The Glass Ocean

by Beatriz Williams

  Tess turned up the charm, a hand pressed artlessly against her breast. “Please, you can’t imagine . . . I can’t lose this job, I can’t.”

  More true than he knew.

  A commotion at the other end of the line made the policeman swerve. “You! Back!”

  Tess took the opportunity to say, “If you please—I’ll just nip right in . . .”

  The policeman was already moving elsewhere, muttering under his breath about the pay not being enough. “All right, all right—servants’ entrance is around to the left. And don’t let me catch you loitering about.”

  “No, sir. Thank you, sir.” Tess was through the cordon before he could think better of it, invisible in her servant’s costume, just another menial bustling hither and thither.

  That was the idea, at any rate.

  The biggest job of our lives, that was what Ginny had told her. Enough to keep you for life.

  No, Tess had said. She was done. Finished. That last job they’d done, she’d been as near to caught as made no difference. There was a price on her head. Well, on the head she’d been wearing at the time. They’d dyed her hair black for that one. She’d been South American money, the daughter of a wealthy cattle rancher looking to add to Daddy’s art collection. It was a heist they’d played a dozen times before. Some time with the picture to “examine” it. Maybe even a few girlish sketches.

  Never big pieces, always small ones. Miniatures, tiny triptychs. Once even a few pages from a medieval book of hours. It had been hell coming by the right pigments for that one, the crushed lapis lazuli and the gold leaf. But Ginny had arranged it. Ginny always arranged it.

  What’s the harm? Ginny would say, sounding so like their father. Yours look as good as the original. They’ll never know the difference.

  And they hadn’t. Until that last switch, when something—Tess flinched at the memory of it—something had gone wrong. She’d made a mistake. It had been a miniature, attributed to Holbein. More complex than usual. Tiny, delicate brushstrokes, miniature jewels glimmering on the neck of a sixteenth-century beauty. Rubies. And she’d painted sapphires.

  Don’t think about that. Don’t. The police were looking for Assumpta de los Argentes y Gutierrez, swathed in furs and dripping in paste jewels, not Tess Schaff in a black uniform and white pinny.

  But she kept her head down all the same as she hurried around the side of the house. Her hair still felt rough where she’d washed out the dye. A thin film of gray had clung to her cheeks and neck and back, refusing to rinse out. It had taken hours of scrubbing with carbolic before she’d removed the stain of it, and even now, Tess felt like she could feel it on herself, that shadow of deception upon deception, lie upon lie, as though the corruption from her soul had grafted itself upon her skin for all to see.

  Ginny had snorted at the notion. If you want to go clean, go clean. Don’t make a drama out of it. But first . . .

  But first.

  Most New York townhouses had a service entrance in the front, a half-flight of steps down. But not the Hochstetter house. It sprawled over four lots, a vast French Renaissance pile, the pale stone glowing in the electric streetlights, adorned with an abundance of tracery and the odd gargoyle. A service entrance would have ruined the façade, made too obvious the labor required to keep the great house running. The staff entrance was around the back, where it couldn’t bother anyone.

  We don’t bother anyone, that’s what her father had always said. Never mind that the nostrums he peddled were compounded of turpentine and red pepper, mutton fat and mineral oil. By the end, Tess suspected he half-believed his own claims, that he had spent months in the desert learning the tribal secret of snake oil from a Hopi medicine man, when instead he was a German immigrant who had failed as a pharmacist, lost his wife, and, if Tess was being honest, his mind as well.

  Sometimes, he would be Zaro the Magnificent, an opulent silk scarf wrapped around his balding pate, peddling pearls in vinegar—otherwise known as vinegar in vinegar. A town over he would be Spitting Snake, an honorary member of an apocryphal tribe, having borne his daughters with him through territories unknown to other white men. Anything but Jacob Schaff, anything but the man he had been.

  Dimly, Tess remembered a time when their mother had been with them, when she had played waltzes on the small upright piano her father had hauled with them from Hell’s Kitchen to Kansas. Until her mother died and the music ended. Tess couldn’t play; she had, she had been told, a tin ear. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate music. She just couldn’t produce it, any more than Ginny could replicate the shades of a sunset or the curl of a lip. Her skill with a brush was a talent, yes, but one that had brought her more sorrow than joy, from the day her father had caught her sketching a dragonfly on the windowsill and decided her quick fingers might be put to more practical use.

