Archive of Our Own

“Oh, Edith Galman, you will not believe what fresh hell I have been served from the First Lords!”

Edith continued her row of carefully small darning stitches. How Jane managed to wear through her stockings so quickly when it was Excidium who was doing the bulk of the physical labour just now was a mystery that Edith could never hope to solve. Perhaps she kept moths as pets; perhaps she chewed on them herself; perhaps she offered them to her midwingmen for target practice. Regardless, someone needed to fix them. 

“I have not been Edith Galman for some years now, Admiral Roland ,” she said, when she completed her row. 

Jane waved off the protest as easily as she commanded the attention of a room. 

“I find myself unimpressed with the names men give to women just now,” she said, dropping onto the chaise across from where Edith herself sat, her limbs sprawled all akimbo. Edith bit into her cheek to stop the smile from spreading; in a temper like this, Jane would take it poorly. The truth was far simpler than the condescension from the First Lords or the dismissal from the Ministers or the dawdling from the House of Lords, which were all meant to belittle and sweep away a woman who dared to hold the office Jane managed as easily as breathing: when she flung herself onto the couch like that, she looked far younger than Edith had ever seen her, and the resemblance between her and her daughter was never stronger. 

Edith hummed, measuring out another length of thread to snip for her needle.

“What have they done now, then?”
“Held up every blasted promotion that I have approved for the past sixmonth ! They say it is due to the irregularities of battlefield promotions, but Gibraltar is having none of these irregularities- ”

Earlier in their acquaintance, Edith might have sought to appease her with reassurances that all would work out in the long-run as the First Lords saw that there was nothing to critique about Jane’s commands and she needed to merely weather the storm of suspicion that would allow her to build again the trust in her competence. Now, though, Edith knew that Jane was well aware of the task put to her; here, however, was where she could rage as she could not in Whitehall. That this happened any time the board of the First Lords changed over was as predictable as the tides, and Government had been quite volatile of late. So Edith listened, and made little outraged noises, and said how dare they! when it was appropriate, but she kept her eyes on her stitches and her thread wrapped around her fingers so that it would not prove too loose of a patch and put her right back in this position far sooner than the next change of the Admiralty board.

“And I know that they will approve the proposed budget, for they can hardly do otherwise, with the Navy’s expenses so steadily outpacing our own, but if I could get just a single victory that did not feel as though it were being pulled out of my skull by a damn barber-”
“Surely it is not so dire as that,” Edith said, now, finally looking up. There was a fine line between venting her spleen and pushing herself into a darker mood, and they neither of them had the time for the latter. 

Jane sighed, explosively, and dropped her head onto the back of the chaise, the streaks of gray at her temple reflecting in the firelight. 

“No,” she admitted, eventually, “it is not. But damn if I don’t want to turn their townhouses into target practice for Excidium.”

Edith laughed even as she shifted; she was now in a race with the sun to finish this hole before she lost the light entirely and was forced to either rely on candles or to postpone this until tomorrow. Neither was a very pleasant prospect. Jane picked her head up at the sound of Edith’s dress against the seat, an eyebrow raised.

“Unless you have some more pleasant manner I could employ my evening?” 

Edith clucked her tongue then, still smiling. 

“Fie, you wretch- I am about to lose the light, and now you proposition me?” 
“Oh, but this can be dire?” Jane asked, sitting forward now, with her elbows on her knees, her grin turned almost wolfish in the setting sun, “Some bit of frippery to adorn your next ballgown?”
“It is your mending,” Edith said. It sounded sharper in her own ear than she meant it to, but truly- did Jane pay so little attention to her own things that she could not recognize the JR monogram that lay across Edith’s lap? How these holes appear will be a mystery from us all, it appears, she thought, catching the loop of her thread on the tip of her needle.
“Then you may safely discard it. I’m sure I am not so fine as these London ladies who swoon at the faintest breeze through their stockings-”

Edith did look up from her mending at that, a frown melting its way across her face. 

“You are an Admiral, ” Edith said, “I was under the impression you had some taste for the position; perhaps I misunderstood your complaints, all this time.”

Now it was Jane who was frowning. 

“What does the state of my stockings have to do with-”
“You are a reflection of the Corps,” Edith insisted, resuming her darning at real pace, now, because the sun waited for no woman, no matter how irate she may become, “and your position at Dover makes you the most accessible of your peers to the First Lords- to say nothing of how you represent all Longwing captains, whose reputations are necessarily tied to your own-”
“More hogwash, then.”

Edith sat down her needle and stared.

“Do you truly think so?” 

All this time, she had thought that Jane giving over her mending pile with a bemused smile every week was as much a sign of their close partnership as Jane asking her for her input on which of the great families in England would countenance a dragon landing on their commons the best. Now, Edith wondered if Jane had even noticed the difference between a shirt with a ripped underarm gusset and one that had been carefully recut and reattached to give her the room in her sword arm that her actions demanded she have without discomfort. 

