While he gazed at the dusty and forgotten room, I gazed at him. I had been right last night, there was something jarring about him. He didn’t fit into our world as he should. Underneath the good looks and the glamour, there was a changeling; a boy by turns serious and bitter and playful.
From outside the musty world of the maze, the ringing of the university bell disturbed the ivy-covered ghosts of war. “It’s four o’clock,” I said, looking away from him. “Tea will be over.”
“Yes,” David answered absently, still looking around the room. “Yes.”
We quietly wound our way back through the maze until we reached the door. I pulled it shut and turned to find David standing just behind me. Away from the freshly cut grass, the smell of him was overpowering. “I enjoyed this afternoon. Believe it or not, my days are usually tediously empty.”
We were barely a body’s width apart.
“Given what I have seen on the wall screens since your arrival, I thought you spent most of your time partying or kissing debutantes.”
David moved away with a quick laugh. “A bachelor must keep up appearances.”
We were on the lawn now, with the sun streaming down and the soothing hum of the gardeners trimming the grass. The university bell rung again, but I felt reluctant to move closer to the house. “Mother will be wondering where I am,” I said, stalling.
“Let’s not keep her waiting then.” To my surprise, David seized my hand and started running, pulling me along behind him. I could feel my curls pulling loose from the comb that kept them back. He looked back at me and said something, but the words were snatched away by the wind and the mowers.
Whatever wall I had been holding against him fell away, but I steeled myself against that smile, against that warm hand, against the flight of fancy on the velvet grass. I refused to be the kind of star-crossed girl who falls in love with the eager knight.
But then I found myself smiling back.
Uncle Stephen regarded me with solemn gray eyes while I paced in the gallery, waiting for Jamie to finish a tablet call in our drawing room. Since he’d started as a resident physician at the public hospital last week, he’d been subject to a barrage of calls from the understaffed medical ward. Predictably enough, his tablet buzzed as soon as we were about to leave for tea at Cara’s house, and I couldn’t leave without him since she’d refused to see me.
But she’d granted Jamie an audience, and I was determined to tag along.
My uncle looked a little disapproving. “It’s the only way,” I told the painting. “I have to see her.” I wiped some dust from the bottom of his gilded frame. “I’m the only one who knows she’s lying.”
My grandmother’s portrait looked at me with an eternally sad face. Never had there been a depiction of someone with such despairing eyes, a mouth so incapable of smiling.
“You’ll see,” I told both paintings. “I know I’m right.”
Jamie came out of the library, and I tried to pretend I hadn’t been talking to pictures. “Sorry. They’ve found a pair of interns to come in, so hopefully we can continue on to our tea unbothered. Trouble is that we’re low on most of our supplies at the moment—donated blood being the most crucial—and they’re in the uncomfortable position of having to choose who to care for and who to send away. Luckily, it seems to be a slow morning so far.”
“You work too hard for them.”
He offered his arm, and I took it, bidding a silent good-bye to my uncle, perpetually seventeen and brooding in the last portrait painted of him before his death.
“It’s a public hospital, and all of the patients are working class or even Rootless. They can’t pay so they can’t get treatment anywhere else. If I don’t help, who will?”
“There’s always somebody else.”
Jamie shot me look. “Maybe for the gentry, but not for them.”
I felt a little ashamed. He was right.
We climbed into the silent car, and it took us a mile south to the modestly named Westoff Castle. It was the second largest estate in the city, and while not actually a castle, the house could almost pass for one with its spiked turrets and crenellations at the top.
If the size and ambitious architecture failed to impress, the overdone landscaping might make up for it. A long reflecting pond stretched out from the front of the mansion, and bright swaths of flowers and statues led up to the front terrace, which was made of slabs of pink marble. I looked up at the gold clock ticking four stories above, then stepped into the wide doorway, ushered in by Jamie.
I’d been inside the Westoff house countless times, but I never stopped feeling overwhelmed by its opulence. Mirrors and pastel paintings lined the walls, some stretching from floor to ceiling, others concealing hidden doors. Statues and ornate pedestals held gilt candelabras, while glittering chandeliers hung from the painted ceiling. Hand-carved chairs lined the hallways like soldiers, immaculately crafted but painfully uncomfortable. The floors were pink-and-black checked marble, and the curtains were a pale rose and gold. An artificial floral perfume pervaded the air, and a heavy silence hung in the empty castle, the still air of hundreds of rooms and lush carpets and thick drapes. The creeping quiet of unused excess.
The butler greeted us at the door and ushered us into a well-lit parlor, telling us that Cara had just come back from the stables. Cuddles, an old Yorkshire terrier, snored on the sofa. I remembered him being a threat to little fingers years ago, so I kept my distance. Cara came in the room with a smile for Jamie.
“Oh, God,” she said, seeing me. “Not you.”
I gave a curtsy. “Good afternoon, Cara.”
She threw herself gracelessly into a nearby chair. The light caught the faded bruises on her neck and forehead; she hadn’t bothered to put any makeup over them. She still wore her riding boots but had changed into a proper afternoon dress, a light silk with an empire waistline and knee-length skirt, which was downright chaste by Cara’s standards. I noticed that the dress puckered slightly around her chest and waist, and wondered if she’d lost weight in the last week.
