She would not remember this. She would slumber in a dreamless fog and wake without realizing what she’d done.
I would scrub her dress and supply new ink to the well and plait her hair and never mention this moment to her.
There was a creak in the hall—a floorboard, a door, the house settling, it did not matter, save it sent me back to my heels. I pushed at her shoulders, soiling her arm with the dirt I’d forgotten. I pulled my handkerchief from my pocket and swiped at the fabric, then stood.
Mrs. Burton let out a low sigh and gripped the edge of the seat until her knuckles paled. “Rebecca.”
I turned my gaze to the door, to Rebecca, wraithlike and wan, still in convalescence, her hand on the frame for support, and a thin smile that wavered and dropped as she stared at me. “I’ve been calling and calling you.”
“What do you want?” I asked.
Rebecca’s gaze flicked to the mistress. “I’m almost better, Eugenie.”
“I’m so glad.”
“I heard you up here. And then I didn’t. You know how I worry. Though I’m sure Lucy has—”
“Why are you out of bed?” I asked. I ached to shove her through the door. How much had she seen?
Mrs. Burton rested her elbow on the table and caught herself upright, with only a slight sag of her shoulders. “I’ve been napping in the sun, you’ll need to forgive me. Lucy . . .” She circled a finger in the air, as if she were trying to gather words that now succumbed to the grip of laudanum.
Rebecca gathered her robe and crossed the carpet. She leaned over and wrapped an arm round Mrs. Burton. Her eyes glittered, though not with fever. “Has she been good, our Lucy?”
Has Lucy been good? My scalp thrummed; Mrs. Burton must have pulled out some hair. My lips pricked and shivered. My skin quaked with longing. My heart stuttered, and I understood. I was in love with Mrs. Burton.
Rebecca’s smile curled the corners of her mouth. “Of course you have.”
Chapter Eleven
My mother taught me needlework. She showed me how to unravel my stuttering attempts at the alphabet and borders stitched with tulips, and reuse the cotton threads until they’d thin and break. When I’d fumbled past pinpricked thumbs and jags of crying boredom, my embroidery hoop became a canvas of tilting houses and pine trees that wilted at the top and chimneys I’d not planned the height of and dogs with three legs and half an ear. Still, she was happy when I’d finish any little piece and sewed the ragged nonsense on throw pillows. She would ooh and aah over them, but my father turned them over when colleagues from his school were invited around.
I am ashamed to admit that I was grateful Mother’s death brought with it the end of cross-stitch lessons. I stuffed the hoops and threads into the back of a closet, leaving the plain hemming and cuff repairs to old Zebidah, who came to help Father and me when we found ourselves so suddenly alone.
Zebidah did try for a time to continue Mother’s training—oak-gnarled knuckles floating over the soft fat of mine, tongue clucking quick when pleased, and dead silent when my threads grew riotous. Zebidah was fond of platitudes and odd sayings, certain the discipline it took to transfer the words to the hoop in both a pleasing (and readable) manner would translate into a discipline of emotions.
I remember this, and the hours I spent, letter by letter, and this time trusted with silk threads of amber and aubergine. How Zebidah was pleased with the height and spacing of the words, and found particularly fine the pattern of apples and peaches I’d added to each corner.
It was to be the family register.
As such:
John Sep 17, 1801– &
Abigail Mar 1809–Apr 6, 1842
MARRIED Jun 12, 1828
CHILDREN
Charlotte Mar 3, 1829–Apr 14, 1829
Emma May 11, 1830–May 12, 1830
Lucy Feb 27, 1831–
John Jul 8, 1832–Apr 6, 1842
It had been, that family register, the very last needlework my stomach could handle. And soon enough, Father had pissed away his tutor position, his acquaintances, and any money at all for food, let alone Zebidah.
There was not much difference between that register and the one hanging near Mrs. Burton’s sitting room door, though it was a world away in talent and design. While mine was the crude hand of an eleven-year-old, hers was delicate and fine, with swaths of white thistle and amethystine primrose, draping green leaves, and climbs of feathered vine.
Josiah and Eugenie Burton were wed the year of our Lord 1845.
