“Typhus requires this.” Mr. Beede rocked on his shoes and rolled his list in his fist. “Best to return upstairs, Mrs. Burton.”
“It’s all a mess up there too.” Her voice had grown tremulous. She clutched and unclutched her skirt. “Why this room?”
Jacob shook his head and whistled as he rolled the rug, giving a swat for me to move aside.
Mr. Beede sniffed. “Lucy, could you take—”
“I’m perfectly capable of returning to my room.”
She would not admit she was lost. We had moved everything haphazardly, left sofas in hallways, bureaus on opposite walls, books and vases on mantelpieces, baskets of bed linens near the stairs, carpets rolled and waiting for their walk to the yard and a good beating.
Not once had we thought about her.
I wondered if we would ignore her as we stripped her bedroom, if Jacob would lift her and move her to the side with the writing desk, if Mr. Beede’s list included returning her clothing and brushes and shawls to their original spots. If the chemises so neatly sewn with the days of the week would be folded and ordered from Monday through Sunday.
I wondered if Rebecca would merely have locked Mrs. Burton in her closet and got on with the work.
“You’ll be in charge of your own room.” I crossed to the mistress. “And I’d be more than thankful if you could take a handle of this basket.”
Upstairs, we tossed the sheets and stamped the dust from the chair seats. Trundled the runners and rugs to the hall. I held out her dresses and gave her the job of brushing them out. She was fastidious—flicks of the brush followed by the touch of her fingers, a quick frown if the nap was not to her pleasing, a repeat of the same pattern of movement from one dress to another.
Mr. Quimby remained wrapped around her slippers in a corner, giving a low growl if I came too close.
“How many poor souls has he mauled?” I returned a skirt of plum-and-brown plaid to its hanger.
“Only those who deserved it.”
“Really?”
“Are you worried?” She paused, then let out a laugh. “Shall we do the drawers?”
“Will you help scrub the floor?”
“Will you play a hand of cards?”
I took the chemises from her and tossed them in the basket. “Your cards are marked.”
“How else will I know what’s what?” She pulled open the bottom drawer, scooping out the pantalets. “How else could I possibly win?”
I tapped the handle of the basket and watched her heft the fabric. “Good aim.”
She curtsied, her hand moving in a grand gesture.
“You’re not at all what I expected,” I said.
“Neither are you.” She straightened, shaking her head. Her fingers found the silver watch hung from a short chain at her waist. She clicked open the glass and touched the hands on the dial. “It’s already half past one.” The corner of her mouth lifted in a smile. “Let’s see to the floors.”
But Mr. Beede refused her the chance. He escorted her to the conservatory to sit among the ferns and the hard-pruned roses. I brought her tea and nearly spilled it at the sight of her—how she rocked and glared. A fingernail tap tap tapping the glass of her watch.
I set the cup and saucer on the small table.
She did not acknowledge me. Just rocked and glared.
I turned to leave but was stopped by the rake of her chair.
“I am not useless,” she said.
“No. You’re not.”
In the foyer, Mr. Beede roughed my neck and pushed his face close to mine. “What are you thinking?” He gave me a quick shove. “Get to the carpets.”
LeRocque did not come today. Matron brought me breakfast and did not stay to talk about her beau. It rained most of the morning, fat drops against the high window and a deafening drum on the roof. Now a stillness. One hour after another. Hours upon hours to drive me mad.
“Who’s here?” No answer but the rhythm of my breath.
Mrs. Burton set much by her watch. Egg and toast at 6:30 a.m., with hair and clothing to be completed no later than 8:00 a.m., the conservatory at 9:30 to attend the meager plants. Embroidery at 11:00, and a plate of cakes at noontime sent by Cook. The hourly pass of the grandfather clock to match the time on its great hands with those of her own.
Afternoon hours were given over to correspondence. Not received. No, there were no letters for her to open or missives to read her, though she waited daily for the mail. But still she wrote. How careful she was, the nib of the pen placed in the wire grid, as letter by single letter the pen scratched and inked the paper. Then came the powder tipped and sifted, and a forty-five-second wait for the ink to dry. The envelope addressed to this cousin or that dear friend.
