BONE HOUSE (6 page)

“Yes, of course,” I murmur.

“We shall dwell no more upon it,” says my mistress, reaching over to pat my hand. She rises, and as she does she accidentally dislodges my kirtle, which lies folded at the foot of my bed. I slides to the floor and the vial hits the wooden boards with a thump.

“How clumsy of me,” she says, bending down to retrieve the kirtle, and as she picks it up she notices the vial. She holds it up to me.

“This is Edward’s. Wherever did you find it?”

“On the path outside the house, mum,” I stammer.

She holds it up to the candlelight, admiring it for a moment. “He lost it some years ago. I was terribly disappointed, as I’d purchased it myself from a dealer in London.”

“It is very beautiful,” I say.

“Perhaps one of the servants took it,” she says with a sigh, disregarding in her way the fact that
I
am a servant. “I shall take it to him immediately,” she says, pleased at the prospect. “And you must rest,” she says firmly. “I only wished to ascertain that you were out of danger.” She pauses then and turns to face me one last time. “Remember we must be vigilant with both our physic
and
our soul,” she says pointedly. “The one cannot survive without the other.”

“Yes, mum.”

She leaves me then, with a little nod of condescension, and I am left holding her words.

T
he following day I return to my duties. I am anxious to confront my master about the vial at the first opportunity, though it is not clear to me how I should do so. My mistress has received word of the impending arrival of the portrait painter, and is busy making arrangements for his accommodation. She consults me over the suitability of his rooms, not wishing him to stay among the servants, as he has sat with royalty and her second cousin is his patron. But neither does she wish for him to be accommodated in the guest wing, for it is truly sumptuous, and by rights his status as a painter, even a talented one, places him only slightly higher than that of a craftsman. I suggest that he be given the tower room, above the library, for it is both apart from the servant’s quarters and austere in its decoration. It also benefits from much sunlight, and I remind her that such matters are important to a painter. She nods at this, and instructs the houseman to move a bed into the room at once.

I also propose that the painter might appreciate some volumes of history in his quarters, as he is due to remain for some days while he carries out his commission. My mistress agrees, and so I hurry to the library, where I know my master will be passing time among his books. I am short of breath by the time I reach the tower, not so much from tiredness as from anticipation, and I pause just outside the library door, my heart thumping in my
chest. I can hear my master moving about inside; he has a peculiar shuffling gait due to one leg being slightly shorter than the other. I knock and enter when he bids me to, and he turns to face me, his hair disheveled and his eyes a little wild. Unlike his mother, he does not take much notice of his attire, and dresses in a melancholy manner, almost entirely in black, sometimes wearing the same dark tunic for several days at a time. He has a small mustache, which he is fond of stroking with his thumb and forefinger, and wears a tall, floppy, broad-brimmed hat whenever he goes out, lending him the appearance of a minstrel. His eyes are his most attractive feature, being large and round and tawny-colored, with long curly lashes like a woman’s. But what one notices most about him is his shape: for he is small in size, and his left shoulder protrudes sharply upward past his ear, so that his neck and head are almost always at a slight angle, a fact that I have always found unsettling when he speaks to me. That and his manner, which can only be described as somewhat absent, as if he is in a state of perpetual distraction.

He looks at me now in that slightly vacant way, as if his eyes are upon me but his vision has gone elsewhere, and I explain that I have come to borrow books on behalf of my mistress.

“What sort of books?” he asks skeptically, as my mistress keeps her own collection of psalms and Scripture in her antechamber, and is not fond of any other.

“History, sir. Or geography perhaps. They are for the portrait painter,” I add. “For his amusement.”

“Ah,” he says, and shuffles slowly to the far side of the room, selecting half a dozen volumes from a shelf. “These might interest him, if he is the reading sort, though he may well be illiterate. Many of them are, you know.”

“Yes, sir,” I reply, taking the books from him. He moves over to his desk then, and at the same time, our eyes both light upon the vial, resting on the silken pouch atop his desk. In an instant his face has dropped its vacant look.

