Jessandra

September 24, 1998

            The summer had been long and hot for the hill-town of Ashtonbury. The heat coupled with the fast steaming rains had stripped most of the white paint from the exterior walls of the small town’s hall. The white paint which had been so meticulously applied that spring by Farmes Marsh, the town’s painter. The remaining paint peeling in the heat and flaking off into small snowfalls down into the main street on blowing down into Ben’s Alley that last long week. Ben had grumbled about Farmes Marsh painting the hall’s alley side wall so much last year, that Farmes feared to do it this year seeing that Ben was dead and that the little painter was afraid of ghosts. The town hall stood powerfully on the highest crest of Ashtonburry alongside Gillobren’s church; the two structures strove above the other teaming buildings and houses that cloistered there on the hill. The peeling paint revealed the oaken columns that ringed the hall’s sides and façade, tall and mighty trunks they once were, cut from the forests of Avonlea to the north.

            The hot wind of the receding season slipped through the narrow streets past the jailhouse up to and by the hall, bearing the smells and scents of the day to mix a aroma in the square of the hamlet. Smells of fish from Samisson’s market and fresh baked breads from Baker Dante’s shop from down the street. All this mated in and with the swirling paint chips as they showered down into Ben’s Alley. The alley so named for Benjesserit- a soldier of half a dozen wars, who had lived there since the raiders had burned his farm outside of the town seventeen summers since. Benjesserit or Ben had arrived one day and decided to live there since he could not rebuild or find another place to lodge. But now Ben was dead.

            Ben had passed on in front of the Fountain to Mellina- a local goddess of the past- that sat at the center of the square. The fountain had always been a gathering place for the townsfolk and many of the festivals were held there. Benjesserit died one evening as he recanted his favorite war-story to a small crowd of children and parents. This particular story was about a war with no name; and a man that he had met, fought along side and who had become the best friend that Ben had ever had- a friend who he had lost. It was this man for whom Ben had quit soldiering and come home. A man who fought against war- and so the story would end, except this time old Ben got a far off look in his eye and slumped down against the base of the fountain.

            People of the town had called the alley after Ben, although the alley had been considered as Ben’s for a long time before. But for the townsfolk of Ashtonburry, this was the most appropriate way for them to express grief at Ben’s passing and in turn honor the only hero that Ashtonbury had ever known. Then one day about midsummer as Farmes Marsh fretted over his lost paint job, he saw Ben’s ghost in the alley. Farmes had actually seen a flurry of paint flakes caught in the light and shadows and wind, but nothing would do Farmes but to elaborate and stretch his story until the Townsfolk would not even look down the alley, much less enter it. Most of the townsfolk believed him with one exception, Jessi.

            Jessi or rather Jessandra Lathandres found in Ben’s Alley a rare kind of sanctuary. Her father had decided, for reasons that were not made known to her, to send her to Queen Margaret’s school for Ladies in Ashtonbury. Jessi knew that part of the reason had to be her mother. Her mother had been the center of her father’s life and hers as well. She had been a handsome and proper lady who on occasion who show that she had deep emotions and a sense of long forgotten freedom. It had been that freedom that she had seen flashes into her mother’s eyes on rare occasions that (and Jessi believed this to be true in spite of everything her father and the doctors said) had killed her mother. The first time that Jessi had suspected her mother’s true nature had been when she turned seven and her mother had freed a caged canary of purest gold from its prison and bid it fly away. The bird had died because it could not decide where to go and a household cat had eaten it. This act upset her father extremely, as it had been his favorite songbird. He and her mother had exchanged curt words over it and then that blaze had come into her mother’s eyes and she knew. Her father had taken a lot of time grieving for the caged bird.

