The wailing of a baby’s lusty cries were coming from the bassinet.
“Wait!” Ellis cried out. “The baby…”
“Not now, Ellis,” Jonas insisted, pulling her across the room by the viselike grip of his hand.
“There’s no one here to take care of it,” Ellis protested. “We have to do something…”
“There is nothing we can do for it.” Jonas scowled, his brow knitted in determination. “Not for it or for anyone else here.”
“So, we’re just leaving this child?” Ellis was aghast.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jonas said, impatience coloring his words. “Come on!”
The door should have led to a closet but instead opened onto a steep, narrow staircase plunging downward. At the base of the stairs more than twenty feet below them, dim bulbs cast an amber light from wall-mounted iron sconces set on either side of a door with peeling, beige paint.
Jonas stepped onto the stairs carefully. He glanced backward at Ellis, his free hand raising a finger to his lips, begging her to be quiet as well. The stairs creaked softly beneath their feet as they descended. At the next door, Jonas paused, listening for any sound on the other side. Satisfied, he turned the tarnished brass handle and pushed it open.
Ellis stepped through into a broad hallway. It had a floor of fitted tiles that shone in the incandescent glow from punch-bowl lights mounted to the ceiling at even intervals. There was a bench set to one side of the hall between a pair of closed doors finished in white paint. Across from these was a matching set of open doorframes. Through them Ellis caught a glimpse of a pristine kitchen unsullied by a dirty dish or cooking sauce. It was strange, Ellis thought, that nothing was happening in the one room in the house that she knew should be busy nearly every moment of a waking day.
I know you think you have to learn these things, but you upset Cook whenever she finds you in her kitchen.
Ellis’s hand went to her head. That voice. Her mother’s voice.
Cook is doing something every moment of the day in her domain and she has no time to take you on as an apprentice as well.
“Ellis,” Jonas said, carefully examining her face. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I am fine,” Ellis snapped, stepping back and snatching her hand sharply away from his entwining fingers. “But, you … I remember you.”
Jonas gave her a smile that was colored by the pain in his eyes. “Yes, I very much hope you do.”
“Don’t be too certain that’s a good thing,” Ellis insisted, keeping her distance. “I’m not. Take off that mask.”
Jonas drew in a breath.
“Now,” Ellis insisted.
Jonas sighed. He leaned his face forward, reaching up with his right hand. He slipped the mask up over his head and then raised his face to her. His hair was dark and wavy though now no longer carefully combed, disheveled as it was from removing his mask. His face still looked young to her as it was the type of face that would never look old, but there were lines at the corners of his gray-green eyes that she had not noticed on their previous encounters.
It was the paisley-shaped bruise around his right eye that made her catch her breath. It was darker and more pronounced than she remembered it, with a number of abrasions on his cheek that she did not remember him having before. Instinctively, she reached up with her hand toward his injured cheek.
He pulled away from her reach.
“Did Merrick do this to you?” Ellis asked.
“No.” Jonas shook his head. “You said you remembered me. What do you remember?”
“I remember a watchmaker’s shop,” Ellis said. Even as she spoke the words, she could almost feel the cool of the cabinet glass and smell the lacquer from the clock housings on the wall. “My watch was not running and I was trying to keep an appointment with…”
“With some suitor your mother had arranged for you.” Jonas smiled at her.
“Yes.” Ellis nodded. “I never kept the appointment.”
“I pretended to take a long time fixing your watch,” Jonas said with a shy smile. “I didn’t want you to leave and certainly not to meet another man.”
“Hmm.” Ellis conveyed neither approval nor disdain with the sound, just acknowledgment of the statement. She stepped around him, surveying their surroundings. “This is the servants’ hall, I believe. We’re below stairs, as my…”
Ellis stopped in thought.
“As your what?” Jonas urged.
Ellis smiled sadly as she stepped listlessly about the hall. “As my mother used to say. I don’t think she ever paid much thought to the people who worked in places like this. She certainly didn’t approve of my being anywhere near a kitchen.”
“Which explains a great deal,” Jonas said with a gentle laugh.
