My stomach heaves and I swallow back bile. “No.” I lunge from the chair.
He winces, shrinking into the seat. “You are not helping yourself.”
“I could press this chain against your neck and be happy for the crack. But you are not worth the effort.”
“Guard!” he calls. His voice is tremulous and thin. “Guard!”
“Why, Lucy?” Matron’s got her arms wrapped tight around her waist. There are others out as we make our way back across the yard. Men in a wobbly line of black stripes and manacles. On their way to nail soles or turn a lathe as they did the morning before and will do the mornings after.
“I’d rather hang.”
Chapter Twenty
I am certain Keene has much of interest, vital things that set it apart from Goffstown or Peterboro or Harrowboro. I wasn’t of much mind to care. When I arrived, I was still full of spleen at my unfair (though not unforeseen) circumstances. The stage from Harrowboro to the township had been a jarring six hours on heavily potted roads. The sun baked the exterior of the coach and steamed the interior. On our approach to the town, the road paralleled the new train, which billowed smoke of oily coal dust that crusted my clothes and teeth.
Mrs. Cyrus Elfton’s house was a simple saltbox of weathered white paint and a door that hung just off square. It was easy to find—Cook wrote on the outside of her original letter to take a turn right from the stage stop, turn again past the First Church bell tower, and there behind the blueberry bushes at X-marks-the-spot would she be. And so she was.
“I have no money for you.”
“I ask for none.”
Mrs. Elfton, grim and hard edged, stared up from the note I brought from Cook. “She says you were grievous treated.”
“Did she?”
“Aye.” She flicked the paper near her wind-burnt nose and cheeks as if it would bring both a waft of cool air and some solution for the wayward girl on her steps.
I lowered my chin and shrugged. Perhaps Cook didn’t exactly say grievous treated. It was a small postscript embellishment I made at the stopover in Jaffrey. And though I had confidence in the forgery of the letters themselves, I felt a twinge of unease in the phrasing.
The woman glanced again at the paper, then her eyes caught the basket. “Is there raisin cake?”
“And cider.”
“Ach. There’s nothing to match my sister’s raisin cake.” She pointed to a square table away under a sugar maple. “We’ll sit.”
Mrs. Elfton ate the cake and drank the cider, then ambled over to the blueberries. She picked a handful and brought them back to the table. Her hands were twisted from hard use and age. But I saw Cook in her gestures and swallowed back a rush of grief that it wasn’t the woman herself.
The light was fading. I rubbed my eyes and blinked, as if that were all it would take to clear this away. As if with a shake of my head I would be returned to the kitchen table to take up the mending as Cook murmured bible stories. Manna in the desert. Lot’s wife and the pillar of salt. The raising of Lazarus. All while her voice matched the rhythm of our needles and Jacob’s cloth as he shined the silverware. Jacob’s lips mirroring hers, and when he remembered a fragment of a story, his voice weaving into hers.
If I had been more pliant, not let my temper go, not lashed out at Mr. Finch, I would still be there and not in Keene staring at Cook’s sister and her pale eyes.
But there was nothing to return to. Rebecca would have told the sad story to Eugenie and poisoned any thoughts she had of me with lies. All in the name of protecting her, and all, I am certain, with her hand slipped gently in Eugenie’s, and basking yet again in her attention.
My chin trembled. I dropped my head and pressed my palms to my mouth. But I could not hold back the sobs that pummeled my ribs.
Mrs. Elfton remained quiet, observing me as she ate a solitary blueberry, then another, until there were none left.
I gulped in a breath and wiped my eyes with the back of my arm.
“Are you finished?”
“I’m finished.”
“Is she well, then? My sister.”
“Yes. I think so.”
“Still the psalms at night?”
“At least one.”
“Good.” She folded the rest of the raisin cake in its cloth and placed it back in the basket with the empty cider bottle. “We’ll tend the goats now.”
