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The House was a rose in the garden of the Empire, and the Empire watered its garden with blood.
It had been many long years since the last feeding. The newly arrived Matthew Crawley tasted too eager; his mother too set and sure in her ways. They, like decades of newcomers before them, could only whet the appetite and not slake it. Matthew at least could serve a purpose, and be discarded afterwards.
He did not make a meal, though, and the House felt it might starve.
But the Empire did not let its roses wilt, and the House’s patience was rewarded one fine morning not long after the new Crawleys’ arrival, when Tom Branson arrived, young and bright and full of righteous dreams.
Oh, the House sighed when he appeared on the gravel drive. Love at first sight. Here is one just for me.
//
The Ungrateful Daughter had other ideas. (So did Tom, of course, but that only made him more delicious.) The House had watched her sweetness slowly turn to restlessness, and knew to be wary. The Unfavored Daughter, the middle one, needed no watchful eye, and as far as the House was concerned her purpose in life was to amuse it and receive its spite.
And then there was Mary. Eldest, adored, and loyal; beautiful Mary, the true heir, who knew to love the House as it should be loved; cruel Mary whom the House had already killed for twice by the time Tom Branson arrived. (It would kill for her eight more times; it would kill as many people as Mary needed it to, whether she wanted it to or not.) The House would shape Tom to serve Mary, which was the same thing as serving the House itself. It was not yet certain how it would achieve this, when Tom first arrived, but it knew it would succeed.
//
Never before had the House had someone like Tom. Servants with ambition came and most of them went (not Barrow, though; the House kept him for its own). Visitors with agendas flitted in and out, some intriguing, some annoying, all disposable.
Cora, on paper, came closest. She too arrived from a rebellious colony across the sea — but the heat of that revolution had cooled by the time she'd been born, the young country turned from traitor to ally. She too lacked reverence for the English aristocracy — but her opinion tended towards indulgence for its rules, and bored the House in comparison to Tom’s hatred of class. And unlike Tom, who was awed by the House despite himself, Cora was not impressed.
The House might have been offended by Cora’s indifference to its thrall, if it were not for three very important facts.
One: Cora was not blood, so her lack of total devotion did not constitute a betrayal.
Two: She arrived willing, though not eager, to make the required sacrifices at the altar of the House. She gave up her money, her Jewishness, and her homeland without a fight.
Three: She gave the House Mary.
Cora didn’t care where she lived so long as she had her family. And her family included Mary, and Mary would never betray the House. So the House accepted Cora without a fuss. It even developed an appreciation for her inner strength when Robert faltered and failed, or when Mary needed her mother. The House indulged her accent, her odd opinions and traditions, because Cora was tame.
Not like Tom.
Tom the socialist, Tom the republican, Tom who not only quoted the words of Marx and Connolly and Tone and Pearse but felt them through his body and soul. The House could hear his heart beat faster when he so much as thought the words. That strong heart. That hot blood.
No, there'd been no one like Tom. What a rare and refined pleasure, the House thought, to have to hunt one's food before eating it!
//
The Ungrateful Daughter saw too much. Sometimes the House wondered if part of Cora knew what the House was, and what her daughter would be, when she gave her a name that meant oracle, meant prophetess, meant woman who sees what others cannot and warns of what will kill them.
The House took some reassurance from the knowledge that, traditionally, oracles were less advisors who were heeded than agents of foreshadowing who heroes visited as the first step towards hubris and doom. Perhaps no one would listen to this one either. But to rely on that would be hubris too, so the House watched the Ungrateful Daughter closely as she grew up.
She had the worst of both parents in her. Robert's impatience and self-importance; Cora's indulgence and lack of reverence for ritual, tradition, and rigid social roles — in the Ungrateful Daughter these flaws were so concentrated that they twisted attributes that otherwise would have been virtuous. Her kindness, so sweet when directed towards her family, turned foolish as she bestowed it too freely on those beneath her. Her fortitude, which (had she directed it like Mary did) could have served the House well, went astray into politics, where the Ungrateful Daughter had no right to be.
