The Stepsister's Tale

by Tracy Barrett

  You are a Halsey. You are the last of your line, you and your sister. You have much to live up to. Never disgrace the Halsey name. On and on they whispered as Jane hurried, risking a dangerous tumble, and the voices didn’t cease until she stood once more in the South Parlor, surrounded by their own familiar clothes and furniture and cooking things, and Maude made rose hip tea, to help them recover from the climb.

  Chapter 2

  Jane opened her eyes first to a dim and misty sunrise, then to bright hope, and finally to bitter disappointment. Mamma had not returned in the night.

  She walked through the haze to the barn, where Baby and the goats waited impatiently. She milked them and took the pails to the dairy, where Maude was churning butter. It was pleasantly cool in the little stone house, which was perched over an underground spring that carried snow melt from the distant mountains. Yesterday’s cheese was progressing nicely, so Jane broke up the curds. Six days, she thought. It’s been almost a week since Mamma left. Maybe I should—

  Betsy’s sharp bark interrupted her thoughts, and her heart lightened. Maude ran to the door of the dairy and exclaimed, “It’s not Mamma! It’s a carriage!” Jane joined her, and they leaned out to see.

  A shiny carriage, pulled by two chestnut horses, came up the drive. The fine animals looked strong, yet they were leaning hard into their traces. The carriage must be carrying something heavy, Jane realized. As it rounded the last curve, an enormous gray horse tied to the back came into sight, head down, hooves dragging. “It’s Saladin!” she said.

  Surely all the eggs and cheese and butter in the world weren’t enough to trade for a carriage and two beautiful horses. Maybe someone who owed Papa a gambling debt had decided to ease his conscience by giving them to Mamma. Maybe Mamma had fallen sick and a kind stranger had brought her home. Or maybe—Jane felt a chill—maybe Mamma had died, and the owner of the carriage was returning Sal to them. She took Maude’s hand to comfort her and was herself comforted by its warmth. Together they walked to the drive, where the carriage was making the final turn.

  The driver pulled on the reins. The horses stood with their heads down, their sides heaving. The carriage door opened, and Jane, dreading to see a messenger who would deliver bad news, felt her heart skip a beat. But out stepped Mamma, road dust caking the folds of her dress, her face drawn with weariness, but smiling. She opened her arms wide. The girls ran to her, Jane weak-kneed with relief, Maude showing only joy.

  “Hello, my chickens!” Mamma said. “Wait till you see the surprise I brought with me!”

  “We can see it,” Jane said.

  “Where have you been for so long?” Maude demanded.

  “Oh, the surprise isn’t the carriage,” Mamma said. “I mean, yes, that is our carriage now, but that’s not the surprise. The surprise is what’s in it.”

  “Visitors?” Maude squeaked. Jane shrank back. Why would Mamma do this to them? What would they say to visitors? How could they receive them in their ragged dresses and bare feet and uncombed hair? She licked her finger and rubbed at her face, trying to remove the smudges that she knew she must have gotten in the barn.

  “Not visitors,” Mamma said. “Something better. Something you have been wanting for a long time.” What had they been wanting? Before they could guess, Mamma told them. “A new papa, and a new little sister.”

  “Oh!” breathed Maude. “A baby!” There hadn’t been a baby in the house for so long, not since Robert.

  “Not exactly a baby.” Mamma looked toward the carriage. A tall, balding man stepped out of it and then turned and reached back inside, speaking in a low, coaxing tone. He was answered by a torrent of words that the girls couldn’t make out, although their meaning was clear: whoever was in the carriage was unhappy.

  Mamma laid her hand on the man’s arm. “Let me try, Harry.” The man stepped back, and Mamma reached in the open door. “Come, Isabella. Come see your new home.” She stood for a moment and then moved away, helping someone out and then down the two steps.

  Jane caught her breath. The small girl looked unlike anyone she had ever seen before. Her hair was of that pale brown called ash-blond, and it hung to her waist in shiny waves. Her oval face was a clear, delicate white, and she had pale pink cheeks and dainty red lips. Her sky-blue dress stopped just below her knees, showing snow-white stockings and tiny white shoes. Her hair was held back by a blue ribbon that had to be silk. She was the most beautiful thing Jane had ever seen, standing perfectly still in front of the dry stone fountain in the curve of the gravel drive. Maude whispered to Jane, “Is she real?”

