Bone House_ A Novel - Betsy Tobin [29]
“I am not you,” I said finally. She smiled a little ruefully, and shook her head.
“No.” She laid the mirror down again and rose, turning me to face her. “And one day you will be glad of it,” she said, no longer smiling. And then I saw a trace of something alien in her eyes: a part of her I could not reach. In that instant I longed to be her more than ever.
After that day I did not ask to see the mirror again. Indeed I went some years without so much as a glimpse of my own reflection, until I came to the Great House where the profusion of mirrored panels and vanity glasses meant that I was forced to confront myself at every turn. And though I was relieved to find that my face was not as unpleasant as I’d remembered, it still did not hold the power nor the intrigue of hers.
Now, as I cross the great hall toward the kitchen, I am once again reminded of this fact, for the girl in the panel opposite me stares blankly out like some mute farm animal. As if by reflex I look away, avoid her eyes and her damning absence of expression, and disappear inside the reassuring warmth of the kitchen. When I enter Cook is putting the finishing touches to a pigeon pie, and I can tell from her demeanor that she is still angered by my mistress’s visit. She hands me a bowl of onions and a paring knife, and I take my usual seat on a bench near the fire. Little George is there, carefully turning a spitted hare, and the three of us carry on in silence for a time. Gradually Cook’s mood lightens, and after a time she begins to hum a little tune under her breath, and even Little George looks relieved.
A knock sounds on the garden door and when Cook opens it my mother stands outside. Cook bids her come inside but my mother refuses, so I rise and go to her. We stand outside the kitchen door, my mother looking around her nervously. She does not like the Great House, indeed has never set foot inside its walls. It is her custom to send messages via Cook whenever she wishes to see me.
“How is the boy?” I ask her.
“He is much improved,” she says with a nod. “But I must attend a birth across the river. It is a first child, so I may be gone some time,” she explains. She does not want to ask me directly, but I know she wishes me to look in on him in her absence.
“I’ll go to him this evening,” I say.
“I’ll return as soon as possible,” she says.
“He will be fine,” I say to reassure her. She does not thank me, merely nods and turns away. I stand and watch as she hurries out of the yard, her dark shawl pulled tightly round her shoulders.
It is a sight that echoes my earliest memories. As a child I used to stand at the window and watch her disappear down the lane. She was often called away and almost always at short notice, so that I came to dread the midnight knocks upon our door. When I was still small I would be bundled up in my nightclothes and taken to the house of a neighbor. Goodwife Wimpole was an elderly widow who lived alone in the village and had agreed to harbor me at such times for a small fee. My mother preferred this sort of arrangement to any other, as she had no living relatives, and did not wish to be beholden to the women of the village. Goodwife Wimpole was short and gray and hard of hearing, with a thistle of hair upon her chin that reminded me of a goat. Her breath smelled of ale and pickled onions, and her house was small and cold but tidily kept. I had my own makeshift bed in one corner on the floor, with a lumpy straw mattress and an old wool coverlet that smelled of mice. It was there I lay at night listening to the whistling wind and Goodwife Wimpole’s whiskered breath, awaiting the return of my mother, who was sometimes kept away for days. I did not understand the reason for her absences, nor why I could not accompany her on her journeys. I knew only that birth was a mysterious and difficult process that required the presence of many women, my mother foremost among them.
That babies came from women’s bellies I’d been told as soon as I could speak. How they came remained