The Lady of Bolton Hill (2 page)

Clara looked hesitant. “I’ve got it, but my father is hosting a political conference all week. They will be using the Music Conservatory for meeting rooms, so we won’t be able to play.”

Being shut away from music for another week was unacceptable. This had been the worst few days of his life and he
needed
to escape. Daniel glanced over his shoulder. His mother was waiting for him with that desperate look of anxiety. In another moment she was going to break down again.

“Meet me at the Music Conservatory tonight,” he whispered to Clara. “I’ll figure out a way to get us in and we can play there.”

Clara looked as though he’d asked her to set a house on fire. “We can’t break into the Conservatory. It’s against the law!” But the way she bit her lip and clasped her hands let him know that she
wanted
to do it, even if she couldn’t muster the courage.

“Don’t be such a rule follower,” he said. “Meet me at midnight outside the Conservatory. And don’t forget the sheet music.”

Without a backward glance, he dashed back to his mother, knowing Clara would not let him down. His mother’s thin frame stood before him, and along with her came years of responsibilities. Even if he was lucky enough to someday have another shot at a college scholarship, there was no way he could leave his family without income. He’d have to figure out how to pay the crushing weight of bills that would accumulate quickly now that his father was dead, and do his best to support what was left of his family. For a while he had dreamed of a chance for college and a better future, but that was over. Now his life was going to be lived inside the stark brick walls of a steel mill.

But for a few hours tonight, he would escape into a magical world of music, and that was enough to keep him going for now.

Clara clutched the sheet music to her chest, her eyes fastened on the ground before her feet as she scurried toward the Music Conservatory at the top of the hill. The glow from the moon made it easy to see as she cut through the backyards of her neighborhood. She hated to admit it, but she was still a tiny bit afraid of the dark. Sneaking around like this was simply awful, but it would be worse to abandon her best friend when he needed her.

Clara reached the end of the street and could see the Conservatory plainly in the moonlight. The Music Conservatory, a rambling gothic monstrosity of a building with a few practice rooms and an oversized auditorium for performances, belonged to the city. She and Daniel used the practice rooms every chance they got, and her fondest memories were here while they played Beethoven and Chopin and sometimes even their own fledgling compositions. Normally the Conservatory was a haven for her, but tonight it loomed like a ghostly fortress in the moonlight. She had no idea how they would get into the locked Conservatory but knew Daniel would find a way. He could do anything.

She dashed across the street, her heart pounding and her palms sweaty. She would feel better once Daniel got here and told her to quit being such a sissy.

She heard a low chuckle behind her. “The way you’re hunched over that sheet music, you’d think an army of Pinkerton’s agents were hot on your trail.” She whirled around to see Daniel step from behind the sycamore trees, radiating that supreme sense of confidence he seemed to effortlessly possess. A smile broke across her face. Only seconds ago she had been scared to pieces, but Daniel could always ease her pathetic worries.

“I already popped the lock on the back door,” Daniel said. “Let’s go.”

He must have been here for a while, because Daniel had already set up the cello beside the piano. “Do you want to play Chopin or try composing something?” Clara asked. For the past few months they had been writing their own music, Daniel on the cello and Clara on the piano.

“Let’s play Chopin. I don’t want to have to think too much tonight.”

She was afraid he was going to say that. “Well, there’s a problem with the cello part,” she said. “It’s written in a different key than the piano.”

Daniel took the cello score from her and made quick work scanning the lines. “Not to worry. I can transpose it to the higher key as we play.”

She’d been taking music classes for years but could never transpose on the spot like that. Pale moonlight filtered through the French doors, providing enough illumination for Clara to see the music, but Daniel was holding it close to his face, his head cocked at an odd angle as he scanned the lines from his one good eye.

“Is there enough light for you to see?” she asked. “We can go in the back room if we need to light a lantern.”

“I can see well enough. I can certainly see that hideous bonnet on your head. It looks like a potato sack.”

Clara pulled off the offending bonnet. “I didn’t want my hair to show in the moonlight. I know it’s ugly. I’ve been told it looks like I pulled it out of the garbage.”

“Oh? Who said such a thing? Give me the name and I’ll thrash him for you.”

“Clyde said it. And no thrashing . . . you weren’t any nicer about my poor bonnet.”

“I’m allowed to say rude things to you. No one else can.”

