The Aviary (20 page)

“My father thought he was Elliot?” Clara asked. “Why?”

She shrugged helplessly. “Oh, something about cuff links. He said he remembered seeing the distinctive cuff links on the poster when he was a boy.…”

Clara squeezed her mother’s hands. “George Glendoveer’s cuff links! The double
G
s. I know them. They were given to him by Mrs. Glendoveer. Didn’t you see them in the jewel box?”

“Darling, of course I know. But Nevan said they were in a box his father dug up from under a tree, of all things. And apparently he was severely beaten when his father found him looking through the box. But he was certain he could go back to his childhood home and find proof. If not the cuff links, then something else connecting him to the Glendoveers.”

Clara considered this. “Did he ever get to speak to Mrs. Glendoveer?”

“No. Nevan sent me here with you while he went to search for proof that he was Elliot. He didn’t even want me to know where he was headed. Nevan feared his father, and it was an obsession with him that you always be protected.”

“He loved me, then?” Clara asked.

“As much as I do.”

“But he never returned. Why?”

“I don’t know. Everything he did, he believed was right. I found him utterly convincing for so long. But now I’ve come to the sad conclusion that he was unable to discern the truth from his own imaginings.”

Clara studied her mother’s face. “Why are you sure he isn’t Elliot? What did Mrs. Glendoveer say when you came here?”

Her mother wiped the back of her hand across her forehead.
“This is the worst part of the story,” she said. “When I began to see that I’d made an awful mistake. I told Ruby that my husband believed he was Elliot Glendoveer. And she looked at me, standing there in the fog with my bundle, and said, ‘Good gravy, we’ve got another one.’ ”

“What did she mean?”

“You know Ruby. She is very frank. She brought me in for tea and explained that they had lots of visitors ringing the bell and letters and telegrams from all over from people convinced they were the missing Glendoveer. She said the number had dropped off in recent years, but invariably the claims were proved false.”

“But Mrs. Glendoveer must have had her own opinion.”

“She was as kind as she could be. I described Nevan to her, but of course it wasn’t enough to match him up with baby Elliot. As for the cuff links, she said George liked the ones she gave him so much, he had copies made. A pair could have been stolen when the children were taken. But they hadn’t been missed. And your father did not return.”

“And yet here we are still, in the Glendoveer house,” Clara said. “Perhaps she
did
believe he was Elliot.”

“Mrs. Glendoveer never said as much. Seeing that I had you, she took pity on us, and, as it happened, she had a position for me. Yet, if I am honest, I’d say we both hoped your father’s story was true. It kept me here much longer than I might have stayed, certainly.”

Clara sat, going over the details of her mother’s story in
her mind. Almost everything fit, but questions remained for her.

“Didn’t you look for my father?”

“Clara, I told you, he wouldn’t let me know where he was going. He feared his father enough not to want me to follow.… I suspect he might have gone out to one of the Pincushion Islands far out in the bay, but there are so many of them! They’re an untraceable lot, those people out there.”

Clara had heard of the Pincushions from Mrs. Glendoveer. They had odd names like Skull’s Head, Grindstone, Double X, and Tick’s Mouth. “Good places for scofflaws, sailors jumping ship,” Mrs. Glendoveer told her.

“But, Mama,” Clara said, “doesn’t it hurt to know that he might be out there somewhere? What if he suffers?”

“Of course it hurts,” she said. “Not knowing has made the years here quite difficult for me. No matter what passes, for good or ill, it is always better to know.”

On hearing this, Clara’s eyes filled with tears. “I am glad to hear you say that,” she said. “It is exactly what I tried to tell you today. It
is
better to know, Mama.”

Her mother dropped her chin and stared at her handkerchief.

Clara wiped her eyes. “And now you must tell me why you have shut me away.”

Her mother’s gaze met Clara’s. “Because I am afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Shall I name the fears one by one?” her mother asked.
“All right, then. First, I promised your father to keep you safe. He believed the man who raised him was an outlaw, after all, someone who might seek to silence him and us. And as he hasn’t returned … it’s possible that danger was real.

