Breath and Bones (36 page)

Famke mourned the loss of her own pretty round breasts, but at least there was this way to fill out the frock she'd chosen. Once she was with Albert again, she would eat and regain her curves; for now, the corset made her waist so small she could span it with her own hands, and it gave a welcome support to her spine as well.

Famke would arrive in San Francisco as a lady, with gloves—she found them in a drawer—and a parasol, a straw bonnet, and an embroidered shawl. She felt some qualms at taking Mag's only overcoat and sturdy outdoor shoes, but she had to keep warm; she could see beyond the window that snowflakes were already spinning around the gas lamps.

Ladies had to coif their hair. The red curls were just long enough now to make a modest knot at the base of her neck, and she used some of Mag's heavy hairpins to do it. She would have liked to fasten a glittering bee or butterfly over her ear, but she wasn't sure a lady would do that. She must hope not to attract notice.

When she felt her ensemble was complete, she studied her reflection in the mirror. She twirled the parasol—black silk trimmed with tassels—and the waft of perfume and smoke blew wisps of her hair about. She added a matching black net purse with a long tassel and turned herself around slowly, thinking of those splendid Americans on the New York dock. Mag's skirts showed a bit too much ankle, and Famke hadn't been sure how to put on the bustle, but she thought she'd done well enough. The wire cage of it slapped first her back, then her thighs, when she bounced up and down. It seemed secure.

She reminded herself that Harry would be waiting for her at the Santa Fé depot next morning. She would have to walk all the way there—tonight, right away. She tried taking a few steps as an American lady, eliminating the masculine saunter and mincing instead. It did not seem too difficult; this was what Sariah had drilled into her, after all. Famke could play the part.

Just as she was about to leave the room, she met her own eyes in the mirror and was startled. She realized she'd been avoiding them, and with that realization she steeled herself to confront what had become of her face. She stepped up to the glass and studied herself. Where was Albert's Nimue?

She found that when she regarded herself as a stranger, she bore more resemblance to the artist now than to the nymph: With the loss of flesh, her eyes bulged in their sockets, her brows were set in a masculine line, and her nose had risen into prominence. Of course,
she
thought Albert was handsome, but did she want to look like him? Did she want him to see her as a reflection of himself?

There were a few things she could do to rectify the situation. Her former hectic flush was gone, a blue-white pallor in its place; but she might pinch her cheeks and bite her lips and be glad to see there was enough blood left in her to redden them. She put some of Mag's lip-rouge in the purse, just in case. Then she dabbed some Eau de la Jeunesse—Mag had a bottle, too; perhaps all the girls did—onto a finger and used it to lift her eyebrows into a nymphly arch. She smiled.

Her face grinned fearfully back at her. The teeth looked far too big.

Famke closed her eyes and thought hard. She remembered cold, ice, the sight of her round breasts bobbing as she clutched the ceiling slope and sailed upon Albert. In her natural state she was beautiful. She told herself that for now, she had done the best she could: She looked as much like the original Nimue as possible. Everything would be set right when she saw Albert again.

Famke gathered herself together to step out the back door and into the frosty night of snowflakes like tiny kisses. Almost as an afterthought, she took out a twenty-dollar gold piece and laid it on Mag's dresser, for all the world as if she were a male customer; she had after all arrived in that guise, though she was leaving as a lady. Then she closed the door and stepped lightly toward the main road, feeling her breath come easier in the cold air. A train would leave for Arizona at 8:12 p.m.

Lying in the Chinese cook's bed that afternoon after Harry had left, Famke had seen no reason to wait for Harry and every reason to avoid him. He'd already listed the trains for her and told her to choose the one she thought best; it was an easy matter to select a different train now and follow the route he'd sketched. She made the depot in good time.

She was so pleased with herself that she failed to notice the ticket agent's critical look—for it was unusual to see a woman who carried nothing larger than a purse when no man, porter or friend, followed her with a valise. She bought a ticket and climbed into the train, happy in her first silk dress and the prospect of resuming a life of art in a big city. She coughed into a handkerchief and threw it recklessly out the window.

