Chelsea Quinn Yarbro - The Spider Glass

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THE SPIDER GLASS

An Edwardian Story

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

==========

It’s only fitting, I think, that we end this volume with one of the series’ most favorite contributors.

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro was one of the first women to establish what should have been known by

editors and publishers all along—that women can write “this stuff” just as well as men. Sadly,

she and the other women in the field still have to prove it, it seems. That is, not to put too fine a

point on it, dumb. A writer is a writer is a writer, by God, and what the hell does sex have to do

with the price of apples ? Nevertheless, she perseveres. She grows. She gives us some of the best

writing the field has ever seen. And when Shadows finally, inevitably comes to an end, I can only

hope that it will end with something she has written.

==========

“THERE IS A curious tale behind this mirror, actually. I’m pleased you noticed it,” their host said to the

select and exclusively masculine company that had gathered in the Oak Parlor at Briarcopse after dinner.

He reached for the port and rather grandly offered it around. “Surely you’ll have some. It was laid down

the year I was born—splendid stuff. My father was quite the expert in these matters, I assure you.”

Five of his guests accepted with alacrity; the sixth declined with a polite, Continental bow, and the Earl

put the decanter back onto the silver tray set out on the gleaming mahogany table. “Don’t stand on

ceremony, any of you,” he said with a negligent wave of his long, thin hand. He then settled back in his

chair, a high-backed, scallop-topped relic of the reign of Queen Anne, and propped his heels on the

heavy Tudor settle before the fire. Slowly he lit his cigar, savoring the aroma and the anticipation of his

guests.

“For the lord Harry, Whittenfield…” the rotund gentleman with the brindled mutton-chop whiskers

protested, though his indignation was marred by an indulgent smirk.

Their host, Charles Whittenfield, ninth Earl of Copsehowe, blew out a cloud of fragrant, rum-scented

tobacco smoke and stared at the small, dull mirror in its frame of tooled Baroque silver. “It is a curious

tale,” he said again, as much to himself as any of the company. Then, recalling his guests, he directed his

gaze at his wiry, middle-aged cousin who was in the act of warming his brandy over one of the candles.

“Dominick, you remember my mother’s Aunt Serena, don’t you?”

“I remember all the women on that side of the family,” Dominick said promptly. “The most amazing

passel of females. My mother refuses to mention half of them—she feels they aren’t respectable. Well, of

course they’re not. Respectable Women are boring.”

“Yes, I’m always amazed by them. And why they all chose to marry such sticks-in-the-mud as they did,

I will never understand. Still, they make the family lively, which is more than I can say for the males—not

a privateer or adventurer among them. Nothing but solid, land-loving, rich, placid countrymen, with a yen

for wild girls.” He sighed. “Anyway, Dominick, Great-aunt Serena—”

Dominick nodded with vigorous distaste that concealed a curious pride. “Most misnamed female I ever

encountered. That whole side of the family, as Charles says—they marry the most unlikely women.

Serena came from Huguenot stock, back in the middle of the seventeenth century, I think.” He added this

last as if the Huguenot influence explained matters.

“Ah, yes, Great-aunt Serena was quite a handful.” The host laughed quietly. “The last time I saw her—it

was years ago, of course—she was careering about the Cotswolds on both sides of her horse. The

whole countryside was scandalized. They barred her from the Hunt, naturally, which amused her a great

deal. She could outride most of them, anyway, and said that the sport was becoming tame.”

“Whittenfield…” the rotund man said warningly.

“Oh, yes, about the glass.” He sipped his port thoughtfully. “The glass comes from Serena’s family, the

English side. It’s an heirloom, of course. They say that the Huguenot who married into the family took the

woman because no one else would have her. Scandal again.” He paused to take wine, and drained his

glass before continuing. “The mirror is said to be Venetian, about three hundred and forty or fifty years

old. The frame was added later, and when Marsden appraised it he said he believed it to be Austrian

work.”

“Hungarian, actually,” murmured the sixth guest, though no one heard him speak.

“Yes… well.” Whittenfield judiciously filled his glass once more. “Really wonderful,” he breathed as he

savored the port.

“Charles, you should have been an actor—you’re wasted on the peerage,” Dominick said as he took a

seat near the fire.

“Oh, very well, I’ll get on with it,” Whittenfield said, capitulating. “I’ve told you the glass is Venetian and

something over three hundred years old. The latest date Marsden ventured was

1570, but that, as I say, is problematical. In any case, you may be certain that it was around in 1610,

which is the critical year so far as the story is concerned. Yes, 1610.“ He sank back in his chair, braced

his heels once more on the Tudor settle, and began, at last, in earnest.

