Читать книгу The Murderer's Maid - Erika Mailman - Страница 17
ОглавлениеNOVEMBER 16, 1889
At half four on Saturday, Bridget stood waiting on the front stoop wearing her nut-brown serge dress with many pleats, fashioned by her mother all those many years ago and kept good by Bridget’s careful laundering. She had emerged from the side door and made her way to the front steps, looking up at the sky between the twin fastenings of the oak trees, the “bride and groom” positioning to showcase the house.
As she waited for Mary Doolan, she watched her breath clouding in the crisp air and the carriage traffic on Second Street, the horses’ hooves smelting the odorous piles they left, hay discernable in the thick masses. There were shops interspersed with the modest homes here. Kitty-corner from the Borden house, several women rapped on the door of the home with a small sign indicating it was the residence of a Dr. Bowen. Whatever the downturn in fortunes, this neighborhood boasted two doctors, which Bridget felt to be advantageous. She curiously watched as the door was opened to the women, but just then a cart began to pass, blocking her view.
She turned her head against the stink, and a male voice boomed, aimed at her, “Fancy a ride, lass?”
It was the same as winked at her a week ago when she arrived, trying to tote her trunk. “Ach,” she said under her breath, willing him away.
“Been up and down this street on your behalf,” he said. The hack had halted, and the horses tried to mark her past their blinders, wrestling against the bit. “Never caught a nick of your shadow.”
Reluctantly, she looked at him perched above her, nearly touching distance due to the house’s closeness to the very street. He was smiling, sure, but not insolent. He touched his cap as soon as he had her eye.
“Are ye getting on fair?” he asked.
“Aye,” she said.
“And is there any place ye need a pleasant ride toward?” His dark eyes fastened on hers, and the smile left. He was serious, for whatever cause.
“No,” she answered.
“You are in the custom of standing at the door for no call?”
“I’m waiting for a friend,” she said.
“I could be one,” he said, and she burst out laughing.
Just as his eyes lifted behind her, she heard the door open. She turned and saw Miss Lizzie, her eyebrows high in censure. Bridget found herself blushing though she’d done naught.
“Bridget, whatever are you doing?” asked Miss Lizzie, her silver gaze fixing on the man in the hack.
“I’m off for the evening,” said Bridget.
“And you snuck out from the back? I’ve been in the sitting room this entire time. Does Father know you’re out?”
Bridget felt her heart skip a bit. The accusation leveled against her was a bold one. She needed to address it, and quickly. “I found it just as easy to come down the stairs I was on, and there was no craft about it,” she said. “It’s my night off of the fortnight, and your Father does know that’s my due.”
“I fail to trust he’d approve of roadside discussions with men as they pass,” said Miss Lizzie. “This is not a reputable practice.”
“I was the driver who brought her here,” said the man in the carriage. “I was only asking after her settling in.” He looked uneasily at Bridget and broadcast a sort of apology with his eyes.
“From the seat of your carriage, calling out like a commoner,” said Miss Lizzie. “This is the home of Andrew Borden. It is not a harlot’s port.”
“Miss Lizzie!” said Bridget, stepping back in horror and, in doing so, losing her balance on the uneven stone steps. She managed to catch herself before she fell to the ground, but her entire body felt the affront of the hard surface radiating up through her shoes, the jolt in her bones.
“I can see I’m causing more trouble than I’m helping, so I’ll pass along,” said the man. “I hope you are all right, miss.”
Bridget didn’t answer him, and only looked at her shoes. How could Miss Lizzie voice such an odious, preposterous idea in front of the man?
“Your place in this household requires a certain degree of respectability,” said Miss Lizzie. “Come back inside at once.”
Her jaw sore from the snapping of her teeth as she stumbled, Bridget walked back up the steps. Miss Lizzie opened the door, and she was just about to step inside when she heard Mary Doolan call out, “You’re after going the wrong way!”
Bridget looked at Miss Lizzie’s face, half-shadowed as she was inside the home now. She was a study of gloom and sunlight, her nose the silhouetted wall in the ombre garden of her face. Yet in that complex field, Bridget saw clearly the argent eyes and their message.