  “Of course she’s real, silly,” Jane whispered back. She had a sudden flash of a memory—of Papa’s mother, Grandmother Montjoy, who had died when Jane was four. Grandmother’s face had been white and wrinkled, her staring eyes unfocused, and she’d mumbled as she reached out a shriveled finger and gently stroked something—a porcelain fairy, Jane remembered, with dark gold curls and blue wings.

  The man, whose thin hair was a duller version of the girl’s and whose sweat-streaked skin might once have been as perfect as hers, bent over and whispered in her ear. She crossed her arms and turned her head away from him, her lower lip sticking out and trembling.

  Mamma called, “Girls, come here.” Maude looked at Jane, who could read her own reluctance mirrored in her sister’s eyes. They didn’t dare disobey, and after another moment’s hesitation, Jane walked to the carriage. Maude followed a step behind.

  “Harry,” Mamma said, “these are your new daughters. This is Jane, the elder, and behind her is Maude.”

  “I am happy to meet you,” the man said. He didn’t sound happy.

  “Where are your curtseys, girls?” Mamma asked sharply. Startled, Jane tucked one foot behind the other and made an awkward bob. Maude did the same. It had been so long since either of them had had to perform a curtsey—Jane couldn’t remember, in fact, the last time they had met someone new—that she knew they looked ridiculous. Especially with dirty, bare feet and knots in their hair. Especially in front of that fairy princess.

  The fairy princess burst out laughing, and Jane felt herself flush. “What was that?” the girl asked. “Is that how people curtsey in the country?” Maude looked as though the child had slapped her.

  “Perhaps you could help them learn to do it better,” Mamma suggested. “Would you like to show them how a curtsey is done in town?”

  I don’t want her to show me anything, Jane thought.

  The girl picked up her skirt in the tips of her fingers, and placing her right foot behind her left, she sank down nearly to the ground, then rose smoothly, lining her two tiny feet up next to each other again. Jane suddenly felt too tall, and lumpy. Her dress had grown so tight over her chest that her breasts were flattened against her ribs, and she’d had to let out the skirt of her dress to accommodate suddenly round hips. This girl was so slender that even her small curves were graceful.

  Maude reached out and touched a tawny curl that dangled past the girl’s shoulder. “You’re beautiful,” she breathed.

  The girl didn’t answer, and Maude, looking embarrassed, dropped her hand.

  “Take the horses into the barn and wipe them down well,” the man said to the coachman. “When I am satisfied that you have done your work properly, I will pay you.” The man, who had unharnessed the horses, made a quick bow and led them around in a tight circle and down to the barn.

  Mamma held out her hand to the girl. “Come, Isabella. Have some supper and then go to bed. You’ll feel happier after you sleep. In the morning, Jane and Maude will show you all around. There might be some new puppies in the barn—are there, girls?”

  “Yes, Mamma.” Maude was eager to catch Mamma up on everything that had happened in her absence. “She had eight right after you left, and only one died. There are three boys and four girls, two brown, three brown and white, tw
o—”

  “Father,” Isabella said.

  “Yes, darling,” he said promptly.

  “I don’t want to see puppies in the barn.”

  “Then you won’t have to. There are rats in barns, anyway. Come in and have some supper now, and then I’ll put you to bed.”

  “I can put her to bed,” Mamma said. “I’m her mother now.”

  “Stepmother,” Isabella said. “And I want my father to put me to bed.” She clung to the man’s hand.

  He looked down at her. “Of course, sweetheart. Of course.” He picked her up and carried her over the broken front steps. He stumbled over a crack and muttered something, and then set the child down at the door, which he pushed open. They followed him as his booted footsteps rang in the front hall. The sound, so familiar yet almost forgotten, made Jane’s stomach lurch.

  The man came to an abrupt halt as two mice scurried into their hole in a door frame, disgust clear on his face. “My God, Margaret,” he said. His daughter pressed against his side, and he put his arm around her.

