Laura Schlitz - Splendors and Glooms

Lizzie Rose’s brow puckered. She forgot the scene they were enacting. “It doesn’t make sense,” she said. “If Miss Wintermute ran away from home, she’d come to see Parsefall and me. She wouldn’t hide in your boudoir or creep down to the larder.”

“They think she was kidnapped,” Mrs. Pinchbeck said sagely. “They think Grisini kidnapped her and ’id her in the ’ouse.” She took the gin bottle from under the sofa and poured a tablespoon into her glass. “It don’t matter,” she concluded, and drank. “They won’t find anything, any more than they did the last time.”

“The last time?” Lizzie Rose echoed.

Mrs. Pinchbeck eyed the level of gin in the bottle, sighed, and pushed it under the sofa again. “Must have been eleven, twelve years ago. It was just before I met Mr. Pinchbeck and settled down. I was in Brighton, at the Theatre Royal — I was Angela in The Castle Spectre — and Grisini was playing at the Dome. We was staying in the same boarding’ouse. And this little boy went missing. He’d come to the Dome to see the fantoccini, and afterward his nurse brought ’im backstage, because he wanted to see up close. And then — the next day it was — he went missing. Everyone thought Grisini ’ad something to do with it, because ’e was a foreigner. So the coppers come to the boarding’ouse. They was all over, poking and prying and asking their questions. But they couldn’t prove anything, because Grisini never done it.”

The front door slammed shut. Lizzie Rose heard the sound of barking. Parsefall had returned with breakfast. The parrot, excited by the cries of the dogs, shouted, “Ruination!” The canary burst into song, beginning with a series of earsplitting chirps and ending with a trill.

Lizzie Rose leaned toward Mrs. Pinchbeck, not wanting to lose the thread of the story. “But did they ever find him?” she said imploringly. “Did they ever find the little boy?”

“He came back ’ome,” Mrs. Pinchbeck said, “but ’e was never the same after that. Next to an idiot, ’e was. That’s what I ’eard. But it had nothing to do with Grisini, and soon afterward, I met Mr. Pinchbeck.” Her voice warmed as she began the familiar story. “I ’ad on a white muslin gown with pink flowers, and a parasol to match, and my ’air was in natural ringlets, as took two hours to put up in papers —”

The door opened. Parsefall came in, oppressed by dogs. Pomeroy, the bulldog, had attached himself to the boy’s trousers and hung there, drooling. Punch, the rat terrier, leaped up and down like a hammer on a nail. Puck, the beagle, snarled at Parson, the pug dog, and Ruby was at the rear. The spaniel had caught the leash between her hind legs and was circling with one paw lifted, hopelessly tangled.

“Oh, poor Ruby!” cried Lizzie Rose, and went to rescue her favorite.

“I’ve got breakfast,” Parsefall said joyfully. “I asked for stale bread, but the old lady at the bakery said there was only fresh. She said she’d give it to me ’ot an’ cheap, if I’d just get the bloody dogs out of the shop.”

“How clever of you, Parsefall,” cried Lizzie Rose, “and shame on you, using such horrid language in front of a refined lady like Mrs. Pinchbeck!”

Parsefall blinked at her. Mrs. Pinchbeck was charmed, as Lizzie Rose had intended, and assumed an air of mincing gentility. “There’s fresh dripping in the larder,” the landlady hinted, and Lizzie Rose clapped her hands. She had an unappeasable craving for meat in any disguise.

“Bread and dripping for breakfast!” announced Lizzie Rose. “I’ll run downstairs and put the kettle on, and we’ll have a feast.” She reached under the sofa, nabbed the gin bottle, hauled the bulldog off Parsefall’s leg, and went bravely downstairs to face Mrs. Pinchbeck’s larder.

Clara slept. Never in her life had she known so dense a sleep: a sleep without dreaming, without the slightest twitch of finger or eyelid. She was as lifeless as a pressed flower. If she had been awake, she could not have said whether her eyes were open or shut. Her mind was empty, freed from guilt and terror and grief. Only the night before, she had spoken of her fear of cold and darkness; now darkness and cold claimed her, and she was not afraid.

That night Parsefall had a nightmare. It was Ruby who sounded the alarm, sniffing at her mistress’s face and whining softly. Lizzie Rose heard Parsefall’s labored breathing and climbed out of bed. She drew a blanket around her shoulders, tiptoed out of her room, and knelt down beside the sleeping boy. She wanted to rouse him before he screamed; Grisini did not like being awakened.

“Parse,” she whispered urgently. She took his hand and squeezed it. “Parse!”

His eyelids lifted, fluttering. He flailed his arms and sat up, straining to see through the darkness. Ruby whimpered and tried to lick his face.

“It’s just me,” Lizzie Rose whispered. She put her arms around him and drew him close. He was trembling so hard that her own heart beat faster. She steadied herself, taking deep breaths. If feelings could cross from one body to another, he must catch hers, not the other way around. “I’m right beside you, Parse.”

Parsefall burrowed into her. She felt the heat of his breath against her shoulder and a few damp spots, tears he would never admit to shedding. Once, after one of his nightmares, he had bitten a hole in her nightdress. Lizzie Rose rocked him back and forth, stroking his hair. It felt greasy and smelled horrid. She tried not to inhale. “You had a bad dream,” she murmured, “but the bad isn’t real. I’m here, and you’re safe.”

For perhaps a minute and a half, they clung to each other. Then he pushed her away. “Get off me,” he growled.

It occurred to Lizzie Rose that it would be easy to hit him. It would serve him right, and he was certainly within range. She pushed the tempting idea aside and reached for the poker. “I’m going to stir up the fire,” she whispered. “You’re cold as ice.”

Parsefall wrapped his arms around his knees. He was still quivering, but he didn’t argue. He watched as Lizzie Rose put coal on the fire and stirred the embers. As the firelight grew stronger, his narrow little face took on a different cast. By full light, he was a weedy, homely little boy, but now he was weirdly pretty. His hollow cheeks held the shadows, and his pale eyes gleamed silver.

“Now,” Lizzie Rose said briskly, “what was your dream?”

She knew he wouldn’t tell her. He never did. She wondered if he even remembered.

“Nuffink,” said Parsefall tonelessly.

“Do you want to go back to sleep? I’ll sit by you.”

Parsefall didn’t answer.

“Do you want me to tell you a story?”

She had him there. Caresses he spurned and sympathy he could resist, but Parsefall loved stories. No one had told him stories in the workhouse. As a figure worker, he had learned the plots of Grisini’s puppet plays, but he knew no others. He could not read and he resisted all Lizzie Rose’s attempts to teach him his letters. But stories he loved. He said hungrily, “Cinderella?”

Lizzie Rose smiled to herself. It was his favorite, and her masterpiece. She had told it many times over and perfected each detail; if she was in the mood to describe every gemstone on the enchanted coach, or every ribbon on Cinderella’s gown, she didn’t spare him. “Wrap yourself up,” she whispered, “and I’ll tell.” She reached for his quilt so that she could wind a cocoon around him.

Something fell from the folds of the cloth, striking the floor with a sharp plonk. “What’s that?” hissed Lizzie Rose.