Breath and Bones (11 page)

He sat behind a large mahogany desk, surrounded by papers and fountain pens, with the white cat asleep in his lap. Asian masks leered over his plump form in its ill-fitting suit, and when Famke walked in, his mouth dropped open in unconscious imitation of the mask directly behind him.

“I am very sorry,” Famke said. Never having worked in such a fine house, she thought perhaps she was supposed to speak first in such a situation. She heard the faint tone of a bell. “Did I startle you?”

The mouth snapped shut. “No,” he said. “Not quite.” He put on a pair of spectacles and peered at her through them. A vein throbbed in his bald pate, but he said nothing.

She thought Herr Skatkammer must be very angry indeed. She curtsied as the nuns had taught her. “I apologize for spoiling the carpet. I understand my wages will be reduced.” Wages hardly seemed to matter; there was nothing she wanted to buy.

“It was a valuable rug,” he said, not responding to the matter of the wages. “But come closer.”

Obediently, Famke stepped forward, wondering if he planned to slap her. But he merely gazed, as in another land he might have gazed upon a silk tapestry or marble carving, until she realized that this house posed some of the same dangers that the farm had.

“You are very beautiful,” Herr Skatkammer said at last, exhaling. His breath carried the bitterness of one who could not sleep without a stiff dose of laudanum. Though he had hardly moved, the white cat woke with a sudden start and jumped to the floor.

Virtue
, Famke thought. She said nothing.

“You are from the Immaculate Heart orphanage?”

“Yes.”

“How old are you?”

Before she could answer—she would have had to answer, and her answer would have led to further and perhaps perilous conversation—there came a discreet knock on the door.

Herr Skatkammer removed his glasses. “Yes,” he called in some irritation.

“Herr Skatkammer, the Saints are here for you.” Frøken Grubbe cracked open the door. “Shall I send them to the parlor?”

“No, no, bring them in here,” he said with a last lingering look at the new maid. “And tea. And some pastries.”

Mystified, Famke followed the housekeeper downstairs. “What are these saints?” she asked, but Frøken Grubbe gestured for silence.

Two somber, heavily bearded men were standing in the entryway.

Not those plates,” Frøken Grubbe snapped, more harshly than was necessary. “Herr Skatkammer uses the Flora Danica for these guests—though why he honors them, I don't know.” With an air of long-tried patience, she unlocked a dark cabinet that held the hundred-year-old china depicting flowers native to Denmark. It reminded Famke of the carriage Albert hired the day he whisked her away from Dragør, and she was glad to touch it.

“Why did you call the men saints?” Famke asked as she set out the plates. Frøken Grubbe was slicing buttery almond
Wienerbrød
, and Famke's mouth watered. But she knew it was pointless even to imagine what such a treat might taste like, so she put her mind to other questions.

“That's what they call themselves,” said Grubbe, still irritable. “They are from America”—as if that settled the matter.

“Are they importers, too?”

The kettle boiled; Frøken Grubbe lifted it off the stove and poured it over the tea leaves in the Flora Danica pot. “In a manner of speaking. They import people. They convert good Scandinavians to their religion and then take them to a desert that they say is God's chosen land.”

“Slavers?” Famke asked in fascinated horror.

“No one knows,” Frøken Grubbe admitted, warming to her subject as the tea steeped. Her upper lip looked darker as it dampened with steam.
“But they are said to marry many women and to make them participate in secret rituals.”

Famke thought of those bushy, moustacheless beards and shivered. “What do they want with Herr Skatkammer?”

“They want,” came the ominous answer, “to convert him. They believe that as a Catholic among Lutherans, he is vulnerable. If they succeed, they will convince him to finance passage for their converts, to let them sail on his ships and to
give them money
—more than a decade's wages for you and me, most likely. They think nothing of asking, and he might think nothing of giving it.”

Famke felt a twinge of resentment that brought her into communion with Frøken Grubbe; it was almost as if the Saints were stealing from the two of them.

“They're a strange bunch,” Frøken Grubbe continued, fishing out the tea strainer. “They pray to God's wife, though everyone with a right mind knows He is a bachelor.” She sighed, as if suddenly weary. Then she picked up the tray of steaming tea and sweetly fragrant pastries. “
I
will bring this upstairs,” she said with a sharp look at Famke. “I think it's best if you stay out of Herr Skatkammer's sight.”

Famke was grateful to have found a protector in the spare and unlikely form of Frøken Grubbe. She avoided Skatkammer as best she could; and even when he asked for her by name, the housekeeper would send another maid in her place or do the errand herself.

Eventually Famke realized that Frøken Grubbe's cooperation could point in only one direction.
She loves him
, Famke thought, and was astonished. She felt as if she'd received a revelation: At the advanced age of nearly forty, and suffering a lack of personal charms, a woman could fall in love. That this particular woman was besotted with an even less attractive and more aged employer, and hoped he would come to love her as well—Famke thought it very sad indeed.

