Chapter Two
“His Grace does not enter the nursery.”
Mrs Garnett delivered it on the second-floor landing, in the tone of a woman reciting the eleventh commandment, and continued up the stairs without waiting to see how it landed.
“Never, Mrs Garnett?”
“Formally, at quarter-day, to review Lord Theodore’s progress. Otherwise, the east wing is his lordship’s, and the rest of the house is His Grace’s, and the two do not mix any more than the kitchens mix with the chapel.”
“Quarter-day,” Elinor said. “He reviews the boy’s progress, how?”
“In the steward’s room. Lord Theodore is brought down, recites what he has learnt, and is returned. A quarter of an hour, by the clock.”
“Brought down and returned. Like the rents.”
“You will keep observations of that kind behind your teeth, Miss Wrenfield, where they may yet do you some good.” The housekeeper replied, but did not say the observation was wrong.
“And the boy comes down for dinner?”
“His Grace dines alone.” The housekeeper’s chatelaine kept time against her hip, a small steady music of keys. “Lord Theodore takes his meals in the nursery. You will take yours there as well, or in your room, as you prefer.”
“At seven, I dined with my father every evening. He was absent-minded and frequently in debt, but he was at the table.”
“Then you were fortunate in your table, Miss Wrenfield, whatever it cost.” Mrs Garnett stopped at the head of the corridor and faced her.
“I shall say this once, because you seem a sensible woman and because three tutors did not trouble to learn it. This is a good house. It is not a happy one, and the two are not the same, but the difference is not your business to mend. Your business is the boy.”
“The boy is the difference, Mrs Garnett.”
The housekeeper’s mouth moved, something that on a less disciplined face might have become agreement.
“These doors are the duchess’s rooms. They have been closed these seven years and they stay closed.
The maids dust quarterly under my eye. You will have no occasion to enter, and you will not make one. ”
“I understand.”
“The gallery is open to you, the library with His Grace’s leave, the gardens at any hour Lord Theodore is fit to be out in them.
” She moved on, keys swinging. “Breakfast in the nursery at eight. Lessons at nine. His Grace expects a written account of progress each Friday, delivered to the steward’s room. He will not ask you for it in person.”
“Does His Grace ask anyone for anything in person?”
“He asks the land steward, the bailiff, and Parliament, in that order.”
“And Lord Theodore? Who has charge of him when lessons are done?”
“Sarah, the nursery maid. She is eighteen, fond of him, and lets him keep beetles in a soup dish, which I have arranged not to know about. The Cook sends up gingerbread on Sundays and calls it kitchen economy. Davies cleans his boots twice when once would serve.”
“Then he is loved.”
“He is pitied, Miss Wrenfield, which wears the same apron and does different work. The household is fond of him in the way a household may be. Fondness below stairs is no substitute for notice above them.”
“And His Grace?”
“His Grace provides. There is no bill for that child’s comfort left unpaid, and no hour of his company spent.” The keys went silent under her hand. “I have now said more than I intended twice in one morning, which is your doing, and it will not become a habit.”
They had come down again into the hall, where the morning post lay on a silver tray. Mrs Garnett’s eye caught on the topmost letter and stopped, and her face shut like a ledger.
“Bad news?” Elinor asked.
“News.” The housekeeper set the letter apart from the rest, face up, with two fingers. The hand on the direction was elegant and certain of itself. “Lady Cassandra Ridgeway writes to announce herself for a visit. A connection of the late duchess’s family. A distant cousin, as she claims.”
“That will be pleasant for His Grace. Company. Is her ladyship expected to stay long?”
“Her ladyship’s visits begin with a fixed end and acquire extensions.
” Mrs Garnett restored the tray to perfect order, and her voice returned to perfect service.
“She notices everything. You will want the schoolroom in good order, Miss Wrenfield, the boy’s collar clean, and your accounts exact.
She behaves as if she is the lady of the house.
That is all I shall say, and I have already said more of it than I intended. ”
The schoolroom adjoined the nursery. It was a long room with good northern light, a globe with the Pacific rubbed pale, and a shelf of primers arranged by a hand that had wanted them used.
Theo was at the table when she came in at nine, sitting very straight, with the torn map squared in front of him like a wall he meant to hold.
“You stayed,” he said.
“I said I would, if your father permitted. He permitted.”