“That’s true enough.” Daniel did tease her mercilessly, but she never minded because she knew he didn’t mean a word of it. Daniel would slay dragons for her if she asked him. Clyde said rude things to her all the time, but she didn’t want to discuss her frustrating, brilliant older brother. She knew Daniel envied her brother the opportunity to attend the best schools in the country. Now, after Daniel had to walk away from the test that would have awarded him a scholarship to Yale, he would probably never get the chance.

“How is your mother doing? And your sisters . . . do they even understand what has happened?”

Daniel sagged a little bit. “Please, Clara, not tonight. Anything but that.” He straightened. “Tell me about Edmond Dantès. Last I heard he was about to convince Villefort’s wife to poison him.”

For the past month, Clara had been telling Daniel the story of
The Count of Monte Cristo
as she read each chapter. Daniel didn’t have time for books, but he loved listening to her summarize whatever she was reading. They liked adventure stories best, and Clara had already read most of the works by Victor Hugo and Daniel Defoe.

“I would give anything if I could write like Victor Hugo,” Clara said. “Did I tell you that my aunt Helen met him when she was in Paris?” Aunt Helen’s poetry had brought her notice in both Europe and America, and Clara thought her father’s sister was an extraordinary person.

“So when is she going to come home? Ever since I’ve known you, she has been traipsing around Europe like a vagabond.”

Clara shrugged. She dreaded telling Daniel that she was on the verge of being sent to live with Aunt Helen in London. Daniel had once told her that their friendship was the only ray of light in his world of coal-fired boilers and dingy tenements, but her father was determined that Clara should go to London. He wanted the Endicott family to be a force of change in the world, and had been grooming both Clara and her brother for that very purpose from the time they were old enough to walk.

“My father says Aunt Helen should keep working her way among the power circles of Europe,” she finally said. “Everywhere she goes she helps advance his cause of free education for the poor. And next month Clyde is heading off to South America to give smallpox vaccinations to the natives. Of course, I’m the howling disappointment of the family. My entire family is brilliant, and I’m like a firecracker that fizzles when lit. I can’t even transpose music as I play.”

“Clara, you are sixteen years old. You aren’t supposed to be successful yet . . . it would go to your head.”

“
You’re
successful at everything you do.”

Daniel winked at her. “That’s how I know.”

She elbowed him in the ribs, but could not help noticing that Daniel was very fine looking when he grinned at her like that. With his tousled dark hair and that eye patch, he was as dashing as any pirate from an adventure story. The girls at her school, Miss Carlton’s Academy, would fall over themselves for a boy like Daniel, but Clara forbade herself to develop a crush on him because it would ruin everything. Daniel had a lot of girlfriends, and she wasn’t about to stand in line with the rest of them. It was much better to be his best friend.

She took a seat at the piano bench and positioned the music so the moonlight illuminated the page without her shadow interfering. Daniel sat on the corner of the bench and propped his music on a stand. She pecked out a few notes to get her fingers accustomed to the keyboard, and Daniel leaned his head toward her. “Ready?” She nodded. “On three, then.”

Daniel counted out loud . . . then Chopin’s nocturne filled the air as her fingers lifted the music from the piano. A moment later the warm tones of the cello joined the melody, dancing and weaving in between her notes. It was a lyrical piece, beautifully capturing the forlorn mood of Chopin’s work.

It was enchanting, to be alone in this darkened room with moonlight streaming through the windows. They felt like the only two people in the world as the lift and fall of the haunting melody filled the empty chamber. It was always like this when they played music together.

Which was why she was so startled when Daniel hit a clumsy note. The music from the cello went off-key, then skidded to a stop altogether. Daniel dropped his bow and buried his face in the crook of his elbow.

He was sobbing.

Clara flew off the bench to kneel before him, but Daniel turned farther away from her. He held up a hand to shield his face. “Clara, don’t. Don’t look at me.”

He curled over the seat and now the sobs were coming from deep within his chest, raw sounds he could not hold back. Even his shoulders were shaking from the strength of his weeping. Clara pressed herself against his back and wrapped her arms around him. “Please don’t cry,” she said uselessly. Daniel was the strongest, smartest person in the universe, and seeing him like this made Clara cry, too. Her tears spilled over and wet the back of his shirt as she clung to him, wishing she could ease the burden of his grief.

“Everything is falling apart and I don’t know what to do,” he said between his sobs. “My mother is a wreck and the girls keep crying, too. I don’t know what to do.” A shudder racked his tall frame as another round of weeping overtook him. Raw, painful sounds came wrenched from deep in his chest. “I keep seeing my father crumpled on the ground,” he choked out. “I can’t get the sight out of my head. Blisters were already coming up through the burns on his face.”

