There was pride today more than ever in the smoothness and the gleam of the mahogany banister, so deep it was almost black. There was the smell of his house. It smelled of meats, sweets, and money, and there was no finer combination in Channer Kenyon’s mind than those three things. True that the higher up he got, towards the servant’s quarters, the smell of the house became stale and unused, but that only proved that the highest quality smells belonged to the highest quality folk. On the landing, he looked ahead of him down the long corridor lined with white doors. The floor looked to him like a vast ocean dappled with sunspots from the numerous chandeliers overhead. On the walls he saw the various paintings that his wife hadn’t felt were prominent enough to display downstairs; works by unknown artists and a few works by well known gentlemen that Mrs. Kenyon felt just plain weren’t any good. There was one open door, since all of the servants were busily working at their assigned posts. Miss Kassirer was alone in her room unpacking various garments and placing them in drawers. Mr. Kenyon knocked and she turned, smiling faintly and quietly. “Are you quite comfortable?”

“Oh, yes. Most pleased. You have a stunning home Mr. Kenyon, sir.”

His chest expanded under her praise. “We’ve worked hard to make it so. Come, I must introduce you to other workers in the house.”

“That seems a rather diminutive task, Mr. Kenyon; I’m surprised that a man of your import should be saddled with the responsibility.”

“You’d be surprised at the things I do around the house because my wife won’t hire someone for the task.” He continued walking but clamped his mouth shut, wondering whether or not to reprimand her sharply for remarking on affairs of the house she should never have thought, being so new. Indeed, no servant was supposed to be forward no matter how long they’d been with the family. He chose to scold her softly, for she was new and young, and when he looked at her face he felt no desire to be harsh. “Miss Kassirer, I’m afraid I cannot allow comments like that. I understand that you might be somewhat naïve about the way that we run our house, since you’ve been with the Beverly’s for so long, but tart remarks like that won’t be acceptable in future.”

“In that case, I should think that replies like yours would be banned, as well.”

For a long time he was silent, fuming a bit, unable to think of a reply. “I should never have said anything so disrespectful.” And then his ego swung hurriedly to his defence. “However, I should never have needed to say anything about the matter if you hadn’t brought it up.” And there were no words until they reached the kitchen.

Marguerite Kassirer was an orphan, and had been raised in the orphanage with a job in servitude as her primary goal in life. She could manage no better, they said; no orphan could, and they should consider it a blessing that they were even being given that satisfactory a chance. Each child was offered one chance, at the age of eight, to try their hand at various household tasks – clean a dirty room, cook something, take care of a child, and other various chores. If a particular aptitude was shown for one of these tasks, that was what the child was from then on reared to do; that and nothing else. Marguerite had gotten the highest praises for her skills in taking care of a child only five years younger than herself, and she was taught with earnest.

When she was ten, Onofre Setag had come to power. He was brought to office the normal way, but at the same time it was anything but normal. The country had, for years, been struggling to avoid collapsing in on itself with war. There had been famines in the western half, which had been blamed on the eastern half, and there were threats flying in all directions of the compass for all reasons known to man between all people. Indeed, Marguerite was raised in a country almost torn asunder by greed and confusion and distrust without ever having been aware of it. All this she found out later from old newspapers she’d found in one of the headmistress’ rooms. The times had changed and were changing still, and the land cried out for a man who would stand and defend them from themselves, who would help them solve their problems in a fast, efficient way so that they could get on with their lives. And that was when Onofre Setag stepped forward.

This was not the first anyone had ever heard of him, of course. He had been involved in politics for over twenty-five years before his grand entrance. There was a moderate following for him; he was liked well enough among the constituents and the other, more serious and experienced politicians, looked upon him as little more than a fledgling with charisma – nothing to take very seriously. But Setag was thorough in wooing over anyone within his field of vision, and it didn’t take long before his opponents began to wonder if maybe they’d been mistaken in their assumption of him. Setag swore to provide his country with a continuation of the glorious times they had been rolling on; he could maintain this high crest of wealth and gaiety and make Shendleigh a world power on a scale never before seen.

