by Janeen Brian
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Sister Hortense’s office door was ajar. Eloise gulped and cast a look over her shoulder. She couldn’t see the Head Sister, but she could hear her. The woman’s nasally voice had a clear sound, sharp as glass. It carried across rooms, hallways, up stairs and even to the edge of the orphanage garden. Right now she was in the kitchen issuing instructions to Sully.
If the office door had been shut, maybe the idea wouldn’t have popped into Eloise’s head, but there it was. Eloise gritted her teeth, knowing the longer she stood rooted to the spot in the hallway, the less time she’d have.
If only her feet would move.
She blew out a breath. If her heart beat any louder it’d deafen Sister’s words. Then she wouldn’t know where the woman was or what she was doing.
Like, maybe returning to her office.
For almost thirteen years, Eloise had wondered about a family. Had she ever had one? She’d waited and wondered, with more interminable days of not knowing stretching out grey and bleak before her.
She had to do it.
With her hands in fists, she urged herself forward.
She could see the book the second she reached the doorway.
Her stomach curled up, small and hard as an apple. Another hasty glance told her the hallway was clear. The Littlies must be outside or already in the dining room. That fresh thought made her gasp. The breakfast dishes. She should’ve set them out beforehand. She’d have to get to them quickly or there’d be trouble. That sent her blood rushing even faster.
Eloise took a cautious step into the office. The thick book, with its green leather cover, sat importantly to one side of the wooden desk. The same place it’d been when she’d first noticed it some months back, the time she’d delivered a letter to the sister. At the first sighting of the book, her heart had thumped. Now it bounced against her ribs. The faded gold letters on the cover drew her like a magnet.
Family Register, it read.
Eloise let the hope of those words sink in. Clasping her hands, she crept closer. Only when she remembered to breathe did she become aware of the shut-up smell of the room. It was a room used to being closed, with dark, heavy curtains, crosses, statues and shelves lined with old books. A thin piece of cane lay like a solitary ornament on a single shelf.
In the deathly silence, Eloise opened the large book and gasped. Her eyes swam at the lists of information written in small cursive swirls. Peering closer, she read the headings inked in larger letters above the four columns. Name. Age when admitted. Date. Family details.
Hurriedly she calculated she would’ve been born in 1807. Pinching the corner of the paper with the lightest of touch, she turned page after page until she came to that date. She ran her finger down the first column. “Eloise Pail,” she murmured, hoping her voice might make clear what her eyes might miss.
There was nothing.
After a quick blink, Eloise searched the surnames. Then, a year before 1807 and a year following. Perhaps Sister Genevieve had been mistaken about the date she’d been found.
“Outside, on the steps,” the gentle sister had told her years ago. “A newborn baby left in a bucket with only a scrap of a blanket. It was so pitiful.”
Why couldn’t she find her name? The last column was the least filled in, but even that had some scatterings of information. Where was the information about her family?
Eloise turned another page, her eyes sweeping from left to right and up and down. Then she stopped and straightened. Her ears strained at the echo of footsteps in the hallway. The familiar strides were heading her way, along with the faint click of rosary beads that grew louder with each step. Eloise sucked in a sharp, terrified breath, shut the book and dived beneath the desk.
A few moments later came the swish of long, black fabric across the floorboards and the squeak of the door.
Crouching back as far as she could, Eloise hunched her knees, her head low like a cowed animal. Sister uttered a couple of grunts, placed something on the desk and then walked a short distance away. Eloise gripped her legs, trying not to cough or murmur a single sound. Please don’t sit at the desk, she pleaded fervently, tucking herself up tighter. And please don’t shut the door.
For what seemed ages, she listened for telltale sounds. Was that a book being pulled from the shelf near the window? If Sister now had her nose stuck in a book, Eloise might just be able to make it to the door. But dust and fluff from beneath the desk had drifted up to her nostrils. Already they were itchy, threatening a sneeze.
Eloise puckered her face to prevent any explosion and cried Now! in her head. She scrambled from beneath the desk, edged along one side and bolted on all fours towards the doorway.
She was out.
Until the heel of her boot clunked against the doorway.
“Who’s there?”
Red-faced, Eloise leaped to her feet and spun around. She came face to face with the steely-eyed sister, who’d marched across the room in a few quick strides.
“Only me, Sister,” Eloise stammered. “I . . . I . . . thought I heard a noise and –”
“You were on the floor! Why?”
“I tripped, at least –”
“Eloise Pail,” snapped the sister, “at this time of the morning you were presumably in the dining room setting out the breakfast dishes. And you thought you heard something in my office and then, right at the doorway, you tripped?”
Eloise’s mouth dried.
“Are you a snoop, Eloise Pail? As well as a scruff? Tie your hair ribbon properly.”
“No . . . yes. Yes, Sister.”
Sister Hortense furrowed her forehead, a stretch of skin made quite remarkable by its lack of eyebrows.
“I mean, no, Sister.” Shaken by despair at not finding her name and being caught out, Eloise stumbled in her reply.