“I owe you many thanks,” he says. His gaze drops down to the vial. “It is indeed very precious to me, and I am grateful for its safe return.” He looks at me a little expectantly then, and I can only manage a half-smile. “My mother said you found it on the path . . . I cannot imagine how it came to be there.”

I take a deep breath before replying. “No sir, I did not. It was given to me by Dora before she died. She desired that it be returned to you . . . in the event that any misfortune should befall her.” My master lowers his eyes then, stares at the vial, loses himself inside it for a moment.

“I see. Then I must thank you doubly for your discretion,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper.

“She had some knowledge that death was near,” I say, moving toward him slowly. “Indeed she feared that it was imminent.”

He frowns, his eyes cloudy with confusion. “But her death was an accident.”

“One that she prepared for,” I reply. We both stare at each other for a long moment.

“What are you saying?” he asks.

I shrug. “I only wish to know the truth.”

He pauses then, his fingertips resting lightly on the desk, and just then his body sways almost imperceptively. “The truth is that I feel her loss acutely,” he says finally, sinking down into his chair and burying his hands in his hair. He stays this way for several moments, the room so quiet I can hear the ticking of the timepiece in the corner.

“But I know nothing of her death,” he says finally.

I wait a moment, ponder my options.

“Perhaps you knew she was with child,” I offer.

His face freezes. “No,” he says, his voice crackling like fine paper. “No, I did not.”

And I believe him, for there is a time when lying is not possible, when the flesh and fluids within us betray all our truths. This is when I ask my final question: the one I have been waiting for.

“The baby she carried, could it be . . . ” I hesitate, summon my courage. “Is it possible that it was yours?”

He looks at me and his eyes slowly bloom with pain. His face twitches and his chest heaves. Then he shakes his head, just barely, from side to side. “Such a thing could not be possible,” he says, his voice barely audible.

My mouth is dry like cotton. “Forgive me, sir,” I whisper.

Then I take his books and run from the room.

By the time I reach the main house I am drenched with fear. I have never seen my master thus, and though I do not fear for the sake of my own person, I am nonetheless frightened for his. Our bodies are the safe house of our passions, but there are limits to what they will contain. If the house becomes too full, it will unburden itself in some manner: either by sickness, or by deed. In truth, the severity of his response confounds me. Though my question clearly caught him unawares, it was not ill-founded, for he is a man like any other. And though I took some liberties in the asking, I did so with the knowledge that theirs was no casual liaison, as he himself had only just revealed to me the depth of his affections. Indeed, Dora touched so many in our midst, that it now begins to seem as if she spun a dense web of loyalty around her, one so vast that I cannot step in any direction for fear of tripping up against the thread of her presence.

And I myself am caught within the web, for like my master, I feel her loss acutely. Why else do I seek an answer to the riddle of her death?

At the end of the day, when I return to my room, I find a plain-wrapped parcel waiting on my bed. When I open it a small cloth purse drops into my lap, together with a note on white parchment. Though he does not sign it, I recognize my master’s hand. The message reads simply: “Please deliver this safely to her son.” I open the purse and empty its contents onto my bed. It is more money than I have ever seen—indeed it is more than I have ever
dreamed
of seeing. What does he hope to buy with this money, I wonder. Is it the price of my silence, or the cost of his guilt? I count it slowly, carefully, partly to be sure of its value, but partly just to have the feel of it in my hands. Then I return it to the purse, which I stow beneath my bedclothes. Tomorrow I will take it to the boy. But tonight I will sleep upon it, and dream the dreams of misers.

W
hen I was a child, I went often to the great-bellied woman’s house, to sit upon the hearth and listen to her stories. She was an accomplished teller of tales who could spin whole worlds with only a few long strands of words. The stories she told were strange and exotic, unlike any I have heard before or since: tales of people and places far across the sea, and of animals unknown within our shores. These stories lingered with me, and many are buried still within my mind. They come to me now in fragments, often when I least expect them, like uninvited guests. But they are not unwelcome, as they bring with them part of her: a sense of mystery and of possibility, coupled with that peculiar blend of strength and calmness that was her hallmark. For she was all these things to me, and I suppose to many others as well.

