Impossible Saints Read online

  In memory of Mom,

  who believed

  and Rob,

  who remembered

  1

  “Mr. Stelling,” she said … “couldn’t I do Euclid, and all Tom’s lessons, if you were to teach me instead of him?”

  “No; you couldn’t,” said Tom, indignantly. “Girls can’t do Euclid; can they, sir?”

  “They can pick up a little of everything, I dare say,” said Mr. Stelling. “They’ve a great deal of superficial cleverness; but they couldn’t go far into anything. They’re quick and shallow.”

  —George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

  INGLEFORD, SURREY: JUNE 1907

  The day her pupil’s father threw Lilia Brooke’s copy of Homer’s Odyssey across the schoolroom was the day she knew she’d have to leave Ingleford. Given time, she could forgive most offenses, but all bets were off if violence was done to her favorite book.

  She didn’t usually bring the book to school. It was beautifully bound in dark green leather and too sacred to risk among her pupils, most of whom treated their books with a troubling lack of respect. But Anna Martin, Lilia’s cleverest pupil, had no copy of her own, and Lilia knew she could trust Anna with hers.

  The day in question was ordinary, even dull, until Anna’s father burst into the schoolroom. Lilia had assigned an arithmetic problem to the younger girls and reading to the older ones. Then she invited Anna to sit with her at her own desk so she could help with her pupil’s translation of Homer.

  Anna had just whispered a question about the proper translation of περιπέλομαι and Lilia turned to look at the word in context of the passage when the door was flung open and Mr. Martin—all six feet and eighteen stone of him—strode towards Lilia’s desk.

  At Lilia’s other side, Anna shrank back, her face white.

  Lilia shot to her feet, standing between Anna and her father, and demanded, “What is the meaning of this, Mr. Martin? We’re in the middle of a lesson.”

  “Is that what you call it?” A stonemason, he was wearing his work smock, and as he moved, the dust of his trade settled on the floor and the front-row desks. The first-form pupils stared at him open-mouthed.

  “Come, Anna,” he ordered. “We’re going home.”

  Anna rose hesitantly, looking from her teacher to her father.

  “Anna hasn’t finished her lessons,” Lilia said firmly. “She’ll go home later.”

  Mr. Martin took a step closer—close enough for her to smell the sour reek of his breath—but she stood her ground. She was tall, though slender, no match for this huge man if he chose to be violent. But surely he wouldn’t shove or strike her in front of her pupils.

  Instead of touching her, Mr. Martin snatched the Homer from the desk beside them and said, “This again? Just as I thought—you didn’t listen when I said no more Greek and Latin gibberish for Anna. She’s done with school.”

  He then committed the unpardonable sin, flinging the Odyssey across the room with such force that it crashed against the wall. Some pages came loose, gracefully weaving through the air like dead leaves before coming to rest on the floor.

  “How dare you?” Lilia cried, torn between wanting to save the book and wanting to scratch the man’s eyes out. “You have no right—”

  “She’s my daughter, and I have the right to take her out of school. Anna, come!”

  Anna, head bowed, went to her father, and he pushed her ahead of him towards the door.

  Lilia moved quickly. She reached the door first, barring the way out with her body.

  “You don’t understand how intelligent your daughter is,” Lilia said. “She can do anything, learn anything. Be anything.”

  “She’s going to be a wife and mother. And a wife and mother doesn’t need to know Latin and Greek.”

  Lilia didn’t move. “Don’t you care what Anna wants?”

  “What Anna wants!” He snorted. “She wouldn’t want all this learning if you hadn’t put ideas in her head. You’re a menace to these girls, making them unhappy with their lot. Get out of my way!”

  Lilia had no intention of obeying him, and he moved as if to push her aside, but at that moment, the headmaster appeared in the doorway just behind her. He was as tall as Mr. Martin, though not as solidly built. He also happened to be Lilia’s father.

  “What’s the trouble here?” Mr. Brooke inquired.

