Ironskin

by Tina Connolly

  She lay down and starting yelling in earnest, drumming her feet on the side of the dresser.

  “What’s wrong with her?” said Martha in disbelief. And then, “You put tar on my floor?”

  “It’s an experiment,” Jane said briefly. “This food won’t work.”

  “Won’t?”

  “I need something she can eat with her hands,” Jane said. “Tell Cook I need plain cut-up vegetables, plain cut-up bread. Apologize from me for the extra work.”

  Martha was still peering at screaming Dorie.

  “I’ll tell you all about it after I tell Mr. Rochart tonight,” said Jane. “Lunch—please?”

  Martha backed out with the tray, and Dorie’s howls and kicks redoubled. After a while, Jane heard Martha return and leave the new tray outside, but she did not open the door. Jane waited until the girl wore herself out, till the furious kicks became languid thumps of the heel, and the howls were just a rhythmic grunt in the back of her throat.

  Perversely, Jane was almost glad to see the tantrum—it made Dorie seem more human, to see her throw a full-blown, audible tantrum that looked exactly like any other frustrated child might have thrown, rather than her usual trick of calmly walking to the window and ignoring Jane. No, this tantrum was real, even down to the petulant part of being too tired to continue, but too stubborn to totally give up. Jane watched the kicks die away. Then she brought the tray in and set it down in front of Dorie.

  Dorie sat up, sniffling.

  “I know this is hard,” said Jane to the tear-streaked face. “But I promise you it’s important. Your father wants you to use your hands. Will you try again for me?”

  She wiped the tips of Dorie’s finger and thumb, pushed the tray toward Dorie and held her breath, hoping the promise of food would lure the girl into one more effort. Sniffling, Dorie ate most of the bread and all of the carrots.

  That was the last thing she did as Jane asked.

  The minute lunch was finished, Dorie plopped down in an afternoon sunbeam and lay on her stomach, her hands flat to her sides. Her eyes were open, her lips pressed shut, and she refused to budge. Finally Jane went and retrieved a book from the library, sat down with her back to the window, and calmly read. Or at least pretended to calmly read—the book she had grabbed turned out to be about the politics of the Ilhronian city-states in the 1600s, a subject she would’ve found dull at the best of times.

  Twice Jane set down the book, got up, and built herself a castle from the blocks, hoping the game would lure Dorie back to life. But Dorie refused to budge.

  Eventually Dorie fell asleep. Jane brought in warm water and towels and wiped the tar off the limp arms. She settled Dorie down for her nap. Dorie did not stir, and Jane gazed down at her, wondering how she could look so innocent in her sleep. Dorie’s fingers twitched on the coverlet.

  Jane stepped from Dorie’s room, softly closing the door behind her. Martha was dusting in the foyer below, one ear cocked to the room above. Her eyes widened as a bedraggled Jane came down the stairs, covered in bits of tar from stem to stern, a book tucked under one arm and dirty towels in her hand.

  “You lost the war,” Martha said.

  “It’s a draw,” Jane said grimly. “Are there old clothes stored somewhere?”

  Martha furrowed her brow in question.

  “I need gloves for Dorie,” said Jane. “Long gloves, a lady’s gloves.”

  “Won’t fit.”

  “I know,” said Jane, grabbing for the last thread of her patience. “I don’t need them to look nice. Just an old pair.”

  “Chests in the north roof,” said Martha. “You won’t go there ’less he says so.”

  “Of course not,” said Jane. The rules and restrictions oppressed her, overwhelmed her for that moment with her insignificance. But she had expected nothing less.

  She plopped down on the stairs for a moment, felt the tired muscle ache in every corner of her frame. She wasn’t sure how long the tar would last. Not long, clearly—and every day Dorie had it on was another day of more work for the maid and laundress. Jane would stand up to their wrath if she had to, but she was sorry to provide them with more work if there was a way around it. And how would she get more tar, anyway, without going to the city herself? The thought of Mr. Rochart going to Niklas’s foundry on one of his city trips made her grin.