The House had given her a life of privilege, a family and household who universally adored her, and every opportunity for happiness. Yet with each passing year the Ungrateful Daughter grew more restless.
And she saw things. She saw the housemaid who didn't know her place. She saw past Barrow's scheming and into his suffering. Worst of all by far, when the war brought its ghoulish illumination she saw the way the House kept the Family to itself and accused them all of being useless. As if a Great House was not a purpose unto itself. As if the strict maintenance of the rules everyone else followed was not essential to the survival of the Empire.
When the House finally realized that the Ungrateful Daughter had no sense of fealty to that Empire, it felt an emotion it had not experienced since its infancy as a medieval palace, when the Protestant Reformation brought upheaval that threatened the entire estate. Fear.
A handsome young socialist from across the sea — an outsider to be converted and consumed — was one thing. But a member of the Family not only immune to the thrall of the House but increasingly in opposition to it — this could not be borne.
The House considered killing her. But then Tom arrived and he caught her eye, and all at once the House saw such rich possibility it glowed. If the Ungrateful Daughter insisted on seeing past the ancient systems of rank and class, that could work to the House’s advantage.
I will use her as my bait.
//
It threw them together. When they went to the count-turned-riot, the House pushed the Ungrateful Daughter so she would bleed, so Tom would fear for her, so she could defend him to the Family. When they met in the garage the House allowed no interruption. When the Ungrateful Daughter tested the limits of her life and left the House to learn nursing, it made itself a hospital for her to return to, so Tom could watch her work and fall ever more in love. (And all those young soldiers within its walls — ah, how sweet, how proper, to heal these loyal squires of Albion so they might rise to kill again, or go home to father sons for the next war!)
At the same time as all this the House twined itself through Tom's veins, moving slow and quiet to ensure he would not notice. By Easter 1916 he'd breathed the House's air long enough that he could not muster up the fervor to join his countrymen in martyrdom. For weeks he listed the names of the executed sixteen in his mind the way a dog might worry at its wound: Roger Casement, Éamonn Ceannt, Thomas James Clarke, Con Colbert, James Connolly, Edward Daly, Seán Heuston, Thomas Kent, John MacBride, Seán MacDiarmada, Thomas MacDonagh, Mícheál Mallin, Mícheál O’Hanrahan, Pádraic Pearse, William Pearse, Joseph Plunkett.
The House reveled in his pain, and even moreso in the knowledge that it had saved Tom's life.
//
A year later, when Tom received notice he'd been drafted, it was easy for the House to reach into his heart and break it. Not all the way — just enough to give it a murmur so that Tom could not don an English uniform, make his foolish little demonstration, and rot in some common English jail.
You'll have no thought of rebellion by the time I'm done with you, the House crooned to Tom as he slept. Twice over he owed the House a life debt, now. You'll rot nowhere but here. Tom's mouth twitched; his brow furrowed. But he did not wake, and when he got up in the morning he would not remember the whisper he'd heard in his dream. He’d think only of the Ungrateful Daughter and her promise of after the war.
//
The Empire won the war. There was no conflict, the House felt with pride and eagerness, that the Empire could or ever would lose.
//
I’m ready to travel, and you’re my ticket, the Ungrateful Daughter said. Fetch the matches!
The House could have struck her down on the spot with the force of its wrath. The ingrate wants a fire, after all I've done for her? The House could give it to her: car combusted, garage in flames, her screams sucked from her lungs along with the air around her.
It might have done it, too, if not for Tom. He was looking at the Ungrateful Daughter with such incredulity and joy that the House remembered its plan, and saved its fury for later. Calm enough now for prurience, it watched them kiss for the first time. It felt their hearts, their blood, their sense of soaring.
One of the things the House loved about Tom was his capacity to make it curious. So that’s how he tastes, when he thinks he’s gotten everything he wants. What will it be when he loses it?
