The Sweet Far Thing (45 page)

Big Ben strikes the hour. “Oh,” Ann says, wilting. “We’d best go back. I don’t want this day to end.”

“Let’s not end it just yet, then,” Felicity says.

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We repair to a tea shop to celebrate. Over glasses of tickly ginger ale, we toast Ann, and Fee and I tell her again and again how absolutely brilliant she was. At a table nearby, four suffragists sit discussing a demonstration before the House of Commons. With their banners worn proudly and their
Votes for
Women
posters at their feet, they are a sight to behold. They speak to one another with passion and zeal.

Some of the ladies in the shop look on in disapproval. Still others approach shyly, taking a leaflet or asking questions. One pulls up a chair to join them. They make room, welcoming her, and I see that Ann is not the only woman who means to change today.

When we return to Spence, I search for Kartik’s bandana in the ivy under my window, but it isn’t there, and I hope that he’ll return with news soon.

“Have you seen Ann?” Felicity asks when I step into the great hall. “She disappeared after dinner. I thought we were to play cards.”

“I haven’t,” I answer. “But I’ll go and have a look, shall I?”

Felicity nods. “I’ll be in my tent.”

Ann isn’t to be found in any of her usual haunts—our room, the library, the kitchen. I know of only one other place, and that is where I find her—sitting alone on the third-floor terrace that overlooks the lawn and the woods beyond.

“Care for some company?” I ask.

She gestures to the empty spot on the railing. From here I have a perfect view of the half-completed turret and the skeletal East Wing. I wonder if my mother and her friend Sarah ever experienced the sort of happiness we did today. I wonder what they might have changed if they’d had the chance.

A gentle breeze blows. Far off I can see the lights of the Gypsy camp. Kartik. No, I shan’t think about him just now.

“I thought you’d be packing for your trip to the world’s stages,” I say.

“We shan’t leave until next week.”

“It will be here before you know it. What’s that?” I point to the sealed envelope in her lap.

“Oh,” Ann says, fiddling with it. “I can’t seem to post it. It’s a letter to my cousins, informing them of my decision. Was I really all right today?”

“You were magnificent,” I tell her. “Your voice enchanted them.”

Ann stares out at the lawn. “They only wanted to hear me because they liked what they saw first. And don’t go lying to me and saying that we’re judged on our character, because that’s rubbish.” She laughs but there’s no mirth in it. “Beauty is power, and my life would be far easier if I were as beautiful as Nan Washbrad.”

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Ann
is
lovely, but not in the way that matters to her. She’s not a beauty. It is the careful knowing of her over time that makes her handsome. But that’s not what she wants to hear. And even if I did say she was beautiful, even if I meant it, would she believe it?

“Yes. It’s easier if you’re beautiful,” I say. “The rest of us have to try harder.”

She smooths out the letter in her lap, and I fear that I’ve wounded her with my honesty.

I squeeze her hand. “You’ve done it, Ann. You’ve changed your life. I’ll say it to anyone who will listen: Ann Bradshaw is the bravest girl I know.”

“Gemma, how will I explain to them? Either I keep up this illusion forever or I find a way to make them believe in Ann Bradshaw.”

“We’ll sort it out. We need only enough magic to convince them they hired Ann in the first place. You’ll do the rest with your talent. That’s your magic.” But I know how she feels. It’s getting harder to imagine giving this up. I want to hold tightly to it and never let go.

“It was a good day, wasn’t it?” A small smile dispels the worry on Ann’s face.

“And better days to come.”

Ann turns the letter over in her hands. “Guess I’d best get it over with.”

I present my arm like a courtier. “It isn’t every day I’m privileged to escort a star of the stage.”

“Thank you, Lady Doyle,” she says as if entering stage right for her bow. She walks straight up to Brigid and offers the letter with a hasty “Brigid, will you post this for me tomorrow?”

“Course I will,” Brigid says, tucking it into her apron pocket.

“There, now that’s done,” I say.

“Yes. Done.”

“Come on, then. Fee wants to play cards, and I’m determined she’ll not whip us at it as she always does.”

Buoyed by Ann’s success, the three of us sit up playing hand after hand, wagering wishes like shillings—“I’ll see your dream of becoming princess of the Ottoman Empire and I’ll raise you one journey into Bombay riding on an elephant’s back!” Ann wins most rounds, and not even Fee minds. She swears it’s further proof that Ann has changed her luck at last, and that nothing is beyond us now.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

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SEVERAL DAYS PASS,AND STILL THERE IS NO SIGN OF Kartik’s red scarf. I worry that he’s met with misadventure. I worry that when he returns, I will not be able to help him with Amar. I worry that he will not return at all but will travel on to Bristol and the
Orlando.

Such worry has put me in an ill humor. Already we have suffered the ignominy of walking backward as we shall do when presented to Her Majesty at Saint James’s Palace. I stumbled twice, and I cannot imagine how I shall manage with the long train of my gown thrown over my left arm, my head bowed toward my sovereign. It makes my stomach hurt to think of it.