“Sneaky, lazy behaviour and shabby appearance will not be tolerated at the Children of Paradise Orphanage,” the sister went on with a piercing gaze, “and you, as the eldest, should be setting a Godlike example.”
“Yes, Sister.” It was the word eldest that sent a quiver of sorrow to Eloise’s stomach. It carried the weight of all her years at the orphanage. Of everyone being younger. Of being alone. And of not once being offered to a family in search of a child to call their own.
“After breakfast you will shake the bird clapper until lunchtime.”
Sister Hortense turned and the door shut in Eloise’s face.
Eloise swallowed. Not finding her name or any remarks about her family was just another disappointment after all. She was foolish to think she might’ve discovered who she’d perhaps belonged to, once upon a time. She pushed the ache back down deep in her heart.
And the punishment could’ve been worse. At least bird scaring with the noisy, wooden clapper meant she’d be outside in the garden.
“I’ll thank my lucky stars Sister didn’t catch me with the book,” Eloise murmured to herself. And she did have her stars. Her own, secret night stars that listened to her whisperings and dreams
.
After retying the ribbon around her long, thick curls, and rubbing her arms for warmth, Eloise hurried towards the kitchen to fetch the breakfast plates.
That day had begun like any other.
Eloise opened her eyes to the dullness of a late winter morning, in a bed like twenty others in a long, bleak room, one of two bedrooms. Tall windows let in what light there was, but being set high meant she could never peer out of them. Only at night. And only if she dared get out of bed.
From the other beds came rustlings and stirrings as one by one, the Littlies woke and stretched.
“Up, Littlies. Come on!” Sister Bernard bustled into the room, clapping her hands and fixing her eye on Eloise, who sighed and flung her legs over the side of the bed.
“Morning, Sister,” acknowledged Eloise, before turning her back to the little kids and dressing quickly. She reached for her old boots from beneath the bed and grimaced as she wrenched them on her feet, feeling the squashing of the toes and the pinch at the heel. If only she had new boots that fitted.
“Hurry, Eloise, we haven’t got all day,” said Sister Bernard, drawing a grey tunic over a little girl’s head. “Don’t wriggle, child. The tunic only has two armholes. That’s the neck.”
Once dressed, each child sat on the bed, feet stuck out. Eloise shuffled from one to the other, straightening clothes and helping with boots. She preferred the quiet of the early morning, where she could pretend she was elsewhere. Where the dawn might light up a bedroom of her own, in a house where she belonged.
But the Littlies woke with chatter on their lips.
Polly swung her legs until Eloise said, “Shall I put these boots on your feet or on your ears?”
The girl laughed but stilled her legs. “Do bees have hearts?” she asked.
“They give honey, don’t they?” said Eloise. “Isn’t that a gift of the heart?”
Mamie stared cross-eyed at Eloise. “If you do this, Eloise, you see two of everything.”
“Make sure you do that at breakfast. Then you’ll get double helpings and won’t feel hungry.”
“Why have you got that lump on your head?” Wilfred pointed to her forehead. “It’s just there.”
“I know where it is, Wilfred.” Eloise had seen its reflection in the glass of the grandfather clock in the hall. Also, she had a habit of rubbing it whenever she was thinking. “But no, I don’t know why it’s there,” she answered. “Maybe it’s magic.”
Wilfred’s eyes grew large, but he said nothing.
The Littlies were okay, but what was the point of getting close to them? Most left the orphanage anyway at some stage. Goodbye after goodbye. Often with hands being held and not a backward glance.
Eloise left Sister Bernard to do the hair brushing, while she gathered the Littlies’ chamber-pots, carried them down the wooden steps, and emptied and rinsed them outside.
When that job was finished, Eloise glanced down at her water-splattered tunic and flicked at the worst of it. She shook her head at the useless gesture and was about to fetch the breakfast dishes when saw Sister Hortense’s office door ajar.
That was when the idea had occurred to her. But in the end it’d come to nothing.
She was nothing. Not even a handwritten entry in a book. Eloise’s bottom lip trembled for a brief moment, but there was breakfast to think about and then the water to fetch.
And there was always Dancy.
Even before Eloise collected the wooden buckets from the kitchen, she knew their weight. She also knew their arm-dragging heaviness once they were filled with water. The orphanage sat on a slight slope, and because of that, the short walk down into the village of Whittering was lighter and easier than the return journey, except for the push of Eloise’s curled-up toes in her tight boots.
But water-fetching was worth it just to feel free, even briefly, from the orphanage. Not that she’d go unnoticed. Her outfit screamed orphan. Over her grey tunic Eloise now wore a white, slightly grubby pinafore. Since the morning chill had eased, she hadn’t bothered with the jacket.
After the short distance along a track, her boots clattered on a curving pathway of cobblestones that led into the market square and towards the village pump. Eloise never tired of staring at the tall stone wall that circled the whole town. But the one pair of gates, large enough for carriages, carts or wagons, was only open during the day.
“They always be locked at night,” said Mr Jackson, the blacksmith, who lived close by. “Have done since right back.”
“Why?” Eloise had asked.
