The Companion

by Kim Taylor Blakemore

  I gripped the valise and moved toward her. There was only the rustle of her skirt as she hastened along the wood floor. Her fingers trailed the walls and tapestries and the edges of tables as we sped along, taking the opposite path to the foyer and well away from Mr. Burton’s study. She clambered the wide stairs, feet silent on risers carpeted in swirls of calla lilies and vines. Her figure was quickly swallowed by the shadows. It was an advantage, wasn’t it? To be familiar with the dark’s quirks and moods?

  She thrust open a door at the end of the gray-tinted hall. The room was frigid, the long windows open, air pawing at the curtains. The fire had burnt to ash, only a low red glow left. Enough for me to see her fling her body into a tufted chair of robin’s-egg blue. She clasped and unclasped the bead and embroidery pocket at her waist.

  Then, in a start, she rose to shut the door and light a lamp on a curio table nearby.

  I set the valise near the wall, crossing to the windows, reaching past the curtains to pull the windows shut. My foot caught on the curved shard of a porcelain teacup. I bent to it, finding other shattered bits, here a portion of a violet petal, there the lift and bend of green and yellow grass. I dropped the mismatched bits in my apron pocket.

  The mistress perched on the edge of the chair, her fists now pressed against her stomach. She frowned and stared at the door. Her eyes glistened with a tumble of tears. “Will she live?”

  “That’s for God to determine,” I said.

  “Then she has no hope.”

  “Perhaps the doctor, then,” I said.

  “He’ll give her arsenic and call it a salve.”

  I looked away, at the bed with its turned posts and thick covers, at the writing desk that contained both pen and paper and an odd wood frame coursed with wire, at the half-open door to the dressing room and the vestibule with drawers full of the linens I scrubbed and ironed twice a week. Against the wall near the small woodstove stood a lacquered cabinet inset with yellow herons and a gilt sun. Above it hung a watercolor of cattails prattling to each other on the edge of a brown pond. Her room alone, this woman who sneered at God.

  My own diffidence of the Almighty was deep. Father proclaimed God a dullard’s crutch, and I could not disagree. But those troubled relationships were not for public dissemination.

  I lingered nearby, unsure what my duties should be, or if I should give her comfort. Mr. Beede had pulled me up the steps, leaving me with no explanation, though it was clear I was meant to replace Rebecca. A word of instruction would have been appreciated. Instead, I was dropped in the middle of the sitting room with as much attention paid to me as the leather bag I lugged up the stairs.

  I chose to stoke the fire. I chose to roll the pieces of teacup onto a dinner tray and let the bits float in what was left of the beef soup.

  What did Rebecca do for her? What was done for me, once upon a time, when my name was good and God not a bitter flavor? What had I done later for others, when my family was lost to me, for a penny or a bed? Remove the jewelry and the tortoiseshell combs. Lay out a nightgown. Hang the skirt and give it a quick brush. Fold a shawl over the end of a bed that will be carelessly picked up in the morning with no thought of the girl who’d put it there.

  “Now, now,” I said, my voice stilted. “There, there.”

  “I won’t be blamed.” She trembled as if she had caught a chill, her teeth chattering.

  I laid my hand to rest on her back until her breath slowed. “Let me brush your hair.”

  I found the brush atop a dresser in the alcove to the dressing room. It sat by a matching sterling-silver mirror that swirled with filigree and the initials eBc, and a set of keys. I lifted the brush, wondering what the e and the c stood for. She looked so small, and brittle, her unseeing eyes resting on me and waiting like a small child for the familiar stroke of the brush.

  “It’s not my fault,” she whispered. She winced as the brush caught a tangle. “How could she—why—she’s made herself sick. It wasn’t—” A drop of scarlet bloomed on her lower lip; she had bit hard enough to break the skin.

  “You’re bleeding,” I said.

  “Am I?”

  I set the brush down and gave her my handkerchief. She dabbed at her lip.

  She shook her shoulders, straightening in the chair, her neck and jaw tense. “She told me yesterday she wasn’t feeling well. I should have listened. I should have given her the day to rest. But she said nothing today. If I’m not told one way or another, then I won’t think of it one way or another. Why should I?”