Steadily his star rose in those lean years before the country’s troubles began. At the moment that seemed most likely to be his entrance as the leader of the land, chaos suddenly became the order of the day. Inflation had been growing and then their currency was worth practically nothing. Even the wealthy were destroyed, and suffered with the poor who felt no pang at this turn. The bright life of hedonism which he’d promised had dissipated, and they turned bitterly against him. Not a soul in Shendleigh could stand to see his face, and he was driven out by mob rule, cast away like rotting filth, and the people focused on their own problems and their current leader, begging for aid.

Exiled, Setag spent the years in Oblivder and Whatter, wandering between the two countries and never deciding where he wanted to make a home. This would not stop him from his political career, of course. It was only a minor setback, this, and his time would come. Neither country granted him citizenship when he asked for it, and they flatly refused to let him buy a home. He could not find a woman that would love him. His Shendleighan money was naturally useless and so he was often hungry. Bitter hatred grew in his soul against both countries for denying him the comfort and happiness he desperately sought, a place of refuge in which to collect his body and his mind so that he may all the more effectively strike at his homeland when the time was right. In the meantime, however, he needed to find a stable home to keep him off the streets. What he needed even more than that was an ally in the country so that he might have a base of operations outside the jurisdiction of his own country.

This came in the form of Gene Carroll, a young man wooed by the wild eyes of Onofre Setag. He gave Setag a spare bedroom and good food to eat, and although Setag was grateful he could not help being inwardly enraged that this inferior land was by far more well-off than his own. Gene Carroll had a sister named Lisa whom Setag loved with all of his passion. She was a tall girl with red hair and shining green eyes that laughed often and dreamed of being on the stage. With eagerness he pleaded for her, but she refused to listen. She was in love with a man named Herman Duncan; they were engaged and planning on having a family. Setag still pleaded, refusing to heed. Lisa had to confess that she hated him, loathed what he stood for. She knew his politics; how could she not, they were his life. And then within days of a confrontation she was gone with Herman, off to another country to perform on the stage. Fearing being hunted by Setag, she flatly refused to tell any member of her family where she was going, and they mourned the loss of their daughter and sister. Furious at Setag for driving them away, they booted him out of their home most ungraciously.

Now he vowed to spare no agony upon Whatter. Never in his life had he felt so hell-bent upon a mission. His mission now was to make them all sorry, to make up for the inadequacies that Lisa saw in him. When he ruled (and rule he would!) Whatter would be first on his list of countries to annihilate.

He would speak often in later days about the years he spent wandering the two countries without a cent in his pockets: “I was a stinking, dirty, greasy little tramp in those days,” he would come to say with a laugh, but it was a laugh which never reached his eyes. “You mustn’t punish your children too hard if they miss a bath; your leader could have out-grimed them in a heartbeat.”    This was true: he went without bathing for weeks at a time and his hair never got within ten feet of a barber shop for months at a stretch. He hadn’t a cent in his pockets and he turned down every job that was offered him. They gave him manual labour because he was foreign. He wouldn’t take any of these, as he considered himself well above them. “I have long been destined to make speeches and better the lives of my people; I was never made to lift boxes and work in soup kitchens.” Working in soup kitchens may have been a good thing for him, considering that those years were spent living off of the charity of many such places.

There were many things which he didn’t tell to “his nation” once he became leader or even to the cronies who swarmed around him.  He never told them that he slept in the filthy streets, or that he often picked food out of the garbage to eat.  Once or twice, he resorted to theft and was on one occasion arrested and spent the night in jail.  He especially didn’t tell anyone that that was his most comfortable night’s sleep in his entire stay after being removed from the Caroll house.

