Chapter 2 #2
“Are all the skins stuffed like this?” she asked before he could leave.
When he hesitated, she clarified, “Are all the birds mounted with stuffing inside them? Or did the Van Tessels leave bird skins—perhaps in drawers or boxes somewhere—that were empty?” If she found anything valuable for the museum’s collection, she’d stuff them herself.
“If there’s a cupboard full of skins somewhere, I hope I’m not the one to find it.
You’re on your own, Miss Reisner. Good luck to you.
” He started toward the door, then turned back to her.
“As you are searching for bird skins and field notebooks, if you come across a medieval aviary, please set it aside for me. It’s quite valuable, and I haven’t been able to find it yet. ”
“You mean an illuminated manuscript with illustrations of birds?” she confirmed.
“Yes.” He looked at his watch. “You’ll know it when you see it. I trust you’ll bring it to my attention when you do. For now, I must be off.”
She agreed, and he left.
Elsa slid into the chair for a brief respite.
Quiet pulsed around her, a dense but tangible thing.
A taxidermized Onychorhynchus coronatus stared at her from the corner of the desk.
She smiled, enchanted by the Royal Flycatcher’s crown.
Above a yellow body, bright orange feathers tipped in royal purple fanned across its head.
As the only species in its genus, Elsa knew Mr. Chapman would want to add it to the museum collection, so long as she learned when and where it’d been collected.
Pulling from her leather bag, she spread out a handful of field labels and opened a fresh notebook to the chart she’d already prepared for the Hudson Collection.
For each bird, she’d need to record on the label and in the notebook a catalog number, the species, the sex, the locality where the bird was found, and the date the bird was taken.
She stared at her beautiful chart. If she listed the birds in the order she found them—by color—her documentation would be as disorganized as this house was.
The only solution she could think of was to write on only one side of each page, then when everything was accounted for, cut the chart into rows and rearrange them by species, genus, family, and order, and then transcribe it all again.
What a headache.
There was no use tagging this Royal Flycatcher until she found more information about him. It must have been caught in South or Central America, so she looked through the notebooks Mr. Spalding had gathered, hoping to find them labeled by expedition.
They were labeled by year.
So much for shortcuts.
No wonder Mr. Chapman had assigned this job to her. No one else on staff would have the patience for this.
Leaning one elbow on the desk, she rested her chin in her palm for only a moment before correcting her posture.
She may have a limp, and she may not have the physical stamina of her peers, but thanks to her mother and strict teachers, no one could say her spine wasn’t straight, for all the good that did her.
Alone with her posture and a few dozen dead birds, she reached for the oldest notes, dated 1871. Birdie would have been twenty years old, and her husband, Linus, twenty-eight.
The first entries were written by Linus and mostly described the hassle of the voyage to certain islands in the Pacific and the process of obtaining a special license from local authorities to hunt birds and bring the skins back to America.
Apparently, he’d had a servant or assistant with him named Geoffrey—no surname recorded.
From what Birdie had told Elsa at the fundraiser where they’d met, Linus had been independently wealthy and wanted to make a name for himself by amassing a collection of rare finds fit for a museum, including bird specimens, art, and artifacts.
But instead of sharing with an actual museum while he was alive, he kept it all in their mansion.
Elsa’s eyes glazed as she scanned line after line about setting up camp, venturing out, getting blisters, bruises, and dysentery.
It seemed that poor Geoffrey bore the brunt of the work while Linus stayed in camp to heal after cutting his foot on a rocky trail.
The few birds that were caught Elsa recorded in her chart.
If she found them in the mansion, she’d create matching field labels to tie on their legs.
Halfway through the field journal, the handwriting changed from masculine printing to curving script as a new expedition was recorded in 1876.
Well, it’s time to truly live up to my name.
People shortened my full name of Bernadette to Birdie when I was too young to have a say in the matter.
For as long as I can remember, people thought it a lark (pun intended) to give me bird-themed gifts for birthdays and Christmases.
I’ve always enjoyed bird-watching, but now Linus says it’s time to take it further.
To be a true life partner to him, he says, I must partner in his work, too, searching the world for fine-feathered friends to take home with us.