  Jane knew the front hall was big—Hannah Herb-Woman’s entire hut could fit in it with room to spare—but to her it had always been just the place you had to go through to get to the living quarters. Its marble floor gleamed only when one of the girls polished an area to play a game on it, and now that these strangers were staring, she realized how dingy the stone was. The velvet drapes framing the tall doorways were tattered, and the gold tassels that fringed their edges were faded and dull. The decaying staircase loomed above them, the flaking gilt of the scrolls and curlicues along its sides glinting even in the dim light that came through the open door. The light also caught the strands of a spider web that stretched from a banister to the remains of the chandelier high on the ceiling. When Jane saw the girl wrinkling her nose, she, too, caught the odor of mold and rot.

  The man glanced at Mamma. “I told you it was in need of some repair,” she said. Jane detected an uneasy note in her voice.

  “I know, but I had no idea....” He shook his head. “It hasn’t been that long—only a few years.”

  “The decay had started even when I was a child. My parents managed to hide the extent of it.”

  “Father!” burst out the girl. “You said we were going to have supper!”

  “Yes, darling.” He instantly turned to her. “Yes, of course. Where...?” He looked around.

  “Oh, we don’t use much of the house,” Mamma answered vaguely. She gestured at the South Parlor. “This is where we spend most of our time. I’m afraid it’s not very presentable.” Not presentable? But they had been so proud of how they had cleaned it.

  They all followed her in. Harry wrinkled his nose as he looked around. “The first thing we’ll do is get the kitchen back in working order. I won’t be comfortable in a room with the smell of cooking in it.”

  “We haven’t cooked a thing all day,” Jane said indignantly. They had eaten nothing but cheese and some nuts that Maude had found.

  “Girls—” Mamma began, and hearing the exhaustion in her voice, Jane leaped forward.

  “Sit down, Mamma,” she said. “I’ll find something.” Maude was already heading out to the dairy, so Jane went to the pantry. She glanced at the bare shelves, hoping against all logic that somehow more food would have appeared there. Of course it hadn’t. The shelves were waiting for whatever Mamma had brought home from the market; that’s why she had gone to town. Or was it? Jane wondered, suddenly suspicious. Had Mamma really gone to meet that man?

  Nonsense. They were almost out of everything. Jane poked around in one nearly empty bin and then another. Turnips, onions—no, she didn’t think Mamma wanted her to take the time to cook anything. Apples—yes, that would do for a quick supper. She filled her apron, choosing the reddest ones. Into her pocket pouch she put almost the last of the biscuits, the twice-cooked bread that lasted a long time in the cool pantry. She sat on the floor and rubbed the apples to wipe off the dust and to bring out their shine. When they were as rosy as Isabella’s lips, she gathered them up and went back to the South Parlor, passing through the long-unused dining hall, where marks on the floor showed where the long table had once stood.

  Isabella was sitting on her father’s lap on the big chair, her feet on the armrest. She squirmed, and her shoes made streaks on the cloth. Jane looked at Mamma, but Mamma appeared not to notice, and Jane put the food down and went to join Maude outside.

  The sun was low, and the evening noises were starting. Crickets and tree frogs screeched out their songs, and a light breeze rustled through the trees beyond the henhouse, lifting a little of the heat from the late-summer day.

  Maude showed Jane six new-laid eggs in her basket. “One for each of us and two for the man. He’s big and probably eats a lot,” Maude explained. She had placed them carefully in the basket, nestled in straw to keep them from breaking.

  Jane picked the few remaining berries from a bush near the kitchen door. Walking carefully, she entered the South Parlor just as Maude was placing the egg basket on the scarred wooden table they used for everything from sewing to cooking to eating. Mamma had lit the lantern.

  “Look what I have, Mamma,” Jane said. “We can eat these after the eggs.” She carefully pulled the berries out of her pockets, heaping them on the table.

  “Lovely, dear,” Mamma said. “Where—”

  But Isabella interrupted her. “I can’t eat those,” she said to her father. “She touched them with her dirty hands!”

