Ruthie turned to look away from the street and into the garden in which they stood. “I wonder how far this garden goes,” she said, and began to walk along a brick path lined with flowers and herbs. On the far end to one side, beyond some huge oak trees, stood two more structures that looked very much like the facade of the ballroom. In between, there was no grassy lawn; the entire area was lushly planted with aromatic flowers and shrubs. The rich and heavy smells had an intensity that was not familiar to Ruthie. They came across a rose garden, a small landscaped maze, and another area with a small fountain and benches. It was as though the outdoors had been designed with separate rooms, just like the interior of a house, all perfectly weeded and not a leaf out of place.
“This is so pretty,” Ruthie said.
“Thank you, ma’am,” a voice answered.
Startled, Jack and Ruthie spun around and found themselves face to face with a girl who looked to be almost their age. She had dark skin, her hair was braided in tight, even rows, and she was wearing plainer clothes than what they had seen on the people in the street. A dull brown dress that stopped just above her ankles and had a high collar was covered by a loose-fitting jumper—like an apron—made in a well-worn calico print. The girl held a large watering can. “You visiting the Smith family?” she continued, her expression a combination of curiosity and wariness. She spoke with a thick southern accent.
“Yes, that’s right,” Jack said immediately. “I’m Jack and this is Ruthie. We’re here from Chicago.”
“That up north?” the girl asked.
“Yes,” Ruthie answered. “But we’re not staying here for long. Just passing through.”
“Those traveling clothes?” The girl looked them up and down, especially their shoes.
“Yes,” Jack replied. “What’s your name?”
The girl appeared surprised by the question and stared at Jack for a moment before responding, “I’m Phoebe.”
“This sure is a beautiful garden.” Jack looked around at the greenery. “Do you work here?”
“Yes, I do. With my father. He’s in charge out here. We’re with the Gillis family.” Phoebe nodded to the grand house at the far end of the garden. “My mother works inside, and next year I will too.”
“Doing what?” Ruthie asked.
“Serving, of course!” Phoebe answered as though it were the silliest question she’d ever heard.
“We don’t live with servants in Chicago.” Ruthie hoped that might explain her question.
“Where do they live?” Phoebe asked.
“Ruthie means we don’t have servants at all,” Jack explained.
“Oh. I’ve heard about that. About up north.” She made “up north” sound like it was another planet. She shook her head the way people do when they hear something unimaginable. “How do people get on?”
“We get on just fine,” Ruthie answered, although she was not at all sure what Phoebe meant by the question. Was she asking how people got along with each other, or how they functioned on a daily basis without slaves?
Just then Phoebe’s eyes widened and she said, “Quick, follow me.” She led them around a large flowering bush to a shed nestled in an out-of-the-way corner. “In here.” She opened the door and motioned for them to enter. It was a potting shed, neatly organized with gardening tools hanging from nails on the wall. A small window over a worktable let in light. “We’ll wait in here for a spot.”
“Why? What for?” Jack asked.
“You didn’t hear him? James Gillis?” Phoebe asked.
“I didn’t hear anyone,” Ruthie answered.
“Neither did I,” Jack said.
“Maybe my ears are just listenin’ for him ’cuz he’s always callin’ for me. Soon as I get started on something, he wants me to do something else. He’s always interruptin’,” she explained. “You’d think he was master around here!”
“Who is he?” Ruthie asked.
“He is Master Gillis’ last son. He’s younger than me! Not yet eight even! But really I belong to his older brother, Martin.”
Ruthie had read a little about slavery in history class; still, this last statement amazed her. “What do you mean?”
“Master Gillis gave me to Master Martin last year. But he’s away in college and only needed one servant, so I stayed here. You sure you don’t have servants in … where was it?”
“Chicago,” Ruthie answered. “No, we don’t.”
“I’ve heard stories … some folks save enough money to buy their freedom and head up north.” She thought for a minute. “Do you think I’d like Chicago?”