By 1850, she had born and lost four babes. They were named Catherine, Josiah, Theodore, and Aurora. None breathed past their first week.
I had set the bobbins and thread in a row on the table near to Mrs. Burton’s reach. Silk threads from palest yellow to darkest black, twelve in all, inventoried twice by her. The mauve was low: I was asked to add it to the spring list. Varied sizes of needles protruded from the pin cushion tied to her wrist. Her hoop was tight, an oval of shimmering silk. The pattern was half complete, the embroidery delicate and tight. Peonies and roses cascading like water from a tall urn.
The room itself was quiet, save for the clock in the hall and the whisper of thread and snip of scissors. Every so often came the click of a tin as Mrs. Burton helped herself to a candied violet and held the container out to me.
I was tasked to read aloud: The Black Tulip. There had been a mob, a lynching, a competition to grow the most impossible of flowers. But the words slid over my tongue, completely detached from the thoughts that careened in my head. It is true I was bordering on exhaustion: downstairs and upstairs chores, and sometimes flying from the kitchen to Mrs. Burton I would forget to remove an apron speckled with remnants of biscuit dough or chicken down. I had not slept more than a few moments, tossing and turning with Cook’s snores and the pangs of weariness.
Outside, the sun spread across the birch trees, and the open window drew in the aroma of a field fresh turned. A horse whinnied. Mrs. Burton lifted her head to it, then returned to the needle.
My thoughts jangled—so certain I was she remembered nothing of the previous week, the laudanum providing a swift erasure or, if she remembered anything, an easy excuse. My mouth filled with a bitter taste—the resentment sharp of the effects of the tincture, and the fervent wish she had been of her own true mind.
“You’re restless,” she said.
“It’s beautiful out.”
“Yes.” She switched one threaded needle for another, her canvas of silk like a loose loom, the threads available to take up as she willed. “This is the teal?”
“That’s the yellow.” The book slid from my lap to the settee’s cushion as I arose and crossed to her. “Here.” I lifted the teal, touching my thumb to hers as a guide before dropping into the seat across from her.
“Stop swinging your foot.”
“I’m not.” But of course I was. I chewed my thumbnail and rested my chin in a cupped hand. Picked up and examined each of the bobbins. Watched Mrs. Burton’s precise work, knots and loops and twists forming the petal of a rose. A rose of impossible color. “How did you learn that?”
“Much, I suppose, the same as you.”
“I didn’t take to it, though. You, on the other hand . . .”
“It’s a way to while the day. And it gives me pleasure. Something created.”
“But how do you know—”
“What it looks like?” She rested her hand on the hoop. “I could say it looks exactly how it looks in my head, and I’d always be right.”
“I’d tangle it all up.”
“I did at first. But I spent a year at a school in Boston, an institute for the blind. I learned how to write again. And read. And be surrounded with people just like me.” She pushed the needle under the thread, over again.
“Everyone was blind?”
“Except Laura Bridgman. And a boy who came and went. They could neither see nor hear. She was a wild girl. Mr. Howe tamed her by making her his living doll. He taught her
language. Made her famous. Paraded her—all of us—in front of crowds. His crippled dancing monkeys on display.” The teal was abandoned for a length of red. “I was requested home when word of that made the Portsmouth papers. I may have been blind, but I was not meant to be on display. I’ll give Father credit for that.”
She caught up the gold thread, then the white. Teal rose tipped in red, stem of brilliant gold lit white along the outer edge.
“How did it happen?”
“Scarlet fever. Mother quarantined me to my room, of course. I remember waking up all of a sudden, and seeing just a pinprick of too-bright light. And in the days that followed, I no longer saw that.”
“Was it frightening?”
“Of course. I was sixteen—I was meant to be coming out to the world. To dance my first cotillion and charm the men. Not be so alone. Mr. Quimby was quite my savior. He was always there.” She ran her finger along the pattern of stitches, brows pulled tight in concentration. “I miss color. And sometimes people’s expressions. Though their voices can give them away.”