'Twas a cure

He had not ever named

Unto our kin lest they should stint

Their favour, for some foolish hint

Of wizardry or magic in't [ . . . ]

I bade him come that night. He came;

But little in his speech

Was a cure or sickness spoken of,

Only a passionate fierce love

That clamoured upon God above
.

D
ANTE
G
ABRIEL
R
OSSETTI
,
“T
HE
B
RIDE'S
P
RELUDE”

It is a dreadful pity that old cities will burn down and be rebuilt, and that all cities must have such a monotony of repetitions of blocks of houses. By the end of another century there won't be an old city left anywhere in the world
.

H
ELEN
H
UNT
J
ACKSON
, “D
ENMARK
,”
IN
G
LIMPSES OF
T
HREE
C
OASTS

The maid who opened the front door was plump, pale, and spotty of complexion; worse yet, she smelled of cat. Mother Birgit wondered why a fastidious man, such as she presumed Herr Skatkammer to be, and his housekeeper tolerated this indication of personal slatternliness. Perhaps the housekeeper had a damaged olfactory sense; it was only natural, after all the caustic soaps and oils she must have inhaled in her career.

Birgit drew herself to attention. The maid was looking at her suspiciously, as she must look at many black-robed Catholics who came to the door seeking Herr Skatkammer's favor. Perhaps the girl was a Lutheran.

Reminding herself that she was Mother Superior, Birgit held her breath and gripped her basket hard. It required all her courage and sense of purpose to say, “I have heard the master is ill. I would like to bring him these gifts from the children of the Immaculate Heart, to whom he has been so generous.”

The maid chewed the inside of her cheek suspiciously, but nonetheless she opened the door and allowed Birgit into the foyer. “Wait here.” She vanished, to be heard from soon afterward with heavy steps that could not be muffled no matter how thickly carpeted the stairs.

Standing in the foyer, Birgit had time to study Herr Skatkammer's collections of shadowboxed beetles and butterflies, fossil ferns, and artifacts
related to a mummified crocodile. They all bore a layer of dust and ash that put Birgit distressingly in mind of the death that the Catholic network reported was imminent, though she took it as a good sign that much of the anteroom was occupied by several large wooden crates. These presumably contained more collections looking for a home and thus indicated that the owner had not yet given up on life.

It seemed that on restless nights Herr Skatkammer was in the habit of enjoying a cigar and a collection of rare prints in bed. Two weeks ago, the inevitable had at last occurred: The master fell asleep, and by the time his housekeeper had detected the smoke, Herr Skatkammer was nearly a lost cause. His bed was a mass of black feathers and cotton, and he himself was covered with blisters and char. The burns were so painful that Herr Skatkammer begged the doctor several times to kill him, as he seared the wounds shut by burning them further with irons.

One of Birgit's informants had hinted that the ephemeral collection was something scandalous, pictures of men and women from the East doing things no nun should know of; but Birgit hardly believed it. Herr Skatkammer was known to be a most upstanding gentleman.

“I have brought you some elderberry wine,” she said to him when at last the plump maid showed her into the sickroom. She peered into the shadows at what must be the bed, presided over by the housekeeper's dark shape. “It is both nourishing and soothing.”

Birgit had met Herr Skatkammer only once before, when she came to arrange for Famke's employment; and if she did not know that he alone occupied this brocaded bedroom, she certainly would not have recognized him now, like this. He was lying on his back, wrapped in bandages nearly up to the eyes, and about him there clung an odor of burnt flesh. The pale blue irises glinted as he struggled to look at her.

Birgit closed her eyes a moment and, as was so useful, imagined Skatkammer as one of her orphans. She whispered a prayer for his recovery and finished out loud: “There is wine jelly as well.” She set the basket down, fished out a bottle and jar, and held them up where he could see them.

