The Vespertine (2 page)

U
NLIKE THE SEEMLY
, segregated docks in New York City, Baltimore's northwest harbor was a fantastic place to step into an adventure.

Though my cousin Mrs. Stewart did her utmost to keep me from oggling at the sailors and shoremen, only a hood would have hidden them from me completely.

What marvels they were, some fine in uniforms from the best and worst steam lines, a Cunarder cap there, and the crisp, familiar white and red of the White Star Line on down the way. But the coal men and crabbers I found the most fascinating, for I had landed in Maryland on an unseasonably warm day.

My blouse clung to my flesh in those rare places my corset didn't confine, but these men all adock had no such troubles. Half of them had stripped to the skin, muslin shirts hanging from their belts, suspenders crossing bared chests and broad shoulders.

"Move along," Mrs. Stewart said, herding me with her parasol against my bustle. In spite of her hurry, I gazed my fill.

Young men, thin as whippets, ranged before us. They tipped hats and called hello in a way that said they
knew
they had no business greeting ladies this way. Some had accents, melodious hints of countries I'd read about but never seen. Others spoke with the same down-home tones Mrs. Stewart did.

"Out of the way," she threatened when one blue-eyed tease of a lad, this one at least fully dressed and no more than ten, fell into step beside us.

"It's trouble on the docks for ladies alone," he said, pulling his hat off and pressing it to his chest. He implored me, as if I had any say in the matter of my direction. "Beg you let me see your way to your carriage."

"We have not one penny for you, young man. Good day."

Mrs. Stewart not only led visiting cousins by the rod of her parasol, but she drove off churls with it, too. She threat ened with its lace and silk, and the boy melted into the crowd again. When he did, Mrs. Stewart made a triumphant sound, then looked to me.

"Have no doubt of it, Miss van den Broek, Baltimore is everything brash and forward." She hooked my elbow and steered me neatly around a broken board. "We'll make you a good match yet, but we won't find it here—mind your step."

"Fair enough," I said softly, laughing when a fruit vendor, an Araber, tossed up a pale green trio of apples to juggle.

A single yearning "Oh" escaped my lips.

My trip from Broken Tooth to Baltimore had lasted barely three days, but it had left me oversalted and undersweetened. The perfume from those apples burned my nose, sharpening my appetite with raw hunger.

I had no pocket money of my own. The price for keeping me was folded in a thick leather folio, tucked safely in Mrs. Stewart's coat. There was enough for a few gowns and necessaries. I'd need those to make proper friendships, hopefully a marriageable match, this summer—there was nothing more necessary than that, as far as my brother was concerned. Apples, however tempting, could hardly be considered so important.

Mrs. Stewart glanced at me, then traded a coin for an apple before hurrying me into the cobbled brick street. "Save it 'til we're on the road," she said.

Of course, I wouldn't thwart her; I clung to my apple and followed gratefully, until we came to a roundabout and an unattended victoria.

Though the leather seats shone a bit, worn in places from use, it was a glorious little car. The bonnet top was folded back, its wheel spokes painted gaily red—this carriage was worlds more delightful than the funereal rockaway carriage August kept at home.

Mrs. Stewart put her foot in one of the front spokes, looking over her shoulder at me. "In You go."

A flutter filled my chest, watching her hitch her skirts daintily and climb into the driver's seat. Trailing my gloved hand along the hitched horse's flank, I asked, "You'll be driving, ma'am?"

"We're no relation to the Commodore," she said, and of course intended to remind me that though I was a
van,
mine was
den Broek
and not
der Bilt.
"I'll drive or we'll swelter all day here. If it's all the same to you, I'd prefer suffocating at home."

"Where
is
Mr. Stewart?" I inquired, still lingering.

With brisk, gloved hands at the reins, Mrs. Stewart looked down at me. "At his office, I expect. The law's as much a calling as the cloth."

"I see," I said.

"Come on now. Lizzy told me you weren't the precious sort. Even if you are, I'm the driver you've got."

Chastened, I blushed and moved to climb in the carriage. But at once, I stopped.