            The last time Jessi had seen that blazing look in her mother’s eyes was when she lay in bed with the cold sickness and Jessi was thirteen. Her mother had spoken long with her father before he had come silently from her room. He walked over to Jessi, telling her that her mother wanted to speak to her and then he almost ran from the room. Jessi had thought that a tear had broken through his polite exterior. Jessi had gone into the room to find her mother lay up in the giant bed that had been her grandmother’s. Her mother waved her over and then dismissed the huddling doctors and nursemaids from the room. Jessi had come over to the bedside and look into her mother’s eyes and seen them blazing as her mother had stroked her hair. Her mother had wept while talking about going on a long journey and that Jessi must watch for the raven- a sign of her destiny. Then her mother sent her from the room and gone into a deep sleep. The next day, Jessi’s father told her that her mother had died and that it was time for Jessi to began to be a lady of the court. With as many words and a short dry kiss, he sent her off to the finishing school in Ashtonbury. So Jessi had come to believe that her father did not want her to be around him because she reminded him of her mother.

            “Queen Mag’s School” as it was called in Ashtonbury was a dreadful place for the thirteen-year-old girl from Avonlea. Jessi had trouble fitting in with the older girls since she was too young to be giggling about boys and strutting around trying to be as shapely as the fifteen and sixteen year old girls- of which there were six. The leader of that pack had tried to get Jessi to act ladylike but Jessi had not hit puberty yet and it would not be noticed for awhile so the older girls left her alone. The younger girls were nine to eleven and ran as a pack of well-behaved sheepdogs. Seeking to please the austere grandeur of the queen of the school, Margaret or “Queen Mag.” Queen Mag had run the school for many years with an iron hand, a gentle touch and a deep sense of honor and duty. It was said that she had once been the high queen of Avonlea and when the high king had died, that Queen Mag had left the high country for Ashtonbury. Queen Mag had chosen exile over any other options. When money and hospitality had run short, she had opened the school as a means of support and survival in “the wasteland of rudeness” as she would put it.

Jessi had found Queen Mag to be a kind but aloof mistress who drilled her pupils on the matters of etiquette and skills that all ladies should have- especially queens. A detail that the next high queen was secretly one of the girls at the school. This kept the gossip mill turning and town talking about it with every new recruit that Queen Mag added to the enrollment. There had been a small stir when she had arrived, but the townsfolk had instantly dismissed the idea when the saw how “common” that Jessi was. Jessi’s “commoness was to be found in the way she dressed and her hair. Jessi, at thirteen, stood at nine spans, and wore plain smocks of woven cotton with faded dyes. Her favorite one was a blue one that was so faded that it could pass as white except that the smocks never stayed clean enough. Her hair was straight and hung from her head down onto her shoulders in piles of tangled knots- which Queen Mag or Mansa (Mag’s maidservant) would dutifully come out when they could catch her and keep her still. Jessi had deep gray eyes, which the locals were inclined to stay that was the sign of low breeding rather than that of royalty. Jessi had grown up enough to have a presence but had not developed any hips or buttocks that she was supposed to sway as to denote her sex. Rather she walked and ran like a boy.

            In the early days of her exile and isolation at the school, Jessi had discovered a hidden door in the back storeroom of the grand manor that the school was housed in. The door opened into a narrow passage that in turn ended in a wall. The wall could swing open at slightest pressure on the inside revealing the alley behind the manor. The downside to this secret door was that Jessi had found no way to open the door from the alley side. Jessi decided that if she left a piece of ribbon with a knot on the end of it on the inside with the tongue of the ribbon sticking out in the alley, she would be able to opened the door by pulling on the door. The ploy and worked but had to be performed very carefully. So Jessi had found an escape from her imprisonment and would do so as often as possible. These escapes led to her exploring the town and would have gone on except that most of her sojourns had ended up with her being recognized by one of the townsfolk and turned into Queen Mag for punishment. So after having to scrub the floors for the eighth time, Jessi decided that Ashtonbury was a Tatarus for little girls although the other girls did not seem to mind the confinement. On her ninth trip out that summer she had discovered Ben’s Alley and the subsequent stories about it.