Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

by Gregory Maguire

  “A woman may walk abroad in Haarlem and conduct her business,” says Margarethe with satisfaction. “In England a woman is rarely allowed such liberty. She is quarantined for fear of the society outside her door or her farmstead. Clara, don’t fiddle with your collar.” Margarethe has spoken loudly. Three dames of Haarlem turn and watch Clara attend. “That’s an obedient child,” says Margarethe.

  Iris pulls back a step and thinks about this. Is Margarethe parading herself as Clara’s mother-in-stead? Is she is making a show, all about town, of her care for the motherless child?

  She studies Margarethe as they wait at the door of the tobacconist, where her mother wants to buy a pleasing blend for van den Meer’s pipe. If Iris were to paint Margarethe, what would she notice?

  There is the heavy brow, slightly protruding, like a lump of bread dough that has fallen forward from up top. Firmly marshaled eyebrows, knitted together in the act of watching the merchant cut the tobacco to the correct specifications. Margarethe’s hand is soldered to her hip, a gesture of patience and intractability both. Her lips are pursed. The lower lip is nipped in, to be pinched by the upper teeth in moments of mild distress. And, Iris realizes, such moments are frequent. Margarethe lives a life of compromise. She takes nothing for granted and barters every sentence to her advantage.

  How dear she is, even in her strictness, her chill.

  There’s another side of Margarethe to be seen later this day, for the route they take home from the shops brings them by an almshouse for old men. Maids and manservants are carrying several corpses out the door to await the gravedigger’s cart. “Plague alarm,” says the regent crossly when he sees Margarethe stop and stare. “Save yourself, and give the sufferers a chance to rest in peace from your scrutiny!”

  “The dead are dead,” says Margarethe bravely.

  “Some here are corpses, some not yet,” the regent replies. “We are carrying a few to the Leprozenhuis outside of town. You want to join them and the other lepers, jump in the cart.”

  “God save their souls, and yours,” calls Margarethe, and she mutters a few lines of the first psalm that comes to mind, mutters them without conviction or accuracy.

  “This is what stalks you,” says Margarethe as the girls hurry after her. “This is the devil’s work. There’s nothing to anticipate but the broad scythe of the reaper that will cut you down. Only jump when it passes, and perhaps you may save yourself until the next sweep. If you don’t jump, you don’t save yourself.”

  Ruth jumps out of anxiety, as if she imagines the scythe to be passing exactly then.

  “Changelings,” says Clara ominously, about the invalids and the corpses.

  “How high do you jump?” says Iris to her mother.

  “Just you watch me,” says Margarethe. “I’ve jumped from the fens of England to the threshold of the poorhouse of Haarlem, and then jumped again. Just you watch me, and you’ll learn what there is to learn. Give me room to cast my eel spear, and let follow what may.”

  Iris watches. Day after day she watches. She watches the ice form on the duck pond down the lane. She watches Margarethe sing as she prepares the hearty stew of root vegetables and prunes. She watches Clara alternately sulk and cozy up to Margarethe. She watches van den Meer’s face grow longer as, with every passing week, the shipment of bulbs doesn’t arrive.

  Then she watches as Margarethe waits, and waits, and chooses the right moment to jump again.

  The

  Nowhere

  Windmill

  The three days before the beginning of Lent, Clara tells them, are called Vastenavond. It hardly seems right to feast like gluttons when Henrika is so newly buried. Besides, the practice of Lenten atonement has never been popular in the Fisher household before. But Margarethe throws herself into the preparations with energy, concocting a stew with mutton, citron, greens, and ginger. “We will take our religious obligations seriously,” she says, ladling up to van den Meer and the three girls.

  “I suppose we should,” says van den Meer. He is brooding, perhaps out of mourning, or maybe—Iris hates to admit—out of fear of financial ruin. “This is a good hutsepot, Margarethe. As good as Henrika ever made.”

  “I don’t think it’s that good,” says Clara stoutly, dropping her spoon.

  “Now, if you’re going to do things right,” says van den Meer, “preparing for Lent, Margarethe, you might want to take yourself over to the House of Correction. Careful with a stuiver as you are, you’ll appreciate that at kermis time, admission is free.”

