The nighttime sounds were different here. In the city, even during the darkest hours there had been the sound of horses and cabs, laughter, a policeman’s whistle. People, loud and brash. But here were sounds that came from her memory: The rustle of the trees in the night breeze. Crickets. A night bird. But no sound of the sea, or smell of a rotting seabird or fish, or salt on the air. She hadn’t been magically transported back home, but the sounds made her feel less afraid, less needful of the softness of the nearly shapeless rag doll in her bag, the one that Randolph had seen on her bed when he had looked into her tiny room on the train. He had picked it up and stared at it for a moment, and his skin had flushed and he had dropped it as though it had burned him.
After many minutes she wearied of standing and, without asking his permission, she sank onto her bags and rested her arms and head on her knees. She was hungry, but they had eaten everything packed in the food hamper and left the hamper in the train car. At Madame Jewel’s, the food hadn’t been plentiful, but there had always been food when she was hungry.
“No man wants a skeleton in bed.” Madame Jewel seemed to delight in dabbing the cook’s lumpy mashed potatoes onto the girls’ plates. “If they do, they can go to the city morgue and find some poor thing wasted from opium. And don’t think there aren’t those who won’t!”
When would they eat again? Randolph had told her little about where they were going except that it was a town called Old Gate. Madame Jewel had talked of a great house, but he had only talked of the town.
“Full of the most godawful, sanctimonious sticks you’ve ever met,” he had said. “But they mind their own business down there. They were taught a lesson in the war.”
Kiku had no idea what the word sanctimonious might mean, but she understood being taught a lesson. It was what people said when they thought you had done something wrong, or that you didn’t know better.
“Goddammit, it’s about time.”
Kiku turned her head to follow his gaze. She noticed the matching blazes of white on the two horses’ faces first, and then the large man seated at the front of the carriage they pulled. His skin was so dark that he took shape from the night like a spectre.
Settled inside the carriage beneath a thick woolen blanket, Kiku stifled a sneeze. Outside, a woman was making a fuss over Randolph, and Randolph was replying in the same formal but condescending tones he used with Madame Jewel. The woman was certainly welcoming him, but she didn’t know that Kiku was inside the carriage. When Mason Goodbody, the man driving the carriage, unloaded Randolph’s luggage and boxes, the carriage shook, and Kiku squeezed one of her own rough portmanteaux to reassure herself it was still there.
At the station, Randolph had roughly introduced her to Mason. “Mason, this is Kiku. Take her to the cottage and make sure she gets some food.” Mason didn’t stare at her as so many people did, but only nodded and said, “Yes, Mister Bliss.”
Randolph turned to her. “I’ll see you in a day or two. Behave yourself. Mason will make sure you have everything you need.”
She had wanted, just in that moment, to cling to him. He had told her nothing about where she was to go or what she was to do. Only that this Mason would be somehow responsible for her and that she was supposed to be a good girl. She knew what the men at Madame Jewel’s meant when they told her to behave. Would this Mason take her into his bed? Alone, without the protection of Madame Jewel, was she to become the property of any man Randolph wished?
Madame Jewel had told her that she was not owned by Randolph Bliss, but obligated. Standing in the rising moonlight, watching as Mason helped Randolph into the carriage, Kiku saw no difference between ownership and obligation. With Randolph inside, Mason startled her by putting a gentle hand on her arm and whispering, “Get on in. We’ll get you home soon.”
Mason had helped her into the carriage, and as he indicated that she should cover herself with the blanket, he said, “I’ll tell you when we get out of town and you can sit up.”
As Randolph’s and the woman’s voices receded, Mason told the horses to “get on,” and the carriage began to move. A few minutes later, just as Kiku felt she could no longer bear the suffocating blanket, he told her that she could come out. “There’s nobody out on the road to see you.”
She shook off the blanket, feeling her hair fly up, stretching after the wool, and when she was free, she breathed deeply. The air smelled of horse, but it was clear air, and chilly. As her eyes adjusted, she looked out the window to see that the sky had become a star-meadow. Not since she’d last been on ship’s deck at night had she seen so many stars. Could a place that let her be this close to the stars be a bad place?