            Setag returned, ironically, when the difficult times in Shendleigh which had caused his exile only got worse. For the most part he made sure to keep himself out of the limelight. Nevertheless he had some close contacts, and he made sure that the ones he went to would only see him at his best. As far as they could see, he had flourished during his exile in Oblivder and Whatter, and they were impressed with the dashing figure he cut upon his return, not bothering to look farther than the freshly tailored suit, scented and cropped hair, and fairly glittering appearance. He didn’t have much money in his pocket, but that was alright, these wealthy people who still were willing to smile at him leant him the fundamentals. These old contacts lead him to older, richer, more dottering and forgetful families. They hadn’t heard of Onofre Setag, who had been at most a local hero. But they saw a clean-cut man who deserved a chance. “You ought to get into politics,” they said knowingly, nodding their wrinkled heads at one another. “You’d go far.” Flattering them, he would always put his hand over theirs and ask how, after all he wasn’t as wealthy as they were. “We’ll back you,” they said firmly. He seemed to understand their version of politics, and their version was more important than any other. These people were going to put him in charge if they had to bribe every official under the sun to get it done.

Now with more money and a better image than he’d had the first time around, he began to make appearances all over the country, calling upon these big names to highlight the good he’d done in his previous incarnation and to speak on his behalf for all the good he’d do now. These names drew attention, big names nationally like Tatham and Gussidy, and big names in local areas, names like Claget and Javidge. And he stood tall, proud, and handsome, hair glistening as he spoke loudly to the people who crowded to get nearer to him.

He told the people exactly what they wanted to hear, but more appropriately, what they needed to hear. By giving them reasons why they were starving and hinting at options of how to escape constant hunger, he won the support of the west, the farming lands that had been starting to stand idle. By giving them assurance that the burden would no longer rest on their shoulders and hinting at options of how to make more money by selling less, he won the support of the north, the farming lands that had produced the lion’s share of food for the entire nation. By giving them faith that he would restore morality and integrity to a country eating away at itself through gambling and prostitution and hinting at utopian ideals that only he could make come to pass, he won the support of the south, the pious lands that had been writhing at the idea that sinful pastimes were becoming the norm. By giving them trust that he was one of them and hinting at promises that he would see personally that their comfortable lives would go on undisrupted, he won the support of the east, the industrial land of the wealthy which had never known anything but the finest of all things in life. He was brought in almost unanimously, with a naysayer or two shaking their heads in fear. These people were quickly silenced, an ominous sign that should have clued them in to darker things on the horizon. The people of Shendleigh were not paying attention to the people who stood against him, for there were very few and they were nameless entities one heard about that lived miles and miles away, never anyone close to home. And when something is miles away from you, it cannot affect you.

With Setag in the master’s chair, the country instantly began buzzing with hope and promise. No one noticed that he had begun to slowly use his power to dominate his people, and Marguerite wasn’t going to notice for many, many years. As a start, to keep his people safe from harm and from indolence, he decreed that any child that did not belong to an upper-class family begin working starting at the age of nine. As Marguerite was one year over that, she was sent out already to begin raising children while still a child herself.

She was a good nanny, and did not mind losing the experience that being a child had to offer. For many years now she had been taking care of the children of the wealthy, and had spent time in many homes before this one. Officially speaking, she had only been nannying for five years, but her work was good and she was given stellar reviews when a new house was looking for a woman to watch their child. There were specific desires for a nanny many times, desires that she couldn’t fill, such as race or religion, and one frequent problem was that Marguerite was too young; only three months ago had she celebrated her fifteenth birthday. But anyone who’d used her before stuck by the opinion that she was a diligent worker and one that made the children most happy, and saw to it to dispel any fears that she wasn’t the best one for the job. After all, she was still a child and could relate to her wards better than anyone else they could hope to hire. The Beverly house, her last assignment before this one, had kept her for nearly a year and a half, and it pained her greatly to leave them. The children were saddened, too, that she was leaving them, and it had been a difficult few days to get through, what with saying goodbye and packing her belongings. And when Mr. Kenyon had arrived that morning to pick her up and been witness to the scene of the children crying into her skirts, she had thought to beg Mrs. Beverly to let her stay. But this job was better and it was a step up for her in the world of hired-help to be attending to the Kenyons. They were one of the richest families in town and there was no question that if she was working for them he would be kept well.