“Doubtless you’re aware that Europe was a great deal more chaotic then than it is now—”

“That’s not saying much,” the rotund man interjected.

“Twilford, for God’s sake, don’t give him an excuse to digress again,” Dominick whispered furiously.

“As I was saying,” Charles went on, “Europe was doing very badly in 1610. That was the year Henri the

Fourth of France was assassinated and his nine-year-old son succeeded him, and you know how Louis

the Thirteenth turned out! James was making an ass of himself by prolonging Parliament and by locking

up Arabella Stuart for marrying William Seymour. One of the tsars was deposed, but I can never keep

them straight, and I believe a Prussian prince was offered the job—”

“Polish,” the sixth guest corrected him politely. “Vasili Shuisky was deposed in favor of Vladislav,

Sigismund Ill’s son.”

“Very likely,” Whittenfield agreed. “Spain and Holland were having a not-very-successful go at a truce.

The German Protestant states were being harried by their neighbors… That will give you some idea.

Well, it happened that my Great-aunt Serena’s nine times great-grandmother was living—”

“Charles,” Twilford protested, “you can’t be serious. Nine times great-grandmother!”

“Of course I am,” Whittenfield said, astounded at being questioned. “Serena was born in 1817. Her

mother, Eugenia, was born in 1792. Her mother, Sophia, was born in 1774. Sophia’s mother, Elizabeth,

was born in 1742. Her mother, Cassandra, was born in 1726. Cassandra’s mother was Amelia Joanna,

and she was born in 1704 or 05; there’s some doubt about the actual date. There was flooding and fever

that winter and they were not very careful about recording births. Amelia Joanna’s mother, Margaret,

was born in 1688. Her mother, Sophronia, was born in 1664—”

“Just in time for the Plague and the Fire,” Dominick put in.

“Yes, and only three of the family survived it: Sophronia, her mother, Hannah, and one son, William.

Terrible names they gave females in those days. Anyway, William had four wives and eighteen children in

his lifetime and Sophronia had six children and even Hannah remarried and had three more. Hannah’s

mother was Lucretia and she was born in 1629. Her mother, Cesily, was born in 1607, and it was her

mother, Sabrina, that the story concerns. So you see, nine times great-grandmother of my Great-aunt

Sabrina.” He gave a grin that managed to be smug and sheepish at once. “That Lucretia, now, she was a

sad one— married off at thirteen to an old reprobate in his fifties who kept two mistresses in separate

wings at his principal seat as well as having who knows how many doxies over the years. Lucretia turned

nasty in her later life, they say, and there was an investigation over the death of her tirewoman, who

apparently was beaten to death under mysterious circumstances. The judge in the case was Sir Egmont

Hardie, and he—”

“Charles!”‘ thundered his cousin.

Whittenfield coughed and turned his eyes toward the ceiling. “About Sabrina. Let me see. She was

twenty in 1610, married to Captain Sir James Grossiter. Cesily was three and her boy, Herbert, was

one. It is a little hard to tell about these things after so long, but apparently certain difficulties had arisen

between Sabrina and her husband. Sir James had quarreled with his father when he got into trouble with

his commanding general, and ran off to the Continent, which was a damned silly thing to do, considering

the times. He tried a little soldiering, which was the only thing he knew, and then got caught for some

petty offense and was flung into gaol, leaving his wife with two children to feed and no one to help her,

and in a foreign country, to boot.”

“Well, she’s not the first woman to earn her bread on her back, but I shouldn’t think you’d bring it up…”

one of the guests was heard to remark.

Whittenfield shook his head. “Most men prefer whores who can speak to them, which Sabrina could not.

And her children were inconvenient for such a profession. She knew some French and had been taught a

few Italian songs as a child, but for the most part she was as good as mute.” He drained his glass again.

“She was greatly distraught, as you might suspect, and did not know which way to turn.”

“That’s a female for you,” the same guest said, and the sixth guest turned to him.

“What makes you believe that a man, in those circumstances, would fare any better?” The sixth guest

clearly did not expect an answer, and the man who had spoken glared at him.

Charles went on as if he had not heard. “She sold all that she and Sir James possessed, which was not

much, and then she began to sell their clothes, so that they had only what they wore on their backs, and

that quickly became rags. However, she was able to afford a few bits of food and to hire mean lodgings

in a back street of Antwerp. By doing scullery work at a nearby inn she got scraps to eat and enough to

buy cabbages to boil for her babes. But it was inevitable that there would come a time when she would

not have enough money even for those inadequate things, and her children would have no shelter or

food.”

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