Bell Weather (11 page)

Nary an hour passed anymore without Jeremy, the servants, or Nicholas coming to Mrs. Wickware with a fresh report of Molly’s misbehavior, which had unexpectedly worsened after a single, promising day of near capitulation. Mrs. Wickware had never seen the like. One evening Molly had been leeched without struggle, admitting to defeat and seeming to submit, and then the very next day she had seemed possessed. She routinely rejected her meals, fled the dining room, and hid for much of the day, emerging just long enough to steal a piece of cake or a bottle of milk from the kitchen. One day Jeremy had locked her in her room, and Molly had emptied her wardrobe onto the busy street below. As punishment for this, Mrs. Wickware had taken the clothes Molly was wearing, certain it would teach her to respect her own belongings. Instead the girl escaped and sprinted through the house, entirely naked, astonishing the staff before returning, pink and laughing, to the safety of her bed.

There had been weeks of such behavior. Mrs. Wickware had attempted all manner of common punishment, from depriving Molly of comforts to locking her in closets, and although these efforts failed at every turn, she told herself that discipline would finally win the day, as when a long-standing illness yields to steady treatment.

Yet to make matters worse, the girl was unpredictable. Some days Molly would appear at breakfast, eat whatever was placed before her, and outshine the queen in ladylike comportment. She would follow every rule for half a morning and then, just as Mrs. Wickware’s guard began to lower, she would abruptly reignite the flames of misbehavior.

This morning had been similar. Weeks of battle had left Mrs. Wickware prone to overreaction, and when Molly passed her in the third-floor hallway and failed to step aside, she was ordered to kneel and face the wall until such time as Mrs. Wickware returned. Molly had complied, saying, “Yes, ma’am,” curtsying, and kneeling like a penitent, and had remained there—or so it was believed—for more than an hour, until Jeremy reported she had vanished.

Newton the footman had seen Molly running through the downstairs study not two minutes ago. Sure enough, Mrs. Wickware discovered, the study doors were open and fresh-cut flowers had been scattered on the floor. The study led to a narrow hall, where the chambermaid, blackened in a cloud of settling ash, explained that she had just emptied one of the hearth grates when Molly grabbed the pan and threw it into the air. Mrs. Wickware stepped around the ash, ignoring the maid’s apologies, and followed the next open door into the gilt room, where the largest portrait—that of Lord Bell’s father, high above the floor—was hanging upside down. She continued to the library, where Nicholas stood amazed before a castle made of books. It was six feet tall with battlements and towers, a marvelous construction he had found moments ago, he claimed, after hearing Molly’s laugh and chasing her into the library.

“I saw her place the final book,” he said, pointing to a leather-bound copy of
The Rise and Fall of the Lost Volcanic Islands
. “I said I would report her and she answered…”

Nicholas hesitated, seemingly reluctant to repeat what Molly had said. Mrs. Wickware’s legs quivered when he paused. Her skin began to blotch and she was breathless, having walked much faster in the chase than she had realized.

“What did she say?” Mrs. Wickware asked.

“That I could tell the chicken-breasted harpy anything I liked.”

She struck him on the cheek, sudden as a reflex.

He accepted the blow and said, “I’ll take it down straightaway,” beginning at once to reshelve the books, and Mrs. Wickware could not decide whether it was Nicholas’s poise or Molly’s pandemonium that made her want to knock the castle over, or—if only it were possible—to climb inside, close her eyes, and hide behind its walls.

She pursued Molly throughout the house, encountering finger-pointing servants and flagrant mischief at every turn. She visited the stables outside, found the groom trying desperately to calm the frantic horses, and followed a trail of dirty footprints back inside the house. They led her through the kitchen, up the rear stairs, and straight to the third-floor hall, where Molly knelt—neither breathless nor disheveled, the bottoms of her shoes immaculate—on the very spot of the floor where Mrs. Wickware originally told her to remain.

*   *   *

“You actually
saw
her enter the library?” Mrs. Wickware asked Nicholas at dinner.

She had questioned—repeatedly—everyone who had witnessed any part of Molly’s escapade. How could anyone traverse the entire house, including the stables, and accomplish so many things in so little time unopposed and unassisted? It had taken two grown men with a ladder to reposition the inverted portrait in the gilt room, and Nicholas had spent hours returning the nearly five hundred books of Molly’s castle to the shelves. And yet the servants’ accounts harmonized down to the minute. Molly herself refused to speak a word in self-defense but rather smiled, seeming tickled by the story, until Mrs. Wickware locked her in a closet and stationed Jeremy at the door.

