Bell Weather (6 page)

“Give her to me,” Bell said.

Frances leaned away and held the baby closer. Bell forced his hands under the bundle and she was forced to let go, much to her distress. He held the baby awkwardly and Frances stood to follow, but he ordered her to stay and meet the nurses when they came. She looked as if he’d kidnapped her own precious daughter.

He carried the baby through the house, away from everyone until they seemed the only two people in the home, her cries and his rigidity the only two forces in the world. He came to Nicholas’s room, balanced the baby in the crook of his elbow, and opened the door without knocking.

The boy stood in the dark, silhouetted at the window, and didn’t move until his father beckoned him to come.

“Hold out your arms,” Bell said.

He placed the girl firmly into Nicholas’s hands. Right away the boy’s hold seemed entirely assured and Bell stepped back, confident his daughter wouldn’t fall but anxious—he could not have said why—to see them there together, son and daughter, as a pair.

“Your sister,” he declared.

“Molly,” Nicholas said, and suddenly the baby fell silent and relaxed, her color flowing out and into her brother’s cheeks, until they both looked healthy—she less inflamed, he less anemic—and Lord Bell observed them from the door, disregarded, thinking of his wife and powerfully alone.

Chapter Five

“Molly,”
Frances said, pausing in the garden with her tusk-handled pruning knife. “If you cannot leave that spider alone, I will serve it up for supper.”

For six years, Frances had attempted all manner of correction with Molly, who thought of her governess’s reprimands, exasperations, and emotional entreaties not only as variations on a game, but as constant reassurances of Frances’s devotion. They were together in the courtyard behind the house, a thickly gardened refuge with high stone walls that almost made the bustle of the world disappear.

Umber was a compact, overpeopled city. Most of its central buildings were constructed of ghostly pale lunarite, a native stone of Bruntland, which gave the capital both the beauty and echoing hardness of an open-air cathedral. From the garden, Molly could see the neighboring mansions of Worthington Square and the tower of Elmcross Church, the latter’s white belfry glaring in the sun, but with the burstwoods and roses clustering around her, it was easy to imagine they were deep within the countryside.

Molly put the ripe purple spider in her mouth.

Frances shrieked and rushed forward, only to snag her skirts upon the rosebush thorns. The spider struggled in Molly’s mouth, dancing on her tongue and almost scrambling down her throat. She puffed her cheeks to give it room, surprised a thing so colorful had no distinguishing flavor. But neither did a grape, Molly thought, until you chewed it …

“Spit it out, spit it out!” Frances said, tearing free of the bush and opening Molly’s mouth. Out the spider came, tumbling off her lip and landing in the moss—a vibrant combination to behold: violet-green. The lingering tickle on her tongue left her giggling uncontrollably.

“Oh, you wicked thing.” Frances glowered but her eyes grew teary with affection. “Don’t you know how poisonous they are? It might have bit you!”

“Those are safe,” Molly said, relishing the pinkness of her governess’s cheeks. “That’s a sugarplum weaver. Nicholas told me. It would take a hundred of them biting all at once to make me sick.”

“You mustn’t do such things,” Frances said, unconvinced. She saw the spider at her toe and leapt away. Molly laughed. The governess continued: “Is it any wonder that your cousins and the children in the park prefer each other’s company?”

“Some of the children like me,” Molly said. “I make them laugh.”

“Their parents don’t laugh, nor their governesses neither. You would have more friends if you would play with better manners.”

Molly sulked and watched the spider crawl across the moss until it hid beneath a rock and left her feeling lonely. It was true: other children didn’t actively avoid her, but they didn’t seek her out as often as she hoped, and she received dirty glances from their guardians and mothers when she dug in public flower beds, and yelled, and swallowed bugs. Molly’s father rarely socialized—“He gave it up after your mother died,” Frances had once told her—and her truest young companion was her own friendless brother. Nicholas was generally too ill, or too bored by children his age, to set aside his studies for more than a hasty walk in the park. Their governess was all Molly had, most days.

