Chapter 5 #2
That was a project for another day. For now, what she needed was a change of scenery. She could always hunt for more field notebooks.
After covering the birds with the sheet once again, she left the dining room and entered the stair tower. All was quiet on the second floor now, the spoken-for paintings having been claimed. Curious about which ones, if any, had been left, she decided to find out for herself.
She’d take it slow.
The last time she climbed these stairs, she’d been in a hurry, and she’d been anxious about being alone. Neither of those was true today. She could do this.
By the time she reached the second floor, she felt the exertion in her leg and lungs, but it wasn’t nearly as acute as it had been before. Encouraged, she strolled through the corridor, past the bedrooms, until she reached the art gallery.
How naked it looked without so many of its paintings.
A few small line drawings remained, some of them brightened with watercolors.
They resembled the illustrations she’d seen in Birdie’s field notes.
The Latin names for the birds had been written at the bottom in her handwriting.
But instead of labeling the body parts with measurements like a diagram, they were drawn and colored as though living: in flight, brooding, feeding their young, or with their little mouths open in full-throated song.
The essence of life pulsed as strong as Elsa’s heartbeat.
She smiled at a row of eastern bluebirds, puffed up and huddled on a branch together as though keeping warm in the winter. How lovely that Birdie chose the common over the exotic to paint and hang in the gallery. But then, just because a bird was common didn’t make it any less wonderful.
Good for Birdie. If none of the relatives wanted these, the Petrovics might.
“Miss Birdie has a blue room.” Danielle’s voice came back to Elsa, compelling her to search for it.
It didn’t take long to find a blue bedroom suite.
If it had been shared with Linus before he died, no masculine traces remained.
The feminine, whimsical space seemed suited entirely for Birdie.
Just as Danielle had said, the ceiling had been painted night-sky blue with yellow constellations.
Mounted birds of every shade of blue blended in with the floral wallpaper.
Danielle had been here. Was this where they’d looked at the aviary together?
Elsa searched the space, along with the adjoining dressing room.
No aviary.
The bed creaked as she sat on the edge to think. Had Birdie purposely kept it hidden? Maybe she’d intended to tell the Petrovics where it was kept, but then forgot or simply ran out of time.
Sliding off the bed, Elsa knelt and reached beneath the mattress, feeling along the length of the box spring. When that turned up nothing, she repeated the process on the other side.
Her breath caught when her fingers touched something hard. With her other hand, she lifted the mattress and gently removed a book.
But not the aviary.
Still, when she realized what it was, her heartrate picked up. This was the journal she’d been wishing to find, the one dated the summer Birdie’s baby would have been born.
Taking a seat at the claw-foot writing desk, Elsa pushed back indigo bunting and black-throated blue warbler specimens to make room for the journal. Light fell softly on the pages as she turned them.
June 2, 1877
Some days I am so ready to meet this babe inside me, and other days I nearly panic for fear of what I’ll do when I meet her (yes, her.
I’m sure). Today is the latter kind of day.
Me, a mother? The nursery is ready, but I am not.
The layette has been prepared, but what can prepare me to raise a human being from infancy to adulthood?
Linus insists the job isn’t quite up to me, that the nurse and governess will play a bigger role than I will.
But I can’t agree to this. Why should I hand over my own flesh and blood when I’m the only mother she has?
Her eyes growing hot and sticky, Elsa swiped off her glasses, and the words on the page turned into one illegible smear in her vision.
She was touched by Birdie’s heartfelt emotion, but what she felt was a double-edged sword.
One side was the sweetness of young Birdie as an overwhelmed mother-to-be.
She’d felt inadequate, but that didn’t mean she was willing to relinquish her baby.
The other side, however, was pure bitterness.
Elsa’s own mother had been more than willing to “hand over” Elsa to a succession of nurses and governesses, before, during, and after her bout with the dreaded disease.
She didn’t remember much about the worst of the illness.
What she recalled was waking in a dark room, alone, with no one there to comfort her or tell her what was happening.
She wanted to know why she couldn’t move her legs. When would she walk again?
Would she walk again?
No one had answered her. “Don’t fuss now” was not an answer. “You must be a good girl and rest so you’ll get better” was not an answer, either. It did imply that good girls recovered. Naughty girls did not. And naughty girls ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Elsa was. She had been ashamed as a child, and she still battled that demon now.
