The door opened. Dr. Wintermute raised his head, dreading the reappearance of Mrs. Pinchbeck, but the woman in the doorway was his wife.
“Thomas, who was that very singular woman in the front hall?”
Dr. Wintermute said heavily, “Her name is Mrs. Pinchbeck.”
“Is she — a patient?”
“No. No, my dear, she is not a patient.”
“Why was she here?
Dr. Wintermute could think of no answer but the true one. “She was landlady to Professor Grisini. I questioned her a week or so ago. I encouraged her to come to me if there was any chance — if she thought of anything that might shed light —” He smoothed the envelope between his fingers. “She knows nothing about Clara. I am convinced of that. But it seems that the other two children have also disappeared, and I wanted to question them again. Mrs. Pinchbeck thinks they may have gone north. She gave me an envelope with an address on it. I don’t suppose there’s any real hope —” He tried to speak levelly, but his voice was husky. “All the same, I should like to question them again. I must go to Windermere and see if I can find them.”
Ada crossed the carpet and stood before his chair. She put out her hand for the envelope. He gave it to her, and she took it as if it were precious. “It’s a lady’s handwriting.”
“That struck me, too.” He spoke very calmly, afraid of any word that might cause her to distance herself from him. He was tempted to reach for her hand but held back.
But it was she who reached for him. She knelt down and placed her hands on the arm of his chair. “Thomas, let me come with you.”
He shook his head. “My dear, the journey is a long one, and you haven’t been well. If only — if I could — there is nothing I wouldn’t do if —” He found himself unable to finish his sentence. He knew that he was about to weep and closed his eyes. A drop of warm liquid seeped between his eyelids. All at once, he felt his wife’s touch. She brushed the tear aside, spreading its moisture across the surface of his cheek. Ashamed of his weakness, he opened his eyes.
Ada looked more alive than she had for months. Her mouth was trembling, but her eyes were resolute.
“I’m coming with you,” said Ada, and when he attempted to dissuade her, she pressed her fingers against his lips and would not let him speak.
Cassandra wept. It was the night of the stone’s destruction, and she couldn’t stop crying long enough to fall asleep. She was chilled to the bone, and she couldn’t get warm. She tried to explain this to the strangers that stood around her bed, but her voice was ragged from crying, and the syllables came out in the wrong order. Two girls left the room and came back with their arms full of blankets. An untidy-looking boy put coal on the fire, stimulating it to a mighty roar. It occurred to the witch that the strangers were children, and that was odd: surely her sickbed was no place for children? She looked for the bell cord so that she could ring for the servants.
Her eyes became fixed with terror. Suspended over her head was a yellow monkey. He was shinnying up a golden cord and leering at her cruelly. Cassandra pointed at him and tried to tell the children he should not be there. He was a fiend; he would drag her into hell, where there was no mercy for sinners. But the strangers only looked at her with wonder and pity, and she despaired of making them understand.
She fell into a dream. The monkey was beside her, gibbering and hissing. There was a lake of fire, and a puppet named Grisini danced on the rim of the shore. Marguerite was there, weeping because someone had strangled her little dog. Cassandra opened her eyes, and there was the spaniel, snoring peacefully. She pointed to it and tried to tell Marguerite that all was well. But Marguerite had gone away, and the yellow monkey was smiling at her. Cassandra shifted her gaze to the rope that passed through its body. Traitors were hanged, and she was a traitor. She pawed at her throat, trying to loosen the rope around her neck.
One of the children seized her hands. Cassandra bit her. Then she wept, because the child had beautiful hands, petal soft and clean and strong. Her half circle of ragged teeth marks was an obscenity. But she could not apologize. The children’s faces blurred and went dim, and she was asleep again, weeping still.
When she woke up, the dark-haired girl was standing on a chair beside her bed. The child was using her teeth to loosen the knot in the silk cord. When the knot gave way, the girl pulled the brass monkey over the kinks in the cord.
“What if she misses it?” asked the red-haired girl. “She’s used to having it to open and shut the bed curtains.”
