Knowledge #2
(Later, of course, she’ll realize that he’s just a man of slightly more than average height, as Father Clemence was a man of slightly less.
He only seemed so tall because she was a terrified child, and once both those conditions have changed, he’ll dwindle in her eyes until he becomes something more surmountable, something she can overcome.
But that day is far in the future, and by the time it arrives, Floretta Bearse will no longer, for all intents and purposes, exist.)
In the murky, unpleasant present, she shies away from him like a wild creature, shooting one last desperate glance at the man who has, up until this point, been the final authority in her world. “Am I to have no choice in my own future?” she asks.
Her uncle shakes his great, implacable head. “You are a child, and a female child beside; you should count yourself endlessly fortunate that I’m willing to take on the burden of caring for you.”
Floretta wants to scream, wants to tell him that if she’s such a burden, he can leave her here where she’s familiar and comfortable and safe.
She doesn’t. She can see by the way he’s looking at her that such an outburst would do her more harm than good.
Her fate is set. The ink is dry, and she is leaving home, leaving the place where a storm touched down and a woman died to bring her into the world.
She looks upon the future, and she is afraid.
Her uncle has a name—John Baker—and as his coach rattles along the road between home and Boston, she learns that she has a name as well. Not the name she’s worn for her entire life, no: that name belongs to Father Clemence, and is no longer hers to carry.
Floretta Bearse leaves the village where she was born, and Floretta Baker arrives in Boston a full day’s drive after their departure, bones aching from the unfamiliar motion of the coach, eyes aching from her desperate attempt to take in the entire world outside their windows, soul aching from the loss of everything she’s ever known.
Her uncle is a cold man, and barely spoke during their drive, instead taking the time to study and catalog her with his eyes, making note of every flaw and imperfection as if he had every intention of repairing them, making her over into something more suited to his glittering life in the glorious city.
Floretta squirmed under his regard, and she squirms still as the coach pulls to a stop in front of a great brick house, so large that it seems barely smaller than a castle, more fit for a fairy-tale queen than a little girl in a dirty, tattered dress and her unsmiling uncle.
She looks, quickly, to Uncle John, waiting for him to tell the driver that they’ve stopped in the wrong place, that they need to continue onward to their actual destination.
Instead, he huffs a great sigh and picks up his valise (which she has not seen him open yet, not even once; whatever it contains is still a mystery to her), as he climbs out of the coach.
He pauses then, looking back, and asks a question she wishes he’d asked upon their meeting:
“Are you coming?”
Floretta Baker is a biddable child, if not as biddable as Floretta Bearse once was.
She climbs out of the coach and follows him without complaint, allowing him to lead her through the gate and up the stairs to the grand oak door into his impossible house.
The hall on the other side is paneled in mahogany and feels like it should be flooded with a honeyed sunlight at all times, even now, with the hour slipped well beyond midnight and all the stars alight in the sky.
She clutches her own small suitcase, which contains everything she has any right to call her own, and looks around with awestruck wonder, so dazzled by the dream of absent sunlight that she doesn’t even notice the woman in the white cap and apron who stands in a narrow doorway to one side, watching them.
“Deborah,” snaps her uncle. The woman steps into the foyer, reaching out to take his valise, sparing only a half-curious glance for Floretta.
Uncle John ignores it, continuing in the same aggravated tone: “This is my great-niece. She’ll be staying with us for the foreseeable future.
Please see to it that a room befitting her station is prepared for her, and ask Miss Cottingsly to order her a whole fresh wardrobe. ”
“Yes, sir,” says Deborah, casting her eyes toward the floor. “Everything, sir?”
“Bows to toes,” says Uncle John. Floretta glances at him, startled. The rhyming is the most playful thing he’s done since she met him in the parlor of her—of Father Clemence’s—home. Perhaps he’s not going to be so terrible after all.