She lifted the corner of her mouth in a smile, unraveling a single strand of red thread along the tip of a peony and replacing it with a blush of pink. “And you, Lucy?”
“Me?”
“You’ve a habit of speaking your mind. It’s not the wont of most serving girls. Who are you really?”
My throat grew dry. I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth and swallowed. “I’m the girl in the moon. I told you. I’m searching for a ladder tall enough to reach the stars. Then it’s just a hop back to the moon. A simple leap.”
“Is it?” She dove the needle through the silk. “I’d miss you.”
“You wouldn’t really.”
“There are so few intimates and allies in this life. I’d like to count you as mine. And me, yours.”
“But you have Rebecca.”
She gave a quick jerk of her chin. “How is she?”
“She asks for you.”
“I’d say ‘Poor Rebecca,’ but that would imply I like her.” She lifted her mouth in a grim smile.
I pushed back the chair, disturbing Mr. Quimby as he passed nearby. He gave a half-hearted hiss and jumped to the arm of Mrs. Burton’s chair, his corpulent haunches drooping over the arm’s edge as he batted the strings on the hoop, setting the needles to tick against each other.
“Stop it.” She pushed him, but he caught a claw in the new embroidered rose, spinning the hoop from her grasp as he leapt to the table. She clenched her hands into fists, half standing as she hammered them against her skirts before dropping to her knees and searching for the hoop.
Mr. Quimby stared down at her, then turned his attention to grooming his back leg, his paw aimed high in the air.
I bent to pick up the embroidery, its threads tattered and stretched along the border. “I have it.”
“Give it here.” She snatched it from me, cradling it in her skirts and running the tips of her fingers over the whorls and then held it out to me. “Is it ruined?”
“No.” I kneeled next to her.
With a sigh she pushed herself from the floor and wandered to the window, setting the ruined embroidery on the sill before pressing her hand to the sun-warmed glass. “I’ve grown fond of you. What will I do when you find the moon?”
Had she? Grown fond of me? I pressed my hands to my cheeks to calm the sudden heat, then shook my head at my foolishness.
“There you are.” Mr. Burton stepped around me—for I had not risen—his black boots heavy on the floor, his stride not broken until he stood next to Mrs. Burton. His hands were clasped behind him as he looked down at her. Then he caressed her cheek and set his palms on her shoulders before stepping back. “How does the sewing go?”
“Well enough.”
“Good.”
Mrs. Burton turned at the rustle of my skirts. “You don’t need to leave, Lucy.”
I steadied with a grip on the table, then busied myself reorganizing the bobbins Mr. Quimby had batted to and fro.
“Mrs. Burton speaks well of you.”
I paused at Mr. Burton’s voice, then switched the lemon yellow and aubergine. It was, to be blunt, disconcerting to find the man so physically present. For most of the winter, he was nothing more than a vague idea, more often absent than in the front of my mind. Oh yes, it was never forgotten that it was he who kept us all in house and home. But his orbit so rarely crossed Mrs. Burton’s. A touch of his fingers to her shoulders if he joined her at the morning table. The turn of her cheek for a peck as she passed him in the hall. Any other closeness too sharp a reminder, perhaps, of hope chipped away with each child’s death.
But the roads were clearing, the town an easier ride, and with the unfurling of crops that needed management and tenants that needed attending, Mr. Burton became a more regular fixture. His footsteps could be heard now up and down the hall and stairs, and pacing his office, all the while his low voice tumbled round corners in calls to Mr. Beede and grumblings about the state of the house.
Now he stared at me, as if there was a reasonable answer to his comment. Mrs. Burton speaks well of you. Why yes, of course she does. I speak quite highly of her in return. Can I also mention she does not speak as such of you? In truth, I have not one time heard her mention you. Though I think the fact you lock her in the house should warrant a grouse or two.
“Mr. Beede will put a bonus with your wages.” He tilted his head as he waited for me to—what? Splay myself at his feet with gratitude?
“Thank you.” I managed a quick curtsy.
“Rebecca is on the mend?” he asked.
“Near to perfect health,” I answered.
“Eugenie will be happy to have her back.”
