Chapter 19
“It was my cow, Saint Margaret,” the woman with the broken arm was saying, sounding deeply inconvenienced by the entire affair.
“Are you calling me Saint Margaret, or is that your cow’s name?” Mae asked, her brow furrowed as Rosalind nudged Ezra Barnett into a corner to observe. “Some people think Mae is short for Margaret. Sadly, it isn’t. I’m stuck with the one syllable.”
The woman gave a begrudging little smile. “My cow is lofty, miss.”
Mae chuckled, reaching out to examine the arm by pulling it into her lap as the woman took the chair opposite her own. “Well, she has every right to be. Why did she step on you?”
“I startled her by kicking the milk bucket into her legs and then dove to grab it without thinking,” the woman said with a sigh. “My fault, really, but my husband gave Saint Margaret quite a smack to the behind after, which only made matters more chaotic. He’s a protective one, my Bradley.”
“Well, we’ll deal with him later,” Mae assured her. “I’m afraid it’s two bones broken here, not just one. The setting is going to hurt. Did Bradley come with you? I can give you something for pain, but you’ll need help getting home if I do. It’ll make you a bit silly.”
“He didn’t,” she said with a frown. “Can I take it with me and be silly after I get there?”
“Of course,” said Mae. “Rosalind, would you be a dear and hand me the tallow on the table there? I’m afraid I need to oil you up a little first, Mrs …?”
“Wilson,” she said. “I don’t mind. Arm’s quite numb.”
Rosalind passed the tin over to Mae, who got to work immediately, slathering up the woman’s arm while Rosalind turned and fetched a towel to drape in Mrs. Wilson’s lap to avoid staining. “Trust me,” she said with a little smile, “you don’t want to ruin the fabric.”
Mae tittered. “Mrs. Everly here got in quite a bit of trouble with her brother for getting ointment on his good sheets recently. Fine cotton, I hear.”
“The finest,” Rosalind returned with a roll of her eyes.
“What are you going to … I’m sorry,” said Ezra Barnett, gulping down his discomfort. “I am just curious. What is the oil for?”
Mae turned to him with a raise of her brows. “It makes everything under the skin a bit more pliable. Do you want to feel it?”
“No!” he said, a bit louder than it looked like he meant to, which made every woman in the room laugh.
“How about I tell you a story while I work?” Mae suggested to Mrs. Wilson. “I find that it helps take the sharpness off the thing. Have you met the famous Mr. Ingalls down in Seven Dials?”
“No, miss,” answered Mrs. Wilson. “What’s he famous for?”
“Well, I had the pleasure of finding that out recently,” Mae said, using her thumbs to begin to urge the muscles around the broken bones into place, making her patient wince but focus on her words all the same.
“He has a bakery with the finest breads and pies and cakes, and when I went in to buy a pastry for my dear old granddad, we got to talking. He said to me that he invented the fluffy dough recipe that made his bakery famous, which was very impressive, wasn’t it?
But then he lamented, ‘No one calls me Ingalls the Baker, do they?’ and I suppose they don’t, for I had never heard him called that. ”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Wilson. “That is a shame.”
“Indeed, indeed,” agreed Mae. “Hold your breath a moment. Yes, good, just a little pinch. Excellent. Anyhow, then he said to me he also built the beautiful brick oven that he baked his creations in, and the whole bakery around us besides. ‘But no one calls me Ingalls the Builder either, do they?’ he told me, shaking his head and frowning. And it’s true, no one calls him that. ”
Mrs. Wilson was staring at her, entranced, as Mae pulled her arm firmly out and pinned her palm to Mae’s own thigh.
“He also once saved a baby from drowning, he told me, but no one called him Ingalls the baby savior either. He lamented this for quite some time, you know,” Mae continued, walking her fingers along the break until she found the right spot, then lifting the full heel of her hand up alongside it.
“He told me he recobbled the whole street outside the bakery too. Do they call him Ingalls the road builder? No. But, Mrs. Wilson, you make love to one goat …”
Snap.
The arm popped back into place just as the shock and gasp of the joke landed, with Rosalind gasping on her own titter and Mr. Barnett’s hand slapping up over his mouth.
“One goat,” repeated Mrs. Wilson with a weak chuckle, and then she promptly fainted.
“Oops,” said Mae, lunging forward to catch her. “Mr. Barnett, if you could? Let’s just get her on the cot there.”
