The Companion

by Kim Taylor Blakemore

  Both Mr. Burton and I chased them as they rolled on the carpet. I took them from his hands to return to their rightful places.

  “Shall we pick up where we left off?” she asked me, though I was quite lost as to where that point of departure had been.

  “Would that be—?”

  “Cornelius van Baerle has come down with tulipmania. Chapter five, I think.”

  “Yes. Yes, that’s right.” I scooped the book from the settee, spreading the pages open.

  Mr. Burton craned his neck to see the words. “Dumas? The Three Musketeers was wonderful—I read it to you, remember?”

  “Mm.”

  “I’ll leave you to it.” He gave me a nod and exited the room.

  I cleared my throat. “It was the time when the Dutch and the Portuguese, rivaling each other in this branch of horticulture, had begun to worship that flower, and to make more of a cult of it than ever naturalists . . . Don’t you want to read the letter?”

  She twisted in her chair to face me, her expression as apprehensive as I had ever seen. But she nodded and came to the settee, pulling the letter from the folds of her dress with a trembling hand.

  “It’s so thin,” she said. She pressed the paper along her thigh. “Maybe she’s writing to say she’s forgotten me completely—”

  I covered her hand with mine. “How about we read it instead of needing to find smelling salts?”

  She released the envelope, and I slipped the fine paper from its nesting place.

  My Eugenie—

  It has been so long since you’ve written and I have felt as abandoned as if my own children had turned against me. I have encased my heart in tin these months so it will not break when thinking of you.

  And now a letter, quite from the blue, from your home that is nearer the moon than me.

  Tell Josiah we’ll be piling into cart and carriage and to expect us all mid-June. At least expect me—we shall be happy bachelors! Or perhaps it’s Mr. Beede you should inform, and Josiah you should send up Monadnock for an extended hunting expedition? It would make him happier than spending too many evenings with me.

  You have not forsaken me—

  Your Always Bright Aurora

  Mrs. Burton dropped her head to her hands and her shoulders shook. She pulled in a breath that rattled, and sat up straight.

  “We’ll need to tune the piano. And the conservatory—I think I’ve let the plants all wither and die. I have, haven’t I?” She reached for me then, her arms wrapping around and pulling me tight. Her palm drew circles on my back. Her breath was hot on my cheek, her skin flushed and near as warm.

  “I can count on you, can’t I?”

  But I did not know whether she needed me as ally, intimate, or maid.

  Chapter Twelve

  With a snap of his fingers, Mr. Beede returned me to the downstairs and the confines of the kitchen. Aurora’s visit neared; I was needed more downstairs than up. Rebecca resisted leaving my room, though Mr. Beede expected the exchange to be complete by noontime and I was near to shoving her out the door. Instead, she stood, hand mirror raised to reflect her face.

  “Is it really this terrible? Or is it only the mirror?” A mewling sound slithered from her throat as she turned this way and that to catch the light. She yanked at the neck of her shirt, trembling fingers unbuttoning the fabric, circling the mirror round her neck and across her bosoms. She pressed her index finger to each lingering scab.

  She gestured at her face. Her skin was sallow and sagged at the cheeks and brows. Her eyes, so odd and wide set, floated in sockets deep hewn and shadowed. Her hair, thin to begin with, was thinner now still, dry and dull as straw. The bones poked from her collar.

  The mirror slid from her grip, landing with a dull thump on the rag rug. “Am I ruined now?”

  “It won’t all scar.” Perhaps it wasn’t the kindest thing to say.

  Her shoulders shook. She raised her hands to her face, but the moan slipped through her fingers, followed by blubbering sobs.

  I glanced to the hall, wishing Cook was nearby to scold the girl into quiet. There was, alas, only me to provide some form of solace, or at least enough to bring her to her senses and send her packing up the stairs. After settling the mirror (facedown) on the small bedside table, I patted her arm. “Give it time.”

  “Oh God . . .” She sunk to the bed, awash in tears, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “This was . . . this is all I have.”

  My jaw tensed. Yes, there were scars, all of which would heal, as her hair would thicken and her body fill out. I tugged the blankets from under her and rolled them tight for the wash. “I’m sure you have more than that.”

