Keira Adams (keiraadams) wrote in shadowlands_ic, @ 2017-07-11 15:12:00 |
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Entry tags: | chiara di palermo, keira adams |
Who: Keira, Chiara, and NPC “Samira”
What: Keira is recruited.
When: Around a year ago (1887)
Where: London/L’albergo (Muswell Hill)
Rating: Low
Warnings: None really
Keira had only been in London for a few days. She had managed to secure a room for a short while and was slowly trying to figure out what to do with her next step. She’d just recently lost her husband, of course it was by her own hand and she was slightly freaking out about that. Not that her husband had died, but that she had had it within her to take his life. There was no plan on what she should do now. She had Jameson’s money, but that wouldn’t last forever. She was a woman, alone. A widowed woman, alone. That went only so far, she knew. She needed to figure out what to do.
She knew she could always go work in a pub again, or a tavern. That’s what she’d done in Ireland, but she didn’t want to go that route again. Maybe a business. She could open a shop, serve tea and baked goods. That was a decent idea, a good one really. She loved baking and she was damn good at it.
So that meant trying to procure a shop. Which meant she needed to go hunting for places to house her business in. Taking a stroll, she made her way down streets, stopping to look at a place every now and then.
Samira followed at a safe distance. This woman, this Kiera, might only have been in London for a few days but she had already caught the eye of the Sisterhood. It had, in fact, been one of the Sorelle Fidate who had first spotted her, making her way down a street and looking vaguely alone and vulnerable.
A few days surveillance was telling her all she needed to know. Unless she was hiding it particularly well, Kiera had no one to go home to, no one who would notice that she was missing if such a tragedy was to occur. It was time.
She cut down an alleyway and around a corner, so that she could approach Kiera from the front. Strategically, she stepped out as Kiera was passing, almost but not quite causing a collision to give herself an excuse to speak.
“Pardon me,” Samira said softly. “It was entirely my fault.”
Keira was starting to feel hungry, she’d been on the streets for awhile looking at buildings that could house her shop and so far nothing seemed to pop out at her. She knew she’d find one eventually, or if not it just wasn’t meant to be.
She was in deep thought when another woman stepped out in front of her, making her come to a quick stop. “Oh! No, it’s quite alright,” she assured the other woman. “It’s most likely my fault, I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Perhaps we should agree we are both a little at fault,” Samira laughed lightly. “Perhaps you will let me apologize, for my part, by buying you lunch. I know for a fact that the woman who runs the pie stall sells the most delectable pork pies I have ever had, and I feel it would be a shame not to cap off this new acquaintance by partaking of one.”
The idea, of course, was to put Kiera at ease before broaching the subject of la Sorellanza with her. Surreptitiously, Samira drew out her fazzoletto and dabbed neatly at her nose with it, though her nose was not running. She wanted to see if the sight of the subtly yellow-edged handkerchief with the unobtrusive yellow emblem stitched in one corner sparked any sort of recognition in Kiera at all.
“I am sure I can agree to that,” Keira chuckled. Taking equal part in the fault of nearly colliding. “But you do not have to buy me lunch,” she then said earnestly. “Though I do find myself quite hungry and would love to know where this pie stall is. I’m new to London and trying to find where to go for such things is a little more difficult than I would have imagined,” she said with a small smile.
When the handkerchief came out, Keira smiled and averted her eyes for a moment while the lady dabbed at her nose. She did not see in meaning in the handkerchief and she wanted to give the woman a little privacy. “I’m Keira,” she said after a moment, thinking names might be good if she were to walk with the woman to a pie stall.
“Samira,” Samira replied, tucking her fazzoletto away. No recognition. Well, Kiera was new to London, after all. She held out her arm for Kiera to take, and led her around the corner to the pie stall, where she ordered two pies. From there she guided the woman to a small park where they could sit and eat their pies as daintily as was possible under the circumstances.
“I wonder if I might be honest with you,” she said after a while, cautiously breaking the silence. “There is something you ought to know.”
Keira took Samira’s arm, though hesitantly, and let the other woman lead her around the corner. She wasn’t exactly trusting of the woman and kept her attention on alert and ready to fight and flee if she needed to. No one was to be trusted, though had Samira been a man, she would have immediately walked away.
With pie in hand she followed to the park and took a seat on a bench. When the woman mentioned wanting to be honest and that there was something she needed to know, Keira’s head shot up and her eyes went guarded.
“Okay?”
