Red Dance of Spring

On the first day of spring, the white mares had to trot for but a minute down the dirt road before pausing. A singular, small field separated my own family’s estate, Maysonshire House, from the manor of Lord Weldonsford. Yet my mother urged me to make quite an entrance on this, such a special and enchanted night. So it was that our finest, whitest horses pulled up to the front steps of the Weldonsford Manor and I emerged from the dark-as-night carriage. I gazed down nervously at the great salmon-colored dress I wore, bedecked with enough frill and fuss that its constituent parts might clothe all the cold, street corner-dwelling peasant children of Spiegelsbury.

“Wish me luck, Boris.” I said in a whisper to our family’s beloved chauffeur, who presently held open the carriage door for me.

“You’ll do fine, milady.” Boris said, smiling and waving me off as I entered the manor. I held up the ends of my dress as I ascended the manor’s front steps, my heels making a clacking sound against the marble.

The parlor was decorated in the manner one might expect upon seeing the facade of the great house. Hand-crafted grandfather clocks, exceptionally fluffy sofas, golden chandeliers engraved with the faces of Jesus and Mary and Saint Matthew and Saint Francis, and Renaissance-Era paintings all depicting the Crucifixion or the Last Supper or some such New Testament scene I could not presently recall. Every inch of furnishing, created and crafted with the utmost care, as well-bred and well brought up as the dance’s attendees who stood between the clocks, sat atop the sofas, passed under the chandeliers, and admired the paintings. I recognized immediately two dozen or so faces I recognized, all cousins to me in some such manner, but as I went to join the locked circle of interlocution they created in the parlor’s center, his beckoning stopped me dead.

“Lady Maysonshire!”

I turned about and met the gaze of his hazel eyes.

“Lord Weldonsford!”

We practically sprinted to each other, falling into the other’s arms as we met directly beneath the gaze of Christ, currently being hoisted onto the Cross in the painting adjacent to ourselves.

“Shall we, milady?” Lord Weldonsford offered his gloved hand.

“Gladly, milord, gladly.”

Off we moved to the dance floor in the central room. Here too paintings exclusively of the most Christian of subject matter filled every square inch of the walls. The crowd of dancers (again, all of whom I recognized, as shoestrings attached each one of them to my family oak) cleared a path when they saw the Lord Weldonsford and I approach. The orchestra silenced themselves as we made our way toward the dais where they had set up. Lord Weldonsford flicked his hand upward at the men and suddenly, the violin struck up the most remarkable waltz.

I held tightly to my Lord’s sturdy arms, garbed in the sleeves of a greatcoat the color of storm clouds. Though in my immense anxiety, I fumbled and nearly ran out of the room in mortification when I tread my foot upon his own accidentally, he danced with his characteristic precision and assured me, with his comfortably tight grip on my waist, that he intended to dance with me all night, even if his feet were left black, bloody, bruised, and numbed.

What explains the overwhelming nerves that drove forth those uncompromising jittering and quivering that took hold of me? It was the way he fumbled with something on the interior pocket of his greatcoat between dances. I took the liberty of pressing my hands to his chest for but a moment during the third dance and felt some small, box-like object. He meant to propose. Certainly, my mother was correct. Certainly, he meant to propose and make me his bride, make me the Lady Weldonsford.

My mind buzzed and my lips tingled with the enthusiastic “yes” I intended to give him when he surely presented the question at the end of the evening. I imagined the scene with a lucidity I never could on those long nights in my bed chambers, where I stayed up and dreamt about what will happen in but a few short hours from now. Now it all seemed so close, so real.

It might even have happened if the Communists didn’t invade the manor.

It began with the bullets. One of the aforementioned chandeliers crashed down upon the floor. Bullet holes were left in the heads of the Romans depicted prominently in a picture of the Crucifixion just above the orchestra on the dais. Then the parlor door broke open and men and women and children, carrying muskets and waving big red banners with yellow lettering flooded the hall and, snaking along the walls, surrounded us dancers. Sufficiently rounded up, like rascally piglets freshly recaptured after escaping their pen the day before their subsequent being turned into a ham dinner, the screams quieted and an ominous silence took hold of the hall. At last, from the crowd of dirty, manure-smelling farmers and blacksmiths and bakers and carpenters and seamstresses and domestic servants and milkmaids stepped forth a man, whose gait and ability to command absolutely the attention of that crowd of lowborn scoundrels told us all he was their leader, his face half-covered in a gray cloak.