But then he continues: “The dress she’s wearing is a horror. Burn it once she has something suitable to wear. Burn it all. None of it is suitable for a daughter of this house.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Take her now. Her company is a tedious thing, and I do not wish to see her before breakfast tomorrow.” Unspoken was the command to clean her up and prepare her for polite company, a herculean undertaking for anyone, but especially for a single housemaid who looks barely old enough to be working outside her parents’ home.
Deborah nods and bobs a curtsey, then gestures for Floretta to join her. “Come along, child,” she says, encouragingly. “I’ll show you where you can get something to eat, and then meet Miss Cottingsly. She’s head of the house staff, and she’ll need to measure you for your new wardrobe.”
“Yes, ma’am,” says Floretta, moving to her side. She glances back at her uncle and, out of an abundance of civility, says, “Thank you, Uncle,” before she can be led away.
Deborah waits until they’re both halfway down the hall and out of his hearing before she says, in a tightly clipped voice, “Never speak after you’ve been dismissed. It only encourages him to continue perceiving you, and that will end poorly for you if it occurs.”
“Ma’am?” asks Floretta, voice gone small.
“You’re to be a member of our household now. From your attire and demeanor, I’m supposing this was as much of a surprise to you as it is to me?” There is no deference in her tone.
(Deference would come later, when Floretta had completed her transformation into the ward of the master of the house, rather than the in-between creature she was now.
Deference would come when there were no other choices to be had.
It would not be enough. Nothing, once the wheels had been set into motion, could have been enough.)
“Yes, ma’am,” says Floretta.
“How old are you?”
“Seven,” says Floretta.
“Do you know your letters? Your numbers? Can you do simple sums?”
“I can read well enough to sound out the scripture, and do simple maths with sufficient ease to relieve some of the household pressure on my guardian,” says Floretta, with careful politeness. “Am I needed to handle the household accounts?”
“Good Lord above, girl, no,” says Deborah, sounding shocked. “You are a child. You will be expected to comport yourself as a child does, to attend your lessons and mind your manners. Do as you’re told and we’ll have no problems.”
Floretta frowns. “Is there to be no time for…” She trails off.
She doesn’t know how describe the life she’s lived up until this point, or how she’s spent the majority of her days.
Does Boston even know the value of wildflowers, or the need for wandering in the woods between lessons and chores? Do wildflowers grow in Boston?
She has never felt so small, or so alone.
“The master is a good man. He will see to it that you’re fed and clothed, and elevated to the heights to which your birth entitles you.
Don’t look so glum, girl. You’ve landed in a fortunate position here, and whoever—whatever—you were before, you’re Mr. Baker’s ward now.
Appreciate what you have, and forget what you haven’t. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
Floretta nods and says nothing.
It doesn’t feel as if there’s anything left to say.
Miss Cottingsly seems too old by half for the title she carries; Floretta has never seen a “miss” old enough to be her grandmother before.
The woman’s face is seamed with wrinkles, and her hair is white as cotton and cut short enough to curl in on itself, like a lamb’s wool.
She wears a simple dress and a white apron, perfectly tied around her admirably thick waist.
She looks at Floretta as Floretta looks at her, taking in the child’s measure with a quick, calculated motion of her head, eyes slightly narrowed as she considers the job in front of her.
The girl’s hair will need to be cut and styled, her face washed, and her dress replaced by something more suitable, yes, yes, but these are the superficial aspects of what must be done.
Everything about the child screams “provincial.” She is a creature of forest and fen, the mud under her fingers so deeply engrained that it may as well be a part of her, immutable.
There are wildflowers in her eyes. It will need to change, every bit of it, before she can be a respectable daughter of a respectable household.
And Mr. Baker keeps a respectable household.
The woman he calls Miss Cottingsly could no more explain his profession or the source of his funds than she could the movement of the heavens; she is a simple soul, employed for her discretion as much as for her skills, and she has never once inquired after things that are not hers to know.
He pays her wages, provides a roof above her head, and so she allows him all the secrets he desires.
She was well trained in the household she served before this one. She knows how to practice discretion.
“Stand up straight, girl,” she says, and her voice is as matronly as her appearance, and utterly devoid of warmth. “I want to see you.”