“It’s just cloth, Edith, it doesn’t matter- it will get mended when I have the time to do so.”
“When was the last time you did any repairs to your own wardrobe?” Edith demanded, more than aware of the answer, and forcing Jane to now confront it as well. 

Jane opened her mouth, and then closed it, and then furrowed her brow, and then looked away. 

“For that matter,” Edith said, unable to let her think it over in silence, “had you even noticed that your shirts have all been replaced from when you gave them to me?”

Jane’s head snapped back up.

“You have been-?”
“Of course I have!” she said, overloud. Edith forced herself to take a breath, and smoothed out the lap of her skirt, and took up the stocking again. This would not be a permanent break between them; still the stocking needed to be mended, so that Jane’s boots would not chafe at her calf when she flew tomorrow. 
“You must have your boots made wider in the calf,” she said, in a flash of inspiration, “You have used the same pattern since you were young, haven’t you?”

Jane was startled by the rapid turn into honesty: “Yes, since I made lieutenant. My feet have not changed since I had Emily.”

“But your legs- you truly have never wondered why your stockings wore through so quickly?” Edith demanded.

Jane shook her head, slow and wide-eyed. 

“It never occurred to me to look.”

And that was the most honest thing Jane Roland had said today; perhaps in the entirety of the week, with how many meetings she had been in. 

Edith took a deep breath and made herself exhale slowly.

“I will ask if they can stretch your boots when next they are taken to be cleaned.”
“When they- Edith, how much of my wardrobe do you manage?!”
“All of it, apparently! You have not been doing so, and someone must!”
“Must they?!”
“Do you truly think that appearing in front of the Admiralty Board in stained shirts, ripped in the side seam, wearing an old-fashioned cut of trouser, with dusty Hessians, and a coat that is fraying in the cuff will help your case?!”

Jane, to her credit, truly thought about it. 

“...My cuffs are fraying?”
“Not anymore!” 
“And you have been doing this since-?”
“Jane, how did you think your things were being repaired?”

There was no answer that Jane could give there, because the answer was of course that she hadn’t thought about it, because she hadn’t thought it of any import to pay attention to.

Edith reminded herself of the great many things that Jane had on her mind, the number of dragons and people she was responsible for, the truly staggering amount of decisions she had to make every day. That was why she had taken up Jane’s mending pile to begin with, she reminded herself, to reduce the amount of things that Jane (who of course could have no wife to manage her private life as her colleagues had) needed to keep track of. 

“I- apologize, Edith,” Jane said, haltingly, reaching, tentatively, across the empty air between them, “Most heartily. I had no notion…I did not mean to burden you so.”

Edith smiled, a spasm of a motion across her face.

“I do not mind the work,” she said, “Only…I do not like to see it maligned. It is not a burden , but it is no small undertaking, either.”
“Then- why-?”

Edith looked at her, quite unamused.

“Is it so opaque as that?” she said, swatting at Jane’s hovering hand, “Shall I become some mawkish novel heroine for you?”
“You are the one always telling me that novel heroines are not as silly as I have heard-!”
“Indeed they are not! I am glad you have taken that lesson, at least!”

Jane caught her hand, and came out of her seat to kneel in front of Edith so she might press her lips to the back of the hand she clasped. 

“Then let me learn a second lesson,” she said, “I am sorry to have dismissed your efforts so flippantly. I would claim ignorance, but I suspect that to be the true cause of the injury.”

Flushed with both victory and the sight of Jane kneeling in front of her, Edith inclined her head, mock-imperious. 

“I will allow the excuse this time,” she said, warningly, “but do not expect it to work again.”

Jane pressed her hand to her heart, more theatrically than was perhaps necessary to draw a smile out of Edith, but successful all the same.

“What a generous favor you’ve granted, my lady.”
“And one I will rescind if you do not allow me to finish this- the sun has set but there is perhaps enough of dusk to limit the amount of darning by firelight I will have to do.” 

Jane laughed, dropping her head against Edith’s knee as she did. 

“I suppose watching you finish this instead of finishing yourself is my penance?”
“It can be,” Edith said, still smiling, “Do you feel penitent, Admiral Roland?”
“I might. Perhaps I’m inspired by the sight of Minerva at her loom.”

Edith finally felt her own laughter bubble up again. 

“Mm, I don’t fancy being a spider- isn’t that what happened to the last woman to be compared to Pallas Athene?”
“Maybe,” Jane agreed, “I didn’t pay much attention during lessons.”
“ That, I believe.”

Jane sat and watched the remainder of her careful work. Edith, who paid much better attention to the Classics than Jane apparently had, wondered if she ought to turn Penelope instead and unravel the whole of the piece so that she could see how long Jane would stay on her knees, but upon further reflection- there were other ways to put that question to rest.