How deep was her frown as she touched the caliper, exploring the metal, following its curves to the tips.
“Moving slightly up from the crest of the ear,” Finch said, “we approach the ridge that determines combativeness. Can you feel that, Mrs. Burton? It is not large. But neither is it average. Not ungovernable but tinged, unfortunately, with fire. You would be well advised to watch the girl’s temper. Shall we move further round the skull? Come, come.” He lifted the caliper and pressed his index finger to the spot above my ear. “You should each have a touch.”
For the court records, I present my findings of the accused from the original diagnoses made in June ’54 and the recent appointment of Dec ’54.
She is a creature much determined by her combative and excitable nature. The zygomatic arch is quite pronounced. The protuberance at No. 6-7 is overlarge, and in both sittings, I was troubled by the measurements and took them twice to confirm. Together we have evidence of unqualified bitterness, hatefulness, and when roused, a desperate wrath.
I suppose, the next week, I should have thought twice before punching Enoch Finch.
But I didn’t.
For the record, Mr. Finch, you caught me unawares. You’re lucky I didn’t pick up a slop bucket and sling that at you.
I do apologize (for the record—not that it will do me any good) for taking my roused wrath out on you. You slobbered on my breasts and bruised my waist, but those were only the final straws to your trying personality.
“Tell me about Mary.”
Eugenie bolted in her bed, but I would not let go her shoulder. “What are you doing in here?”
I pressed my cheek against hers, my lips hard against her ear. “Did you tell her she would be your companion too?”
Her mouth was slack, and she breathed in quick rations of air.
“Did you love her?”
“Let me go.”
“Do you love me?” I clamped my fingers to her jaw and turned her head to face mine. “Tell me. Tell me the truth.”
Eugenie did not answer in words but in quick bites and caresses that marked my skin. I pushed my mouth into her shoulder to stifle a cry and left before she could conjure a lie.
Chapter Nineteen
Truth is a rather pliable object, isn’t it? Something molded and recreated and told as an entertaining story.
Evidence. Me. Sitting here now, Mr. LeRocque.
I was observed pushing Rebecca down the stairs. That is true if you’re the girl looking up from the bottom step. That is not true if your view is from the landing above.
And it is true I had quite the inventory of jewels in my valise. And men’s clothing. It is not true that I stole them.
And I did punch Mr. Finch that summer. That was, alas, also true.
Mr. Finch says I have committed calumny. That he instigated nothing at all, and certainly not the last bit behind the barn that caused his ensuing black eye. Not accosting me on the steep back stairs as I brought down the plates. Not with a hand over my mouth and the muffled rumble of Cook’s snores filtering from her bedroom to mine. Not at Wheeler’s Inn where he took longer, and was crueler, and gave me a coin to spend any way I wanted during the remaining threads of my afternoon off.
But that morning, he followed me to the barn as I lugged the slop buckets to the pigs. He hummed and kept stride, thumbs hooked in his vest pockets and eyes squinting at the light.
“You’re a fine, strong girl, Miss Blunt. I can see it in your forearms.”
We passed the side of the barn, the shadows nipped with the last of the night, and then came to the hog pens. The brutes pushed against each other, solid bodies of brown vying for the first bucket of the day. Steam curled from their nostrils as they snorted and bunched close to the fence. I set down the buckets, reached in, and tugged a few ears. “You’re a hungry sty of pork today.”
I stepped down and lifted a bucket. Mr. Finch stood a few paces back from the animals, his hands still clamped to his vest pockets. He peered at me with eyes both dispassionate and wanting at the same time. I’d seen the look before. Albert’s version of it melted me. Mr. Finch’s made me laugh.
I slung the bucket’s contents over the rail, then switched to another and moved down the pen.
“Why are you laughing, Miss Blunt?”
I couldn’t say out loud that he looked like a woodpecker in heat. I couldn’t say that he frightened me. I just shrugged, tipped the last of the buckets, and then gathered them up by the handles.