  “But I don’t.” She lowered her head, then took my arm to rise. “I don’t.”

  I waited as she brushed and pinned her hair, eyes averted from the small frame of glass on the wall by the door. Waited as she wrapped her shawl round shoulders thin as a rail.

  She slowed at the turn to the kitchen. “Has the mistress been brought her meal?”

  “Yes.”

  A snivel, a worry of the lip, a lift of the head. “We’re more alike than you think. You and I.”

  “We’re not anything alike.”

  But I suppose she was right. Both tied by circumstance to that house in the woods: me through misjudgment and sin, she the poor cousin of Mr. Burton with no means but his kindness to buoy her. She was the mistress’s companion out of obligation and debt.

  Matron has a strange look on her face: glee and wildness. She peers down the short hall, quick glances that go from the door and then alight back on me. She’s got something hidden in the folds of her apron, her hands juggling between the skirt and the key to my cell, her hip pushing against the door, her left eyebrow twitching and lifting. Then she creeps inside, leaning against the wall with a satisfied little grin. “I’ve brought you something nice.”

  But then her forehead crinkles as she searches for a space to settle that’s not too damp and won’t stain her dress, and finds her choices are the edge of my mattress or back out the way she came. Down she kneels on the straw and cotton, one leg wobbly as she folds herself with a thump and a wheeze of air. “You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

  It is a kitten. A squirming tiny thing, already a nick in its ear and a patch of tar on a dove-gray haunch. How wild it is, twisting in her grip, paws spreading and retracting as it seeks to escape its captor.

  “Where did you find it?” My voice is nothing more than a breath. I reach to stroke its head, and pull away at the rough lap of tongue.

  “The gardener’s spring cleaning the cats. I happened to be quick enough to save this one from the bin.”

  “He’s a fine one, isn’t he? Listen to him purr.”

  “It could be a she.” Matron dangles the kitten aloft, then rests it back on her breast.

  “You’ll know in a few months’ time when there’s either another litter or a howling tom in your kitchen.”

  She presses her nose to his—for I have deemed him a he, have already thought Aloysius a fine name—and purses her lips, planting kisses that make him sneeze. She’s not Matron now. She’s soft and gentling and sweet. She’s rescued a grimy kitten from the hollow of a prison bin.

  Jacob had his kittens too. He’d smuggled two to his room while Cook and Mr. Beede caviled over the weekly order of sugar and lard. He christened the tabby JimJumJummy and the round black-and-white Checkers. I could hear him coo and cluck his tongue at night, and imagined them rolling across the pillows and leaping to the window before careening across his forehead. How else to explain the scratches that glowed pink and red?

  “I had a terrible dream, Cook. I think I aimed to tear it directly from my head.”

  It was near a week before the secret was out. The kittens clawed the doorframe, dropping with incessant thumps and plaintive mewls to the floor. No amount of whistling or pot clanging on my part could mask the sound.

  Cook handed him a burlap bag and length of twine. She said
to round up any others he could find.

  It was on his chore list anyway.

  He grabbed the kittens by the scruffs, dropping them in the burlap, twisting the top, his knuckles white as bone. The scratches stood red across his forehead, one disappearing into his pale hair. He stood by the door in silence, eyes boring the floor while Cook took her time with the keys. Out like a shot he was, legs stiff and determined, bag cradled against his chest and alee of the rain.

  As he had his chores, I had mine. Rebecca was not fully fit to regain all her duties, which left me to lug the meals up and down the stairs. I lifted the tray Cook made for the mistress and Rebecca and ascended the stairs to serve.

  Rebecca sat in the morning room across from Mrs. Burton, chewing through a rash of bacon and sloshing back a third milky coffee. I stood at the window. Rivulets of rain slipped the contours of the glass, parsing and distorting the lines of the carriage house and muddied paths to the paddocks and beyond. I watched Jacob stumble back empty-handed from the wood.

  “It is a bleak day,” I murmured.

  “I fully agree,” Rebecca said. “It is a horrible start to spring.”

  I turned from the window. The sconce candles, lit against the grayness of the morning, caught the typhus scars that still marred her skin. Her tongue darted out, catching a bit of yolk from a pock at the edge of her lip.