  But the question of where the ironskin needed to go was solved, and it certainly was all about the hands. Maybe it even made sense. Dorie’s curse was not rage or hunger or misery, but it was a variant of fey talent—fey technology, perhaps; who knew how bluepacks were made, after all—and so perhaps it made sense that it was directed by her hands.

  Chainmail would work, she thought. Chainmail like the dwarves wore, but crafted into gloves. But no, immediately—how would chainmail allow delicate use of the fingers? Jane flexed and unflexed her fingers, pondering. Had Niklas ever tried chainmail for scarred hands? Perhaps there was a reason it didn’t work, or perhaps the chainmail was simply so bulky that those people lived with the curse rather than live in iron gloves.

  No, keep thinking. Something with the tar she had, but that wouldn’t get on anything. Two pairs of gloves, perhaps, cut to fit Dorie, and the tar sandwiched in between. Leather—no, oilskin for the gloves. There’d be some evenings of stitching ahead, she foresaw.

  But first there was an artist to tackle.

  * * *

  Jane retreated to her room to freshen up before reporting to Mr. Rochart. Her apron and dark day dress were grimy with bits of the iron-flecked tar. She would have to attempt to remove those tonight, and then hope that the hired laundress Martha had mentioned could do a better job on them. There was a reason that her small collection of dresses and skirts were all dark.

  But now she had a couple things Helen had insisted she take. (“You must dress up occasionally, Jane. I don’t care two pence if you ‘get applesauce on them.’ That’s what life is for.”) The dark silver gown hung in her closet like a promise. It insisted that someday she would get to wear that gown again, though she couldn’t think why or when. Next to it hung a pressed sapphire blue linen, an old summer dress of Helen’s that she had always admired. It was simple and neat, with a boatneck and three-quarter sleeves, enlivened by embroidered white dots that Helen had done one week in a fit of boredom with the old dress. But it was new to Jane. And it was quite appropriate for a dinner dress at the end of a day chasing Dorie.

  Or for bearding an artist in his den.

  She unbuckled her mask and laid it on the bed. She scrubbed her face and arms scrupulously clean before stepping out of her dirty dress and into the sapphire blue one. She changed out the padding in her mask for fresh—and then rather than twist her hair up, she suddenly decided to leave it down. The brown and white locks did not hide, but they softened the side of her cheek, obscured the lines of the iron.

  Her mood lifted as she cleaned up and changed. Helping Dorie was not going to be easy, no. But she had proved that the tar would work. She had a way to get through to the girl, to break her of her disturbing fey habits.

  The rest was just going to be hard work for the two of them—but Jane knew what hard work was like. She could do this.

  Jane brushed down her skirt, looked down at her boots. They suddenly looked unbearably workaday, and she tugged them off, replaced them with Helen’s castoff dance slippers, white and embroidered with silver thread. They were a touch too long, and she was overdressed, certainly—but it seemed to suit her expanding, lifting mood. The twilight sky with stars and clouds, that’s what she was, and the thought was light and joyful.

  Jane checked on Dorie—still sleeping, exhausted—descended to the foyer, and slipped through the forest green curtains. The landing she had stood on a week ago should be in sight—yes, there it was. She flew up the stairs to Mr. Rochart’s studio and slipped trhough his open door, knocking on it as she entered.

  He was just closing the far door behind him, entering the main studio. “Jane,” he sai
d, surprise in his voice. “You—” He stopped. “You look different in colors.”

  “Black is a color,” said Jane. “So is grey.”

  Mr. Rochart snorted. “You’re laughing at me, and I’m the artist. You might show your elders some respect.”

  “Indeed I had forgotten you must be almost thirty,” said Jane, and then added, laughing, “I will call you Grandfather Rochart henceforth.”

  “Grandfather Edward,” he replied. He crossed to her and then the worry was back in his amber eyes. He touched her arm. “You look too cheerful to be up here with bad news—but tell me. How did your day go with Dorie?”

  “It wasn’t entirely perfect,” Jane admitted, “but I think I have a way to reach her.” Briefly she explained the iron paste, and concluded, “It seems to stop her from using her fey abilities.” And that one tremendous success could offset even such a day as she had.