//
The House, impatient despite its age, could not resist finding the answer to that question in short order. When Tom and the Ungrateful Daughter eloped, it nudged Mary towards her sister’s locked bedroom door and the note that lay beyond it. Tom and the Ungrateful Daughter had chosen an inn outside of the House’s domain but still close enough to sense, and when she said I will be true to you it could tell, it could taste, that he doubted.
He came back, though. For his love for her and (though he didn’t know it yet; though he didn’t know he’d come back over and over long after she was gone) his love of the House itself.
//
Robert’s rage gratified the House, when the Ungrateful Daughter told the Family of her plan to marry the chauffeur. He alone understood the level of betrayal this signified, a betrayal the House would never forgive, even if Robert did; even though it had, in part, orchestrated the act itself.
Robert’s contempt for Tom annoyed the House, though it enjoyed the opportunity to see Tom draw himself up in his heartfelt posture of principle to reject the bribe Robert offered. Tom in righteous anger tended to inspire frisson in the House, a rare and welcome experience.
Robert’s too-quick softening towards the Ungrateful Daughter after the House killed the Other Girl exasperated the House. With the exception of Mary it could not expect humans, frail as they were, to share its capacity for eternal grudges, but still. He ought to have done better than a few weeks.
Robert let the Ungrateful Daughter go with a pang. Don’t worry. There will come a day you forget to miss her, the House promised quietly, to him and Tom at once.
//
Their wedding was not worth description, except to say that the Ungrateful Daughter’s joy stung and Tom’s tasted bittersweet.
Someday soon he’ll love me more, the House reminded itself.
//
Like her parents, the House had thought that the Ungrateful Daughter might come to regret her choice when she had to live out its consequences. These hopes, along with any chance of the House tolerating her, were dashed when she grew stronger, happier, and surer with each month she spent in the rebellious city that had once been the heart of the Pale. Dangerous and alarming, for a coddled daughter of the Empire to be able to betray her home with ease and joy. The House would not let it stand.
Beyond the sense of her strengthening, the distance made it hard for the House to read the hearts of the Ungrateful Daughter and Tom. This would not do. Mary’s upcoming wedding would provide an excuse to draw them back, judge their progress, and peer inside of the Ungrateful Daughter to examine the appetizing little soul growing inside her.
The Dowager Countess, always in concert with the House even when she did not know it, sent them the money they needed to make the journey.
//
The old me would have liked to put a bomb under the lot of you, Tom half-joked to Matthew the night before the wedding, and the House laughed.
I’m a socialist, not a revolutionary, he’d told the Ungrateful Daughter when first they met. And now, just a few years later, Tom had already forgotten who he’d used to be. His old tactics were embarrassing a general at a private dinner and making a childish demonstration at the draft office. A bomb? No. Tom was thoroughly amputated from his old self, the House thought with satisfaction.
It was wrong.
Tom and the Ungrateful Daughter went back to Tom’s homeland after the wedding, and Tom did something terrible.
//
The House was a resourceful entity, and with Robert’s help it made Tom’s crime useful: he was exiled from his home and could never again return. But the House could take little satisfaction in such a neat fit into its plans, because Tom had committed a nearly unforgivable sin.
Fetch the matches, the Ungrateful Daughter once told him.
Well, the House thought hatefully, see how she likes it now, having a husband who helped burn a Great House like me to the ground!
She was so distraught that the House, in the moment she dropped Tom’s hand, almost liked her. The Family raged at him. I was always against any personal violence, Tom protested, in delicious and despicable agony. If the House could have spoken it would have screamed at him itself: This is personal.
But unlike some of the Family and many of the servants, the House took his meaning. Though it was touched when Carson ran in with buckets of water at the smell of smoke, it never thought Tom would burn it down.
Still, he had to be punished. The House had been planning what came next for years, and the perfect time had come. In one act it would punish, trap, and crush Tom; secure two souls; and rid itself of one that had plagued it for far too long.
What a harsh world you live in, Robert had snarled to Tom. We all live in a harsh world, Tom replied; but at least I know I do.
He didn’t. He would.
//
Patrick Crawley, unworthy.
Kemal Pamuk, in a way that would warn Mary not to err again.