“She won’t miss it,” the other girl said firmly. “It’s giving her nightmares. Anyway, she’ll still have the rope.” She handed the brass statue to the boy. “Take it out of the room, Parse.”
The boy weighed the object in his hands. “It’s int’resting,” he said. “Might be worth two, three shillings.”
“It’s horrid. Take it out,” commanded the dark-haired girl. The boy wrinkled his nose at her, but he took the monkey out of the room. He came back empty-handed.
Cassandra gave a great sigh of relief. She rolled over so that she could pet the red dog. Stroking it, she fell back to sleep.
When Cassandra awakened, one nostril had cleared, and she could breathe through her nose. The inside of her mouth was as dry as wool. Her neck hurt; she had scratched it raw. Dizzily she lifted her head.
The candles had burned out, but the room was not dark, only dim. It was dawn outside, and the children were asleep. Cassandra looked from one to the other, recalling their names. The boy sleeping before the fire was Parsefall. The dark-haired girl in the armchair was Clara. The girl sleeping at the foot of her bed was Lizzie Rose, and the red spaniel belonged to her, not to Marguerite.
Cassandra shifted. The dog stirred and yawned. Lizzie Rose awoke and pushed herself up on one elbow. “Are you more comfortable, ma’am?”
Cassandra consulted the child’s worried face. “Yes.”
Lizzie Rose stretched toward her, laying one hand on Cassandra’s brow. “We’ll send for the doctor today. He’ll make you feel better.”
Cassandra took the girl’s hand, examining it for teeth marks. “I thought I bit you.”
“That was Clara.”
“I can leave you Strachan’s Ghyll, you know.”
Lizzie Rose looked embarrassed. “You needn’t if you don’t want to.”
Cassandra frowned. “If someone offers you something you want, you should take it.” She swallowed, running her tongue over her lips. “I want a glass of wine. Will you get it?”
Lizzie Rose slid off the bed. She tiptoed barefoot across the room. Cassandra watched her with an aching heart. Dear God, but the girl was young: to be able to move so easily, after being up all night! Cassandra accepted the wine, gulping it so that it spilled down her front.
Lizzie Rose took the glass and refilled it with water from the washstand. She moistened a handkerchief and mopped the sticky patch on Cassandra’s chin. Cassandra spoke impatiently: “For God’s sake, child! What good have I ever done you that you should serve me thus?”
Lizzie Rose’s forehead knotted. Cassandra could see her trying in vain to remember one good deed.
“There isn’t anything,” Cassandra said testily. “Mind you, I’ll leave you the house — you and the boy — that’ll be worth something. But first I want to tell you — I must tell someone — what I stole from Marguerite.”
Lizzie Rose sat cross-legged on the bed. “It was the stone, wasn’t it? The fire opal.”
“Yes,” Cassandra said. “It was the stone.”
“It happened more than seventy years ago. It was Marguerite’s birthday, and mine; I was thirteen and she was twelve. It was Carnival time in Venice, and Marguerite’s father persuaded the nuns to have a birthday party at the convent. Marguerite was allowed to invite her six dearest friends. We were all dearest friends — Marguerite was very given to endearments — but I was her dearest, dearest friend. Fool that she was, she loved me best.
“It was my birthday, too.
I beg you to remember that. Marguerite gave me an ivory fan painted with peasants or nymphs or some such dainty nonsense. It was the only gift I had that day. Before my mother ran away, I always had birthday presents, but my mother didn’t know where I was. I knew there was no chance of a letter from her. I was afraid that my father would forget me, too, so I wrote to remind him of the date. Every day I waited. I even prayed. He sent nothing: no letter, no gift.
“The sixth of November came, the day of Marguerite’s party. Monsieur Tremblay came, and we received him in the nuns’ parlor. There were little cakes and confetti and chocolate to drink. We sat and watched Marguerite open her birthday presents.