I remember a tale of a great plumed bird who lived high upon a mountain above the treetops, whose feet never once came to rest upon the soil. The bird was proud and kept to itself, only occasionally allowing the people who lived in the village far below to catch a glimpse of its rare and beautiful plumage. One day a great hunter came to the mountain, and hearing of the marvelous bird, determined to capture it for its beautiful feathers. He told the unwitting people of the village that he would like to see the bird, but when he asked them to describe it, each gave a different account of its beauty. Some said its feathers were green and
luminescent, like those of a peacock, while others said it was bright red with streaks of yellow and orange, like the setting sun. Still others said its body was black as coal, with snow-white tail feathers that flashed among the leaves when it flew. The hunter was confused and, deciding that the people were deliberately misleading him, resolved to find the bird himself. He climbed the mountain and for three days and nights remained hidden in the underbrush. On the fourth day he gave up hope and began his descent, when suddenly he caught a glimpse of a winged creature of such extraordinary beauty it made him gasp. He nearly forgot his purpose as he watched the bird soar and dive among the trees, but finally came to his senses and took aim with his bow and arrow. He heard a cry and saw the bird plummet toward the ground, but when he reached the spot where it should have landed, he found only a crow, pierced through the heart by his arrow, dead as a stone.

He picked up the crow and descended the mountain with great sadness, knowing as he did that the bird of his dreams was lost to him forever. When he reached the bottom, he hid the dead crow in his pack, and gathered the people of the village around him. He told them they were indeed blessed to have such a thing of beauty in their midst, and instructed them to revere it always. The people nodded and were relieved, secure in the knowledge that the bird would remain with them forever. The hunter left that land and never returned, and the people of the village kept their pride in the wondrous creature that lived among them.

Dora spun her stories with such intensity that she often left me breathless. Her pale eyes flashed with the excitement of the telling, and her long fingers rose and fell before her in an animated fashion. At these times she seemed to carry the hear beat of armies within her ample breast—she seemed more alive to me than anyone or anything I had ever encountered in my own barren corner of the world. But what struck me most was how she differed from my mother, who though capable was unfailingly
taciturn and circumspect, and did not trust the world beyond her threshold. My mother had no vision of life outside our little village; she did not dream of faraway lands or foreign peoples, nor did she aspire to any other life but the one she inhabited. She accepted Dora for what she was, but granted her no other past. Once when I asked her why Dora had come across the sea, she looked at me a little strangely, as if I had spoken some heresy, and said that Dora had found her place within our village. “But what of her own people?” I persevered. “We are her people,” replied my mother, and with that she rose and turned her back on me, as if to stifle any further questions in my mind.

So I took my questions to Dora herself, asking her why she’d come so far across the water to settle in a strange land. She looked straight at me then, and her expression deepened, as if I’d vanished right before her eyes—for suddenly her face was taut with memory. She stayed that way for several moments, and then she blinked and looked at me anew. “The world holds many lives for us,” she said finally. “And in the end, I chose to lead this one.” She spoke slowly, choosing her words with care, as if the truth was too fragile to reveal. Or as if she must temper her words for my ears.

As a child of nine or ten, the idea that one could choose one’s destiny made me almost dizzy with desire. I was too ignorant, too naive, or perhaps too stubborn to see how uncomfortably this notion sat within my mother’s understanding of God or man or the nature of things. I knew only that it was strange and desirable. Now the idea frightens me, for I have learned with age that it contains seeds of truth and possibility. And there are times when I feel the stirrings of my childhood swell and rise within me, but always they are accompanied by fear, so much so that I often think that there are two people who dwell within me: my mother and myself.

I wake in the predawn light feeling stiff and uneasy. Half asleep, I grope beneath my cushion for the purse of gold, but my fingers scrape the empty sheets and claw at nothing. I sit bolt upright,
rubbing my eyes, wondering if I dreamed of its existence. And then I check the floor beside my bed, where I see that it has fallen during the thrashings of my sleep. I reach out to retrieve it, and clutch it to my breast, my heart beating wildly. For the first time it occurs to me that to have so much wealth in one’s possession is perhaps a mixed blessing. What will it mean for the boy?

