Chapter 7
The nightmare was utterly familiar and that’s what made it worse each time for Lisan. She knew what would happen but she was
helpless to change things. The dream swept her along, relentless, inexorable.
First, a large hand grasps hers and pulls her up a long staircase. Her legs pump desperately to clamber up each step, calves
aching with the effort to keep up. She reaches the top of the stairwell and there’s a view of rooftops. Black smoke billows
in the distance, loud noises boom from the streets outside, and screams shred the air. She stands looking down and it’s a
familiar sight: a beautiful courtyard garden with an arched bridge that spans a large pond. What’s not familiar is the activity
in the courtyard, women running through the garden in all directions, a confusion of movement. And then there’s nothing to
see as gentle hands tie a cloth over her eyes and a voice, quavering but insistent, says, Now jump.
But Lisan doesn’t jump. She never jumps, because that’s when she always wakes up.
She sat up gasping for breath, panicked for a moment when she didn’t recognize the room, then after a few more breaths remembered.
She was in Lennox Manor. Swinging her legs out of bed, she stumbled to the window and struggled to push it open just an inch, cursing the humidity that had swollen the wood.
Cool, damp air entered, calming the jumbled riot of emotions pounding at her heart.
Through rain-spattered glass the sky was momentarily clear of clouds, swept away by windy gusts that seized leaves off branches and sent them flailing through the air.
Lisan couldn’t remember a spring as cold as this. The newspapers said it might even snow. She pressed her face against the
glass, clouding it with her breath. She wiped it clear, wished she could wipe away the terror of her nightmare as easily.
It had been years since that particular one had materialized so vividly, affected her so forcefully. It was the strain of
the past weeks, she told herself. First Master Liu forcing her to leave her job with Mrs. Gordon—which she hoped had not caused
a rift between her and the headmistress. Then coming here to Lennox Manor, the effort of adjusting to a new life, a new employer.
To this house. A house whose every creaking floorboard and rattling casement seemed to cry out to her.
And there was Yao. So strong was the impression of familiarity that whenever she saw him, she fell into confusion, unable
to voice her questions. She had sifted through her memories and found nothing that could warrant such feelings; she’d never
spent more than a few minutes in Yao’s presence whenever he came to see Master Liu. They’d only ever exchanged polite greetings,
the most superficial of conversations.
And yet she could feel his eyes on her whenever she turned to leave a room. And he had always treated her respectfully, almost
deferentially, even when she was a little girl and he a mere teenager. Perhaps because although Master Liu had not adopted
either of them, she lived as a member of his household while Yao had been sent off to apprentice as a gardener.
She considered the possibility that somehow, he had known her before Master Liu took her in.
She had no memories of that other life. She had tried at different times to gather her thoughts and move backward, deeper into the past, but her mind always shrank away from that darkness like billowing black curtains of dread that prevented her from seeing—seeing what? Remembering what?
She had told Master Liu about her nightmares once. She wondered if they had anything to do with her past. He listened to her
inarticulate, childish outpouring. She was still a child then, and when she finally stopped, he patted the seat beside him,
and she sat down on the long elmwood bench.
“You were all alone when I found you,” he said very gently, “and I think that your life must’ve been very harsh or perhaps
you saw something terrible. Perhaps you forgot everything because it was just too sad, made you too unhappy, but sometimes
memories pop up in those bad dreams. In which case, it’s best you don’t try to remember, neh?”
Master Liu didn’t know about her past but perhaps Yao did. She had to talk to him, ask if he recognized her. What if he had
known her real family? But surely he would’ve said something if that was the case. She wouldn’t get her hopes up, but if she
didn’t ask, she would always wonder. She had to work up the courage to ask him.
Why do you seem so familiar, Yao? Why do I trust you without knowing anything about you?
She had hardly slept this past week. When awake, she forced herself to smile and pay close attention, hide her exhaustion
from Caroline Stanton. Lisan never realized how much she missed the familiar sounds of the only home she could remember, how
she’d fallen asleep to the household’s nighttime routines at Master Liu’s villa. To the quiet shuffle of cloth slippers as
the house servants checked each room, banking fires and turning out lights; the soft thuds as doors pulled shut; the faint
sweet trills of Master Liu’s bamboo flute from the other side of the house as he practiced a new piece of music.
