Bell Weather

by Dennis Mahoney

  Molly laid the napkin down and covered it with her hands.

  “I’m sorry to have worried you,” she said. “Thank you for the very best butter on the kippers.”

  “Which is wasted if the kippers aren’t eaten!” yelled the cook, turning to find that Molly was already gone, the heel of bread remained, and the crushberry pie was missing from the table.

  Molly carried her prize halfway up the stairs and froze before the landing. Jeremy was coming just above her to the left. Before he turned the corner, she slid down the railing with a flowery poof of skirts. The quick descent and the sumptuous aroma of the pie made her dizzy and she almost dropped the dish, but she escaped through the parlor and reached the stairs on the opposite side of the house.

  There was Newton, the liveried footman, trimming lamps and pleased to see her. He snipped a wick and said, “Nicholas desired you to know that he and Mrs. Wickware will return at three in the morning. I suggested that he may have meant three this afternoon, but he was most adamant, repeating it distinctly. Perhaps it was confusion from his terrible exhaustion.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Molly said, hearing footsteps behind her. “If Jeremy inquires where I am, please inform him I have hastened to my room after a necessary trip to fetch more ink.”

  “I will indeed,” Newton said, widening his nostrils to appreciate the pie.

  He stepped aside to let her pass and trimmed another wick.

  Molly reached the upstairs hall just as the parlor door banged open, and the last thing she heard before she padded away, silent in her stockings, was the placid voice of Newton saying, “Yes, Mr. Jeremy. She has hastened to her room…”

  * * *

  Molly behaved during dinner, neither arguing nor slouching, and ate two whole kippers of the three that she was served. After days of sour looks and worsening petulance, her placidity seemed all the more angelic, like the hush when a newborn finally stops wailing. Molly sensed Jeremy’s animal frustration as he stood behind her chair, unable to manhandle her without Mrs. Wickware’s say-so, and Mrs. Wickware herself was nervously attentive, wondering why her troublesome charge was suddenly a model of decorum. It was as though a sparking fuse had fizzled at the bomb; the explosion didn’t come and yet the fear of it increased. Molly pleased and thank-you’d, curtsied and apologized, and the tension of her manners persisted after the meal to the weekly bloodletting.

  The leeches Mrs. Wickware had purchased with Nicholas’s help were six inches long, greenish-brown with a fine red stripe along their dorsals, and were kept in an earthenware jar. They had suckers fore and aft, one for leverage and the other, triple-jawed with a hundred minuscule teeth, to open a wound and feed. Mrs. Wickware believed them to remedy fatigue, aches, fever, infection, tired blood, melancholy, sanguinity, and countless other ailments, and so had ordered weekly bleedings for the entire household, including Jeremy and herself.

  Nicholas’s health called for three weekly bleedings.

  The first and only time Molly had been bled, she’d fought until Jeremy had tied her arms to the chair. He had used the wrong knots, however, and Molly had shaken free so dramatically that most of the leeches had flown from her arms and landed, with viscous plops, along the edges of the room.

  Tonight, Mrs. Wickware again brought the leeches into Molly’s bedroom, where she placed the jar on a nightstand and set aside the lid. Jeremy had been practicing knots all week and stood behind a chair in the center of the rug. He had a length of dirty rope and looked eager to employ it, but Molly took a seat and rolled up her sleeves unbidden. The room seemed to shrink with all of them together. Mrs. Wickware plunged her hand into the jar; leeches could be heard writhing at her fingers.

  She turned and asked Molly, “Will you need to be restrained again?”

  “No, ma’am,” Molly said, turning up her forearms to better show the veins. Her sweat thickened when the first slippery leech was brought toward her. It was hungry and had already drawn blood from Mrs. Wickware’s wrist, but Molly stared at it directly and refused to flinch away.

  “Do you hope to be exempted on the grounds of good behavior? This is not the proper attitude,” Mrs. Wickware said. “Leeching, though unpleasant, should not be viewed as punishment, you see, but as a beneficial practice we must all of us accept.”

  “I understand,” Molly said. “I think it’s humbug and hideous like everything you do. But I will patiently submit because I know I cannot win.”