I don’t know what Mrs. Elfton—Marietta—really thought of me. She allowed me to stay, and I helped her deliver goat cheese and milk and soap to households. She rose earlier even than Cook, with a quick whistle to awaken me and a chookchook to the mule. We loaded the jugs and bottles on the short cart and walked each side of the mule without passing much of any word during the deliveries.
She never gave a name for the mule, so I called him Fred, and he wasn’t averse to me scratching his long, tufted ears as we plodded along.
His one good eye, a deep, soft brown, was level with mine on our local travels, and his look was often baleful, as if this lot in life both disappointed and annoyed him. I thought of the peddler’s mule and his fine ears pricked forward to the possibility of each new adventure.
The long whistle of the railroad perked Fred up. He pranced and shifted in the traces, his tail high angled and flicking. We watched the plume of smoke as the Cheshire Railroad approached the Ashuelot River and clattered over the stone-arch bridge, wheels squealing and sparking and slowing their revolutions as the train pulled to the depot. We sold blueberries and gooseberries and red currants in small paper cones to the few passengers coming from Concord and points east. A few alighted, but most remained in the single car squeezed between the engine and the beds of timber and cotton and brass and wool. Mrs. Elfton walked the windows with a cone lifted and a singsong “Sweet berries from Keene.”
“She’d sell more with a smile,” I told Fred. But she was as tightfisted with her smiles as she was with her words.
Fred dozed in the swelter of sun and ignored me.
Dear Cook,
I am well here in Keene, and your sister has been kind to me. I hear from your letter to her that you have hired another girl. I hope she is serving the house well. I thought of you today—I made Marietta a pudding that turned out more clots than cream and I thought—Cook would know how to fix this. Unfortunately, I did not, and we settled instead for chokeberry jam.
I have learned much about the business of goats. They are stubborn creatures, and I’ve found myself face first in the ground when I wasn’t careful. You can’t bribe them as you can a horse. They’ve got their own mind, and the best to do is sit and nod and pretend to listen to their litany of inconveniences. One is named Medusa, and I am careful to keep my distance from her.
Please let Jacob, Mr. Beede, and Friday know that I ask after them and hope they are well.
And if you can, would you be so kind as to give Mrs. Burton a greeting from me?
Yours Sincerely,
Lucy B.—
At night we kept the windows flung wide, awaiting any purchase of breeze. It was too hot to do much but sprawl across the bedsheet in the room I now occupied, my thin shift stuck to my chest with sweat. Sleep evaded me. I stared yet again at a meandering crack in the ceiling plaster that journeyed from the doorframe to the window jamb on the wall opposite. The plaster had crumbled, exposing narrow strips of lath and horsehair. It was a high moon, bright enough to add to my restlessness. I bunched my pillow over my head and twisted toward the wall.
Marietta’s voice drifted up from the yard. I turned my head to the window. The moon was directly overhead, casting its pallor on the bell tower of the church. Late. Too late for callers.
Her voice drew me to the window. I peered down to the yard and spied her walking the rows of red currants. She bent to pick weeds from around the bases, tossing them to the path and walking on. There was no one beside her, though she lifted her head and nodded and curled her fingers as if her hand held another’s. She spoke then, though too softly to he
ar the meaning.
She turned to the next row, reaching to cradle a branch of the fruit in her palm. Then her hand dropped and the currant bunch swung and settled. She closed her eyes, dropping her head back and pressing her palms together. Her smile seemed too private for my witness. I stepped into the dark and made my way back to the bed.
Mrs. Elfton spoke to the dead. It was not the only conversation I overheard. On Tuesdays she shared the ledger books with her late husband, and on Fridays she walked the graveyard across the road and touched her hands to the weathered stones.
“Do they speak back?” I asked once as we sat under a tree in respite from the heat and watched Fred chew the shards of grass against a stone fence.
“Only if I listen.”
“Mr. Elfton?”
“He’s never been able to give up the books. Well, can’t say as I’m any good with numbers without him.”
Mr. Finch would have a grand time with her.
My dear Lucy,
How kind of you to correspond with Cook. She gives her regards as requested. Mrs. Burton, however, asks that you not write to this address again. She states it is distressing to all involved.