Frances was thirty years old but dressed, and spoke, and acted much older—more like her father’s musty great-aunts—yet oftentimes, especially when Molly drew her on, Frances ran and even laughed like the youngest of the household maids. She was pretty when her hair fell loose, and she had wonderful breasts for a woman so angular and thin. Molly noticed how they bobbed when Frances hopped away; she loved to nap upon her governess’s bosom in the sun. As an infant, she had breast-fed emphatically—several wet nurses had been urgently retained—and how she loved to suck, even now, on everything from berries to the cream inside a pastry.

Having nothing else at hand, Molly settled for her pinky.

“Such a habit for a girl of nearly seven,” Frances said. “You will never be a lady, sucking your finger and swallowing spiders.”

“I’ll sail to Floria and do whatever I like,” Molly said.

“The savages will skin you.”

“I’m not afraid of savages.”

“The winterbears will eat you.”

“I can outrun bears!”

Molly kicked her shoes away and darted off barefoot, running through the sumptuous abundance of the garden with the soft fronds palming at her skin, the mossy stones, and all the warm, wet ferns—oh!—moistening her ankles. What a joy it was to run. What a bother wearing clothes! Frances chased her, getting close, but Molly darted through a very tight gap between bushes, and she quickly left her governess behind and hurried on.

She ran toward the entrance at the kitchen, through the door and over the cold stone floor, through the pantry and the gilt room with all its sullen portraits—noblemen and ladies who had
never
sucked a pinky—which she hurried past, blowing raspberries, till she crossed the central hall and reached the library door.

She tugged it wide and panted at her brother, who was seated at a table in the middle of the room, moon-white and watching her, expressionless and calm. Molly’s heartbeat punched. Lord Bell was there, too—it should have been a tutor, Father never taught on Wednesdays!—and the moment he turned to see her at the door, Nicholas smiled. Molly smiled back and flushed to her earlobes.

Lord Bell didn’t chastise—household rules went without saying—but he stared to see if Molly would depart without reminder. Frances hurried up behind her, huffing from the chase. Molly looked at Nicholas—he seemed so lonely and dispirited without her, stuck inside with Father on a fine bright day—and she decided that her only means of staying was to climb. She scaled the nearest bookcase and hoped to reach the top. It was easy as a ladder, multicolored as a tree.

“Ignore her,” said her father, turning back to Nicholas and forcing him to focus his attention on his studies.

Frances stood below and tried to whisper Molly down. The quiet of the room, the manners and composure tickled Molly to a laugh that made her brother chew his lip. She watched him as she climbed, hoping to impress him, and she didn’t see the ceiling till she bumped it with her head. The knock surprised her and she reached up, rubbing where it hurt, and then her foot slipped free and she was dangling one-handed, fifteen feet above the hardwood floor.

Frances yelped. Lord Bell jerked around and banged his fist upon the table. One of the table leaves jumped and hit Nicholas’s jaw, and Molly weakened at the sound, losing her purchase on the shelves. Nicholas stood and clasped his mouth, bloody at the chin, and Molly fell from the bookcase, her petticoats and hair fluffing up around her.

Lord Bell tried to catch her but she crashed through his arms and hit the floor hard, knocking out her wind and battering her hip. Frances, in her fright, had fallen backward in the doorway, ghastly white with vivid red hives around her neck. Molly scrambled to her side. Frances held her close until she finally got her breath, and she was just about to cry when she remembered Nicholas and pushed away, running across the room to see his wounded mouth.

Lord Bell caught her elbow.

“I’m sorry, m’lord,” Frances said, wobbling to her feet. “It was all my fault. We were running in the garden.”

“You were not to go running in the garden,” Bell said. “You were to keep her calmly occupied while Nicholas was studying.”

“Yes, m’lord, I’m sorry, sir. As I said, it wasn’t her. I allowed it and I chased her. She was frightened of the chase. She didn’t mean to climb—”

“I did!” Molly shouted. “Let me go!”

“Return to the garden,” Bell said to Frances. “I will summon you when Nicholas’s lessons are complete.”

“M’lord—”

“Now,” he said, squeezing Molly tight enough to bruise. “Close the door behind you.”

Frances nodded with a curtsy that was virtually a swoon. Tears clung like little bubbles to the governess’s eyes, and then she left and shut the door with the gentlest of clicks.

“Nicholas is bleeding!” Molly said.

Her father cocked an eyebrow and looked toward her brother. He was startled by the sight, glancing back and forth as if the siblings were deceiving him, but Nicholas’s mouth was genuinely bloody.

