The Crossing Page 15

  “It’s her birthday, you know?” Mrs. Limsole, the stewardess of the A Deck, port side, inhaled sharply. It was unusual that someone, especially not on her corridor, would know her name. “Oh, and Mrs. Limsole, I was so sorry to hear about your husband’s death last year.”

  “Well, now, how did you hear about that?”

  “Oh, he had attended, I believe, my godmother, Mrs. Dyer, on many crossings, and she spoke so highly of him. I think it is lovely that the Leonidas has continued the tradition of Limsole’s service with you, his widow.”

  “Oh, thank you, dear. And I had no idea you were Mrs. Dyer’s goddaughter or that it was her birthday.”

  “Well, like many women, she doesn’t like to speak of her birthday. No celebration, but I bought her this small gift at the jewelry shop. I mean, it is not nearly as fabulous as the jewels she has, but it’s a locket and I had it engraved, and I have also wrapped up a special book of poetry. She loves poetry. So I would like to give it to her personally.”

  “Oh, yes, of course.”

  “What might be the best time?”

  “Well, following dinner she usually comes back for a short rest and to freshen up. She often has a caller.”

  “Oh, Mr. Wheeler, yes. She told me he is painting her picture.”

  A slight blush rose in Mrs. Limsole’s sallow cheeks. “So I think if you could come immediately following dinner that might work.”

  “Or if I came a little before might you let me in? I want it to be a surprise and would like to set it up on the tea table.”

  “Yes, I could arrange that. Would you like me to bring some petit fours? I mean, not a birthday cake or anything, though that could be arranged.”

  “Oh, how lovely! Petit fours would be splendid.”

  “And some champagne?”

  “Why not? Yes, why not do it up grand … well, not too grand. As I said, she is sensitive about her birthday …” And, Lila thought, she won’t need to be sensitive a day longer, for she will not be getting a day older.

  Lila looked at the clock built into the bedstand. Dinner would not be until eight. Almost five more hours. Miss Doyle always excused herself before dessert. On the advice of the ship physician he had recommended no rich food. She always took her medicine precisely ten minutes before dinner. By the time she left the table her eyelids were drooping, and Lila herself often accompanied her back. Lila now twisted the cap back on the seasickness medicine and placed it with Miss Doyle’s small leather case, where she kept her other toiletries. She peered out the porthole. There was still some light in the sky, but the days were growing quite short. By five it would be nearly pitch-black and then still another three hours until dinner.

  Lila was so excited she thought somewhat ironically that it almost felt as if it was her own birthday. Well, in a sense it was. She’d watched those two ever since the gossip first broke. She’d seen them dancing together at the captain’s ball. She’d followed them onto the first class promenade deck and then to a lonely little aft deck, where illicit lovers often met. She’d seen them embrace. She saw the painter kiss Mrs. Dyer’s neck. But she felt an odd tremor pass through her body. She would make him do that to her. Yes, she would! And he would paint her again. She could clarify why she had to destroy the painting he had made of her and her sisters…. She had an explanation all worked out in her mind.

  That’s what she would do now. She would rehearse it. She began to walk back and forth across the stateroom, whispering to herself.

  “You see, dear Stannish, it’s really quite simple. I mean, how would you feel if the same had been done to you? If a great portrait painter like yourself decided to replace you in a portrait, summarily stick in another person, in this case a servant. Oh, you say you had nearly finished the painting, that it was really my figure and I was in the background while my sisters were in the foreground and there were all the shadows. Well, now, honestly, you had to add those shadows to disguise that the girl was not me. And maybe you’re right. Maybe no one would have noticed. But I noticed….” She paused here. She knew just how she was going to say this. She would keep her voice low, low and a bit tremulous. She didn’t want to sound angry or outraged. She wanted to sound hurt, wounded — debilitated. And that was exactly how she had felt at the time. “For in truth, Stannish … when you do something like that to a person you are stealing her soul. My soul — yes, you stole it and swapped it for another. There is a kind of mortal damage that occurs. A violation. So of course I had to rip the canvas.”

  And now deep in her pocket was another knife that she had discreetly lifted from a tray that had been delivered to her parents’ stateroom near the beginning of the crossing. At the time she was not sure exactly what her plans were for this knife. But it had gleamed so sharply on the cart waiting to be wheeled into her parents’ stateroom that she simply could not resist slipping it into her pocket. Now she had a plan for that knife, and it was not for cutting canvas.

  Ettie spent all day looking for Hannah. She was not in her cabin or in the third class dining room, which was cavernous and had the unpleasant odors of greasy stews and cooked cabbage. Hannah’s roommate was of little help, for she hardly spoke English and merely shrugged her shoulders and turned her palms up toward the ceiling as if to say “Heaven only knows.” By dinnertime Ettie was almost frantic. When her mother rushed into her cabin, she found Ettie biting her nails, something she hadn’t done since she was six years old.

  “Where have you been, Ettie? We are due at dinner in a quarter of an hour!” Her mother paused. “And Ettie, why are you biting your nails?”

