III.
When she had dreamed of being a lady as a girl, Emily did not know any true ladies on whose existence she measured and tailored her dreams. They were, instead, formed by stories. Not Aunt Clara's stories, which did feature ladies but were disappointingly empty of wonder, making her mistress, David Copperfield's mother, sound like the kind and silly Widow Sparring who'd lost her late husband's place on the fish market because she couldn't count. No, Emily's dreams fed on fairy tales and then on books, and thus she dreamt not only of fine, rich clothes but beautiful buildings, of music and adventure, of seeing places where there were castles on mountains reaching to the clouds, or full of molten fire.
Most of these dreams did come true. Steerforth took her to those far away places. France first, then Switzerland and Italy. When the first day passed where she heard sounds around that might as well have been bird cries for there was not a word of English amongst them, he hired a teacher for her as well, a jolly fat woman who took her mind and shaped it new by all the words she learned. Emily had always been a quick study, and when Davy had visited them during her childhood, had stolen all new words he'd used and kept them for herself after he'd left. Learning another language turned out to be not too dissimilar, save that the French Madame Jouvet knew what Emily was doing, and Davy had not.
She loved learning new words, still, not least because it allowed her to keep the guilt at bay for a while. She knew what she had done. She had betrayed Uncle Dan, Ham and the others in the worst way, as only a wicked woman would, and if she was happy instead of sad even for a day, that only proved her wicked nature the more. Yet it was Emily who'd done this, Em'ly Peggotty who was, not Emilie or Emilia. Learning to speak in foreign tongues, as possessed people did in the Bible, also gave her a name for James Steerforth that she could call him by. She couldn't address him as James in English, the way Ham had been Ham and Martha was Martha to her; every time she'd tried in her mind, in the months leading up to this, the gulf between them seemed to widen, and the word stuck in her throat. Davy, who himself posed the problem of being both Davy from her childhood and Mr. Copperfield in the present, had called him "Steerforth", but that, too, implied an equality which simply was not true for her. But if Emilie and Emilia were strangers who had not left a heritage of heartbreak in Yarmouth, they could call the man at their side "Jacques", who'd never been in Yarmouth, either.
"Nor anywhere else," he said on a sunny afternoon while she was trying to find a scar on his body, letting her fingertips explore nude skin, for this, too, she was learning. "Jacques sounds like a French farmer tending his vineyards with little imagination, if you ask me. Or a monk. Are you trying to tell me something?"
She told him, in halting French words, that he'd be a terrible farmer, but that she could see him as a monk. While this amused him greatly, Emily meant it, though she had to return to English to explain. As far as she could tell, he had no scars, not even little ones left by fish hooks, and a man who'd reached two decades without them would never have the patience to tend to anything for long. Tending land, tending sea, there was one thing they had in common: they made you bleed before too long. On the other hand, given the way he and David had talked about their school days, he must have been happy there, and she, whose only school had been the overcrowded one in Yarmouth that taught girls like her to count, write, mark their bible and to sew, had thought it did sound like the way monasteries had been described in tales: boys and men dressed in the same clothing, living in their own world and trying to win the favor of some dreaded superior.
"Well, if you put it like that," he said, still in his usual light tone, though he did not smile any longer, and the skin beneath her fingers drew together as if some cool breeze had mingled with the honeyed, warm French air. "Presumably trying to keep some Abbot happy couldn't be harder than old Creakle and his clammy fingers and his silly daughter."
There was a harshness in him about people which he hadn't shown at Yarmouth, and which could appear without warning. It led to their first true argument when he gave it voice while attending a ball with her. There were other English people present, and one of them, a titled man who'd kissed her hand and listened to her new French words that were no differently accented than the ones Steerforth used, murmured: "Enchanting. I say, old chap, wherever did you find her?"
"Among barbarians," Steerforth replied cheerfully. "But then, what is a pearl without swine it needs rescuing from?"
Just like that, the wall made out of Emilia and Emilie fell down and did not matter anymore, and what was left was Emily, who'd seen Uncle Dan return bone-tired from the sea and yet find the time to carve a comb made out of whale bone for her. Emily, who'd listened to Ham making plans to save enough money for them to travel to London, for he knew she longed to see the world, Ham, who'd been helping out where he could this summer in addition to working for Uncle Dan. Emily, who'd watched Aunt Clara bring a child not hers with her and care for him during what were supposed to be the few free days Aunt Clara had while being in service, because that boy's stepfather was a man without a heart. A gentleman, though. A gentleman like the one laughing now about Steerforth's comment, like Steerforth himself. Emily, who'd witnessed all of her family welcoming Steerforth in their midst, treating him as the most cherished of guests, while he thought this of them.
"None of you are worth kissing the dust my people step on, and I'm not, either," she exclaimed, and left the ball behind, a Cinderella who at that moment longed for nothing but reduce the palace around her to ash.
