Soon Margaret returned, thrilled by her outing with Rosa, who’d brought a picnic and read to her from a book of aphorisms. I was cleaned up by then and had readied a fresh supper. As we ate, I asked Margaret to care for Henry tomorrow, to which she consented. Then I asked to borrow money, which she had to deny. She’d sent most of last month’s pay to her family already, and the rest had gone to stamps, pencils, and stationery. In fact, she intended to write to her sister about her rekindled friendship with Rosa, my arrival in the household, and other developments in her young life. And could I help her to do so, she asked, on this very night?
I couldn’t very well deny her, despite my panicked state. We took down our hair and got in our clean, starched bedclothes, then sat on the hooked rug in Margaret’s room. It was all cruelly pleasant compared to Charlotte’s situation. The windows were opened to the darkness and let in a beguiling breeze as we began Margaret’s first written message to the world.
“Dear Meghan,” she began, with me dictating the spellings. “I am writing this myself.” She paused, pencil in the air, breathing rapidly. Then she stood. “I have bubbles inside! Is this joy? I can’t keep still!” She lifted her legs high, tossing her curls shoulder to shoulder as she danced, then leaned to kiss my cheek. For precious seconds, my troubles were replaced by her exhilaration.
Upon finishing the letter, she retired, and I crept downstairs and took a piece of stationery from Clementina’s desk. I wrote a note with her fine pen and ink, attesting to my husband’s recent demise and my reliable employment and lodgings in her household. “I welcome the chance to house Mrs. de Jong’s baby,” I wrote, “because this will allow Mrs. de Jong to stay longer in our service.” With many flourishes and not a little satisfaction, I signed “Mrs. Clementina Burnham.”
I tucked that letter and the birth certificate into the pocket of a plain dress from home, which I’ll wear tomorrow when I leave to do what I’ve realized I must do to get the needed money.
If Clementina were in, I’d ask for an advance on pay; if Miss Baker were here, she might have loaned me something. But as things stand, the only method in my control is to take a page from the book of Patience. I’ll gather some valuables from my room at Father’s and pawn them. I’ll gain entry to the house by telling them I’ve completed my governess assignment, then take what I can and depart.
I will lie to my own family.
I’ve fallen into bed, with failing courage, and trembling.
Sixth Month 6
Miss Baker was angry at our mistress for banishing me but could do nothing. Margaret whispered that she was so sorry, and I replied that it wasn’t her fault, she had to tell the truth. She said please come to the kitchen door and wait behind the bushes, so I did. I crouched there, sweating in the dusk and sending mental messages to Charlotte—Stay alive another night! I’m coming! Breathe, my darling! It seemed a long time till Margaret brought a candle, a blanket, a cup of water, bread and cheese, and an orange, and set me up where I am now, in a closet in the Burnhams’ stable that is thick with spiderwebs and the stench of mouse droppings and leather harness pieces left to molder. Margaret warned me not to use the candle until late, for otherwise the Burnhams might see.
It’s been several hours since. I’ve lit the candle. With the water being gone, and my bosom painfully full, I pressed my milk out to the cup and drank it along with the remaining bread. It seemed nearly cannibalistic to drink from my own body, but I couldn’t pump water from the well, and what else could I have done with the milk, which had to be let out and would attract vermin if it dripped to the floor? The liquid brought a touch of sweetness to my misery.
Oh, diary, how grateful I am for thy page, which will hold my terrible story.
Before dawn this morning—how was it only this morning!—I woke in the dark in my attic room and waited for the grandfather clock to chime the hour. The Burnhams were away, with no indication yet of their return. At four I arose and woke Henry to change and nurse him, knowing I’d be gone many hours. As the sky lightened to gray, I laid his sleeping body back in his crib, hoping this would be the last day I’d leave him. I would get the money I needed, and at Blockley I’d either find out that Charlotte was dead or pay to release her.
I dressed as plainly as I could; to do otherwise would have startled those at home. I ate bread and milk at the kitchen table as the clock struck five. Then, leaving a sleepy-eyed Margaret charged with Henry, I entered the gloom, with a shawl covering my head, money in a purse at my neck, and various papers tucked into my skirt. I aimed to get the full eight dollars and to be at Blockley by one o’clock, when Mr. Lambert would return.
Despite the urgency of my mission, I relished the cool and vitalizing air. It seemed every bird and other creature was poised in stillness, waiting for the day to enliven it. I moved rapidly down Walnut Street, wondering whether Patience had already taken the valuables from the trunk at the foot of my bed. I stepped along the cobblestones of Main Street, then turned and turned again, until I reached our brick-laid street, not much wider than a pathway.
In the corner barn, a cow mooed. Hooves scraped the wooden floor. I slipped in to stand before the rope that kept our horse, Sarah, in her stall; she huffed her excited greeting. I accepted the push of her head into me and ran my hands along the sides of her neck, relishing its velvety feel and her recognition of me. This was the horse who had pulled our loaded wagon across a spread of rocks, knocking Mother off and piling furnishings on top of her. But of course the horse was innocent. Father had decided to keep her.
Father. Was he all right? Might I find out otherwise?
A rooster crowed; another answered. I kissed Sarah’s tender, twitching nose and left the barn. With my hand on the cold latch of the low iron gate, I paused to behold our two-story domicile, with its peaked roof and its mortar crumbling between the stones. My stomach fluttered, and my mouth grew dry. I picked up a pebble and sucked it, as I had done in childhood, to taste its minerals and bring up moisture. Peonies that Mother and I had planted along the iron fence were bobbing their flower-heads toward the flare of early sun. Along one side of the house, rosebushes stretched budding limbs in all directions.
To the left of the front door, the windows to Father’s workshop were dark. But the windows to the right showed lamplight, and smoke came from the chimney. Someone was awake and had rekindled the hearth.
I dropped the pebble from my mouth and unlatched the gate. The sound of splashing liquid made me look up, and there stood Patience, emptying kitchen waste from a bucket into a gully between our house and the next. Her abdomen extruded; she was with child, and far along. I opened the creaking gate and stepped toward her.
“What might be your business?” she demanded, not recognizing me.
I undraped the shawl from my head. “It’s Lilli.”
She put down the bucket and placed her hands on her belly. Her fair hair was pulled tight in a bun, and her face looked bare and swollen.
“I want to come in,” I told her. “I need to collect a few things from my room.”
I’d started out all wrong. The sight of her unnerved me.
She paused, her eyebrows low over suspicious eyes. “Aren’t you coming back for good?”