She winced at the images his words conjured. “Daniel, your father is in heaven now. He’ll never know pain or suffering again.”

As quickly as it began, Daniel swallowed back the tears, although his breathing was still ragged as he wiped his face with his sleeve. He kept his face averted from her, and his voice was so soft she could barely hear it. “I’m not sure I believe in heaven.”

Clara swallowed, uncertain how to respond. Her belief in God and an afterlife was absolute and she never questioned such things. She wished her father were here; he always knew the right thing to say.

“Well, I
do
believe in heaven,” she said softly. “And your father did, too, and we both know that he was smarter than a whole stack of encyclopedias, so he couldn’t be wrong.” Daniel gave a gulp of laughter and squeezed her hand. “You can trust us on this, Daniel. Your father is in heaven and his suffering is over.”

Daniel heaved a ragged sigh, then nodded his head. “Okay, thanks for that.” He said it in that casual, offhanded manner of his, and Clara figured he was probably just humoring her. He brushed back the straight black hair that had fallen down across his forehead. “Try again?” he asked as he picked up the bow of the cello.

When she hesitated, he turned to look at her, his one good eye still reddened with tears. “Please, Clara, I really need this tonight.” His voice wobbled as he said the words.

There wasn’t anything on earth she wouldn’t do for Daniel, but Clara felt like a traitor. She would be leaving him soon, and now was the worst possible time for him to be alone.

She turned back to the piano and straightened her sheet music. “On the count of three, then.” Moments after she began playing the piano, Daniel’s cello joined her, this time solid and confident. The gentle, surging melody filled the chamber, and the melancholy nocturne mirrored the longing in Clara’s heart. She knew that in a perfect world Daniel would be free to pursue music and go to college, while she would pen great works of literature that would let her express the passion in her soul.

Clara was not precisely sure what the future held for them, but of one thing she was certain: Daniel Tremain was the best friend she had ever had, and no distance or class or circumstance would ever tear them apart.

London, England, 1879
Twelve years later

C
lara was startled by the metallic clank as the lock on her cell door turned. The other two women in the jail cell also stirred, as a visitor at this time of day was odd. Clara sprang to her feet, while the others remained sprawled on their cots. After all, Nellie and Rosina had already been sentenced and were serving their terms, while Clara’s case was still wending its way through the British legal system. For weeks she had been expecting her verdict to be handed down at any moment, making it impossible to do anything other than wait and hope and pray.

Not that she expected good news. After all, she could not prove she was innocent of the libel she had been charged with, since the evidence she had compiled while spying on the mine owners and operations in the coal mines had been destroyed. The door of the prison cell opened to reveal the hulking shape of Mr. Loomis, the prison warden. He pointed at Clara.

“You are to come with me,” he growled. “Get your belongings. You ain’t coming back.”

Clara felt the blood drain from her face. As horrible as this cell was, the thought of being transferred was even more frightening. Would they send her out of London? At least here she had supporters who knew and cared about her cause. If she was deported to one of the island prisons, she would be utterly isolated from the rest of the world. Her gaze darted around the small cell, the faces of Nellie and Rosina the only source of comfort in the downward spiral of her life. She reached out to clasp Nellie’s hand, and Rosina came to put an arm around her shoulders. Clara’s pulse raced so hard she could hear the beating of her heart.

“Where am I going, then?” she asked Mr. Loomis.

“The judge just handed down your verdict. You’re guilty. Time to pay the piper.”

The last glimmering bit of hope Clara had been nurturing for the past month was extinguished. There would be no miraculous change of heart from the prosecutor, or further proof to be found that would mitigate her case. How strange that she felt no urge to cry or temptation to run. All she felt was a wall of grief that settled over her like a weight driving her to her knees. This must be what it felt like to lose all hope.

Nellie squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry, Clara,” she said. “Maybe they’ll go easy on you since you are an American.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Mr. Loomis said. “Being a foreigner makes what you did even worse.” And Clara knew Mr. Loomis was right. The articles she had published in
The
Times
would have ignited a wave of indignation no matter who had written them, but she had been especially reviled because she was an outsider.

Nellie leaned in. “Don’t believe him, Clara. You’ll be out in no time; don’t you fear.”

She didn’t believe Nellie, but she did her best to muster a smile. “I’ll be fine. I’ll be okay,” she said, although she could not bring herself to look either woman in the eye when she said it. Clara straightened her shoulders and raised her chin. “Well, let’s get on with it. I suppose it would be poor form to be late for my own sentencing.”