It was the first argument, but not the last, though she found that being angry made her a creature of the flesh as much as longing and tenderness did, and often ended the same way. This, too, was new; Martha and her whispered stories had never informed her of it. But then, Martha, so looked down upon by all of Yarmouth, had repented in action as well as thought and word, was surely a much better woman than Emily, whose tears and fury had yet to result in ending the state that brought forth both.
"A word of advice, young lady," Steerforth's servant Littimer said to her one night when he found her in the kitchen of the lodgings Steerforth had rented, cutting up fish. She was not supposed to do anything related to the meals, which at first had been very odd to her, but also a relief, and now increasingly left her with a sense of loss, of being adrift like a boat without an anchor. "Mr. James has been very patient so far, which is, I may add, not his usual habit. But if I were you, I would try to remember that to cater to the whims of one's sole source of income is what is expected of anyone in a position such as yours."
Littimer, with a nondescript face and a smoothness of manner that reminded her of a too often washed linen where all the original colouring had been bleached and ironed out of, was someone Emily had never liked. At first she had assumed this was because the only servant working in a gentleman's household she'd ever known had been Aunt Clara, whom she'd never seen at Aunt Clara's places of service, and the idea of another person serving her, even if it was only in as much as Littimer served Steerforth in whose company she was, was unsettling in its newness. Then she'd decided it was because Littimer never talked to her save to convey messages from his master, so she had no idea what kind of man he was, and which opinions he held, and yet she often caught him looking at her as intently as any man in Yarmouth had ever done. But now, when he finally did say something of a personal nature, she found herself repeating, like a dumb child: "A position such as mine?"
He pursed his lips but did not add anything. She put down the knife she'd used on the fish. It wasn't that she needed to eat anyway. She just had wanted to hack something.
"And what, pray, is my position, Mr. Littimer?" Emily asked, her voice sounding thin in her own ears, as did that carefully learned and practiced way of speaking in which she'd dressed up Em'ly that was.
"I can tell you this much," Littimer said. "It is less secure than mine. After all, I have been with Mr. James since his school days, and he has yet to grow tired of my services."
There was something other than blandness and greed in his gaze now, an ill-disguised glee, and she understood that he'd resented having to serve her all this time, who, if Aunt Clara's stories about the strict order that placed footmen and butler far above maids were anything to go by, he saw far beneath his own station, let alone that of his Master.
"Understand that I am acting as your friend," he said. "You have been much admired in good company. If you take my counsel, this might continue for a good while longer. There are, after all, things which even I cannot do for Mr. James."
Emily had considered herself to be aware of what she'd done from the moment she'd first laid eyes upon James Steerforth. Everything she'd ever been taught from childhood onwards had told her that this made her wicked, that there could be no good ending, and that there would be punishment. In fact, this knowledge had been part of what had made her act. And yet there had also been that stubborn streak of hope that maybe all those other tales from her childhood would turn out to be true instead, the ones from the books Davy had told her while they were walking on the beach, leaving the adults and their indulgent amusement behind. She hadn't realised how strong that hope had become until now, standing in kitchen in a far away land with gutted fish and a man aiming to do much the same to her.
By now, they were in Naples, or rather, nearby, for Steerforth had rented a villa near the sea in a gesture that was meant to make her happy, or so she had assumed, breathing the salty air again and listening to the sea gulls cry, talking to the children who ran there as she'd once done, chatting in the words she picked up from them, which were quite different from the Italian Madame Jouvet had taught her in addition to French. When she'd said she was a fisherman's daughter, one of the older girls, who knew what it meant that Emily was staying in a villa with an English gentleman, had asked her whether she was like Lady Hamilton then, who'd lived here half a century ago. Lady Hamilton, who'd been the English Ambassador's wife here in Naples and the friend of the Queen, but before that a woman of ill repute, coming from nowhere. There had been stories about her even at Yarmouth, mostly because that most glorious of heroes to all seamen, Lord Nelson, had loved her. "She was no better than she should be, though," Mrs. Gummidge had declared in satisfaction, "and came to a bad ending when he died. It's ever thus, my girl." Lady Hamilton's first name had been Emily's, and when the girl had said this villa used to belong to her, Emily couldn't help herself, she had wondered whether choosing this place of all places had been meant as a promise.
Sir William Hamilton had married Emily Lyons that was. He'd been not just a gentleman, but nobility, the intimate of kings and queens, and yet he had married her.
Or maybe the choice of place had just been meant as a joke told by Steerforth against himself, Emily thought now, staring at Littimer. For all his pride, Steerforth loved those.
"There's nothing good about any company I've been in since I left my home," she whispered, turned, and left the kitchen behind.