  Margarethe stiffens. “I am correct enough,” she says.

  “Oh, I suppose!” He hasn’t meant to be rude, Iris thinks. Has he? “There you can see the whores and the inmates learning their Bible lessons, being reshaped into Christian worthiness at the expense of the town. It’s quite an amusement.”

  “I have far too much work in managing your household to amuse myself by visiting prisons,” she says sharply. “Or alehouses, for that matter.”

  “You do good work,” he says, chastised a bit. “You perform many kindnesses for me and my daughter.”

  “I should think so. And don’t speak about whores in this house.”

  “It is my house, Margarethe,” he reminds her.

  “So it is,” she gives back to him. “You inherited it from your wife, didn’t you?”

  “You’re feisty for carnival time.” His tone is black.

  She relents. “I should have said, please don’t speak about whores in front of my daughters.”

  “I won’t,” he says, still stung. “But who knows what others in the street say about this arrangement?”

  Her anger is so intense that Iris imagines the roof might explode. Margarethe hurtles out the door. They watch her sliding on the ice in the streets, wind whipping her black cloaks into huge, crowlike wings. But as the girls continue munching the rest of their bread, Margarethe stalks back in. Her face is pink and even beautiful because of the intense cold. “Oh, come see,” she cries, all fury forgotten. “The canals and the river have frozen over at last, and the whole town is out on the great ice road!”

  It’s the happiest day so far. Even Clara is caught up in the excitement, and van den Meer remembers there are shoes with runners, probably to be found somewhere in the sheds. After a time, two pair of skates are located. The leather is rotted from one skate, and of the second pair a runner snaps off. But Ruth’s feet are far too big to squeeze into them anyway, so Iris and Clara each take a single skate, and the girls and Margarethe hurry out to the Spaarne.

  The world is transformed. The skies are hugely gray as usual, and low, but this intensifies the feeling of magic and otherness. Some small boats sit frozen in the water, and children get running starts and glide up to the boats and crash into the sides. Dogs are yapping in every direction. The whole of Haarlem is out on the ice. Margarethe can’t help but poke Iris and say, “Look, and see how it is: The rich have skates and warm cloaks, and there’s a carriage converted to an ice boat! They can enjoy this oddness and take new pleasure in it. And the poor suffer even harder. Warmth is scarce, and food is absent. You can’t live long on ice and snow.”

  “So are we rich or poor?” asks Iris.

  “One skate to your name? You tell me,” says Margarethe. “Balance very carefully, my dear. Very carefully indeed.”

  Enough of object lessons, when the carnival atmosphere spills over onto the city’s icy ballroom floor! Iris hurries away, letting Margarethe try to balance Ruth, for whom the ground itself is usually trouble enough, and ice is more treachery than treat. Iris links arms with timid Clara and off they go. Frost crinkles the moisture in their nostrils and the corners of their eyes.

  “Look, a game,” says Iris, “those boys and men, with sticks and a ball—”

  “Kolf,” says Clara.

  Horses on the ice. Trees at the margins of the Spaarne, sticking up like spindly pillars. Toddlers on their bottoms, wailing. Granddames spinning about on skates as freely as any of the young men.
There a predikant, looking sour, as if he’s merely taking this route to reach his place of prayer the quickest way. Grizzled men from the fields punching holes in the ice and dropping in lines, hoping for fish. Goodwives at their gossip, toddlers in tow. A fat old man falls on his backside in front of them and farts explosively. Off to one side, someone has rigged up a boat with sails, and is trying to make it glide, but the wind isn’t strong enough and there are too many giddy young maidens weighing it down. A teacher recites Bible verses to his students as they all lurch along, no skates at all, but smoothly enough on wooden shoes. As far as the eye can see along the curve of the river, tiny pegs of people, in black and gray and red. Someone has made the mistake of urging a cow onto the ice, and she collapses and sprawls there wailing. A pig has escaped and trots along with dispatch, minding its own business and occasionally hooting with pleasure or hunger.

