The Companion

by Kim Taylor Blakemore

  “Is it a nice hotel?” Eugenie whispered, wiping her gloved hands along her skirt, the fan at her wrist bumping and twisting with the motion.

  “Very nice.”

  “Good.” She nodded, her mouth curling down before settling into a thin line. “Are we ready, husband? I think I’ll have Lucy take me in to my room.”

  That evening, a summer thunderstorm made good on its threat. The tassels on the heavy curtains in the Burtons’ room swayed and bumped against the wall with each successive clap. The room—with its excess of tables and silk chairs and a wide swatch of fabric that hung over the bed—held in the heat and static air.

  Mr. Burton had excused himself to the men’s parlor two floors below, no doubt puffing cigars with other mill men and rolling dice for penny antes. Or not. He could indeed come up any moment, and only the turn of the key would sound the alarm. We lay on the bed, listening to the rolls of thunder and the plonks of rain against the half-open windows. I kept one ear toward the knob, and with each creak in the hall felt my blood pulse quick and hard.

  “God is very grumbly tonight,” Eugenie said.

  “You don’t believe in God.”

  “Thor, then. Zeus on Olympus. Nattering about his indigestion.” She bit her lip, a smile caught between. “Six more seconds,” she whispered.

  Our fingers weaved together when the thunder shook the glass precisely six seconds, or nine, or twelve—for she was right every time—and we rolled toward each other and laughed and kissed and tangled the thin blanket around our knees.

  “How do you do it?”

  “It’s a matter of listening.” She nuzzled my nose and I breathed in the sweet of brandy, of lemon cream, of our joint bodies.

  I ran my thumb down the soft curve of her arm. “I love you.”

  We both stilled. Eugenie rose to her elbow, caressing my chin. Then her lips touched and rested on mine. “Tomorrow I will buy you a beautiful dress.”

  “Will you?”

  “There is a dressmaker in this town, isn’t there?”

  “More than one.”

  “And I will take you home to your very own room. Right next to mine.”

  “The nursery is right next to yours.”

  “It’s yours now. You can decorate it any way you want.”

  She reached to touch my cheek, a quick caress, then ran her hand down my arm and circled her thumb on my wrist. “I’ll give you anything.”

  A fractured slice of lightning and loud clap sent us under the covers. The glass beads on the lampshades clinked and chimed.

  I pulled the cover from my head and sat against the headboard, pulling my knees to my chest. Leaden clouds pushed and darkened the window glass. “Rebecca—”

  “Rebecca doesn’t matter.”

  “But she does.”

  Eugenie crawled up, stretching her legs before her and clasping her hands to her lap. Her expression was veiled. “I don’t care.”

  The cloudbank thinned and swirled, revealing and then obscuring streams of moonlight.

  “You came for me.”

  “I did.”

  “And Rebecca? How were you able to leave without her?”

  She shrugged. “I made sure she overslept.”

  I shivered. “Not sorting out the new maid, then.”

  “Are you cold?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “I am. Can you find my shawl?”

  “In that heap? Give me an hour.” But I found it quickly, glad to leave that conversation behind. Had she given Rebecca a dose of laudanum, or a sleeping draught of morphine, or belladonna from the yard? Did I really want to know?

  I turned to the task of brushing and hanging her clothing in the hotel wardrobe. I lit the lamp, tidying and listening as she described the fulsome horror of the long trip and the roar of the railroad as they entered the town.

  “It’s a beast. Like the Minotaur let loose from his cave.”

  A necklace dropped from her jewelry case, causing its locket to flip open.

  Two miniatures, precisely painted. Eugenie still plumped with youth and covered in her wedding silks. Mr. Burton with hair still fully black, curling around the ears, his collar high and brushing his jaw. They looked hopeful, as if in time they might come to grow fond of the other. As if it all were not merely an arrangement of money and a shift of responsibility from Gene’s father to her husband. Just an artist’s trick, those gazes. Or at least that’s what I made myself believe.

  “It’s time to dress you for dinner. And I still need to find my room.”