  “I’m taking my daughter out of school,” Mr. Martin said, “but your daughter is in my way. If you don’t remove her, I will.”

  “Remove yourself!” Lilia snapped. “Then all will be well.”

  “Let’s go to my office and discuss this calmly,” her father said. “I’m sure it’s merely a misunderstanding.”

  Every conflict was a misunderstanding from her father’s point of view. He wasn’t a stupid man, so he was either willfully blind to true differences of opinion or using the word misunderstanding as a strategy to pacify people. But he had used it too many times with Lilia and her siblings for it to work on them any longer.

  Apparently it wasn’t working on Mr. Martin, either, for he said, “There’s nothing to talk about. If you don’t do something about this harpy you call your daughter, you’ll be hearing from the school trustees.”

  Before Lilia or her father could say another word, Mr. Martin pushed past them, dragging Anna after him, and left the building. Behind her, Lilia could hear her pupils whispering excitedly.

  “Papa, how could you let him do that?” Lilia said in an undertone. “Not only the way he spoke to me, but abusing Anna in such a way—”

  “Let’s talk in my office,” her father said firmly. “Will you ask one of the older girls to watch the class?”

  She clenched her jaw to prevent herself from further protest and returned to the classroom. After asking her most responsible pupil to supervise, Lilia picked up her fallen Homer, carefully smoothing the creased pages and gathering up the loose ones, and left the room.

  She and her father made their way to his office in silence. It was a small room at the back of the building, with papers and books stacked on every available surface, including the two chairs.

  Lilia moved books from a chair to her father’s desk and sat down, gripping her Homer as if it had protective powers. Her father took the papers from his own chair, set them on the floor, and sat opposite her.

  “I know how difficult this is for you,” he began, “and how much you care about Anna’s education, but it doesn’t help your case to exaggerate.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said Mr. Martin is abusing Anna. There’s no evidence to suggest such a thing.”

  “Refusing her a proper education is abuse, as far as I’m concerned. But he’s rough with her, too—didn’t you see the way he forced her out of the classroom?”

  Her father sighed and rubbed his temples with his index fingers. “I thought you stopped Anna’s Greek and Latin lessons when Mr. Martin complained weeks ago.”

  “I didn’t promise to stop them. Besides, Anna wanted to continue.”

  He looked skeptical. “You didn’t push her?”

  “No. Do you think I’m some sort of tyrant?”

  “No, Lilia, but you’re very persuasive and very determined, and sometimes your passion for educating these girls carries you away.”

  She stared down at her lap and said as calmly as she could manage, “I can’t bear the thought of someone with Anna’s brain becoming a farm laborer’s wife and having ten children.”

  “What if she’s content with that?”

  “How could she be?” cried Lilia, angry all over again.

  Her father gave her a wry look. “We shouldn’t have sent you to Girton College. Though perhaps it doesn’t matter—you’ve never sui
ted Ingleford’s simple village school.”

  “Am I being sacked?”

  He looked at her as if he had no idea what to do with her.

  Lilia stared at this man who was both her employer and her father. Their resemblance—both tall and thin, with unruly dark hair—didn’t extend to their temperament. He was phlegmatic, a peacemaker in situations that Lilia thought called for open war. If he had been only her employer and not her father, she would have fought harder against the injustice she believed was being done to poor Anna.

  “You haven’t been teaching here very long,” he said, “but I’ve had to defend your unconventional ideas and teaching methods more times than I care to count. And you haven’t been willing to change them.”

  Lilia couldn’t deny this.

  “This isn’t the place for you,” he said gently. “I’m sorry, little twig.”

  The pet name brought tears to her eyes. She blinked them away, concentrating on the bookshelf behind her father’s head. She was surprised by the stab of sadness she felt: after all, she had been feeling as trapped in this school as if it were a prison, and now she was free.

  “Very well,” she said. “Shall I go back to the classroom?”

