Angel of the Battlefield

by Ann Hood

  Maisie turned to go back downstairs and hear every boring detail about the Dining Room when she paused. No one had said anything about not taking a little souvenir, she thought. Maisie surveyed the pieces, wanting to choose the best one. But there was another weird thing: Every piece was identical. Same size. Same shape. And Maisie knew that when things broke, they didn’t break so neatly.

  Bending to inspect them closer, Maisie also saw that each piece had one perfect blue flower on it. The break had not disrupted the pattern. Curious, she picked up a random shard. The porcelain was smooth–even at the sides, which, she knew, should have been rough from breaking apart. The porcelain seemed to hum in her hand.

  That was when she realized how silent the house had grown.

  Sunlight streamed through the stained-glass windows decorated with half-naked dancing gods and goddesses. The storm had ended as abruptly as it had begun.

  The Woman in Pink’s voice cut through the quiet as she returned to the foyer. “The bronze dining chairs are so heavy they required four servants to move them—diners couldn’t do it on their own.”

  “Wow,” Felix said.

  “Next, we’ll visit Ariane Pickworth’s library, where the walls are made of pink marble imported from Italy . . . but where has that sister of yours gone?”

  “Here!” Maisie called, sticking the shard into her pocket.

  She practically skipped down the stairs, where Felix and the Woman in Pink both stood waiting for her with worried expressions on their faces. Maisie tried to give Felix a look that told him she had something exciting to share, but he refused to make eye contact with her. Instead, he trailed right behind the Woman in Pink as she talked about rare books and the Muses from Greek mythology and dead Ariane Pickworth.

  The Treasure Chest

  The Woman in Pink droned on about fireplaces sent over from France and how many hours it had taken to sew the beads on their great-grandmother’s wedding dress. Maisie smiled and nodded politely. All while the Woman in Pink talked about industrialists and income taxes and the growth of the city of Newport, Maisie kept her hand in her pocket, feeling the slight bump of porcelain there.

  Perhaps the most boring part of the entire tour was the Kitchen, which was down a dark flight of stairs off the Dining Room. As if seeing some out-of-use kitchen wasn’t dull enough, the Woman in Pink had one last thing to show them. She ushered them toward a dimly lit stairway in the corner. Once down the stairs, they found themselves in a small, freezing-cold room.

  “It’s like a freezer in here,” Felix said, shivering.

  “Phinneas Pickworth was clever!” she said. “Refrigeration before it was even invented!”

  She explained in excruciating detail how he devised a way to make ice and how he had coal brought into another part of this subbasement by a little underground train—just so his family and guests didn’t see it being delivered.

  “Phinneas Pickworth thought of everything,” she said with an adoring sigh. Maisie was starting to hate Phinneas Pickworth.

  They stood forever in front of a complicated board that looked like the flight-departure board at an airport but really was just a system for calling servants with little, yellow lights and lots of wires and numbers.

  “I think I’m actually dying of boredom,” Maisie whispered to Felix.

  The Woman in Pink frowned at them. “So,” she said finally, “I think that just about covers the Kitchen.”

  “Wow,” Maisie said, “this was fascinating.” She grabbed Felix’s arm and nudged him toward the stairs.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Really amazing.”

  “Oh!” the Woman in Pink said, tapping her temple. “I almost forgot.”

  Maisie groaned.

  The woman walked over to a small, narrow door and opened it. Reluctantly, they followed her.

  “The first elevator?” Felix asked politely.

  The Woman in Pink laughed. “Oh, dear, no. It’s a dumbwaiter.”

  Maisie stepped inside. “It looks like an elevator,” she said. “Like the one we have upstairs.”

  “Could you step out, please? It isn’t part of the tour to actually go inside the dumbwaiter.”

  “What’s a dumbwaiter?” Felix asked.

  “It was used to ferry things from the Kitchen to all the floors and then back down. Imagine all the time they saved, sending the tea service up to Ariane’s room in the morning. Or the turkeys and hams and roast beefs to the Dining Room.”

  The Woman in Pink explained the mechanics of how the dumbwaiter worked. She talked about pulleys and square footage while Maisie stayed inside, staring upward.

  “Just how far up does this thing go?” she interrupted.

  The woman tsk-tsked. “As I was saying, it goes all the way up to the servants’ quarters . . . I mean, to your apartment.”

  “That is what we have in the kitchen!” Felix said.

  “Shall we continue?” the woman said, looking directly at Maisie. “Since being inside the dumbwaiter is off-limits.”

  The Woman in Pink’s favorite phrase was “off-limits,” as in “this bedroom is off-limits” and “that hallway is off-limits.” Maisie especially liked peering into all those off-limit rooms, which looked exactly like the boring ones they could enter except that a red velvet rope hung across the doorway. A fancy way to say “keep out.”

  Maisie left the dumbwaiter, and she and Felix followed the Woman in Pink back up the stairs and through the Dining Room where a giant wooden table was set with Phinneas Pickworth’s china. The Woman in Pink explained that the china had its very own pattern designed just for Phinneas by some famous person—alternating peacocks and pineapples along the rim and a big pair of interlocking Ps in the center—all of it laid out as if Phinneas himself was about to host a dinner party. Felix thought it was kind of creepy to leave the table set like that.

