Hannah Read online

  She turned now and looked at her room. It was the first time in her life she had not had to share, except when she was out in Kansas at Reverend Stubbs’s house and had been too sick to appreciate it. But she wasn’t sure if she appreciated this room, either. The milky light from Louisburg Square washed in, bleaching the dark wood pale and making the sparse furnishings appear almost insubstantial. Ghostly, she thought. That’s it! She walked quickly out of the room and turned down the hall to the little alcove where a makeshift curtain had been strung.

  “You asleep yet, Florrie?”

  “No.” Florrie pulled the curtain and sat up on her mattress in the cramped little space. “What is it?”

  “She died in there, didn’t she? Dotty died in my room,” Hannah said.

  Florrie blinked. “Not in it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She was ill there. They took her to the charity ward of Mass General Hospital. She died there.”

  “But she haunts it.”

  “No…I mean I never seen her or nothing like that. It’s just that…Oh…” She struggled for the words. “She ain’t no ghost if that’s what you mean, Hannah.”

  “Why do you cram yourself in here and give me the big space?”

  “I just ain’t comfortable there. She was a strange girl anyway. I never did like sharing the space with her and when she got real sick, I moved here. I like it better. That’s all. Now, don’t worry. Go to sleep. You have to get up earlier than any of us so you won’t be spending much time there, anyhow.” Florrie pulled the curtain, and Hannah could hear her nestling down into her quilts on the squashed-up mattress.

  Hannah found small comfort in the fact that she would hardly be spending much time sleeping in the room. She might not sleep at all if some ghost of a dead scullery girl began gallivanting about. But there was little she could do about it. It was not thoughts of Dotty or ghosts that disturbed Hannah’s sleep that night, but the lingering images painted on the two vases. Just as she was on the crest of sleep, Hannah would think of that breaking wave on the vase with the tail rising from the foam. She could almost hear the sea crashing and she felt something stir deep within her. Something familiar, yet so distant. Perhaps ghostly, in an odd way.

  She wasn’t aware of actually thinking I must see that vase again. She just rose from her bed. She felt a keenness, a sense of agitation and apprehension as she made her way silently down the four flights of stairs. When she entered the drawing room, the gaslights had been turned down so that there was only a dim hovering glow, a tiny soft halo within each globe. But the milky fog outside seemed to wash into the room like a tide of pale light settling softly on the furniture. She felt a strange yearning rise in her. The stepladders were gone. She did not dare move anything to climb on so she might see the tail better. But was she too short?

  She walked up to the vase she had dusted that afternoon. She could easily see portions of the body just before the tail began, and she could see the teardrop shape of the scales. Her heart was beating wildly as she drew the pouch from beneath her nightgown. She loosened the drawstrings again and this time shook out just a very few of the teardrop-shaped ovals. Taking one, she held it up to the scales painted on the vase. It fit perfectly, shimmering against the porcelain with a slight iridescence that pulsed once and suddenly seemed to magnify. The glimmer soon spread over the entire vase, enveloping it in a luminous glow.

  Hannah pressed her cheek against the cool porcelain of the vase. She felt herself grow calm. She stood for perhaps two minutes with her cheek and her palms touching the curve of the vase.

  When finally she looked up, the tail was closer than she thought. It brushed the crown of her head. She had wondered before if the creature really was a fish and if it was male or female, although there was something that suggested femininity. All that wondering seemed unnecessary now. It was not exactly a fish in any definable way. But it was female, of that she was sure, and it seemed very powerful. It had to be powerful, for the artist had depicted a storm-lashed sea yet this creature was swimming easily through the waves, not simply easily but almost joyously. She looked up at the way in which the tail flipped from the crest of the wave. Whatever the creature was, it looked free, utterly free!

  She pressed her mouth close to the vase now and whispered as if speaking to some spirit contained within it. “What just happened? Is it me? Did I make this glow?” But there was only silence, and her whispered words spiraled into the soft vaporous radiance that had spread from the vase and begun to steal across the room. As soon as she tucked the crystal back into the pouch, the glow began to fade, like a tide ebbing back to sea.