He sauntered toward me. As I slipped past, he reached for me. The buckets clattered to the ground. His thumb pressed deep in my elbow as he twisted me to face him and pulled me tight. To breath rank of coffee and his ever-present pipe. To his thin chest and extruding rib cage. To his thighs and hardness. “You shouldn’t laugh.”
I kept laughing. For wasn’t it ridiculous? I laughed and his thumb dug deeper, and then he let go just to grab the scruff of my neck. Like a dog. He shook me once and twisted up the neck of my dress. Marched us past the hogs to the back of the barn where the night still lingered.
The boards were flaked and in want of a coat of paint. He pushed my face to the wood and held it there. It didn’t take long. A few grunts on his part, a spittle of paint chips on mine.
“Put your skirt down.” He buttoned up his trousers.
I touched the back of my hand to the stinging skin on my cheek, then curled my fingers to a fist.
He stared at my fist, one brow lifting. “That would be unadvisable.” He tilted his head. “Wouldn’t it? Yes, yes, I think it would . . .” He glanced then at the field beyond us, and the trees that circled the pasture. “Sheep. There’s so damn many sheep here. It’s—”
That’s when I punched him.
He staggered, more from surprise than the strike of the blow. He covered his eye, stumbling back in a flail of feet and elbows, landing with an umph on the ground. “What the hell was that for?”
“You’re a pathetic man.”
His mouth flopped open and closed shut. He cupped his eye and rolled to his back. His ribs expanded and flattened and his chest rumbled in a chortle of amusement. “You shouldn’t have done that. Shouldn’t have done that at all.”
Rebecca stopped me as I returned that afternoon. Her arms were full of cut flowers from the garden. “What happened to your cheek?”
“I tripped.”
Her eyes narrowed, her gaze slipped past to the edge of the orchard and then cut back to me. “You must be more careful.”
Eugenie stopped me that day, stilling the water can I had lifted to a rose so dark it was nearly indigo. Her touch was so soft on my arm, I thought I would break in two. “You’ve been avoiding me. Are you well?”
I crushed my lips to keep from speaking. For what would that possibly gain? Her disapproval at best and her disgust at worst. Either way, I could lose this position and the one I craved.
“You have guests.”
She crossed her arms at the waist. Her dress was cotton, frilled round the collars and cuffs with yellow daisies, the fabric patterned in a snarl of vines.
“Where did you get the dress?”
“It’s one of Aurora’s. Do you like it?”
“No.”
“You’re out of sorts.”
“I have work to do.”
I caught sight of Rebecca turning from the stairs, her hand still on the curved banister as she peered in the dim hall. She approached us and stood in a square of light.
“There you are.”
Eugenie gave a sharp smile. “Here I am.”
“I thought Mr. Friday took care of this hothouse.”
“He’s taken Mr. Finch to town,” I said. “He wishes to tour the mill.”
“How attentive you are of Mr. Finch.” She slipped her arm through Eugenie’s. “Come along. Aurora wants you to accompany her while she sings.”
Eugenie hesitated. When she turned to me, her expression was troubled.
I’ve been summoned to the warden’s hou
se. There is a visitor, though Matron was not told the name, only to bring me post haste. It is early; the ground still shimmers a bluish hue. The only others astir are the guards tending to the boilers in the kitchens and laundry.
The warden’s dwelling sits in the center of the prison, a red-brick house with black-paint window frames and a tidy garden along the walkway to the door.
I wonder about a man who would bring his wife and daughters to live in such a domicile. No matter the window, the view is as grim as the last.
Matron holds my elbow instead of tugging at the short chain between my handcuffs. She glances at me, then away, then back again. “Stop.”
She pushes her fingers through my hair, tugging at the tangles until my head jerks and scalp stings from all the pulling. Her hands slow and smooth, draping a tress over my shoulder, curling it round her finger before letting go. Then she nods and takes up my elbow, and our feet crunch over the gravel-and-rock path to the warden’s door.
Whoever it is has been granted entry before visiting hours.