“Also, Mrs. Glendoveer convinced me that any children living in this house would be better off hidden—at least until they were no longer children.”

“But you know why she said that,” Clara said. “She spoke from her own experience.”

“Yes. Her experience was horrifying.” Harriet shuddered. “But beyond that, she convinced me that there were evil enough people around who might want to reenact a Glendoveer kidnapping. I already told you about all the false Elliots who came to her door. Well, there were also strange letters from people claiming to be the nanny’s accomplice, and worse. So Mrs. Glendoveer begged me to keep you inside, and I saw the sense in it.”

“But you told me I was ill!” said Clara with a pound of her fist. “I loved Mrs. Glendoveer, but wouldn’t it have been better to go away somewhere no one knew us? Then I could have lived like a normal girl and gone out in the world, and had friends and gone to school!”

Her mother’s eyes glittered in the candlelight. “You are a normal girl,” she said. “I believe this now with all my heart. But, darling … I didn’t always know.”

“You mean you thought there really was something wrong with my heart?”

“I kept you close,” said her mother, “because I wanted to make sure you hadn’t inherited anything … bad from your father.” Her shoulders began to shake, and she held her handkerchief to her mouth to stop the noise.

“But, Mother, surely you don’t think that I am mad!” Clara protested, which only made her mother sob harder.

“I have seen it run in families—more than once,” she said.

Clara felt helpless, seeing her mother broken like this. “But I’m fine,” she said, trying to be tender. “You’ve said so yourself. You don’t need to worry anymore.”

“I see only his goodness in you, but you don’t know how guilty I’ve felt. Who did I think I was, marrying a man with a secret past who had only roamed from one place to the next to escape his misery? And before he left, he was wild with the idea of being the surviving child. Not sleeping, not eating.”

“You loved him.”

“It wasn’t enough, Clara,” she said.

Clara dared to touch her mother once more. “You do love me, don’t you?”

“More than myself,” she said. “Darling, I needed an excuse to keep you hidden. If only I were cleverer, I might have thought of something better. Clara, if I haven’t done anything right so far, I mean to make it up to you. We’re going to change the way we do things around here. Do you believe me?”

Clara clung to her mother, believing.

She might have been content to go on even longer if not for her stomach, which was quite empty. “Did you fix Ruby her birthday dinner? I hope she doesn’t think we have forgotten her.”

Her mother straightened up and, finding her handkerchief soaked through, wiped her face with the back of her sleeve. “Not yet. If you help me, we can get ready twice as fast.”

But Ruby was already at the sink peeling potatoes when Clara and her mother entered the kitchen with their arms circling each other’s waists.

“How horrid, Ruby,” Clara said. “Forced to make your own birthday dinner.”

Ruby, though, dropped her paring knife, crossed the floor, and flung her arms around the two of them. “No, this is the best present,” she said. “Are we all right, all of us now?”

“Much better,” said Harriet, accepting the stout woman’s kiss on her cheek. “More than we have been in such a long time. Oh, Ruby.”

The best part about Ruby’s birthday supper was the new openness the three of them shared.

“It was Clara’s idea that I see
The Great Train Robbery
,” Ruby said with a mock frown. “I thought she wanted to see me off to a good time. But now I know she only wanted to see me off.”

“But I did want you to have a good time, Ruby,” Clara said. “I just had to get to the Historical Society. Mama knows all about it now.”

“Too much idle time,” said Ruby. “I’ve said it before, but a girl needs a playmate. Didn’t I say that, Harriet?”

Clara looked at Ruby with wonder.

Clara’s mother dabbed at her lips with a napkin. “Yes. You said it this evening, as I remember.”

“And what?” said Clara. “Mama, did you agree with Ruby?”

Harriet took a long drink of water. “Who is the little girl two houses over?”

“Daphne?”

