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  For Anthony: It’s not exactly “Clouds,” but I hope it will do

  When you are entrusted with secrets in confidence, remember that this may be done, and is often done, under doubt, or at least suspicions may arise afterwards; and if you, by inadvertence or vanity, give cause for such suspicions, your credit and character will henceforth be forfeited and lost. . . . For go where you will, the character which you have made for yourself will be certain, sooner or later, to follow you.

  —The Duties of a Lady’s Maid

  In some families, there are secrets on which the welfare, and perhaps the very existence of the persons concerned may depend.

  —The Duties of a Lady’s Maid

  WASHINGTON SQUARE, 1837

  It was Thursday again, and once more I was courting misery with both arms open wide.

  “Thank you, Ballard, that will do,” Miss Charlotte Walden said, and, bobbing a curtsy, I showed myself quickly from the room. The heavy oak door shut solidly, with a soft click following as the lock was engaged. The Argand lamps threw but dim illumination along the heavy carpet lining the hall, casting flickering shadows amongst the birds and flowers woven there. I made my way along the muffled corridor to the door that led into the servants’ stair. On the landing was the door to my own narrow chamber. I pressed myself to this barrier, one ear flat against the wood. Through the door, I could only just make out the muffled scrape of the window opening in the room beyond. It was all so faint, in the faded light on the landing, almost dreamlike. I let my forehead rest against the door, my eyes closed. I strained for the sound of the bed, imagining its creak coming through the door as a whisper once, twice, again.

  Quick footfalls broke my reverie, and I lurched from the door as Mrs. Harrison came up the stair. I froze, my ears still straining, but the heavy oak was my mistress’s shield. One hand went up involuntarily to see my hair was straight, and I nodded to the imposing housekeeper.

  “Miss Ballard. Is it not your night off?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Harrison, mum.”

  “Is Miss Walden abed and all your duties discharged?” she asked, her face placid, her tone bland.

  “Indeed they are, Mrs. Harrison.”

  “Then I see no cause for you to linger when you might very well go.”

  “Yes, thank you, mum.”

  Beneath Mrs. Harrison’s critical eye, I hurried down the back stairs to the kitchen. I stopped on the landing to arrange my face into a mask of tranquillity before I faced Cook.

  “Night off, Miss Ballard?” the big woman asked, as though she didn’t already know the answer.

  “Yes, Mrs. Freedman, mum.”

  “Bit of a snack for you then, child.” She gestured at a small parcel with the knife she held. “Right then, off with you.” Mrs. Freedman, brusque with everyone, always took the time to show me kindness in her own harsh way. She was under no obligation to feed me extra on my night off, but she often did it anyway, suspicious in that chronic way of cooks that I was not adequately fed unless she was doing the feeding. “All skin and bones, that one,” I heard her mutter as she returned to her chopping. “See you bundle well, child,” she said, raising her voice again. “It’s turned snowy again.”

  I huddled into my wool mantle, tying my bonnet firmly under my chin. No mitts or gloves had I, but only Charlotte Walden’s muff from four seasons ago, the fur patchy and worn near to the skin. Thus attired, I nodded farewell to Cook and slipped out the kitchen door. I made my way down the snowy cobbles to the gate at the end of the mews, should anyone be watching from the windows, then doubled back along the other side of the block and ducked inside the street door to our own carriage house. The horses nickered softly, cold air gusting down the row of stalls from the open door. Moonlight and streetlamps lit my way across the flagstones to the Waldens’ coach, black and hulking. The door stuck a little as I opened it and crawled in to sit on the floor. I breathed in deeply the smells of the carriage house: sweet hay and oat mash, worn leather, brass polish, and the musky scent of horse. Such aromas as had clung to my father. I opened Cook’s parcel to nibble at my portion of bread and cheese, listening to the wind rattle the shutters. Licking my fingers, brushing the crumbs from my skirt, I settled in to wait.