  “You may go home for the rest of the day. No doubt your mother could use your help.”

  But Lilia didn’t go home. Going home before the end of the school day would mean unavoidable hysterics from her mother, who would want to exaggerate every detail of the trouble Lilia had caused for the family. She wasn’t ready for that, not with her own emotions so close to the surface. Instead, she went to a place she considered her second home, to see her Aunt Bianca and Uncle James.

  Bianca and James weren’t really her aunt and uncle, nor were they properly married. Uncle James was the village physician and a childhood friend of Lilia’s father, but her family had always treated him as one of their own. When Bianca had left her husband twelve years earlier to live with James, he had lost most of his patients to the physician in the neighboring village. He’d lost some friends, too, but Lilia’s family hadn’t deserted him. Lilia would have loved Bianca and James even if they hadn’t caused a scandal in the village, but the scandal cemented her adoration. It gave her a cause to fight for: a man and woman didn’t need an outdated custom like marriage to prove their commitment to each other.

  Lilia burst into James and Bianca’s small house unceremoniously, as she always did, and startled Bianca, who was in the tiny front parlor doing needlework. Bianca was in her mid-forties and was still beautiful—so beautiful that people often turned around in the street to stare at her. She was all lush curves, with masses of red-gold hair and green eyes. Uncle James hadn’t had a chance.

  Lilia thought their story was wildly romantic. They’d both been very young when they’d fallen in love and had parted without either of them knowing Bianca was pregnant with his child. She’d moved to London and married Philip Harris, who had loved and raised the child as his own. But when the boy was fifteen, Bianca had left Philip and returned to James and Ingleford, where she’d been ever since.

  “Lilia, whatever is the matter?” Bianca exclaimed, setting aside her needlework.

  “Mr. Martin has taken Anna out of school,” Lilia said, sitting in the chair beside her aunt’s.

  “Oh dear. Is it because you didn’t stop teaching her Latin and Greek?”

  “Yes. But she could have gone on to college, maybe Girton. She could have made an independent life for herself, instead of being stuck in this horrid village forever.”

  “Like you?”

  Lilia blinked. “I went to Girton.”

  “I know. But you’re back, ‘stuck in this horrid village,’ aren’t you? Why do you stay here?”

  “You know why.” Lilia sighed and stared past her aunt and out the window. The trees were lush with summer leaves and a chaffinch was hopping about on the grass.

  “You’re what, four-and-twenty now?” When Lilia nodded, Bianca continued, “More than old enough to make your own decisions. And your mother doesn’t need your help with your siblings anymore. Even Emily is nearly grown up.”

  “A friend of mine from Girton has cofounded a girls’ school in London. She’s invited me to live with her and teach at her school.”

  “Do you want to?”

  Lilia nodded. She couldn’t possibly express how badly she wanted to move to the city. “But Mama wants me to stay. She’ll disown me if I go to London.”

  “Is she worried for your safety?”

  “She says so, but I know she’s more worried for the city’s safety.”

  Lilia and her aunt locked eyes, then burst out laughing.

  Becoming serious again, Bianca said, “She’s hard upon you, Lilia, I know, but she’s only worried that you won’t be accepted in polite society, that you’ll be an outcast like me. Not that you’ll do what I’ve done, of course”—a faint blush colored her cheeks—“but you’re so outspoken about women’s rights—”

  “City people won’t find my ideas as shocking as the villagers here do.”

  “I’m not sure about that. Your ideas may be too advanced even for London.”

  Lilia shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind being an outcast if I were free to live and work as I choose.”

  “You’re stronger than I am. But your mother minds. Very much.”

  Lilia wasn’t afraid of her mother, but she was afraid of what happened when she and her mother argued. “Will you talk to her with me?”

  “Certainly. And your mother might feel better about your moving to London if Paul knows you’re there. He can keep an eye on you. You’ll see him, won’t you?”