“She was giddy with excitement and cooed over her gifts in a way that tried my affection sorely. Her doting papa brought her a large and costly doll — she was still fond of dolls — an Indian shawl, and a leopard-skin muff, which grieved her a little, because, she said, she pitied the poor leopard! I am sure that no leopard ever felt more pitiless than I did at that moment. I wanted to claw her eyes out.
“But I pinned a smile to my face; I gushed and simpered with the rest. Marguerite’s last and best gift was a rosewood box full of pearls. Her father told her that now that she was twelve, she was old enough to have her mother’s jewels. She squeaked with joy and began to adorn herself.
“We all envied her; it wasn’t only me. There were so many pearls. Cream colored and silvery, bracelets and earrings and rings . . . Marguerite loved pearls. I didn’t. I thought they were insipid. But these were so soft looking, so translucent, that they seemed to have no edge. Marguerite passed the jewels around so that we could all try them on. The other girls made peacocks of themselves, trying to see their reflections in the windows — there was no mirror in the nuns’ parlor. But I had my eye on the rosewood box. It was not quite empty. There was a small pasteboard carton left inside. I asked Marguerite what it held, and she told me to open it and see. That was the beginning of my doom, though of course I didn’t know it.
“I opened the box and saw the fire opal. It had a different setting in those days; it was a simple pendant. The colors so dazzled me that I gasped, and the other girls flocked around me, asking me to let them see. I felt as if the necklace were mine. All of us were astonished by its beauty; none of us had ever seen anything like it. But Marguerite showed no desire to try it on.
“We passed the jewel from hand to hand. I fancied that it smarted and stung my palm — a feverish tingle that I found first painful and then agreeable. I tried not to let anyone see how much I longed for it to be mine.
“That night I could not sleep. The image of the fire opal so teased me that I slipped out of bed and crept on tiptoe to Marguerite’s cubicle. Leaving our beds at night was strictly forbidden, but the dormitory partitions were only curtains, made of rough cloth. There were no locks to pick, no doors to rattle, and in fact Marguerite and I often crept into each other’s beds after dark. So I went to her cubicle and asked in a whisper if she were awake.
“She lifted her blanket so that I could slide into bed with her. She said she had been unable to sleep, thinking of me. She asked me if I hated her for having so many presents when I had only her ivory fan. I lied, of course. I said I loved her dearly. She believed me. Then I asked her about the stone.
“She said she had a horror of it. She knew it was foolish of her, but the jewel was a fire opal, and her mamma had died by fire. Madame Tremblay had been oddly superstitious about the gem, even obsessed with it. She used to call it her wishing stone.
“A wishing stone! How those words excited me! I thought of all the things I wished for: that my mother might return; that my father might love me; that I might shrink and become delicate and fairylike, as Marguerite was. I wanted to marry a nobleman; I wanted to live in a palazzo. . . . But of course I confided none of these things to Marguerite. I changed the subject and we talked about the party. Then Marguerite fell asleep — she could fall asleep quite suddenly and deeply, like a child — and I slid out from under the blankets and crept to the trunk at the foot of her bed.
“The moon was full that night. When I opened the trunk, I could see the pale color of Marguerite’s birthday shawl. Underneath was the pasteboard carton. A subtle warmth seemed to come from it. I opened it and found the stone. I gripped it in my fist and wished that my father would remember my birthday. I think when I opened the trunk, I meant only to wish on the stone, not to take it. But of course I did take it. That night I hid it under my mattress. The next day, I sewed a tiny pocket for it in the bodice of my chemise. I wore it there like a second heart — hotter and stronger than my own.
“My father’s birthday parcel arrived within the week. It contained a workbox for my sewing — I detested sewing — and a book of essays, entitled Christian Thoughts. I looked for a letter, but there was only a single sheet of paper with the hastily scrawled inscription: To Cassandra, for her twelfth birthday. I read it and began to cry. There was nothing in the parcel that showed that my father had any acquaintance with me. He had forgotten my age, he had given me the kind of book I most disliked, and his letter could not have been less affectionate. Since that day, I have had better reasons to weep. I have known betrayal; I have known cruelty. But nothing has broken my heart more than the package my father sent for my thirteenth birthday.