  Mrs. Wickware flushed and looked at her triumphantly, her countenance enlivened, her rigidity dissolving. “I am satisfied to hear it. We learn by rote and force what later we believe through wisdom and experience. You cannot see the benefit but bow to my authority. I ask for nothing else. You needn’t love me to obey me.”

  Jeremy loomed close, twisting on his rope. Molly balled her fists and didn’t shrink away as Mrs. Wickware attached the first leech below her elbow. There was a momentary sting. She waited and it passed. “Leech saliva dulls the pain,” Nicholas had told them over dinner, “allowing them to feed undetected on their hosts.”

  Undetected, Molly thought, if she were swimming in a pond—not sitting in a chair and witnessing the meal.

  And yet she sat and let it happen, even when Jeremy leaned down to watch the leeches suck, and Molly imagined they were each a little Wickware at dinner, comfortable and swelling up full enough to pop.

  * * *

  Molly lay in bed, waiting for the Elmcross Church bells to toll three o’clock. She worried she had missed it, having heard the bells at two so very long ago—what if she had dozed and missed the long-awaited cue?

  Her bed had been moved to the room immediately adjacent to Mrs. Wickware’s chamber, the better to ensure that she behaved after dark. On most nights, Jeremy forced her to the room and locked her inside. If Molly thumped or shouted, trying to disrupt Mrs. Wickware’s sleep, Jeremy would lock himself in Molly’s room and watch her sleeping from a chair all night long.

  Tonight, however, Molly had climbed into her bed without being asked. Her door was locked as always but Jeremy had departed, and thanks to Molly’s docility in the latter half of the day, Mrs. Wickware’s suspicions fell away and soon her purring snores could be heard in the neighboring room. Molly passed the hours reading, and when Elmcross Church finally tolled three, she blew her candle out, crept to the third-story window in her shift, and quietly opened the sash.

  A thick warm fog had drifted over Umber from the sea, and all she could discern, thirty feet below, were the wrought-iron spikes of the fence surrounding the house. The rest of the street was pillowy mist, seeming substantial enough to catch her if she fell. She stepped out onto the narrow ledge and closed the sash behind her, fearing a draft under the door would rouse Mrs. Wickware. The only light came from the moon, which was gauzy in the fog and illuminated the haze rather than anything within it.

  She had climbed throughout her life and had rarely fallen, thanks to her natural balance and an absolute, delusional belief in her abilities. The day in the library when Nicholas cracked his tooth had been the closest she had ever come to serious harm, but now, creeping farther and farther away from the safety of her window, she thought of the iron spikes and lost her purchase on the wall. She flailed her arm in circles, grabbed the corner of a shutter, and pivoted on her toes until her body swung outward like a door upon a hinge.

  Her shift flapped. Her hair swung darkly in her eyes. A second later, she was back against the wall, clinging tight, panting against the shutter wood and doubting her resolve. Then a long knotted rope tumbled to her side, dangling from a window of the garret overhead, where Nicholas, invisible, was waiting in the shadows.

  She safely reached the rope, and then she climbed and shut her eyes, still reeling from her slip, and didn’t look again until her hands were on the sill. Nicholas pulled her in; his feeble grip was actually more a hindrance than a help. She clambered into the garret and sighed against the wall. The effort had exhausted her, but her weariness was nothin
g compared to that of Nicholas, who sat on the floor and shivered in the damp night air. When she hugged him, he was cold and smelled of chemicals and sickness. He had long been known to dose himself in secret when he needed. Yet his eyes were ghostly bright, reflecting the moon but seeming to glow much stronger from an indwelling light.

  He opened a basket at his side and handed her a fat buttered roll, a small flask of wine, and a cold piece of mutton he had somehow procured without detection. Molly kissed his cheek and fell immediately to eating, greasing her lips and buttering her fingers.

  “How were your leeches?” Nicholas asked, pleased to see her eat.

  “I don’t know how you bear it three times a week.”

  “I remember they are creatures feeding to survive. I cannot loathe a leech for following its nature.”

  Molly held his wrist, examining the veins, and said with a mouthful of roll, “I’m astonished you have any more blood left to suck.”

