Echoing from the Past

Ours is the blood of travelers. These are the words my father whispered throughout my childhood. They layered over the hurt as RT left, first for school then to cross the sea, never looking back. They settled into my bones as one by one my siblings flew away into their lives. They burned in my soul when war drew me into my own flight.

If you remember nothing else, then remember these words. Ours is the blood of travelers.

I am the youngest. The baby of seven. My mother once told me that her children were proof that my father’s god loved them. That in having us, everything she had ever endured was worth it. It would be decades before I truly understood. There is no love like parenthood.

Sometimes I think I can remember my birth. It was a cold, snowy day. Frigid wind seeped through the cracks into a well lit room. I am somehow above it all, watching. The inner sanctum holds my mother and one of her sisters, Ann I think. The midwife is not there yet and my aunt is worried that I will come too soon. I know that it is not time yet, my mother senses the same through her pain. In the outer room my father paces, corralling my older siblings with scripture.

A wind of ice blows through when the midwife finally bursts through the door. In this before time I know things that I could not possibly have learned. I know that midwife walks the path my mother would have, had she been allowed to be solely herself. I know my mother bears a withering gift within her soul, she should have been a healer. And in this dream of the before I know that I have carefully chosen this life, this path, this blood for my own.

When I wake I will know none of this. I have forsaken this knowledge in birth as payment to come into the world. I will sacrifice more when it is my time to leave.

My earliest memory in my waking life is a sharp sound of skin against skin. My sister Dorothea, in all her twelve year old glory is glaring at our father. His hand is raising again and the skin of her cheek is two shades redder than the rest of her face.

“I want to learn” her voice is unrelenting, her gaze sharp and focused.

I would not know until later that I was witnessing a miracle in action.

Though anger still colored my fathers cheeks and eyes, his voice was measured. A decade later he would speak to me in the same tone, at that time I would recognize the condescension inherent. Now I just hear frustration. “Do not raise your voice to me again.” He considered my sister for a moment, “Girls are far too flighty to learn such an intricate game as chess.”

From my seat on the floor I could see Dorothea’s fist clench tightly. Her eyes never waivered. “Let me prove that I can play.”

Indulgence in the form of a smile passed across my father’s face. His hand lowered as he slipped from frustration into amusement.

Hovering in the background I could see my mother, the skin around her mouth looking pinched. “Dorothea Deane, you are far too old for such childish behavior.”

Father waved his hand at mother, “Now, Jane, if she wants to learn the hard way of her own incompetence, I will let her.” The head of our household stared down at his pre teen daughter, “I will play you. Just one game to show you your...unsuitability.”

Mother bustled me off to bed at that point so I did not watch. Janie Sue told me later that Dorothea did not win, but she impressed father so much that she got her lessons. Father even offered to teach me when I turned twelve.

Of all of us Dorothea or, as she would later be known, Sister Dorothea had the most traveler in her. She was not called to missionary work, not like Emmy, but she pushed her flight high. Had I been allowed to remember the future instead of the past it would still surprise me that Dot outlived us all. She bore no blood, promised herself only to the church our father loved so. This also would have surprised me until it happened. You see, Dorthea had a hobby, one that saw her banned from interacting with the young priests in the cathedral. She had studied the bible relentlessly and loved to ask questions that had others questioning their faith.

I visited her a few times after the war. From what I could see this hobby had only slightly changed. Now though, she could call it teaching.

Growing up my world was Canon Lane. Mother did not like us going far from home, for fear that we would get unladylike ideas. Vernon always teased Emmy and I. He talked about how he got to go to the Wall, down by the river. The Wall was a crumbling ruin that was all that was left of Roman Fortifications. Vernon loved to play with the other boys down by the Wall. To hear them tell it, they fought off horrible Roman invaders every other day. Mother never let us go down to the Wall, there were chores and schoolwork to do. Vernon never teased Dorthea, because she would and did make him pay for it. Either way she never stayed as close as Emmy and I, long after Mary left for school.

Dorothea has always insisted that she was called to serve father’s God. Sometimes I think it was to preempt mother from asking about marriage. Dorothea told me a secret once. She had no desire for men, and could not abide by the thought of being married to one. Being bound to Jesus suited her and drove away the suitors that mother so approved of.