She remembered thinking that she must be naughty indeed, though she hadn’t meant to be, because as hard as she tried to be good, as hard as she tried to make her legs work properly again, the left one stayed stubbornly weak.
Her parents must not have been happy with her.
Otherwise, why would they have sent her to boarding school as soon as the doctor said it was safe?
They hadn’t sent Lauren to boarding school. She had become Julian and Beryl’s ward after Lauren’s mother died and her father was still in Egypt. Lauren had moved in when she was fifteen and Elsa was eight, and she had stayed there until she went to college.
Meanwhile, Elsa only came home for holidays.
“What did I do?” she whispered, glancing at the little bluebird staring back at her. But this time she knew the answer. It wasn’t so much what she’d done. It was what she hadn’t.
She hadn’t been the daughter Beryl and Julian always wanted.
Enough of that. Elsa replaced her glasses and refocused on Birdie’s journal.
June 10, 1877
Linus says the baby is overdue, but I remind him that she’ll come in her own time. I do think it will be soon. I can feel it in my back, my bones, my everywhere. Linus seems almost as anxious as I am, perhaps even more so.
The nursery has been ready for weeks, and yet he will not give up inspecting every inch of the painter’s work.
The walls are painted with birds copied from a medieval aviary manuscript.
Every bird has a story we can tell our little one.
The dove that returned to Noah’s ark with an olive branch in its mouth.
The eagle that represents the strength of those who hope in the Lord.
The sparrow that God has His eye upon. It’s my favorite room in the house, despite the tiny flaws Linus has found in some of the paintings.
Our baby won’t care one whit whether the pictures on the wall match the book exactly.
Meanwhile, I continue my daily walk—or rather, waddle—in the gardens. I don’t get far these days, but—
I do believe I’ve just had a contraction.
There the entry ended. Sketches of a dove, sparrow, and flowering vines filled the page’s margins.
The artistic style wasn’t anything like her previous sketches in the field notebooks or the watercolors hanging in the gallery.
These must have been copied from the aviary, offering a glimpse of both the book and the nursery’s walls.
Elsa turned the page. A new entry dated three days later contained a single, chilling line: No one will let me see my baby.
An ache spread through Elsa’s chest. Had the baby lived, or was it stillborn? Did she die in childbirth?
A tiny ticking from her watch reminded her that time was passing, and she ought to return to her work downstairs. She ignored it, resolving to work on Saturday to make up for this break.
Her gaze darted to the next entry.
They say they are protecting me. But who is protecting Sarah? Why won’t they let me hold my baby?
Goosebumps lifted on Elsa’s skin, followed by a wave of heat. If the child had died, they should have at least let Birdie hold her and say good-bye. How unjust, how unfair, to keep secrets from the mother.
The next three pages were filled with cramped lines of lament.
Linus has just been here. He looks as though someone died, but I can hear Sarah crying.
The nurse tells me I’m hearing her ghost, but I know she lives.
She needs her mother. Linus says that even a mother’s love isn’t strong enough to fix .
. . but fix what? He won’t tell me. He sets his jaw and flees the room, knowing I’m not well enough to leave the bed and follow.
All I can do from this bed is sing, hoping my voice will reach her, calm her.
She knows my voice. But now it cracks and squeezes to a whisper.
Elsa’s throat tightened, horrified by Birdie’s distress.
Every paragraph carried more of the same.
Birdie begged the servants to bring her baby, but they’d been forbidden by Linus.
The doctor came and went, urging Birdie back to health after she’d almost died in labor.
But he wouldn’t say anything of her baby.
The entire household pretends she doesn’t exist. But this morning, Linus left on a trip. By a miracle of timing, Agnes arrived to visit me. When I told her what has been going on, she took up my side and left the room as one prepared for battle. Not ten minutes later, she returned with my child.
If Linus doesn’t love Sarah, I love her enough for the both of us.
Thank God Agnes came. And I thank God that she stayed for as long as she could.
The several pages that followed were filled with drawings of the newborn, some of her in sleep, some with eyes wide open. In one, Sarah reached up toward Birdie’s face. Birdie was smiling.
In none of the drawings could Elsa see the baby’s face below her nose.
On the last page of the journal, a small envelope was affixed to the page. Inside, a lock of blond curls was tied with a pink satin ribbon. Sarah’s.
And none of Birdie’s relatives had even known she’d been born.
No one, that was, except Linus and a woman named Agnes.