  Once her eyes adjusted to the dimness of the garret, she saw its cobwebbed corners and unadorned walls, along with a rocking chair, covered by a sheet, that Mrs. Wickware had stored after rearranging the house. It had been Frances’s chair in her bedroom, a room now occupied by Jeremy, whose burliness and weight had called for stouter furniture.

  “Has she written?” Molly asked.

  “Possibly,” Nicholas said. “The mail is taken to Mrs. Wickware directly from the door. I have hit upon a way to send letters out. Receiving them, however—”

  “Have you told her how we’re treated?”

  “The news would make her suffer. I have told her we are well and miss her every hour.”

  Molly flumped backward onto her heels, sitting apart from Nicholas and lowering her head. The roll that she’d been chewing turned doughy in her mouth.

  “She’d be here if not for me. It’s all my fault! Frances, Mr. Stevens … Most of the servants try to avoid me. And you,” she said, looking up to glower. “I know you play a role when Mrs. Wickware is watching, but you play it so well it almost breaks my heart. Even here alone, I would swear that you were angry.”

  “I am,” Nicholas said, speaking so calmly, and with so little movement, that it seemed as if the words had issued from his mind. “I am angry at Father and at my own futility. And yes, I am angry at you—irrationally so, I openly admit. You are no more to blame for acting as you did than the leeches are to blame for feeding on our arms. Mrs. Wickware herself is merely who she is. I admire her extremity.”

  “Admire!” Molly yelled, standing up and stomping around the garret. “She has all of us in misery and buckled to her will!”

  “She does it perfectly,” he said. “Do you not find it wondrous that in so little time, she has screwed down the house tighter than our father? The servants are rewarded for exemplary performance. They are handsomely rewarded for informing on each other. Have you heard about Emmy?” Nicholas asked. “This very afternoon, she informed against her mother for giving you the pie.”

  “I stole it!” Molly said, spinning around to face him.

  “But the pie was hers to guard. The woman’s own child turned her in within the hour and received half a crown.”

  “It’s horrible.”

  “It’s masterful. With nothing but her will and a well-trained brute, Mrs. Wickware has silenced all dissent and shaped the home as she desires. You and I could do the same, instead of suffering and quailing. I have learned a great deal that we will use to our advantage. Please come and sit before your pacing wakes Jeremy.”

  Molly hesitated, furious but aware of just how noisy she had been. Her heart was like a cricket captured in a hand, frantic in the dark and struggling to spring. She tiptoed back and sat before Nicholas on the floor, feeling wretchedly alone and pushing the uneaten food out of sight. He held her hand, his touch so feathery she might not have noticed it but for the coldness of his fingers.

  “We know her methods now,” he said. “We know the servants fear dismissal and crave reward, yet most of them are willing to support us in revolt. I have spoken to each of them—”

  “What revolt?”

  “More of the same,” Nicholas said. “A great deal more. Mrs. Wickware trusts me thanks to my dutiful compliance. I will carry on complying, as will all the servants.”

  “What of me?” Molly asked.

  “Be yourself, far more than you have been. You must laugh at every stricture and defy every rule. You must shoulder all the blame and suffer all the penalties. I need you to be strong, but you will not be alone.” He smiled and his chipped tooth glinted in the dark. Then his grip turned firm. “Many Mollys will assist you.”

  Chapter Eight

  Mrs. Wickware had instituted a shut-door policy with the coming of autumn’s cold. There were few greater threats to health than icy drafts, a fact she had expected Molly to appreciate given her constant, vocal worry over Nicholas’s well-being. And yet the girl had flouted the rule from the day it was announced, not only refusing to close doors behind her but opening doors wherever she encountered them, and it was this—the long chain of household doors hanging wide—that Mrs. Wickware followed in pursuit of her devilish quarry.

