We Five (21 page)

“Bull
cods
!” expostulated Ruth in a rude voice, making certain to scrape her chair loudly upon the slate floor to keep the oath from a precise audit by her two companions.

But even though there was no guessing from Carrie and Jane about Ruth's tenor or her present state of ill humour, they purposefully ignored it.

Molly Osborne delivered Mrs. Dowell's grey satin pelisse into the hands of the woman's maid-of-all-work. She was upon her return to Mrs. Colthurst's dress shop when she was hailed in the High Road by her cousin, Jemma Spalding. Though Jemma, who was the child of Mr. Osborne's sister Cecily Spalding, was only one year older than Molly, yet the two had not been close since childhood, for as Jemma grew older she began to display a capricious nature that removed common sense altogether from the equation of her life, and became unpredictable and erratic in her behaviour, once taking it to mind to have a bathe in the stream that meandered behind the church she attended, and to do so right after morning services and whilst still dressed in all her Sunday finery. There were some who thought her mad. Molly did not. To Molly, her cousin was merely maddeningly eccentric.

Having completed her marketing for the morning, Jemma was bending her steps to the home of an old woman she knew who lived in a crooked house on the apron of town—a woman who, Jemma explained to Molly as they walked along, was of gipsy stock, but no longer roamed the countryside to sell gispy jewellery and colourful hand-knitted scarves and shawls, but was now settled upon a little piece of tenant land, where she raised poultry and grew parsnips and did only one thing that she confessed was a residual indulgence from her former life: she told fortunes.

“I have my fortune told once a fortnight,” said Jemma, with a look that conveyed a great eagerness to see the woman again. “Then I hurry home and tell Mamma and Papa all that Madame Louisa has told to
me.
Alas, they never believe me—not even when those things which were predicted come true. Yet I know that the Madame has a rare gift, and I cannot help wishing I had leave and means to tell a good many others about it.”

Molly smiled with genial indulgence. “That is all very interesting, Jemma, but I must go back to work now. The dress shop is just round the corner.”

“Yes, I know, but won't you come with me for just a few minutes to see my fortune-telling friend? I have nearly half a shilling left from my marketing and will be happy to pay to have
your
cards read for a change. Aren't you the least bit curious to know what
your
future holds?”

“Who isn't curious to know such a thing?” returned Molly. “But I cannot spare another moment. Mrs. Colthurst will wonder what has become of me.”

“I will tell her you were helping me—that I sprained my foot and my basket was so heavily laden with vegetables and eggs that I simply could not hobble home without assistance.”

“And that would be a falsehood. I do not tell falsehoods, Jemma—as a rule.”

“As a rule,
no.
But as an exception, you have been known to dissemble without the tiniest scruple—such as the time when we were girls and found the kittens and their mother in my father's barn and made a nice nest for them and brought little kitchen scraps for the mother each morning before school, because we knew she could not be both a successful mother
and
a successful mouser under the circumstances. We kept the secret together, did we not? For we both knew that Papa would drown the little ones if he should ever find out about them.”

“That was an exceptional situation, Jemma. The lives of five kittens hung in the balance.”

“But this is
equally
exceptional. My last reading was quite disconcerting.”

“What do you mean?”

“I cannot say. Not until we hear what the future holds for
you
by way of comparison
.
”

Molly sighed cheerlessly. “Jemma, you've become tiresome.”

“Do come. It's very important.”

“Yet you will not tell me why.”

“I cannot. Not just yet.”

Molly thought for a moment, her brow knitted in annoyance. “My dear cousin, there is a reason the children in our town make up little rhymes about you.”

“I am different, I'll admit. But this hardly resembles the times I climb the roof of my father's cottage wearing wings fabricated from chicken feathers to fly myself off and away to London for the season.”

“When did you do this?”

“I'd rather not say,” replied Jemma, whilst brushing a chicken feather from the left gigot of her frock.