Cora’s unborn son, the would-be upstart.
The Other Girl, with ease and perhaps even consent, and her corpse to keep and feed on.
The Other Girl’s father and his first two heirs — the second killed in India by the long arm of the Empire, at the request of its loyal House.
In the not-so-distant future, for the Ungrateful Daughter was not the only one who could see what was coming:
Matthew Crawley, after he wrote a will and gave Mary a son; killing him would made her the heir she was always meant to be. (Too, his death would satisfy the House’s thirst to revenge itself on his mother, who had failed to feed the House and had encouraged the Ungrateful Daughter to leave.)
The rapist Green, just to make Mary happy.
Charles Rogers, so Henry Talbot would give up racing and become the less-loved second husband. He posed no threat at all, and if that changed — well.
That made ten people the House would kill for Mary.
For Tom it only had to kill one.
//
Both doctors arguing over her dying body were wrong, the loyal one less so. If only they knew: all they had to do was get the Ungrateful Daughter out of the House.
Any hospital would do — any house or field or car off the grounds. But the House took her in the night, hours after everyone thought the danger had passed, and no one’s head was clear enough to take her away. No one would have thought of it anyway. Only the Ungrateful Daughter knew. We’ll look at the stars, she’d whispered, because the House did not let her beg as she wanted to: Get me out of here.
The whole Family gathered round the altar of her bed to witness the sacrifice. Such terror, agony, and grief concentrated there that the House felt its consciousness shrink down to that one room, that feeding ground. It did not let the Ungrateful Daughter speak as she died. In ecstasy and rage it seized her body and shook her soul out.
The soul slipped loose. The House let it go, and did not deign to eat it.
The House almost regretted the murder when Mary’s grief sent shocks of pain through its foundations. But Tom’s tears tasted of salt and despair, and the baby’s flesh was so tender. The Ungrateful Daughter would have taken them both away. We can’t go backwards, she had insisted.
With her gone, the House was not backwards — neither behind nor ahead of anything, because for Tom, no other place existed anymore.
//
Tom made a good father. The House would have to watch the baby carefully and shape her as it had failed to shape her mother, as it was succeeding in shaping her father.
Tom made a good widower, too. When Matthew died he drew to Mary’s side and served her as he ought to.
But he could not be trusted, after the sins he’d committed. The House wanted to forgive him, so it gave him the opportunity to prove himself through three tests.
First: Edna Braithwaite. Less test than punishment, really. The House was a spiteful creature, after all, and though it didn’t mourn the Ungrateful Daughter and had long wanted her dead, it resented that it took that death for Tom to stay.
If you knew what was good for you, you never would have left me in the first place. Hunting one's food was all well and good, but it was past time the House's prey learned humility.
Enter Edna. She hunted him single-mindedly, and the night she poured too much whiskey into him the House unlocked his bedroom door that she might enter. After she was done, the House savored Tom’s words: I am already full of regrets. There is nothing but regret in me.
There. He felt as he ought to feel. The House, with the help of its affectionate Housekeeper, sent Edna away.
Second: Sarah Bunting. With such strong opinions and feelings, the House found her easy to use. All it had to do was push her anger to the top of her mind. 1922, 1923, 1924, her every conversation with Tom was the same. Remember who you used to be, and leave.
Tom let her fight with Robert. He let her insult the way he and the Family lived. He let her tell him that he was meant for better things. He even let part of himself believe her.
But over and over he did not leave, and finally, in the third year, he broke with her. The House, merciful, sent her away and allowed Tom a kiss goodbye. You've reminded me of who I am and I'm grateful. I won't lose touch with that again, he told her weakly.
The House almost left it at that, because 1924 brought further proof of Tom’s devotion. The House had many pastimes and amusements, and not least among them ranked the torture of the Unfavored Daughter. Recently it had pushed her perhaps too far: lover lost, child claimed by a different family, living sister cruel, loving sister dead, parents insufficient, the Unfavored Daughter’s misery set the House aflame.