“Cara, it’s wonderful to see you,” Jamie said, inclining his head. “How are you feeling?” he asked as he sat.
“Like shit,” she answered. Jamie looked taken aback by her rudeness, but I just smiled. This was the Cara I knew.
A maid slipped in with a tea tray, and Cara deigned to pour us each a cup, though she pushed mine so roughly across the table that umber drops splattered on the tablecloth.
“Let’s get it over with,” she said to me.
“Cara—” Jamie said, shocked, but I ignored him and leaned forward.
“I know you lied to the police about who attacked you,” I told her.
“Madeline!” Jamie protested, but this time Cara and I both ignored him.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Prove it.”
“I don’t want to have to,” I said, knowing it was an empty threat. “I’m hoping that you’ll do what you know is right. What if an innocent person goes to jail because you wouldn’t tell the truth?”
“I did tell the truth.”
“Did you?”
She regarded me for a moment, and I could tell she was deciding how much to tell me. “I stepped out for a walk and got a little turned around in the grove. I couldn’t find my way out, and then I heard footsteps. It was dark and I couldn’t see who attacked me at first, but I could see the red light of the nuclear charge nearby. When he ran away, I could see his clothes. Tattered, filthy rags.”
She was doing it again. That thing where her eyes flicked almost imperceptibly around the room, and her voice raised half an octave.
“You’re still lying.”
Jamie reached out to touch my shoulder, but his tablet buzzed again. “Excuse me,” he sighed, and exited the room, activating the video screen on his tablet as he walked out.
I slid my chair closer to the table. “Why are you doing this?”
“Why do you care?” Cara hissed.
“You
can’t get lost in the grove at night—I could see the lights of the house the whole time we were looking for you. And a walk, really? Without a coat? In that cold?”
Cara glanced at the door, but Jamie was nowhere near it. “It’s none of your business why I was out there.”
“You made it my business when you refused to tell the truth! My father thinks this is all part of some Rootless conspiracy to overthrow the gentry, and he’s ready to crush them. You and I are the only ones who know that he’s wrong.”
“We don’t know he’s wrong,” she said. “The Rootless could be plotting a revolt for all I know. If some conspiracy gets thwarted because of this, then no harm done. In fact, that means that I’ve done everyone a favor and helped unmask a threat to the gentry.”
“Do you even have a conscience?”
“Do you have a brain?” She jabbed a finger at me. “If I wasn’t attacked by a Rootless or some poor person or a servant—if I was attacked by someone in the gentry—do you think I could go around announcing it to the police? To your father? Do you think anyone would believe me if I accused one of us? The gentry are supposed to defend each other at all costs. If I claimed one of our own attacked me, it would only hurt my reputation and any chance I have at a good marriage. Like it or not, Madeline, this is how our world works, and if you know what’s good for us, you’ll keep your head down and your mouth shut.”
“I kept my mouth shut when you condemned that servant boy and his family. I kept my mouth shut when you lied to your father and told him that I convinced you to run away. But I’m done keeping my head down. All your life, you’ve gotten away with everything! Everything! And it’s not fair!” I clapped my hand over my mouth, realizing how loud—and petulant—I’d sounded.
Cara smirked. “That’s it, isn’t it? You are jealous of me. Well, darling Madeline, no one is stopping you from stirring up some trouble yourself.”
“Is that what this is to you? Stirring up some trouble?”
Her eyes flashed. “I’m saving the people I care about, not to mention myself, from trouble.”
“And what about the Rootless? Are you saving them from trouble?”
“They’ll be fine,” she insisted. “If they haven’t done anything wrong, then they won’t be punished.” Her rising voice told me all I needed to know; the lie was there in plain sight, like a crooked chemise under a dress. She didn’t believe it was a Rootless who had hurt her, but she knew that they would suffer for it anyway.
“How?” I whispered. “How can you just sit there and not care?”
She pressed her lips together and looked away.
Jamie hurried through the door, pocketing his tablet and helping me to my feet. “My apologies, Cara, but I must leave. There’s been a police raid on the Rootless ghetto, and several men and women were badly beaten. At the moment, there are only a couple of frightened interns trying to manage by themselves.”
“They were probably looking for the person who hurt me,” Cara said woodenly.
Jamie reached for her hand and gave it a kiss. “Don’t be anxious. Soon your assailant will be arrested and you’ll be able to feel safe once more.”
At least Cara had the grace to look uncomfortable.
“We will talk again soon,” I promised her.
She tossed her hair over her shoulder, but didn’t reply.
Jamie took my arm and led me out the door. As we left, I heard the sudden crash of china, as if someone had thrown a cup against the wall.
The Public Hospital was a building of stone and stained glass, a relic from the 1800s perched on the bluffs overlooking the flat river bottoms. A gold-covered cupola rose above the nearby brownstones and millinery shops, with a bell inside that still rang across the city once an hour. It used to be a cathedral, back when people used such things, but had since been converted into a free hospital for the poor and for the Rootless, paid for by gentry donations garnered at elaborate fund-raisers and auctions. Arthur Lawrence himself paid the salaries for three physicians to run the hospital.