  “Just like the iron on your cheek,” he said. He shook his head in wonder. “So simple, and yet it never occurred to me.”

  “Don’t blame yourself,” she said, and daringly she touched his shoulder. She was unprepared for the tremor that ran through him, as if he was as unused to touch as she, as if a mere friendly gesture was enough to undo him. His hand rose even as she withdrew hers, and she didn’t know what to do with any of her limbs anymore. So she smoothed down the skirt of her sister’s dress, feeling the embroidered dots slide underneath her palms. That fluttering happiness went sharply through her chest. “She did not want to use her hands, of course,” Jane said, trying to sound casual. “She was quite frustrated.”

  “I imagine.” He was not polished like the gentlemen at Helen’s wedding, but that did not matter to Jane. He was arresting, with those strange deep-set eyes that stayed in shadow, those amber eyes whose meaning she could rarely catch. “I will have a talk with her after dinner.”

  “That would be helpful,” said Jane. “I believe the tar is a tool we can use to catch her up to where she should be. But she will still have to do the work.” She remembered the rest of her purpose and added, “And I need to get into the north attic. Martha said there might be some gloves I could use for Dorie. So she doesn’t get tar on everything. I also need some linen, and linseed oil to waterproof it.”

  A shadow of pain drew across his face. “Yes, I believe Grace had some gloves. She always liked parties more than I did. Tell Martha I said you might look in her trunks. Have Poule find you everything else.”

  Jane nodded. “Thank you.” To distract him from the memory of his deceased wife she said, “I didn’t like Helen and Alistair’s party very much either.”

  “Nasty things,” said Mr. Rochart. “Parties, that is, not your sister and her husband.”

  He smiled at her and she laughed, her heart warming. She realized that she was still poised on the threshold of the studio, and she let her laughter carry her boldly past him, into the studio where the natural light poured over the golden floors, the rough working table, the mounds of white clay. Her blue skirts floated around her, the fine linen weave brushing against her legs, the legs of the table.

  Her momentum carried her all the way to the window and there she stood, the afternoon sun bathing the lines of her dress as she looked away from him. Alistair’s pointed comment about her figure flickered into her mind, and then she banished it. She was not trying to seduce Edward, not trying some ploy to entrap him in the night. No, it was more the thought that with her face turned away perhaps he would see her as she should’ve been, a girl in a blue dress with embroidered dots like stars. A glimmer of her metal reflection danced in the window, but she looked past it, out into the black woods.

  “I used to paint back there,” Edward said. “In the woods.” The intimacy of his words lapped her ears, like he was spilling secrets meant for her alone.

  “Wasn’t that dangerous?” Even before the Great War there had always been the stories. Don’t go into the woods past the last ray of sunlight. There was always someone’s cousin’s friend who knew a girl who chased a blue will o’ the wisp past the edge of sun and never was seen again.

  “I didn’t get on well with my father,” he said. “I avoided him. I spent every possible hour outside, painting.” She could feel him moving closer, though he made no noise. It was implicit in the way the air moved, in the way soft eddies of warmth and scent curled past the wisps of her hair, changed the folds of her dress. “When I grew tired of painting the moor, I turned to the forest. It occurred to me that there were very few forest paintings around. An untapped niche.”

  “Ah, a mercenary,” she said. With her head turned away she was a different Jane, a Jane who still had a brother and a mother, a Jane who had taken this job as a calling to help Dorie, and not also because she was desperate. This Jane could flirt, she could tease, she could even call him “Edward.” As long as she didn’t turn and look at him, the moment would hold.

  “In my head I would be the bravest artist of them all—and the wealthiest besides,” he said, and there was laughter in his voice. “You don’t have to give up your artistic merit for riches if everyone knows you were tremendously brave to get that painting.”

  “I thought people with ancestral estates and good family names were supposed to despise the acquisition of money,” said Jane.

  “Ah, but I didn’t get on with my father, remember? I was going to show him—show them all.”