He says my retching over the side of the ship will be worth it.
Yes, it will be. But the reason I lose my breakfast is not from motion sickness.
I’ll let him believe as he likes though, until I can be sure.
Elsa sat forward, her interest spiking. The field journal had taken a turn toward diary. But . . . Birdie was pregnant? The Van Tessels had no children. Maybe Birdie was mistaken about her condition. Or she might have lost the baby on the expedition. How very sad.
Then again, maybe Elsa had been the mistaken one. She settled back in the chair, thinking. As far as she knew, the Van Tessels had no living children now. That didn’t mean they had never lived, just that they hadn’t lived as long as Birdie.
But the notebook ended with that entry, and the next one picked up years later. The third one Mr. Spalding had found chronicled one of Mr. Van Tessel’s expeditions before he and Birdie married.
A flutter of movement at the window drew her attention.
Ready to stretch, she went to the double doors facing the Hudson River, which was about a hundred yards from the mansion and partially screened by elm trees.
On the other side of the doors, a courtyard featured a fountain in its center, with concentric circles of benches, potted boxwoods, and other flowers radiating from it.
Mesmerized, Elsa watched as a little girl, likely around twelve years old, raked the pebbles covering the ground with deliberate strokes.
Shoulder-length brown hair pinned at the sides hinted at a mother’s care.
A ruffled pinafore over a yellow dress remained as white as her socks.
Elsa, too, had taken great care to remain clean and tidy ever since entering boarding school.
She’d learned the hard way that the consequences of anything less hadn’t been worth it.
She smiled at the girl, lifting a hand in friendly greeting. With no response, she unlocked the door, stepped outside, and relished the damp breeze coming off the river. Clouds muted the sun that had speared through the trees only hours ago.
Elsa wove through the maze of benches and planters until she was a few yards from the charming little girl with a grown-up rake, and grown-up concentration to go with it. She hadn’t looked up, though she must have heard Elsa’s footsteps.
“Good morning,” she tried.
Still, the girl didn’t respond. She didn’t even look at her as she continued to rake in a circle around the fountain. She did, however, study the sky as though she could hear thunder that hadn’t reached Elsa’s ears yet.
“I’m Miss Reisner,” she said as the girl approached. “Will you tell me your name?”
“Yes.”
A pause followed. Elsa studied the girl’s methodic movements, waiting, but nothing followed. “What is your name?” she tried again.
“Danielle.” She remained focused on pulling the rake behind her, drawing neat parallel lines over the tracks she’d made.
“It’s nice to meet you, Danielle. I’m here from a museum to take care of the bird collection inside.”
“Miss Birdie is gone,” Danielle murmured. “Miss Birdie is gone.” Thunder rumbled in the distance.
“Yes, she is. I’m so sorry. Was she your . . . ?” Elsa wondered if Danielle was the daughter of a servant or of a relative who was supposed to wait a few days before coming to claim Mrs. Van Tessel’s belongings. “Are you here with your mother or father?”
Danielle stopped short, looked at Elsa’s shoes, frowned, then peered into her eyes for the first time. If those deep blue pools were the windows to her soul, they were locked tight and the shades were drawn. All Elsa could see was disapproval.
At once, she realized why. “Oh, pardon me. I’m in your way, aren’t I?” Taking a step back, Elsa sat on a bench and let her pass with the rake. “Is this better?”
Danielle raked over the slight impressions Elsa’s shoes had left.
She reached the place she’d started in the circle and noticed her own footprints again.
Danielle’s eyebrows knit together as she looked behind her and before her, as though she were trying to work out how to rake them away without stepping on the lines she’d already drawn.
Her knuckles went white on the tool’s handle.
Elsa didn’t know why the lines in the pebbles were so important, but it was obvious that they were critical to the child, at least for this moment.
“I have an idea,” Elsa said. “Why don’t you step over here, and then we can reach over and connect the lines from here. What do you think?”
Without meeting her gaze, Danielle followed her suggestion. When she struggled to reach the rake far enough without it dropping, Elsa held out her hand. “May I try?”
She surrendered the rake, and Elsa managed to complete the task. “Better?”