  I had seen the necklace before; she wore it often, stroking the gold casing as she sat listening to me read. I closed it with a snap and pushed it and a sliver of unease under her pins and bracelets. Then I placed the box on the dressing table.

  “Hold still unless you want this pin stuck in your neck.” Gert fusses over a piece of collar lace. She’s adamant I be dressed right for God and has fitted me in a dress of serge, midnight blue with white posies. She’s smuggled in the pins one by one and stitched the pattern pieces to the underside of her petticoats to evade the inspections. Here a quick measurement, there a hasty turn of the hem. All the elements now assembled and draped and fitted.

  It seems a shame to waste it on me.

  She circles. “Step up on the bench.”

  The boiler knocks and hisses steam. “Think the warden will replace that one too?”

  “When the Irish learn to wash their mouths out.” She shakes her head and bends to the skirt hem. “I don’t want you tripping.”

  Almira and Margaret stand over their vat, two witches with a brew of lye and tepid water and thin, tattered sheets.

  “What are you looking at?” I ask.

  Almira shakes her head, a frizz of gray and black wobbling on her scalp. “Can I have that dress when you’re done with it? My girl could use it.”

  Margaret keeps her head down. “That’s a horrible thing to joke about.”

  With a twist of her paddle, Almira lifts a bundle of sheets and slaps it back with a spray of water. “I don’t really want it. You’ll piss and shit and ruin it anyway.”

  I stumble from the bench, Gert’s shoulder grabbed tight in my fist. I lurch over, breath burning my chest, mouth wide gasping for air. Gert settles me to the floor, grousing about the pins and smoothing out the skirts.

  “You’ve got no heart, Almira.”

  But she’s right. I’ll shit and piss and my tongue will swell and go black. If I’m lucky, the rope will be the precise right length and I won’t notice anything but the drop of the floor. The doctor’s weighed me; the cut of the rope’s in the hangman’s hands now.

  Gert grabs me by the chin with a shake. “You listen to me. You’re going to put your shoulders back and give us a goodbye and you’ll be quick to the Promised Land, leaving all the rest of us envious you got there first. And not a stain will mark this dress. Now, take a good deep breath and let me get back to the hemming.”

  “She’s not headed for the Promised Land.”

  Gert pushes to her feet, her face red as she turns on Almira. “I’ll have you switched to the latrines quick as I can snap my fingers.”

  The seamstress at Mrs. Dempsey’s Millinery bore the patience of someone who’d been handed triple the fee. She held up ready-made dresses for Eugenie’s exploration: how smooth the fabric, how fine the stitches, what material the buttons, which tone exactly did Mrs. Dempsey mean by green, does it suit her companion’s complexion?

  Eugenie’s cheeks maintained a high flush, and she often laughed and reached to make certain I was consistently near.

  She settled finally on a teal dress of silk and cotton, patterned with peacock feathers and a modest scoop collar. It fit nearly as if made for me, and Mrs. Dempsey said the alterations would be complete by noon.

  I should have demurred then. Urged Eugenie toward one of the simpler dresses in plainer fabrics.

  Vanity, Lucy.

  A drop of ice water hits my cheek. I flail my hands a
nd struggle upright, blinking against the dark.

  “Who’s there?”

  I can hear it: the shift of a body, the intake of breath.

  I can smell it. A boggy rot.

  I can taste it. Silt and iron.

  “Mary?”

  It’s cold here.

  Her voice is like crystallized breath.

  Do you want to know what she did to me?

  “Who?”

  But you already know, don’t you?

  The chaplain is insistent I speak with God. Since I have refused the good man’s pleas too many times to count, he has given me full run of the prison chapel. I catch him staring at my leg irons.

  “Here you may talk to God, Lucy Blunt. He is listening.”

  I sit in the plain room, white boards, long worn pews, a visitor’s gallery boarded over, the hymnals locked in a cabinet near the chaplain’s dais. The tall windows allow light through the rusting iron lattices, and it patterns the walls and floor like a limitless game of hopscotch.

  Mr. Smith has unlocked the cabinet and removed a hymnal. He holds it in his palm, weighing the value of sharing it with me. His hand trembles and he grips the spine tight before turning to meet me in the second pew.