  Then, out from the shadow of a beech tree, wobbles the Queen of the Hairy-Chinned Gypsies. “Look!” says Iris, and before Clara can protest, they are slithering up to her. “You never did turn Master Schoonmaker into a slug!” cries Iris gaily.

  “Eh? What’s that?” The old thing is deaf from a multitude of scarves, and cursing her canes. “Let him turn himself into a slug. Most folks do.”

  “You were going to magic him!”

  “Why bother. It’s your own job to change yourself. These days it’s hard enough for a crooked old girl like me just to stay upright.” But she peers a bit and grins, enjoying the fun as much as anyone. “I don’t know you chicks, do I?”

  “Where are the hairy-chinned gypsies today?”

  “You’re a giddy soul! Why, where they belong, of course, like all of us. Your pretty friend’s a quiet one. Her tongue got frozen?”

  “She’s shy of society.”

  The crone makes a mocking face. “Then I’ll push myself off and save you the bother. Beauty has consequence, but I’m ugly as sin, so I don’t care. Good-bye!” With surprising speed she makes headway across the river. The two canes are leggy as usual, and the trailing ends of several scarves, brushing the ice, look like even more legs.

  “A real queen should be glorious,” says Clara, disappointed. “She’s hardly a queen!”

  “She’s hardly alive,” agrees Iris, which makes them both laugh. They fall against each other, turning themselves into a two-headed, wobble-legged Queen of the Hairy-Chinned Spiders. And now here is Caspar, speeding up to them, his face almost purple.

  “Where’s the Master, then? You’ve left him far behind?” cries Iris, delighted to see him.

  “He has work to do; what does he care if the river is frozen or turned into honey or dried out from drought?” answers Caspar. “He’s painting, cursing the cold, painting, munching on his bread, painting. You need to ask? Race you to the other side!”

  “Wait! We only have two skates between us!” says Iris, but they are all off, laughing too hard to get up any momentum. Clara as jubilant as Iris, and both of them free of Margarethe and Ruth. Too ashamed to admit how wonderful it is not to have to bother with Ruth, for once, but today isn’t a day for shame. There’s enough of Lent ahead in life for that.

  They tag each other and sprint along. Everything is changed. Ice has trapped every twig and reed, every broken hoop of bramble and each spike of fence. The crowds are mostly behind them now, but the friends can still hear the unanimous rush of “Ohh!” as the sun breaks through for a moment, diamonding the landscape.

  Too much splendor. The sun burrows back beneath its blankets of cloud. It is early afternoon, but cold as dusk. “Shouldn’t we turn back?” says Caspar. “We spend so much energy on the way out, we’ll be tired returning.”

  “Just as far as the next bend,” says Iris. “Who knows when we’ll be able to ride the ice like this again?” It’s nice to be out of the house too, and if Margarethe is being holy, Lent may be a more grim affair than usual.

  They’ve passed beyond the place where the canal meets up with the Spaarne, and they’re moving silently between open fields. Here and there a distant farmhouse, with the usual mess of old stork’s nest on roof beams, and thin ropes of smoke issuing from chimneys. Some cattle lowing, out of sight. The birds are with them for a while, but then they disappear, as if they can feel a harder cold approaching, and are making for home.

  “This is the bend,” says Caspar. “Come now, let’s go back.”

  “No, that bend,” says Iris.

  “That bend is a different bend; it’s just come up into view as we passed this one,” he says. “I can’t stay out longer; the Master will need me to stoke up the fire.”

  “He needs you to keep him warm? He needs you a lot,” says Iris, affecting the ironic tone with which her mother discusses Caspar’s apprenticeship. She has stung him; he whips his head and scowls.

  “He does indeed, and I’m taking advantage of him in skating so far with you,” he says. “I’m going to turn around even if you’re not.”

  Iris hasn’t meant to provoke a disagreement, but she’s so glad to be away from Ruth and Margarethe, she merely says, “Well, go if you must; we’re not bound by your obligations.”

  “Maybe we should turn back,” says Clara. Out in the world she’s less certain of herself, and also less mean-spirited, Iris has seen. For once, Iris can’t help taking the one advantage she has over Clara—that is, the privilege of courage.