Matron grips my elbow. “Perhaps it’s Mrs. Kepple with news . . .” But she can’t say more; saying it means there’s hope someone believed me when I told the truth.
I slowed before the morning room door as I passed and stared at the tableau round the breakfast table. Aurora held her teacup halfway to her lips. Mr. Finch bit into a strip of bacon, his jaw shifting side to side as he chewed. His left eye was a swell of purple and red.
“She threw herself at me. Dropped the buckets, spun right around, clawed my collar. Like a harridan. Mmph.”
“I warned you,” Aurora said.
“There was no reason for her to give me such a blow. I might lose my vision.”
“You won’t lose your vision, don’t be daft.” (Saith Aurora.) “But you can’t say Rebecca and I didn’t warn you about that girl. I hope Eugenie listens now.”
“She’s a horrid little creature.” A cup returned with a click to the table, and Finch’s voice cut sharp edged and smug. “I should have minded my own findings.”
I followed Mr. Beede, my satchel in hand. It held only the dress and coat I came in, my comb, and the paper folded with Ned’s hair. I concealed Eugenie’s gifts in the hem of my lilac dress. Ribbons and lace. A bracelet of emeralds. A pair of garnet earrings.
A mural ran the length of the wall behind Mr. Burton’s desk: a fuddled landscape of wilting trees and splotches of brown that denoted horses or four-legged boys. The houses tumbled along a blue lick of water. The buildings in the corner looked to be the mill and the sawyer’s, though the sawyer must not have paid the artist, for his building was half out of the frame.
The other walls were black, the flatness interrupted only by paintings as somber in color as the rest of the room. A table ran through the middle, and on it lay a map of a sinuous river. The curling corners were held in place by a cast-iron model of a train car, a paperweight of amber glass, two leather-bound books, and a vase filled with a drooping daisy and yellowed water.
Rebecca perched at the far end, her embroidery round held in her hands. She did not look up when I entered. Just a long sigh and a needle poked to the fabric.
Mr. Burton sat behind his desk, elbows planted atop a twisted stack of bound papers. “What have you to say?”
“Does it matter?”
“You have injured a guest of my house.”
“He injured me.”
Mr. Beede set a hand on my shoulder, but I twisted away.
“Whatever the circumstance,” Mr. Burton said, “we do not tolerate violence in this house.”
“He deserved that black eye,” I said. “It wasn’t the first time—”
“You seemed content with him when I ran into you in town.” Rebecca peered at me, then out the window. “Fawning around beyond your place. Goodness knows the rumors, Cousin. If you hear any, you—”
“I didn’t ask his attention then. I certainly haven’t asked it after.”
“No? Not the attention you really want, is it, Lucy?”
“Why do you do this?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. She needs to be dismissed.”
“You pathetic—”
Mr. Burton flattened his hands to his desk and stood. “Enough.”
“I’ll speak my mind as I wish. Mr. Finch is a baboon. Which is all very fine to all of you, as long as it’s me he accosted. What if it had been your wife?”
Mr. Burton’s mouth curled. “My wife would not be in such a position to begin with.”
“No. God forbid she’s allowed to walk two steps on her own.”
“I will not have you—”
I stepped back. “I’ll be on my way. I’d just like to say my goodbye to Cook.”
Mr. Burton gestured to Beede and then turned his back to me.
“Here are your wages.” Mr. Beede handed me an envelope. “Cook will have a basket for you in the kitchen.”
Mr. Burton strode to the door and grabbed the knob. The corners of his mouth pulled down and set in a deep frown. He glared at me, then looked above to the horrible fronded trees of the mural. I crimped the envelope in my fist.
“I would like to see Mrs. Burton.”
Rebecca glanced up from the embroidery loop she worked, then returned to sliding the needle and pulling the thread taut. “She has a headache.” With a flick of her wrist she hooked the thread. “Close the door as you go, Mr. Beede.”