  Her eyes slipped to slits and darted to me before returning to her breakfast. She forked a third fried egg to her plate.

  Mrs. Burton skimmed her fingers across the cloth in search of the sugar bowl. It should have been sitting to the right of her teacup; that was where she expected it. But it was far across the table, tucked between the salt and a curious porcelain figure of a monkey in a tall red hat.

  Rebecca puckered her lips: “Are you looking for the sugar?”

  I crossed the room to reach for it, but Rebecca curled her hand around the bowl, lifting the spoon and dropping the contents with a splash into the mistress’s tea. Then she held the spoon aloft. “Another?” She didn’t wait for an answer, just spooned in more sugar and returned to her stack of bacon. “I read in the Almanack we’re to have a veritable cornucopia of rain this year.”

  Mrs. Burton blew a few quick breaths on her tea to cool it, hesitating before bringing it to her lips. “Are we?”

  I shifted on my feet, the empty tray pressed against my skirt. “Is that even possible? A cornucopia of rain?”

  Rebecca blinked. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “A torrent, perhaps. A deluge, a Noah’s Ark event, even. But a cornucopia?”

  Mrs. Burton cleared her throat and set her cup in the saucer.

  Rebecca stared at me, then at the open door. “Do you need something?”

  There was, of course, no reason for me to be up here anymore. I had lingered. All I wanted was a moment between Rebecca’s inane droning. Just a moment to say to the mistress how much I appreciated the gift she had presented and the kind words. Just a moment to let her know it was quite a surprise to find the tin of violet candies on my pillow and the note: You are already missed.

  I glanced at Mrs. Burton, but she let out a breath and turned her attention to her scarce-eaten plate of food.

  There was a thump in my chest, hard and insistent. I wanted to shake her shoulder. To tell her I missed her too. That I listened for her steps to the grand clock and imagined her setting her own watch by its beats. That my stomach clenched to see she’d left Rebecca to again choose her outfits—an awful puce this morning—and that the plaids Rebecca seemed to hate were the ones that suited her best. That when the house was drowsed with sleep, I crept across the hall with a clutch of hope she would be waiting on the back stairs for a game of whist. I wanted her to know I was not like Rebecca at all, that my attentions were not of obligations to be met. And yet, to say any such thing would find me turned out to the road yet again.

  Mrs. Burton rolled her napkin under her palm. “Tell Cook Mr. Burton will be home for dinner.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Is that all?”

  “Should there be something else?”

  “I wonder if you’d sent for the piano tuner?”

  “You needn’t worry yourself,” Rebecca said. “It’s all to hand, though Cousin and I wonder why there’s such a to-do. Over Aurora, no less.”

  I drummed my fingers on the tray and forced myself to ignore her. “And the conservatory? I saw the orange tree. Through the window. Blossoms already. I hope the poor tree can hold up all the fruit.”

  “You know about plants?” Rebecca asked. “Our Lucy’s full of secrets.”

  I admit to wondering if arsenic or strychnine had the fastest effect and why typhus was kind to some of its victims.

  “Lucy is a marvel with plants.” Mrs. Burton slid a look toward me, her eyes bright as a doll’s, as she dissembled. “Her grandfather was a master gardener. Mr. Friday is giving us a tour this morning. I think you should come, Lucy. We’ll attack your bleakness full force.”

  Rebecca dropped her fork to her plate. “I’m sure Lucy has quite enough to do without muddling about with us.”

  “Cook can spare her for an hour, can’t she? It’s so little to ask, really. Besides, all the sewing scissors have been sent down for the grinder, so with what else shall we pass the time?” She leaned toward Rebecca, reaching out a hand. “You should have a good lie-down, Rebecca. We can’t have you overtired.” Mrs. Burton clasped tight and stroked her knuckles.

  Rebecca hesitated, her skin flushing red. “Perhaps a small nap.”

  But Cook would have none of it. She glared at me across the cutting table, then pointed to the utensil drawers in the hall. “Get the knives and sort them out for the grinder. He’ll be wanting a rest from the rain, and I’ll be wanting the knives sharp as my mother’s tongue by evening.” She clutched her apron and turned to the stove. “A tour of the fancy greenhouse . . .”