  Nary an hour passed anymore without Jeremy, the servants, or Nicholas coming to Mrs. Wickware with a fresh report of Molly’s misbehavior, which had unexpectedly worsened after a single, promising day of near capitulation. Mrs. Wickware had never seen the like. One evening Molly had been leeched without struggle, admitting to defeat and seeming to submit, and then the very next day she had seemed possessed. She routinely rejected her meals, fled the dining room, and hid for much of the day, emerging just long enough to steal a piece of cake or a bottle of milk from the kitchen. One day Jeremy had locked her in her room, and Molly had emptied her wardrobe onto the busy street below. As punishment for this, Mrs. Wickware had taken the clothes Molly was wearing, certain it would teach her to respect her own belongings. Instead the girl escaped and sprinted through the house, entirely naked, astonishing the staff before returning, pink and laughing, to the safety of her bed.

  There had been weeks of such behavior. Mrs. Wickware had attempted all manner of common punishment, from depriving Molly of comforts to locking her in closets, and although these efforts failed at every turn, she told herself that discipline would finally win the day, as when a long-standing illness yields to steady treatment.

  Yet to make matters worse, the girl was unpredictable. Some days Molly would appear at breakfast, eat whatever was placed before her, and outshine the queen in ladylike comportment. She would follow every rule for half a morning and then, just as Mrs. Wickware’s guard began to lower, she would abruptly reignite the flames of misbehavior.

  This morning had been similar. Weeks of battle had left Mrs. Wickware prone to overreaction, and when Molly passed her in the third-floor hallway and failed to step aside, she was ordered to kneel and face the wall until such time as Mrs. Wickware returned. Molly had complied, saying, “Yes, ma’am,” curtsying, and kneeling like a penitent, and had remained there—or so it was believed—for more than an hour, until Jeremy reported she had vanished.

  Newton the footman had seen Molly running through the downstairs study not two minutes ago. Sure enough, Mrs. Wickware discovered, the study doors were open and fresh-cut flowers had been scattered on the floor. The study led to a narrow hall, where the chambermaid, blackened in a cloud of settling ash, explained that she had just emptied one of the hearth grates when Molly grabbed the pan and threw it into the air. Mrs. Wickware stepped around the ash, ignoring the maid’s apologies, and followed the next open door into the gilt room, where the largest portrait—that of Lord Bell’s father, high above the floor—was hanging upside down. She continued to the library, where Nicholas stood amazed before a castle made of books. It was six feet tall with battlements and towers, a marvelous construction he had found moments ago, he claimed, after hearing Molly’s laugh and chasing her into the library.

  “I saw her place the final book,” he said, p
ointing to a leather-bound copy of The Rise and Fall of the Lost Volcanic Islands. “I said I would report her and she answered…”

  Nicholas hesitated, seemingly reluctant to repeat what Molly had said. Mrs. Wickware’s legs quivered when he paused. Her skin began to blotch and she was breathless, having walked much faster in the chase than she had realized.

  “What did she say?” Mrs. Wickware asked.

  “That I could tell the chicken-breasted harpy anything I liked.”

  She struck him on the cheek, sudden as a reflex.

  He accepted the blow and said, “I’ll take it down straightaway,” beginning at once to reshelve the books, and Mrs. Wickware could not decide whether it was Nicholas’s poise or Molly’s pandemonium that made her want to knock the castle over, or—if only it were possible—to climb inside, close her eyes, and hide behind its walls.

  She pursued Molly throughout the house, encountering finger-pointing servants and flagrant mischief at every turn. She visited the stables outside, found the groom trying desperately to calm the frantic horses, and followed a trail of dirty footprints back inside the house. They led her through the kitchen, up the rear stairs, and straight to the third-floor hall, where Molly knelt—neither breathless nor disheveled, the bottoms of her shoes immaculate—on the very spot of the floor where Mrs. Wickware originally told her to remain.

  * * *

  “You actually saw her enter the library?” Mrs. Wickware asked Nicholas at dinner.

  She had questioned—repeatedly—everyone who had witnessed any part of Molly’s escapade. How could anyone traverse the entire house, including the stables, and accomplish so many things in so little time unopposed and unassisted? It had taken two grown men with a ladder to reposition the inverted portrait in the gilt room, and Nicholas had spent hours returning the nearly five hundred books of Molly’s castle to the shelves. And yet the servants’ accounts harmonized down to the minute. Molly herself refused to speak a word in self-defense but rather smiled, seeming tickled by the story, until Mrs. Wickware locked her in a closet and stationed Jeremy at the door.