To your best health—
R. White
I crumpled the paper, shoved it in my pocket, and pushed a goat away with my hip. Then I turned back to it, staring into its strange, elongated pupils before giving its shoulder a sharp shove.
“I hate you.”
It shook its head, ears flapping, mouthful of half-sodden hay splattering my skirt. I grabbed its horns and shoved it back until its rump hit the back rails of the pen, then gave another push before grabbing up my skirts and scrambling over the rails.
I didn’t have a destination; I knew little of Keene but the route we took to peddle the berries and milk. I ran, my back to the barn and the cottage and the church spires and bell towers, the sawmills and machine shops and brickyards. I felt the sting of branches and cockleburs on my palms as I slapped them away, darting farther into the forest, away and away from Mrs. Elfton and her mumblings to a husband dead of cholera and rotted to nothing but soil and loam.
The light splintered between the trees into gold and oranges. My lungs pulled in shallow breaths, and the air burned as it entered. There was a rustle of leaves from the maple branches above, then a flash of blue and white as a kingfisher darted in front of me, its call rattling the air before it dove and disappeared. I skidded to a stop. A burble and rush of river lay just beyond me. My chest heaved and I stumbled to the river’s edge.
Here, upstream of the textile mill’s dam, falling leaves stained the water a deep mahogany. The river slipped like oil over boulders and slowed and stilled in lazy eddies alit with black water striders and iridescent damselflies. Too wide and too deep to cross.
I wasn’t the only one there.
Below the water’s skin, opaque and then cobwebbed with filtered light, Mary Dawson stared.
“Oh God.” I kicked until the silt lifted and swirled and buried her to the riverbed.
I was certain she had flung herself in the ice of that stream. Had gripped the rocks to hold herself there until the rime coated and silenced her lips. She threw away her life. Mrs. Burton’s fading fancy.
Was it grief or guilt that kept Eugenie in the carriage while Mary lay in repose? Perhaps, in one of her intemperate moments, she’d locked the girl out of the house, as she had Rebecca. Or was it Rebecca who turned the key?
I would never know, for there was no chance to ask. Any query I sent would be intercepted by Rebecca. No answer, if possibly returned, could I fully believe.
My feet and arms were heavy as I returned through the woods. I perused the matter, turning from the absolute conviction that Eugenie truly loved me, to the desolate acceptance that Aurora had been right. The closer I came to the cottage and the sour stink of goats and curdled milk, the more futile my future became. My meager savings were nearly depleted, and to sell the earrings or bracelet would call attention, and most likely send me to jail as a thief.
I wandered out of the woods to the tumbling racket of the town. I stopped at a corner, aware of eyes catching mine and then quickly averting. I glanced in the window of the tobacconist. My hair was unkempt, loose from the bonnet that hung down my back. My dress was covered in burrs and twigs, stained and crinkled at the hem. As if it were I, and not Mary, who’d inhabited the waters and arose.
I lifted my chin and gave myself a nod. I was not her. I would never be her.
I was wrong, of course.
George Farley (so named in gold letters on his door) was grandly tall, and when he leaned upon the travel office counter, the wood grunted. I stood in the midst of maps pinned to walls and rolled in cubbyholes, of train schedules that displayed departures and arrivals from Boston to South Carolina and the far reaches of Missouri.
My finger traversed the Cheshire Railroad line, whose map was pressed between glass and the counter. The line continued west from Keene to Bellows Falls, Vermont. There it joined the Central Vermont line, and from there one could travel most directions.
I grabbed the counter edge to steady myself and took in the wall maps: all the roads and bridges, the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, the inked-in mountains, the great empty desert, a tiny dot signifying San Francisco. So many possibilities, I felt lightheaded.
Albert said the same once, in a room we’d rented for an afternoon. He was on his side, chin cupped in his hand, stroking my waist with his finger. “The world has so many possibilities. Why, it’s all just a ship away.”
I brushed my palm across his chest, curled the dark hairs and nipped kisses. “Where would you go?”
“Timbuktu,” he said.
