How does Eldric manage this so easily? When I told Pearl how sorry I was about her baby, she merely said, “Thank you, miss,” and turned back to the sink. Perhaps she could tell I was sorry about her baby, but only in my head. That’s just a thought, not a feeling.
The next morning, Eldric also helped out in the kitchen, or pretended to help but really spent most of his time making up disrespectful rhymes about Judge Trumpington and the Chime Child. He even made Father and Mr. Clayborne laugh, although Father couldn’t help but comment that Judge Trumpington does not rhyme with wages of sin, and never will.
We were on our way to the courthouse, more than an hour later, when I realized that the whole morning was a trick of Eldric’s to set us all at ease. Rose and I, in particular, were nervous.
How does he manage it?
The courthouse was tucked behind the jail, overlooking a sullen little street, clotted year-round with mud. Father and I paused on the courthouse steps to have an exchange of words. They were actual words with actual meanings attached to them. It was not a pleasant experience.
“But you’ve been called as witness,” said Father. He kept his voice low, as we were in public. No one must suspect that the Larkins have their little family disagreements.
Father and I, together with Rose, Eldric, and Tiddy Rex, made an inward-facing circle, like cows, only more intelligent. The Brownie stuck his long nose between Eldric and Tiddy Rex.
Go away! But I didn’t bother saying it anymore.
“Eldric is nice,” said Rose. “Do you think he’s nice?”
“Very nice,” I said.
“He gave me a pink ribbon,” said Rose.
“So he did.”
“He gave it to me because the witches took my first pink ribbon.” Rose was talking now to Eldric. “When I told Briony you gave me the ribbon, she said, ‘Oh, that Eldric!’ She meant you’re nice.”
“When you’ve been summoned as a witness,” said Father, “you are obliged to enter the courtroom.”
How had Stepmother managed to shrug off Father’s notions of propriety? She always said he needn’t know what we girls were doing. That it wasn’t lying, that it kept him from worrying and kept us free to do what we wanted to do.
“But I can’t testify if I’m ill.” My words had actual meanings, but none of them penetrated Father’s mind. It appeared to be hermetically sealed. “I always get ill in the courtroom.”
“Always?” said Father. “You’ve only been there once.”
“I saw Briony be ill,” said Rose. “I didn’t prefer her to, but she did.”
“It’s the way the courtroom smells,” I said. “It smells of eels.”
Father sighed. “Please spare me these arguments of yours.”
“Whose arguments should I use?”
Father’s clergyman mask slipped. His scratch-lips actually ripped themselves apart. But he couldn’t have been more surprised than I was. The shock of hearing myself uncoiled like a spring. One might be wicked, but one wasn’t pert. Not to one’s father.
My own mask stayed just where it ought. I’ve had lots of practice.
“Listen here,” said Father. “I’ll not tolerate this sort of rudeness.”
“What sort of rudeness will you tolerate?” My Briony mask hadn’t slipped. That was exactly the sort of thing she’d say, only more so.
When did the pictures start sliding through my mind? Perhaps I’d been seeing them all along; perhaps that’s why I had a headache. I saw pictures of Stepmother—Stepmother, as she was at the beginning, wrapped in pearls and lace. Stepmother, as she was toward the end, her hair spread across the pillow. Stepmother, as she was at the end, her skin like waxed paper.
They were not quite memories. Perhaps they were dreams, or merely reflections of memories—memories caught on broken glass.
I had a headache; I sat on the steps, let my head droop over my knees. Father spoke behind my back. “The inquest of her stepmother’s death took place here not four months ago. Briony was terribly upset.”
I haven’t gone deaf, Father. I can hear you. But do you really think I’m upset because of something that happened here months ago? Have you been reading Dr. Freud? Don’t tell me you believe in psychology!
“But of course I wouldn’t wear a pink ribbon with this new frock,” said Rose. “I’m wearing a blue ribbon.”
“You have quite an eye for color,” said Eldric. “The ribbon exactly matches your sash.”
“Why, so it does,” said Rose, which was exactly what Father said when she pointed out her matching ribbon and sash, but Father said it with an exclamation mark.
“How pretty you be, Miss Rose,” said Tiddy Rex.
Rose and I wore new frocks for the first time in years and years. Father had asked Pearl to see that we had something suitable to wear to the trial. She and her mother started our frocks, and when Pearl’s baby died, Mrs. Trumpington had her seamstress finish them, which was very kind. They were made from the same midnight blue merino, but mine was far more grown-up than Rose’s: It was cut very trim (no childish flounces for this girl, thank you!), with alabaster buttons down the side of the neck and along one shoulder.
Tiddy Rex sat beside me on the step; he slipped his hand into mine. “I’ll bide with you, miss. Happen you got one o’ them migraines?”
Oh, Tiddy Rex! If I were fond of children, I’d kiss that red-radish cheek of his. “Just a headache, Tiddy Rex.” One has to believe in psychology to have migraines.
“Look at that woman,” said Rose. “She is wearing a most beautiful blue, which I prefer she wear because I have an eye for color.”
“Thank you,” said a voice, belonging, I supposed, to the blue-wearing woman. “Blue and green are my favorite colors.”
Everyone but me turned toward the voice, fragmenting our clever-cow circle, and there followed a general twitter during which names were offered and accepted, and greeting cards too, and hands extended and taken, and a pair of blue leather shoes tip-tapping into my range of vision. They were lovely shoes, all creamy leather and satin ribbons.
Huge, though.
When I learned that the owner of the shoes was named Leanne, I made a bet with myself. I bet that despite her enormous feet, Leanne would be very beautiful. I glanced up.
I won.
She was everything I am not: tall, full-figured, sloe-eyed, dark. You could easily picture her in a sultan’s palace, strands of rubies plaited into her hair. Her frock was of peacock blue silk—silk, for an afternoon in the courtroom? But on her it looked wonderfully right—right out of the harem.
“How kind you all are.” She spoke in a dark-river sort of voice, as though her throat were filled with dusk. She was staying in a village not twenty miles off, but her dusky voice made it sound like an island of spicy winds and bursting pineapples. Just the place to be marooned.
She despised witches, she said. It was witches that had driven her uncle Harry mad. It was in honor of his memory that she made it a point to attend the trial of every witch she possibly could, in his honor that she celebrated every conviction and hanging. She could only do so, of course, during the summer months, when she visited her cousins. Otherwise, she lived with her family in London, which was mercifully free of witches.
Presently, Eldric sat beside me on the step. “Here’s a possible solution: You and Tiddy Rex and I will stand at the very back of the courtroom, and if you feel ill, we’ll leave.”
“Fine.” The taste of ashes rose in my throat. Just fine! Let me be ill in front of everyone and die of humiliation.