Chapter 1
Author Note: Everything familiar belongs to either Julian Fellowes or Charles Dickens.
Edith was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of her burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner, her sister Mary. Edith was as dead as a door-nail. Mary knew she was dead? Of course she did! How could it be otherwise? It made her the last Crawley sister, and although her and Edith's relationship had been turbulent at times, that very fact had changed Mary. Could you say she was dreadfully cut up by the sad event? Hard to say, but she was an excellent woman of business on the day of the funeral. The mention of Edith's funeral brings me back to the point I started from. The fact Mary Crawley was the last Crawley sister must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the upcoming story. Once burying the hatchet as adults, Mary and Edith had combined their shared interest in business to start one - Crawley Sisters. Mary had never painted out 'Sisters'. The firm remained Crawley Sisters. Now like I said, the loss of her business partner had changed Mary. While Edith was alive, the brunette often remarked 'haven't you heard? I don't have a heart', and most who heard her would have believed it. But there was a side she didn't show to people.
But now that softer side was gone, and she was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone, was Mary Crawley! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous sinner! Hard and sharp as flint. Secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. Much to her chagrin, Robert's generosity and mismanagement had squandered Downton, and ever since Mary held on carefully to every penny she made. One frosty Christmas Eve, she was busy in her office, counting some of those aforementioned pennies. It was cold, bleak, biting weather, and the door of Mary's office was open that she might keep an eye upon her clerk, who was in a dismal little alcove beyond, copying letters. Mary had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn't replenish it, for Mary kept the coal-box in her own room, and the only thing colder than an unheated room was Mary Crawley's temper. All of a sudden, the bitter silence - in many meanings of the word - was broken.
"A merry Christmas, aunt! God save you!" cried a cheerful voice. It was Mary's niece, Sybbie Branson, who entered the domain so quickly that it took a second for the aunt's brain to react to the situation.
"Bah! Humbug!" hissed Mary. Sybbie was caught off-guard, but smiled.
"Christmas a humbug, aunt? You don't mean that, surely?" she asked. The newcomer had walked at a fast pace, and it had made her features glow - being the spitting image of her mother, she was a beautiful young woman.
"I do mean it." said Mary. "Merry Christmas? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough." she spat. Sybbie's mother, after the Crawleys had fallen on hard times, had married - in their eyes - an even poorer fellow. The Bransons had come over to Downton Place now and then, but in the years since Edith's death, Mary had gotten even snobbier - quite a feat, truth be told. The room seemed to get chillier at her biting words.
"What reason have you to be dismal? You're rich enough." Sybbie replied.
"All idiots who go about with 'Merry Christmas' on their lips, should be boiled with their pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through her or his heart!" Mary proclaimed. The younger woman was visibly appalled.
"Aunt Mary!" Sybbie gasped. Mary tutted at the reproach.
"Sybil." the older woman said icily. "Keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine." she snarked. The clerk, a stone's throw away, bit back a dry laugh at this - Mary Crawley did not 'keep Christmas'.
"We'll have to agree to disagree on that, aunt." Sybbie said. "Christmas may never have put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, but I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"
The clerk involuntarily applauded, but then after a split-second, he poked the fire, realising that was better than poking his boss' temper.
"Let me hear another sound from you, Mason, and you'll lose your place."
Sybbie decided that enough was enough of Mary's bleak attitude.
"Don't be angry, aunt. Don't take it out on poor William, either. I'll tell you what - why not come and dine with us tomorrow? Me and Johnny."
"Why did you get engaged?" asked Mary in a huffy tone.
"Because I fell in love. Love got us all here, did it not?" Sybbie replied.
"What codswallop! 'Love' is the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas! Good afternoon." Mary snapped.
"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?"
"Good afternoon." said Mary, a crispy finality to her voice that her grandmother would have been proud of. Seeing she wasn't going to get anywhere, Sybbie bid Mary a merry Christmas, and wished the same of William Mason as she opened the door to leave the building. As she left, two strangers walked in, a redheaded woman and a blonde lady who was smaller than her companion. The redhead was holding a notebook.
"Crawley Sisters, I presume?" the blonde asked. "Have I the pleasure of addressing Miss Mary Crawley, or Miss Edith Crawley?"
"Edith has been dead these seven years." Mary replied. "She died seven years ago, this very night." she continued in an emotionless voice. "What do you mean by barging in like this?" she pondered, uninterested.
"At this festive time, Miss Crawley, we mean to raise a fund for the poor and homeless, and are looking for donations. What might I put you down for?" the blonde asked, her expression hopeful. William Mason grimaced.
"Nothing. Are there no workhouses left?" Mary asked, her tone bratty.
"Plenty of them are still open - I wish I could say the opposite." the redhead chipped in. Mary scoffed, and the visitors were shocked at this.
"Well don't they go there? It would put a roof over their heads."
"But some would rather die!" the blonde gasped.
"If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population! Good afternoon!" Mary snapped with ice in every syllable.
"Well Gwen, I think we've taken up enough of Miss Crawley's time." the smaller woman said in a hurried tone. Gwen nodded, and they withdrew from the building. Mary muttered another 'bah, humbug' as the door blew shut from the wind behind them. Fog had seemed to descend during the strangers' visit, along with more piercing, searching, biting cold. Then she heard it through the wooden panels of the front door - someone singing.
"God bless you, merry gentlemen! May nothing you dismay!" a female voice came. The soprano melody seemed to seize something in Mary, who picked up a ruler, wrenched open the door and snarled at the young lady with such malice, that the singer fled in terror. Hours later, it was closing time, and William Mason approached Mary, a question in his throat.
"Excuse me Miss Crawley, but seeing as it's Christmas Eve-"
"I'll see you at half eight tomorrow then." the boss replied coldly.
"That hardly seems convenient." William muttered. Mary rolled her eyes.
"Then what, pray tell, is convenient, Mason?" she spat.
"For me to have the whole day off, not just a half-hour. I haven't asked for much in the six years I've been in your employ."
"Have you not, indeed?" Mary asked waspishly. "And I'm supposed to pay you for this larking about, as you spend your shillings on frivolities?"
"It's only once a year." William pointed out. Mary sighed.
"A poor excuse for picking pockets every December the twenty-fifth." said Mary, buttoning the coat she was wearing up to the chin. "Not in the literal sense of course." she said, a ghost of a shrewd smile on her face. William blinked, thinking he had imagined his employer's expression.
"But seeing as I'm just about the only one who knows such a thing, I will grant you the whole day. But you better be here all the earlier next morning." she finished. William promised that he would, and Mary walked out with a snarl. After having dinner in her old haunt, the Grantham Arms - which the cook had just managed to cook to the temperature she desired - the boss made her way to a flat that she and Edith had once shared. I bring the former business partner up because it is curious that Mary had not given a thought to her sister since the mention of 'Miss Edith Crawley' that afternoon. And yet, as she came to the door of the flat, and turned her key in the lock, Mary saw something else in the knocker. Without undergoing any intermediate process of physical transformation or change, it was no longer a knocker, but Edith's face.