I rise and dress, stowing the purse deep within my petticoats. I have no other alternative for its safekeeping, as I will not have an opportunity to take it to the boy until that evening, and I do not wish to leave it in my room. Then I smooth my skirts and go below to take my breakfast with the others, the money brushing up against me like a whisper. When I reach the great hall the others are already hovered over breakfast. A bitter draft buffets their faces this morning, curtailing the normal talk and laughter at the table. The two girls are seated together in their usual place at one end, heads bowed and shoulders just touching. They remind me of two rodents worrying a biscuit. Alice, the elder of the two, is one year my junior but carries on as if she is half my age. The eldest daughter of a yeoman farmer in the village, she is short and heavyset with a ruddy round face and eyes set deep within their lids. She wears her straw-colored hair in a long thick plait down her back, and likes to toss her head about for emphasis, causing the plait to jump and writhe under her cap, like an angry snake. Lydia, the laundry maid, is two years younger, though much the more sensible of the two. She is not unpretty, though her face already bears the burden of hard labor, and her hands are rough and reddened from overuse of lye.

Little George, the turnspit, sits next to her, his eyes still filled with sleep. He wears a long knitted scarf wrapped round and round his neck which reaches nearly halfway up his face. He is an orphan whom my mistress rescued from the poorhouse, though he appears not to notice and persists in his misery. The youngest of the lot, he is not yet twelve, the same as Long Boy, though the two could not be more different. For a moment, I see
Long Boy seated in his place, but the image quickly fades, for I cannot imagine Long Boy taking orders, much less carrying them out. He is far too much her son. I take a seat next to Little George, who shifts uncomfortably, then resumes eating.

The menservants, four in all, group themselves round the other end of the table. Nate and Joe are barely more than shaving age, stable hands who have been here less than six weeks and may not last the winter, judging by the restless look in their eyes. From time to time they leer at the girls, who pull faces in return, and then dissolve into giggles. My master’s manservant Josias is much older and has lived all his life in the Great House. Indeed he was born within its walls and would no doubt perish were he forced to live outside them. He is quiet-spoken and loyal, like his father before him, but is not without some influence, as befits his position. Finally, there is Cook’s nephew Rafe, a sort of Jack-about-the-house, who is smarter than the rest, and not to be trusted. He and I have crossed swords on more than one occasion, normally when I have caught him out for some wrongdoing. But he is under Cook’s protection, though someday he will no doubt push her to the limit, as she frequently reminds him.

In all we are a motley crew, and I cannot help but wonder as I take my breakfast what would happen were I to spill the contents of the purse upon the center of the table. Josias would pay no heed, as he is more than happy with his station, but for the others it would constitute an open door. And yet, what would they make of it, or more importantly, it of them? It would not alter their person: Alice would remain rough-skinned and heavy-set with her nose a little upturned; Nate would still carry the scars of pox, and Joe his crooked teeth. And what of Little George, would it relieve his misery? I doubt it, for all the gold coins in the world could not raise his parents from the grave. Perhaps Rafe would make something of it, for he has more imagination than the rest. But he is also impetuous, and it might well lead him down a path of wickedness and sin.

And so I keep the money stashed beneath my skirts, for it is safe there, and can do no harm.

My mistress rings her bell and I quickly finish my breakfast and rise. Cook has prepared a tray for her, and now I take it up with me. When I reach her chamber she is seated in front of her dressing table with a frown. She wears only her nightclothes, with a loose velvet dressing gown for warmth, and her hair is uncombed. When she sees me enter she makes a face of mock horror at her own reflection, then sighs and turns to me with a rueful smile.

“They say he is accomplished in the art of camouflage,” she says. “He will have to be, in my case.”