  “She’s only asking for an hour.”

  “And that’s an hour I need you, Lucy.”

  I should have nodded, gone to the drawers, and sorted the knives—the apple parer, the fish scaler, the meat cleaver, and all the shapes and uses in between. The peddler was coming to grind the knives and axes, to sit and tell Cook the state of the world beyond ourselves. Instead, I lifted my shoulders and pressed a hand to my stomach and said, “No.”

  “No.”

  “No.” My stomach jittered. “The mistress asked. I said yes.”

  Cook narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms. “You’ll see to the knives.”

  “I’ll see to them after I’ve seen to her.”

  She creased her lips and moved them all around, peering hard at me before letting out a breath.

  I swallowed. “She asked—”

  “Jacob will tell her you’re indisposed here.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t cross me, Lucy. You’ve a place here. And you’re best to stay away from up there.”

  But I did not have a place, did I? I had stopping points is all. Miss Lawrence’s Academy for Girls was quite a nice one; the barn I gave birth in was a rough one. The loom was a weary one, and Albert’s lips a dangerous one. The boarding houses, the alleys, the quick kisses and clutched coins, the damp straw and circle of candlelight as I watched the wonder of Ned’s breaths for the short time he lived.

  A clanging bell interrupted us.

  The peddler had arrived. He stood on his buckboard, rain rolling from the sodden brim of his beaver slouch hat, dripping from the tips of his long beard, and beading on his oilskin coat. He clanged the cowbell that was tied to a precarious leaning pole, and slackened the reins until they settled on the back of the mule that carried him into the yard.

  Cook folded her towel and gave a great clap. She grabbed her bonnet from the wall, tying it round her throat, and slinging open the kitchen door. I followed behind, covering my eyes against the insistent drizzle.

  A fine mule neared, with a stubborn fierce eye. With a jangle of his traces, he slowed to a
stop before us. A tall chest of drawers and a wide wardrobe were lashed tight to the base of the wagon. The round-wheeled grinder hung by ropes over the side. The man dropped the spoon he’d used to clang the bell, and it swung in an arc from its rope cord.

  “Would you welcome this peddler to tinker and toil, grind and grouse, sell you wooden nutmeg, pasty jewels, sweet snake oils, maps to purgatory, and not much beyond?”

  Cook stepped from the kitchen. “Tom Knapp, get down off your wagon ere you drown.”

  He pulled the brake, then swooped his hat from his head and bowed. “Mrs. Cook, you are the divinest of sights.”

  He caught my gaze and bowed even lower. He was the most uniquely ugly man I’d ever seen. His gray eyes glowered under the jutting hang of forehead. His nose, crooked in the middle, flattened against his right cheek. When he smiled, his long beard fluttered and returned to rest on his chest. He wore a tanned leather shirt with thick black tattoos just visible above the collar.

  “Who have we here?” he asked.

  “Lucy,” I said.

  “Lucy. Who has taken the place of Mercy after her tragic demise.”

  “Mary.” Cook wrung her hands. “Sweet girl.”

  “Right. Mary.” He clapped on his hat and released the brake with a squeal. “But we’re not wanting to intrude or bring bad remembrances. Old Jedd and I will settle ourselves in the barn. I’ve a clock tells time backward that I’m keen to show John Friday.”

  “You’ll come in for my minced pudding and I’ll hear no more.”

  He pulled his beard, then slapped his hand over his heart. “Mrs. Cook, you are my star.” His eyes lingered on me as he pulled away.

  The kitten rolls in Matron’s lap, pink-and-black paws kneading the air. “Will you hold him?”

  I wrap my arms tight around my chest, dig my nails into the skin of my ribs. “I’d better not.”

  It hurts too much to do so.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Candlesticks from Laconia, mourning pins from Rochester, butter stamps from Rumney, starched collars and sock garters from Lebanon. Saffron and pear soap and pasty gaudy bracelets. The peddler’s cabinet was full of treasures, but we were none allowed its delights. There was no money to speak of, at least outside the confines of Mr. Beede’s small safe. We were paid in scrip and lodging. The peddler, Mr. Beede said, had nothing that could not be found in town.