  “So wash them,” Jane said, as she would to Maude. Her fingers were a little grimy, she supposed, but none of it was nasty—just good, clean dirt from pushing branches aside and picking fallen berries up off the ground.

  “There appears to be no water,” Mamma said as though to no one.

  Oh, for heaven’s sake, Jane thought. Of course there isn’t. There are no servants to fetch it.

  The man spoke to Isabella. “Don’t worry, darling. We’ll wash the berries, won’t we, Margaret?”

  Mamma’s lips were pressed together. Jane looked at the man. Didn’t he know that this meant he should stop now, before Mamma got angry? But Mamma just said, “There is nothing wrong with the berries. Isabella may wash them if she really wants to, or she can have apples and a boiled egg. That should be sufficient. A light supper is all a lady requires.”

  “I want berries,” Isabella said. Mamma pressed her lips together even tighter, and Jane waited for the storm. But it didn’t come. Instead, Mamma reached into the back of the cupboard and pulled out a small white bowl painted with tiny flowers, one of the few pieces that had been saved from her beautiful china. They had not been able to sell this one because of a tiny crack.

  They needed water to cook the eggs, anyway, so Jane went outside to the pump. They had used up the rainwater stored in the cisterns weeks before. While she was working the pump handle she thought how ridiculous it was to pretend they were still the Halseys of long ago, with servants to fetch heavy pails of water and to wash things that didn’t need it. When she came back, the man took the jug and hastily poured a little water into the bowl holding the berries, splashing some on the table. “She really isn’t used to country ways, Margaret,” he said apologetically. “In the city—”

  “I understand, Harry,” Mamma said.

  Jane could tell by the way Maude was looking at her that her sister shared her shock. Mamma would never have allowed one of them to tell an adult what to do, and she would have sent her to bed without any supper if she wasn’t satisfied with what there was to eat.

  When the water in the pot hanging over the fire steamed, Jane placed the eggs in it. They knocked about pleasantly. When they were done, Maude scooped them out. Jane cracked her egg quickly, blowing on her fingers after each touch. Soon the soft white and golden yolk were spreading on her plate, to be eaten while hot and delicious.

&
nbsp; Isabella made no attempt to peel hers. Instead, her father did it, his big hands clumsy. He sucked on a reddened forefinger while his daughter daintily spooned up her egg. Jane watched, fascinated, as the girl wiped her mouth after each bite. Isabella caught Jane staring at her and glowered. Jane dropped her gaze and crumbled some biscuit into the smear of yellow that remained on her plate, and then spooned it up.

  “Father, look what she’s doing,” Isabella said with a giggle.

  “Hush, darling,” he said. “That’s how they eat in the country.”

  “In the country?” Jane asked. “Don’t they eat eggs where you come from?” The girl and the man exchanged a glance, but neither answered. Jane felt she was doing something wrong, but what?

  They ate the apples, Harry peeling and slicing Isabella’s and his own, and then Mamma took Harry to see the gardens. Isabella perched on the edge of the big chair, whose brown velvet was almost rubbed away. Her toes barely reached the floor as she sat silently, her hands crossed in her lap, her eyes fixed on a spot a few feet ahead of her. Maude asked her abruptly, “How old are you?”

  “Thirteen.” Isabella didn’t look up.

  “What?” Maude asked. “That’s older than I am! You can’t be thirteen.”

  Isabella raised those extraordinary eyes to her. They glittered like the green ice on top of the pond in the winter. “Why can’t I?”

  “Because...” Maude gestured at her. “Because you’re so small!”

  “I’m not small,” Isabella said. “You’re big.”

  “But...” Maude started, and then fell silent. She looked at Jane, indignation plain on her face.

  “Maude is tall.” Jane came to her sister’s defense. “Tall like Mamma. So am I. And you’re short. Your hands and feet look like they belong to a baby.” Their mother said that their long fingers and toes were an aristocratic trait, and besides, they would grow into them, but Jane didn’t believe her. Secretly, Jane admired the girl’s small feet and hands and her slender limbs, unlike her own arms and legs, which were unladylike and muscular. The girl crossed her arms over her chest, tucking her hands into her armpits, and looked away. Jane shrugged.