Frøken Grubbe leapt from her seat at the bedside and took the items out of Birgit's hands. “Herr Skatkammer is on a restricted diet,” she said reprovingly. She was so thin and her face so lined with shadows that Birgit
guessed she must have been spending all her time in the sickroom. A mustache showed up startlingly dark against her white skin.

Birgit addressed herself to the housekeeper. “These foods are made of the purest ingredients, from Immaculate Heart's own trees, and the jelly is of an old recipe recommended for invalids. I boiled it myself.” She did not need to point out that there could be nothing wrong with the gifts of a convent; her dark habit and dangling rosary communicated as much for her.

Herr Skatkammer wheezed. “I—am gratified to see you, Mother. A most fortuitous—a welcome surprise.” It cost him some effort to speak at all, for the heat of the fire had blistered his lungs; Birgit heard the liquid gurgling like a gutter deep inside. She was surprised when he managed to draw together breath enough to say, “Grubbe, you may—go now. I want to talk to the Mother—alone.”

With a disapproving shake of the head, Frøken Grubbe went, taking the convent basket with her. Birgit replaced her in the bedside chair, where the smell was nearly suffocating; she, who was so skilled with corpses and sick children, itched to unwrap Herr Skatkammer's bandages and see what she could make of the wounds beneath. She had to remind herself that he surely had the best of doctors, and it was not her place to interfere in this way.

There could be no harm, however, in smoothing a gray wisp of hair from a patch of brow that had miraculously remained unburnt. When she did so, Skatkammer looked at her with tears of gratitude—so happy, she thought, for the small mercies. “Is there something you need from the Church?” she asked in the voice that she used for soothing agitated novices.

He seemed to feel there was no time for niceties. “That housemaid you sent me,” he said. “Ursula. I am told—she was once an artist's model.”

Birgit tucked her hands within the folds of her skirts and allowed them to clench each other. “That may be true,” she said, her voice and face carefully blank.

Skatkammer would not have noticed if she'd been livid. The pale eyes blinked rapidly. “Do you know where she is?”

Birgit decided there could be no harm in admitting, “I believe she has gone to America.” Thinking of Viggo's letter, which had been remarkable in its lack of real information, she stretched the truth slightly and said, “She has gone to join her artist. They are to be married.”

“Ah.”

With all the bandages, it was impossible to read the wounded man's expression. In the long pause that followed, the housekeeper's voice scolded someone on the floor below, but Birgit could not make out her words.

“I have also heard”—Skatkammer wheezed damply over the aspirated sounds—“that there exists a marvelous painting of her. A barefooted nymph. In a forest of ice.”

Birgit chose her words carefully. “I have never seen such a painting,” she said, but the image Famke had described to her flashed in her mind: naked but for a nightgown, arms upraised; hair streaming, breath steaming. The thought of it scorched Birgit with shame.

“I read of it in the papers,” Skatkammer said, as if winning an important point.

Red-faced but carefully erect, Birgit said, “Naturally Immaculate Heart did not know of Ursula's activities, nor do we approve of—”

“I know that painting has gone to America as well,” Skatkammer cut in with an invalid's imperiousness. “But it—has to come back. I want to buy it—I am thinking of starting a collection of art,” he added, as if to justify himself to the nun.

Looking around at the already crowded walls, Birgit rather doubted that a new collection would be possible without building another wing onto the house. But she said, “I know considerably less about this painting than you do.”

“That doesn't matter now. I can do nothing as I am, and someone—must help me find it.” His eyes were leaking into the bandages, where surely the tears would sting the tender skin; Birgit took out her clean, coarse handkerchief and dabbed gently at the lower lids. Skatkammer took advantage of this intimacy to whisper, “Help me.” Even his breath smelled burnt, blowing hotly on her face. “I have no faith in the Grubbe woman.”

Birgit sat back and tucked the handkerchief into her sleeve, hoping that her face did not show how troubled she felt.