“Sure,” Jack said. “It’s colder, though, and we don’t have palm trees.”
“Do you go to school in Chicago?” she asked.
“Yes,” Jack said.
“Even you?” Phoebe asked Ruthie.
“Yes. We go to the same school.”
Phoebe shook her head again in disbelief. “I think I’d like to try going to school. Can you keep a secret?”
“Of course,” Ruthie responded as she and Jack nodded.
“I can read. And write some. Look,” she said eagerly, pulling a book from a pocket under her apron. It was a much-used copy of A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, by John Newbery. Ruthie and Jack could see it was a book of rhymes illustrated with simple woodcuts.
Phoebe proudly pointed out her name written on the inside cover. “I don’t understand all of it, but I can read most of the words.”
“Why is it a secret?” Ruthie wanted to know.
Phoebe answered cautiously, “Folks don’t like their servants reading. You won’t tell?”
“Never!” Ruthie promised.
“And you?” Phoebe eyed Jack with a look that meant business.
“Promise!” he replied.
“All right, then,” she said, softening.
Jack was about to say something when they too heard the insistent voice of a boy—James Gillis—calling out for Phoebe.
“Just when I’m in the middle of something,” she said.
“What were you in the middle of doing?” Jack asked.
Phoebe looked at him like he was dim-witted. “Why, I was having the nicest conversation with you! Remember?”
“You said you worked with your father. Doing what?” Ruthie asked.
“The herb garden. Maybe you walked by?” She beamed. “That’s mine. I know all about herbs for cookin’ and elixirs for curin’.”
“Curing?” Jack asked.
“You know, medicines, preparations. My grandmother taught me, and now it’s my job.” She turned to Ruthie. “He doesn’t know much, does he?”
“Not about that.” Ruthie smiled. “Do you get to practice your reading and writing very much?”
“Readin’ is easy to practice. I have this book—and there’s others in the house that I … uh … borrow. I always put them back. James Gillis is supposed to be readin’, but he doesn’t take to it much. Writin’ is harder to practice, because I don’t have a slate of my own.”
Then Ruthie had an idea. She reached into her messenger bag and pulled out her small spiral-bound notebook. She tore out the few pages that had writing on them and shoved those back in the bag. “Here. Why don’t you keep this,” Ruthie offered.
Phoebe’s mouth fell open. “For me? A book of paper? And it’s got the lines already on it so I can keep straight!” She turned to see how many empty pages there were. “You can do without this?”
Jack jumped in. “She can get another one.” Then he nudged Ruthie. “Don’t you have some pencils in there too?”
Ruthie sank her hand in and rummaged around, finding two pencils.
Phoebe grinned from ear to ear and immediately wrote her name on the first page. “Thank you, Ruthie. This is just what I’ve been needin’. Now I can practice my writin’!”
“You’re welcome.”
“May I ask a favor?” Phoebe seemed hesitant.
“Sure,” Ruthie said.
“Would you write that t
his is a gift from you to me, so people know that’s the truth?”
“Of course.” Phoebe handed her the notebook and one of the pencils, and Ruthie printed A gift to Phoebe, from Ruthie Stewart on the cover. Ruthie passed it back. “How’s that?”
“That’s real good. Thank you. Now I best be gettin’ on. I don’t want a beatin’,” she said, so matter-of-factly it gave Ruthie chills. Phoebe opened the door a crack and looked out first. “You wait in here and come out after me. I don’t want James to know I’s talkin’ to you.”
“Okay,” Ruthie said.
Phoebe turned and looked puzzled. “What does that mean?” she asked.
Jack and Ruthie simultaneously remembered Thomas’ mother asking the same thing! “It means ‘all right,’ ” Ruthie explained. “In Chicago.”
After the door closed behind the young girl, Ruthie looked at Jack, stunned. “We just met someone who is owned by someone else!”
“It’s pretty unbelievable,” Jack responded. “Imagine what it must be like for her.”