  Better to sing as her mother could, lieder from the old country, softly, piano and voice blending in perfect harmony.

  Tess could hear music now, the notes of a waltz, a waltz like her mother used to play, sweet and sad all at once. For a moment, she thought she could hear her mother’s voice, singing in German.

  She probably ought to have eaten something today, shouldn’t she? Her stomach had been too unsettled to cram down more than a hard roll, and here she was, hearing music that wasn’t.

  Except it was. That was no phantom tune, beneath the more strident tones of the orchestra. It was a waltz, played on a piano with a far more resonant tone than her mother’s. Tess didn’t know much about musical instruments—being too small to secret in a pocket, they hadn’t figured largely in her felonious past—but she could tell that this one was the very Rembrandt of its tribe, its tone rich and sweet even through the leaded-glass panes of the faux-medieval window. Through the gothic arches of the window, Tess could see a woman as rich as the sound, sitting at a piano bench, her fingers drawing forth wonder. Her dark hair was coiled in the latest style, as sleek as the wood of the piano. Pearls shimmered in restrained opulence at her neck.

  But what really made the scene was the man, his body bent toward the lady’s as he reached over to turn a page, leanly muscled beneath his evening clothes, his hair slicked away from a side parting, revealing a thin, interesting face, all bones and shadows.

  Tess wanted to paint him. She wanted to paint all of it: the fall of lamplight on the piano, the music on the stand, the woman’s slender neck bent over the keys. But most of all, she wanted to paint him. The music wrapped around Tess like an enchantment, stoking longings she hadn’t known she had, a longing to be inside that well-lit room, as perfect as a doll’s house, with that man, that man, leaning toward her with that same predatory grace, restraint and hunger all mixed together written in every line of his body.

  Damp tracked down her cheek. A tear.

  Tess dashed it away. A fool, that was what she was being. We’re not like other people, that’s what her father had always told them. Why would you want to be like everyone else? Pah, cattle.

  Maybe it was a lie. Maybe they could have been like other people, Tess thought rebelliously. Maybe her father could have worked behind the counter of a shop and Tess might have learned to play the piano. Never that well and never in a room so elegant, but enough that some man might have come calling and leaned over her to turn the pages and laughed with her as this man was laughing now, the mood breaking, changing, as they plunged together into something fast and clamorsome, hands moving together across the black and white keys, bumping into one another, making a game of it.

  Enough. Tess shook herself out of it. Even if they’d been like other people, she wouldn’t have been like that, like Caroline Hochstetter. She recognized the woman from the pictures Ginny had cut out of Town Topics: the former Miss Caroline Telfair, pampered Southern belle with a pedigree that went back to God. Or, at least, to three or four Founding Fathers.

  Tess felt a shiver of unease. This wasn’t part of the plan. Mrs. Hochstetter would be in the ballroom, that’s what Ginny had in
structed her. Out of the way. She’ll be busy with her guests, you’ll have a clear field, I promise.

  Never mind. Ginny couldn’t control the movement of the tides—or spoiled society matrons. Grimly, Tess set her back to the music room window and stomped toward the servants’ entrance. If Caroline Hochstetter was sparking with a swain in the music room, it meant she wasn’t in her rooms, and from Tess’s point of view, that was all that mattered.

  The kitchen was just as Ginny had described it, not one room but several, all busy with people bustling about. Through a door, Tess could see some of the upstairs servants taking their ease, sitting over tea, or something stronger, in the upper servants’ hall. Tess felt the tightness in her chest ease slightly. In this, at least, Ginny had been right. Mrs. Hochstetter’s lady’s maid was firmly ensconced in one of the heavy oak chairs, her profile to Tess.

  “You! Take this.” A superior-looking sort of man in a starched shirtfront thrust a tray into Tess’s hands, champagne glasses jangling. “Ballroom.”