It considered letting her burn to death. But the time wasn’t right (it had more in store for her) and besides, it hurt to be on fire. So it let the smoke escape her bedroom and raise the alarm to Barrow, whom the House knew to be devoted even if few others did. And who should come running to throw soothing water on the House’s wounds but Tom? This rescue from a man who once watched as rebels burned an English castle! Tom choked on the smoke and the House drank in air and water both.
Later, after the firefighters put out the rest of the flames and the Family returned, the House wondered if it ought to spare Tom any further tests. But he did not send Sarah Bunting away quickly enough, and her words so pricked at his heart that he became restless again.
And so the third and final test: America.
The House had thoroughly ruined Tom for his homeland; no danger remained of him returning there. There were other places in the world, though, for an Irishman to go looking for himself. The Empire had driven millions of them away during the Great Hunger and the decades that followed. If Tom chose to join the diaspora, he would find no shortage of people like the one he used to be. If he tried to stay away, the House would force him to return as it did before, and punish him worse.
He did try — barely. His self-made failure tasted sweeter than any revenge the House could have taken. It preened when it read the letter Tom sent to Mary: I dreamt last night that I was in the park at Downton walking with Sybbie under the great trees, listening to the pigeons cooing in the branches, and when I woke my eyes were filled with tears.
Tom and his daughter were back within the year, never to escape again.
//
By 1925 Tom had become worthy to serve Mary in every way. At her side he extracted profit from the land, the tenants, and the animals; profit that he and Mary fed to the House to please and sustain it. When Mary chafed against the House’s plans for her second marriage, Tom berated her with a passion that surprised even the House, pushing her together with Henry Talbot until she relented into loving him.
Reflecting later on Tom’s fury at Mary for refusing Henry, the House wondered if it might not be such a mystery after all. After all, Tom knew what happened to people when they did not love according to the wishes of the House. Maybe he was trying to protect Mary. This possibility gratified the House and made it love Tom still more.
Tom and Henry went into business together. Cars, of course. The skill that had first brought Tom to the House now served to feed it more money.
Still, though, Tom was not happy. The House thought on this for some time. His pain, his not-quite-fitting, was what made him delectable. But he deserved some reward, surely. The House resolved to find a solution.
//
There was a time when the threat of the Royal Family's presence would have turned Tom Branson incandescent with righteous fury. Back then, before the House got hold of him, he would have cried out the words of the traitor James Connolly: All these parading royalties, all this insolent aristocracy, all these grovelling, dirt-eating capitalist traitors, all these are but signs of disease in any social state – diseases which a royal visit brings to a head and spews in all its nastiness before our horrified eyes.
But James Connolly died in 1916 at the hands of the Empire, and by 1927 the Tom Branson who worshipped him did not exist anymore. Or if he did, he existed only in the memory of the ghost of the Ungrateful Daughter (she haunted the halls in a bloody nightgown and no one saw or heard her but the House) and in the jokes of the Family (Our tame revolutionary, Robert called him fondly).
Tom himself could hardly remember who he used to be. The House watched him closely during the royal visit. His submission was beautiful. When the King thanked him personally, Tom went still and speechless. The membrane the House had built around him trembled, thinned; he could dimly see the man he used to be, who would have rather died than earn this favor from the head of the Empire. What have I become and how did it happen, the House could hear him feeling, for Tom was too far gone to form the emotion into thoughts or words.
The moment passed. Tom rejoined the party, a little more haunted than before, a little tighter in the House’s clutches, forgetful.
//
Despite his submission, Tom would not deserve peace until his homeland gave up the fight. For nigh on eight centuries that war had gone on — some decades bloodier than others — so Tom would not marry someone who could fit him into the proper way of things. But he would marry, because the House loved him. The House was merciful.
The House brought him a fellow outsider as soon as he was ready to receive her. It doesn't hurt anymore, he told her when she asked about the Ungrateful Daughter. The House thrilled to the sound of these words, and even more to the knowledge that Tom really believed what he said. Someday he won’t remember her at all.