“I cannot go with you this time,” said Bridget.
“But you must!” protested Mary. Fearlessly, she mounted the steps to stand with Bridget. “I couldn’t help but overhear the exchange, Miss Lizzie. I can’t vouch for the decorum of the driver, but Bridget’s only after a bit of fun, clean and decent, at the Irish hall. ‘Twas not her fault he called out to her.”
“What mean you by ‘a bit of fun?’”
“’Tis only dancing and the playing of our traditional tunes. Singing, too. I’ll pledge her propriety and return her safely later tonight.”
Miss Lizzie hadn’t looked at Mary at all, only kept her eyes on Bridget. “You will need to mind yourself,” she said. “You can’t bring shame to this house.”
“I will mind myself,” Bridget said.
“I’ll mind her, too!” said Mary gaily. “Now let’s get along, or we’ll miss the beginning.”
Miss Lizzie’s reply was the closing of the door between them. Wordlessly, the two Irish women went down the steps and onto the street again. Mary set a rapid pace so they were soon away from the house and able to speak freely.
“She’s a case, ain’t she?” asked Mary.
“I’ve no idea her problem. Did ye hear what she said? Implying me a harlot!”
“Calm your boilin’ blood and don’t let her spoil your one night out. She’s just fashed no handsome lad ever calls out to her! You’re pretty, and you’re Irish, and she’s dissatisfied with her own sad lot in life.”
“I didn’t hardly answer him,” said Bridget.
Mary stopped and cast Bridget a look of exasperation. “You can’t put any credence in what she suggested of your character.”
“I put credence in it if it costs me my post!”
They walked on a bit until Mary, in a low voice, said, “I’m sorry, Bridget, and I know my boldness isn’t always welcome. I don’t want you to get into trouble for my sake. But sheets and bloody linens, all you did was stand there a half moment waiting for me!”
“I ought to have gone out the front door and told where I was going. I think that’s the root of her anger. She must’ve looked out the window and seen me talking with him.”
“But then you’d earn it for daring to use the family door rather than the servants’! And must you account for all your comings and goings? Lord knows we only get one night a fortnight, and it’s ours to do with as we wish.”
“That has been the case with my previous employers,” admitted Bridget. “But she has new rules for my conduct, and I’ll obey them.”
“She? Why she? Does she pay you? Or is it her father? It’s none of her business what you’re doing of a Friday night!”
“I know you are right, and yet I don’t know what I’d do if I lost this position without a good character.”
“There’s always a better spot somewhere else.”
“If I can get it,” said Bridget. “I don’t have your confidence.”
“Well, if worse comes to worse, you can live in the barn until they discover you,” Mary said. “And eat the pears off the trees, and I’ll bring you table scraps.”
“Good gracious! You sound as if you’ve thought of this before!”
“Your predecessor,” said Mary.
“Truly?”
“Indeed. Oh, and now here we are! Can you hear the music from down the street?”
A thin thread of sound came from a public house, but as soon as Mary grasped the door and opened it, the music flooded out loud, strident, unapologetic: completely Irish. It was the “Hayman’s Jig”, and inside the sets were already there with knees flying and skirts flouncing. Instantly, Bridget wanted to be on the floor dancing, too.
The space was small and cramped with so many bodies. There was a long bar with many golden taps, and tables pushed to the edges to create the dance floor. A smell of sweat and sodden wool from the men’s caps created a not-unpleasant whiff to the room, along with the overflowing glasses of hops and doctored tea.
“Hello, Miss Doolan!” greeted a man behind the bar, and Bridget was relieved he was addressing her friend formally.
“And good evening to you. This is my new friend, Miss Bridget Something or Other!”
“Sullivan,” Bridget supplied.
“I’m Mr. Seamus Dorgan, and I welcome ye. Where might you hail from?”
“Allihies, sir.”
“Indeed, and let’s all drink to Allihies!”