I pressed my nose to his skin and sniggered. “Timbuktu.”
“Or Edo Bay.”
“Japan?”
“I could meet the emperor.”
“Would you take me?”
“Mmm.” He rolled to his back and stuck his hand under his head. I smoothed his mustache as he stared at the ceiling, eyebrows pulled tight in thought. “I couldn’t take the children. You, however, would be a grand companion.”
He didn’t mean it. It was another of his flights of fancy. Even then, he kept a close eye on his pocket watch, lifting it from the bed stand to check and recheck the time.
With a scratch of his beard, he said, “You’re my girl.”
“Yes. Here or Timbuktu. Or the Andes, if that suits.”
“Right.” He gave a soft smack to my rump and sat up.
We dressed, backs to each other, and left ten minutes apart.
“How much to San Francisco?”
The travel agent raised and lowered his eyebrow as he looked at me. He cleared his throat. “I can get you to St. Joseph by train, then you’ll need to find a wagon going and—”
“Get me to St. Joseph, then. That’s in Missouri?” I rummaged in my waist purse and slid the last of my coins across the counter. “Would you barter for the rest of the fare? I’ve some old jewelry.”
“Better if you had some old companion with you.”
“I can take care of myself.”
He reached for his fare book, opening it to a half-filled page. “What’s the name?”
“Tessa Marks.”
I turned and pushed through the door before I could change my mind. So simple. A ticket and another new life.
Mrs. Elfton had company.
A red brougham sat on the dirt street. A pair of mismatched horses, one dapple gray and the other a freckled white, lingered in their traces. I slowed as I came to it, my heart punching my chest. I clenched and twisted my skirts as I rounded it, following the voices to Marietta’s yard. I stopped at the hedge of blueberries. Dappled light fell through the wide-armed sugar maple, and it caught the movement of a jade-green silk fan: the flutter up, the quick flick down, the twist and click as it closed. Then its owner leaned forward, her free hand gripping the table. My heart tumbled in my chest, and I misstepped as I neare
d. Eugenie. With Mr. Burton sitting across, his dark-gray suit vest sifted with a fine layer of dust. And there, by the porch, Mr. Friday just stepping down and carrying a large pitcher of iced tea, followed by Marietta, who carried a plate of biscuits and the chokeberry jam we’d put up the previous week.
“Mrs. Burton?” The word raced from my mouth.
Eugenie turned her head with a slight cock, and her mouth quivered and drew into an uncertain smile. “Lucy.”
Her cheeks stretched along the bone, for she had lost weight and her skin was so pale I could see the pulse of blood along her throat. Her dark hair had come loose from her bonnet, and her yellow calico dress was dulled with dust.
I darted my eyes across the yard and peered into the shadowed porch. “Is Rebecca . . .”
Eugenie pressed her glove to the corner of her eye and then let out a breath with a short laugh. “She’s at the house. Sorting out the new maid.”
Mr. Friday set down the pitcher and clasped his hands behind him. He had not removed his coat; when he flicked at a mosquito, I saw a ring of sweat under his arms.
Mr. Burton pressed his lips together and gazed at me. “My wife says I was wrong. About you.” He swallowed. “Mr. Finch . . . He and Aurora are no longer at the house.”
“I don’t understand why you’re here.”
Eugenie spread her palms. “We’ve come to take you home.”
Mr. Friday’s gaze caught mine. As he regarded me, his expression grew dour and then seemed to coil to a sort of pity. Perhaps it was his only way to warn me; he was never one for words, after all.
My words caught in my throat, a riotous mix that would come out a meaningless keen were I to let them go. “But you fired me.”
“You did nothing wrong, Lucy.” Her voice grew tremulous. “Please. For me.”
Chapter Twenty-One
So, I was collected.
In bright moods I think: she loved me.
In my darker moods I think: I was collected like an object for her shelf.
We lodged in town that night. Mr. Burton made the arrangements, and we sat in a lobby of ferns and horsehair seats while the room was procured. Mr. Friday passed bags and a trunk to the desk clerk.
The Companion Page 17