  “Are those Rebecca’s keys?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “On the dressing table.”

  “You think I locked her out.”

  “No, I . . . I don’t think that.” But I did wonder; who else would lock the upstairs doors? Mr. Burton and Mr. Beede could not have, for they were in town. And I’d not seen Cook set a foot to the upstairs.

  Mrs. Burton reached out. “Give them over.” How swift the cloak of scorn dropped on her shoulders. How ugly the look that followed it. “I’d like a glass of water.”

  The ewer was empty. But perhaps she knew it.

  She worried the strings of her purse and removed the blue vial from the pouch. “Did you hear me?”

  I lifted the ewer from its bowl. “Of course.”

  She flicked her hand in dismissal. On my exit, I found the door shut behind me with a thud and locked.

  “She’ll lock the servants’ door too.” Jacob snipped the wick on a candle, then lifted a match to it.

  “Were you listening?”

  “Why would I care what a madwoman says?” Down the hall he sauntered, snipping the wicks and setting the second floor ablaze in light.

  I gripped the ewer to my chest and followed. “She feeds and clothes you, so you might think to care a bit.”

  He smirked. “Care didn’t do much good for Rebecca, did it?”

  How Rebecca writhed and gasped that night. The poultice Cook applied aided her naught, nor the towel-wrapped ice pressed to her forehead and chest. Cook shushed and hummed hymns, brushing Rebecca’s sweat-matted hair from her forehead, leaning away from her flailing fists.

  The air in the room—my room—was stale and putrid sweet. I pressed my palm to my nose and mouth, as my kerchief remained upstairs with the mistress, and waited on orders from Cook. I’d ferried broth and tea, swung the mallet to gather thick shards of ice from the well.

  Once, Cook reached out to me, clasped my hand until the bones pressed and ground, sure she’d been that Rebecca was meeting Death in the cold of night. But Rebecca, whose breath had quivered and stilled, arched her chest of a sudden. She coughed and rasped before collapsing back to the fever-soaked mattress.

  “That’s the spirit.” Cook released her grip on me and rubbed Rebecca’s arms. “We’ll need no doctor here.” She glanced at me, and there was a desperate look in her eye. The same look I’d seen from the mistress just hours before.

  I, too, had no faith in doctors. When I was eleven, I watched my brother and mother die within hours of one another from whooping cough. John succumbed at 6:48 a.m. and Mother at 8:32 a.m., the broth the maid brought still steaming in its cup as she gasped her last. Doctor Ainsworth, who left the hair to grow from his ears and whose breath smelled of peppermints he never shared, draped the sheet over my mother and patted me on the head as he strode by. “You were a good girl, Lucy. You took all the medicine I prescribed. And here you stand.”

  John and Mother took the medicine, too, and there they lie.

  My father fixed his gaze on me, alive and breathing. I spread my arms as he stepped forward. I wanted him to wrap me up, to carry me as he did once when my tooth ached and he spent the night walking a circle and reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream with all the voices. But he pressed his palms to the sides of my face and squeezed until my ears rung and my skin burned. “She’s dead,” he said. “She’s dead.”

  For many days following, he cried out in grief, keening in his roo
m at the God he once dismissed, blaming him for Mother’s death, for John’s, and not the dose of bitter brown liquid my mother spooned religiously into our mouths. He was a man of rational thought; medicine was meant to heal.

  I blamed them all.

  Years later, when I’d quickened with Ned and returned to the house in shame, another doctor, whose name was never mentioned, gave me a bottle of tonic to stir into my morning oatmeal. He followed the gift with directions to remain in my room with ample cloth and water and not be too startled by the bleeding. I buried the extract in the garden.

  It wasn’t my growing belly I worried about. I had more of a bond with my neighbor’s dog than I did with the child. But I was selfish in wanting to keep my own life.

  I had no certainty the poison was meant only for the child.

  The only time Cook moved from Rebecca’s side was to make breakfast for the Burtons upstairs. She sang:

  See gentle patience smiles on pain

  Then dying hope revives again . . .