  “He will listen,” he says. But he stares at the cover of the hymnal instead of me, and I know it’s because he doubts.

  I do not take the book. He leans forward and sets it near my side. His lips form into an indifferent smile. He taps the cover, then takes his leave of me.

  Now I sit in an empty pew in an empty church. The pew seat is scratched and scarred; fingernails have dug through the oil-dark surface, littering it with yellow-white hieroglyphs. Jan 1813 Carlyle Martin; Goffstown; Jesus C; Nov; Mirabel—names and dates and smatters of pictographs crisscross and tangle from one arm to the other. I walk each aisle, my fingertips tracing the ridges and furrows of lives spent kneeling and praying and whittling.

  It is the first I have been in this place; it taxes the chaplain to provide two sets of sermons, and the few women here don’t warrant the effort.

  I return to my seat. I shove the hymnal off the pew, and it lands with a satisfying thwack. Beyond the clang of the irons, it’s the only sound in the room. I click my tongue and turn my head from left to right, listening for echoes that chirrup and bleat and break to pieces in the air.

  Cook would smack the back of my head if she were here. Faith simmered under her skin. She told me once that God resided between our thoughts and spoke in the quiet spaces. “You don’t leave enough room, Lucy.”

  But Cook is not here. Though I would like to know if, at her passing, all her prayers and pieties bring her face-to-face with him for at least a quick chat and holy embrace.

  Behind the dais hangs a large embroidered cross. It is as plain as the room, and the gold has browned at the edges.

  “You took my child,” I say.

  The room is still. Only the sound from outside the windows of the workers replacing the cabinet-room boilers, a whoop of the foreman and the pound of hammer to metal.

  “You took everything.”

  He’s not listening. Mary—at the other end of the pew. Her form shifts and varies, her face concealed behind a graying veil. Her back curves as she cuts her name into the wood.

  I close my eyes and press the heels of my fists to my lids. When I look again, the seat is empty.

  But there is her name, etched and ribboned into the dark wood. Mary Dawson.

  Eugenie’s arm pressed to mine during the trip back to Harrowboro. Mr. Burton departed at the mill, ensuring he would be home for dinner. Mr. Friday took the narrow lane to the house. I rolled down the window to take in fresh air. The trees curved above, limbs weaved and creating a path that limned to shadows with the onset of dusk.

  The horses quickened their pace as they recognized home. Mr. Friday’s churrings could be heard through the glass, and his hands worked the reins to keep the animals at pace.

  Then the carriage shot out of the woods and into the clearing, washing the interior with the last rays of the day.

  Eugenie pressed my fingers, then released them, shifting in her seat until there was space between us. “She will be waiting.”

  The horses slowed, swaying the carriage forward and then settling back. I looked through the glass at Rebecca framed by the columns, her hands held across her waist, hair twisted into tight loops, her smile set in a brittle curve. She stepped to the door.

  “Lucy. You’re back.” Her words came clipped through that careful, wary smile.

  “You were told. I assume.”

  “I was not.” She lifted and dropped a shoulder. “Well. We do need you. The new maid is worthless.”

  Her welcome—both polite and spiked with displeasure—was what I expected.

  Eugenie untied her bonnet and handed it to me. We descended to the gravel drive. I shook out the wrinkles in my skirt. The teal fabric gleamed. Eugenie slipped her hand to my elbow and leaned past me. “Lucy’s bags go with mine, Mr. Friday.”

  I saw it then—the flash of surprise in Rebecca’s eyes.

  “And Rebecca. Will you ask Cook for two trays? Just something light.”

  “I’ve eaten,” Rebecca said.

  “I’m glad.”

  Rebecca fought to keep the smile on her face, clenching her teeth. “Two trays, then.” She turned, her shoulders pinched tight, the bell of her skirt swinging as she strode to the steps. Her foot faltered on the first stair. She glanced over her shoulder, her gaze fixed to the ground. “Is she your new companion?”

  “Rebecca . . .”