“Don’t forget your pillow,” Rosina said, handing her the rolled-up jacket Clara had been wearing on the horrible evening she had been arrested. Rosina was a girl who ought to be in school, not turning tricks as a prostitute, and yet she had a sweet demeanor that Clara could not help but like.

“Thanks, Rosina,” Clara said as she pulled on the jacket with shaking hands. For a month this poor jacket had been balled up to serve as a pillow, a footrest, even a makeshift weapon to shoo away the mice, but still the jacket held its smartly tailored shape.

“Bye, luv,” Rosina said as she gave Clara a little hug. “It was fun having you for a cell mate. Even if you were real afraid of those mice. Never seen a girl so scared of tiny little rodents.”

Clara returned the hug, trying to fight back the sense of desperation that was threatening her thinly held composure. How strange that leaving this windowless cell was suddenly proving so difficult. “Promise me you’ll go back to school when you get out of here,” she whispered in Rosina’s ear. “You are a fine, bright girl and deserve much better than what you’ve asked from the world.” She pushed Rosina back so she could look the girl directly in the eyes. “There is
nothing
you can’t do when you leave here. There is no taint that can’t be overcome. You are a child of God, and that means that there is great, shining beauty within you.”

Rosina flushed and dipped her head. “When a fine lady like you says that, I can almost believe it.”

Clara smiled, and this time her smile was real. “I’ve believed in you all along, Rosina.”

Clara turned to Nellie, a pickpocket who had almost completed her two-year term. “Thank you for showing me the ropes when I first got here, Nellie. I don’t know how I would have survived without you.”

Nellie gave her a gap-toothed grin. “You’d have learned everything sooner or later, but I figured I owed it to you. My own two boys worked down in them same coal mines you wrote about, so I don’t hold no grudge against you for what you did.”

Clara reached out for another desperate hug. A pickpocket and a prostitute. In her old world of concert halls and titled aristocracy, she would never have come into contact with such women; now here she was clinging to Nellie for dear life. Perhaps there was at least one good thing that had come from this horrible ordeal. Clara had learned to see the humanity beneath the soul-destroying poverty that drove otherwise decent women into vice.

“Ain’t got all day, lady.” Mr. Loomis’s words caused another rush of anxiety, but prolonging this mess would not make it any easier.

“I’ll try to write to the both of you whenever I get to where I’m going.”

“Sure, Clara,” Nellie said. But they both knew they were empty words. Nellie would be released into the underworld of London soon, and Rosina did not even know how to read. Still, the words seemed to make this moment a little less stark. Less final.

Clara walked out of the cell without looking back. She couldn’t bear to see the pity in the eyes of her two cell mates. At least they were to serve their terms here in London, but heaven only knew where Clara was destined to be sent.

“Might I have a moment to pull myself together?” Clara asked as she paused in the grim hallway outside her cell. Her jacket was hopelessly wrinkled, but at least it covered the grubbiness of her shirt. Her work had been rejected, her carefully prepared research confiscated and destroyed, and now she was facing a new life as a convicted felon. Still, she was an Endicott, and Endicotts did not go about shabbily dressed, no matter how dire the circumstances.

She pulled the sides of her jacket in a vain attempt to remove the wrinkles, smoothed a few strands of blond hair back into her bun, and tried to smile. “Well, then. ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done.’ ”

Mr. Loomis looked at her blankly.

“It is from
A Tale of Two Cities
,” Clara said. “The prison scene, just as Sydney Carton is led away to his execution.”

“They ain’t going to execute you, lady. Ten years of hard labor is what the oddsmakers in London are betting.”

Clara swallowed hard. Ten years. That meant she would be thirty-eight when she got out of prison, and that wouldn’t be so bad, would it? She remembered the swaggering self-confidence of the boy she had loved when she was only sixteen years old. She could almost hear Daniel’s voice telling her to buck up and stop being such a sissy.

She tried to smile. “Did you place a bet?”

He shrugged. “I’m not a betting man. Could be ten years, could be twenty. I’ve seen the judges do too many crazy things to waste my hard-earned coin on guessing what they will do.”

Clara nodded, but was at a loss for anything to say. Surely they would not sentence her to twenty years in prison, would they? Not when she had risked her life to reveal the tortured conditions children endured when they were shoved beneath the surface of the earth to mine coal. Anyone who saw what such labor did to the spinal column of a young child could not possibly sentence her to such a fate.

