Amy Snow (9 page)

At last, a cry from my driver: “Jessop!” The cab draws up in a quiet street with terraced white houses stained gray with the pall of the day. I tumble out, unconvinced that my bones retain their original configuration.

After trying at number six—Mrs. Begley was sure it was number six—I am directed instead to number eighteen. In Jessop Walk, a moatlike ditch separates street from houses. At each property a little walkway bridges the divide and high spiked gates protect against villains. Despite these precautions, the houses are narrow and the inhabitants could quite easily peer over a garden wall into the lives of their neighbors. At Hatville, if we wanted to see a neighbor, we had to walk some miles.

I am reassured that Mrs. Woodrow is a scholarly-looking woman with spectacles and gray woolen mittens. She is not fat, slatternly, drunk, nor inquisitive (I had not been aware how much the novels of Mr. Dickens would shape my expectations of landladies). I pay for two nights' lodging in advance, and she agrees that I can extend my stay if I need to.

“Assuming, that is, a crowd of wealthy and important guests don't all descend at once,” she adds dryly. “It is January,” she continues, seeing that I take her seriously. “No one ever visits London in January.”

Looking out of my small window I can quite see why. A light rain has begun falling, adding its own luster to the day. The sky sags over the hodgepodge of cramped gardens, washing lines, vegetable plots, outhouses, roofs, windows, and walls that fit within my view of roughly two feet squared. Home . . . if such it ever was . . . is a long way away.

My room has bare floorboards and a narrow bed covered in a plain coverlet. The walls are brown and there is but one small painting in an ugly frame, a sentimental shepherdess simpering at a rosy-cheeked swain. There is a washstand, one chair, and a small table bearing a glass jar of snowdrops.

The sight of them leaves me awash with memories: the road between Hatville and Enderby; countless hidden corners of the estate; dark lush leaves and drifts of little white flowers; fresh air and the promise of spring with Aurelia . . .

I wonder if this is what she imagined for me.

The household was devastated by Aurelia's diagnosis. I caught Lord Vennaway reduced to tears, and turned away out of respect. Lady Vennaway took to her bed, then got out of it almost at once when she realized that a decline was an ill use of precious time with Aurelia. Lord Kenworthy disappeared like a shot cannon, soon to become engaged to a wealthy young lady from Kent, so we heard. Every cloud has its silver lining.

I could not catch my breath from the shock of it.
Aurelia!
She was far too bright a flame to be prematurely extinguished. If this sad destiny had been anyone else's, I might have been able to conceive of it: Lady Vennaway was too brittle to sit comfortably in this life, Cook was eternally tired, Rosy was always coughing and scratching. As for Marcus, he was forever falling off walls and dropping hammers on his toes and getting trapped under logs. But Aurelia? Goddesses don't have weak hearts.

She remained in good spirits. In fact, she was so little changed in that first year that it was easy to suppose Dr. Jacobs mistaken. She insisted, though, that I must cease my ambiguous role in the household and become her full-time companion.

“It is time to stop this nonsense now,” she told her parents soberly one day. “I know you disapprove of Amy, and I will stop trying to talk you out of it if you will accept my decision and allow her to carry out her duties in peace. I do not know what lies ahead of me or how long I have. Amy calms me and I trust her absolutely. Whatever befalls me now, I want her by my side.”

Of course, she said it when the Reverend Mr. Chorley and Dr. Jacobs were present; she never hesitated to air her private business before the pillars of the community if it served her interests. Dr. Jacobs expressed his medical opinion that I was a beneficial tonic for Aurelia. Mr. Chorley urged compassion and said I was a gift from God. I loved him for that.

And so I bedded down in the scullery no more but was moved into the room next door to Aurelia's. We continued to take lessons together, though these were now a desultory affair. Mr. Henley was no longer grooming her for marriage, but Lord Vennaway had become so distracted with grief that he neglected to dismiss him.

Aurelia continued to walk the two miles into Enderby each week to visit the villagers, as well as to discuss the plight of the unfortunate with Mr. Chorley, Mr. Clay, and Mrs. Bolton, but now I went with her. Everyone, irrespective of fortune or status, was appalled at the ill fate that had befallen Aurelia. She forbade anyone to talk of it, but everyone did.

Lady Vennaway's persecution of me eased, save for her insistence that I dress like a governess, provoking another battle. Aurelia chafed at the unkindness that it represented and swore that seeing me so drab would hasten her demise. Lady Vennaway would not hear of a lowly companion wearing beautiful clothes. Aurelia argued that to look upon beautiful things raised her spirits. Lady Vennaway retorted that Aurelia's spirits seemed unnaturally high to
her
and that if she didn't like it, she could send me back to the scullery. I did not care so I told Aurelia that she could yield with honor. There were greater things to concern us, after all.

•  •  •

The second year brought the first signs of her ill health, unwelcome and inevitable as the shortening days and withering leaves of autumn. She began to complain of fatigue, a word that was never in her vocabulary before. “It is not that I am
tired
,” she told me, “it is not the feeling one has after a busy day or the longing to melt into sleep. It is like a weight upon me and I cannot wrestle it.”