“Keep out robbers. And . . .” he added, narrowing his eyes, “maybe other mysterious beings.”
Eloise was thunderstruck. Never had such thrilling words been uttered at the orphanage. She’d wanted to know more. But Mr Jackson needed to get back to the forge. “Another time,” he promised.
That day, however, Eloise’s thoughts about the town gates took on extra meaning. When they were closed, the town was sealed, both from the outside in, and the inside out, like a trap. And, because her name was not even recorded in the Register, the chance of her leaving the orphanage was minimal. Except perhaps when she was old and no longer of use. Although a fresh breeze swung the signs above the shop doorways, Eloise felt a sense of being trapped herself.
A wink of light in a rounded shop window startled her. Eloise glanced up to see a brush of sun against a cloud and it lifted her spirits. She decided to ask Mr Jackson more about the mysterious beings that he’d hinted had lived outside the great wall of Whittering.
Either side of the cobblestone road were houses or shops. The house front doors opened straight onto the street and while Eloise always longed to step inside, her curiosity was also aroused by the shops. Their windows displayed wares like hats, wigs or meat pies.
Mr Jackson’s small stone home and blacksmith’s forge was set off to one side of the market square and water pump, alongside a fenced field. Often as not he would wave or call out as she pumped water. Sometimes they’d chat. Apart from Sister Genevieve, the old man was the friendliest person Eloise knew. But besides that, he was someone who lived outside the orphanage. He knew things.
“Hello, young filly!” he called in his familiar way. There he was, waving as he lumbered into the forge, a shambly, bearded man, broad-shouldered, hands like dinner plates and blue eyes tucked beneath bushy eyebrows. Eloise stopped pumping and returned the wave. Dancy hadn’t yet appeared, which was unusual, but if she wanted to speak to Mr Jackson, she had to work the pump faster. By the time both buckets were full, a sweat had broken out on her forehead.
At the same moment she heard a soft whinny.
Leaving the buckets, Eloise ran towards the field, yanked a fistful of grass and waited until the snowy-coloured horse ambled up and nuzzled from her hand.
“Hello, beautiful boy,” said Eloise, her heart opening to the gentle creature. She patted his nose and breathed in his smell. Then she remembered what she’d wanted to ask Mr Jackson. “Bye, Dancy,” she said and rushed towards the forge.
The clang of the blacksmith’s hammer on the rod of glowing metal rang like a giant bell. Sparks leaped like shooting stars. Eloise waited until Mr Jackson picked up a pair of tongs and thrust the bendy rod into a tub of water where it hissed and spat.
“’Tis a fine sound, that sizzle,” the man said.
“Yes,” Eloise agreed politely, but to her it was more a sound of angry snakes. “Mr Jackson, you know you said that a long while ago, some mysterious beings lived here?” She paused to savour the word on her tongue, and then said, “Could you tell me more about them, please?”
“Well, they might’ve lived here,” he countered. “And, I be sorry, but I haven’t got a lot of time today.”
“Just a little bit.”
“All right. I’ll hurry through what I know. Not that I be saying it’s the full truth, ’cos I don’t know whether it is or it isn’t, and anyway, I’m not one for twisting the facts into stories. I’m better at bending and twisting m
y metal and –”
“I don’t mind,” said Eloise, her voice rising with urgency.
Mr Jackson stepped to one side of the forge and wiped his hands down his leather apron. “Some say there once be small hills, with holes, like caves outside the town, near Whittering Pond.”
Eloise lifted her eyebrows. A pond? Whittering Pond?
“Some also say that strange beasts with horns lived in these holes. And also that folks heard weird cries at night. Supposedly women threw stones into the pond to frighten the beasts away.”
“Why? Were they dangerous?” Eloise’s head was spinning with pictures of beasts she’d never seen.
Mr Jackson raised his great shoulders. “Maybe they worried the beasts had something to do with their children getting the pox. Or the farmer saying a calf, borned with three heads, was on account of the beasts. Stories grow out of the strangest things.”
“Could the creatures get out of their holes? Maybe they cried because they were trapped.”
Mr Jackson held up his hands as if in surrender. “I’m not one to believe in all the age-old stories. But I do know that the holes, whatever they were, were blocked up. And there was something else. They say from time to time Whittering Pond turns sour and spoils the land around it. But, bah! Who knows? I never seen it. And that be the end, little filly. Time I was back to work. And I dare say, you too, back with the water.”
The reminder of her chore came like a crushing thud. Eloise nodded. “Thank you for the story, Mr Jackson. Goodbye.”
By concentrating on the blacksmith’s tales, Eloise could turn her mind from her sore feet and reach the orphanage puffing, but without too much water spilled. She had time to shake her hands and rub at the red marks left by the heavy handles. Then it was off to the storeroom for the bird clapper.
Was it really only that morning she’d sneaked into Sister’s office and found out something more about herself?
Which, in fact, was something less.
The clapper in her hand was a reminder of how lucky she’d been to get away with such a small punishment. Eloise felt for her ribbon. It was still there, thank goodness. The last thing she wanted was to give Sister Hortense another reason to pick on her.