  Her voice was like a bird’s in late May, sweet and full of life, each note meant to coax a soul from the lip of death. I took up the stool, the cool cloth, the psalm.

  The promise guides her ardent flight,

  And joys, unknown to sense, invite,

  Those blissful regions to explore

  Where pleasure blooms—

  But the psalm was too well known to me, meant for a dying child, one I’d sung before, and I could not continue it. And the question of those keys in the mistress’s room and Rebecca’s rescue at the edge of the woods gripped me.

  I pressed the cloth to her febrile forehead. “Did she lock you out?” Was the mistress that heedless, or did Rebecca deserve it? Although to be put out in the snow—

  Her head lolled on the pillow, eyes bright with fever, and her brow creased in a deep frown. She wanted something, but her mouth formed only a thin whisper. She twitched her finger for me to come closer. I leaned over, my ear near enough her lips to feel the scratch of chapped skin against my own. “Has she asked for me?”

  “No.”

  Her hand snaked in my hair, fingertips sunk into my skin, and her teeth clamped to my earlobe.

  “Jesus.” I rolled my shoulder into hers to alleviate the pain as her teeth clenched on cartilage and lobe.

  My arms flailed as I looked for purchase, then found it. I pressed my palms to her face, thumbs digging into the soft ridges under her cheeks to force her to let go. Then I nearly tumbled from the stool.

  I swiped at my ear, sure my hand would come away with blood. I swiped again in disbelief that her bite had not broken skin.

  I didn’t know I’d raised my arm to hit her until it was stopped by Cook’s grasp. She stared down at me, mouth in a narrow line and lips lost in the fold. “Turn the other cheek, child.”

  There was a commotion then at the door, and the appearance of a doctor with grand sideburns and a solemn glare. His girth was contained by a satin vest checked red and black. He set his bag on the floor, shucking off his long coat and holding it out to me.

  He waved me out of the way. “I’ll see Mrs. Burton next.”

  “What do you want?” The mistress’s voice was muffled by the door—still locked. The water ewer sat where I’d left it earlier.

  “I’ve your breakfast.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  I blew out a breath and rolled my eyes. My skin and muscles ached from tiredness, my ear thrummed, and I shook badly. The tray with its simple meal of oats and corn pone was heavy in my hands.

  “Then I’ll leave it for the cat.”

  “Leave me be.”

  “Are you afraid of her?” I whispered.

  There was silence, then a loud bang of something hard hitting the door. I prayed she’d not tossed the chamber pot.

  I remembered then, as Rebecca released me, the way she glared. Her eyes so full of venom. Yet our paths had rarely crossed. The venom was not meant for me.

  “Are you there?” Mrs. Burton’s voice was low.

  “Yes.”

  “Is she alive?”

  I set the tray on my hip. “Yes.”

  “The doctor—”

  “Is coming up straight after seeing her. Let me help you.”

  We met the physician in the sitting room.

  “I am so sorry to hear about Rebecca.” Mrs. Burton kept her hands crossed in her lap, her shoulders square, chin lifted. As composed and beautiful as the portrait that hung behind her. “Please let me know all we can do. Of course, there will be a donation to your clinic. For the paupers.”

  Chapter Seven

  The doctor proclaimed it typhus. Rebecca was ordered to remain in confinement and not be moved from the bed. He left me instructions of what to give her, which I shared with Cook.

  “Two drams of this.” I swirled the small vial of brown liquid. “Harlan’s Coca Extract upon waking. Stiff dose of brandy for the late afternoon. A tepid elixir of larkspur and crushed nettles for the main meal.”

  “Nettle?”

  “It goes on.” I held the paper to the lamp. “Eye of newt and the wing of a Belgian firefly are to be given at the first signs of decomposition—but only when accompanied by a long chant to Hecate and the waxing moon.”

  Cook snatched the paper from my hand and gave me a smack on the back of the head. “Your imagination does not become you.” She pored over the directions twice before tearing the paper in half, opening the oven, and flicking them into the flame. “No drams or extracts needed here. I trust my own medicinals. Give me the bottle.”