“How—”

“It was you!” Molly said. “You struck the table and it jumped!”

Nicholas confirmed it with a quick, sharp nod.

“I would not have struck the table if you hadn’t climbed the shelves,” Bell said.

“I didn’t mean to hurt him!” Molly yelled and tried to free herself.

Bell gripped harder. “Show me your mouth,” he said to her brother.

Nicholas approached him.

“Take away your hand—a split lip, nothing more. Let me see your teeth. Ah,” Bell said.

Molly wilted at the sight. Her brother had lost a fragment of his upper left incisor. Molly pinched herself as fiercely as she could and started crying.

Bell turned to her and said, “See what your unruliness has wrought.”

“Nicholas, I’m sorry!”

“No,” Bell said, looking at her brother, who for one bright second had regarded her with sympathy. “She mustn’t be forgiven. She has injured you and injury requires proper justice. Think upon your lessons.
Lex talionis.
You have seen it in the Book of Light, as well as in the histories of clans and ancient kings. Even our own common law demands equality of recompense for certain types of crime.”

Molly sobbed and shook her head, knees buckling underneath her.

Nicholas faced their father with a grave, princely dignity. “A thief would lose his hand.”

“Yes,” Bell said.

“A man who killed his neighbor’s ox would have to pay an ox.”

“He would.”

“And if a rider dropped his reins, distracted by a bellman, and trampled a child in the street,” Nicholas said, “should the bellman himself be trampled, or the bellman’s own child?”

Bell hesitated briefly with a flicker of his eyes. “One should never drop the reins. The rider is to blame.”

“Then you should lose a tooth,” Nicholas told his father. “It was you who lost control in a moment of distraction.”

Bell straightened up and answered with a grin: half a dozen of his pale beige teeth, neatly ordered. “I have told you more than once you have a future at the bar.” He offered Nicholas a handkerchief, immaculately white and monogrammed
B.
“Still, she must be punished,” he continued, looking down at her. “Tell me, Molly: did Frances start the chase or was it you?”

“It was me.”

“Then Frances lied.”

“No.”

“She either chased you or she lied. Which is it now? The truth.”

“That isn’t fair!” Molly said, twisting free with her heart beating quicker than a bird’s.

“Very well,” Bell said. “I will hold you and Frances equally responsible. Unless you choose to bear the total punishment yourself.”

Molly nodded in defiance.

“Twice the count or twice the force?”

“Twice the force,” Molly said, bravely as she could.

“Nicholas, your shoe.”

Her brother paused just long enough to register objection, but then he raised a leg without unbalancing his stance and popped the left shoe off his heel. It was stiff, silver buckled, with a black leather heel. Lord Bell lifted Molly by the armpits—he held her so infrequently, it came as a surprise how powerful he was—and took her to a chair, where he sat and bent her over, belly down, upon his thigh. She focused on the highly polished floor and held her breath, unable to see her brother with her hair fallen wild in her eyes.

Her father raised her skirts, exposing her to view, and said, “You are no stranger to discipline, Nicholas. You have learned to bear the blows. It is time you learn to deal them. Twenty for her and twenty for Frances. Land them flush and keep them firm, straight across the buttocks.”

No!
Molly thought.
Oh, he wouldn’t ever hurt me!

Her horror was assuaged when Nicholas refused.

“You must,” Bell said, “or I will give her eighty.”

Make it eighty or a thousand, only never one from Nicholas! Molly shut her eyes, dizzy from the blood swirling through her head. The first smack upon her bottom blew the air from her lungs.

“Very good,” her father said.

Another smack, even cleaner, made her squirm and kick her feet.

“Hold her legs if she obstructs you.”

Molly dropped her legs. She wouldn’t cry or make a sound. She’d imagine it was Father, and she wouldn’t raise her heels and force her brother to restrain her. The next several blows struck tears from her eyes. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. The sting had risen to a fire. Another and another, steady as a drum, until the pauses seemed to hurt as badly as the whacks. The twentieth was red, the thirtieth was white, and then the colors bled together and she shut her eyes and wept. She drooled upon the floor, contorting her expression till her face ached, too. When it finished, she was stupefied.