“Will you be happy to have her back, Mrs. Burton?” My jaw was tight as I spoke. I’d grown used to having Mrs. Burton to myself.
She pressed her lips together and spread them in a thin smile. “Of course. Darling Rebecca.”
“Good, good,” Mr. Burton said. “All-around good, then, eh?”
“Is that what you came here for, husband? To ask about Rebecca?”
“Rebecca? No. I’ve something for you.” He reached in the inner pocket of his coat and pulled out a long envelope. “A letter came for you.”
Mrs. Burton’s face paled, then flushed. Her hand fluttered to her throat, then reached out, palms awaiting the missive.
My own heart beat hard against my chest and I strode over, intent on reading the name of the sender. “It’s from Aurora.”
I used to receive letters. Scads of letters, some vitriolic and some requesting my signature or a cut of my prison skirt or a snip of hair. There was a long string of notes from a Hiram Bundworth in Ohio cataloging everything from his “sevn cows & 1 bull” to the “pewter ewer” his mother had bequeathed him and he’d brought on his travels from West Virginia. He seemed, from the framed silhouette he sent, a sturdy and durable type. I assumed the notes were his way of proving he would make a good and solid husband; the last described the “rich soils and elegint sunsets” of his Ohio Valley. But I never received a letter to explain all the ones prior, one asking for my hand, which leads me to believe he’d found a local girl more to his suit and gave up his taste for a murderer like me.
I still wonder the girl’s name and if she is making Hiram happy.
But the warden no longer allows me correspondence. He says it muddles up the workings of the prison and makes the other prisoners envious and riled.
Gert brings me a spoonful of blackberry jam. It’s the last of it, the final taste of the past season’s fruit. Soon, the buds so tight with promise will yield and blossom, grow heavy with sweetness. I won’t be here for that.
We sit on a low bench striped with sun, well away from the other laundresses. I watch them, heads together, gossip swallowed with their meal, reputations chewed to bits. Today, the main course is the arrival of a prisoner from Hopkinton. A Cochrane, and Irish, and Catholic. Horrible things he did, though none can stat
e what they are. I can envision the women at night, ears squashed to the floorboards above the warden’s dining table, listening to the latest convict news.
Gert narrows her eyes. She shakes her head, then scoops thick jam from the jar. “Come evensong, the poor man will have been accused of bestiality and six counts of bigamy.”
She hands me the jam. It’s dark as midnight on the spoon. I press it between my tongue and the roof of my mouth, releasing the tart flavor. Gert is good to me.
She rests her chin on her palm, elbow to knee. Opens and closes her mouth with a click and a lift of her chin. “Not too much sugar?”
“Just right.” I chase the last bit on the edge of my lip, suck it in, flatten it, roll the seeds.
“I’ve never been one for the oversweet,” Gert says. “You should have met my Archie. Not a tooth in his head by the time it hit the tombstone. How that man loved his sugar. He loved it as much as he loved his babes. And sometimes more, I think.”
She runs her thumb over her wild eyebrows, then rests back against the wall. “Can’t fault a man for that. On his dying day, he said, ‘Gert my girl, I’ve loved you fine, but it’s your cakes I’ve sinned with.’” She laughs, a deep sound from her belly. “Never wanted another after him.”
She takes the spoon, wrapping it in cloth and stuffing it in her apron pocket along with her supper tin. “Let’s get back to washing our troubles away. And who knows what proposals await our Lucy today?”
“I’ll pass the best on to you.”
“Had the best already.” Then she peers at me, touching a rough finger to my cheek before tapping her thigh and arising. I know she’s wondering if I’ve had my own Archie. She won’t ask, though. It’s something I won’t tell her. She poked and prodded enough when I was first sent here. But as Archie held tight to his sweets, I held tight to my secret.
Perhaps I should tell her, so she can rest the question in her mind. Yes. I had my own Archie who loved her sweets just as much.
Mrs. Burton took the letter and slipped it into the pocket of her dress. She picked up her embroidery and returned to the table, where she sat and made a little tsk sound to call to the cat. She stroked his back until he flopped to his belly, once again scattering the bobbins.
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