  It was nearly pitch dark when Seanin arrived, the streetlamps having guttered low. I had dozed off with my head on the carriage seat, but woke at once when he touched my arm. In the wan light, he smiled, his eyes gleaming. I smiled back, took his glove, and let him hand me down from the coach like the lady I’d never be. Softly, so our boots wouldn’t ring on the flagstones, we slipped out the carriage house’s front door onto the street. A clock struck one over at St. Mark’s as we made our way east out onto Broadway. A sudden gust as we rounded the corner threw me off-balance; I moved into the proffered circle of his arm, huddling close against him. A light snow fell, swirling in eddies over the cobbles, and I gripped his arm to keep from slipping on the shell of ice formed over the street. The houses and shops that lined the way were dark, silent, and we had gone several blocks south before we saw lights dancing behind curtained windows and either of us dared speak.

  “Have you eaten?” he asked me quietly in Irish.

  “I have,” I whispered back. “Have you?”

  “I ate. But I’m not yet satisfied.” He smiled wickedly; I shoved him, grinning in spite of myself.

  We crossed over Houston and down to one of the narrow side streets, a swell of light and noise rising to meet us as we came to Lafayette. Warm light and capering shadows thrown from the windows of public houses and dance halls stained the snow, a mix of song and laughter escaping from behind the doors.

  The Hibernian stood on Mulberry Street, on a block crammed full of public houses and a handful of the more respectable sorts of brothels. Like its neighbors, it catered almost exclusively to Irish, though one might find the rare Italian or Prussian who’d wandered north out of the Sixth Ward, the borders of which were still confined to the south. It was already all Catholics then in Mulberry Street, but the Hibernian was full of lilting voices from every corner of the island. Here, broad Galway vowels rubbed up against rapid Belfast chatter and clipped Dublin drawl. And from behind the bar, his heavy brogue booming over the din, reigned Dermot John O’Brien, proprietor and publican, who nodded to us as we entered. We nodded back, weaving our way through the patrons packing the place.

  At a cramped bench in the back, I waited while Seanin sidled up to the bar. When he returned, he held two mugs in each hand, foam streaming down the sides. I had slipped off my bonnet and mantle, my face flushed from the heat of the room, and, reaching for one of the mugs, gulped down half its contents in one swig.

  “Easy now,” he said, speaking English this time. “It’ll go straight to your head.”

  “Fuck it, Johnny,” I said, using his English name. I took another swallow, having by now dropped the posh accent I adopted in the Waldens’ home and slipping back into my native brogue. “Just because you’re buying there’s no call to be an ass.”

  He spread his hands in a defenseless sort of gesture that I had been growing lately to despise. I turned my eyes back to my ale, scowling. He was always a great one for ruining a moment.

  My temper up, we drank then in silence; the
amber firelight from the hearth seemed to suffuse the amber liquid in my mug. From time to time, I saw him nod or say a word in acknowledgment of other patrons, men I recognized as friends of his, but I kept my eyes firmly on my ale, refusing stubbornly to meet anyone’s gaze. At last he sighed loudly.

  “What now?”

  He shrugged with exaggerated casualness. “Might go greet the lads, if you weren’t feeling social.”

  “It’s all the same to me.”

  “Grand,” he said, clinking his glass cockily to mine and sauntering into the press toward a knot of his cronies.