“I will warrant, Jemma, that there are extremes to your behaviour, and by comparison this request
does
seem very nearly reasonable.” Molly sighed. “So let us go quickly to hear what the gispy woman says, and I should hope very much that she will not foretell how I am to be cashiered by Mrs. Colthurst for shirking my responsibilities at the shop.”

Molly had never seen a woman so burdened by troubled thoughts as the scarf-headed Madame Louisa. Jemma responded to the old woman's expression of worry by delivering soothing pats to her shawl-draped shoulders. Madame Louisa answered Jemma's thoughtful enterprise by producing an appreciative glimmer of a near-toothless smile, which showed bravery in the face of apparent desolation.

“It has happened again,” confided the old gipsy in a low tone. “Three times, in fact, since your last visit, Jemma.”

“Three times out of how many?” asked Jemma. She was now patting the old woman with a much stronger hand, for it seemed required.

“Out of three,” the woman answered glumly. “For after these I shut my door and locked it tight. I only admitted the two of you this morning for I have decided that I must have
someone
to whom to confess my fears. And they are dark and terrible fears, indeed.”

“And how did the three react when they heard what the stars foretold for them?”

“I confess—I could not bring myself to speak the truth as the cards conveyed it to me.” Madame Louisa took pause to blow her nose into her handkerchief and to dab at her tear-glistening eyes (and in that order, although a different order would have been tidier). “I told each of the three that which came most conveniently to mind, for if I had said what I actually saw upon the cards—what they had to say about the town at large—I should send them into a similar state of despondency, and I did not wish to be so cruel.”

“And what did these new readings reveal?” asked Jemma, cringing in anticipation of the answer.

“The same as was revealed for you, dear girl. The same, no doubt, as we should see if I were to lay out the cards for your young cousin. Which is why I will not do it, for this would make five, and what is already a certainty will only be a superfluity.”

Jemma thought this over, whilst Molly sate quiet and confused and not wishing to intrude, for the look on the warty face of the old gipsy was frighteningly wretched, and she knew not what she
could
say to contribute aught of value to the interview. Finally, Jemma spoke: “Yet, perhaps, Madame Louisa, there is still the glimmer of a chance that if you will but deal the cards for Molly, they may speak only to her
own
circumstances and not to the fate of the town at large. Could that not be possible?”

Madame Louisa considered the prospect as she drew a slice of apple from a plate set before her and popped it into her mouth. “Apple slice?” she said, proffering the plate to the two cousins.

As the gipsy looked too much like the crone in the fairy story who offered the poison apple to Snow White, Molly declined with a shake of the head, though Jemma took a slice and bit into it appreciatively. Molly noted that Jemma was quite carefree and casual in her society with the gispy. Perhaps, thought Molly, the woman served as a preferential surrogate for Jemma's mother, as Molly's aunt was severe and uncommunicative and demonstrative of so little affection for her oldest daughter. And Jemma's father was not very different in this respect from his wife. It was a home with little love within—or at least the kind of love with which Molly was most familiar: one which dwelt in sweet union betwixt her father and herself. In that moment, Molly felt a little sorry for Jemma. And who could not also feel sorry for the miserable Madame Louisa who wore pain upon her face in every corner and wrinkle?

Subsequently, Molly was compelled to say, “Whether the reading should apply to me alone
or
to the town of Tulleford, I should like to know what the future holds. Perhaps we will be lucky and the spell will be broken and all will come out well in the end.”

Madame Louisa turned to Jemma, her lips compressed with censorious displeasure. “What is this fool girl saying?”

“She's saying that she'd very much like to have her fortune told.”

“Very well, then. We will all rue it. Yet I will do it.”

The fortune was told through the laying down of the gnarled, colour-faded, dog-eared cards upon the rickety-legged deal table.

And it was not good. Not good at all.

But there was a small compensation. “Ah, this is most interesting,” said the gipsy, as she closely examined the cards she'd put down before her in the configuration of a cross. “At least we know now roughly
when
the tragedy will occur: in two weeks' time. Or sometime thereabout.”