“Sarah said you would not. She said governesses never come back after they have seen the house.”
“Then Sarah is now wrong, which will be excellent for her character.” She hung her shawl on the peg by the door. “We shall begin with arithmetic, because it is the worst thing first, and then geography, because you are owed something for surviving the arithmetic.”
“Mr Crane began with Latin.”
“Mr Crane is already ahead of us, and we are not. Take out your slate.”
He took out his slate. For half an hour she set him sums dressed as supply problems, three hundred men holding a pass on so many loaves a day, and he worked them with his tongue between his teeth and an appetite he tried to disguise as obedience.
“If the loaves run out on the fourth day,” he said, “the Persians win.”
“Then check your subtraction, because Greece is depending on it.”
He checked his subtraction. He found the error himself and scrubbed it out with his sleeve before she could offer the cloth, and when she told him it was right, he looked at the answer longer than the answer required.
“Mr Crane said I was idle.”
“Mr Crane confused idle with unwilling. A boy who feeds Cicero under a door page by page, in order, is not idle. He is thorough.” She crossed to the window to open it a crack, and stopped. “There is a soup dish on your sill, Lord Theodore, with holes punched in the cover.”
He had gone rigid in his chair. “Sarah lets me. It is only Hector. He eats bark.”
“Hector.” She lifted the cover an inch. A stag beetle the size of her thumb considered her from a bed of leaves with an air of injured dignity. “A good name. Troy could have used him. He stays, on the condition that he attends geography quietly and does not eat the maps.”
“Mr Crane said livestock had no place in a schoolroom.”
“Mr Crane no longer has a place in this schoolroom, and Hector is still here, which should tell you how the campaign ended.” She turned the globe until the boot of Italy came round under the window light. “Geography. Show me Rome.”
His finger went to it at once, certain as a compass. “Have you seen it?”
“Rome?”
“You said you had never stood in the pass at Thermopylae. Have you seen Rome?”
“No.” She said it plainly, because he would smell anything less. “I have never been out of England. I have seen Kent, Bath, three counties between, and a great many schoolrooms.”
She had braced for contempt. What he gave her was nearer to fellowship, wary and surprised by itself. “Then how do you know things? About the roads and the engraving and how the sea is coloured?”
“From books, letters and maps. Other people’s eyes, borrowed honestly.
” She set her fingertip beside his on the little engraved city.
“Some places become familiar in imagination, Lord Theodore. I have read Rome so long that I should know my way without asking directions. Whether the real city would forgive me my confidence is another matter.”
“If you could go truly,” he said, watching her finger on the engraved city, “where would you go first?”
“Rome first. Then Greece. Then I should be ruined for England entirely and have to be shipped home in disgrace and live on my memories like an old soldier.”
“You could stand in the pass.”
“I could. Somebody ought to, who would come back and tell it correctly.”
“Papa has seen it.” The same escape under the door, and this time he did not slam his mouth shut after it. He watched her instead, testing what she would do with the offering.
“Then your father knows things I do not, and that is useful, because between us we shall keep you accurate.” She gave the globe a quarter turn. “Now. The Colosseum. Tell me what you know, and I shall tell you where the books disagree.”
“It held fifty thousand men. Mr Crane said eighty. The green book in the library says they flooded it for sea battles, real ships, with real prisoners to row them, and Mr Crane said that was a fable for the credulous, and he took the green book away.” The grievance came out level, itemized, a clerk presenting evidence. “Did they flood it? Truly?”
“The accounts say it was done, early on, before the cellars were built under the floor. How they managed the water is the part the books argue about, and I have never read a settled answer.”
“Then nobody knows.”
“Somebody might,” Elinor said, and caught the small report of the corridor floor a half-second before she chose to go on regardless. “Somebody who has stood in it.”
The Duke of Rothmere stood in the doorway. She had not heard him climb, only that last betraying board, and she would wonder afterwards how long he had been there before the house gave him up. Theo had gone still, a soldier caught between two commanders.
“Your Grace.” She rose. “You find us at the Colosseum. Lord Theodore wishes to know whether the sea battles are fact or fable, and the books disagree, but you have stood in the place. Will you settle it?”
For a moment she thought he would simply withdraw. He came one step inside the door instead, and the schoolroom rearranged itself around him without anyone moving.