“It was nine weeks before Marguerite found out that something was missing from her trunk. She was perfectly bewildered, because only the six of us — her dearest friends — had seen the necklace. No thief had broken into the convent. Her precious pearls were untouched. But her mother’s favorite necklace was missing, and that meant that one of her friends had betrayed her. Of course we were searched — our trunks, our cubicles. Sister Beata took me into an empty room and told me to remove my clothes.
“I was horribly embarrassed. I was ashamed of my figure, which was too well developed for a girl my age. I pressed my hand against my second heart and wished that I might be spared the search. I shall never forget the queer look that came over Sister Beata’s face. ‘Of course it was not you,’ she said. ‘You are Marguerite’s dearest friend. You have said that you are innocent and I believe you. You may return to your room.’
“So my secret was never discovered. As for Marguerite, she was heartbroken. One of her dearest friends had proved an enemy, and she didn’t know which one. ‘The only thing I know for certain,’ she used to say, ‘is that it wasn’t you.’ I couldn’t imagine how she could be so stupid. Had she forgotten the night of her birthday, when she told me it was a wishing stone? Why didn’t she remember? I think perhaps it was sheer obstinacy. She was determined to trust me in the very teeth of the evidence. Indeed, she treated me with greater affection than before. Sometimes when she brushed my hair, I had to leave the room, so that I could be sick — but I couldn’t vomit up the lie. There were times when I almost confessed — except I knew that if I told the truth, I would have to give back the stone. I couldn’t give it up.
“So I kept my secret, and in time Marguerite went back to New France. For years she wrote to me. I never answered. Before she died, she sent me the little portrait that you found in the library. In remembrance. She wrote that on the back. I’ve wondered what she meant by it. Perhaps, years later, she came to understand that I was the thief; perhaps she wanted to remind me how I’d wronged her. Or perhaps it was a token of forgiveness. I’ll never know. That she should hate me, that she should forgive me: either one is a torment. For seventy years, she has haunted me.”
“You loved her,” said Lizzie Rose.
“Did I?” asked Cassandra. “I don’t know. She loved me. She was the last person who ever loved me. I never had another friend. I had admirers, of course; with the power of the fire opal, I could make men fawn on me. But their affection was neither lasting nor true, and I quickly tired of them. It’s queer, isn’t it? When I look back over my long life, there were only two people who mattered. One was Gaspare and the other was Marguerite. He betrayed me and I betrayed her.” She moved
restlessly. “You look as if you pity me. Don’t. Remember, I brought you to Strachan’s Ghyll to steal the fire opal. Any of you might have inherited its curse: you, or your brother, or Clara, if she hadn’t been so strong. I knew what I was passing on. A wasted life, a fiery death. I didn’t care. I’m telling you the truth: I didn’t care.”
Cassandra’s voice did not falter. She risked a glance at Lizzie Rose and read the shock in the young girl’s eyes. Cassandra twisted away from her, dragging the bedclothes over her shoulder to signal that she was too tired to talk anymore.
Ruby gave a little grunt of irritation. She got up, stretched, and made her way to Cassandra’s pillow. Carefully, systematically, she began to lick the tears from the witch’s face.
When Parsefall opened his eyes, he was in Madama’s room. He sat up and used his fingernails to scrape the grit from his eyelids. Then he kicked off the blankets and reached for his clothes, only to recall that he had left them in the White Room.
A ray of sunshine streamed through the crimson curtains. It was full daylight. Lizzie Rose was not there, and neither was Ruby; they must have gone for their morning walk. Parsefall wondered why none of the servants had come in with breakfast. At the thought, his stomach growled, and he got to his feet.
He had forgotten Clara. She was asleep in the chair, curled as tight as a fist. To an adult, she might have appeared small. To her former puppet master, she looked enormous. Parsefall felt a pang of regret. She was no longer his. He recalled the thrill of making her dance and the queer un-loneliness he felt when he cradled her in his lap. Now she was separate from him, a thing he had lost.
Splendors and Glooms Page 29