“Whatever does that mean?” Ellis asked with a sharp glance.
“Nothing at all,” Jonas said. He leaned back against the wall, setting his mask down on a bench next to him.
“Well, Mister … what is your name again?”
“Jonas,” he replied with less patience than he felt. “Jonas Kirk.”
“Well, Mr. Jonas Kirk of Boston—”
“Nova Scotia,” Jonas corrected.
“I beg your pardon?” Ellis’s eyes narrowed.
“I only worked in Boston, in my uncle’s shop,” Jonas corrected. “I was born in Nova Scotia.”
“Well, then, Mr. Kirk,” Ellis said, taking a step toward him. “I believe it’s clear that we are no longer in either Boston or Nova Scotia now.”
“No, we are very far from both, indeed.” Jonas nodded. He shook himself out of the pleasant reverie. “Too far.”
“And what do you propose?” Ellis asked, her eyes fixed on him. She still did not trust him any more than she trusted Merrick but the memory of their meeting lingered in her mind.
You have to learn the rules before you can break them.
Her father’s voice.
“That we find Jenny, wherever she is in this house,” Jonas said. “Please, Ellis. We haven’t the time to stop now and talk.”
“We find Jenny?” Ellis mocked. “Slipping unnoticed about this house in our masquerade clown costumes so that we might find my cousin before one of the other lunatics finds her first. And once we do?”
“Once we find Jenny, we’ll know what to do,” Jonas said with increasing urgency. “Please. We need to move on, Ellis. If we stay in one place too long, they’ll find us.”
“Move on?” Ellis raised her eyebrow at the thought. “Find Jenny, you say, and move on to where?”
“Home,” Jonas replied. “I need to get you home.”
“Home? And I suppose you know where home is?”
“Yes, Ellis,” Jonas said. “I’ve waited a very long time to take you there.”
“And just what do you know of home?” Ellis asked, gesturing about her. “I have been told repeatedly that this is my home. This never-ending nightmare of senselessness. I am supposed to be some sort of queen of this asylum from what I understand. The lady of Echo House and the mistress of madness.”
“You are indeed, my lady,” said the chirping, nasal voice behind her.
Ellis turned around, startled.
Standing in the center of the servants’ hall was an older woman wearing the plain, black dress common among the servants. Her hair was stark white and carefully pulled back into a bun at the back of her head. She had a square face softened by age. Her eyes were a deep blue, sparkling behind a pince-nez perched across the bridge of her nose.
“I’m sorry for having startled you, ma’am,” the old woman said gently. Her raised hand was as pale as linen and as thin as parchment. “I heard voices here in the hall and thought I might be of some assistance to your ladyship. And the boy is right, my lady, about one thing: you really must hurry along.”
“Who are you?” Ellis demanded.
“Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am,” the woman said with a slight curtsy. “I’m your housekeeper … Mrs. Crow.”
/> 7
MRS. CROW
“Mrs. Crow?”
The older woman folded her hands in front of her and cocked her head slightly to one side. “But of course your ladyship would not be remembering me, having just returned so far from outside the house. It is completely understandable and you shouldn’t trouble yourself about it. You are as always welcome here, your ladyship, but I am surprised to see you below stairs. I’d offer her ladyship a cup of tea but if he’s after you again then you’ve no time to lose.”
“Who?” Ellis struggled to regain her composure. “Who is after us?”
“Why, I suspect Lord Merrick is at your heels again,” Mrs. Crow said with a demure smile. “Was not his lordship the reason you fled the house in the first place?”
“I don’t … I don’t recall,” Ellis said as she shook her head slightly, her eyes fixed on the woman. Mrs. Crow had every appearance of benign servitude. Her smile was pleasant. There was a slight rosy blush to her cheeks. Her dress was clean and neatly pressed with a style that was simple and unadorned. She might as easily have fit the role of someone’s doting grandmother. As for the position of housekeeper, Ellis was hard-pressed to imagine anyone more perfectly suited for the role. Yet there was something about her, something that Ellis could not put into words, that raised the hair at the back of her neck as she spoke to the older woman.