A roar went up, and all the men took a swallow of their ales. For a second, Bridget saw the scene through Miss Lizzie’s eyes: was this disreputable, men drinking so good-naturedly and loudly? Drinking to her village for her? Was it too rough?
Then Mary caught her arm and twirled her around, a makeshift jig that had Bridget’s feet flying, and soon others gathered around them, forming the straight lines until they were threading the needle, their feet following the time-worn steps.
Each song melded into the next, the fiddlers at the back of the room wiping sweat off their brows whenever they could manage between notes, the pipers and bodhran player taking sips off their pints while the music momentarily faltered. It was grand and glorious, and if Bridget closed her eyes, as she did sometimes in the dizzying twirls as she swapped grasps with new partners, she could almost imagine herself in the barn back home, with nothing outside but a stretch of cold yet fertile land offering greening hillocks to the travelers who lifted a lantern to the sea.
At one point, Bridget’s lungs could take it no more, and she stepped outside the set, giving a smile to Mary who kept dancing. She made her way to the table where meat pies and scones could be had for a few pennies. She bought a beef pie and a tea, and stood balancing both against the wall.
“I haven’t seen ye here afore,” said the woman standing next to her. She was tall and willowy, her red hair in a bun that was losing its formality from, presumably, her dancing.
“No, it’s my first time. I came at the invitation of Mary Doolan.”
“Ah, she’s grand.”
“It does my heart good to hear the tunes well presented, rather than my own deplorable whistling,” said Bridget.
The other girl laughed. “I’m Maggie,” she said.
“I’m Bridget. Pleased to make your acquaintance. Where do you hail from?”
“Kinsale on the coast.”
“So lovely!” said Bridget. “I went once on a holiday.”
“And you’re from?”
“Allihies.”
“I’ve heard of it. And when did ye make your way to these shores?”
“Five years ago,” said Bridget.
“Broken heart?”
“Broken purse more like.”
“Ah, those of broken purses tend to fill up the ships heading west across the Atlantic, do they not?”
“Aye. I’m sending a bit back home each month and hoping to keep myself out of rags as well.”
“’Tis a noble aspiration, to keep all the body clothed,” agreed Maggie with a grin.
“A lofty one indeed!”
The rhythmic beat of the bodhran, a tempered sort of drum, percussion with a lilt like all things Irish, fastened onto Bridget’s mind and became the cadence of their conversation. Everywhere she looked, she saw smiling faces. Unfettered of the general mistrust of immigrants they faced on the street, the group blossomed into joy. They all remembered, in place of the brick mills and soot-darkened windows, the green expanses of their childhoods, the hills besmocked with mossed rocks, the willows bending to the water.
“’Tis gay,” the other girl observed, and as if to underscore her point, a lad in a heather-colored wool cap pulled her off to join a set. Bridget laughed outright at her new friend’s surprised expression.
“Go on and show him the lightning of your footwork!” she called, but too late to be heard.
Bridget ate her pie and drank her tea, lukewarm now. It was good fare, which she hadn’t needed after the dinner she’d made for the Bordens and of which she’d eaten the leavings, but as they were plodding their way through the same tired roast of pork, she was glad to eat a second, more pleasing repast.
As soon as she’d finished and set down her cup and plate, a man appeared as if he’d been waiting. He was flush-cheeked with eyes blue as spatterware and smiled and indicated with a nod of his head that he’d like to squire her onto the floor. She nodded, gratified at the attention, and they joined into the mix. She couldn’t stop grinning for she loved this song.
The row of dancers faced her, full of merriment, darkened hair at the brow where sweat gathered, and circles of dark cloth appearing under their arms. She cared not a whit.
She cocked her leg in front, then curled the other behind, drag-stepping to the right, everyone in accord although not all were graceful—but it didn’t matter, it was only the doing of it that mattered, the shoes bouncing off the floor and returning lightly.
She danced twice more, then begged off with the speechless gentleman who only smiled his regret to lose her. She returned to the corner where Mary Doolan and the girl named Maggie were talking. In contrast to the gaiety, they were talking quickly with their eyes intent on each other.