“It was just as I have told you,” Nicholas said, lowering his fork and speaking very slowly. “I followed the sound of her laugh and saw her place the final book. When I threatened to report her, she said—”

“Yes, I understand, but did you see her running in? Surely she had been working in the room for quite some time?”

“I had passed the library ten minutes earlier,” Nicholas said, “and nothing looked amiss.”

“But don’t you see that it’s impossible?” Mrs. Wickware cried.

Before attempting to explain the obvious again, she picked up the lavender teapot and poured herself a cup, hoping to soothe her throat after hours of fruitless questioning. A long fat leech issued from the spout and overflowed the cup with a quick, dramatic plop. Mrs. Wickware shrieked and swatted it away. The cup exploded on the floor, the pot was overturned, and somehow the leech remained upon the table. She leapt from her chair and backed away, tugging the bell rope so emphatically its tassel tore free in her hand.

Newton and Emmy promptly appeared, but they could hardly make sense of Mrs. Wickware’s incoherent fury. Once Nicholas explained the commotion, Newton collected the leech and swept the breakage from the floor. When Mrs. Wickware upbraided Emmy for delivering the pot, the kitchen maid grew incensed and said, with a fiery glow, that she had seen Miss Molly creeping round the pot and had chased her off, assuming at the time that she had come to steal the tea.

“She bedevils us!” Emmy said. “Always sneaking about, snatching food and sullying floors and interfering with our work! I am sorry, Mr. Nicholas, to speak against your sister, but I have never known a girl so bold in all my days!”

Nicholas bowed his head in woeful resignation.

“You can’t have seen her in the kitchen!” Mrs. Wickware said. “She is locked inside a closet and has been for many hours!”

“Then it must have been her ghost, beg pardon,” Emmy said, “or the girl’s spitting image, with the same unruly hair.”

“Excuse me,” Newton said, gathering teapot shards. “I myself found Molly drawing pictures on the wall. I have only just finished painting over what she drew.”

“What wall? When? What did she draw?” Mrs. Wickware asked, her voice trailing off due to shallowness of breath.

“In your own bedchamber, within the hour,” Newton replied. “I would rather not communicate the nature of the drawings.”

Mrs. Wickware ordered them all to abandon the mess and leave the dining room single file. They followed her up the stairs and down the hall until the four of them stood before a wide-eyed Jeremy, who rose from his stool in front of the closet and handed Mrs. Wickware the key.

She opened the door and there was Molly, roseate and calm. The closet was large enough to sit in, but the girl had apparently stood; the dust upon the floor and on the trunks was undisturbed.

Jeremy insisted he had not left his station.

“I was here upon the stool and didn’t hear a sound.”

He repeated himself verbatim when Mrs. Wickware informed him of the leech and of the drawings, and when she asked him yet again how Molly might have escaped, he flexed his jaw, smoothed his ill-fitting waistcoat, and refused to speak again.

Mrs. Wickware knew better than to interrogate Molly herself, and rather than satisfy the girl with fury and frustration, she pretended not to care, sent Molly off without additional punishment, and retired to her chamber with its newly painted wall, where she calmed her ruined nerves with half a bottle of wine.

*   *   *

Throughout autumn and deep into winter, Molly did as Nicholas had instructed, flouting rules and causing trouble at every opportunity. She shouted, laughed, kicked, overturned drinks, vandalized rooms, insulted Mrs. Wickware, bit and spat at Jeremy, stole whatever she could and broke whatever she couldn’t. She kept refusing meals she didn’t want to eat, and the cook, still peeved about the crushberry pie, initially refused to sneak her any food.

At the dinner table Molly fainted with hunger, only to be revived with spirit of hartshorn and placed, once again, before a loathsome plate of fish. One night when she refused to stay in bed, Jeremy tied her to the bedposts with knots that left bruises on her ankles and wrists. She spent a long, panicked night gagged with a handkerchief, fearing she would suffocate and trying not to cry. She cried on most nights, and sometimes during the day when nobody would see.