  Her flinch was palpable. “Then she can tell Cook about the trays.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I was begrudged nothing upon my return, or at least nothing that involved my physical well-being. If I wanted damask curtains and velvet coverlets, Eugenie placed the order for two of each, in blue or teal, amber or ochre. If I merely mentioned a yen for rose water, or a flush of white calla lilies to brighten a corner, or sugared peaches, by the next day they were procured and presented with a child’s glee.

  “Is it not all you wanted?” Eugenie clasped her hands to her chest, then spread her arms and reached for me, waiting with an expectant smile for her kiss of thanks.

  I was given my own bed. My own desk. Fine thin paper. A crystal ink bottle. A shelf of the latest romances. Feather bolsters. A tortoiseshell comb-and-mirror set. A chemise in the smoothest cotton. Hairpins tipped with pearls.

  Like a well-kept whore.

  It is a hard word, I do grant, but appropriate nonetheless. And yes, it dogged the edge of my conscience, though I was able to ignore it most hours of most days.

  I had all I desired in the palm of my hand. What did it matter that the door between us locked from her side and not mine? That some nights she invited her husband to cards and an evening’s reading and my patience grew taut enough to snap? Those nights I closed my windows and pressed my hands to my ears. I paced the corners of my room, slowing at the keyhole to watch the flits of shadows and light from the other side, but not stopping, never stopping my pace until the bruise of morning light. Then the clock on the wall above my desk chimed, and the sonorous clock in the hall answered. Six o’clock. A brush of my skirt, a pat of my cheeks, a trip down the stairs for the morning trays, for the new maid’s sly glance, for Cook’s silent disapproval.

  “I see you less now than before. I hate it.”

  Eugenie rubbed her nose with the back of her index finger and sighed. She leaned her elbow on the armchair, resting her chin in her palm, fingers curled in, and looked in my direction. “It’s too early in the morning. Don’t you think—”

  “I don’t care about the time.”

  “Such ill humor.”

  I picked a curl of paint from the sill. Flattened it. Picked again. I cut a glance to the open door and the dark hall beyond. With a shove away from the window I crossed the floor, making wide berth as she grasped for my wrist. I peered into the hall and turned my gaze to a scu
ff of sound beyond the stairs. Delphine, I assumed, for there was another scrape, chair legs against the floor and a rectangle of light washing from the open doors of the piano room. “She’s always skulking. And not very kind to the furniture.” I glanced back to Eugenie. “Why did Mr. Beede choose her?”

  “Miss?”

  I swung my head round. Delphine stood in the hallway, twisting a feather duster. Her mass of black curls haloed her head and looked seconds from bursting into a chaotic tangle. Her eyes slanted up, as did her dark eyebrows, and with a sharp chin, gave her an obdurate expression.

  “Yes, Delphine?”

  “Oui?”

  My fingers pressed into the doorframe and then I tapped them against the wood. “I didn’t call for you.”

  “I know.” She turned back to the room, giving a quick swipe to a hall table. Her lips curled with the threat of a smirk. “I don’t answer to you anyway.”

  I shook my head, at a loss. My grasp lingered on the knob after I shut the door.

  “Are you afraid of our little French-Canadian?” Eugenie asked.

  “I think I am.”

  “Josiah’s hired a group of them for the mill. He expects to save money.”

  “The Irish are cheaper.”

  “But they’re so few and far between here.”

  A breeze lifted the summer curtains. Eugenie sat in the light. “Come, read to me from your romance. Our nun is quite on the verge of losing her habit.”

  My shoulders dropped and I rested my forehead against the wood. “Will I eat in my room or with you tonight?”

  “I’m dining with Josiah. You could eat with Cook. Or Rebecca, if you like.”

  “Why would I do that?” I gritted my teeth and turned the knob. “Can you embroider instead? I’m tired of that story.”

  “Lucy.” Her skirts rustled as she walked to me, circled her arm around my waist. Capturing me. Her head on my shoulder, her breath a muddle of bitter coffee and ginger preserves. “You know you have my heart.”

  “Do I?” I grabbed her elbows and pushed myself from her. “You’re right,” I said. “I am ill-tempered. And afraid of the new maid.”