He stumbled forward, shaky but willing, and helped place her while Mae protected her arm and laid it over the rag on her torso.
“Now we have to bind and splint it,” she told him. “Rosalind, the tray?”
Mae, to her credit, talked him through the entire process while he hovered nearby, watching out of one eye while keeping the other firmly locked on the exit.
He got steadier as they went and even stayed behind to watch Mae compound the pain-relief mixture that she would send home with Mrs. Wilson once she woke back up.
Rosalind patted him on the shoulder in encouragement. “I fainted with the patient the first time I watched a bone get set,” she told him.
“And a lot of people just run away,” Mae added. “You did well.”
“I did?” he muttered to himself as they exited the little treatment room and Mae took in the next person seeking treatment.
He fumbled for his notebook in his waistcoat pocket and then looked down at it and tucked it immediately back in without even cracking it open. He shrugged at Rosalind’s look of curiosity. “No need,” he said. “I’ll never forget any of that.”
She giggled and nodded in understanding. “At least it wasn’t a boil,” she told him, gesturing toward the staircase. “You go first, I’m very slow on stairs still.”
Once they reached the landing, she peeked into the window of the classroom and saw that Vix was still about her lesson, slapping a pointer stick to the chalkboard where several multicolored tally clusters were drawn.
The room looked very respectfully rapt with whatever she was saying.
Rosalind tried not to wonder if they preferred Vix’s instruction to hers and resolved to simply be grateful that the other woman had been willing to take up the task while Rosalind had been indisposed.
It would make sense that she would be better at it, anyhow, she supposed.
Vix had been trained to be a governess, after all.
She had more skill at instruction than Rosalind did.
She put a shaky, brave smile on her face and turned toward the other door, opposite the classroom.
“Oh,” she said, blinking. “You didn’t answer me about the little pox. There are always a few bairns who have it. I don’t want to bring you in if you haven’t.”
“Smallpox?” he asked raggedly.
“Goodness, no,” she said, slapping her hand against his arm. “No! What do you call them? Chicken pox?”
“Oh!” he said, sagging in obvious relief. “Yes. Oh, good. Yes. I’ve had those. Steady on.”
She marveled a little at how protective she felt over the boy at this point, when she ought to still consider him something of a threat, and patted the arm where she’d laid her hand in reassurance as she turned and pulled the door open.
Dinah Lazarus, Hannah’s younger sister, was standing in a half circle of children, holding a deck of playing cards up above her head as the children appeared to be heckling her.
“No, no,” she said. “I promise it worked last time. Let me try again!”
“You don’t know any magic, Miss Dinah,” a young boy cried out in a fit of giggles. “You always get it wrong.”
“Not always,” Dinah retorted with a toss of her golden-brown curls. “Can you do any better, little Mister Thrush?”
“It’s not thrush,” the boy retorted with a frown. “It’s shingles.”
The group turned to see the new interlopers, with Dinah’s eyes widening in joy at the interruption. “Rosalind!” she cried, rushing forward and throwing her arms around Rosalind’s middle. “Oh, I’m so happy to see you! I’m sorry I missed the wedding! Hannah insisted I stay and tend the clinic!”
Rosalind grunted at the force of the embrace and patted the girl’s back with a wide smile. “It was a very small affair, I assure you. What are you doing with those cards?”
Dinah pulled back with a grin, waving a deck of well-worn cards back and forth, printed on their backs with an image of a fox with flames instead of fur. “Magic. Do you know any?”
“Any magic?” Rosalind replied with a smirk. “No. And even if I did, I think that might be a bit unseemly for a vicar’s wife, don’t you?”
“Miss Manners Makes Magic!” Dinah breathed, cupping her cheeks with both hands. “I could write for the Chronicle.”
“Oh, dear,” muttered Mr. Barnett.
Rosalind turned to him with a frown. “Do not print that.”
It drew Dinah’s attention to him with a skeptical narrowing of her eyes. “Him? He’s no older than me.”
“This is Mr. Barnett,” Rosalind said. “Mr. Barnett, this is Miss Lazarus. He is a little older than you, dove.”
She looked deeply skeptical. “You write for the paper?”
He nodded.
“Do you know any card tricks?” she asked, taking a step forward and jutting out her arm with the cards. “Do you?”
He blinked. “I know one,” he said, looking around the room as though someone might come tell him he didn’t have to perform it. “The four highwaymen?”
