Splendors and Glooms (23 page)

The train rattled onward. The night was frosty, and the padded seats felt as hard as iron. Parsefall squirmed and shivered. Lizzie Rose’s toes ached with cold, and she tensed her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. She was grateful for the warmth of the dog in her lap.

The whistle shrilled. The train slowed. They had come to another station. This time the clergyman left the train. Parsefall, who had taken a strong dislike to him, hoped he would not return. But before a quarter of an hour had passed, the man reappeared with two dry jam puffs, which he thrust into the hands of the children. “‘Whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water shall in no wise lose his reward,’” he thundered.

Lizzie Rose, who recognized the Bible verse, said, “Thank you, sir.” Tears of gratitude and humiliation filled her eyes. She accepted the jam puff and tried to nibble it daintily, as if she weren’t hungry. Parsefall wolfed his down and looked around for the cold water. He might have demanded it if he hadn’t been distracted: the burlap sack in Lizzie Rose’s arms was moving, and a faint whine issued from it.

The spaniel’s head emerged from the sack. The nursemaid gave a little shriek. The stout man muttered an oath and shouted for the guard, but the trumpet blared, signaling that the train was about to move again.

They reached Lancaster at three in the morning. Lizzie Rose and Parsefall wrestled the trunk from the luggage rack and dragged it to a corner of the railway station. Parsefall went exploring and found the lavatories. When he returned, Lizzie Rose took Ruby for a walk. She bought two cups of tea and a sandwich, which the children shared: five knobs of gristle swaddled in stale bread.

They waited for three more hours. When at last the next train arrived, the guard showed the children to a second-class carriage. Parsefall glanced at Lizzie Rose to see if she would object, but she took her place on the hard wooden seat without a murmur. Parsefall yawned as the train shot out of the station. He was sick of watching the red sparks, and it was too dark to see anything else. He turned to ask Lizzie Rose how much longer they had to travel, but saw that she had fallen asleep. Her face was very pale. Parsefall studied her narrowly and held his tongue.

While Lizzie Rose slumbered, Dr. Wintermute lay awake. For once, he was not thinking of Clara. He was thinking of Lizzie Rose. He recalled her stricken eyes when they parted. “You don’t know how it is with us — how hard —” He hadn’t let her finish the sentence. Now, in the dark, he finished it for her:
You don’t know how hard our life is.

It was true. He didn’t know, but he could imagine. He had seen her shabby lodgings and sat by her meager fire. He remembered the darns and patches on her frock, and the way the sole of her boot parted from the upper. How could he, who had lived in comfort all his life, condemn her for stealing? The girl had no one to provide for her, no one to protect her. He remembered the beefy young fellow who had kissed her, and regretted that he hadn’t punished the man with his fists.

He thanked God he had not gone to the police station, as he had threatened to do. The girl might be telling the truth, after all; the photograph of Charles Augustus might have been stolen by Grisini, or even by the boy in Ebury Square. Perhaps if he questioned her a second time — kindly and patiently — she might tell him the truth about the matter. At the very least, he could apologize for his rash behavior, provide money for her immediate wants, and make sure that the beefy fellow left her alone.

He turned the thought over in his mind, and found, to his surprise, that it eased him a little. He closed his eyes and promised himself that he would return to Danvers Street that very day.

“Oh,” breathed Lizzie Rose. Her breath came out in a white mist. She stood with Ruby on the platform at Windermere, gazing over the wide space around her.

The children had slept through the last stage of their journey. The guard had shaken them awake. Now groggy, thirsty, and stiff with cold, they stood on the platform with the wicker trunk between them.

They had come to a new world, a world of immense space and ample light. Everything was foreign, majestic, and sublimely clean. Three inches of pristine snow lay on the grass. The sky was coldly blue. White clouds soared like galleons overhead, shadowing the snowy fells. The train station stood in the midst of steep hills: great, curving humps, one beyond the other, like a pod of whales breaching and diving.

Parsefall whistled. He had expected Windermere to be like London or Leeds: another city, with rows of begrimed houses pressed tightly together. He shook his head in amazement. “It’s like scenery,” he said at last. “Like a painted backdrop.” He could give no higher praise.

“I never thought it would be like this,” Lizzie Rose said. Her voice caught, and her eyes brimmed over.

“It ain’t nuffink to cry about,” Parsefall said disapprovingly.

“No,” agreed Lizzie Rose. She brushed her cheeks with the tips of her fingers. “We’ll have to hire a gig,” she said, and turned to face the station.

A man in a rough jacket came toward them. He spoke to them in a voice that was gruff but not unkind. Lizzie Rose did not catch his words, but they ended with something that sounded like
strawns-gill.

It took Lizzie Rose a moment to decipher this. She had thought of Strachan’s Ghyll as
stratch-hans-guy-el,
not
strawns-gill.
The man jerked his thumb over his shoulder, indicating a carriage drawn by two chestnut horses. He repeated, “Are you bound for Strachan’s Ghyll?”

“Yes, please,” said Lizzie Rose. “That is, if that’s where Mrs. Sagredo lives. She invited us to stay. I have her letter with me —”

“Madama,” the man corrected her, taking off his cap. “We call her Madama; it’s what she prefers. She had one of her fancies today and thought you’d come.” He replaced his cap and picked up the trunk, heaving it onto his shoulder as if it were weightless.

Parsefall emitted a squeak of protest. The man grinned at him. “Don’t you mind, now! I’m supposed to carry your things, and I’m not likely to drop ’em. I’m Mr. Fettle, coachman. Footman, too, when Madama needs one. My mother’s the housekeeper at Strachan’s Ghyll.”