“Oh, so ye know each other,” Bridget greeted them. “What’s at odds?”
“Maggie’s worried about you,” said Mary.
“About me?” Bridget looked at Maggie, whose face indeed reported concern, her lips thinned and her dimples gone.
“It’s not enough to leap out of the frying pan to save my skin,” she said. “When another jumps in after me.”
“Whatever do ye mean?”
“Maggie’s the girl who worked for the Bordens afore ye,” explained Mary.
“I worked up my courage to leave,” said Maggie. “I didn’t think about ever meeting the girl who took my place. And you’re so nice . . . I can’t not warn ye.”
On the instant, Bridget felt her stomach unsettle. Had the meat from the pie gone bad? It had tasted fine, but maybe its thick juices masked the bad.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s Miss Lizzie.”
The two looked at Bridget, and she pressed her hands against her protesting stomach, suddenly cramping.
“I’ll need the privy,” said Bridget.
“We’ll take you,” said Mary. They walked through the crowd, receiving a few elbow blows from conversationalists deep in their cups, gesticulating to illustrate their stories. They walked past the musicians, red-faced with effort, heads nodding full-force as if snapping awake from a nap over and over.
Mary and Maggie led Bridget out the back door to the small courtyard with its double privies to handle the volume of the pub-turneddance hall.
Bridget entered the small wooden privy, but her stomach wasn’t upset after all. She looked at the moon through the moon cut into the door, a tacit pun that made her feel weary. She gave herself time while she listened to the murmur of the women talking and the muffled music from inside.
No, it wasn’t the pie making her stomach feel off. It was what Maggie had said . . . or not yet said about Miss Lizzie.
“Are ye all right in there?” asked Mary, now close to the door.
“Aye, I’ll be out in a trice.”
The stench made it no place of respite. She stood, let her skirts to the floor and went back outside, gustily inhaling the fresh night air. She bent to the nearby bucket to wash her hands. A cake of soap exuded its own milk in a tin dish.
“Tell me then,” she said.
“You’ve noticed she’s . . .” began Maggie strongly, but then she trailed off.
“She’s what?”
“It tests one to talk about sommat in your gut with no true reason behind it.”
“But you left.”
“I left, not even knowing the next place I’d land.”
“And where did you?” asked Bridget.
“I’m renting a flat with five other girls. They’re at the mill, and I take in laundry, sewing, odd jobs. I made the meat pie you just ate.”
“So you can make a living just with that?”
“Close to it. I’ll serve again if I can find another home without a character.”
“Mr. Borden wouldn’t give you one?”
Bridget straightened. So Maggie had been booted after all, in opposition to what Mary had told her in the backyard that day. And perhaps now she was casting Bridget against the family in revenge?
“I went to him with my fears, and he was angry.”
“What were your fears?”
“I worry Miss Lizzie is dangerous.”
Bridget responded with an exhale, crossing her arms. “And dangerous how, you say?”
“Have you not seen the rage that sits in her eyes?”
Bridget said nothing. Above their heads, the stars sprawled in their chosen arrangements. Some ancient peoples had looked at the mess up there and managed to see patterns. “Her eyes are a quite unnatural color,” she said finally.
“Hers unnatural, and yours blind,” said Maggie.
“What did you fear?”
“I feared harm.” Maggie’s voice took on a tone of defensiveness now rather than persuasion.
“You feared she would harm you?”
“Yes. I wished to end all association with her and leave the house forever. She isn’t right, and if you don’t see it yet, you will.”
“Did she yell at you?”
“No, but worse. It’s the quiet that scares me. I tried to talk to Mr. Borden about it, and he wouldn’t hear it. So I tendered my resignation.”
“You left good employment just because of a feeling?”
“I did, and you ought to as well.”
“And who will serve the Bordens? Do you intend to dissuade every maid until there are none left in Fall River?” Bridget hated the words coming out of her mouth and didn’t know why she was being cruel to a girl who was only saying the things she had already thought.