When I was sixteen Dorthea came to visit. Her initiate year was finally over, you see, and she wanted to visit her family before she took her final vows. Her convent insisted that their initiates spend a year with no contact from the outside world so that they could consider why they wished to devote themselves to God.

RT had already crossed the sea and Mary was living with Father’s sister Margaret. She had been by for dinner, but had retired home for the night. Susan was doing some travelling of her own. Vernon had turned into such a bore, so even if he hadn’t been in Denton for months that night we would have let him sleep. Dorothea woke Emmy and I for an adventure.

Mother still kept us close when we were home, never traveling much further than the market and always with her. After the relative freedom of school the restrictions chaffed. Emmy worked around the restrictions, finding reasons for her to go somewhere. I leaned more toward Dorothea's influence, pushing back against the restrictions. More often than not I was squashed between my freedom and my mothers worry, barely able to breathe as the restrictions became all the heavier. I denied Emmy’s ability to go with the flow, mother worried about her less and so she received more freedom. But even though I knew it was the wrong choice, still I pushed.

The night Dorothea woke us had been particularly strenuous. Mother, who had grown wan in recent years, had never truly approved of Dorothea’s choices. She likely, and possibly rightly, thought that every choice Dorthea made was simply to spite her. Though she approved, in general, of a woman joining the convent and was even outwardly proud that one of her daughters was called to such important work, she was privately deeply suspicious. The part of me that remembers things I should not know think that as Mother aged, the withering gift in her soul began to poison her.

Surely what happened that night would not have otherwise. I know she loved us. With Dorothea she just...forgot that she should.

Dorothea, as a last hurrah before she took her vows, decided to take us to the night market at The Cross. Chichester Cross was a famous market, open at all hours. We had never been, in spite of having lived there our entire lives. Mother. It is possible that Father would not have let us go either, but he was concerned with the state of our souls, not the state of our reputation.

I had been to other markets, through school, but something seemed different about The Cross. Perhaps because it should have been as familiar as my own home. It was practically in our backyard, after all. We spent hours at the Cross, no one moment sticks to my memory but there seemed to be much merriment. The three of us giggling over nothing and everything. That is how I like to remember my sisters. Giggling and happy.

We had never had a curfew to break, never allowed out without our parents. Mother was waiting when we arrived home, with hours of darkness to go. There was something foreign in her face, something frightening as she snarled at us. Father was disappointed as well, but was willing to forgive our youthful femaleness. He did insist that we would make up for our mistakes though service to the church

Mother, though, she was ravening. It was the first time that I truly feared her. Her lecture, her rant, her screaming lasted hours. As the light of the dawn began to creep through the windows she laid down a pronouncement. Dorothea, as the chief influence, was banished. Banned from contacting her siblings while they lived under my parents roof. Though younger I was considered to be almost as bad an influence on Emmy. Mother decreed I would return to school, and on the rare occasions I was to be allowed home I would be supervised. Emmy, the good child, would be kept home and Mother would find a closer school so that I could not taint her with my influence any longer.

That night would be the last time I spoke to my sisters unimpeded for many years. On Mother’s request my mail was screened by the school so that I could not be unduly influenced. No letter I sent to Emmy was ever responded to. Later I would learn she never received them. To this day I do not know if Mother held them or the school never sent them. It matters so little in the scheme of things.

Before that night Emmy was my best friend as well as my sister. In protecting us from some unnamed danger my mother broke that bond in a way that never recovered. By the time that school let out, Emmy had become Emily. My laughing sweet sister became prim and proper, her fire shaped into something I did not recognize. It was Emily that grew closer to Father through the church. When Emily travelled it was done in the proper way as far as my Mother was concerned. When Mother passed Emily began to live through her missionary work, not making as careful steps as she had previous.

I love my mother, please do not doubt that. But Emily never spoke of the time she spent with her. The hours alone with her after I was sent away. After Dorothea was banished. And that look on Mother’s face has long made me too afraid to ask.

Susan was four years older than me. Those years seem all at once nothing and everything. As children four years difference is everything, particularly when I had Emmy. Janie had always been closest to Dorothea. By the time I lost Emmy, Jane was an adult and living her own life, calling herself Susan. The difference between sixteen and twenty is much more than one would think. Then the war came.