Ruthie was quiet for a minute. “It’s hard, isn’t it—to imagine, I mean.”
“I wonder what will—what did happen to her,” Jack said.
Ruthie found it difficult to contemplate. There were too many bad options. Just like Louisa, Phoebe was caught in a circumstance that was totally unfair and filled with danger. Both these girls’ lives were filled with cruelty and pain simply because they had been born in a certain place and time.
“We should probably get out of here before anyone finds us. I don’t want to cause trouble for her.”
“Neither do I.” Ruthie opened the door of the shed an inch and listened. They heard what must surely have been young James Gillis giving orders, his voice that of a high-pitched tyrant. They waited until the sound moved farther away. When it was all quiet they left the shed.
Carefully, so they wouldn’t be seen, they made their way through the garden back to the porch steps. Ruthie had realized that, just as had happened before, only people experiencing the magic could see the entrances to the rooms. To anyone else, the garden appeared to continue on. From Ruthie and Jack’s point of view, it was like being in two worlds at once: seeing the garden and the nineteenth century in front of them, and seeing the Thorne Room and today just behind them.
They waited outside the French doors for a while, to make sure they had a clear opportunity to reenter the room. As they stood there, they saw James Gillis wending his way along one of the garden paths, coming very close to the porch. He looked directly at them but through them, a bored look on his face. Soon he saw something that caught his attention: an anthill in the cracks of the brick path. He bent down to investigate. Then, like a true tormentor, he proceeded to stomp on the ants as they scattered, not stopping until he had squashed every last one.
Racing across the room, they ran to the door through which they had entered. Ruthie made sure to leave it ajar.
“I almost forgot,” Ruthie said as they stopped on the ledge. “When we came through the room the first time, I checked the handbag. It was definitely glowing, especially when I was standing close to that tall cabinet.”
“You think that means something?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I’d really like to—” Ruthie was about to say she wanted to run in and take a look but was interrupted by the sound of the PA system announcing that the museum would be closing in ten minutes.
Jack looked at his watch. “Wait—what day is it?”
“Wednesday.”
Jack slapped his palm to his forehead. “I thought today was Thursday, when the museum closes at eight!”
“We don’t have time to climb back to the other corridor.” Ruthie knew she should have been paying attention to the time. There was only one possible way out. “We’ll have to go out through that access door full-sized!” They had tried fitting under before and found there was no gap between the bottom of the door and the carpet on this side to crawl under; it was the reason they’d built the climbing strip in the first place.
“It’s right in front of the information booth. This could be worse than not good,” Jack said, though he didn’t sound nearly as worried as Ruthie felt. What if they got caught sneaking out through the door with a stolen Art Institute key in their hands? What if they didn’t find a chance to sneak out until after the museum closed and they got picked up by security cameras? Ruthie’s heart throbbed faster and faster in her ears.
They followed the ledge until it ended at the door that would lead them back to Gallery 11, directly in front of the entrance and the information desk, where a guard almost always stood. They would have to wait until everyone had cleared out of the museum, but not too long after. Timing was everything.
“Ready to get big?” Jack calmly asked.
“Do we have a choice?”
Ruthie took the metal square from her pocket and grabbed his hand. She let the square drop and they stepped into thin air. The space shrank around them and their full-sized feet hit the ground just as they heard another announcement: “The museum is now closed.”
Jack put the square in his pocket, reaching in another pocket for the Art Institute key. He looked at his watch. “We’ll wait three minutes.”
“Can you hear anyone?” she asked.
Jack put his ear to the door and listened. “Nope.”
“Keep listening,” Ruthie said, feeling the eternity of the wait. She decided to look in her messenger bag to see what, if anything, was happening with the beaded bag. The rhinestones appeared dull and quiet; maybe a few tiny glints, but nothing like what she had seen in the room. She had a hunch there must be something in that cabinet behind its drawn curtains. But what?