“Oh, Lucy.” Cook fingered the edge of the psalm book in her pocket, then rested her hands on my arms. She had left a pheasant half plucked on the counter. The floor was littered with feathers striated in yellows and whites and browns. I whisked them into a pile to be sifted into boxes for later use, the soft hackle set aside for pillows and fishing lures, the long tail plumes to be added to a vase in the hall. I kept my eyes on the patterns of the plumes, not the throb of the split skin on my knuckles. I kept my attention on the sorting rather than the stir of acid in my stomach.
“You’ll find another girl, Cook.”
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, then turned to the pheasant and plucked the final quills from its skin. “I’ve made a good basket for you. There’s two slices of raisin cake, and I’ve slipped in a bottle of cider. Victuals enough to tide you for a few days.”
“You didn’t need to.”
“And there’s a note to give my sister in Keene. Mrs. Cyrus Elfton. There’s just her now, her husband fell to the cholera a few summers back. She could sorely use help.”
“Is she like you?”
“Fiercer.”
“Then it’s I who will need the help.” I grabbed her then, arms wrapped round before she could grumble away.
“That’ll do.” She bent her head, and her lips moved with silent words. Then she gave a sigh and turned back to the pheasant. “Be off, then.”
I picked up the basket and shifted the shoulder strap of my satchel. I slowed at the door. “Cook? What’s your name? I’ve never asked your real name.”
Cook wiped her hands with her apron. “Connors. Emma Connors. But I wouldn’t know it to answer to.”
“God keep you, Emma Connors.”
The warden’s wife meets us at the door. She is a small woman, smaller than Matron, and her blond hair is graying. She worries the brooch at her throat as she leads us through the dark-walled hall. The parlor is washed with gray light that has reflected from the stone wall of the building opposite. The oil lamps placed round the low-slung room, the bright-red rag rugs, the gaudy pillows, and random cut-glass ornaments attest to a feminine hand but a losing battle.
There are two figures at the window, one large with feet planted wide. The warden, brash with confidence. Then the other turns toward us. My skin chills and then flushes with prickling heat. I press my hand to my mouth, pulling in gasps of air, the iron chain swinging and the shackle hitting my jaw.
“Ah. Miss Blunt.”
Enoch Finch. With the same rasp of a voice and cocky thrust of chest.
Matron grips my elbow and I topple into the seat. She steps behind, and her hand rests on the seat back.
The warden looks at me. His eyes give away nothing. They never do. They are hard as glass. It’s not surprising given his position. He nods at Finch. “I’ll be in my office.”
Finch leans against the deep window frame and takes his time packing and lighting his pipe. He puffs and blinks, his head tilted one way and then the other. “Are you well?”
My lips are numb, cold, though the room is heated from the stove in the corner. “What do you want?”
“Still so bellicose.” He kicks out a shiny shoe and steps toward me. He leans down, resting a hand to his knee, biting the pipe in his teeth. His eyes dart back and forth as he peers at me. “Your time slips like sand. Mmph.”
Then with a twist of his trunk, he settles into the sofa. He sets the pipe on a plate of rose glass, the tobacco glinting orange and sifting to ash as it lands.
“We wonder why we were called here,” Matron says.
“Do they give you a precise time to hang? Or is it a range of hours, say, sometime between lunch and evensong?”
“Ten fifteen a.m.” I can’t stop the needles prickling under my skin.
“Ten fifteen a.m.” He leans back and snakes his arm across the top of the sofa, his finger tapping the curved wood of the frame. “Or not.” His eyebrow lifts. “Mrs. Kepple is a worthy ally to you. She has gained a hearing on the floor of the statehouse.”
I sit forward with a gasp.
“I have been asked to report on your character. As an authority on psychological conditions, of course the request came to me. Aurora will plead for your life. I will confirm if it’s worth it.”
My clench is so tight on the arm rests, my fingers have numbed.
“There is hope,” Matron murmurs.
“The warden isn’t keen on you women. His last report was the third time he’s complained that you don’t earn your keep. At least the men have a hand in the sale of cabinets. And shoes.” He shifted. “The asylum is on offer. If I deem you fit. You see, Miss Blunt, I hold your life in my hands.”
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