The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [231]
Constance smoothed the girl’s hair, touched the small soft cheeks, brought the round face close. “ ’When the woods grow dark / and by faint stars and pale / does God’s light leave its mark / then does her heart quail. But . . .’“
“ ’But her faith’s like a lamp,’ “ Angelica interrupted proudly, but then stumbled again at once. “ ’And God . . . God slow, God sl. . .’ I can’t recall.”
“ ’And God’s love is brighter . . . still . . . than . . .,’“ her mother prompted.
“Shall I see a moon through the tower window?”
Angelica’s excitement was unmistakable as night approached. Twice she looked closely at Constance and said with great seriousness, “I am frightened to be alone tonight, Mamma.” But Constance did not believe her. Angelica claimed to be afraid only because she could sense—for reasons beyond her understanding—that her mother wished she were frightened. Her claim of fear was an unwanted gift—a child’s scribbled drawing—offered in perceptive love.
Still, those transparent lies were the exception to her candid anticipation. Constance washed her, and Angelica spoke of the princess’s adventures alone in her tower. Constance brushed her hair while Angelica brushed the princess’s, and Angelica asked if she could please go to bed yet. Constance read to her from the blue chair, and in mid-sentence Angelica uncharacteristically claimed fatigue, then sweetly refused her mother’s offer to sit with her until she fell asleep.
“Should I leave the door open, my love?”
“No, thank you, Mamma. The princess desires her solitudary.”
Constance likely waited in the narrow hall, tidied the linens in the armoire, straightened paintings, lowered lamps, but heard no protest, only muttering court intrigue until that, too, faded.
Downstairs Joseph had still not returned. “Is all well in the child’s bedroom, madam?” the maid asked.
“In the nursery, Nora. Yes, thank you.”
When Joseph did arrive, he did not inquire but assumed his dictates had been smoothly instituted. He spoke of his day and did not mention Angelica at all, did not even—as they extinguished the downstairs gas and rose to the third story—stop on the second to look upon his child in her new situation. His cold triumph was understood. “Angelica resisted the new arrangements,” Constance allowed herself in mild rebellion.
He showed no concern, seemed even to take a certain pleasure in this report or, at least, in Constance carrying out his will despite resistance. She was curious if any description would inspire him even to mere sympathy, let alone a retraction of the deadly orders. Besides, the child’s actual satisfaction tonight was surely temporary, and Constance wondered what sort of response he would offer when the child’s courage finally broke, and so she said, “Angelica wept herself to sleep, so isolated she feels.”
“She shall adjust, I imagine,” he replied. “No choice in the matter, and where there is no choice, one adjusts. She shall learn this readily. Or not.” He took her hand. New whiskers were emerging, a spreading shadow at the edges of his beard. He put his lips upon her brow. He released her hand, rose to the basin and looking glass. “She shall adjust,” he repeated and examined himself. “Further to all this, I have been giving thought to her education.”
It seemed he would not be satisfied with his victory today, as a dam that has held for years before yielding to its first crack will then collapse in minutes. “Surely there is no urgency to act upon that as well,” Constance attempted.
“Surely I might speak before you indulge your passion to contradict me.”
“I apologize.” No longer regretting her lie, wishing only that his child’s weeping could cause him any pain at all, she occupied herself with a hairbrush.
“I have not concerned myself sufficiently with her education. She has achieved an age where her formation as a thinking person should be monitored.”
“You believe she has suffered under my eye?”
“You must not start at shadows, my dear. More of her father’s influence