“Well, I most certainly do recall,” Mrs. Crow said cheerfully.
“Ellis, let’s go,” Jonas urged. His eyes were fixed on Mrs. Crow, his face a mask of disapproval.
“In those?” Mrs. Crow considered Ellis’s Columbine costume, an abrupt laugh bursting from her lips, which she quickly stifled. “You can hardly pass unnoticed.”
“Our departure was somewhat unplanned,” Ellis commented with a glance toward Jonas.
“Well, we shall have to do something about that.” Mrs. Crow raised her right hand slightly, her index finger barely extended. Her eyes shifted their gaze slightly to Ellis’s left. “Margaret?”
“Yes, Mrs. Crow.”
Ellis jumped slightly within her skin, startled by the sudden appearance of the young woman at her elbow. She had last seen Margaret as they were rushing past her in the theater several floors above them and a dizzying number of hallways between. Yet, at the mere mention of her name by Mrs. Crow, Margaret had appeared at her side in a seeming instant.
“Margaret, her ladyship will be needing something to wear for the evening,” Mrs. Crow said, appraising Ellis with a set of critical eyes.
“May I suggest something casual,” Margaret offered, her eyes fixed on Ellis’s astonished and concerned countenance. “Something she can move about in at her ease.”
“That would be quite satisfactory,” Mrs. Crow agreed. “Perhaps a traveling suit?”
“I believe I know just such an outfit, ma’am,” Margaret responded with a sideways glance at Ellis. “If her ladyship will kindly follow me back—”
“NO!” Ellis’s single word echoed down the interminable servants’ hall, leaving a shocked silence in its wake.
Mrs. Crow raised her white eyebrows as she turned to the lady’s maid. “I believe, Margaret, that her ladyship prefers not to be seen in public at the moment. She might wish to avoid any awkward encounters in the private quarters. If you would be so kind as to fetch her ladyship a suitable outfit and bring it at once to my own room, that would be satisfactory.”
“But Mrs. Crow,” Margaret protested, “I am her lady’s maid and it is my duty to—”
“Do as you’re told, girl.” The deep blue of Mrs. Crow’s eyes fixed on the lady’s maid, a chill firmness edging her voice. “I’ll brook no nonsense from you today. Be quick about it and not a word to anyone about Lady Ellis. Her ladyship may have a long journey ahead of her and cannot be delayed by a single moment.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Margaret replied with a surly tone.
“And Jonas,” Ellis added, turning to call after Margaret as she hurried down the hall. “He’ll need a change of clothing as well before we … Where is he?”
“Jonas, of course,” Mrs. Crow replied cheerily. “He’s our hallboy. New, really, and I don’t know as to whether he is going to work out. He tends to come and go at his own liking.”
“But he was just here,” Ellis insisted.
“And I’ve sent him to change, as your ladyship commands,” said Mrs. Crow as she bowed slightly and motioned for Ellis to follow her down the hall. “I’m sure he’ll return at once. I’ll have a word with him when he does. For now, would your ladyship join me until Margaret arrives? She won’t be but a moment. I promise no one will come looking for you in my room and this old woman is in the mood to reminisce.”
Reminisce? Ellis considered a concept for a moment: how did one reminisce without memories? Yet she had remembered something.
Hold still, Ellie, and the butterflies will come to you.
Another memory and clearer this time. She had been running for days, it seemed, trying to escape a house that seemed without end. Now holding still, learning the rules of this new game and recovering her thoughts was bringing her more success. This kindly appearing servant might help her connect with more. She was the first person she had encountered since she awoke on the train so long ago who was willing to talk to her about the past. Surely only good, she decided, could come from further remembrance.
As she followed Mrs. Crow down the hall, she thought she could hear the receding sound of frantically beating moth wings against the window glass of the kitchen behind her.