  “Uh … I don’t know, Mother,” she replied weakly. “You look beautiful,” she then said, trying to change the subject.

  Edwina Hawley was steeped in the froth of the shirred midnight-blue chiffon of her gown. The satin bodice had a starburst pattern, and around her neck hung a dazzling star sapphire pendant.

  “Oh, I have a headache, Mother. Can’t I skip dinner?” Edwina’s amber eyes narrowed.

  “You had a headache last night, Ettie. No, you cannot miss this dinner. We are at the captain’s table again. Not many people are invited twice to dine with the captain. It is a great honor.”

  “Well, I’ll give up my place and someone else can. Seems more democratic.”

  Edwina’s jaw dropped open.

  “Democratic! Where do you learn such words?” Her mother was shaking her head in disbelief.

  Clarice had drifted into the stateroom and was now watching her younger sister and mother as if she were at a tennis game. Her head swung back and forth during this verbal volley.

  “We live in a democracy. Well, actually, we live in a republic,” Ettie was saying. “Technically, the United States is a republic because it is a state in which the superior power is held by the people and their elected representatives.”

  “Henrietta Grace Hawley, where on earth do you get these ideas?”

  “Mother, they are not ideas. They are facts. It is our form of government.”

  Edwina’s shoulders sagged. A pained expression did a slow crawl across her face. “Ettie … what am I going to do with you?” Ettie was not sure how to answer this question. “Just promise me one thing.”

  “What, Mother?”

  “You — you … are you going to be one of those — those … suff-suff —”

  “Suffrage women!” Lila had just come into the room.

  “Oh, don’t you look lovely,” Edwina exclaimed as her eldest daughter entered. Lila wore a garnet-colored silk dress with a silver metallic passementerie of cording and braid that had been embellished with jet beads.

  Lovely? Ettie thought. There was something completely unnerving in her sister’s appearance. Was Ettie the only one who noticed? Lila’s eyes had a feverish glow. A hectic flush crept up her neck. She seemed almost electrified.

  “Suffrage, yes that’s the word.”

  “I — I —” Ettie couldn’t take her eyes off Lila. “I would like to vote someday, Mummy. But
don’t worry. I don’t think it will happen. Not in my lifetime.”

  Lila tipped her head to the side. “Definitely not in your lifetime, Ettie.”

  Ettie felt something cold and dark flood through her. “I’ll get ready for dinner, Mother, right away.”

  “Oh, that’s a dear. And why not wear the gray velvet? It looks so pretty with your eyes.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “And I’ll send Roseanne in to do your hair. I think the blue bows would be perfect.”

  “Yes, the blue bows would be perfect,” Ettie answered, never taking her eyes off Lila, who was now fiddling with the ruching on the neckline of her dress.

  The seating had been carefully arranged. Ettie would not have been surprised that her mother had perhaps talked to the steward of the captain’s table, for Clarice was seated next to young Samuel Ames from the Ames Shovel Company. He was explaining to her the “architecture” of their latest shovel. Ettie had never thought of shovels as architecture but rather that they helped builders execute architecture. In truth, the Ames shovel’s greatest claim to fame was digging gold. The company, with their shovels, became much richer than any actual miner, or so Horace Hawley said. Ames shovels dug the railroad beds for the trains that began to cross the continent almost a half century before.

  Lila was seated between the captain and the first officer. She appeared slightly distracted, but every once in a while would turn to either Captain Beasley or Officer Collins and ask a question. However, her eyes kept darting toward a table in the far corner where Mrs. Dyer sat with several of her friends. Stannish Whitman Wheeler was not at the table. He always seemed to be seated several tables away.

  The bouillon cup had been taken away and the second course was brought. It looked to Ettie like the teeniest lamb chop ever. The bone was encased in a little paper frill.

  “Ettie, don’t fiddle with your food, darling,” her mother leaned over and whispered.

  “When a lamb chop wears pants it’s asking to be fiddled with,” Ettie muttered.

  “And tell me, Miss Henrietta, do you go to Miss Goodall’s School for Young Ladies like your sister Clarice?” Samuel Ames asked.

  Ettie looked up and smiled. It was sweet of him to include her in the conversation. “Not yet. I have a governess. But next year. Right, Daddy?”

  “Well, I think so. Henrietta is very bright. I think she’ll thrive there.”

  “And then I hope to thrive at Radcliffe,” Ettie added.

  “Oh, dear!” Samuel Ames said.

  “My sentiments exactly, Mr. Ames,” her mother added with an artful sigh.

  From the corner of her eye Ettie saw Lila getting up from her seat and making excuses to the captain and the first officer. She then came around the table to Edwina Hawley.

  “Mother, I’d like to retire now. I feel a fearsome headache coming on.”

  “Of course, dear. Would you like Ettie or Clarice to accompany you?”

  “No, I’ll be fine. And Miss Doyle is here if I need anything.”

  Ettie set her mouth in a grim line. Ettie stared hard at the trousered lamb chop. How come she gets to have a headache and I don’t? She’d never get away now. And she had thought of a few more places that she could look for Hannah. But two headaches at the same table wouldn’t be tolerated.