Emily disparaged the war, the violence. When she found out that Father supported Susan and I in our decision to join the war effort she flew across the ocean to stay with RT. She lived there for months, until long after our departure. There was so much we never talked about, and this was one thing among many. I never knew what changed her heart, but she flew back and joined the nurses.

While my other siblings tried their best to understand, Vernon even saw me off when I left, Susan was the only one who got it. Even though Emily also served, it was different. Shaded by her earlier disdain.

I remember.

I remember. I had never been so far from home before. I thought I knew what it would feel like to step off that boat, so far from anywhere I had ever been. The air was tense as I stepped foot on the docks. I was carrying my personal luggage, the single bag I had been told I was allowed. Training had been a brief few weeks, and leave was done. I had been taught that presentation while traveling was of vital importance and as such my uniform was pristine. I was ready to take on the world for my country. I was so unprepared for reality.

I remember I was not the only nurse on the ship, not the only volunteer to serve. But I was the only one who had never done this before, who had never been to France. The others disbursed in a chattering mass, knowing where their lodgings were. I stood on the Quai for hours, waiting to be met. It had not occurred to me that I had no way of knowing where to report, and no one knew I was coming.

People passed by, few looking at me. Everyone was moving so quickly I did not dare interrupt someone else’s day. Afternoon gave way to evening, then darkening to night. Three hours after I arrived, a new ship disembarked with more nurses. This time I was able to watch and saw a group enter a building at the far end of the Quai. My destination had been within reach all along.

That was the last time I shied away from finding answers. The last time I feared asking questions. I would not stand for hours waiting for answers to questions I had not asked. For my sake and for others. It was unfair of me.

It could not be called a hospital, the building I walked into that day. This was nothing like the training I had done. I had never smelled despair before and here it oozed from the walls.

I was met by the Matron, a sharp faced woman who barely glanced up from her papers.

“Ma’am?”

Her eyes flickered up to me with little interest. “Don’t you have duties?”

I bobbed my head agreeably, thankful that I was in the right place. “My name is Margaret, I’m...I just arrived.”

The woman lifted an eyebrow. “Were you told to report to me?”

I bit my lip, anxiety welling up inside, “I-I, no. I just arrived.”

The woman heaved a sigh that said I was the worst waste of her time today, “Then you’re not in the right place, you need to go to the Louvre Hotel. You’ll receive your assignment there.”

She went back to her papers, apparently thinking she had said enough and dismissed me. After several long moments I spoke, “Ma’am, how do I get to the Louvre Hotel?”

She startled, then looked up at me. With another great sigh she rose and motioned me to follow her. She led me through long, dim halls to an open room where several women were changing clothes. Nurses' aprons hung in the corner of the room.

At the sight of the Matron, the women who had been sitting shot to a standing position. The Matron waved their actions away and they sank back down on the benches.

“Jill” The Matron called to one of the women. Her hair was a dark, curly halo around her head.

“Yes, Matron?”

“You’re going to the Louvre Hotel for your leave, correct?”

“Yes, Matron”

“Good. You can take this new girl, Margaret, to the hotel.”

Jill bobbed her head, “Yes Matron”

Without another look, the Matron turned and left. Leaving me to wait, anxiety rising.

Jill was kind but largely silent through that last leg of the journey, she merely warned that I should get used to stealing sleep when I could, particularly if I was stationed at a forward hospital. Then she dozed for the ride.

After we arrived at the hotel she led me into a large room that was quiet as there were few Sisters awake at this hour with our late arrival. Then she left me there. I never saw or spoke to Jill again, though I am grateful for her kindness.

I remember being given my first orders, a resting station not far from the Louvre hotel. My kindly manners gave comfort to soldiers, mainly those waiting to be shipped home after being wounded.

I learned many things in that first assignment. I learned to stand on my own, apart from my family. I gained courage. I gained empathy. I got my heart broken.

Oh, yes, I got my heart broken. My first love was not the man I would one day marry. In some ways George did remind me of Frederic. In others they were not the same at all. Frederic had not been a soldier. No he had been a local porter that worked for the Louvre Hotel. He taught me French, after seeing how I struggled everyday to care for myself and for others. He would come to the rest station during my afternoon break.

