29. Sam Armoring #2
Perhaps not everything Clementine could see was apparent to me, but I saw enough.
Meg and Gertie, wholeheartedly impressed with this tale of medical enchantment; Walter, clearly besotted with the speaker rather than the story; Iris and Wister, respectively curious and skeptical.
And I could see Clementine herself, with the expression of determined neutrality that I was coming to recognize as her posture of defense, the face that appeared when concealment was of the utmost importance.
“He wasn’t an associate of Father’s,” Clementine said from the doorway.
“Oh, Clementine!” Rosetta exclaimed happily. “I was telling them about my asthmatic attack. You remember it better than I do.”
Clementine took a step into the room, her expression grave. “I certainly remember. It’s etched in my mind.”
“You’re the older sister, of course,” Iris said.
“I was ten,” Clem assented, putting down her satchel. She spoke carefully. “I remember holding her hand while her fingers turned cold. I remember the color of her skin changing. I remember the look upon your face, Rosie, as you fought for air.”
“Thank the spirits for the enchanter!” Gertie exclaimed.
“There’s no question that he saved Rosie’s life,” Clem replied quietly.
“I can well understand,” Walter said solemnly, “why you would wish to pursue enchantment yourself after such an event.”
In a brief, unguarded moment, something like grief flashed across Clementine’s face. Then it was gone, and she looked at Walter with composure. “Yes,” she agreed. “As I’ve said to Miss Amsel, I am greatly interested in medical enchantment. I’ve already benefited from her teaching in that area.”
Wister had been watching Clementine with a thoughtful expression, and she didn’t speak, even now. Something about the quality of Clem’s words had cooled the room, and now the convivial atmosphere was gone. Rosetta, her spirits suddenly dampened along with everyone else’s, looked a little confused.
“Well,” Iris said briskly, standing up. “I’m sure you’d like to resume that important work, and I’ve already wasted half the morning here. My sisters, Bernie and George, are expecting me. Walter may have unlimited leisure time, but I must get home before noon.”
Walter stood up. “I couldn’t resist coming to see how the studies were progressing,” he said sheepishly, “since my classes aren’t until the afternoon. It sounds as though you’ve been learning more than I have,” he said to Clem.
“I’m learning so much from Miss Amsel,” Clem said. “Thank you again for the introduction. I’m indebted to you.”
“Oh, not at all, not at all,” Walter protested, embarrassed. “It will be a great pleasure to see you succeed, as I know you will.”
Rosetta got to her feet as well. “Of course she will.” She beamed happily, her cheerfulness restored. “Gertie, Meg, a pleasure to meet you.”
As the little group broke up, I noticed Iris extending an invitation to Rosetta, and Walter shining with delight at the prospect. It was graciously accepted, a nervous, fluttering look was exchanged, and Iris benevolently herded her brother toward the door.
“I’ll see you at home,” Rosie said, embracing Clem quickly.
“Why don’t we drop you off?” Iris said. “We came by coach.”
So the visitors left, and Gertie and Meg reluctantly returned to their work elsewhere in the house, and Wister and Clementine were left alone. The room abruptly seemed somber and silent. “Sit down,” Wister said gently.
Clementine sat in one of the chairs of the little table. She pulled out the books from the satchel. “I apologize for coming late today. I had an urgent task.”
“No matter,” Wister replied. She paused. “Would you like to tell me the rest of the story of Rosetta’s illness?”
“No,” Clem said quickly. “Not now,” she amended, in a softer tone. “It was a momentous event in our lives, and one with many repercussions. I find myself here because of it.”
Wister nodded. “Very well. When you wish to speak of it, I’ll be glad to listen.”
For a moment Clem stared at the surface of the table, her eyes fixed, her face still.
The silence deepened. Elsewhere in the house, the sound of Gertie’s chirping laughter echoed.
The slapping sound of wet fabric being tussled into cleanliness came from somewhere else.
Outside, in the garden, someone was singing quite terribly.
When Wister spoke, she appeared to be changing the subject. “You may have heard that my given surname is Croix, not Amsel,” she said.
Clem glanced at her. “Yes. Walter mentioned it.”
“It’s my father’s name. He was the last of the Croix family.”
“Aren’t you, then, the last of the Croix family?”
“Not really. My father disowned me when I made the attempt to enter the spirit realm.”
“Oh—I’m sorry.”
Wister smiled. “I was not, and am not. It gave me the occasion to change my name. He had little enough to do with me when I was a child and a young woman. Mostly he was a distant figure, too severe when I was little and too intolerant when I was older. My mother was a native woman from the Great Lakes. And she had some knowledge of enchantment.” Clem looked at her with open surprise.
“Yes—it’s common there. The native people, unlike the men of Commonwealth, share the enchantment between men and women.
Of course, when I was very young, I didn’t understand that it was enchantment.
I only saw her care, her precautions, the many small ways in which she made the path smooth for me.
My understanding came the winter I was eight.
It was January, and the weather was frigid, with at least a foot of snow on the ground.
I was exploring in the woods that surrounded my father’s estate, and I fell into a sort of narrow cave.
It was too steep for me to climb out. But I’d brought with me the tinderbox that my mother had always insisted I carry, and I tried to light a fire.
No luck—there was nothing to burn. I called and called to no avail. And then darkness fell.
“I thought I’d be cold, but I wasn’t. I felt perfectly comfortable, only anxious and hungry.
In the morning, I heard the search party looking for me, and I called to them.
They pulled me out with a rope. My mother was there, desperate and fearful, and she clung to me the entire way back to the house.
In the days that followed, I noticed the servants casting nervous glances in my direction, and even my tutors seemed unnerved by my presence.
My mother, who never lied to me, explained that they found my survival suspicious.
They didn’t know, she told me, that the tinderbox I carried was enchanted.
It would have kept me warm on an iceberg.
She had enchanted the tinderbox herself.
“I understood then how her power had protected me in my great moment of peril, even when she herself couldn’t be present. It was as if she had been with me all along. I knew then that I would become an enchanter.”
Clementine smiled, and it was one of her genuine smiles that emerged so rarely, lighting her eyes with tenderness. “What a touching story. Do you still have the tinderbox?”
Wister reached into the pocket of her pants and withdrew a small tinderbox, cylindrical, with an oval firesteel attached to it by a slender chain. She placed it on the table.
Clem inspected the tinderbox in silence. “How did you survive, afterward? Not as a child, I mean, but after your father disowned you? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“For a time I wandered. Well, not at first—at first I was imprisoned by the commonwealth for having practiced enchantment. Then, once I’d been freed, the warden recommended I come here, to Keel House.
I rejected this outright, wanting nothing to do with such a life—it seemed to me then an acquiescence to the judgment that had been rendered of me.
So I wandered, in a great arc, northward first and then west. My mother had died three years earlier, of cholera.
I began searching for the people she’d abandoned in order to marry my father, but then it became a longer search, one that lasted several years.
When I returned to Massachusetts, I found that my view of Keel House had changed.
I didn’t see it as a house for wayward women; instead it was a house of peace, of refuge.
In the time that I’d been wandering, my father had died.
And at the end of his days he had decided to leave me all his fortune.
The fact is, he had no one else. I decided I would use it for Keel House.
It means we can accept more women into the house, and we don’t worry about the income made by our work. ”
“That’s very fortunate.”
Wister nodded. They sat in silence for a time, and I sensed that something had shifted between them. Clementine wasn’t forthcoming, not yet, but Wister had won her confidence. When the time came, and Wister reached out her hand, Clementine would take it.