“Lords and ladies,” The leader said. “We are representatives of the Communist Workers’ Party of Spiegelsbury.”

“What is the meaning of this?” Lord Weldonsford said. He pulled me into a tight embrace as the shooting began, but at this juncture, he loosed me and went to confront the leader.

“You are Mr. Weldonsford, yes?” The leader said.

“I am. Now answer me, fiend, what is the meaning of this illegal intrusion of our private affairs?”

“We mean no harm, Mr. Weldonsford-” The leader began before the interruption.

“Lord Weldonsford. You shall call me Lord Weldonsford.”

“Mr. Weldonsford,” The leader said. “We mean no harm. We swear it. We, the working men and women of Spiegelsbury, comprising the majority of residents in this borough do demand that you and all those of noble blood here in attendance and elsewhere relinquish us from our suffering by redistributing the wealth of this town.”

“How do you mean, scoundrel?” Lord Weldonsford said.

“Hand over all your ducats to us, Mr. Weldonsford.” The leader said. “So that we may redistribute them equally and fairly among us all. We strive for peace, sir, peace exclusively. We do not wish to raid your vault and take your gold by force, but in the name of social harmony, we will not rule out the option.”

“Is that a threat?” Lord Weldonsford said.

“Mr. Weldonsford, please step aside so that we might-” The leader said.

“Step aside and allow you treacherous lot to rob me, to rob us all of the wealth we earned by right?! You shall take what I own only when I am thoroughly dead and have had thirty shovels of dirt tossed over me. I challenge you to a duel, you traitorous bastard! Right here in this hall!”

“A duel?”

“Yes. Draw your weapon, knave!”

Lord Weldonsford drew from the holster beneath his greatcoat a steel dagger. He lunged forward in a manner suggesting he was about to stab the leader right in the chest.

But before he got the chance, the leader drew a pistol and punched a bloody hole in his head.

Lord Weldonsford’s body was sent flying backward. We all opened our mouths to scream, but nothing came out. Before they even took our gold, these men and women already stole our ability to speak, presenting us as they did with such rapid change and vast tragedy committed in a stolid and straight-laced fashion, as if they did not comprehend the weight of what they were doing. It scared us silent.

“Anyone else?” The leader said. “Thought not. Clear the way, then. We will go to the vault, take the gold, then leave. If you don’t get in our way, we won’t unnecessarily shorten your lifespan.”

We all moved aside to form a path, just as what happened when the Lord Weldonsford and I arrived in the hall. The men and women marched, not with pride, but certainly with an unbending resolve, which I thought impossible to maintain and therefore incredibly cold to perform in front of this crowd of suddenly meek eyes, of quivering lips and skin suddenly gone pallid. How might these boys and girls carry on in such a manner when our frightened and human faces exist but a few inches away? They have to take but one glance and recognize our vast unease. Certainly, they have to.

Their leader was at the vanguard, a cadre of musket-armed bakers’ sons flanking him. It was only when he came into my view that I realized it was Boris’s snowy hair and watery eyes beneath that gray cloak. Something compelled me to reach out, right past the rightmost bakers’ son, and touch him on the shoulder.

“Boris.” I said.

Everyone in the hall, noble and peasant alike, turned to look at me.

“Boris,” I said. “Why? Why are you doing this?”

“I’m doing what is just, Miss Maysonshire.” Boris said.

Miss Maysonshire. It was so strange to hear him call me Miss Maysonshire.

“Boris, do you not feel...?”

“Do I not feel what, Miss?”

“Feel...anything? Anything at all after serving House Maysonshire for forty-seven years?”

“No, Miss. Nothing at all.”

The way he said it so instantly, it shook me. I at least wanted him to ponder the question before his denial.

“I don’t believe you.” I said.

“What?”

“I don’t believe you, Boris. Prove it. Prove you don’t care.”

There was a burning sensation in my gut. A bullet from his pistol drilled through all the layers of my frilly, pink dress. It found a new home there, lodged squarely amid my intestinal tract.