She knew she was being foolish. Anything could happen to her. Anything had.
Randolph had talked of the town, but she was being driven away from the town.
For a while, the land on either side of the wagon seemed to be cleared. Perhaps farmland. But finally the trees thickened, and when Mason nickered at the horses, they slowed and turned onto a narrow road. Kiku watched as the trees and darkness closed behind them.
It was peaceful with the slow thuds of the horses’ hooves on the dirt road, and the creaking of the wheels. But Kiku’s heart started to pound in her small chest and she began to have trouble breathing. Were the woods enchanted? She had never in her life been in so desolate a place. Empty yet not empty. It was the place of nightmares, of the stories her grandmother had told her of cottages, even whole villages, hidden in the woods, where kitsune-tuskai lived, witches who could charm foxes and have them do their evil work. Or the witches who ate children who wandered from their villages.
Oh, Oba, how true those stories were. Do you know how true? Are you dead now, dear Oba? Or do you miss me still?
Kiku wiped her tears on her sleeve. How she hated these stiff boys’ clothes. She was not herself anymore. No one knew who she was. She hardly knew herself.
“Ho!”
The horses stopped in a small clearing, but the absence of a few trees didn’t make the place any less frightening. She could see the outline of a cottage.
Mason climbed down from the front seat and spoke to the horses. Then the clearing was suddenly brighter with the spark of lantern light, and then another lantern. The lights jerked along as he climbed the porch stairs and hung one of the lanterns on a hook jutting out from the wall. She wanted to ask him if he limped because he’d been injured or if he’d been born that way. There had been a baby boy in her father’s family who had been born with twisted legs—it was supposed to be a secret, but she had heard that it was because of some curse in the family. It was said that the baby hadn’t been allowed to take a breath, but her mother told her that was gossip the neighbors had made up, that the baby had been born too weak to live. Kiku wasn’t sure what the truth was, but she knew she could never kill her own child, no matter the circumstances of its birth.
Mason came back and opened the carriage door. “You all might as well get out. This is it.”
This was what? Mason’s home? Randolph’s home?
Randolph was staying at an inn that was a townhouse, which made sense to her because it was a house, and it was in a town, like the houses in New York. Here, there were no other houses in sight. Only trees, darkness, and the smell of earth.
“It’s only getting later. I’m going to have to get up in the morning, and that’s about three hours from now, girl. You are a girl?”
Kiku took his hand and climbed out.
Mason will take care of me. I am to be a good girl.
She followed Mason up the porch stairs. There was no light on inside, and she had the sense that the cottage had been empty for a long time. The air smelled of paint and wood smoke.
Mason’s lantern made shadows of the few furnishings: a sofa and a pair of big chairs near the cold fireplace, a large trunk, a smoking stand, and a side table. A round dining table with two chairs.
“Bedroom’s in there. You’ve got a lamp in there, too, and there’s a little
kitchen. The sun gets through on a clear day. Necessary’s out the back door from the kitchen.”
Kiku glanced around, but her eyes kept coming back to Mason. He was tall, but his shoulders had the slightest of stoops, as though he were ashamed of something. In the lamplight, his curled brown hair was tinged with red. He looked older than Randolph.
“There’s some ham and beans that my wife, Odette, made, in a dish in the kitchen, and I pumped some water into a pitcher for you.”
Now he seemed awkward. Still, Kiku said nothing. What was she supposed to do?
“Here’s the bedroom.”
She followed him. The bed was larger than any bed at Madame Jewel’s, even the bed that was reserved for the men who liked to have more than one girl at a time. A small armoire and vanity table were pushed up against one wall, and two windows reflected the lamplight back to them and brightened when he lighted the lamp on the bedside table.
Mason set her bags on the bed.