“In London, there is a society, an organization, called La Sorellanza. That name is Italian for Sisterhood, and that is exactly what it is about. We are a tightknit group who have become each other’s family, when many of us come from circumstances where family is either a foreign concept or a very dirty word.”
She paused to take a bite of her pie and gauge Kiera’s reaction, but for the moment, she did not seem to be running. Again, she took out her fazzoletto and spread it out on the bench between them. “It is clean,” she laughed. “The nose dabbing was entirely for show. I had to see if you knew of us already. See here, the emblem in the corner. This is the emblem of the Sisterhood, and this handkerchief serves as identification of a sort.”
She knew that more information would obviously need to be forthcoming (including her point), but that was enough to be going on with, at least until Kiera said something.
What Samira said, what she started to explain to Keira, was not what Keira had been expecting. She had expected something about joining a brothel or something else, but not to hear about a group called the Sisterhood. When the handkerchief came out, she rose an eyebrow and looked at Samira for a moment before gazing back down at the cloth that was now spread out between them. “Oh...I see,” she said with a small nod of her head. “I can honestly say, I’ve never heard of you or seen that emblem anywhere else before.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” when it came to her attention that the other woman was waiting for her to speak. “Why tell me this? Is there something that you want or need from me?”
“Because we want you,” Samira said simply. “As creepy and repugnant as it may sound, we have been watching you for a couple of days now. We have seen that you are alone, and you are searching for something - though the amica who followed you yesterday was unable to work out what.” She grinned.
“We want to offer you a place to live, and good food to eat, and opportunities. Our leader is a wonderful woman who has spent her life finding girls and women who have nothing else and giving them the tools to build a real life. Members of the Sisterhood, after passing the initiation period, are sent to university. University! Do you know how many women graduated from London University last year?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Three. And they were all sisters.”
She finished off her pie, daintily brushing the crumbs from her fingers onto the grass below them. “Of course if you are not interested, we will not persist. Our leader is very definite about not coercing or blackmailing women. That is not what we are about. We simply want to offer you a way of life that we think you might enjoy.”
This time both of Keira’s eyes jumped upward and she stared at Samira openly for a moment before taking a look around to make sure there was no one approaching to nab her or anything. “You want me?” She asked. She didn’t understand why. They had followed her for a few days, which was all that Keira had been here and they wanted her to join their Sisterhood. Apparently the low profile she had been wanting to keep had not been keeping well.
And then she wondered if they knew what she was! That was not good in the least, she didn’t think.
“I’ve been looking for a shop, I want to open a business to sell tea and baked goods,” she said. “That’s what I’ve been doing while you and your amica have been following me,” she informed her. “You’re right, I am alone here. I have no friends or family…” She tilted her head to the side, wondering if this was something real, or if she were being sold a line. “University? Really? That’s rather interesting,” she remarked. “And you would house me? Feed me? Your leader...she doesn’t plan to sell me to men, to have me make an earning to pay for all of this? I mean, what is the catch?”
“We live at L’albergo. It is Italian for “the hotel”, and it is in Muswell Hill. It is a five storey building, and the sisters are housed by rank. As a new recruit, you would be a neofita, a “neophyte”, and you would live on the ground floor until you moved up a rank. You get your own bedroom, your own space, and you are allowed to lock it. So yes, we would house you, feed you, and our leader will send you to university. And we are never sold to men.”
That, at least, Samira could be proud of, but she had the good grace to look a little ashamed at Keira’s next question. “The catch…” She took a breath. “We steal.”
Now she laughed a little. “Neofite are trained in the art of pickpocketing, but it doesn’t end there. Have you ever heard of Robin Hood? We are rather like him, in a way. We take from well-to-do men to feed ourselves, women who but for la Sorellanza might be living on the streets and forced to prostitute themselves just to live.”
Keira listened, honestly interested to hear what Samira had to say. She ate a little at her pie, the knots in her stomach not there as much. Samira sold it all very well. Keira would get a place she could feel safe again, she could be sent to University to learn more about business if she wished. And when the catch came, it wasn’t what she had expected.
“To steal?” Her eyebrows rose. “You steal from the rich and give to the poor?” She asked. “But why? I mean, I’m all for the Robin Hood line, but why? What is your leader’s main purpose?” She could be naive, but she wasn’t stupid. There had to be something there, a main point, to it all.