  “I’m going to the next bend in the river,” says Iris, “and I’ll find my own way back if I must.” She doesn’t say farewell to Caspar, but pushes ahead. Proud as a hawk! Her left foot launches and her right foot glides, and she’s mastered the art of balance. In a few minutes she hears Clara’s voice calling after her. She turns and waits.

  They go to the next bend, and the next after it. “We’ll be in Amsterdam before nightfall,” says Iris approvingly.

  “I have to stop and rest,” says Clara, “and I need to lift my skirts and pee.”

  The landscape is so flat as to be almost vacant. It reminds Iris suddenly of the way she felt when she arrived in Haarlem—what, four, five months ago? As if there were nothing of the past, just a white sheet. In the distance, maybe because a wind is whipping up some blurring edge of snow, the fields merge with the sky. The only solid thing in the landscape besides themselves is a windmill in a nearby field, not all that far from the river’s edge. “Come, we’ll go there,” says Iris, “and if we can open a door, you can squat down in some corner. It’s too cold to do it outside.”

  Clara isn’t up for arguing; she’s shivering with the effort to hold her bladder. They climb the low bank of the river and slash-clump their way across the field without bothering to remove their skates. The windmill is an old one, abandoned. Only two of the four arms are left, and one of them hangs broken like the limp limb of a hanged man. Icicles make the other arm look as if draped with white fringe. “Icicles will slice you right in half,” says Iris. “Mind them. Doesn’t this whole place look like a big, ferocious creature, with a blunt head, or maybe headless, and those reaching arms?” A giant in the fields, growing larger as they near—no surprise that, but ominous in this white nothingness . . .

  She tries the door. It’s locked, but the wood has rotted and with a little protesting shriek, the weight of two healthy girls applied against it, the door springs open and they tumble in. Clara makes for a corner and relieves herself. The piss steams on the dusty floor, pooling over ancient encrustations of bird shit.

  Ancient, and not so ancient. A few flapping wings in the dark over their head. “Bats,” says Iris. “Or maybe owls.”

  “Spirits,” says Clara.

  “Spirits, hah,” says Iris. “Goblins maybe, but not spirits. Aren’t all the local spirits trapped in the ice in Haarlemsmeer today? They can’t get out.”

  “Spirits. I’ve been here before, I know. The crow at the top of the story.”

  “What crow, what story? You mean some tale I told, or the top story of your high house? You haven’t been here before; you haven’t been any
where before. You don’t go to the cathedral, you don’t go to school. How could you be out here in the nowhere windmill?”

  “I was,” says Clara. “I remember now. I remember the shape.”

  “All windmills are the same shape.”

  “No, they’re not. I remember these beams going up like an angle, see? And this machinery. These gears! I remember the noise they make. So loud! So loud that when the wind drives the arms, nobody outside can hear anyone inside.”

  “All windmills must have the same kind of machinery,” says Iris patiently. “It’s cold in here, shall we go now?”

  “There’s a trapdoor in the floor just below this beam,” says Clara. “I remember.”

  “There’s no trapdoor. The floor is stone.” Iris kicks at the muck. “See?”

  Clara is on her knees. “No. Look.” She claws with her fingers, and old straw and debris comes up in moldy patches. “I’m telling you what I know, and you’re not listening. There’s a space down here. They put me there and they fed me. See the hook?” She points at the beam above, from which a rusting hook protrudes. So I wouldn’t get hurt, they put me in a basket and put the rope through that hook, ,and lowered me down softly.” She’s cleared away enough rubbish to prove her point. The floor is wooden, and there, there, is the edge of a trapdoor.

  “Who put you down there?” says Iris. “When?”

  “They did,” says Clara.

  “But who? Your father and mother?”

  “No, no,” says Clara angrily. “The others. The spirits. The crow man, the others.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “When I became a changeling,” she says. “Don’t you know anything?”

  “When did you become a changeling? What happened to you?” says Iris. She peers at Clara s face in the gloom and comes closer. The whole place suddenly smells strongly of bird shit, new, powerful stuff. Iris is entranced by a sort of terror, almost a pleasurable sensation—but she is scared of Clara’s monotonic recitation of these impossible facts. Iris says, “Clara, what happened to you?”