  Hannah stayed another few minutes then went back upstairs to her room on the third floor.

  During the night, a land breeze came up and swept the fog back out to sea.

  It was not a dream. That was Hannah’s first thought upon waking. She knew that last night had really happened. The crystals in the pouch were not mere ovals, but perfect replicas of the scales of the mysterious tail on the vase. Hannah’s head had begun to blur, and then it struck her with a great force. I have broken a rule! The number one rule Mr. Marston had laid down was that Hannah should only be in the family rooms for work.

  Yesterday, Hannah had felt truly blessed that she had a place to live near the sea, and soon would have a dollar and three quarters in her pocket. But she had risked it all last night. Had she been caught, she would have been summarily dismissed without so much as a cent. The question was, how had she forgotten? Her recklessness chilled her blood. Think! Think, Hannah! Think before you do anything so foolish again.

  7 THE PAINTER

  THE NEXT MORNING, the house was a beehive of activity. As soon as Hannah had finished polishing the front-door knocker and took her rags and polishing paste back to the kitchen, Mrs. Bletchley called out.

  “Change out of your scullery uniform and put on upstairs clothes. They needs you on the third floor to help with the trunks.”

  “I don’t have an upstairs uniform,” Hannah protested.

  “Oh, yes, you do. We keep spares for the scullery girls. Go down past the silver pantry to the first door on the left. Dotty’s is hanging there. It’s got her name on it.”

  Hannah went to the closet. There were three hangers with Dotty’s name. One had a black dress, one a pink, and one a lilac color. Each had a different apron. Which one was she supposed to wear? Hannah had no idea. She rushed back into the kitchen.

  “Which one, Mrs. Bletchley? There are three.”

  “The lilac one, of course.”

  Hannah blinked. She wasn’t sure what was so “of course” about it, but she hurried back and scrambled into the uniform. She was trying to fasten it when she heard footsteps. It was Mrs. Bletchley. “I’ll help you with the fastenings.”

  A minute later Hannah had tied the full-length white pinafore apron around her and put on the upstairs regulation maid’s hat, which looked like a pancake with a frill around it. Mrs. Bletchley measured her approvingly. “Well, the apron’s not pressed, which wouldn’t do if they was here, and you’ve got the cap on cockeyed.” She straightened it out. “All right, now run upstairs and help Daze and Florrie with them trunks. Miss Horton will direct you.”

  On the third-floor landing, Hannah nearly collided with Florrie, who was obscured by a huge, fluffy cloud of crinolines. “Go to Lila’s room, Daze is there.”

  “Which is Lila’s room?”

  “Last on the right, just after the nursery.”

  Hannah peeked into the nursery as she walked by. The dollhouse was set on a low table, an exact replica down to the lampposts on the sidewalk. She couldn’t resist going in for a closer look. Hannah crouched down on her knees. It was empty of furnishings, but even so, she had never seen or imagined anything like it. Everything from the wallpaper to the gas lighting fixtures were identical to the real ones except in miniature. She even found her own room, tucked in at the very top of the house under the narrow dormer.

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p; “Come along now!” Florrie stuck her head into the nursery. “I’ll let you help me with it later. But Daze needs your help getting these clothes organized.”

  Hannah got up and followed Daze into Lila’s bedroom. Never had she seen such a lovely bedroom. The bed was hung with a gossamer canopy embroidered with flowers that exactly matched the ones painted on the headboard. The curtains matched the canopy and there was a lovely thick carpet with gold-colored fringe. On the dresser were delicate porcelain figurines of animals. Across from the dresser, there was a writing desk with gilt edges and an array of elegant pens set in silver holders at the edge of a blotter. A white and gold plant stand that spilled with pansies and ivy stood by the desk. Pansies already! Hannah thought.

  “Whatcha be gawking at, girl?” Daze said, looking up from the trunk she was already unpacking. She was plump with a rounded, dimpled face and a delicate spray of freckles that spanned her nose and cheeks, giving her a naturally rosy appearance.