“Our leader has an eye for fine things, and sometimes one cannot acquire enough money to purchase such things by… honest means,” Samira said cagily. “I would have to give up my fazzoletto if I were to tell you too many details, but the important point is, she likes beautiful things, and she is willing to steal them, so she teaches us to steal so that we may help her. She is a fierce protector of women’s rights and liberties, and she has the means to help others, and that is what she does. She might be known as a great philanthropist, if she was not such a thief.” Samira laughed.
“Look, you can walk away and there will be no hard feelings. But we have been watching you. You are looking for somewhere to open your shop. I am guessing that you do not currently have a means of supporting yourself. There is no husband, because we have seen where you go at night. Perhaps he is coming to meet you later…” She trailed off, cocking her head to the side as she pondered. “But I rather think not. It seems to me that any husband worth his salt would not have sent his wife on alone to an unfamiliar place.”
She stood, brushing the crumbs from her dress. “We would like to take care of you. We would like you to be one of us. If you wanted, you could come with me now and see where we live. It might help you to decide.”
Keira thought about what Samira was saying. It seemed this leader had an eye for desirable things, shiny things even, in which Keira could understand. They stole from the rich to give to the poor, they were about women’s rights and liberties… It all sounded pretty good; even Keira wouldn’t falter to take something shiny if it called out to her, but she wasn’t much of a thief.
“I’m a widow,” she explained when the mention of a husband was brought up. “Rather recently, actually,” she then said. “That is why I’m here, alone. Trying to start over, fresh place, fresh life,” she said quietly. When Samira stood, she tilted her head to look at her for a few moments, contemplating the decision she now had. Did she go? Or did she turn the offer down? Having a family would be nice, someone there if she needed, and it didn’t hurt that they were all women.
“I…” she paused and stood up, swiping crumbs from her. “I guess I’m coming,” she said, her eyes meeting Samira’s. “Lead the way.”
Samira led her to L’albergo, and used her key to open the front door. “I can show you a Neofita suite,” she offered. “But I cannot take you any further up, unfortunately. L’albergo is strictly divided by rank. However, I can show you the dining room and the terraces.”
She was proud of the building, proud of the sisterhood it housed, and eager to show it off.
They had to take a streetcar to get to L’albergo, the house that housed these group of women that Samira wanted her to be a part of. They were silent on the way, unable to speak of The Sisterhood so others did not overhear.
When they did arrive to the home, all Keira could do was to stare. It was magnificent and she had never seen anything like it; needless to say she hadn’t traveled much around London to see all the homes. “Wow,” she whispered as she stood on the front stoop and waited for the door to be unlocked. “Just the outside is gorgeous.”
“Do the women change rooms as they graduate to different levels?” She asked Samira. “How many ranks are there, and what is yours?”
“Yes, we change rooms as we graduate ranks. There are five ranks,” Samira explained. “The first level, on the ground floor, is the Neofite. They are the neophytes, the newly recruited. Their fazzoletto has a brown emblem. The Discenti live on the second storey, and their emblem is done in red. Discenti means… learners, roughly. Students. That’s the rank at which sorelle attend university. The amici - the “friends” are yellow, the sorelline - the “little sisters” are green. You asked my rank? Behold.”
Again, she pulled out her fazzoletto and showed it to her, yellow edging and emblem proudly on display.
“We share the third floor, though of course we all live in our own suites, as do most of the sisters if I am honest. Only a couple are called upon to share, two of the neofite, and they still have their own rooms. On the fourth floor are the fidate, the “trusted”, and they have blue. Our leader’s quarters and office are on the fifth floor. I hear that her fazzoletto is purple, but I have never seen it.”
Keira listened and then looked at Samira’s handkerchief. She was yellow, Amici, which mean she was third rank. She still wasn’t sure what to make out of all of it, but she knew that whatever The Sisterhood had going on, they must be doing right if they were living this well. She had lived well in Ireland, but nothing compared to this. Everywhere she looked, she was in complete awe.
“This place is amazing,” she said with a small smile. “Your leader, she really wants me here?”
“We who do the recruiting have become adept at knowing the kind of woman Lady di Palermo wants for the Sisterhood,” Samira said simply. “If you accept, you can move in immediately - this afternoon, if that is your wish. You would meet our leader in a couple of days.”
Keira looked around and thought about her choices. Go back to the little place she was renting right now and listen to others through the walls, or come here and not have to worry about being alone. There was so much in favor of her moving here, other than the stealing thing and already she had done that before. She’d done much worse than just steal and if it were to help those who needed it, she could do that.
“Alright,” she said, turning to Samira. “I’ll join.” It was a hurried decision and she hoped that she wouldn’t regret it later.