  Lilia hesitated. Paul was Bianca and James’s son, but Lilia hardly knew him. She did have fond memories of the summer she’d spent at the Harrises’ London home, when Bianca was still with Philip. Paul was three years older than Lilia and had been a shy, awkward adolescent, very different from Lilia’s boisterous younger brothers. But he was a brilliant scholar and the person to whom she owed her first lessons in Latin and Greek. Even at twelve, she’d been persuasive, or perhaps just annoying. In any case, she’d pestered him until he’d given in.

  Despite this positive experience, there were two counts against Paul from Lilia’s perspective. First was his refusal to visit his mother in the twelve years since she’d been living with James in Ingleford. Second, he was a clergyman. And not just any clergyman, but a canon at St. John’s Cathedral. Lilia found Christianity faintly repugnant and its ministers decidedly so. The virtues Paul possessed as a child would have almost certainly been crushed by his choice of profession.

  Nevertheless, it was only fair to see the man if it pleased her aunt, since Bianca had been Lilia’s advocate in so many ways. It was largely due to her influence that Lilia’s parents had sent her to Girton. When she was twelve, Lilia had rebelled against her parents for sending her brothers to school while keeping her at home by running away to London, in hopes of being allowed to live with Bianca and Philip. Bianca had convinced the Brookes that if they promised Lilia that she could attend Girton when she was old enough, she would be easier to manage. Lilia had struggled valiantly, if not always successfully, to comply with her side of the bargain.

  Another reason to see Paul was Lilia’s precious Odyssey, which had been a gift from him as a reward for her hard work as his pupil. Surely any adolescent boy who had given such a gift wouldn’t grow up to be a bad man.

  2

  Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,

  Or what’s a heaven for?

  —Robert Browning, “Andrea del Sarto”

  LONDON: JULY 1907

  Paul Harris was alone in the sacristy, removing his vestments and feeling nostalgic. It had been exactly two years ago today that he was installed as a canon at the cathedral. He remembered how nervous he had been the first Sunday he had celebrated the Eucharist. He’d worried that he would stumble over his words or read the wrong prayers. He’d worried that he would drop the Body or Blood of C
hrist on the floor. He’d worried that he would miss a cue or look undignified at the altar. But none of those things had happened, then or since.

  Except for one notable exception, the cathedral clergy had welcomed him warmly and made no disparaging comments about his youth. He had been only five-and-twenty when he became a canon, and even now he was young for a cathedral clergyman. His dream of becoming the youngest dean in the history of the cathedral was surely not out of the realm of possibility.

  Paul’s musings were interrupted by the notable exception himself, Thomas Cross. Cross poked his head into the sacristy and said, “There you are, Harris. Are you coming?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Johnson and I are going to visit the prison inmates. It would do you good to come with us.” Cross was four or five years older than Paul and hadn’t held his own canonry for more than a few years, but he treated Paul like a stupid younger brother who was in constant need of advice.

  “I can’t,” Paul said. “I’m otherwise engaged.” He had no intention of canceling a long-awaited luncheon with his friend Stephen Elliott, whose visits to London were rare.

  Cross raised one eyebrow. He was darkly handsome, in a pantherlike way—sleek, muscular, and, Paul fancied, ready to spring upon his prey and sink in his gleaming fangs in one quick motion.

  “Is that so?” Cross said. Quoting from his own sermon that morning, he added, “‘I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.’”

  “As I said, I have other plans,” Paul replied evenly, turning to put away the richly embroidered stole he’d been wearing.

  “Very well.” Cross turned to leave. “Enjoy your solitary religion.”

  His solitary religion! It was a common taunt from Cross, but it made Paul’s blood boil all the same.

  Paul flung himself out the opposite door, which led to a private courtyard at the side of the cathedral. He paced back and forth, taking deep breaths, until he could assume his calm public mask again. But as he made his way to the front entrance of the cathedral where his friend Stephen was waiting, he was still struggling to keep his temper.