Kiku stared down at the floor, uncertain. Was it time? She sat quickly down beside the bags and wrestled off the tight shoes. Then she undid the suspenders from her wool pants so that they loosened quickly and slipped from her, onto the floor, as she stood again. She was wearing no underwear—which was what Randolph preferred, but the long shirt covered her front.
Mason gasped. She looked up.
“Good Lord, girl. Stop! What are you doing?” He had turned his face to the wall, his hands in front of him as though to ward off some terrible thing. “Do you want to get me shot?”
His footsteps pounded the floor, shaking it, as he hurried from the room, leaving her alone. Confused and frightened, she pulled the pants back on, struggling with the suspenders. If he were to leave, she would be alone in the cottage, surrounded by the dark and whatever spirits lived in the walls or in the woods outside. “Wait. Please wait.” She wanted to cry out, but found she could not raise her voice above a whisper. “Don’t leave me.”
When she reached the parlor, she found Mason standing near the open doorway of the cottage, looking out. Hearing her, he turned around.
“It’s not like that. Don’t do that for anybody but Mister Bliss, do you hear me? You won’t if you want to live . . .” He shook his head. “Not if you want to live here.”
It hadn’t taken Kiku long to learn some English from the girl, Christiana, on the ship, and she had learned plenty more in her months at Madame Jewel’s. She knew exactly what he meant. She shivered in the cool air coming from the open door.
“I’m sorry for you, but I can’t do nothing about it. I’ll be back to check on you when I can. Nobody will bother you. The workmen aren’t allowed in the woods on this side of the big house.” He nodded and closed the door behind him.
Kiku stood, listening, as the carriage moved slowly away from the cottage, leaving her alone in the wavering lamplight with her own thin shadow.
Chapter 6
KIKU
August 1878
Kiku didn’t remember sleeping.
She had been paralyzed for a long time after Mason left, afraid to move beyond the soft glow cast by the parlor lamp he’d lighted for her. After a few frozen moments, she heard an owl calling out in the woods, and found herself waiting, anxious for an answering call. But there was none. Only the same owl calling again and again. It was all alone, as she was. For a moment, she had fantasized that she might open the door so that it might come inside: Fukurou meant good fortune, a sign for a hopeful future. The rug in front of the cold fireplace was thick sheepskin, and she sank to her knees, exhausted, yet listening, listening as hard as she could, not wanting the owl to stop calling.
She had seen only one owl in the city: a black shadow that had swooped from the steel-gray sky as she walked one early evening with Emerald, hours before the busy time at Madame Jewel’s. The air had trembled with a rush of wings, and a rat that neither of them had noticed in the gutter shrieked as the owl sank its claws into its back and carried it up, up into the shadowed rooftops on the other side of the street. Kiku had stared after them, but Emerald had grabbed her arm and hidden her face against Kiku’s shoulder, terrified.
There had been brown water rats that lived near the shore of her village, and her family kept their food baskets and jars covered to keep them out. But the rats of New York were gray, with pointed noses, and they ate the noses and fingertips off of infants living in the tenements. It had gladdened her heart to see one murdered by an owl.
When she opened her eyes to weak sunlight, half of her face was buried in the sheep’s fleece, and she pulled a bit of wool from her dry lips.
She was still alone, and nothing had murdered her in the night. Though she knew that it was just superstition—something her father told her was for old women and fools—she couldn’t help but think that it had been the owl that had protected her. The thought brought a smile to her face. An unforced smile of the kind she hadn’t felt in a very long time.
After drinking most of the water from the pitcher Mason had left, and eating a ravenous, cold breakfast (cold, because she had no idea how to light or use the stove) of beans and thankfully tender chunks of ham, she opened the front windows of the cottage. The sashes lifted easily, unlike the greasy windows at Madame Jewel’s, and let in the brown scent of the woods. She looked about for some sign of Mason, but saw only the expanse of flattened dirt in front of the cottage. Beyond were the trees—not so thick or forbidding in the daylight—and the roof of a house. Closer, the brighter edges of the canopy floor were scattered here and there with stems of wildflowers whose petals hung in graceful rows of bright pink.