  Out they went into yet another room, this one circular.

  “The Grand Ballroom was considered the heart of the house,” the Woman in Pink was saying. Her hands swept upward. “It was the first room in the United States to incorporate lattice design as a decorative scheme.”

  “Ah,” Felix said, just to say something.

  Up the Grand Staircase they went, the Woman in Pink describing the statues, the tapestries, and the marble banisters. Every inch of the place had a story behind it. Felix tried to imagine Great-Aunt Maisie as a young girl. To him, she was the shriveled old lady they’d been forced to visit twice over the weekend in the nursing home, who ate cottage cheese and had a crooked mouth and talked all garbled. It was hard—almost impossible—for him to imagine her ever being his age.

  The Woman in Pink paused briefly at a black-and-white photograph that hung on the wall.

  “Here’s someone you know quite well,” she said.

  Felix stared right into the eyes of the little girl in the picture. “Great-Aunt Maisie?” he said softly.

  “That’s correct,” she said and continued up the stairs.

  But Felix stayed put, studying the soft, pretty face of the little girl. She had braids and wore a white dress. Behind her, it looked like a party was taking place, with blurry people in fancy clothes on the great lawn that rolled down to the ocean. Felix pressed his finger against the glass as if he could actually touch the little girl. Could this really be the same person who lay all wrinkled and infirmed in that assisted living place? The thought made him sad for reasons he couldn’t explain.

  Felix leaned closer to the picture. At the edge of the photograph a little boy peeked out as if he’d run into the field of the camera’s eye at the very last moment.

  “Who’s the boy in the picture?” Felix asked.

  “Thorne Pickworth,” the Woman in Pink said. “Maisie’s twin brother.”

  Both Thorne and Maisie had a twinkle in their eye
s, like kids who had a secret.

  The Woman in Pink cleared her throat. “We’re going upstairs now, Felix,” she said. “We’re already running late here.”

  Reluctantly, Felix continued up the stairway, feeling as if those two kids in that photograph were watching him.

  “Now here’s something special that Elm Medona has,” the Woman in Pink said when Felix reached the hallway at the top of the Grand Staircase. “Something children like very much.”

  Maisie stared. She blinked her eyes. She blinked again.

  “The—the vase,” she stammered.

  “What vase?” the Woman in Pink said.

  “The priceless one,” Maisie said, pointing. “The broken, priceless one.”

  All three of them stared at the lush rug—which the Woman in Pink had said was handwoven by a blind family in Persia. But there was nothing there except the rug’s intricate pattern of birds and vines. Not one piece of porcelain remained as if it had all been swept up and put away.

  “How strange,” the Woman in Pink said. She went right to the spot where the shards had been and dropped to her knees, running her hands carefully over the carpet. “Maybe the cleaning staff . . . ,” she began, but trailed off.

  “Was there really something broken there?” Felix asked in a small voice.

  The Woman in Pink stood, smoothing her pink skirt. “Obviously the preservation society got my message and sent the cleaners over. Why, they’re probably trying to piece it back together as we speak.”

  Maisie placed her hand in her pocket and fingered the smooth shard there.

  “So. Where were we? Ah, yes. As you may know,” the Woman in Pink trilled, “Phinneas Pickworth was a rascal. He was an adventurer, a collector, a lover of magic and practical jokes.”

  The Woman in Pink touched the wall with the special French Louis-the-somebody’s green-and-gold paneling. It was the very spot where Maisie had hoped to find something extraordinary when the vase broke. Like magic, the wall opened to reveal a staircase.

  “What in the world . . . ?” Maisie said, jumping back slightly.

  Felix gasped. “A hidden stairway!”

  “Oh!” Maisie said. “This is absolutely incredible!”

  “Maybe the coolest thing ever,” Felix said.

  “Where did the wall go?” Maisie said, running her fingers along the edges where the wall had just been. That broken vase had left a trail, right to here. Something special waited at the top of those stairs, Maisie was certain of it.

  “As you can see, this section of the wall spins into this recessed part here,” the Woman in Pink began to explain.

  Without hesitating, Maisie started up the stairs.

  “No, no, no! The Treasure Chest is off-limits,” the Woman in Pink said in her fluttery voice, teetering after Maisie in her pink high heels.

  That really piqued Maisie’s interest. “The Treasure Chest?” she said, stopping midway up. “Is that what’s up here?”

  Maisie didn’t wait for an answer. Treasure chests held gold and jewels and all sorts of interesting things. She quickly climbed up the rest of the stairs, disappearing at the top.

  “Oh, dear,” the Woman in Pink said. She looked helplessly at Felix. “The Treasure Chest is most absolutely off-limits.”

  Felix nodded at her, his stomach sinking with every syllable she spoke. Off-limits was just fine with him. Now the Woman in Pink disappeared upstairs, too. With a sigh, Felix followed.

  At the top, Maisie stood with her body pressed against the red velvet rope that stretched across the doorway of a large room filled floor to ceiling with . . . more stuff than Felix had ever seen all in one place. He blinked, trying to take in what he was looking at.