“Fine,” she said. “Children, come. The boy writer is going to do a trick.”
Rosalind blinked at him but did not offer rescue. She was, admittedly, a little curious. She had not seen anyone do a card trick in many years.
He took the cards from the Flaming Fox, the Becks’ gambling club, and fumbled with them for a bit, picking out the jacks and arranging them in his hand, then turning toward the children as he placed the remainder of the deck on the table. He took a deep little breath and rolled his shoulders.
“How old is he?” Dinah whispered. “I’m seventeen. He can’t be more than seventeen.”
“Hush,” said Rosalind.
“These are the four highwaymen,” Mr. Barnett began in his most adult voice. “They are going to rob this coach.”
“Oh,” said the boy with shingles. “That is naughty.”
“Rob it. Take the jewels,” said a very small young girl, scooting closer.
“Erm, yes,” Ezra Barnett said, paling a few shades. “They attack from the trees and land on the top of the coach.”
He put the four jacks together and dropped them on top of the deck.
“The first highwayman is going to be the lookout. He will stand guard here on the road,” he said, taking the first card off and showing the children the jack, which he placed face up next to the stack.
“This next one goes inside to secure the people,” he said, sliding the first card into the deck.
“The third ties up the driver,” he added, sliding it into a random spot in the deck.
“Ties up,” the little jewel-hungry girl said, nodding. “Can’t get away.”
Mr. Barnett frowned. “The final one takes all the jewels and puts them in a bag,” he continued, sliding the last card into the deck. “But then, oh no! The lookout sees the kingsmen coming and must alert his fellows so they can escape.”
He picked up the lookout card and tapped the top of the deck with it as though the lookout was knocking on the carriage door.
“He was just in time,” he told the children, pulling the top three cards off the deck and turning them over, revealing them to be the very jacks he had appeared to hide inside the deck. “And they all came back.”
There was a round of stunned and awed gasping and a smattering of applause.
Even Rosalind gave a little bit of a clap.
Dinah just crossed her arms and frowned. “Do it again, then. Slower.”
He looked up at her uncertainly, scratching at the hair behind his ear.
“Dinah,” Rosalind said. “Stop it.”
“Do it again!” agreed the little girl. “Steal more.”
Rosalind sighed.
Just then, there was the ringing of a little handbell, which drew her attention around to the door. The sounds of the classroom coming open and the students spilling out drew her back to the threshold, her heart jumping up in her chest.
“Oh,” she said, blinking. “Oh, I need to go see them. I will come back after,” she said.
“I’ll come with you,” Mr. Barnett immediately blurted out, coming onto her heels so quickly, she thought he might cling to her skirt to beat his escape.
Dinah only glared.
Rosalind burst out into the hallway just in time to see some of her former students, who exclaimed in pleasure at her return and surrounded her with well-wishes and handshakes and so many questions, it made her head spin.
Vix only stood in the doorway and watched, leaning against the jamb with a little smirk.
“When will you be back to teach?” one man asked in a little whisper. “Lady Aster knows her tallies but she’s a bit stern.”
“It’s my last day today,” a woman on a crutch said, smiling widely. “I got hired on at a hatchery to help with the books. I could’ve skipped today but I wanted to make extra sure I had my counting skill down. All because of you, Miss Murphy.”
“She’s Mrs. Everly now,” another woman said with a raise of her eyebrows. “Her man’s my parish vicar.”
And this raised another round of exclamations and shoulder-patting until Rosalind was feeling quite warm all over.
When they finally retreated, Vix came forward and helped Rosalind walk into the classroom and sit down. The smell of the chalk dust, oddly, made her eyes well up a little.
Mr. Barnett hovered in the doorway until Vix turned to him and expressly invited him in, looking like he was afraid he’d be the next thing she whacked with her pointing stick if he dared to cross into the room beforehand.
“Goodness,” said Rosalind, sniffling and dabbing at her eyes with her knuckles. “I didn’t realize how much I’d missed all this.”
“Didn’t you?” said Vix with a little smile. “We’re glad to have you back, even if it’s only a little at a time. And you’ve brought us a new worker, I see?”
They turned to look at Mr. Barnett, who was frozen in place, blinking rapidly. “Oh,” he said. “I … do you need that?”
“Penance,” Vix reminded him. “In whatever form you can offer it.”
“Right,” he said, glancing around. “Right. Tell me about these tally lessons, please, and I’ll do my best to repent.”