Life was not a dream under Setag. In fact, he had insisted upon a number of things that Marguerite hadn’t agreed with at all, things that had seemed harmless enough, and they shared space with things that were approved of with monstrous support. It was well publicized that he was sending strong farm hands and trucks of money to the west so that their farming pursuits would not be wasted. Less well known but concurrent with this was the decree that no one could possess art created by a foreigner. It was all to become government property. Of course, no one found out about this until the articles that showed up daily in the newspaper of people being arrested and charged on counts of having foreign art in their home and, in some cases, on their person. Most people let it go. True that in the east they were a cultured people and did enjoy fine art, most thought it was a momentary safety precaution. Hideous rumours had been flying for months beforehand that the countries outside of Shendleigh were planning attacks – it was probably done for their own safety. And anyway, what did it matter if the foreign painters were gone? Shendleigh was a nation renowned for having extremely talented artists in abundance. Of which Marguerite Kassirer was one. All the people she’d ever worked for, and indeed even the headmasters and mistresses at the orphanage, had remarked that she had a fantastic skill when holding a brush between her fingers, and if you were to hand her a pen, one was bound to get a detailed and stunning sketch. Marguerite was offended when she was informed by a very flurried Mrs. Cooper that she had to discard all of her foreign art works. For many years she had worked so hard to indulge herself in her one distracting pleasure – buying small art reprints so that she could keep them in a large, leather-bound book. In this book there slowly emerged thousands of images painted by men and women alike from near and far abroad in places that Marguerite, uneducated in geography, had never heard of. It was a source of great pride that she who was paid so little and who was designated no life outside of other people’s children, had made this thick book of other worlds and people come to life. With a smooth lie to Mrs. Cooper she said that she had burnt her paintings and that nothing was left now but the Shendleigh work.

Marguerite wasn’t going to let some doctrine from a man she’d never have supported destroy her hard-earned refuge. What would she do if she could not rest at night after a long day of chasing children, laying in her bed and gazing absentmindedly at pictures of vast landscapes or people from royal families that she’d read about who’d led lives of torrential passion and deceit? She’d certainly go mad. And so unsuspectingly began her career in disobeying government decrees, as well as her start in hiding the evidence. It helped at times like this to be as pretty and young as she was – who would ever suspect that Marguerite Kassirer, the fifteen-year-old nanny to the fifth-richest people in East Shendleigh, would be disobeying Setag? She had thick, dark hair that seemed to meld from black to brown to red depending upon the light she was in, wavy and elegant and falling the length of her neck with the ends just barely brushing her shoulders, when it was down. She had a face that ran in the same powerfully beautiful vein as all the great temptresses: One of her eyebrows had grown in just such a way that it was permanently raised, as though sceptical of everything, and they created charcoal lines in a skin paled from lack of exposure. Her eyes were amazing orbs of constantly metamorphosing blue that seemed to soak up the world within them, passionate and full of life and wonder and a hint of something more, though the football shape of her lids caused her irises to appear far too large for the space that contained them. These eyes were lined with lashes dark and naturally curled, long and perfect for casting seductive glances and heart-stopping downward looks of timidity. The nose was small and could almost be referred to as button, save that at the very tip it curved upward just so slightly, and between this and her one cocked eyebrow it gave her a look of uppity superiority that was unshakable. Her cheekbones stood out just enough to give her face shape and make men such as Shendleigh was full of, always fascinated by sculpted faces, wonder what their hands would feel like there against the gentle slope her bones created. Her lips were pink, curved, and alluring, with little shadows where as-of-yet un-revealed dimples lay, and behind these lips were arranged a set of teeth that could glisten in a warm smile. There was a stern and square jaw at variance with the little pointed chin, and, for all the strength of her features, anyone would think to look at her that she were as sweet and fragile as a porcelain doll. And with a body attractive and well grown for its fifteen years, she could easily palm off any plausible lie, for who would dream to think of her lying? She didn’t lie often, but when it came to her art she was fiercely protective.