I'm not entirely sure what possessed me. Maybe the loneliness of the cab, or the novelty of a lady driver, or just the wild air of the Inner Harbor in my lungs, but I asked, "Is there room up front, Mrs. Stewart?"

Mrs. Stewart answered my question with a distinct slide to the right. I folded my skirts as I'd seen her do and stepped up. From this perch, I could see the whole of Baltimore—it was a magnificent view.

"Have that apple now," Mrs. Stewart said, seamlessly urging the horse into traffic. "Caesar here will want the core."

My teeth cut into the fruit's firm and fragrant skin, and I tasted something entirely new as Mrs. Stewart drove us away from the harbor side.

Narrow row houses shone with white marble steps; the streets swelled with splashes of color—riotous silk gowns and cheerful vests cut in shades of earth and grass and sky. Children darted in front of our wheels, but miraculously survived their own derring-do, girls and boys alike. So many songs slipped into my ears—the call of Arabers, the shouts of newspaper boys, and delightfully, oddly, someone playing a pianoforte.

Somehow this struck me all as a daydream, a mythological fantasia too great to be real. All my life I'd lived on our cliff, looking down on a fishing village so small, I could raise my thumb to cover it. A season in town had been beyond my imagination. This great chaos and cry, smelling of sea and smoke and open ground—
this
was a
city.
My heart beat with it. My thoughts roared with it!

With another crisp bite of apple, I tasted—perhaps for the first time—the true sweetness of possibility.

***

"We'll share this bed. And I've cleared half the armoire for your things."

Clad in cherry silk, Zora Stewart moved as if her feet never touched the floor. She had a high color in her cheeks, her heart-shaped face delicate as a bisque doll's.

Curls escaped the sweep of her dark hair, coppery coils that served only to draw her throat longer and more elegant still. Only the faintest spray of freckles across her nose gave hint that she was anything but perfection.

"It's good of you to have me." I bowed my head, an imitation of her serene air that felt so unfamiliar, it could have been mockery. Lizzy was right. I'd spent too many years rusticating in the Down East, reading about manners but never truly practicing them.

"It wasn't as though I had a choice." Lights danced in Zora's eyes, hinting at the nimble mind wrapped in such a lovely package of grace and femininity. She had not spoken crossly. In fact, amusement touched the edge of her lips. "Can you polish boots?"

I played along. "I can, and darn socks and rebone stays..."

"How are you, I wonder," she said, as she turned to open the window, "at making biscuits?"

I covered my heart with my hand and confessed, "A failure, I admit. I'm told my biscuits suit nicely when there are no rocks to be had for a slingshot."

A soft breath of wind flooded into the room, stirring trapped heat and urging it away. Zora leaned against the windowsill and smiled. "Brilliant. I'm forever running short of ammunition for my slingshot."

"I have never been away from home," I told her.

"I have never had a friend to stay," she replied.

At once, we both took an accounting. Her gown was more fashionable; my hair more intricately dressed. In stillness, she held her hands with grace, and I sprawled, ungainly along the edge of the bed. In that moment, I suppose we could have decided to be rivals.

Instead, Zora took my hand and said, "We're too grand to stay indoors today, I believe."

***

Twining down streets that spread in a chaotic burst from Druid Hill Park, we took in sunshine and our fill of sightseeing—or, rather, sightseeing for me and sight-showing for her.

"Four mornings a week," Zora told me, tugging at a locked door, "we'll come here for classes. You won't care much for Miss Burnside."

Lifting my skirts, I rose to peer in the window. It looked like any private home on the block, though a plate by the door read SWANN DAY SCHOOL.

"I only had a tutor."

Zora nodded. "My friends Sarah and Mattie share a tutor, but Papa is fascinated with progress. Co-educational learning! Gaslight on tap! You should see the way he trembles in excitement when he talks about the new train line going in. Chicago's the future, he claims. We need a direct route to it!"

"August isn't modern at all," I said. "He's quite old-fashioned, in fact. He would have married me off by now if there were anyone in Broken Tooth
to
marry."

Wrinkling her nose, Zora asked, "What sort of name is Broken Tooth?"

"An accurate one," I said.