* * *
Ellis frowned at the dress laid out on the narrow bed. It was the same ugly traveling suit she had worn on the train when she first came to herself in this place. It was heavy, woolen and, in her opinion, deeply unfashionable. She had worn it, too, when she fled into the rain from Summersend searching for refuge in the Norumbega. She wore that miserable, wet and stained outfit in her desperate run through the endless rooms of this maddening house until Margaret had found her. Now, here Margaret had presented her again with this same dress. At least now it was clean and pressed although how Margaret had managed it during the time she had been in her ridiculous clown costume, Ellis could not imagine.
“Is there something the matter, your ladyship?” asked Mrs. Crow, standing in the doorway behind her.
“No, not at all,” Ellis said, swallowing hard.
“You were always fond of the costume parties,” Mrs. Crow said with a quivering sigh. She reached up from behind Ellis, pulling out the hairpins securing the hat to Ellis’s hair and lifting it free. She set the hat carefully down on the top of a small chest of drawers to their right. “You often told me that you created this house just so that you might hold such grand events.”
“So, this house … Echo House … you say I created it?” Ellis asked, reaching up to the ruff, trying to feel how it was attached to the collar of the jacket.
“Oh, dear me, yes,” Mrs. Crow replied with a happy chuckle. She moved to the rocking chair set with barely enough space in the corner of the room and settled slowly into it as she spoke. “Of course, it wasn’t your first Day. There were a great many others before and, my, some of them were so very fanciful indeed! I think you made more scrapbooks than anyone and never quite seemed to be satisfied with how any of them turned out. You won the Game more often than even Merrick. He always found you a real challenge.”
Ellis was feeling a little dizzy trying to find the meaning in the housekeeper’s words, let alone follow along. “So, this Game that everyone plays. It has rules?”
“Everything has rules, my lady,” said Mrs. Crow.
“How did we get here?” Ellis asked. “In the Game, I mean.”
“Oh, that’s an old story, your ladyship,” Mrs. Crow sighed, leaning until her back came to rest against the wall. “Way before the house ever was.”
“Tell it to me,” Ellis insisted.
“Well, best I can remember, there was this fight between two brothers,” said Mrs. Crow as he
r eyes narrowed. “One was noble and wanted discipline and order for all of us, to give us purpose. The other was selfish and wanted to do whatever he liked. But their father said we all had to decide for ourselves which of them we were going to follow: the noble one or the selfish one. Some chose one and some chose the other but there were a few who didn’t want to decide at all. Those are the people who came here to the Tween. Those are the folks who are in the Game.”
“So everyone here is part of the Game?” Ellis asked.
“I didn’t say that, ma’am,” Mrs. Crow corrected gently.
“But you said…”
“I said that those were the folks that came to the Tween and are in the Game,” Mrs. Crow replied, straightening up to perch on the edge of the chest. “There are others who have come to the Tween for their own purposes. There are emissaries—some call them angels and some call them demons—who make their way into the Tween trying get some soul to finally make that choice they didn’t want to make in the first place and ally themselves with one brother or the other.”
“So, what is the Game?” Ellis asked.
“Well, it’s a place that we all share.” Mrs. Crow smiled. “It’s a way for us to enjoy a taste of life for a bit.”
“You mean a better life, don’t you, Mrs. Crow?”
“Isn’t that what I said? Here, now, let me assist your ladyship,” said the housekeeper with a kindly, sweet smile. Mrs. Crow stood up and stepped around behind Ellis. She reached forward toward the buttons that closed the back of the costume, her pale, white fingers remarkably deft at the task. The back of the costume parted, exposing Ellis’s back to the chill of the room.
Ellis shivered.
“Oh, and you have such shoulders,” Mrs. Crow said admiringly. “Have you thought where you might go?”
“I need to find Jenny before I do anything,” Ellis said simply, then turned around to face Mrs. Crow. “Do you know Jenny?”
“Miss Jenny? Of course, my lady.” Mrs. Crow chuckled with merriment. “Your sister, as I recall.”
“Odd,” Ellis remarked. “She was my cousin last time…”
“Cousin … sister … it makes little difference in the end, does it not, my lady?” Mrs. Crow managed to get the last of the buttons undone. “Have you thought where you might start?”
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