It takes me a moment to realize whom she is referring to. The painter arrived late the previous evening, and is due to start work almost immediately. He will paint two miniatures of her, and a larger portrait for the great hall, and another of my master, if he will allow it. My mistress has not had her portrait done since her marriage, more than thirty years ago. It is customary for ladies to have their portraits painted with their children when they are still young, but it is said my master’s father would not allow it, owing to his son’s disfigurement.

I place the tray on the small round table by the window. Indeed we will have a task transforming her, but what makeup and fine garments cannot conceal, no doubt a paintbrush can. I stand behind her at the mirror and place my hands on her shoulders, concentrating on the look I should like to achieve before morning is out. She bites her lip and eyes me nervously: she is entirely in my hands, a feeling I must admit to liking. I smile a little to reassure her. “We had better get to work,” I say. “We have much to do.”

I begin with her hair and makeup. The gown she has chosen is heavily embroidered, and no doubt it will overtire her if she is forced to wear it long. And the lace ruff she has chosen is so absurdly tall as to be almost unwearable. She has seen a similar one upon a portrait of the queen, and had it copied by her tailor
especially for this occasion. I begin to coat her cheeks with ceruse, mixing it with white of egg and applying it in layers until it entirely conceals the true color of her skin. The process takes some time, as each layer must dry before the next is applied, and she passes the time in between by nibbling gingerly at a roll. When the base has been laid, I use henna and a fine brush to do her eyes, giving her eyebrows a slightly higher arch than usual, which pleases her enormously. I also paint a small discreet mole on one cheek, the fashion at court these days, and with a blue crayon I trace a vein snaking down her neck toward her bosom, which will be partially but discreetly exposed by the squared neck of her bodice. Finally I rouge her cheeks ever so slightly with cochineal, as she is not overly fond of color, and paint her lips a bright crimson. The entire process takes me nearly an hour, and when I am finished she is still uneasy, as her hair and garments remain undone, and the success of one without the other is limited at best.

“Trust me,” I say, patting her hand in reassurance. She gives a small embarrassed wave of her hand in response.

“I feel like a bride,” she says a little sheepishly.

“And you shall look like one before I’m through,” I respond.

We both know that I am lying.

The hair and headdress come next. First her own hair must be oiled so that it will lie flat upon her skull, then the wig must be applied and dressed. She has several and today has chosen her favorite, a very pale shade of auburn that, it must be said, becomes her. Once the wig is on she begins to relax a little, as it is now possible to foresee the final outcome. I tease and comb the curls into place, then carefully pin the headdress, a delicate tiara festooned with jewels that she has borrowed for the occasion, as her own failed to please her. She can barely move her head once it is on, as it sits rather precariously atop her curls, but her movements will be further hampered by the lace ruff.

We pause when I am through with her hair. It is past mid-
morning and the sun is shining, which will no doubt please the painter, who is scheduled to arrive in her chamber at noon. She rings for some refreshment, which Alice brings on a tray, and the girl is nearly struck dumb by the sight of her mistress in jeweled headdress. I pour out ale for us both and when she takes a sip of hers she leaves faint marks of red upon the cup. Her gown and underskirts have been newly pressed, and we begin the laborious process of removing her nightclothes and putting them on, taking extra care not to disturb her makeup or hair. First I carefully slip her best chemise over her head. It is finely spun of bleached white linen and will protect her elaborate outerwear from bodily secretions. Then comes a flannel petticoat for warmth, as she is bone-thin with age and suffers acutely from cold in winter. Her corset is extra-fine, made of satin and linen with whalebone stays and a long central pocket into which I insert an ivory busk. Her body stiffens as I do so, and she draws in a breath at the effort of remaining erect. The corset is cut long, as is the current fashion, and has little loops at the bottom that will hold her farthingale in place. She prefers a French farthingale to the Spanish type; it too is made with whalebones, the skirt falling in a dramatic A from her hips. Finally I attach the bumroll just above her hips. Hers is larger and more pronounced than my own, and dwarfs her measurements, but the effect pleases her. My mother has no time for such accoutrements, and is forever lecturing those in confinement to abandon them.