Chapter 12 The Martin School #2
One bed was made and untouched. The other held a solitary small figure curled beneath stacked quilts and wool blankets.
I sat in the chair beside the bed. “Good morning, Nessy. I am Emma.”
The girl turned her face from the pillow. Her childish plumpness had melted to hollow adult beauty, her eyes sunken, huge, and brilliant, her cheeks porcelain white with bright roses—the false bloom of consumption that was perversely celebrated by fashionable cosmetics.
“How do you do, miss,” the girl whispered. The handkerchief in her hand was stained dry brown and damp crimson.
“I have been touring the school,” I said. “But they tell me I am too old to attend!” I pouted, and she gave a weak smile.
“Nessy has been a student for four months,” Lizzy said behind me. “She sold me a daisy in St. James’s Park, and she had no home, so I asked if she would like to learn to read. We are only waiting for her cough to improve so she may begin her classes.” Lizzy’s voice was brittle with cheer.
I picked up a book beside the bed. “Shall I read to you?” The girl nodded. I opened it at the marked page and resumed a story about a plucky young rabbit. By the time the rabbit had escaped a fox, the girl’s eyes were closed. I fell silent and watched her thin chest rise and fall.
What did it mean to be a great wyfe of healing?
I closed my eyes, then loosened each finger of my lace gloves. Swiftly, I tugged the gloves away and dropped them behind me. The lingering hint of scarlet within me stirred, cooling a rush of fear.
I opened my eyes to the girl’s resting countenance. Behind me, Lizzy and Harriet were so still, they might have been holding their breath.
I placed my bare palm on Nessy’s forehead, then had no idea what to do next. Outside the window, a sparrow chirped the finish of its song and fluttered away.
I began to feel something. To become aware, like the moment on the river when I sensed the wyfe’s terrible injuries. Knowledge of the girl’s illness grew in my mind. The unthinkable vileness. The evil rotting her lungs.
Go away, I thought ferociously. I pressed with my palm and said aloud, “Heal!” Nothing changed, and I felt foolish.
Curls of colorless miasma were seeping between the floorboards. They searched hungrily, climbing the girl’s bed. I took my hand back and hid my palms in my coat, and they faded.
Nessy’s eyes fluttered blearily open. “Are you the angel come for me?”
“No, dear. I am just a friend who likes to read to you.” My voice sounded perfectly natural, the sole skill I had mastered while caring for Papa.
“We have had physicians visit,” Lizzy said when we were in a small office downstairs.
“The last one said I should not have taken her in. He had the temerity to scold me! ‘Do not make yourself anxious over sick orphans. Hundreds die every day.’ ” She blew out a furious breath.
“I should ask Dr. Davenport to come. Mary is a good judge of people.” She gave me a tiny smile.
“It was good of you to try. Did you… learn anything?”
I had felt the girl’s lungs rotting to mush within her. Anger filled me—at the cruelness of illness, and at grandiose legends. “I felt enough to know I did nothing. This talk of healing is a bad joke.”
Lizzy nodded, her thin smile lost. There was no hint of accusation, but I remembered Yuánchi’s words: You must bind to find your strength and know your limits.
To Harriet, Lizzy said, “That is the hardest part of caring for these children. But for every sorrow there are a dozen joys. A dozen children embarking on wonderful paths through life. If I have not frightened you away, may I show you something more pleasant?”
“I am not frightened,” Harriet said, who had not spoken since we left the girl.
We joined a classroom of rambunctious younger girls. A harassed older gentleman with gray hair sticking in every direction was helping them fit leather straps around a life-sized straw model of a horse’s chest, shoulders, withers, and neck. This was Lizzy’s harness making project.
Lizzy sent a girl with a message, and she returned with Lucy, the lady’s maid from Chathford.
She must be a student, or perhaps an assistant.
Harriet and she greeted each other, then crowded around a table with three of the younger girls.
I watched Harriet beam at Lucy and a tableful of penniless urchins, and I frowned.
Harriet Smith was not a Darcy who could condescend in gracious charity.
The more precarious one’s status was, the more caution was needed. The more perfect one must be.
Lizzy nodded toward seats beneath a slate illustrating knots and buckles, and we moved there.
“Perhaps Darcy’s legends are wrong,” Lizzy said dejectedly. “The wyfe of healing may be a story, or a wish. The great wyves celebrated in song may be inventions to justify a handful of women with power.”
“I have no power,” I said. “But I believe what Yuánchi said.”
“I trust him, too. But everything sounds profound when it is delivered in booming thoughts. His explanations are frustratingly incomplete. I do not know if he relates grand truths or tells draca folktales.” She sighed. “It is nice to be able to discuss this with a wyfe.”
I snugged my gloves more firmly. Despite disliking Harriet’s interest in the school, I could not help liking Lizzy. She was enthusiastic and caring. But I did not enjoy admiring the wonders of Mrs. Darcy’s fabulous binding.
Martha, the girl who threaded the bolt, approached Harriet and whispered in her ear.
Harriet smiled and dipped her head so the girl could stroke Harriet’s hair, elegantly styled but as black and curly as the girl’s own.
Together, they positioned a metal punch on a piece of leather.
Martha struck it with a hammer, admired the neat hole, and ran to fit it around the straw model.
Lizzy’s thoughts seemed distant. She mused, “I really should ride more.”