Page 12 of House of Furies
Did I dare broach the subject? Chijioke and Poppy had been kind enough. I pressed my luck, lifting the teacup with trembling fingers. “You obviously look different.”
She laughed, and the croak in her voice returned for but a moment. “Congratulations, girl, it appears you have eyes in your head.”
“I only meant—”
“I know what you meant,” she interrupted, wiping her hands yet again on her apron. “Sometimes it is best to look your worst. If everything was exactly as it seemed at all times, we would live in an awfully dull world, don’t you think? Now eat up, girl, and fast. The master fancies a word with you.”
At my side, Poppy gasped.
“Mr. Morningside wants to greet his newest employee.”
Chapter Eight
So I was to go beyond the green door. And so soon.
I felt Poppy’s eyes on me as I left the kitchens. The thought of meeting my employer—someone the girl had warned against—had made the scone in my mouth all but ash. Authority figures and I never quite got on, for obvious reasons. I chafed at their superiority and they likewise chafed at my insubordinate attitude. But adults never actually had it figured out, did they? My mother certainly hadn’t. And it could not be said of my grandparents that wisdom came with age; they had grown wizened but not wise.
The teachers at Pitney? I suppose they were adults in the sense that they were grown versions of us, former students who gorged themselves on power and self-righteousness, taking out their frustrations on the younger girls who could do nothing but shrink and obey.
Still, even if I had no intention of respecting Mr. Morningside, I didn’t like the uncertainty that surrounded him. Poppy had made his company sound cold, even frightening...
She’s just a little girl.
“Are you deaf?” Mrs. Haylam followed me out into the foyer and hurried me along, swatting at my backside with her apron. “He wants to see you. Now, girl, not later.”
“It won’t be so bad!” Poppy called from the kitchen. I could hear her cleaning up the tea, and most likely sneaking bits of ham to her hound.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the housekeeper said. She bustled me to the green door, and, with company and in the warm light of day, I didn’t hear the odd song coming from it that I’d heard before. “It’s just a formality. I expect you to be quick, yes? We have so many guests this week, I can’t imagine how we’re supposed to manage them all with this skeleton crew.”
Mrs. Haylam skirted around me and opened the door, ushering me through with now familiar impatience. What felt like a warm, tropical breath rushed out to meet me.
“Off you go, and show the master more respect than you show me, child.”
With that warning, I nodded and began down a set of stairs. I had expected an office right on the other side of the door, but instead I found a kind of cellar passage leading underground. It ought to be cold, I thought, taken aback by how overly warm the corridor felt. The green door shut behind me, and either I hadn’t noticed them burning before, or a series of candelabras lining the walls leapt to life. Yellow flames danced on either side of me, illuminating the gradual descent that turned, spiraling, leading me down into a kind of tall antechamber.
I paused at the bottom of the stairs, appreciating the paintings hung in the grand, vaulted chamber. The walls were plasterpainted the color of mint, and when I put my hand on the plaster it felt warm to the touch, like it was somehow lit from within. Alive. The paintings were a series of portraits, all of solitary men, all in different stages of life and different locations. Here was a boy, perhaps of ten, posing proudly with a hunting rifle and a dead pheasant. And here was a middle-aged man with a heavy black beard, his boot propped on the railing of a sailing schooner. And there an elderly gentleman in repose in his library.
Down on this subterranean level, I could hear no hint of the goings-on above. It was as if the boardinghouse had ceased to exist.
There was no mistaking it—I was stalling. A familiar sense of panic welled in my throat. Mrs. Canning, the headmistress at Pitney School, had called me before her too many times to count. My fingernails were never clean enough; my gait was too arrogant or too sly. My spelling was too improbably correct. I was always cheating or dawdling, sleeping too late or waking too early, being too helpful or not accommodating enough. She singled me out as her adversary, her project, and from my first day at Pitney she and the teachers had colluded to make my life unstable. I never knew what, precisely, was expected of me. The rules constantly shifted, and therefore I never performed at an adequate level.
My friend Jenny always said they were just jealous because I already knew some French and Latin, and because I took tolessons readily and with a quick mind. But Jenny was always charitable that way. The far more likely explanation was that they simply hated me.
Jenny didn’t believe in such things. Every bad reaction, every act of malice, needed to be justified. But I knew better—some people were simply mean-spirited. The world could be evil and unfair, and the sooner one accepted this idea, the sooner one could get on with the business of surviving. Surviving this time, I thought with a sigh, meant playing the part of a good little scullery maid.
No doubt I would face the same random cruelty from this Mr. Morningside. I tried to resolve my posture and face into the correct combination of obedient and simple. It was always best to be underestimated, and who wouldn’t want a docile, dull, but determined employee?
The vaulted antechamber narrowed toward a hall and another green door. As I neared this door, flattening down my apron, I heard nothing on the other side but the scratching of a quill pen.
I breathed deeply, stilled, and knocked twice on the door.
Go in, be pleasant, leave, return to work. You can accomplish this, Louisa. You can just be normal. You can disappear.
“Come in.”
It was not the voice I expected—not old and gruff but mellow. Perhaps a bit nasal, but not at all mean. I opened the door, finding a round room that reminded me of some kind of cistern.Though I saw no leaks, the place felt warm and wet. Perhaps the spring on the grounds was responsible for the clamminess. I was at once struck by the number of standing birdcages filling the large office. They decorated the place in a semicircle around a long, tall desk. The cages stood at varying heights, each filled with a different bird. Some were simple English things I had seen myself in the country; others wore riotous colors, great crested plumes spilling over their heads. Strangely, it didn’t stink at all of animal, and stranger still, each and every bird was utterly silent, as if... commanded. Controlled.
Some noticed me; others groomed themselves, or slept with pointed heads under their wings. The master himself, Mr. Morningside, had noticed me, too. He stood tall and straight behind his desk, his pen down and at rest on a stack of papers. His right hand was tucked into his coat. It reminded me of something Jenny had said at Pitney, that her French aunt had shown her an illustration of Napoléon Bonaparte in theTimesand bragged about how handsome and regal he was, standing there with his fingers hidden in the flap of his jacket. A flashy gold pin studded his cravat. And he was young. Disarmingly young. Older than myself or Lee, certainly, but not very.