  I relocated to the bar in the hopes of engaging Dermot in a lengthy discourse on Seanin’s many faults, but the bustle kept him moving up and down the counter, too busy refilling mugs with ale and topping off glasses of whiskey to do more than keep my own mug filled and shrug apologetically at me as he moved on to less sullen patrons. I counted seven rounds before the room began to blur and sway, the light and laughter swirling like the gustings of snow that still fell, before a sudden smack of cold stung my cheeks. Seanin was holding my shoulders firmly as I retched in the alley behind the Hibernian, the icy wind sobering. I shook his arm from my shoulders, pushing past him back into the pub. Weaving between the scattered remaining patrons, I made my way to the stairs at the back of the bar, sketching a rough salute to Dermot as I passed him. He reached out to steady me as I swayed, but I waved him off, leaning heavily against the wall for balance. I descended, making my way past the casks and kegs to a double pallet spread out by the hearth. I could hear Seanin hurrying behind me, and sat, legs splayed, waiting for him on the pallet. My braid had come down, uncoiling over my shoulder, which I noted in a detached sort of way as I allowed him to remove my boots and stockings. I bent forward, nose to my knees, and waited for him to unbutton me enough to slide my frock over my head. I felt his fingers clumsily picking at the knots in my stays, and moved to help him unlace me. I was shivering then, clad only in my thin shift, lying back onto the pallet, my eyes closed as I listened to him move about the room. I heard him building up the fire, felt him sit heavily onto the pallet beside me, pulling the layers of blankets up around me to stop me shivering. I rolled over on my side and took his hand, pressing it gratefully to my cheek. I squeezed his fingers, inhaling the perfumed hair oil of Charlotte Walden, who, only hours before, had lain with him in her bed.

  Seanin retrieved his hand, brushing a stray hair back from my face, and saying in Irish, “There now, little Maire. What did I say about all that drink?”

  “Hell with it, Seanin,” I said in our father’s language. “There’ll be time to regret it all in the morning.”

  “Go to sleep, Sister,” he whispered, kissing my brow before heading back up the stairs, but I was already drifting off.

  Whatever may be told you, therefore, by your mistress, should be kept inviolable, though she does not particularly enjoin secrecy.

  —The Duties of a Lady’s Maid

  It had been just over a year ago that Charlotte Walden had met my eyes in the mirror and asked, “Where do you go on your nights off, Ballard?” and I had invented an aunt who lived in Essex Street. The question wasn’t wholly unexpected, and the Hibernian was in the general direction of Essex anyway.

  I listened attentively as she asked me to leave the window of my closet room ajar. Charlotte Walden had never left her nursery; it had merely been made over as she came of age, and when her nurse moved out of the tiny adjoining room, a governess had moved in. The autumn of Charlotte’s coming out, I had been hired and it had been made over yet again, the little closet now reserved for her lady’s maid. It had been the closest thing I had to a home for nearly two winters by the time she made the request. It was cramped, with space enough only for a narrow bed and my trunk, one door leading to Charlotte’s bedchamber, the other door leading to the servants’ stair. The tiny window, just wide enough for a lean man to climb through, looked out into the mews. Thick ivy crept up the bricks, providing ample handholds, and I thought later, as I looked out the window, that the little room could not have been better designed for such clandestine purposes.

  I listened, I nodded, I murmured “yes, miss,” as though it was the most natural thing in the world. As though she had asked me to hand her a stocking or find her glove. Of course, Miss Walden. I’d be happy to help. The next Thursday, I did as I was bade, and then listened outside the door on the landing as my brother shimmied through the window to fuck my mistress. I tried to listen to their muffled talk, imagining his smooth compliments, her halfhearted protestations. I listened for the silence of their first kiss. I listened for the swish of silk slipping over her shoulders, to the creak of the bed as they fell against it, to the rhythm of them making love. I thought I heard her moan and cry out, so soft, so soft. And what sounds the oak door robbed me of, I could imagine well enough.

  When it was over, I was waiting for Seanin in the carriage house, as though it were any other Thursday night, and we walked in silence to the Hibernian. I could smell her on him: the lavender-scented oil I brushed into her shining hair, the musk of her underarms, the heavy, earthy scent from between her legs. I wanted to ask if she’d wanted it. I wanted to ask if her lips were soft beneath his own. I wanted to ask if she’d bled, and when she’d cried if it had been with pain or joy, and what she’d said to him after it was over. I wanted to ask a thousand questions burning in my heart, but I was ashamed and asked nothing at all. It was Seanin’s fault, with his hangdog face, looking pleased and embarrassed both, so I dared say not a word. When finally we reached the Hibernian, I let him stand me round after round until I staggered into the back alley and was sick into my hair. We slept back to back that night, but the smell of her rose off him in warm waves, curdling my stomach. I heaved myself up the stair again and went out back to retch in the alley until there was nothing left but bile, then retched that up too. Dermot found me there, shivering and barefoot, and made me eat a few handfuls of clean snow. He picked me up in his arms as though I were a babe, and carried me back down to my pallet in the cellar. Once he had settled me, he shook Seanin till his teeth rattled.