She wondered how much longer she could actively persist, because although her brother’s plan was seemingly in motion, Molly went days without a kind look from anyone in the house, and in the course of her rebellion she began to glimpse herself, reflected in the punishments and faults and accusations, as a creature unworthy of forgiveness or redemption.

Nicholas encouraged the servants to blame her for everything, including their own mistakes. Some with hearty consciences initially refused, but Nicholas convinced them by explaining the design. Others played along because they welcomed a permanent scapegoat, and because Nicholas rewarded them—using Lord Bell’s money, secretly obtained—far more lavishly than Mrs. Wickware did.

In their grandest orchestration, Newton had scattered the flowers in the study, the chambermaid had dumped her own ashes, the gardener and coachman had inverted the portrait, Nicholas and three maids had constructed the book castle, and the groom had tracked manure into the house. Molly, who had knelt before the wall as she’d been told, left the spot just long enough for Jeremy to find her missing and returned before Wickware discovered she’d been gone.

The house was full of Mollys every moment of the day, and not an hour passed that one of the staff did not report a shocking new offense, genuine or faked, and trouble Mrs. Wickware with straight-faced deception.

As the governess and Jeremy were constantly distracted, Nicholas and the servants were trusted to go about their days largely unsupervised. With the exception of the choreographed disruptions, the household ran superbly and the liberated staff—no longer punished even for their own mistakes—was inspired to harry Mrs. Wickware further. They hatched their own plans, perfected their alibis, and collected their rewards without a pinprick of guilt.

They began to sneak Molly food when she was deprived of meals, loosen her bonds when they were overly tight, and buoy her with gentleness whenever they were able. Her vigor grew. Her spirits rose. She heightened her attack. Mrs. Wickware, frazzled and increasingly prone to drink, dispensed with punishment entirely and started to bribe and plead.

“If you finish your dinner,” for instance, “you will be given an extra custard.”

Or, “Girls who wash their feet deserve a finer pair of shoes.”

Or, “You may do whatever you like, so long as you leave me in peace this afternoon.”

To these and other inducements, Molly answered with defiance, until at last she swept through the house like an unchecked fire, and all that Mrs. Wickware could do was treat her own burns.

Leeches kept appearing in the unlikeliest places: baked into Mrs. Wickware’s puddings, folded into her towels, writhing in her bedsheets. One slithered from a bookshelf and landed in her hair. The weekly bleedings were abandoned and the earthenware jar was taken from the house, and yet the leeches not only persisted but increased in size and number.

Nicholas stole Mrs. Wickware’s personal belongings. At first he merely moved them into adjoining drawers or rooms; she assumed that she herself, scatterbrained and often tipsy, was responsible. Later he kept whatever he took and encouraged the staff to follow his lead, provided every item was delivered straight to him.

By midwinter, Mrs. Wickware was starting her days with wine and ending them with peach brandy. She continued to wake at daybreak, but Molly woke earlier to dress herself, eat a secret breakfast in her room, and spy on her governess’s movements through the keyhole.

One morning she heard the clink of the decanter on a glass once, twice, three times before a glow filled the hearth and Mrs. Wickware could finally be seen, disheveled in her nightgown. The governess lifted her personal lockbox onto a table and opened it using a key she wore at all times around her neck. Her firelit face immediately shadowed. She clawed through the box and finally overturned it, scattering the contents on the table and still not finding what she wanted. Then she ran toward the keyhole, fumbled for the bedroom key, and opened the door to find Molly, prettily dressed, standing there before her with a curious expression.

“Where is it?” Mrs. Wickware said, leaning close to Molly’s face. “What have you done with it? You have to give it back!”

“What?” Molly asked.

Mrs. Wickware shook her by the arms, repeating herself and panting with a sweet-sour breath. But since Nicholas or one of the servants must have stolen the item in question, Molly’s puzzlement was wholly unfeigned and Mrs. Wickware could spot no glimmer of deceit. She released Molly’s arms and backed away, seeming about to fall and supporting herself in the doorframe.

“It was my husband’s,” Mrs. Wickware said. “My husband, dead and gone … I keep it to remind me of him. Please, Molly, please. It is worthless, but to me— Oh, you must give it back! You won’t be punished, not a whit. You don’t believe me. No, of course! You’re worried I’ll be angry. Leave it out where I will find it, anywhere at all, and we will never have to speak of it again. You have my promise!”