The Wonder(13)

“No, thank you.”

“Why not, do you suppose?”

A trace of a smile. “I can’t say, Mrs.—ma’am,” Anna corrected herself.

“Why? Is that private too?”

The girl looked back at her mildly. Sharp as a pin, Lib decided. Anna must have realized that giving any explanation would get her into difficulties. If she claimed that her Maker had ordered her not to eat, she’d be comparing herself to a saint. But if she boasted of living by any particular natural means, then she’d be obliged to prove it to the satisfaction of science. I’m going to crack you like a nut, missy.

Lib looked around. Until today it must have been child’s play for Anna to sneak food from the kitchen next door in the night or for one of the adults to bring it in without the others hearing a thing. “Your maid—”

“Kitty? She’s our cousin.” Anna took a plaid shawl out of the dresser; its rich reds and browns lent a little colour to her face.

A slavey who was also a poor relation, then; hard for such a subordinate to refuse to take part in a plot. “Where does she sleep?”

“On the settle.” Anna nodded towards the kitchen.

Of course; the lower classes often had more family members than they had beds, so they were obliged to improvise. “And your parents?”

“They sleep in the outshot.”

Lib didn’t know that word.

“The bed built off the cabin, behind the curtain,” explained the child.

Lib had noticed the flour-sack drape in the kitchen but assumed it covered a pantry of some kind. How ridiculous for the O’Donnells to leave their good room standing empty and lie down in a makeshift chamber. But Lib supposed they had just enough respectability to aspire to a little more.

The first thing was to make this narrow bedroom proof against subterfuge. Lib touched her hand to the wall, and whitewash flaked off on her fingers. Plaster of some kind, dampish; not wood, brick, or stone, like an English cottage. Well, at least that meant any recess where food might be cached would be easy to discover.

Also, she had to make sure there was nowhere the child could hide from Lib’s gaze. That rickety old wooden screen would have to go, for starters; Lib folded its three sections together and carried it to the door.

She looked through without leaving the bedroom. Mrs. O’Donnell was stirring a three-legged pot over the fire, and the maid was mashing something at the long table. Lib set down the screen just inside the kitchen and said, “We won’t be needing this. Also, I’d like a basin of hot water and a cloth, please.”

“Kitty,” said Mrs. O’Donnell to the maid, jerking her head.

Lib’s eyes flicked to the child, who was whispering her prayers again.

She moved back to the narrow bed that stood against the wall and began stripping it. The bedstead was wood, and the tick was a straw one, covered in stained canvas. Well, at least it wasn’t a feather bed; Miss N. anathemized feathers. A new horsehair mattress would have been more hygienic, but Lib could hardly demand the O’Donnells drum up the money to buy one. (She thought of that strongbox full of coins, nominally destined for the poor.) Besides, she reminded herself, she wasn’t here to improve the girl’s health, only to study it. She felt the tick all over for any lumps or gaps in the stitching that might reveal hidey-holes.

A strange tinkling in the kitchen. A bell? It sounded once, twice, three times. Calling the family to the table for the noon meal, perhaps. But of course Lib would have to wait to be served in this narrow bedroom.

Anna O’Donnell was on her feet, hovering. “May I go say the Angelus?”

“You need to stay where I can see you,” Lib reminded her, testing the flock-stuffed bolster with her fingers.

A voice raised in the kitchen. The mother’s?

The child dropped down on her knees, listening hard. “And she conceived of the Holy Spirit,” she answered. “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…”

Lib thought she recognized that one. This clearly wasn’t a private prayer; Anna sang out the words so they carried into the next room.

Behind the wall, the women’s muffled voices matched the child’s. Then a lull. Rosaleen O’Donnell’s single voice again. “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.”

“Be it done to me according to thy word,” chanted Anna.

Lib tugged the bedstead well away from the wall so that from now on she’d be able to approach it from three sides. She laid the tick over the footboard to air it out and did the same with the bolster. The ritual was still going on, with its calls, responses, choruses, and occasional chiming of the bell.

“And dwelt amongst us,” intoned the girl.

Crouching at each corner of the bed in turn, Lib ran her hand under every bar, felt each knob and angle for scraps. She pawed the floor looking for any patch of beaten earth that might have been gouged up to bury something.

Finally the prayers seemed to be over, and Anna got to her feet. “Do you not say the Angelus, Mrs. Wright?” she asked, a little breathless.

“Is that the name of what you just did?” asked Lib instead of answering.

A nod, as if everyone knew that.

Lib shook the worst of the dust off her skirt and rubbed her hands on her apron. Where was the hot water? Was Kitty just lazy, or was she defying the English nurse?