She did not say anything to Steerforth about any of this, as he took her to see the volcano, something, he said, he'd always wanted to do, adding a phrase about the Romans and the sore lack of a Vesuvius in current day London. Exploring the volcano was done first on mules and then on foot, took all day even if one started when it was still dark, and for the life of her Emily had not imagined how it should be done in one of those beautiful dresses he had bought her. So she had borrowed the clothes he'd worn when he went sailing. When she'd been a small child, and money was very scarce, she'd sometimes worn Ham's old discarded clothing; Ham grew so quickly. But dressing as a boy, even to help with the work, became impossible once Mr. Gummidge died and Uncle Dan offered Mrs. Gummidge a place in his home, for Mrs. Gummidge declared the practice scandalous. "And her a girl, Dan'eel, and her a girl!" she'd exclaimed, which had been the end of that. So this wasn't the first time Emily wore male clothing, but it was the first time in many years. While Steerforth was of course taller than she was, he wasn't tall for a man, and she could roll up the sleeves and trousers easily. Steerforth was delighted.
"I knew you'd make a pretty boy," he said, his dark eyes dancing as they had been that first evening, when he'd watched her tease David, and something in her clicked and put the pieces altogether.
"Then I shall be one today," she replied, and the giddiness of her decision was that which she'd felt when running along a jagged timber which overhung the deep sea as a girl, scaring Davy the visitor from another world in the process. "Call me Pratolina."
Pratolina was the local word for daisy, and he understood her meaning at once, she could tell from the startled way he drew back for a moment. But then he drew close again, and something shifted between them. "Pratolina," he said. "Yes."
If being Emilie and Emilia had kept Emily's guilt at bay for a while before proving to be unsafe levees against that flood at best, Pratolina freed her for one miraculous day and night altogether. By now, she'd lived with Steerforth long enough to know how gentlemen moved and talked, and she remembered all those times with her childhood friend in great detail, so speaking as David Copperfield would was no more difficult than dancing had been, once she'd learned the steps.
When she'd chatted with the mule driver about his animals and joined one of his songs to them, picking up the words quickly, Steerforth said: "You should have gone to Oxford, not me, with your gift for language." There was no joke in his tone; instead, he said it wistfully, admiringly, and while a part of her knew he'd never have said it to Emily Pegotty even if she had been born male, because fishermen did not go to university, she replied as David Copperfield would have, pleased with the compliment and taking it as such. When the mules had to stop, and they started to climb, Steerforth stumbled once, she didn't try to catch him, she laughed, taking his arm and falling onto the ground beneath them with him instead, which was warm, and oddly soft, not rocky, with the black and grey pebbles so small that they were more like sand.
"Now that's a dirty trick, Pratolina," he said, laughing as well, and they ended up rolling in the dark earth like children, smearing each other's faces, before getting up again. They could not quite reach the top, but got far enough to stare into one of the smaller craters. Once, she hadn't known such mountains with fire in them existed outside of fairy tales.
Emily had not forgotten what Littimer had said, not one hateful syllable of it, but she was not Emily that day and night. Emily had never told Steerforth she loved him, for a great number of reasons, starting with the fact this seemed a betrayal too many, especially after she'd learned how little he truly thought of her family, and ending with a fancy that the words, once spoken, would remain true in a way she could no longer alter. But Pratolina said them, for Pratolina was not Emily, not any longer.
"I love you," she said, when they had returned from their excursion, too exhausted even to get out of their dirty clothes, yet too awake to fall asleep. The house was very quiet; the maids who were doing the washing were gone for the day, and Littimer, wherever he was, mercifully kept out of sight. They were on the terrace that opened up to a garden. Supposedly, it had once been decorated with many a statue found near here when Sir William Hamilton was Ambassador, but these riches had long since been transported to England, and thus there was only the basin of an empty water fountain left. It still shone brightly in the moonlight.
"Do you?" he asked. "I truly thought that you hated me by now." For a moment, she was not sure whether he said this to Emily, but then he added, "Daisy." The night painted him a study in contrasts, moonlight and shadows drawing their lines over him, and she stretched out her hand, caressing his dusty cheek with her thumb, making her mark on him.
"But that is why you did what you did," she murmured. "To make me hate you. So I would not be destroyed."
She understood this. After all, it had been what made Emily abandon the thought of seeking her death in the sea to escape, and chose him instead, though if she'd then believed it would cause the lesser pain to Uncle Dan and Ham, she'd since changed her mind. But she was not speaking as Emily now.
"The power to destroy me is not yours, Steerforth," she said, using David's voice which was less crisp than his and yet no longer that of the child Davy who'd called to her to come down from the jagged timber, and the name she'd never used before to address him fell naturally from her lips.
"We'll see about that," he said hoarsely, and this time, when she kissed him, while he tore away her borrowed clothes, she bit hard enough to scar him at last.