  Hannah had been trying to place Daze’s accent ever since she had met her the previous day. It was very odd. Not really Irish. There were so many Irish children at The Home that Hannah had even been able to pinpoint if they spoke with the clipped cadences of County Clare or Sligo, County Kilkenny or Kildare. Daze’s speech was clipped, but then it suddenly seemed to swoop up at the end of words or sentences only to be chopped off almost with a hiccup.

  “I’m gawking at everything! I’ve never seen such a room. It’s like a princess’s.” Hannah looked around. It was hard to imagine that all these beautiful things were for just one girl, only one year older than herself. She bet that the furniture and all the gewgaws in this one room cost more than the fabled one thousand dollars that Mr. Marston earned in a year.

  But if Hannah had a little seaside cottage, she wouldn’t need any of this. She would have shells for decoration and no curtains so she could watch the sea day and night. And she would not have nearly as many clothes. Indeed, although her terrible rash was gone, she remembered how free it had felt to wear no undergarments. She had never felt “depraved” as matron had suggested.

  Daze snorted, “Yeah, that what Miss Lila be, a princess, if not a queen. See that heat stove over there in the corner?”

  “Yes.” There was a small porcelain coal-burning stove that was painted with delicate flowers.

  “It’s a copy of one that belonged to a famous French queen—Marie Antoinette, the one that went and got her head chopped off.”

  “Ooooh! Who’d want one like that?”

  “Not me, but we ain’t Miss Lila, are we? She’s a little strange. And it be your job each evening when the family is having dinner to scurry up here and start a fire in it to warm the room, so it be nice and toasty when Miss Lila comes to bed.”

  “And what’s that tiny little bed?” Hannah asked as she caught sight of an exact replica of the larger bed with the same canopy, even down to the miniaturized version of the embroidered flowers.

  “That’s Jade’s bed.”

  “Who is Jade?” Hannah wondered aloud.

  “A cat. And she’s not that small for a cat. She’s a big, fat thing. And that, my girl, is one of your first lessons.”

  “Yes?”

  “No one except Miss Lila ever touches Jade. None of her sisters. Not Mr. or Mrs. Hawley. Not Miss Ardmore, the governess. No one. But it be your job to bring a pan of milk up for Jade when you come to light the fire. Now come here and help me.”

  Daze began with a rapid-fire list of instructions. “Take these to the laundress for immediate ironing. Miss Lila likes her chemises and combis arranged in stacks of four in the middle drawer. So when you bring them back, remember, stacks of four. Line up her shoes in her closet according to this chart.” Daze handed Hannah a carefully drawn diagram that had a small drawing of each shoe and showed the order of where it was to go on the shoe rack in the large closet that was as big as Hannah’s room. “And never, never ever touch the figurines. Only Miss Horton is allowed to dust them.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I told you, she’s strange…bit weird in the head.” Daze looked up and tapped her maid’s cap.

  “I heard someone say she was high-strung.”

  “That be one way to put it, I s’pose.” Daze turned her back and began sorting through petticoats.

  “Are the others that way, too?”

  “No. Pretty normal for girls so rich and spoiled. Clarice is very sweet, but she takes holy hell from Lila just for being so pretty even though she’s three years younger.”

  “And what about Henrietta?”

  “Oh, Ettie?” Daze laughed. “Ettie’s something else!”

  “What do you mean by ‘something else’?”

  “Ettie’s just nine. Bit of a tomboy. Look, dear, I ain’t got no time to go explaining them to you now. You’ll see they all be as different as can be. But you gotta be careful of Miss Lila.”

  As soon as Hannah had delivered the clothes to the laundress, she came back up to the nursery. Daze was on her knees, surrounded by boxes with labels on them. “Do you read?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good, that will be helpful.” She laid her hand on a stack of boxes to her left. “These are the people boxes.” She began to unstack them. One label said UPSTAIRS MAIDS, HOUSEMAIDS, AND DOWNSTAIRS MAIDS. Another said COOK, MR. M, SCULLERY. Then there was a box with the word FAMILY on it. Another box was labeled FIRST-FLOOR CARPETS AND PAINTINGS. There were at least twenty boxes filled with the furniture, decorations, and people figures, all part of the household at 18 Louisburg Square. They put the plump doll with the gray curls and cap in the kitchen at the range. That was Mrs. Bletchley. Then they hung up all the pots and pans. Next they slid the miniature wine bottles into the racks in the wine cellar and stood Mr. Marston in front of them.