  I held it out to her, the murky liquid sloshing the bottle’s interior and leaving a ring of oily dregs, and watched as she poured the contents into the slop bin. I felt a pang of sorrow for the potato grindings and apple cores.

  She lifted a jug of vinegar from the larder and set it with a thud on the table.

  “Everyone’s getting a bath,” she said.

  All around me hung day dresses in plaids and various patterns, and evening ones that shimmered in peaches and blues. They were all out of date, the shoulders too narrow, the lace too articulated, too fancy.

  The mistress allowed me only to remove her dress, petticoats, and crinoline, before asking me for the corset hook. She sighed and waited for me to turn my back.

  I pivoted round in the dressing room so I faced the tall built-in drawers painted a flat light blue.

  “Are you turned?” she asked.

  “Quite around.”

  I counted the drawers that went from the floor to just above my waist. Six in all, quite thin. The top drawer for everyday brooches and trifles. The next down for gloves and handkerchiefs. The lower drawers contained pantalets and bloomers, a partition for the stockings, and the bottom two drawers reserved for the daily change of her chemise.

  Behind me came the shirring of the hook on the corset, the soft slide of it to her feet, and a long intake of breath.

  I knew the cut and weight of all of them. She was fond of pink ribbon ties. Each chemise was identical to the other, wide necked and short sleeved, all of a fine Egyptian cotton. Each was embroidered on the collar with a raised letter to designate the day of the week. Only one chemise remained untouched by the needle. It was plain lace and worn only on Sundays.

  There was a curl of movement, the air stirring as her underthings dropped and she shrugged on her robe.

  “Where did you set the tub?”

  “Near the fire.”

  “You can turn around now.”

  I glanced at her over my shoulder. Her hands clutched the robe tight. A thin white light cast itself in from the window, leaving her face half in shadow and half lit. The muscle in her jaw twitched.

  There was a tinkle of a bell as the cat ambled through the bedroom and into the closet. With a purr and a shake of his head, he made a figure eight around Mrs. Burton’s legs, detaching himself and wandering on before she could pet his fur.

  “Would you like a vinegar bath, too, Mr. Quimby?”

&
nbsp; He leapt to the window ledge, his attention on the sway of the bare trees beyond.

  “Have you had him a long time?”

  “Mr. Quimby?”

  “Yes.”

  “Since I was fifteen. I could still see. That makes him—oh, that makes him seventeen. Does he look seventeen?”

  “Besides the cane and the false teeth, he’s looking particularly well.”

  She laughed, then her eyebrows dropped and she gave me a quizzical look. “That makes me thirty-two. Do I look ancient too?”

  “No, you look . . .”

  She shook her head. I stepped aside as she moved past me and out to the bedroom. “Show me the tub so I don’t fall in it.”

  I took her elbow, thinking how thin it was, and how I felt her pulse between my fingers. “I’ve put the cloth and soap on a chair next to it.”

  Her hand reached out.

  “To the right,” I said.

  Her fingers traveled the fabric and soap, explored the seat of the chair, found the lip of the metal tub. She hesitated, then dipped her hand to the water, and her nose crinkled at the sting of vinegar in the steam.

  She stood. “I can bathe myself.”

  “I’ll wait outside, then.”

  She nodded and hesitated before speaking. “Do you read?”

  As she bathed, I perched on the edge of the settee in the dressing room, reading aloud a letter from a Mrs. Aurora Kepple of Concord.

  Dearest Gene,

  I so wish you and my brother had the means and time to visit from your wilderness. You would find Tad and Theo more than a handful, but loveable nonetheless. We are putting on a production of As You Like It for no one but the staff and dear Otto’s pater and mater. How much better it would be were you to play Rosalind instead of me. I am much more convincing as a Celia, but alas Otto’s cousin Mar—

  But here something had spilled on the ink, and the blotches and single letters were unreadable.

  “There’s nothing more to read. It’s been sent like this.”

  “Rosalind suits her.”

  I wondered why Aurora Kepple had not chosen to rewrite the letter. I ran my eyes over the address and then across the date in the right-hand corner.