Chapter Two

My mother, try as she might, could not keep me hidden in the nursery forever. Eventually we outgrew the nursery, my sisters sooner than I. Despite their myriad petty cruelties, it felt lonely after they migrated to rooms of their own on the floor below, having achieved the status of young ladies. That left just Nurse and me, and the world I could see from the nursery windows.

No one else, except the servants, slept on the top floor of the tall, narrow house. My father being an important man in the town of Salster, the house had many comings and goings, but until I reached eight or so, they meant little to me.

Nobody ever said there was anything wrong with my wits. My sisters had a tutor who taught them, and he also included me in the lessons. I learned to read with lightning speed and soaked up knowledge in a manner that impressed even Master Groat—maybe because I had no distractions. While my sisters worried about properly manicured nails, snags in their silk stockings, and whether their curls fell correctly onto their shoulders, I concentrated on the work itself. In fact, in many ways it saved me.

As soon as I could read, books became treasured companions. I had only a few but didn’t hesitate to steal them from the schoolroom. I kept them under the cot where I slept. The characters in those books spoke to me; they were warm, funny, clever, or devious. They taught me how to be.

I must have been eight when, as I say, my parents planned another grand party. From what Nurse said, I gathered they would celebrate an important anniversary—their fifteenth, perhaps, since Robin would have been fourteen by then. I know there was much planning, bustle, and commotion, and I determined I would see it all.

Had I been half as clever as I thought, I’d have realized the truth. Most of the townsfolk must, by then, have forgotten my existence. After all, my mother trotted my brother and sisters out at every available opportunity, but I was never seen. If the family attended an event or function, they went without me. I’d become a detail swept under the rug.

Yet, living in my own head, I forgot that. I merely wanted to see my sisters in their finery—they seldom came up to the nursery anymore. I wanted to behold all the guests arriving in their gilded carriages, and the heaps of food. I wished to hear the music and perhaps dance to it, just once.

But I spent most of my time locked in the nursery. When Nurse went out for any length of time, she took the key with her. On this occasion, with her called to help my sisters dress, I spent most of that day locked in, frustrated and unhappy.

But when Nurse—no longer so young as she had been—returned, she looked exhausted. We ate the cold supper she’d brought—the kitchen had no time to waste on niceties—and put her feet up in her chair, where she soon fell asleep.

She had left the key in the bowl on the table, perhaps never expecting deviousness from me. But I knew an opportunity when I saw one.

When I think now of the pitiful preparations I took, it makes me shudder. I brushed my brown hair carefully and dressed it with plain slides, as I had no ribbons. I could do nothing about my dingy dress or my slippers—my sisters’ castoffs. But I borrowed a bobbled shawl left hanging on the back of the door and covered what I could.

Then I peered into the wavy, speckled mirror. Did I look all right? Never having owned any finery, the shawl looked very grand to me. I imagined myself fitting in, slipping between the guests unnoticed, at liberty to listen to the music and sample the food.

I nabbed the key from the bowl and let myself out of the nursery. In the dusty hallway beyond, I stood for a moment breathing deeply, heart racing in my chest. From here, all the sounds intensified—the music flowed up the stairs at me and the laughter tinkled like metal chimes.

I crept down the stairs—the rear stairs, these were, not the grand front set—holding hard to the balustrade. I slid like a shadow through the hallway at the bottom, past the door of the kitchen which heaved with frenetic activity. No one noticed me, and I went on, drawn to the light and beauty like a moth to flame.

Beauty. No one can estimate its importance until deprived of it. I did not mind so much myself being ugly—well, I lie. Perhaps I did mind, but I had at least grown accustomed to it. But I missed color and brightness, even the sight of my sisters in all their finery.

Now I stepped into the grand sitting room, assaulted by it all. A rush of sound, heat, and more color than my senses could quite assimilate.

Guests crowded the room, dancing, laughing, and chattering. Everything glittered, from the jewels they wore to the crystals on the chandeliers. The music seemed to glitter also, to cascade like broken glass.

I paused just inside the doorway as if struck across the face. Whatever I might have imagined while shut away upstairs, this surpassed it. I stood as if rooted, my breath caught in my chest. For several precious moments no one noticed me. Waiters threaded their way among the joyous guests; I might have been invisible.

I could not see my parents anywhere. I think I had some mad notion that I would find them and they would see how well I looked in my borrowed costume and realize how mistaken they’d been in failing to include me all this while.

It didn’t happen that way, though. Instead, one of the nearby guests noticed me. He drew his companion’s attention to me and they both laughed.

Let me reiterate: for all my other failings, I was not a stupid child. Even though I didn’t want to believe it, I knew at that instant that they laughed at and not with me. Their faces jeered at me, and in an effort to get away from them I stumbled farther into the room.

Face after face swiveled toward me. Laugh after laugh sounded. The decibel level in the room seemed to drop till I heard only laughter.

Of the members of my family, Robin saw me first. He hurried over, a look of consternation on his face, and knelt down to take me in his arms.

I still remember how that felt—so seldom was I held by anyone—and how welcome the sense of shelter seemed. But my brother, at fourteen, could in truth do little to shelter me. And next to hurry up, to my everlasting regret, came my mother. She loomed above me and Robin, quite possibly the most sublimely beautiful of all the women present, and began to screech.

“Ah! What is she doing here? Russel! Russel!”

My father, thus summoned, hurried up also. He wore his fancy black suit with the mayor’s sash fastened across his chest, and his expression lent me no reassurance. Father had been known to strap Robin and paddle my sisters—though, granted, only for grave offenses.

It came to me I had indeed committed a grave offense.

He and I stared at one another out of almost identical eyes.

“Erikka,” he told Mother, “I am sure she merely heard the music and wished to see—”

Mother, in no mood to be appeased, spat at him, “Get her out of here. Where is that nurse, to let her get away? I will strike the woman off!”

I switched my gaze from my father’s face to my mother’s—flushed dark, it appeared almost purple, and for the first time ever she did not look beautiful. Her emotions had twisted her image into one almost as ugly as mine.

Robin straightened, still holding me in his arms. He pushed my head into his shoulder, exchanged one look with Father, and walked straight from the drawing room.

By the time we got upstairs, I wept with disappointment, with fear, and with the creeping humiliation that on some level always accompanied me. Robin roused Nurse, who swatted me soundly for my escape. Father soon followed and spoke to Nurse in a fierce, low tone, some of which I overheard.

“You are to keep the door locked, especially when we are entertaining.”

“Master, I did keep the door locked. She must have got hold of the key, the imp! She grows ever so devious and disobedient with age.”

“Nevertheless, she is your responsibility. If you can no longer handle it, we will find someone who can.”

Nurse, dismissed? Huddled on my bed where Robin had placed me, I shuddered. I might not love Nurse, nor she me. But she was all I knew—a large part of my narrow world. She might be replaced by someone who would beat me daily instead of delivering the occasional swat.

Nurse said, “She needs a good talking to, that’s all. Leave it with me.”

Father and Robin left, and Nurse did speak to me, all the while she strapped me with a leather belt across the backs of my legs.

“Something for you to remember,” she declared before she left me, taking the key with her.

All that might have been bad enough, but my mother arrived sometime later, near dawn, after the party had ended. Still dressed in her finery, she pounded on the door and woke us both. Nurse let her in.

Mother raged up and down the room. She railed and berated Nurse, spewing words like venom. I do not remember all she said, but her message sounded loud and clear. She did not wish to see me—not ever, if she could manage it. Never while entertaining. By the time she left sometime later, I had indeed learned one important lesson:

My mother was not always beautiful.