  Damn. Well, she could always abandon it somewhere along the way. Tess tried not to buckle under the weight of the tray, not silver plate, judging from the heft, and most certainly too big to stash beneath her apron.

  We’ve bigger fish to fry, honey. She could almost hear Ginny’s voice. What’s a tray to this?

  What, indeed? Ginny was in it for the money, but Tess had demanded more, had refused to act until she had assurance of it: a new life, in a new land. Papers, passage, everything she needed to start fresh. Tessa Fairweather. She’d picked the name herself, based on another of her sister’s maxims: Keep it close to the truth. She could be this woman, this Tessa. She knew she could. Twenty-four and unscathed, returning home to England after a failed attempt to make her fortune in the new world.

  After all, Tess knew everything there was to know about failed fortunes.

  Are you sure you want this? Ginny had demanded, when she’d named her conditions. You might not have noticed, but there’s a war on over there.

  The sarcasm, Tess knew, came from concern. Concern and hurt. It hadn’t been easy for Ginny, at fourteen, being saddled with a four-year-old and a father whose every scheme was crazier than the last. Ginny had cooked, cleaned, stolen, lied, helped their father when necessary, stood up to him when she’d dared. She’d done whatever was needed to keep Tess safe, and Tess knew she saw this development as a personal betrayal. In Ginny’s eyes, she was still looking out for Tess, still keeping her safe.

  Even if keeping her safe meant keeping her just one step away from being taken up by the law.

  Tess had seen Sing Sing. She didn’t want to go there. But that was where they were headed if they stayed on their current course. The world had changed over the last twenty years, grown smaller. You couldn’t pull a scam in one town and escape with impunity to the next: the telegram wires clacked, electric lights lit the night, and papers poured with abundance from the presses in every town, news traveling from place to place with the speed of a brushfire. The day of the traveling con man was done. At least for them.

  “Come with me,” Tess had urged. “We’ll—oh, I don’t know. We’ll open a seaside stall. I’ll paint miniatures on seashells and you’ll sell them.”

  “To the gulls?” Ginny had snorted. “Never mind that. I’ve bigger plans.”

  Just like their father. “Don’t plan too big, Ginny.”

  “You just concentrate on the job. I’ll take care of the rest.” There had been a look on Ginny’s face, a look that reminded Tess of their father when he had promised them that this was the next sure thing—which it wasn’t. Not ever. “Don’t fret, honey. This will be the easiest job you’ll ever have.”

  Ginny had a strange idea of what constituted “easy.”

  Tess hoisted the tray up in the air and weaved her way through the throng of menials, out through the green baize door, into a marble hall easily the size of the entire town where Tess had been born. You could herd cattle in that hall and still have room left over for a dry goods store and a saloon.

  Arches led off the hall into varied delights: a Moorish smoking room; the lush dense plants of a conservatory; the music room, the doors open now, the piano still. Tess frowned over her burden of bubbly. Where had Mrs. Hochstetter gone?

  Tess bobbed and weaved through the guests, proffering her tray at random. Let them deplete her stock; it would give her an excuse to find the servants’ stair, just returning to the kitchen, that was all, lost my way . . . But first she had to find Caroline Hochstetter. If she’d gone up to her room, the whole game was up.

  The ballroom had been decked with a fantasy of palm fronds that tickled Tess’s nose and blocked her view. The undulating dancers reminded Tess of a kaleidoscope she’d begged for as a child. It had seemed so pretty at first, all those little pieces swirling from one pattern to another, but it had given her a headache when she’d looked too long, trying, always trying, to find that moment of stillness, for the pattern to fix itself into something safe and sure.

  Or, in this case, a woman in rose silk, draped and beaded. Surely that should be easy enough to spot? It took a moment, but Tess finally found her, dancing with a man with a monocle and moustache, his uniform stiff with assorted orders.

  Keeping her eyes on Mrs. Hochstetter, Tess sidled sideways. A man, obviously the worse for drink, lurched into Tess’s path. Tess swerved—and bumped into something hard and warm, sending the last glass of champagne on her tray flying up and over, sparkling liquid cascading over the immaculate evening attire of the man who had grabbed her shoulders to keep her from falling.