“I don’t care who serves them! Let them stew their own mutton a hundred times over!”
“Persuade her better,” said Mary. “Use that blarney. Tell her what you saw that makes you so wary.”
“Well, that’s the trouble, isn’t it? I’ve naught to report other than a feeling deep in me gut that Miss Lizzie was the sort of trouble I wanted nothing to do with.” She regarded Bridget in exasperation. “Did you never find yourself on a dark street and something amiss at your back? No one’s there but you hasten your pace till you’re flying.”
“Aye,” said Bridget.
“So that’s how I felt with Miss Lizzie.”
“And tell her about the way Lizzie stopped calling her stepmother Mother,” said Mary.
“Two years ago, for love of nothing but money, Miss Lizzie suddenly stopped calling her Mother, which she had done since her father married her. She raised Miss Lizzie since she was a child, and suddenly she’s Mrs. Borden to her.”
“What happened?” asked Bridget.
“Mrs. Borden’s half-sister—whom she helped raise—goodness, this lady has been mother to so many and yet none from her womb . . . her sister had been bandied about by her husband, not good with money or rents or those matters. So Mr. Borden provided her a house on Fourth Street, deeding it to Mrs. Borden. The girls were in an uproar about it.”
“How so?” asked Bridget, amazed. “Family sticks together, and what uproar did they make of a kindness?”
“She’s not blood to them,” said Maggie. “Abby’s not, and her half-sister even less so. So the house became a morgue of stillness with their darting looks and their prim faces until one morning it exploded in anger, and Mr. Borden gave them their own house.”
“And it didn’t placate them?”
“Not a bit; he might as well have given them a coal from the fire for all it pleased them.”
“I wonder that they don’t move into the other house,” said Bridget.
“Not fit for them,” said Maggie with her chin lifted and a haughty expression adopted on her face.
“You’re just the picture of her!” breathed Mary Doolan.
“It’s the house they once lived in with their true mother, and they didn’t want to return! They’re renting it out. And it’s over that bundle of pettiness that they began calling her Mrs. Borden.”
“The very greed of it,” marveled Bridget.
“Yet they’re unashamed. They lost a ‘mother’ for the sake of helping out a family member with a no-good husband and two young children to provide for.”
A fellow came out then, bringing music and cheer with the opening of the door, and the stark silence of the stars as it swung shut behind him.
“Evening, ladies,” he said. For the sake of his privacy, of one accord they nodded and moved back toward the dancehall.
“Well, I’ve done my job in warning you,” said Maggie. “All the rest is up to you now.”
They were swallowed by sound as they entered, and Bridget felt weary of the music that had previously invigorated her. She felt the other two were of the same mind, troubled by what they’d talked of. The grins on others’ faces were no longer infectious and instead a reminder of the blankness in her gut.
“If ill befalls you, come to me,” said Mary. “Throw stones at my window, and I’ll let you in.”
“I hope it won’t come to that,” said Bridget. “Oh, Mary, would you mind much if we left now?”
“I’ve gone and spoilt your evening,” said Maggie.
“Thank you for your concern, truly,” said Bridget. “I’ve not many options, though. I’m the breadwinner, and my family still in Ireland waiting on the odd coin I send.”
“And isn’t that the very brunt of it; it always comes down to money,” said Mary.
“Watch yourself,” said Maggie, “and you can always bunk with me if the times get rough.”
“You’re very kind,” said Bridget. She stared at the other girl, who she knew not from Adam, but whose disquiet for Bridget had taken over the evening. “Go raibh maith agat,” she added in Irish.
“Tá fáilte romhat,” said Maggie. “You’re welcome indeed.”
On the walk home, Mary Doolan hummed the titular tune of the pub, a ballad about a headstrong lass who took a ring off a fellow and then crossed the ocean without him. They walked in companionable silence other than the droning strains, but Bridget soon realized she was dreading the return to the dark house. The pub had been too merry, but the home would be too low.