What was more, the housekeeper's unhappy story made Famke realize her days in the mansion could well be numbered as the hairs on her head. Even the kindest of women—and Frøken Grubbe certainly was not that—would
not harbor the object of a beloved's lust for long. Indeed, her reproofs of Famke's mistakes were becoming sharper and sharper, and once or twice Famke found that after the other servants had eaten there was no meat for her own dinner. She made herself adopt the meek manners of the convent and tried to please Frøken Grubbe whenever possible. This was not a job a girl should throw away, especially not a girl who'd lost her virtue.

Famke's virtue remained unmourned, nearly unremembered except for the two mementos of the man who had taken the last shreds of that ephemeral purity from her: the silver tinderbox and the sketch he had made of her in Dragør nearly a year before. She would not tack it to this wall, but when she had a moment and a candle and her bedmate was sleeping, Famke liked to unroll the delicate cylinder of it and spread it on her own bed. She still thought it was Albert's finest work. There was always some new detail to be noticed: a wrinkle in the ribbons of the cap so carelessly shoved back from her head, a bend in the curls that escaped from her braids, a spark of sunlight in her eyes. And finally, as a special treat, Famke might turn the paper over and read the words written there—words she had not discovered until she unpinned the sketch from Fru Strand's wall and rolled it up to come to Skatkammer's. Albert must have written them just before he left:

To my sweet, lovely Famke, who rescued her face and my fate from the fire—

Had we but world enough and time, this parting, darling, would be no crime.

Best regards from a rushing heart,

A. C.

They were beautiful words, words that—she thought—made it plain he did not wish to leave her. It was only the uncertainty of his own future that kept him from begging her to be his permanently. Had she but means, she might have gone to him and said that none of the rest mattered . . .

These thoughts never failed to make her weep, until, romantically, she doused the candle with her tears.

Behold, my house is a house of order, saith the Lord God, and not a house of confusion.

P
EARL OF
G
REAT
P
RICE
132:8

Alone, depressed, and bored, Famke's mind needed some occupation, and the strangest of the strange attractions in Herr Skatkammer's household were the men who called themselves Saints. They were not Skatkammer's only visitors, but they were the most fascinating; they came to the house regularly, and when a visit was expected, Famke found herself choosing to perform certain duties that lay in their path. She brushed the animal heads in the hallway or polished the sabers on the front stairs, allowing Frøken Grubbe to chase her away only after she got a good look. Men who married more than one woman at a time . . .

“
Polygamy
,” she said, trying out her dictionary English in the privacy of the servants' outhouse. “
Fidelity. Darling
.”

What if Albert had been able to marry both Famke and another girl? Would a half share in Albert have been enough?

He had been gone for more than two months. At night, when her bed-mate, Vida, fell asleep, Famke recalled his amphibious eyes and touched herself Down There.
The cottager holds a paintbrush
. . . She rolled a pebble of her own flesh and felt something pleasant, but not the shimmering feeling, the wanting feeling, she got with Albert. In time even that pleasure disappeared; but she was interested in no other kind. Vida was chubby and smelled like Herr Skatkammer's cat, and she was not Albert. Famke had to take some other action.

With April and the British Royal Academy show well in the past, Famke took advantage of her first Thursday halfday and trudged into Copenhagen. Albert had promised to tell her how Nimue fared, and her faith in that promise had only grown in the absence of other hopes.

Fru Strand's rooming house looked more dilapidated than ever, now that Famke had Herr Skatkammer's villa to compare it to. The landlady still had not replaced the windows Albert had removed, and she probably never would, Famke thought as she rapped at Fru Strand's door. There must be plenty of sailors who were willing to take that room; when in port, they lived in the darkness and slept in the daytime, so the boards would be no hardship for them.

When the door opened, Famke was surprised to see not Strand but a hunched-over man of early middle age. He was in his shirtsleeves, a napkin glistening with fish scales around his neck; when he saw her, he whisked it off, revealing an equally discolored shirtfront, then wiped his mouth and tossed the napkin into the shadows beyond the door. With lips still shiny, he smiled and tried to straighten, but he was unable to do so fully.

Famke hesitated, but she remembered the boarded-up windows above; she was in the right place. “
NÃ¥
. . . I came to see Fru Strand.”

“She is gone,” he said, and made a courtly little bow. “I am Ole Rasmussen, her nephew and the new proprietor. You are a friend?”

“I lived here once,” Famke said. “Just a month ago. With my husband.” She felt it was only polite to ask, “Where has Fru Strand gone?”

“To the other side,” he said delicately; then, when Famke still looked blank, “She is dead.”