It was a hard-working village, small and spare. We had no regular doctor;dentistry was done in the barbershop. I supposed it made August feel like a lord to live on a hill above it all. Down East he could pretend to be a society man. I didn't bother explaining that, though. We Van den Broeks shared that pride, it seemed—I didn't want Zora to think I was more backward than she already must.

With a winning smile, I changed the subject. "So I'm looking forward to going to school with you!"

Zora looped her arm through mine to drag me away. "I already earned the first desk. It drives the boys to distraction. Have You taken Latin or Greek? You'll have to start at the last, but if you unseated them your first week ... oh!"

Bewildered, I asked, "Unseat them how?"

"With lessons. The first of the class earn the desks closest to the front; the last are sadly relegated to the shadows in back. It's farthest from the stove and the lamps and the windows."

"Sounds miserable," I said.

And to my delight, Zora laughed, a soft, naughty sound. "It's is."

"Secretly, you're abeast, aren't you?"

"There will be time enough for sainthood once I'm married," she said.

Then, with a strength I never would have thought possible, she yanked my arm, pulling me down an alley. Our forcible departure from the road startled me, my thoughts unsettled by a strange, sharp scent I couldn't place. There was no gate nor welcome to invite us through this passage, but Zora walked it with sturdy familiarity.

Pausing, Zora pressed a finger to her lips. Then she gathered her skirts so they would do no whispering as we crept into a set of adjoined yards. White wooden fences separated them, fist-size spaces between each plank giving us much room to peek through.

The high note of a struck axe rose up. I noted first the blade, dull at the handle and bright at the edge, catching sunlight and tossing it with a flash. His hair caught some of that spark, a little long and falling loose, brushing past eyes certainly light in shade. I was too far to make out the color exactly.

I ascertained that should I truly wish to know, I'd only have to ask Zora, whose grip tightened uncomfortably on my elbow.

"Thomas Rea," she said. She kept her voice low as she pulled me along the fences, for it seemed we needed to look on Thomas at many angles. "His father's a bachelor or a widower. It's our little mystery trying to guess which."

Oblivious to us, Thomas split through his lot of wood, oddly graceful at it. Such a brute chore should have been ugly to watch. Instead, it was a wonder, the way he turned a pile of maple into an orderly cord for burning.

"He's almost in our circle." Zora put her hands on my shoulders, ducking around me to get a better view. "Since his father's a doctor, that's respectable enough. But no one knows them, really. Sarah's mother is beside herself, trying to decide if any of us can marry Thomas."

I covered my mouth to hide my smile. "Is that so?"

"Mrs. Holbrook plots. It's her opium." Suddenly, Zora crumpled against the fence.

Hurrying to attend her, I asked, "Are you faint?"

"Simply mad, Amelia."

Zora exhaled a sigh, looking through the slats again. Her lashes fluttered as she battled her stays for a deep breath. Her hands had turned to hard knots, held tight at her waist. Deliberately, she brushed herself off and headed for the alley.

Though I mainly played at my charcoals, I had a moment of inspiration. Zora would make such an ideal Thisbe! How entirely like her in that moment, longing for a Pyramus at work with his axe. I imagined sketching holly in her hair and wispy gowns flowing from her shoulders...

"You're dawdling. Don't you want to get to the printer's today?"

Protesting, I swore, "I don't think August intended my allowance to be spent on calling cards!"

"Dash August, then," Zora said. "We'll spend it anyway!"

Newly dizzy with daring, I held up one finger. "A moment, wait!" And in my madness, fed by hers, I stepped up on the fence and called out, "Fancy You, Thomas, good afternoon!"

"Amelia!" Zora cried, her delight both complete and horrified.

I never knew if Thomas raised his head to see us, for Zora ran away laughing. What could I do but run after her?

T
HAT'S A MAN'S CARD
," Zora said, tugging a catalog from my hands. "What's the matter with you?"

"I like them!"

Reaching for the printer's book, I longed to look at the handsome calling card again, the one with a silhouette of a hawk. It seemed all the cards I preferred were meant for men—the ones with bold strokes and dark letters.

Nostrils flaring, Zora presented me with one of her cards. "See, there. That's a proper lady's card. Ivory and silver and script. Don't you think it introduces me well?"