  For Hannah, the dollhouse was an education. In the brief time she had been at number 18, there were many rooms she had not even seen. For three hours, Daze and Hannah dusted, polished, and sorted out all the contents of the dollhouse. They began hanging the pictures in the downstairs rooms and putting out the Oriental carpets that sparkled like tiny jewels. There was even a set of the vases, but the paintings on the vases were crude in comparison to the real ones downstairs. The crashing waves had a rigid geometry and the tails of the sea creatures seemed to droop, devoid of energy or power. It was as if the artist had tried to reduce the entire ocean and its creatures to a single drop of water.

  “Oh, dear, here’s poor Dotty.” Daze sighed as she unpacked one of the servant boxes. “Well, I guess that’s you now,” she said, and put the small figure up in the room on the top floor. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  Hannah was caught aback. She looked at the servant figure dressed in the same rough-woven skirt that she had been wearing earlier, with an apron that even had smudges of coal dust. “I do sort of mind, Daze. Could we change her a bit?”

  “Good idea! We have spare uniforms. We’ll just put her in an afternoon upstairs one and, you know, I have a great idea.” Daze jumped up and went to a cabinet with paper, paints, and brushes. “Dotty had blond hair. It will be easy to dye her hair with some of these India ink paints and make it red like yours.”

  The girls fussed with the doll for nearly a quarter of an hour. “Look at her!” Daze said, propping the doll against a miniature coal scuttle. “Pretty good job, eh?”

  “Very good. Thanks,” Hannah said and began to reach for another box.

  “Don’t touch that!” Daze blurted as Hannah started to lift the lid from the box that was labeled LILA’S BEDROOM. Hannah’s hand froze above the lid. “Nobody is allowed to touch or clean the furniture for Lila’s room in the dollhouse. She even has a little china cat that looks just like Jade in it.”

  “All right,” Hannah said. “What about the other girls’ rooms?”

  By two o’clock they had finished and Hannah had changed back into her scullery clothes and been sent to clean the grates and lay the fires in the first-floor rooms.r />
  Now she walked into a room she had never been in before. As soon as she entered, she stood very still. Hannah recognized it as the music room. Daze had arranged its furniture in the dollhouse version. There was a grand piano and across from it, beside two very tall glass-paned doors that looked out on a garden, stood a harp. Hannah set down her scuttle of coals and kindling. The colored strings, the shapely contours, the very gleam of the harp’s wood drew her. She had never seen a harp before except in pictures. There was not another soul in the room and the harp stood solitary in a shaft of morning light. Although there was no player, Hannah sensed a stirring in its strings. But how could this be? The harp was untouched, and yet Hannah could feel or almost hear a quivering of fragile sound, like a melody waiting to breathe.

  Suddenly Hannah sensed another presence in the room. She wheeled about and found herself facing a tall young man with thick black hair and eyes the color of emeralds. She gasped.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you, I’m sorry.”

  “Mr. Hawley?” But he was much too young to be the master of the house.

  “Hardly!” The man laughed. “I’m Stannish Wheeler.”

  “The portrait painter?” She almost whispered the words. She was suddenly very nervous and could not meet those emerald eyes. It was as if they emanated a current.

  “Yes, the portrait painter.” He cocked his head to one side and narrowed his eyes as if to study her. He took a step closer, a pulse twitched in his temple, and the color drained from his face. Hannah was alarmed. What is he seeing? He looked as if he might faint.

  “Sir, are you…are you well?” She reached out her hand as if to steady him, but he immediately took a step back and she felt herself blush furiously. Stupid! Stupid! How stupid of me. He was a big, tall, healthy man. Why would she ever think he was going to faint?