The outsider the House chose for him was a bastard maid and a secret heiress. Another stone in Tom’s pocket to keep him where he was. No, better than a stone: a jewel. Her riches would belong to him, and thus to the House. He would join Cora, and the Other Girl’s father, in the long line of inhabitants who sustained the House’s power. On that long list Tom was uniquely beloved, as he proved hard to conquer and gave up his wife, his labor, and his ideals for the House.
The Bastard Maid would make him happy and further keep him from belonging. I think I know who I am, now, he told her. The House was not sure whether it wanted that or not. It must have total dominion over Tom, but a kernel of regret (if not resistance) ought to remain, surely.
And this would be ensured by the chilly reception the Bastard Maid and Tom would meet in the homes of those who welcomed Mary with awe and adoration, as one of their own, as Tom and the Bastard Maid could never be. They’d be driven back into the maw of the House over and over. Reward and punishment, haven and exile-within-exile. Back and forth these forces would batter Tom in the jaws of the House until the day he died.
//
It is my third parent and my fourth child, Robert once said of the House. Robert never served with the skill of a worthy patriarch, but he loved the House and knew his existence depended on it. Most of all, he gave it Mary. That was enough.
And Tom? Well. These days, if someone asked Tom Branson his parents’ names, he wouldn’t remember.
These days Tom reads the paper and follows the news from the place that had once been his home, but the words don’t stick in his mind. A pang over breakfast is forgotten by lunch, and by the time the dinner gong rings he’s content to be dressed by his servant in the clothes he’d once denounced as the uniform of oppression.
The House pays close attention in his stead. Tom’s former home is near enough that the House can hear all the voices that Tom’s forgotten, their struggles and speeches and songs. Every word assures the House of the importance of its work.
A traitor, recently executed and oft quoted:
The Defenders of this Realm have worked well in secret and in the open. They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but, the fools, the fools, the fools! — They have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.
A ballad, about the Great War and the Rising that the House had saved Tom from:
‘Twas England bade our wild geese go, that small nations might be free
But their lonely graves are by Suvla's waves or the fringe of the great North Sea
Oh, had they died by Pearse's side or fought with Cathal Brugha
Their names we would keep where the Fenians sleep 'neath the shroud of the foggy dew
Another traitor, dead the same month as the first:
If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and, mayhap, raise a force that will destroy you. We defy you! Do your worst!
The House claimed Tom Branson for its graveyard long ago. No one will keep his name with the legions of Fenian dead. His spirit will not rise from its grave to challenge the Empire. (The Ungrateful Daughter’s spirit still haunts the House, but has no power so long as her corpse is trapped. The House hopes she will quiet once Tom is buried beside her; it tires of her anger and despair.)
The Empire waters its garden with blood, and the House is a rose which drinks that blood and turns it from the fuel of rebellion to a beautiful, harmless, sweet-smelling blossom. Tom is an ornament. Tom is useless. Tom’s heart has been corrupted so thoroughly that it’s pure again.
You are mine, but I am not yours, the House thinks to him, savoring.
I killed your wife and gave your child a tongue that speaks in the accent of those you once called your oppressors. I took you from your home and replaced your family with mine. I shaped you into a tool to serve my favorite daughter and save my king. I seduced you from your ideals with my beauty, my riches, my power.
Every day I reward you for your devotion and every day I remind you that you are my subject; you are in my debt forever. You are not my favorite, but I love you so. I love that I captured you. I love to imagine what you would have felt in 1912 if you had known — coming up my drive for the first time — what we would become. You would have run. You would have gotten away.
But I have you now, my dear who is not dearest, my forever lonely one, my Tom. You will never again want to leave me, and I will never let you go. I love you. I made you love me.
As long as you live, you will show me how grateful you are. One day you will die in my bed and I will swallow you at last. Your rotting corpse will feed my grass and make it green, green, green as the country you abandoned for me.
You know it’s coming. You fear it and you yearn for it: the day you become wholly mine, wholly conquered, never to raise your voice in defiance again.
I’ve won.
//
(But in Tom’s once-home across the sea, still they cry tiocfaidh ár lá!, and build bombs.)