Do not think that I am confessing some sordid romance. I only wish that I was. No, Frederic was a perfect gentleman. It was he who insisted we only meet in public, where there could be no tarnish on my reputation. I was not his only student, many of the nurses learned French from him. He made me laugh, he was the one that held my hand the first time one of my rest station patients took a sudden turn for the worse. The soldier had died of a sudden infection before he could be sent back to the hospital. It was only to Frederic that I whispered the impossible dream that I dare not tell anyone else.

I told him as I tell you now. I wanted to explore the depth of the sea, to peer into the hidden places below the waters and see what is there. I dare not speak this in my everyday life, I know that as a woman I would neve be allowed. If I were bolder like Dorothea, I would demand to be allowed to learn. If I were more cunning like Emmy, I would twist words over one another until I had the ones in power suggesting it. I am neither, I only dare whisper my dream to a man who has no power to grant it. I have had little contact with the ocean, but I can only catalogue what little memories I have. Perhaps one day, in some time in the far future this would no longer be a problem. Maybe I can hope that I will be born again and in this future I might be allowed to peer into the depths.

This maybe is something else that I will never tell a soul, save you. My Father’s god would not tolerate a life lived again.

Two weeks before I was reassigned to Rouen, Frederic announced he had become engaged. He would marry the next summer to his childhood sweetheart. I was not the only nurse who was devastated. For all my heart broke, I could see the love they had when he brought her to meet us. It was clear that their souls were bound together. I have measured every relationship that I have ever had against that bond.

I have never found it’s match, until I held my daughter for the first time.

We exchanged a few letters, Frederic and I, during my time in Rouen and after the war when I was in Rome. The last I heard was that his wife was pregnant with their second child, a daughter they called Margery. Frederic said they named her after me, the good friend he had made during the war that gave him the courage to declare his love for his wife, Carina.

Though I will never know it, just a few years later he, his wife, and their first born will all die when Paris was occupied. Their daughter Margery will live on. She will carry the blood of my first love into the new century, into a new country, but she will never know for whom she was named or the could have beens. She will never even know the bond her parents had.

I wonder if this is a pity or blessing.

Rouen was so different from the structure of the Rest Station. The stink was different. The sights. These were not the already bandaged soldiers that we cheered up and cheered for in equal measure. Here there were some we patched well enough to go back, some we patched well enough to go home.

Officially Rouen never saw any action. Unofficially I was one of fifteen nurses who were taught how to shoot, just in case. To my knowledge it was never authorized and thankfully I never had to use it.

Susan and I had kept in touch through the war. During the years of service we were able to take leave together four times. Once Emily even joined us, but her station was well away from the fighting. She had been assigned to a hospital for families of soldiers. I do not begrudge her but what she dealt with and saw was not the same as Susan or I.

This brought us closer, even as it drew us away from family. I returned from the war to a home that felt alien. Utterly unfamiliar. I returned home to news of Mary’s death. Neither Susan nor I had been informed, Mother claimed that it was too sudden. Her burial had been just shy of a year before we arrived home. It was claimed that it was not news that we should receive in a letter and it was not like we could have gone to the service anyway.

I think about emergency leave and I wonder.

I think about Emily, who was not surprised like Susan or I, and wonder more.

There is a part of me that will never forgive any of them for not letting us know, not letting us choose.

Susan left, I do not think she spoke to either of our parents again. I went North with her, to visit Dorothea. She was up to her old tricks, but now I didn’t feel compelled to participate. I was too wild for most of the family, too tame for the wild child. Just as I was thinking of moving on to visit Vernon, now a reverend with the Church, I got a letter.

I had met Francine during my time in Rouen. She had been a jolly soul who never could be brought down by what we saw there. We all envied her the ability to just leave all the mess and the stench behind. I will never be able to remove the smell of despair and the bitter poison of infection.

Francine sent me a letter, which had followed me North from Chichester. She was working at a university in Rome and they needed a secretary for the Bursar's office. She thought of me, as I had been the only person to manage the Wards paperwork effectively in my time there. Faced with the utter alienness of my own family, I accepted.