“Take these.”
And that first afternoon, my eyes dim from the nap I’d stolen while she wrote, my arms stiff from all the cleaning, I took the stack from her, yawned, and descended to the first floor to drop the correspondence on the silver tray by the door.
I ambled down the stairs and set the letters on the tray. My stomach rumbled, and I thought it was as good a time as any to sneak a treat from the kitchen. But I stopped and lifted the top envelope. The address was illegible, each dispatch a chaos of block letters that smeared into pools of black.
I ripped at the wax seal to withdraw pages thick with blotted ink. My breath stuck in my throat and burned. I grabbed the others, shoved them all in my apron pocket and bolted down to the kitchen and to my room.
“What is this?” I leaned over Rebecca, the envelopes crumpled in my fist. “You broke her writing template, didn’t you?”
She blinked and stared from her pillow. Then she gave a disdainful sigh.
“How long have you done this? Do you just throw them away? Why?”
“Are you going to hit me?” Her voice was rough from disuse, but her gaze was hard as glass.
“Look at this.” I pulled a paper taut and held it to her nose. “Can you read this?” I tossed it behind me, holding up another. “What about this?”
My hands trembled. How I wanted to lift her by the shoulders and shake her. And yes, I wanted to hit her hard enough to remove the smirk from her face. “I’ll tell Mr. Beede what you’ve done.”
She gave a quick laugh, then pushed herself up on her elbows. “And he’ll listen to you? You’re nothing to this house.”
My heart thumped and wavered. “And you are?”
“Mr. Burton is my cousin. I think I might mean something.”
“What right do you—”
“Mrs. Burton is better off without pining for a past. How she used to cry. It gave me a constant headache. And she doesn’t care to mix with the women here. The way they look at her, as if she’s . . .” She shook her head. “So, you see, it’s kinder this way. Isn’t it, Lucy?” She raised her hands to her hair, lifting the dingy tresses and feathering them round her shoulders. “Besides, it’s not your responsibility. So tell your little tale and I’ll make sure you’re out of this job and blacklisted at the mills.” She narrowed her eyes to slits. “Or has that already been your fate?”
The blacklist. I had heard it whispered through the burling lines at Amoskeag, the girls turning their heads to follow another as she was sent out the door to face the streets of Manchester in shame.
It was easy to join the list and impossible to leave. It traveled town to town—Manchester to Goffstown to Peterboro to here—carried on gossip and confirmed in formal letters.
Small infractions added up—too many late days, sick days, early days, broken threads, bungled dyes. The shift manager and the boarding house landlady both keen eyed and suspicious.
If you were obeisant and quiet, went to church on Sunday and to the lyceum on Thursday evenings, quilted on odd Wednesdays, well, you were assured your place at the mill and a snug little room with a draft.
I, on the other hand, had caught the eye of Albert Drake. He had wavy hair and a thick dark beard and walked me partway home at night before t
urning from the tenements toward the brick houses with tidy lace curtains.
And wives.
And children.
But who thought of that? Better to think of the man whose clever eyes are only for you.
Think of the man who takes you to see the traveling players and fancy magicians and steals a rabbit from a hat to give to you.
It was late summer and the moon was overfull and atilt. I had followed that moon earlier, bowing out of the quilting bee, scuttling the tenement alleys until I’d met Albert at the edge of a wide field and entered the players’ tent. A woman with flame hair strode the wooden stage, smoking a cheroot, and not giving a damn that people threw fruit at her. And that was when she played Juliet the first half of the evening. By the end of the night she caught the bottles tossed and never missed a word in her speech on women’s plights and rights.
I was half in love with her and half terrified, but Albert was certain my sighs were meant for him.
A magician roamed the tent, pulling coins from behind the ears of pretty girls. Earlier in the night he had drawn rabbits and cockatoos, and once a tall lamp from his brown derby hat. He stopped in front of me, and he might have been a mesmerist, for I could not look away from his violet eyes.