Not everyone felt so paternalistic, however. Some muttered that it was a waste to provide care for a people who were all dead by forty, tantamount to throwing medicine into the river.
Still, the donations paid for the ovaries and testes of the women and men of childbearing age to be routinely treated to protect against mutation, ensuring that any offspring they produced would be viable enough to carry on the work of managing the charges. Additionally, each fetus was inoculated against the radiation shortly after conception. After the vaccine did its work, making sure the child wasn’t born with any crippling deformities, it wore off quickly, usually around the third or fourth year. From there, every Rootless child grew steadily more ill until they finally erupted in sores and started coughing blood.
Some grew sicker than others, depending on what kind of work they did. The changers only changed the charges in the houses and carried the charges back to the Rootless ghetto. The strippers and sorters had to strip the cases from the fuel and sort them into piles according to size, but at least they had some slim protection to wear while they did so. But the packers not only had to load the charges on the train to Cape Canaveral for extraction, but they had to ride along with the charges, too, to make sure there were no accidents or spills along the way. They handled the fuel the most and they were around it the longest. Most of them didn’t make it past thirty.
But it was the only job out of all the work the Rootless did that paid money. Most Rootless were only given a ration card and were allowed to pick up food staples and limited household items, like nails and fabric, once a month. But the packers got paid, almost as much as a factory worker or a small shopkeeper, and the Rootless needed every penny of that money to make up for the rotten food the Rootless Bureau handed out and for the random taxes the gentry-ruled government levied whenever they felt the Rootless were growing too comfortable. Too lazy.
But as Jamie disembarked from the car, I didn’t think the building looked like a grudging concession to keeping a caste viable and alive. With its roof gleaming golden in the afternoon light and its wooden doors thrown open as if in welcome, the hospital looked downright friendly.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your tea,” Jamie apologized one more time. “I know you wanted to talk to Cara.” Behind him, two Rootless women sat crying on the steps, their dirty and tangled hair caked with blood. I thought of my callous words earlier. There’s always someone else . . .
Not for them, there isn’t.
“You said you were low on blood earlier,” I said, sliding over in the seat. “Can I help?”
Jamie blinked. “You want to donate blood?”
“Is my blood not good enough?”
“No,” Jamie said quickly. “It is very good. Rather too good, if you understand me. The gentry don’t usually donate blood here. In fact, they never do.”
I climbed out of the car and shut the door. “Please, Jamie. Let me help.”
With a baffled expression, Jamie led me inside, up the shallow steps and past the weeping women, and through thick wooden doors. Inside the marble-floored narthex, gold basins on pedestals dispensed bandages and packets of antibiotics instead of holy water. Bleeding, groaning Rootless leaned against the walls and slumped on the floor. More than one set of eyes locked on my bloodred hair and thin gold necklace.
“Landry,” one of them hissed. Jamie steered me away.
Inside the sanctuary, the curtained clinic rooms and boxes of cheap medical supplies were dwarfed by a high ceiling, deep blue and set with twinkling lights, like a summer sky full of stars. White pillars marched grandly down the center of the room, while ancient stained glass threw triangles of color across the curtains, the faces of the wounded, the feet of the shuffling patients in line.
At the front, something more permanent than a curtained room was constructed: a sleek white cube made of gleaming metal with a single door. A few of the Rootless men and women stood in line before it, and they were among those few
in the old sanctuary who were not injured.
“Where the altar used to be—that is the fertility treatment room,” Jamie explained as we walked past it. “The serum is injected directly into the reproductive organs and is effective for three or four years. Each fetus is also inoculated, as a precaution.”
“All so they can watch their children suffer later?”
Jamie rounded on me. “And what should I do? Order them to stop the treatments? So they can then grieve over stillbirths instead of enjoying a few short years with their children? It is a step, Madeline. A step toward humanity for them. No matter what the reasons are for doing it, it’s still a good thing.”
He was right. And I realized that as much as he had defended my father and the other gentry the night of Cara’s attack, he did genuinely care for these people, his new charges.
I nodded and we moved on, behind the dais. I caught only a glimpse of Jamie’s office: a small room covered in books and paintings of his home in London, a two-story house on a narrow street. A picture of his mother and sisters, some of them with brown hair and some with black, but all with glossy curls, hung above his desk.
Just down the hall, a cramped and sterile-looking room contained piles of laboratory supplies. Jamie gestured to a chair.
I sat.
He rustled around for a moment then came over with a tray full of equipment. He tied a tourniquet around my arm, clucking when I winced, and prepared a hollow needle.
“Clench your fist, and I will count to three.”
I breathed in, nervous. The fevered illness of my thirteenth year had left me with a severe dislike of needles.
“One, two, three.”
“Ouch!”
“You should’ve done it on two,” someone said from the doorway.
It was a handsome young man, my age or a little older, with bright ginger hair and thick bands of muscle that swelled through his worn clothes. A scrape on his cheekbone and a dried trickle of blood along his jaw made me suspect that he’d been a victim of the recent raid. “She tensed as you said the word three, making it more painful.”
Landry Park Page 6