Mrs. Nightwing has settled us at the dining room table. At each of our places is a daunting array of silver. Soupspoons. Oyster forks. Fish knives. Fish forks. Butter knives. Dessert spoons. I half expect to see a whaling harpoon and perhaps, in case we find it all too overwhelming and wish to die with honor, the seppuku sword of Japanese legend.

Mrs. Nightwing drones on. I find it difficult to pay attention, and only catch every few sentences. “The fish course…the bones, pushed to the side of the plate…buttermilk, by the by, preserves the softness of a lady’s hands…”

The vision steals over me quickly. One moment, I am listening to Mrs. Nightwing’s voice, and the next, time stands still. Mrs. Nightwing is frozen at Elizabeth’s side. Felicity’s eyes are trained on the ceiling in an expression of utter boredom. Cecily and Martha, too, are suspended in time.

Wilhelmina Wyatt stands in the open doorway wearing a grim expression.

“Miss Wyatt?” I call. Leaving my frozen companions, I chase after her.

She stands at the top of the first flight of stairs, but when I reach the landing, she steps through the portrait of Eugenia Spence and vanishes like a ghost.

“Miss Wyatt?” I whisper. I am suddenly alone. The very bones of the school seem to murmur to me. I cover my ears but it does not stop the ghastly whispers, the muffled cackles, the hissing. The peacock paper on the walls comes alive, the eyes blinking.

Wilhelmina’s spidery handwriting emerges on the portrait of Eugenia Spence:
The Tree of All Souls. The
Tree of All Souls. The Tree of All Souls.
It fills the whole of the painting. The whispers grow louder. I put my hand to the painting, and it’s as if I fall straight through it and into another time and place.

I’m in the great hall, but it’s changed. I see what must surely be Miss Moore as a girl, the brooding concentration in her face. A girl with startling green eyes smiles at her, and I gasp as I recognize my own mother.

“Mama?” I call, but she does not hear me. It is as if I’m not really here.

An older woman with white hair and blue eyes sits with them, and I know her, too. Eugenia Spence. The face that seems so intimidating in her portrait is kind here. Bright and ruddy with life.

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A girl brings her an apple, and Mrs. Spence smiles. “Why, thank you, Hazel. I shall relish it, I’m sure. Or should I cut it up with a share for all?”

“No, no,” the girls protest. “It is for you. For your birthday!”

“Very well, then. Thank you. I do so love apples.”

A small girl in the back raises her hand shyly.

“Yes, Mina?” Mrs. Spence calls.

Now I see traces of the woman in the girl’s face. Little Wilhelmina Wyatt trudges toward her teacher and presents her with a gift of her own, a drawing.

“What is this?” Mrs. Spence’s smile fades as she examines the drawing. It is a perfect representation of the enormous tree I’ve seen in my dreams. “How did you come to draw this, Mina?”

Wilhelmina hangs her head in shame and misery.

“Come now. You must tell me. Lying is a sin and speaks badly to a girl’s character.”

I hear the scrape of the chalk as Wilhelmina writes upon the slate, the words taking shape slowly:
The
Tree of All Souls.

Hurriedly, Mrs. Spence takes the chalk from the girl’s fingers. “That’s quite enough, Mina.”

“What is the Tree of All Souls?” a girl asks.

“A myth,” Eugenia Spence answers, cleaning the slate with a rag.

“It’s in the Winterlands, isn’t it?” Sarah asks. Her eyes glimmer with mischief. “Is it very powerful?

Won’t you tell us, please?”

“All you need to know at present lies within the pages of your Latin book, Sarah Rees-Toome,” Mrs.

Spence scolds in a teasing way.

She throws the drawing into the fire, and tears fall from little Mina’s eyes. The other girls snicker at her crying. Mrs. Spence lifts the girl’s chin with her finger. “You may draw me another picture, hmmm?

Perhaps a nice meadow or a drawing of Spence. Now, dry your tears. And you must promise to be a good girl and not listen to voices you shouldn’t, for anyone can be corrupted, Mina.”

The scene shifts, and I see Wilhelmina slipping a jeweled dagger from a drawer into her pocket. Her body changes with the years until the womanly Wilhelmina stands before me again, the dagger in hand.

Her face is twisted in fury. She raises the dagger.

“No!” I scream. I put up my hand to block the blow.

I’m still shouting when I come back to myself in the dining room. Everyone’s gawking at me, horrified.

Pain. In my hand. Rivulets of blood trickle down my palm and onto the damask tablecloth. The knife at my plate. I’ve gripped it so tightly I’ve cut my hand.

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“Miss Doyle!” Mrs. Nightwing gasps. She rushes me to the kitchen, where Brigid keeps the gauze and salve.

“Let’s ’ave a look,” Brigid says. She rinses my hand, and it stings. “Not too deep, thank goodness.

More a scratch ’n’ a scare than anythin’ else. I’ll fix it right up.”