But out here at the far end of Bubbling Well Road, Lennox Manor sat in splendid, if rather bedraggled solitude.
Since following Caroline through the entire house, Lisan understood why she heard so many strange noises in the night.
Warped floorboards, gaps in door and window frames, clogged chimneys and loose latches.
Every shift in temperature made timbers expand or contract to grind against each other, every puff of breeze outside moaned its way through cracks, and unsecured shutters thumped like footsteps.
Yet even knowing all this, those nighttime noises still put her on edge.
She coughed. Her throat felt parched and painful, the way it did before coming down with a cold. She needed a drink of water.
The jug in her room was empty and Lisan wasn’t going to risk a drink from the bathroom tap. She’d find her way to the kitchen,
where there was sure to be a carafe of clean, boiled water.
She didn’t want to disturb anyone by turning on the electric lights, so Lisan lit the oil lamp beside her bed and pulled on
a quilted robe. She padded out to the landing and down the narrow staircase, trying not to cough. Opening the door to the
kitchen and work areas, she paused. Someone was crying. The sound was faint, and she could’ve sworn it was the sound of a
woman sobbing. Woman or child? Could Xiao Wu, the youngest house servant, be unhappy or ill? But it seemed to be coming from
the other side of the house, beyond the servants’ quarters.
Her feet moved from polished hardwood planks to cold marble as she followed the sound, crossing from the main hall to the foyer, the lamp flickering in her hand.
She stood there, uncertain of what to do next.
The sound of crying had stopped. The drawing room doors were wide open, and for the first time in what seemed like weeks, the moon was visible, its cold, silvery light glimmering in a long streak of brightness on the floor below each window.
She went to a window, beguiled by the sight of skies swept clean of all but a few wisps of cloud.
Out on the lake, the moon’s reflection rippled on the water’s surface as though trapped and struggling.
Moonlight fell on a hazy shape weaving between the willow trees, a shape that resembled a woman.
A woman in a long, flowing red dress. Startled, Lisan backed away from the window.
When she looked again, the figure had vanished.
Trembling, she lifted the lamp and made her way back across the foyer, back to her room.
“Rosa?” A man’s voice, slightly slurred. Puzzled. “Rosalie?”
From the second-floor landing, a large figure looked down on her. He swayed a little, steadied himself on the handrail. A
large, balding man in a long dressing gown.
“It’s Lisan Liu, sir,” she said. “Mrs. Stanton’s secretary. Are you all right, Mr. Burnett?”
“Not Rosalie.” He shook his head, then stumbled as he turned away. He paused and looked down at her again. “No, you couldn’t
possibly be Rosa,” he said, and left the landing, his footsteps ponderous, heavy. He turned to the east wing, mumbling words
she couldn’t make out.
Could he have been the one she heard weeping? No, it had been a woman’s voice, she was sure of that. Returning to her room,
she climbed back under the blankets, shivering. Who was Rosalie? Was she the one who was crying? She closed her eyes and exhaustion
from all the sleepless nights finally claimed her.
Lisan woke at daybreak, the light still hesitant and muted, the skies sullen. Scraps of memories. A woman had been crying.
Had Mason Burnett really been speaking to her? The events of the night seemed so unreal now. But there was soot on the glass
shade of the oil lamp beside her bed, proof she had used it. She pushed herself up and looked around.
It was still hard to think of this room as her own.
She had rearranged the furniture a bit, and now a low chest of drawers beside the bed doubled as a night table.
She had moved a wooden chair to a spot beside the door where she could sit to remove her shoes.
At some point someone—she suspected Xiao Wu—had put a single stem of orchid blooms in a slim pewter vase by her bed, a small act of kindness that made her smile.
Lennox Manor felt more familiar now, but the disquiet that curled around her whenever she was inside the mansion refused to dispel and she didn’t know if it ever would.
There was something she did know: it was time to talk to Yao. The act of asking him the question, she realized, mattered as
much as his answer, whatever it might be.
In the normal course of a day, she had no reason to speak with the gardener; the only time they were in the same room was