  The conversation turned to the escaped murderess. “Oh, you hadn’t heard yet?” Captain Beasley asked. “The news came over the Marconi this morning. Yes, the girl who poisoned the Duke of Crampton escaped from jail two days ago.”

  “What?” Horace Hawley gasped. “That’s the girl, the reverend’s daughter from Bar Harbor. Stephen Snow, the summer minister. He’d been slated to be bishop of the New York Episcopal diocese. What’s her name?”

  “Lucy Snow,” Ettie said.

  “Terrible … terrible,” the gentleman on the other side of her father said. “She was supposed to hang.” Ettie looked around the table. Did they look disappointed? Not precisely disappointed. But they looked rather pleased to have such a salacious topic of conversation.

  “They say the duke had learned some scandal about her and was on the brink of revealing it. That was the motive for her murdering him,” Samuel Ames offered.

  “I don’t know,” the gentleman said. “But surely this is not a dinner topic.” And now everyone really did look disappointed. For they would have to wait until after dinner when the men would go into the smoking salon and drink their brandy and the women would repair to the ladies’ lounge, and each in his and her own domain would begin to discuss the scandalous rumors that provoked the murder.

  By the time the waiter set down dessert — meringues sculpted into the shape of swans, each bearing a scoop of ice cream — Ettie was ready to explode. She had to find Hannah. If anyone should know about Lucy’s break from jail, it was Hannah.

  “What is it now, Ettie?” Edwina asked. “You look like you’re ready to murder that swan rather than eat it.”

  “I don’t like fancy food. I don’t like lambs in pants and meringue swans and things that don’t look like what they are.” Of course she wasn’t sure what exactly a meringue was. “When I have a cook and run a household, food is going to look like what it is.”

  “If you go to Radcliffe and turn into one of those intellectual girls, those grinds, you’re never going to be married and have a household to run.” Her mother’s whisper was almost a hiss at this point.

  “Good. I’ll eat in plain restaurants. I’ll eat baked beans and cod. And clams. I love clams.”

  “Oh, Ettie!” Her mother squeezed her shoulder affectionately. Ettie looked into her mother’s lovely eyes. A part of her wished she could be the way her mother wanted her to be.

  “Sorry, Mummy,” she said softly.

  “Do you want to go to bed now?”

  “Yes, Mummy,” she replied, and crossed her fingers in her lap.

  ACROSS THE SEA on Barra Head, Avalonia wrapped her hand around the fragment of the rock she had kept all these years. The feathery design engraved by eons of time was that of a sea lily. The words of her mother came back to her. Avalonia opened her palm and peered down at them. The lines, the mica chips as bright as the day she found them, sparkled like a mysterious calligraphy from the far edges of time.

  “Some called them feather stars. They are very ancient, from a time before time,” she remembered her mother explaining that day when Avalonia and her sister, Laurentia, had, against all odds, discovered two fragments of the rock on the same beach. Even stranger, when the two girls fit the pieces of the rock together, the sweep of the design was identical to the course of the Avalaur current for which the sisters had been named. Except for mer people, the Avalaur current was a deadly hazard of the sea. But for mer it possessed an arterial force. It meant life and linked them to the mysterious filaments of their origins as well as to their destinies. It was their life’s blood through which the mysterious Laws of Salt streamed through their own veins.

  Avalonia and Laurentia had been linked by this mystical fossil throughout their lives. That link had been broken when Laurentia died. The other piece belonging to her sister had been lost at the time of her death. Now, however, as she held her own fragment in her hand she sensed that a momentous event was transpiring, a great mending had begun. Months before she had felt that Laurentia’s daughters had been found. She had picked up her clàrsach and began plucking the string and singing the song.

  Come home, come home to Barra Head

  I’ll show you the Gyre of Corry

  Come home, come home, sisters three

  I long to stroke your heads.

  She had done this for months, but until now nothing had happened and she had even doubted her own senses, her own beliefs, that the three girls — her nieces — still lived. But suddenly she knew they did and that they were coming home, swimming toward Barra Head.

  Lucy did not simply gain strength as she swam, but she felt an almost magical tingling that began in the scales of her tail and seeped upw
ard toward her skin. It was as if she were sloughing off the dead layers of life on land, those encrustations of the false social order that had ruled her life, so ruled the life of her land family that her mother had planted the poison in a small handbag that was Lucy’s.

  Lucy slashed her powerful tail through the water and shot ahead of her sister. She didn’t know where Marjorie Snow was. She didn’t care. She was free in a way her mother never would be. Yes, Marjorie Snow had gotten away with murder, but Lucy had gotten away with life. And someday Phin would join her on Barra Head, the island where her uncle Nathaniel said they came from, and where an aunt was waiting for them. For now Lucy reveled in the watery realms of the deep. It was like being reborn, as if she were some sort of water butterfly about to unfold. The cocoon itself was made from the silkiest and most ephemeral elements — the whoosh and whispers of water. The crushes of sea foam, the cadences of pressure waves. It was a scintillating, kinetic stirring of speed, sound, and pressure.