We still walked into Enderby, but only on a good day. Sometimes now we took the carriage and sometimes we stayed at home. Aurelia grew frightened. What would her condition impose upon her in the time that remained? She didn't mind death, but she didn't want to be changed before it came.

In December 1843 we celebrated Aurelia's twenty-first birthday. Her parents wanted no ritual at all to mark her passage into an adulthood that would be all too fleeting. Aurelia wanted a ball. They compromised with a dinner for selected family members, prepared by Cook, aided by me. And Aurelia came into her fortune.

I eat a little of the cold collation Mrs. Woodrow has brought me. There is a cut of ham, some bread and butter, an orange, and a mug of ale. I am not fond of ale, but I take a swallow, then leave the rest untouched for later. I head downstairs and ask Mrs. Woodrow if she knows the whereabouts of Entwhistle's Bookshop. She does not.

So I step into the cold, damp afternoon and commence to wander the streets. The size of the city becomes apparent as I walk, street after street after street, never passing a shop of any kind, let alone a bookshop.

The absence of a chaperone makes me painfully self-conscious. If Aurelia had ever paced the streets of London alone, Lady Vennaway would have died from shame. I am, in addition, all too aware of my shabby appearance. At Hatville, everyone understood that I was lowly, but here, out of context, I look as unimportant and lacking in connections—and therefore as vulnerable—as I truly am.

These reflections chase me back to Jessop Walk. My first explorations have been discouraging but I am glad I have been cautious when I see that night falls sooner and swifter here than it does in the country. Gaslights, something I have never seen before, flare eerily in the murk and usher me on.

Alone in the chilly, charmless room that is mine for the next two days, I swallow the remains of my luncheon and stare at the wall. I don't know what to do. So I take up the pages I began in the Rose and Crown last night. I wish I could stop myself journeying back in time each time my quill touches the page. I wish that my present had more to recommend it. Yet I find myself thinking of my origins, something I have not done for many years. This is a certain route to drawing yet another blank.
Who am I?

I used to wonder about my parents all the time. So did Aurelia. From my earliest youth, one of our favorite fascinations was speculating about my birth. It was too great a mystery not to! A baby left in the snow with no clothes and no clue . . . For a fanciful sprite like Aurelia and a solemn little girl like me, who longed to be
something
, it was fertile ground.

At first we assumed I was a princess, stolen away by wicked usurpers, bent on the downfall of my kingdom. But we found two flaws in this theory. One was that none of the periodicals Aurelia avidly read had reported a missing princess baby in their Foreign News columns. The other was that if I were ever found, my duty would be to go and rule my country. Aurelia would be alone again and it sounded tedious to me.

Our next hypothesis was that I was a gypsy. This had more to recommend it, as some traveling gypsies had passed through Enderby the previous year. Gypsies, we understood, were extremely feckless and disorganized. They might well have lost a baby. But gypsies could not have traveled across the Hatville estate, fenced and fortified as it was, so how did I come to be there? I did have very long black hair like the gypsies, but my skin was pale and my eyes too light. We discarded this idea also.

Aurelia proffered the idea that I was Lord Vennaway's “love child,” a term she heard liberally sprinkled about Hatville's drawing room. I was too young to understand fully what that meant, and I'm not convinced she did either. We liked the possibility because it would make me Aurelia's sister and it would certainly explain Lady Vennaway's attitude towards me.

Now that I am older I have come to accept that, despite Lady Vennaway's attitude, I am not likely to be Lord Vennaway's illegitimate daughter. Physically, I look even less like a Vennaway than I do a gypsy or a princess. Also, I believe if Lord Vennaway were to take his affections elsewhere than to his wife, he is hardly the sort of man to do so with the sort of woman who would leave a baby on his estate. No, he would have very discreet, tasteful affairs indeed. Besides, it never
felt
true. When Lord Vennaway beheld me, I saw indifference, disdain, and mild irritation. I never saw love, I never saw curiosity, and I never saw guilt.

It was hard for me to admit how much pain it caused me, not knowing who I was. I would have given anything for even a shred of information about my parents. A name, the shape of a nose, a favorite song . . . anything. I would have snatched at such details and kept them locked safe in my heart. But I could not put it into words.

Even so, as Aurelia matured, she came to understand that my beginnings were no romantic fairy tale. In time she conducted a thorough inquiry, much to her mother's horror. This was one battle won by Aurelia, however, for her mother could not prohibit conversation. Aurelia herself questioned every family in Enderby, entreating them to mine their memories, dredge up any clues.

It all came to nothing. If anyone in Enderby had borne me, or knew who had, they kept silent.

Most likely my mother was some poor unfortunate passing through in disgrace and seeking a fresh start. Most likely she blamed me for her circumstances, or was simply too weak to carry me any longer. I may never know.

Would I wish to? Now? Surely, if God had meant us to know everything, He would not have made the world so very mysterious. I have grown accustomed to the blank spaces around the shapes of my life. I have grown accustomed to living with questions.