Jack put his finger to his lips in a quiet sign. He slipped the Art Institute key into the lock and turned it slowly. He waited a few beats, then gently but firmly pushed the door open. They heard nothing—no footsteps, no voices. Jack slipped out; Ruthie, barely breathing, followed right behind him. The door closed and locked.
“Okay. No problem. Now just look normal,” he whispered. Ruthie doubted she could carry that off at the moment. All was fine until they were climbing the staircase to the main floor and a guard approached them coming down.
“What are you doing here? The museum is closed,” he said sharply, hands on hips.
“I had to wait for her,” Jack explained. “She doesn’t feel so good and was in the bathroom.”
The guard looked at Ruthie. In fact, she did look sick to her stomach, so the guard bought Jack’s excuse. “You’d better hurry to the main entrance.” He continued down the staircase.
Jack smiled at Ruthie. “Good performance.”
“Not acting,” she replied.
WHILE JACK WAS BUSY ON his computer and Lydia made dinner, Ruthie stood in Lydia’s studio admiring one of her canvases. It was a study for the large trompe l’oeil mural Dora had commissioned her to paint. This one showed a deep landscape with an old building in the foreground. It looked as if Ruthie could reach right into it.
“What do you think?” Lydia asked, coming around the corner.
“How do you do it? It looks so real!” Ruthie asked.
“Trompe l’oeil relies on perspective. Has Dora taught you that yet?”
“Yes, but I still can’t make it look like yours.”
“It takes a lot of practice. It also takes some tricks of perception. After all, trompe l’oeil is French for ‘fool the eye.’ ”
Ruthie tilted her head, pondering how her eyes were being tricked.
“Think about it,” Lydia went on. “You’re trying to create a three-dimensional image on a flat surface. It’s an illusion, that’s all. Does that make sense?”
“I suppose so. But the more I think about it, the more complicated it gets!”
“It can be,” Lydia agreed, “and things aren’t always as they seem, are they?”
“That’s like what Mrs. McVittie said to me—that I should question assumptions.”
“
That’s good advice. It works for all kinds of things, including visual assumptions. Try to apply it when you’re practicing your sketches. Sometimes your eyes see one thing, but your brain convinces you it’s something else.”
The phone rang, and Lydia stepped away to answer it. After she’d hung up, she returned to the kitchen. “Soup’s on,” she called.
“Who was on the phone?” Jack skidded to the table.
“A friend of mine with good news about the art thefts. It seems they’ve caught the thief.” Lydia handed Jack silverware to set next to big soup bowls on the table.
“What happened?” Ruthie asked.
“Apparently the police received information from a former girlfriend of a guy who worked part-time for a catering company that did business with many of the people whose art has been stolen. This young woman was suspicious when the guy gave her a necklace that he couldn’t possibly afford. And then he told her that the necklace was a tip from a catering job at one of the homes that had been robbed. She didn’t believe him, so she went to the police. He’d had some minor trouble with the police before this. They found his fingerprints in the residences that were hit.” Lydia ladled tortilla soup into big bowls, adding avocado and Mexican cheese on top.
“How many thefts were there altogether?” Ruthie wanted to know.
“About a dozen have been reported.”
“Did they get the art back?” Jack asked.
“I’m not sure. That could take some time, especially if he sold it on the black market already. But they have enough evidence to keep him in custody.”
“You know people who’ve had stuff stolen, right, Mom?”
“Yes. In fact, a residence I’m working in right now was robbed,” she replied. “Others are collectors who are well known and socially active. You know, people who host fund-raising parties, or open their homes to celebrate young artists in their collections. So I know who they are, but I don’t really know them. People are sure going to be relieved when this news gets out.”
Lydia’s dinner was so delicious, Ruthie ate as much as Jack. Afterward, Ruthie asked if she could see photos of more of Lydia’s trompe l’oeil murals. Lydia opened a file on her computer. “I took these photos the other day.”
Stealing Magic Page 10