  “I don’t know what’s between you two, and I don’t care to either. But if you ever let your sister get that sick and grieved again, you can find another goddamn floor to sleep on.”

  I wept silently as Seanin apologized over and over until, satisfied, Dermot took himself back upstairs. When he crawled to the pallet, Seanin was tender enough, wiping away my tears, asking how he’d grieved me. But what could I have said? My questions stayed unasked, and his stayed unanswered.

  We’d never spoken of it again.

  In the morning, we rose before first light to make our way back to the Waldens’ stately house in the Square—Seanin back to being Johnny in the carriage house, and I to Charlotte Walden’s bedchamber. I tidied things quietly as my mistress slept, removing all trace of her nocturnal doings and misdoings, erasing my brother from Charlotte’s life. But not entirely, for the next week, she asked me to keep the window open again, and the week after that, and the one that followed, until she no longer need ask, for I did it without being told.

  Week after week the window was left ajar, until it became a ritual, like the Mass I never took now in fear I’d be thrown out for popery. It was a ritual to bathe and wash her hair, to anoint her with scented oils and dress her in lace and silk. A ritual in which I knew not if she was priestess or sacrifice, only that to touch her, to make her ready, was a sacred thing. I took great care with her, Charlotte Walden. But also I took care to show her no more or less attention than before, to be no more or less familiar. I took care that she should never feel awkward, or unsure of me. I treated her like a treasure, the perfect creature that she was.

  With Seanin, I said nothing. We resumed our weekly walk to the Hibernian, our routine—a few rounds of ale, pleasantries exchanged with his cronies, and him footing the bill—until one Thursday I realized an entire year had spun by and, bleary with ale, the bitter words poured fo
rth from me in a torrent.

  “You’ve ruined her.”

  Seanin looked up from his circle of mates, surprised. He had been saying something about the upcoming elections that I hadn’t been minding, and I had interrupted him. Giving his companions a forced smile, he took me by the elbow and propelled me to the corner by the alley door. I glanced back over my shoulder at the knot of men we’d left behind and their wary, knowing looks. Seanin spun me around to face him, hissing, “What call have you got to bring her into it?”

  “She’s ruined, I say.”

  “She’s rich, how could she be ruined?”

  “Not that kind of ruined. Morally ruined. She’ll have to marry someday, and then they’ll know.” I shook my head, suddenly terrified. “Oh god, they’ll know.”

  Seanin patted my arm, awkwardly. “It could have happened riding.”

  “She scarce ever rides, Johnny.”

  “She rides every week.”

  “That’s not the sort of riding that’ll do such a thing. She trots the palfrey once around the park.”

  “She spends enough time in the carriage house.”

  “And you should tell her to stop. They’ll notice someday. The way she looks at you.”

  “Ah, she never says a word to me.” His light tone had taken on an edge of annoyance.

  “Her eyes say it loud enough.” I pleaded, unable to make him understand the danger they were both in. “They’ll realize it was you. Or one day you’ll get caught.”

  “Go on. They won’t catch me, I’d be out the window again before they could.”

  I clutched at his arm. “It’s a horrible risk.”

  “I said I’d be fine.”

  “Well, what about her? Think of her if you won’t think of yourself. She’s been good to me, Johnny. She doesn’t deserve—”

  “What? What don’t she deserve? I love her, Mar, and she loves me.”