“A tragedy? What manner of tragedy?” asked Molly, leaning forward in her chair.

Madame Louisa did not lift her eyes from the cards. “We do not know the
nature
of that dire thing which is in store for the townspeople of Tulleford. We know only
that
it will occur. Many will be touched by it. Some—perhaps many—will die. This is the death card, you see—this centre card. Its propinquity to the cards above and below magnifies the portent. You will note that
this
aspect of the cards' configuration has not changed in each of the five readings. It is the
calendrical
cards, which now appear—it is these which give us a fixed time frame for supposition.”

Jemma shook her head with regret. “I should never have pushed you to read for Molly. You knew what to expect and I didn't believe you.”

Madame Louisa reached out first to stroke Jemma's hand and then to give her another apple slice in consolation. “It is good that we've given the cards leave to speak once more, for as it turns out, they
did
have something else to say.”

“Perhaps,” said Molly, wishing to be helpful, “if we were to read the cards yet again, further intelligence pertaining to the forthcoming tragedy—as you have put it—may be gleaned, and this would help us to better prepare for it.”

The gipsy woman shook her head dismissively. “The cards have said all they intend to say. With the passage of a fortnight something most dreadful will befall the town of Tulleford and everyone who lives herein. I advise the both of you to
leave
this place—go abroad for a period—to save yourselves from it. This I intend to do myself at my earliest convenience. That will be six pence, Jemma, and I should also like one of those stalks of celery from your basket, if you are willing.”

It took not five minutes for Molly to change her thinking about what she had just heard and observed, and to change it in a most drastic fashion.

“A fine thing,” bolted out Molly, as her cousin Jemma walked along with her to the dress shop, “having a laugh at
my
expense!”

“What do you mean? Did you see either of us laughing?”

“I detected a smirk on that old hag's face as we left.”

Jemma shook her head. “It was no smirk. She has a mouth tic. It cannot be helped.”

“Stuff and nonsense! The two of you set all of this up to make the fool of me. I'm fortunate to have come to my senses as quickly as I did.”

“It is
no one's
good fortune that you have changed your mind about it,” said Jemma with a fretful look. “The thing was neither a joke nor a lark, for I should never be so heartless. You did at one point believe it; I saw it in your face. What
I
find difficult to contemplate, dear cousin, is the fact that you now do not.”

“I will own she was good.
Quite
good—the both of you. Then when I stepped out into the bright light of day, I came straightaway to see through your comical scheme, as if I were waking from a terrible dream.”

Jemma grew quiet as the two cousins walked along. Finally, she said, “Oh, Molly, I don't think I should be able to bear it alone, knowing there isn't a single person here in Tulleford—once Madame Louisa has fled—who knows what I know and dreads what I dread. The next two weeks will be so frightfully lonely and so frightfully
frightening.
”

Molly stopped upon the spot. She put her hands together and applauded her cousin for what she perceived to be a fine performance. “Brava! Brava! But I cannot commend the little play entirely, cousin Jemma, for you have left out an important point of plot. Just what
is
supposed to happen? On this point the cards fall conveniently silent. At any rate, the curtain has come down, you've had your bit of fun for the morning, and there's the end to it. Run along now, Jemma, and leave me to my terrible fate. You may go, if you wish, and climb once more to the roof of your family cottage and become a flying chicken. Mind you don't forget to send me a letter upon your aerial arrival in London.”

With that, Molly Osborne resumed her march, quickened her step, and left Jemma standing silent and quite unhappy on the side of the road.

Molly was determined to think no more of all the nonsense that had delayed her return to the dress shop.

Except that she could not help herself. After the curtains had been drawn, the candles snuffed out, and the darkness of the night had settled upon her bedchambers, she thought of it so much, in fact, that she did not sleep a wink. She pondered over what it might be—that most horrible thing from which she, like Madame Louisa, should flee in wild-eyed panic. And
if
she fled, what would become of her circle-sisters? What would be
their
fate?