Alone as she was, she forgot to be afraid.
She had no guess as to when Randolph might come. While she had very few notions of keeping an American house, she did have a fair understanding of what Randolph was eventually going to want of her, and she knew that she should make some effort to be ready. But it was early yet. Randolph was not a man of morning appetites. Always, he had come to her in the late afternoon or evening, after his important business was done. On the train he had not wanted her in the morning, but had attended to his own shaving and toilette and then had written letters and read a book for most of the day.
Taking her shoes, two dresses, two hats, and a nightshift from her bags, she laid one dress and her petticoats on the bed, and hung the other dress, along with the nightshift, in the wardrobe. Her hairbrush and pins and few cosmetics she arranged on the dressing table and tucked the sponges, her clean, dry monthly rags, and the special things Madame Jewel had given her for a man’s pleasure into the vanity drawers. At the bottom of one bag, she discovered the peacock feather that she had found near the park’s menagerie soon after she had met Randolph. She had been shy about picking it up from the path, afraid that someone might accuse her of stealing it from the peacock who strutted up and down the small enclosure, but she couldn’t resist it, and quickly tucked it into a fold of her dress. After she had it for a few weeks, she sometimes wore it behind her ear when she met with a gentleman. Randolph had found it particularly charming. Now she laid it on the vanity.
The mirror set into an ornate frame on top of the vanity made her shy, and she wouldn’t look directly into it. The other girls at Madame Jewel’s had been silly for mirrors, but Kiku preferred not to look at her own face except to apply makeup. She had long ago decided that she looked how she looked. It would have to be good enough.
Her sister had always teased that her nose was too broad, like a peasant’s, and her lips too thin. Her eyes were like her mother’s eyes: small and brown and deep-set within her oval face. But there was always kindness in her mother’s eyes. Kiku felt no kindness in her own. Only resignation.
She set the rag doll on the vanity’s top, its head resting against the mirror, so it could watch everything she did.
Standing in the dust in front of the cottage, she wondered where she might take a walk. It was hotter here than in New York, and her plum-colored dress, with its lace-trimmed white bib and black
bows set along the edges of the overskirt, was tighter than it had been just four days earlier. There was the dirt road that curved around the cottage that must somehow lead to a larger road, and that was all, except for the hint of a path angling away from the cottage in the opposite direction. It was so faint that it might have been a deer’s path, or—to her sudden worry—one made by the wild hogs Madame Jewel had warned her about.
“I hear that Virginia and the Carolinas are beset with them. In the war, they attacked soldiers and ate runaway slaves and children!” She had said this with a kind of glimmer in her eyes that made Kiku wonder if she was going mad. “But I’m sure you’ll be fine with Mister Bliss.” Kiku would ask Mason about the wild hogs. Surely he would know.
Then she heard the voices. Sharp voices and orders given. The sound of men. When she had gone out to the necessary at the edge of the cottage’s small backyard, she hadn’t heard any sounds coming from the woods except for the fluttering of birds and their songs. The voices came from the other side of the cottage, from the direction of the big house.
The men aren’t allowed on this side of the woods.
Kiku knelt beside a clump of pink flowers that were like the ones she’d seen from the cottage window, mindful of her skirts among the dirt on the ground. She was just inside the line of trees, but far enough away from the men that she could watch them, unobserved, as they went in and out of the house that rose from the middle of a field like a tall, yellow giant. They weren’t gentlemen, but workmen carrying tools and pieces of paneling and other bits she didn’t recognize. Many wore neatly trimmed beards, dungarees, and tidy caps, but she was far enough away that she couldn’t see the details of their faces. Watching them, she was surprised that she had even heard their voices. They were not the boisterous journeymen of New York. These voices weren’t raised and were more furtive than good-natured. The men’s faces were grim, their gazes downcast unless they were speaking directly to one another. They didn’t seem to notice the beauty of the day, the perfect sunlight.
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