And due to the brilliance of her attorney, Robert Townsend, such evidence had been presented to the court on her behalf. Clara thanked God she had the most skilled attorney in all of London defending her. He normally commanded an astronomical fee for his services, but his bills were being paid by an anonymous supporter who had heard of her case and offered to lend assistance. Such was not unusual. There were thousands of forward-thinking people who wished to advance the cause of social justice. Clara was grateful for it. Her modest salary as a journalist could never have footed Mr. Townsend’s bill, and she hadn’t wanted to ask her father.

Clara blinked when they stepped outside into the light of the morning. A month of imprisonment with no natural light had dimmed her senses, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust. When she was finally able to open her eyes and look about her, she almost wept at the beauty of the simple prison courtyard. Ivy grew in a splendor of vibrant green shades on the stone walls of the prison, and the scent of newly cut grass in the breeze was exhilarating. And the sky . . .
the sky
. How had she lived for twenty-eight years and never noticed the stunning shade of blue that was directly over her head? If she had understood how wonderful a gift it was, she would have looked up and given thanks to God every day for its blessing. She paused as she soaked in the sight. She tried to memorize the precise image of the wisps of clouds against the sky, to store it away so she could recall it in the coming years of darkness and isolation.

A carriage rolled to a halt before the prison, and her attorney, Mr. Townsend, sprang out of the passenger door and vaulted across the short space between them. He grabbed her arm. “Come along,” he said as he hustled her into the waiting carriage. “We need to get you out of here immediately.”

Clara looked across the yard to the courthouse, where all the official business was conducted. “I thought I was going to hear my sentence,” she stammered.

But Mr. Townsend did not stop in propelling her toward the carriage. “No need. Parliament has granted my petition for amnesty on the condition I get you out of the country by sundown. Hurry.”

When she whirled around to Mr. Loomis for confirmation, she could see that he was smirking. He had
known
she was being set free. “See?” he gloated. “Good thing I wasn’t a betting man, or I’d be out five quid.”

And then Clara got the second shock of the day when another man descended from the carriage. The unmistakable sight of the buckskins, the long braid of hair, the nine-inch knife strapped to his leg. What on earth was her
brother
doing here!

“Clyde?” she gasped in disbelief.

Before she could get out another word, Clyde had swept her from her feet and whirled her in the air. “Hello, mouse. I came to see how a puny girl like you could cause such a ruckus. But let’s get you out of here before the folks in Parliament change their minds.”

Clyde released her only to shove her up and into the carriage. Clara landed on the carriage seat in an ungainly lurch, and both men quickly followed her inside.

The moment was so pure, so desperately hoped for, that Clara dared not even draw a breath lest the moment vanish. She refused to let elation get the better of her and she turned to Mr. Townsend as he landed in the seat opposite her. “Is this a dream?” She asked the question calmly, rationally. No histrionics would be permitted, even in a dream.

Clyde pulled the carriage door shut and rapped on the window to signal the driver to get moving. “You are not dreaming. We are on our way back to America.”

Clara looked at Mr. Townsend sitting opposite her. “So, it appears you really are worth your infamously high fees,” she said with a grateful smile. “You could probably buy a small estate for what all this must have cost.”

Mr. Townsend straightened his starched collar. “Nonsense. It ought to buy me a medium-sized castle.” He leaned over to lower the window casement and a wave of cool spring air flowed into the carriage. Clara became distinctly embarrassed about how putrid she must smell.

“It is a pity Parliament could not get a whiff of me,” Clara said. “They would have declared me an undesirable alien and tossed me out of the country weeks ago.”

A gentle smile curved her attorney’s mouth. “Miss Endicott, this country would be a far better place if all of our ‘undesirable aliens’ sported such trophies of their compassion.”

The back of Clara’s throat began to ache and her vision blurred at the kind words. He had proven to be a lion defending her. She had been branded a liar, a spy, and a rabble-rouser. Even as her attorney’s office had been vandalized and excoriating letters demanded he drop her case, Mr. Townsend had not wavered in his support of her.

Clara had not intended to create a scandal when she began her work—she had simply been trying to make one small corner of the world a safer place for children. She was not a famous preacher like her father or a missionary physician like her brother Clyde, but she could use her pen to help educate the world about the injustice she saw. A major piece of legislation reforming child labor had been passed in England years ago, but the abuse had not come to an end. For two years Clara had made a careful study of the ages of the workers being used in the coal mines, convinced that children as young as twelve were being used to cart wagons of coal through passages too narrow for a fully grown man to crawl in. When Clara began publishing her findings in
The
Times
, she set off a firestorm of controversy.