“Wait—” Miss Pool said, rising to her feet—but it was too late. Mrs. Breen had already knelt to retrieve the pamphlet. She unfolded it as she stood. A Great Horror Reviled, read the title, printed in Gothic Blackletter across the top. The illustration below showed an elaborate table setting. Where the plate should have been there lay a baby, split stem to sternum by a deep incision, the flesh pinned back to reveal a tangle of viscera. Mrs. Breen didn’t have to read any more to know what the tract was about, but she couldn’t help scanning the first page anyway, taking in the gruesome illustrations and the phrases set apart in bold type. Too long have the First Families battened upon the flesh of the poor! one read, and another, Blood must flow in the gutters that it may no longer flow in the kitchens of men!—which reminded Mrs. Breen of the boy who had hurled the stone through their carriage window. The Anthropophagic Crisis, Mrs. Graves had called it. Strife in the House of Commons, carnage in the streets.
Miss Pool waited by the dollhouse, Sophie at her side.
“Please, madam,” Miss Pool said, “it is not what you think.”
“Is it not? Whatever could it be, then?”
“I—I found it in the hands of the coachman this morning and confiscated it. I had intended to bring it to your attention.”
Mrs. Breen thought of the coachman testing the weight of her husband’s walking stick, the brigand’s blood black in the jaundiced fog.
“What errand led you to the stables?”
“Sophie and I had gone to look at the horses.”
“Is this true, Sophie?” Mrs. Breen asked.
Sophie was still for a moment. Then she burst into tears.
“Sophie, did you go to the stables this morning? You must be honest.”
“No, Mama,” Sophie said through sobs.
“I thought not.” Mrs. Breen folded the tract. “You dissemble with facility, Miss Pool. Please pack your possessions. You will be leaving us at first light.”
“But where will I go?” the governess asked. And when Mrs. Breen did not respond: “Madam, please—”
“You may appeal to Mr. Breen, if you wish. I daresay it will do you no good.”
Nor did it. Dawn was still gray in the east when Mrs. Breen came out of the house to find a footman loading the governess’s trunk into the carriage. Finished, he opened the door to hand her in. She paused with one foot on the step and turned back to look at Mrs. Breen. The previous night she had wept. Now she was defiant. “Your time is passing, Mrs. Breen,” she said, “you and all your kind. History will sweep you all away.”
Mrs. Breen made no reply. She only stood there and watched as the footman closed the door at the governess’s back. The coachman snapped his whip and the carriage began to move. But long after it had disappeared into the morning fog, the woman’s words lingered. Mrs. Breen was not blind to their irony.
Lady Donner had renounced her.
She had no kind—no rank and no degree, nor any place to call her own.
A housemaid was pressed into temporary service as governess, but the young woman was hardly suited to provide for Sophie’s education.
“What shall we do?” Mr. Breen inquired.
“Until we acquire a proper replacement,” Mrs. Breen said, “I shall take the child in hand myself.”
It was October by then. If Mrs. Breen had anticipated the previous Season, she dreaded the one to come. Last winter, the days had crept by. This winter, they hurtled past, and as the next Season drew inexorably closer, she found herself increasingly apprehensive. Mr. Breen had not spoken of the summer. Would they return to London? And if so, what then?
Mrs. Breen tried (largely without success) not to ruminate over these questions. She focused on her daughter instead. She had vowed to educate the child, but aside from a few lessons in etiquette and an abortive attempt at French, her endeavor was intermittent and half-hearted—letters one day, ciphering the next. She had no aptitude for teaching. What she did have, she discovered, was a gift for play. When a rocking horse appeared on Christmas morning, Mrs. Breen was inspired to make a truth of Ada Pool’s lie and escort Sophie to the stables herself. They fed carrots to Spitzer, Mr. Breen’s much-prized white gelding, and Sophie shrieked with laughter at the touch of his thick, bristling lips.
“What shall we name your rocking horse?” Mrs. Breen asked as they walked back to the house, and the little girl said, “Spitzer,” as Mrs. Breen had known she would. In the weeks that followed, they fed Spitzer imaginary carrots every morning, and took their invisible tea from Sophie’s tiny porcelain tea set every afternoon. Between times there were dolls and a jack-in-the-box and clever little clockwork automata that one could set into motion with delicate wooden levers and miniature silver keys. They played jacks and draughts and one late February day spilled out across a playroom table a jigsaw puzzle of bewildering complexity.
“Mama, why did Miss Pool leave me?” Sophie asked as they separated out the edge pieces.
“She had to go away.”
“But where?”
“Home, I suppose,” Mrs. Breen said. Pursing her lips, she tested two pieces for a fit. She did not wish to speak of Miss Pool.
“I thought she lived with us.”
“Just for a while, dear.”
“Will she ever come to visit us, Mama?”
“I should think not.”
“Why not?”
“She was very bad, Sophie.”
“But what did she do?”
Mrs. Breen hesitated, uncertain how to explain it to the child. Finally, she said, “There are people of great importance in the world, Sophie, and there are people of no importance at all. Your governess confused the two.”
Sophie pondered this in silence. “Which kind of people are we?” she said at last.
Mrs. Breen did not answer. She thought of Abel Munby and she thought of Lady Donner. Most of all she thought of that endless ladder with its greased rungs and rails and high above a radiant circle from which dim voices fell.
“Mama?” Sophie said.
And just then—just in time—a pair of interlocking pieces came to hand. “Look,” Mrs. Breen said brightly, “a match.”
Sophie, thus diverted, giggled in delight. “You’re funny, Mama,” she said.
“Am I, then?” Mrs. Breen said, and she kissed her daughter on the forehead and the matter of Ada Pool was forgotten.
Another week slipped by. They worked at the puzzle in quiet moments, and gradually an image began to take shape: a field of larkspur beneath an azure sky. Mrs. Breen thought it lovely, and at night, alone with her thoughts, she tried to project herself into the scene. Yet she slept restlessly. She dreamed of the boy the coachman had killed in the street. In the dream, he clung to her skirts as she ascended that endless ladder, thirteen stone of dead weight dragging her down into the darkness below. When she looked over her shoulder at him, he had her grandfather’s face. At last, in an excess of fatigue, she ventured one evening with her husband to broach the subject that had lain unspoken between them for so many months. “Let us stay in the country for the summer,” she entreated Mr. Breen. “The heat is so oppressive in town.”
“Would you have us stay here for the rest of our lives?” he asked. And when she did not reply: “We will return to London. We may yet be redeemed.”
Mrs. Breen did not see how they could be.
Nonetheless, preparations for the move soon commenced in earnest. The servants bustled around packing boxes. The house was in constant disarray. And the impossible puzzle proved possible after all. The night before they were to commence the journey, they finished it at last. Mrs. Breen contrived to let Sophie fit the final piece, a single splash of sapphire, blue as any ribbon, or an eye.