“Can I show you another trick?” He tilted his head, and the garnet on his houndstooth coat glittered.
Albert tightened his arm around my waist.
The magician winked and pointed at Albert’s coat. “May I?”
He reached forward, his index finger and thumb slipping into Albert’s chest pocket.
“Now, wait a minute, sir.”
But the magician lowered his lids, and his lips played a smile. “I’ll keep all your secrets. Nothing to . . . What’s this?”
He drew out a velvet ribbon as purple as the night. His eyebrow arched. Then he turned to me and tied it round my throat. His hand lingered on my shoulder before he slipped into the crowd.
The muscle in Albert’s jaw tensed and jumped. His eyes danced in jags around the tent.
“Wasn’t much of a trick,” he said.
“I thought he’d pull out a rabbit.”
“Disappointed?”
“No.”
But I was disappointed the night was ending. The people thinned, exposing empty bottles and crumpled playbills and flattened grass. A lanky man in a smock bent to take apart the boards of the stage. There was a throaty laugh from around back, and curls of yellowed cigar smoke from behind the tent.
Albert peered down at me. He touched the ribbon, then curled it round his thumb until the edges bit my skin. He pushed his lips against mine, his mustache tickling the corner of my mouth. It was the first time he’d kissed me.
He stole a white rabbit speckled with gray. I carried it under my arm and followed him to the river.
How bright the moon was. How dark his eyes. I still see both sometimes when I’m on the verge of sleep.
I found out about the blacklist when I confessed to the child. Albert sent me to live with my father, then sent the doctor who brought the potion I buried in the yard.
Rebecca stared at me through half-drawn lids. Her mouth hung slightly open, and every so often she ran her tongue on her bottom lip.
“Blacklisted, then,” she whispered.
She blinked and closed her eyes. Her chest rose and fell; her sickness still held sway, and the exhaustion showed in the dull pallor of her cheek. I pressed a wet cloth to her forehead.
“Has she asked after me?”
I held her wrist, rubbing the towel along one arm and then the other. The rash had abated, leaving scabs and divots. I rested her hands one upon the other when I determined she was truly asleep. But it reminded me too much of Mary Dawson in her casket. I pulled the blanket up to her neck to erase the image and glanced to the empty hall, waiting for Cook to set me free.
It’s dark now. The watchman has come and gone.
Lucy . . .
“Who’s here?”
Chapter Nine
Lucy . . .
Just a whisper at the last edge of sleep.
Lucy . . .
Like a quiver of air, like a sigh.
Lucy . . .
I scramble to wake, my limbs thick with night, too heavy to throw off the murmur of my name. Lucy.
I lurch up, pressing my palms to my face, gulping the crystal air, rubbing my thumbs against tears that will never stop falling.
Hoarfrost covers my cell window. The walls are layered with an intricate web of ice. My breath shimmers white. Winter has not fully ceded its battle to spring.
She calls my name more frequently now. It terrifies me.
“Time for prayers.” Cook took a bite of biscuit, then set the morsel that was left on the saucer by her bed. It was dark, just a round light of candle between the two of us. She roughed her pillow and gave a long-winded sigh before settling her psalm book on the hill of her stomach. She smoothed the quilt around her, resettled her frill of a nightcap, glanced at the ceiling to mumble something under her breath.
It was her ritual, one I’d become accustomed to, as I shared her room at night. I lay on a thin mattress under pegs that held her apron and frocks. It gave us quick access to succor Rebecca and a few hours each to sleep. I hoped Rebecca would soon take to her own room, though I feared she exaggerated her illness to take advantage of Cook’s ministrations and my own half-hearted attention.
Did I say that I was not fond of Rebecca?
If someone bit your ear, you might feel the same.
And indeed, her knowledge of my past hung heavy over me. It had no doubt been passed sour lip to sour lip that day in the kitchen, as Mary Dawson lay still and silent in the front room.
