I stood beside Antonina’s chair as she swayed, dizzy and confused, then opened her eyes. It was the same chair, in the same room, at the same time of day when I had first met her, wearing this self-same body, so that it might appear to her that she had blinked, and nothing had changed. Her clothes were those she had worn that first time, her hair done in the same style, though six months had passed, and the sunlight had turned from autumn to spring.
Then her father said, “Antonina, we need to talk,” and I bowed once and withdrew from the room.
The house echoed with her shrieking for three days.
I stayed, as a courtesy, in the gently aching body of Josef Brun. I did not do my servant’s tasks, nor were they expected of me, but resided in the outhouse, away from the eyes of my peers, and now faked the stomach infection from which Josef had only just recovered. I read books, took a few discreet walks through the grounds, played chess against my shadow and lamented that I no longer had access to the music room of the house.
On the fourth night the grand old duke came to me and took the seat on the other side of the chess board.
Do you? he asked.
I did.
He played competently, but moved too fast, his impatience showing in reckless attacks and careless defences. I told myself I would play with mercy, but it is not a game where good intentions last, and soon his pieces were scattered across the board.
“You are leaving us tomorrow?” Casually, his fingers on a bishop, a thing that hardly mattered.
“Yes.”
“Where will you go?”
“I’m not yet certain. South, perhaps. The western borders seem a little too… unsteady for my inclination.”
“You fear war?”
“I consider it a possibility.”
“Could you not spend such a conflict as… a general’s wife? A minister’s daughter? Some position away from the front lines?”
“I could. But in my experience war comes to us all, even–if not especially–the wives, sisters and mothers of those who fight. Womanhood is no protection from conflict. You wait for the news that comes. You dread, powerless and alone, forbidden to do what you would and fight for those you love.”
“And who do you love, Josef?” he asked softly. “Who do you really love?”
I leaned back from the board, went to fold my arms, remembered my body, its station, and instead laid them on my lap. “If I am wife, then I love my husband. If I am sister, then I love my brother. If I am soldier, then I love my men. My privilege, if you will, is that I may choose to enter any life I please. Why would I be a man in a callous home? Why would I be a mother whose children I did not adore? I love my kin, otherwise I would not keep them. I love everyone that I am, otherwise I would not be them.”
His eyes were fixed on the board, his eyebrows knotted together. “Are you not tempted to be me? Does my dukedom not attract you?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
I licked my lips, saw small eyes in his drooping face, noted the yellow spots on his hands, the stiff tendons about his neck, the curvature at the base of his spine where posture fought with age. He saw my speculation, blurted, “My age repulses you.”
“No, sir. Not that, although age, if you do not have the opportunity to grow into it easily, can be a shock. You have power and the respect of your peers, and health, but I do not think you are… beautiful. You lack that joy, or that love, which makes beauty more than the flesh that owns it.” A muscle twitched in a cheek, a tiny movement, but enough. I pressed my hands together in apology. “I have spoken… out of turn.”
“No,” he replied, more sharply than I think he meant, and then, softer, “No. You have spoken your mind. Very few do that around me. My daughter… spits in my face, wishes me dead. Do you think I did the right thing in commissioning you? Do you think I acted with… love?”
Silence.
“Come, sir, come.” He tutted. “I have congratulated you on the liberty of your speech. Do not betray that compliment now.”
“I believe you acted from love when you commissioned me to be your daughter. I believe you wish her well and through my intervention sought to give her that security in life which her own nature would not provide.”
“But?” he grunted. “Get on with it.”
“Sir… this understanding has been of great benefit to both of us. But the question I must ask is this: if the security you wished for your daughter required another to achieve it, then do you not force that which is opposite to her nature upon her? Or perhaps I may put it like this: is the daughter you love the daughter you in fact have?”
His eyes upon the board, though he no longer saw the pieces.
“You did not say as much when you agreed to this contract.”
“Nor was it in my interest to do so. But our arrangement is concluded, and you have asked for my thoughts, and there they are.”
His finger settled on a pawn, moved it for the sake of moving, an irrelevant gesture in an already concluded game.
“My wife believes my daughter to be ill.”
I waited, studied the board, leaning forward, enjoying the freedom of a man’s clothes, which did not restrict me to polite straight backs and the little breaths of a corset.
“She believes the illness to be of the mind. She has said it for many years. Sometimes Antonina… has episodes. She will… cry out against people who are not there, name fancies which cannot be believed, tell tales. As a child I hoped it was merely a trick of her growing, some spark of her personality which might, one day, be almost charming. Now she is a young woman, and that hope diminishes. Before you came… she lay with a peasant boy. He was fourteen, she one year older, and when they were done she came running back to the house, still… unclean, and shrieked of the deed that she had done. I do not mean to say that she lamented it, but rather she danced around the room, laughed in our faces, hitched up her skirts to show us the dirt and nakedness of her act, spat in her mother’s eye and told us she was free now. Free and blessed in the eyes of the Lord. I beat her that night. I beat her until even my wife, her child’s spittle dry on her face, begged me to stop. I told no one. We waited for her wounds to heal before letting any living soul near the house–near her. I had hoped that your presence would heal our household, redeem my daughter’s name, and do not think I have complaint. Your behaviour has been exemplary. Perhaps too much so. For these last few months I have almost at times forgotten that you are not my daughter. I watched her dance, laugh and smile. I heard her tell little jokes, bow to gentlemen of whom I approved, politely dismiss those whose spirits were too high. She has been appropriate with the servants, generous with her friends, welcoming to strangers, careful of her dignity. These last months my daughter has been everything I wanted her to be, and now… you are gone, and she returns, and I realise that it was not–nor was it ever–for my daughter’s sake that I sought your services, but for mine. For a few months with the child I thought I had deserved. I do not know what to do.”
He was weeping. The old duke was weeping, his hands pressed in little fists against his eyes, tears gleaming like icicles off the whiskers on his chin. I opened my mouth to speak, and no words came. I stared down at the board, noticed that checkmate was a few moves away, and I felt no triumph at the revelation. Tiny sobs, barely more than hiccups, swallowed before they could begin, broke from him and were gasped back down–the shame, said his clenched fists, the shame.
Then the duke raised his head, eyes raw, and whispered, “Would you be my daughter? Would you be her… a little longer?”
I shook my head.
“Please. Be my daughter. Be who she ought to be.”
I reached out, laid my hands on his, pulled them gently down into his lap, spreading the fingers wide.