True that her natural disposition was at startling opposition with her demure demeanour, the turbulent conclusion was yet to come, and for all intents and purposes lived a relatively dull life those first fifteen years.

The Kenyon house was a warmly pleasant one. From the outside it was most formal and ostentatious; it had given Marguerite a start just to look at it. Marguerite was used to grandiose and ornate homes – she had worked in them nearly all her life. However, this one of pale red brick with black trimming inlaid with a dark mahogany door had stopped her dead in her tracks as she walked, bag leaden, to the stairs. This concrete flight was a sweeping thing that led from the street up the grassy hill, a wide bottom and progressively narrowing towards the middle, and broadening again at the top. Attached was a walkway that led to the second set of stairs, these being wrought iron with intricately designed handrails. The house, with its tower and scalloped bottoms, rounded edges and stunning furniture on a wrap-around porch, made her eyes boggle. Gardens left and right, flowers and trees abounded, and, although she wasn’t sure, she thought she might have seen a small lake behind the house.

Inside the situation wasn’t much different. Furbished at the height of grandeur and presented in the best sense, everything betrayed that superiority she’d heard the Kenyon’s had. There was a lot of deep red, a colour which she’d always associated with the highest of the high-class, or attractively patterned blues and greens. To the right of the anteroom was the sitting room; a fireplace against the wall, and so many thick, comfortable chairs all around. It was partitioned by a wall of glass bricks, which ended in glass doors that reached from floor to ceiling. To the left was the dining room; another fireplace, such decadence! Posh furniture and gilt-framed portraits of long-deceased family members gave the room a lived-in sensation and there were plants used to decorate areas that had been felt sparse. In the far back of the dining room was a light oak door leading to the servant’s dining quarters. In the back of this dining room was a plain, grey, wooden door. This led to the kitchens and laundry room. There was nothing to remark upon these places, except that they were dull and dingy and no one went through them unless it was necessary. Up the stairs one flight were the rooms belonging to the Kenyon adults and their children; up the stairs a second flight and these were the servant’s quarters. It was the kind of house that childhood dreams of princesses took place in, and she found it hard to curtsey to Mr. Kenyon as he’d exited her room for staring so keenly at her surroundings.

Jay Rand was the doorman who had loyally served the Kenyon family for nearly twenty years. He was tall, pale, and weedy with hair which was prematurely white. His face seemed devoid of all colour but when he smiled it was so singularly comforting that Marguerite was inclined to beam at him, flattered, for he had been so remarkably kind when he shook her hand and bowed. In his mid-fifties and accustomed to showing nothing but the highest extravagance in politeness, Jay made her feel most welcome.

Patricia Vassillissa was an atypical woman who served as maid to the Kenyons; rather short and, although broad at the shoulders and hips, was primarily petite and peculiar. She had a strong, masculine jaw with a thin, elongated mouth as an accent piece. Her eyes were very black but what drew Marguerite’s attention was Patricia’s hair. It was the colour of rust and clay, and Marguerite had never seen anything like it. Patricia was stiff and formal, nothing at all like her counterpart Jay, and even though Marguerite tried her best to be sweet, nothing could stop that smile from remaining icy.

Nellis Lydia was young and stocky, energetic for all that she was supposed to be a docile cook. With an oddly quirky voice and cheek bones that were so high they squished her eyes up into her forehead, what really startled Marguerite was the same thing that had surprised her in Patricia – her hair. It was nearly the same shade only far thinner. It was with the fondest hope that Marguerite made her acquaintance with the cook, because, as they were both so young, they would have more in common.

Marguerite Kassirer was nervous as this first day ended, and she wanted more than anything to lock herself in her room and not come down for dinner. More than that, she wanted to go back to the Beverley’s and beg for her job back. True that the children had grown, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t still need her for…something. Swallowing hard, she lifted her chin. She wasn’t going to be nervous. She was going to be brave as she’d been in every other house and she was going to integrate herself thoroughly. Why not? She was here for as long as she was needed and that would be some time – the youngest child, Ruth, was only three. Marguerite was going to stay and Marguerite was going to make herself one of their family.