  “Wicked child,” said Jane. “Won’t go to parties, defies his parents, goes into the woods … it’s impossible to see where Dorie gets it from.”

  “And you?” he said. His voice was rough; it caught at her, intense and burred. “Where do you get your stubbornness from? Your independent streak? Your strange, fierce spirit? Where?”

  There was a sound from behind the far door and she turned, startled, and her eyes met his. He did not turn to look for the source of the noise, but no matter. The instant he saw her face in its mask, the other Jane popped like a burst bubble and she was plain damaged Jane Eliot again.

  “Are Martha’s quarters on this floor?” she said.

  “No.” He leaned forward, urgency in his voice—deep, tense—passion in his simple words. “Tell me who you are.”

  She started to speak, though not knowing what she’d say—but then the door opened and a lovely woman sailed out.

  Her face was perfectly symmetrical, carefully chiseled, framed by a mane of red hair, by a chain of aquamarines at her white throat. She glanced in the mirror at her perfect reflection, then beamed at Edward. “In the pink of health, I knew it. You are divine, dear, but I must run.” She saw Jane and her fine eyes widened. “Is this a new one?” She crossed to them and leaned in confidentially to Jane. “You’ll just love him. We all do.” She kissed Edward on the cheek, whispered something in his ear. A flash of worry flickered on her pretty face, her shoulders tensed, as she told him something Jane couldn’t hear. Then she was sailing toward the door, all smiles again. “See you in a few weeks for that coming out you’ve promised me. Don’t worry about me, I can see myself out.”

  Edward shook his head at Jane. “Just a moment.” He hurried after the beautiful woman and ushered her to the stairwell door, his head close to hers. Jane saw his finger touch the woman’s rose petal cheek before she managed to look away.

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said as he returned. “Miss Ingel is a client. I didn’t want you to think—”

  “There’s something familiar about her,” Jane interrupted. A familiar anger coiled around her heart, suffused her head.

  “Really? I wouldn’t have guessed that you’d know her.”

  “We’re not in the same social circle, no,” Jane said dryly. Though he had betrayed no covenant with her, she felt hideous and ashamed; humiliation made her hostile. “Did she buy one of your masks?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “They are popular, then? I can’t understand it.”

  “Yes. I take it you wouldn’t want one.”

  “I wouldn’t want to brin
g more ugliness into the world.”

  “I understand,” he said. “Jane…,” and he took her hand.

  The familiarity of her first name on his lips infuriated her. He had the upper hand; people like him always would. People like her had to be grateful for crumbs. She had nothing, she was no one, and she was a great big fool in her sister’s dress and shoes, mooning out the window, feeling linen touch her thighs and dreaming of a different present.

  “Of course you understand,” she said, and jerked away. “Why wouldn’t you?” The rows of masks watched her every move. “I like your daughter just fine. The house isn’t even that weird.” She licked dry lips as the orange rage erased all wit and tact from her tongue. “It’s you. You and your horrible artwork scare people off.”

  Chapter 8

  MOONLIGHT

  “Jane,” he said to that, but she was gone. His voice echoed down the stairs behind her. Her flight stopped on the landing with the mirrors, the one that flung your reflection back on you, as if you were coming to meet yourself from the other end of the staircase.

  She stopped, breathing hard, watching the girl in the iron mask. Between heartbeats she listened to the stairs above.

  But he did not follow.

  * * *

  Jane did not sleep well that night. She turned back and forth, restless. Awoke sharply just past dawn with the feeling that an unpleasant dream was slipping just out of her grasp. Some nameless terror, and she had been frozen as the terror insinuated itself into the scar on her cheek, wound itself around her, through her.…

  She hurriedly got dressed and went down to the kitchen to see if she could find Martha. Cook was up making some wonderfully scented bread, but when Jane asked about the maid she just laughed. “Sure and you won’t find that one out of bed before she has to. I’m not saying she’s not a hard worker, but she won’t see dawn if she can help it. But she’s willing to work here at Silver Birch, and there you are. Much can be overlooked for that.”

  “Does she have family in town?” Jane asked suddenly, remembering the old man at the carriage house that night. “Parents?”