Soon enough, they were at the Kelly house, where Mary turned off with a flash of a grin and an immediately contrary somber face. “’Twas up and down tonight, weren’t it?” she said.
“Aye,” said Bridget with a rueful smile.
“I’ll see you in the backyard then,” said Mary, and with a nod she was gone.
Bridget continued on a few more paces until she reached the Borden home. She surveyed its simple, asymmetric face, the pitched roof. No curtain might twitch for her; the rooms that faced the street were only the sewing room and the clothes press. Would she work here until her serving days were over? Was this clapboard tenement to be her final stop?
She went to the side door and used her key. No lamp had been left for her, but it was easy enough to climb the stairs with the guidance of the brittle banister. She trod quietly, aware that her footfalls might awake Mr. and Mrs. Borden. She passed the landing where she could hear the breathing of her sleeping employers, long abed on a Saturday night. She carefully felt with her foot for the turn and the beginning of the next flight of stairs.
She began to climb, her eyes becoming accustomed to the dark. It was then she saw the shape ahead of her on the staircase, a silent immobile mass that she strained to see. A rook-colored pillar, fathomless, black as carbon.
She stopped, hand clenching the banister.
The shape stirred a bit, arousing itself from the glut of darkness. It was a woman.
Bridget could detect her standing five steps above her, in full skirts that acquired the plum flush of belladonna, not black, as her eyes adjusted.
The woman pressed herself to the other side of the steps, against the wall, as if merely a cask one might need to step around. She was trying not to be seen.
It was Miss Lizzie.
Bridget discerned the silhouette now, the frizzed hairs, the stone-shaped head. She couldn’t see Lizzie’s face or her blankly savage eyes. Both women remained rooted in place.
Bridget’s falter and stare must have surely alerted Miss Lizzie that she could see her, yet she said nothing. Bridget gripped the banister so tightly that her nails dug in. She knew she must move, but how? Retreat downstairs? Run to Mary Doolan across the moon-dappled yard?
Continue on climbing to the attic bedroom meant to be her sanctuary but now guarded by a Cerberus in human form?
She could not now, after this long silence, call out a greeting to Miss Lizzie and pretend all was well. The wait became interminable. Her heart took an immodest leap in her throat.
She quelled the impulse to turn and steeled herself to continue her way to her room. Miss Lizzie’s stealth seemed intentional, and so she would preserve the pretense that she wasn’t there.
She forced herself to continue climbing, no hitch in her step, as they drew even and Miss Lizzie’s silver eyes caught hers.
The coldness of the gaze shocked Bridget. It was imperious, frigid glance of someone who did not care. Miss Lizzie faced forward; only her eyes had crept to the side to capture Bridget’s. The whites took on a luster in the stairwell, and Bridget shuddered as she bolted the remaining steps. She resisted the urge to look back, feeling the skin on her neck crawling, cold despite the sweat from the warm evening’s walk.
She grasped the doorknob, fumbling and nearly muttering an oath to herself at the panic she felt to put a door between her and the silent mistress.
Had Miss Lizzie been in Bridget’s room? It was her house after all, and she had the right to enter any room, but what might she be after in Bridget’s attic? Or had she not entered and only stood in the gloom, waiting for Bridget to return?
The door relented and Bridget pushed forward into the dark room. As she turned to close it behind her, she saw that Miss Lizzie had not moved, still facing forward, crushed to the side of the wall, perhaps in some illusion of invisibility.
Bridget closed the door and sank down against it. She waited in vain, weariness dogging her eyelids, for the swish of skirts to alert her that Miss Lizzie had left her strange post.
The darkness, implored for movement, laid bare no secrets. She bent to peer at the small strip where the door did not meet the floor, half expecting the silvery eye to regard her from the other side. It was too dark to see. She listened and wished her night to be essayed afresh: to not have gone out, but to have stayed safely in her quarters, each corner scrutinized by lamplight until the kerosene gave out, to not know of the figure monolithic on the stairs, and most of all unwitting of Maggie’s accusations formed in this very chamber.