Cook had two aprons so stiffly starched they seemed in a constant billow from the wall. Her Sunday skirt and top hung from a separate peg, both a somber but fine gray wool. I noticed the same rich material in Mr. Beede’s vests and coats, and Jacob’s too. I had not yet been afforded a new skirt; perhaps a probationary period had to be met. Maybe I was perceived as a temporary acquisition and wouldn’t receive one at all.
“I think Psalm 139 tonight, Lucy.”
“As you wish.”
“It’s a comfort to share this with you.” She turned her head and peered at me. “A nod of the head to God is good for the soul.”
“Does he ever nod back?”
But no, I didn’t say that aloud—instead, I muttered “Amen” and yawned.
She licked her pinky, pressing the tip to the corner of the book and shuffling the pages. Her lips pursed and then pulled into a smile. “Here we are.”
O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me
Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising,
Thou understandest my thought afar off.
Thou compassest my path and my lying down
From the next room came a sharp screech, and Cook and I both sat up. We waited for another sound, but there was only a mumbling and then quiet.
“What’s that in your hair?”
“It’s nothing,” I said. “Just a bit of lace. Do you like it?”
“Did Mrs. Burton give it to you?” Cook’s eyes narrowed. She lifted her teacup, the psalm book tumbling to the edge of the bed. She slurped, peering at me over the cup’s lip.
“I repaired her writing board. It’s a thank-you.”
“Mmf.” The cup clicked down. She lifted the biscuit and chewed. Cook shook her head and kept her eyes on the crumbs by her plate. “Can she write more than jibber jabber now?”
I tensed, my hands curling around the edge of the kitchen bench. “The wires just needed tightening and—”
“I don’t like the pattern of it.”
“What?”
“That lace. Doesn’t suit you.”
“Well, I like it.”
“I’m sure you do. As I’m sure you’ve grown fond of working up there too.” She took another sip of tea, then drained the cup. “But it’s Rebecca’s place.”
It wasn’t
Rebecca’s place anymore. It was mine, and I admit it was a step or two better than scalding pots and skinning rabbits, though I was still required for that service as well.
I admit also to jealousy.
Jealousy. Envy. A bitter sin. It burns the stomach and clenches the heart and runs tendrils of fire under the skin.
It’s not a trait I’m proud to call my own, yet it likes to perch on my shoulder and whisper all manner of things in my ear.
Albert Drake had a wife and three children, and lived up from the mill on a street lined with elms. That lush summer had ticked over to a brittle fall. The leaves were browning at the edges, curling into themselves, chattering in the wind. The sky was a bright morning blue with high trailing clouds. The thinning light sharpened the corners of the neat brick houses, all painted a uniform white. I knew Albert would be at the mill, high above the lint that floated like flakes of snow, buoyed by the constant movement of spindles and thread. He wouldn’t be on the street with the elms. But his wife would.
I felt the curtains shifting each side of me, wives’ heads shaking in wonder. I didn’t care. My father had turned me out; I had nowhere to go. I stopped at No. 23, with its gloss black door and jonquils in a pot.
Mrs. Albert Drake answered the door after the second knock. She smiled, then frowned, her blue eyes questioning. A tow-headed boy peeked from behind her skirts. I watched her stroke his hair, no conscious thought to the movement. Her gaze cut past me to the street, then back.
My throat felt thick. I was here, I had come to confront her. To prove I existed. To damn Albert in her eyes.
But nothing came out of my mouth. Not one word. I stood, the wind whipping a strand of hair across my face and the sun too bright against that white painted brick. I watched her smile fade, her mouth grow tight, her eyes widen and then blink in painful acknowledgment.
There we stood, her hand smoothing the boy’s head.
Her lips quivered. “You’re not the first.” She stepped back into the shadow of the house and pressed the door shut.
My hands tightened to fists, nails cutting the skin. “You can’t ignore me.” I pounded the door, slammed the knocker until the brass vibrated. Pounded until the gardener came and dragged me from the steps.
The Companion Page 7