Susan decided she would travel through England for a while, relearning her home. We parted ways in London. She chose a random rail going East. I caught the train south to Southampton. From there I was able to secure passage to Rome. Francine talked a mile a minute as she guided me through the old cobbled streets. I can feel the history here. I can feel free here.

The rooms I shared with Francine were small and dim, but from the room I could see the Mediterranean Sea open into the most beautiful blue. The scent of salt in the air refreshed me. I could feel myself washing clean of the war. The nightmares I had in England began to ebb. Sometimes I would still smell despair, but now it was an aberration rather than my every day. After a few years, the sound of dying men even began to fade.

When Father died, Mother wrote well after the fact. By then I had not seen my parents in years. She never knew that Susan came within days of Father’s death carrying the news. It was a difficult choice but both of us felt that we were not welcome wishing father off to the afterlife.

This is the curse of the blood of travelers. In order to travel far and wide, to learn, to lead, we wipe ourselves clean of our pasts. Ours is the blood of travelers.

I met George around the time of Father’s death. His eyes reminded me of Frederic. And he made me laugh. Susan didn’t like him, which made me wary as well. At the same time Susan, just that much older, did not approve of George’s circumstance. Nor did she approve of the dancehall down the street that I went to most nights.

It was George who pursued me. Inviting me to several mixers down at the college. I turned him down, as I was not interested in dating a student. After Susan left for her next port of call, I believe that she was heading back to stay with some friends in London, he asked me again. By this time he had less than a year as a student. After some nudging by his friend Glynn, I agreed.

Just before his graduation, George convinced me to try something with him that I had never done. I was not naïve, I was not tricked but it was not what I would have wanted. To be fair, when we realized that one act had left some consequences he stepped up. And so I left my freedom for a marriage bed, one I wasn’t certain I wanted.

I resented many things on that trip back to England, it was still unfamiliar. Still alien. Now though, I had lived in the Greek sun and was now being drawn back to the cold rain of London.

Sometimes I fear that my resentment poisoned my body. We never even had long enough to get attached before the child that bound me to George was gone. The emptiness was worse. I was still bound by vows that I could not break. The world of London turned dismal and grey, even more so than before. I refused my husband's touch while I healed. I knew he sought others but couldn’t bring myself to care.

Eventually my mind healed enough to do my duty to my husband, and after some time passed life took root again. From the first moment I realized I felt something different. My daughter. This was my daughter, I knew from the first that she would be a girl. It was like standing in the surf of the Mediterranean all over again, I felt washed clean and whole for the first time in years.

I understood for the first time what my mother meant. Everything I have ever endured was worth it for the birth of that one tiny life. My mother, now wasting away from the gift she had long ignored, came to the birth. So did Susan, still sneering at my husband. Vernon arrived in time to baptize my little girl, my Jane. Emily came with mother, she had moved back to care for her. RT did not come, but three months later my niece Helen arrived. She was there to help with the baby as she went to school.

Helen was so helpful, she loved Jane almost as much as I did. Around this time I began to remember my dreams. Jane also had the blood of travelers, but George did not. I remembered the withered gift that poisoned my mother, that foreign frightening thing in her face. My Jane could not face that. I love my daughter so much.

I could feel life take root again. This time, though, I am not invigorated by the child. I am drained. Somehow I know this child will kill me to draw it’s breath and die in taking my life.

I gave up the knowledge of the before to come into this world. I am giving up so much more to leave it. George would never do what was needed to make sure that Jane stays true to her traveler blood. He would suffocate all that she should be. Her gifts would become poison.

Unless.

Unless. It is the end of my days and all I can think of is my little girl. She may never understand. I have encouraged Helen’s crush on George. The knowing that seeps back into me says they will marry for the same reasons he and I did. My Jane, I know it will break your heart, confuse you. It is what is needed, my dear one, to break the binds that would tie you down.

I know that if they tie you to them, you will wither away, my daughter. I have arranged so you will go away, go to school. Susan helped. I am so sorry, my little one, that you will look at your family and see strangers. To feel apart

We are the blood of travelers and I will sacrifice what I must to make sure that you will not wither. You will prosper, my daughter, and spread our blood far and wide. You have the strength of the ages to bear what is coming. But then, all the women of our family do.

Until the end of time, I will watch over you, my darling. My daughter.

Ours is the blood of travellers. Both a blessing and a curse.