Parsefall darted a nervous look toward Lizzie Rose. He didn’t like the idea of Madama’s fancies — how had the woman known they would come? But Lizzie Rose only tugged Ruby’s leash and answered, “Come, Parsefall,” as if he were as bound to obey her as the spaniel was.

P
arsefall had never ridden in a private coach. The inside was leather and tufted velvet, and there were two lap robes on the seat: glossy pelts from some immense black animal. “Look, Parsefall,” exclaimed Lizzie Rose. “Fur robes! Isn’t that kind?” She wrapped one end of the robe around Ruby, who was once again swaddled in the burlap sack. “Poor Roo,” she crooned. “She’s cold.” Ruby shivered theatrically. Lizzie Rose kissed her and made loving little noises that set Parsefall’s teeth on edge.

He hauled the lap robe around his shoulders and tried to anchor it in place by leaning back against the seat. The fur smelled queer, and he sneezed. He could have cried. He was half frozen, and everything familiar was hundreds of miles away. For the first time since the journey began, he thought of Clara, crammed into the wicker trunk. She had no choice as to where she was going; neither did he. His stomach growled, and he wished they’d bought two sandwiches at Lancaster. There weren’t any coffee stalls or baked potato stands in this clean, cold country, and they couldn’t eat the snow off the trees.

He shut his eyes and tried once more to sleep. Time passed, then: “Parsefall, look!”

Lizzie Rose sounded so excited that he left his seat and joined her at the coach window. They were approaching a red stone building, half castle, half cottage. It was attached to a high wall with an open archway. The house had a small turret, deliciously capped with snow. It looked like a piece of scenery for the puppet stage. “Is that it?” asked Parsefall.

“I hope it is,” Lizzie Rose answered. “It’s like something from a fairy book, isn’t it?”

Parsefall shrugged; he had never seen a fairy book. The horses drew the coach through the archway, but they did not stop, and Lizzie Rose looked crestfallen. “I suppose that was the gatehouse.”

Parsefall wondered what a gatehouse was. He said, “Huh,” in a skeptical tone of voice.

“Very rich people have gatehouses,” explained Lizzie Rose, “at the entrance to their estates. I suppose Mrs. Sagredo is very rich.”

Parsefall repeated, “Huh,” and clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering.

“She must have been expecting us.” Lizzie Rose sounded as if she were reassuring herself. “She sent the carriage. That was good of her. I hope she won’t be very distressed that we’ve come without Grisini.”

Parsefall stuck out his tongue to show what he thought of Grisini, but Lizzie Rose was too lost in thought to rebuke him. The horses drew them into an avenue of trees. The branches had not been trimmed and pressed close, tapping the sides of the coach and sending down miniature snowfalls. Parsefall tensed. He could navigate the thickest traffic and the narrowest alley, but he didn’t like being surrounded by trees. They seemed alive to him: they had too many fingers.

When at last the trees parted, the children saw the house: a castle of red sandstone. The gatehouse had mimicked the larger building; this was the real Strachan’s Ghyll, and it was forbidding, not picturesque. It stood in a circle of hollies, and the verdant green of the leaves made the stones look blood red. A round tower leaned over them at a menacing angle, as if daring them to take shelter. Even to Parsefall’s ignorant eyes, it looked unstable. Lizzie Rose said faintly, “It’s very grand, isn’t it?” and the carriage came to an abrupt stop.

The carriage doors opened. Mr. Fettle let down the steps so that the children could climb out. Parsefall wondered why the coachman hadn’t driven them all the way up to the house. He looked to Lizzie Rose for enlightenment, but she was busy with Ruby, who was whimpering,
I-want-to-go-out.
Lizzie Rose extracted the dog from the burlap sack and set her down. Ruby squatted in the snow.

Parsefall gave a snort of disgust. He started up the brick walkway to the great house. He had a queer instinct that someone was watching from within, and he eyed the windows nervously. They were pointed, with stained glass at the tops and small square panes, like scales. Three broad steps led to the entrance. The doors were arched and carved like church doors, and the hinges were black iron, cast in the shape of butterflies.

He raised one hand to the knocker, and the door opened from within.

From her tower, the witch surveyed the children. She had sat by the window all morning with a spyglass in her lap; it was by her order that the carriage stopped a little distance from the house. She wanted to see the children before they saw her.

Why hadn’t they come sooner? It had been weeks since she’d written; what had taken them so long? She had banished Grisini from the house, lest his presence frighten them; she had told the servants to expect two children who must be treated as honored guests. Cassandra had unearthed treasures from her collections and strewn them about the rooms, hoping to stimulate the children’s appetite for plunder. Each day, she had hoped for their arrival, only to be disappointed. Then that morning, she had awakened knowing that the children were on their way. They would come — at last, at last! — and one of them would deliver her from the phoenix-stone.

But they were not as she had pictured them. Her wistful fancy had conjured up a brute of a boy, a painted minx of a girl: two ripe young criminals who would have no scruples about stealing from her. The children who crept out of the coach were younger than she had thought they would be. They looked malnourished, especially the boy; probably the girl, being older, took the lion’s share of the food. What had Gaspare said about the girl?
She’s a deceitful little puss, in spite of her pious airs.
But it didn’t seem to Cassandra that either of the children looked particularly deceitful; they looked exhausted and defenseless. She lowered her spyglass. She had seen neglected children before. The streets of London were full of them. But one did not look at them there. One averted one’s eyes.