  For a moment, all Tess could do was gape. She’d soaked him, soaked him through, from his white tie to his ebony studs.

  Inconspicuous. She prided herself on being inconspicuous. And now—

  “Are you all right?” His voice was like chocolate. English chocolate. Rich, but with a hint of bitter. Tess lifted her stricken eyes to his face, and found herself looking into the eyes of the man who had been with Caroline Hochstetter in the music room.

  “I’m so sorry, so sorry. Er, it’s that sorry, I am.” Tess hastily improvised a brogue, backing away. Irish. She could be Irish. The swells thought all servants were Irish, just another Bridget or Mary. “I’ll just be after getting you a cloth, so I shall. Don’t step in that!”

  Shards of crystal festooned the ground, like Cinderella’s slipper come to grief. Tess stooped and began scooping the fragments onto her tray with more haste than discretion.

  “Wait.” The man’s hand snagged her wrist. “You’ve cut yourself.”

  “’S nothing,” Tess mumbled. He wasn’t supposed to be behaving like this, this man. He ought to be berating her, threatening to report her, demanding restitution for the clothes that cost more than a laborer’s wage. It was easier to rob them when you could despise them. “Please, don’t. Don’t be after troubling yourself.”

  “It’s no trouble.” Deftly, the man produced a handkerchief from his pocket and bound up her wrist. He smelled of cologne and fresh linen, whisky and spilled champagne. Tess’s head reeled with it.

  “Are you—is it a doctor, you are?”

  “No, a newspaperman.” Tess could hear the amusement in his voice. He gave the linen a twist, rising easily to his feet. “But one does pick up a useful skill or two along the way. As well as a bit of ink on the cuffs.”

  An undertone there, but Tess didn’t have time to figure it out. Lunging to her feet, she backed away, the tray under her arm. “Thank ’ee. Thank ’ee kindly, sir. I’ll fetch a cloth, sir. Won’t be a moment, sir—”

  His handkerchief marked her hand like a brand. Tess twitched it away, discarding it with the tray on a small table beneath a potted palm. Stupid to feel a pang of regret. What was she planning to do, sleep with it beneath her pillow? Just because the man had been human enough to spare a kind word for a menial didn’t mean she should begin embroidering linens.

  There. A barely perceptible line in the paneling marked the entranc
e to the servants’ stair, just where it had been on the plans Tess had studied. Tess slipped through, drawing it shut behind her, closing out the light, the music, the sounds of revelry.

  That man wouldn’t be able to return to the dancing, soaked with champagne like that. Petty to feel glad for it. Especially since she was unlikely ever to see the man again, whoever he was. Tomorrow, God willing and the crick don’t rise, she would be setting sail on the Lusitania, with new documents, a new identity.

  Two floors up, Ginny had said. Family bedrooms were on the third floor. And by bedrooms, she meant suites, composed of a sitting room, bedroom, and dressing room. The master and mistress slept not just in separate rooms, but in separate kingdoms, each with their own staff.

  Third door to the left. There it was: Caroline Hochstetter’s dressing room, but it wasn’t empty. A woman jumped up as Tess entered, her filmy drapes agitating unattractively around her spare frame.

  “Really! Is it too much to ask for a moment of peace in this nest of parvenus?” The woman glared at her and Tess felt her hands go very cold as she recognized her. Margery Schuyler, to whom Ginny had sold a Franz Marc painting. Or, rather, a Tennessee Schaff copy of a Franz Marc painting.

  Tess ducked her head. “Beg pardon, ma’am,” she mumbled. She’d been German for that one. An ex-mistress of the great artist, all brassy hair and German accent. Margery Schuyler had lapped it up, loving her brush with the louche, wanting to know what it was like to be, ahem, painted by the great man. Given that he painted mostly animals, and those in distorted shapes and colors, Tess had not found the question flattering. But she was used to art collectors who thought they knew more than they did. They made the best marks. “Only family upstairs. That was what we was told.”

  Margery Schuyler sniffed, although whether it was with scorn or from the permanent drip at the end of her rather long nose, Tess couldn’t tell. “I was just leaving.”