  “What is all this stuff?” he asked.

  Peacock feathers jutted from carved wooden boxes. Seashells lay on weathered bones. Test tubes shone beside parchment paper, which rested on top of faded fabric that partially covered a chest of old tools nestled beside pieces of jade. And that was just what he saw at first glance. The harder he stared, the more objects he could make out: maps and bows and a compass and a wheel of some kind; antlers and maybe real jewels and an inkwell with a feathered pen in it and—

  “How can this be?” Maisie said, startled.

  She pushed Felix aside and started to unhook the rope. Right there, in the middle of all that stuff, on an ornately carved pedestal, sat a huge blue-and-white porcelain vase.

  But the Woman in Pink grabbed her elbow and yanked her away.

  “Off-limits,” she chirped—nervously, Maisie thought.

  “But that vase broke!” Maisie said, pointing. “Not even an hour ago!”

  “No, no,” the Woman in Pink said uncertainly. “As I said, your great-great-grandfather was a collector. He must have acquired a set of Mings. A matching pair.” She began to flip the pages on her clipboard, searching for something. “There’s a list in here of the valuable pieces . . . ,” she muttered.

  Maisie squinted at the vase before her, fingering the shard she’d pocketed.

  “It’s the same one!” she blurted. Right there in the middle, Maisie saw a missing piece. Her piece.

  “That is impossible,” the Woman in Pink said. But she didn’t look like she believed that it was impossible. In fact, she looked up from her papers and stared at the vase, too.

  “How do you know?” Felix said to his sister. He pushed his glasses up higher on his nose.

  “Just trust me,” Maisie said. “I know.”

  “I think we are all being a little dramatic,” the Woman in Pink said. “Phinneas Pickworth collected so many treasures that they aren’t even all catalogued properly. Just look at all of it! You can see why they call this room The Treasure Chest.”

  “I’ll say,” Felix said. “I’ve never seen so much stuff in my life. Not even at the American Museum of Natural History.”

  Felix joined Maisie at the entrance to the room and peered in.

  “Young man! Step back! This room isn’t even part of the tour.” The Woman in Pink’s face flushed as pink as her lipstick. In a shaky voice she added, “You have no idea what has gone on in here.”

  “Is it haunted?” Felix asked, stepping back.

  “No such thing,” Maisie muttered.

  “Exactly!” the Woman in Pink said. “Of course, all of these old houses have their share of unexplained phenomena. And Elm Medona goes far beyond the usual reports of transparent women floating down the stairs and strange noises. Why, they say that in this very room—” She stopped suddenly as if she had just realized that she was talking to children. “But as I said, it’s probably hogwash.”

  She began to walk away, motioning for them to follow.

  “Now, down the hall is the nursery, which I think you’ll find most fascinating.”

  Maisie hesitated, peeking again into The Treasure Chest. That vase had been broken less than an hour ago. Now it stood in The Treasure Chest, put back together. Except for one piece. And that piece was in Maisie’s pocket. Off-limits? Maisie grinned. She would figure out a way to get inside that room. Soon.

  Breaking In

  For some reason, Maisie and Felix both thought the tour was a way to show them around their new home. But as soon as it was over, the Woman in Pink said, “If you ever want to come back in the cottage proper, your mother just has to make an appointment.”

  “An appointment?” Maisie said.

  The Woman in Pink smiled nervously. She had a smear of pink lipstick on her front teeth, and the buttons on her pink suit jacket pulled in awkward directions. “Your family stays right upstairs in the family quarters. Like your great-aunt did for so long.”

  Despite a childhood in Elm Medona with tea parties in the gazebo and croquet games on the rolling lawn, Great-Aunt Maisie had spent practically her whole adul
t life stuck up on the third floor. Once a year, she visited them in New York City and insisted on taking them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she went to the Temple of Dendur and murmured about King Tut like he was an old friend. Or she brought them to the Museum of Modern Art where she stood in front of Van Gogh’s painting, muttering Vincent, Vincent.

  Felix thought she was sad, but Maisie thought she was a little crazy. Just because I’m named after her doesn’t mean I have to like her, Maisie had told him.

  “Your great-aunt certainly led an interesting life,” the Woman in Pink said, and something in the way she said it made Maisie suspicious.

  “How interesting can it be to be locked upstairs?” Maisie said.

  Felix looked up. “Like prisoners,” he said.

  “Not at all,” the Woman in Pink said, fiddling with her scarf. “Like guests.”

  Maisie watched her fiddling.

  “What exactly went on in The Treasure Chest?” Maisie asked. “Do you think Phinneas Pickworth is haunting it? Haunting the whole house maybe?”

  “No, no. There are so many stories about Elm Medona. Why, some people believe that your great-aunt and her brother, Thorne—” She stopped abruptly.

  “That they what?” Maisie asked.

  The Woman in Pink sighed. “Such lucky children,” she said. “Living among history.”

  Felix thought about Bleecker Street Playground, where he and Maisie had played together forever, and the long corridor in their apartment building where they rode their bikes on rainy days. He did not feel lucky at all. He just felt homesick.