She put down her napkin. “I’ve forgotten her last name.”

“Aspinal,” said Clara. “Oh, please, Mama, tell me, are you going to let me have Daphne over to visit?”

“I’m considering it. If you would consent to have Daphne and no others for the present, I think we could try.”

Clara threw her arms in the air. “Hooray! I feel it’s my birthday too, Ruby.”

“I don’t mind sharing,” she replied. “The more, the merrier.”

After dinner, Clara remembered her copy of
Virgil Poems
from Miss Lentham and went to the mudroom to fetch a lantern.

“Where you going?” Ruby asked.

“I’m taking this book out to the aviary,” Clara said. “It’s an old one, and I don’t read Latin. Besides, you know how the mynah loves her pages.”

“You’ve come round with those birds, haven’t you? I suppose we can thank Citrine for that.”

“Citrine was easy. I’m trying to make friends with the mynah now.”

“That old bird’s the toughest one,” Ruby said. “Good luck!”

When the birds spotted Clara, they greeted her with their customary excitement.

“Hello, my friends! Hello, George, Helen, Peter, Arthur! And you, Frances, I’ve brought something for you.”

Frances flitted over and Clara knelt down, shining her light so that the book’s gold lettering glinted in the dark.

“Can’t you see it? It’s a book from Miss Lentham, Frances.”

The mynah studied the volume without a word.

“I imagine you’re anxious to read it by yourself,” Clara said. She slid the book between the bars and let it fall open for Frances to examine. The bird bobbed her head, placed one claw on the edge of a page, and then withdrew it. “Can’t read,” said the bird. Her voice was uncharacteristically soft.

“Do you need more light?”

Again the mynah touched the page with her claw, ran it along a line of type, and stopped. “Can’t. No more.”

“But, Frances, you’ve always loved scratching around in your pages of words. I thought that’s why you wanted the papers brought to you.”

“Can’t,” whispered Frances. “No.”

Clara thought she’d rather have more of Frances’s sharp tongue than to see her withdrawn with her beak to her breast. “Should I take the book?”

Instead of answering, the mynah threw her head back and let loose a piercing cry unlike any noise Clara had ever heard her make. Three times she wailed to the roof, and the other birds shook their bodies as if they were deeply disturbed.

“I’m sorry. Let me know what you want. Do you want me to go? Please tell me!”

Frances flapped her glossy black wings. “Let me go! Let me go!” she said, in a voice so hoarse with desperation that Clara realized she had given the mynah words she had been searching for.

“I can’t let you go from the aviary, Frances,” Clara said. “These aren’t my words. Your father has said you must stay.”

“Elliot!” said Frances.

“Find Elliot,” said George from his perch on high. “Let me go too.”

“Tsip-tsip! Tsip-tsip!” chirped Helen.

Arthur and Peter took up a rhythmic cry, whereupon the entire cage erupted in squeaks and shrieks.

Clara stood, absorbing all the sound until it resonated in her bones. In her mind, the bits and pieces of everything she had gleaned about the Glendoveers’ story held together. She had a picture now! The blue embroidered poem, barely perceptible at the bottom of Mrs. Glendoveer’s mourning picture.

None shall fly till all come home.…

Thrusting her hand through the bars, Clara reached toward the mynah. “I need to know,” she said. “When I find Elliot at last, will he break the spell?”

“Yes,” said Frances.

“But then what?” Clara asked. “What shall happen to all of you?”

“Fly!” cried Frances.

“Let us go,” pleaded George.

“Go where?”

The mynah twisted her head back and forth. “Father!” she said.

“Father!” echoed George.

“And Mother?” Clara asked.

“Ma-MA!” squealed Frances, and the rest of the birds responded with such a racket that Ruby ran outdoors. “Mercy!” she said. “How did you get them so stirred up? If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were pulling out their feathers.”

“It’s all right, Ruby,” Clara said. “I’ll try to calm them down.”

Ruby appeared doubtful. “Do you think you can?”