Helen looked up sharply at the sound of a closing door. It was a whisper, a murmur, barely standing out against the rest of the household noise, but it made the skin on her breasts and belly tighten all the same, pulling her upright, into the polished, perfect posture that Dr. Murphy expected from all the servants in his employ. It was an honor to work in the home of such a great man. It was a privilege to serve his every want and whim. It was for the sake of her family, who benefited from her position, and from the status of having a daughter embedded in the household of one of Hellstromme’s best men. Why, without her holding her position, they would all have been destitute years ago, what with Papa’s debts—shameful things that they were—and Mama’s poor choices of associate.
There were those who lived in Junkyard and said that everyone who walked the gilded streets of the Holy City proper lived charmed lives, that if they had just been fortunate enough to have been born into the life of the Saved and not been sinners from the start, they would never have wanted for anything. Helen supposed that was true enough, in its way. The troubles that she had lain out before her were nothing compared to starvation and damnation and the illnesses that seemed to plague those who lived in the shadow of the smokestacks. She was blessed with good fortune and she was blessed in the eyes of the Lord, and those were two very different things that went by the same name, as so many things in this world did. She could not complain about her lot in life. It would have been shameful to do so.
But sometimes, she wished that it were not so difficult to be saved.
Dr. Murphy was a great man. A refined man, delicate and mannerly. He considered himself refined in all ways, among them the art of moving quietly through his own home, that he might hear the smooth tick and turn of the clocks on the walls, or the hum of the fine steam-powered devices he built in his spare time and set as curiosities on shelves and bureaus. Helen agreed heartily whenever he asked if he had startled her, but the truth was, that small lie was one she had decided God would forgive her. It was rude to scream in the presence of the man who paid her, and so when she heard him approach the kitchen doorway, she continued chopping potatoes for the soup, giving no sign that she knew he was there.
“Helen,” said Dr. Murphy. There was a coiled smugness in his pronunciation of her name, an almost shameful pride. He was proud of himself for sneaking up on her like a common thief.
If what he wanted was a performance, she would grant it to him, if only for the sake of keeping the peace. She squeaked and jumped, dropping the knife she had been using. It clattered harmlessly on the cutting board. Had she been genuinely surprised, she might have cut herself, or dropped the knife on the floor, where she would have risked scratching the wood. Dr. Murphy couldn’t stand to have his house in disrepair. She would have been on her hands and knees for days, sanding out the scratch as penance for her disrespect.
No. Lying was the right choice here. Lying allowed her to do as her employer wished, without causing extra work for herself, extra work that would take her away from the essential need to serve him.
“Sir!” She pressed a hand to her chest, as if to slow her beating heart. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t hear you.”
“Is her lunch prepared?” He nodded toward the counter, where a small plate waited, already prepared with slices of cheese, and apple, and cold boiled chicken. No salt or spices, alas. Only good, plain, easily digested fare. The poor lamb. Some days she could have only oatmeal, or cold boiled potatoes, and those were the worst of all.
“I was going to take it up in a few minutes, sir,” said Helen. “I was finishing slicing her apples.”
“I’ll take it to her.”
“Sir?” Helen caught herself before she could ask anything else. If he wanted her to understand, he would explain.
Working in the house of a great man like Dr. Murphy had seemed like such an honor when the job was offered to her, and maybe it was; maybe she was a sinner, harboring thoughts like the ones she sometimes had. All men were sinners, that was what the Elders said, and women were weaker than men—why, look at what Miss Grace had done, and she the most pampered and privileged woman in all the world! It was only natural that Helen might find herself harboring thoughts that were less than good, less than gracious, less than worthy of her station. Yes. Only natural.
“I will be taking her lunch to her today,” said Dr. Murphy. His tone was patient, but there was a glitter in his eye that warned her of thin ice beneath her feet: she was trying his nerves. “Your services will not be required.”
“Yes, sir,” said Helen, and bobbed a quick curtsey. She might harbor improper thoughts, but no one would ever accuse her of being a fool. She knew when to fall into line. “Shall I finish the apples?”
“You might as well; we need to tempt her,” he said. “When I took her measures this morning, she was listless. I doubt she’ll have much of an appetite.”
Helen had her own opinions about that as well. It was impossible not to, really, and she didn’t feel bad about them. Still, she kept her peace, only nodding and saying, “Yes, sir.”
“Thank you, Helen,” he said. “Whatever would we do without you?” His tone was still patient, still perfectly appropriate, and yet it was impossible not to hear the warning that lurked behind it. Her place in this household, as an unmarried woman who had neither aspirations toward nor the possibility of becoming the master’s wife, was a low one. She forgot that at her peril.
“I really don’t know, sir,” she lied. He would do as he had always done: he would forget her name inside the week. He would open his doors to another daughter of a middling-well-off family, one who needed a job that was neither beneath her nor too good for her, and someone else would slice the apples, and if she were lucky, she would be sent home.
If she were unlucky …
She was not the first to hold her position, only the longest-lasting. Dr. Murphy was a great man. Discontinuity upset him, distracted from his work. She kept her job in part because he did not wish the fuss and bother of replacing her, and in part because she was clever enough to know that she could be replaced. From what the other members of the household had said, those who were dismissed were rarely seen again in the Holy City, although their families were well-compensated for their loss. It wasn’t that the doctor was a bad man, no, not in the least. It was simply that he had important work to protect, and it wouldn’t do to have loose-tongued former employees spilling his secrets to anyone who flattered their egos.
“The apples, Helen,” he said, and there was a gentleness in his tone that spoke to an understanding of her thoughts—what the thoughts of any woman in her position would have been, really.
“Right away, sir,” she said, and turned back to the cutting board, already reaching for the knife.
Apples were often hard to come by in Deseret. The soil didn’t offer them up easily, and the amount of water it could take to tend a single tree—not even to bring it to fruit—was more than even the richest and most holy of citizens could easily afford. They had to be imported at great expense from the heathen territories to the East, where people who knew nothing of godliness toiled in orchards that sounded something like Eden in their greatness and their greenness. Helen hadn’t even tasted an apple before she’d come to Dr. Murphy’s service. When she’d been a girl, her parents had said that there was no need to bring a symbol of temptation into their home, and that had been good enough to explain their lack.
(It still was, if she were being perfectly honest. Why would anyone want to cultivate a taste for a fruit that symbolized the weakness of woman and the uncleanliness of man? Better to eat prickly pears and good blackberries, and leave the apples to the indolent and the Easterners, who knew no struggle, and no redemption.)
The knife sliced through the crisp white flesh with ease, sending up a sweet, acidic perfume. Helen arrayed the last of the apple slices on the plate before picking up the tray and turning to offer it to Dr. Murphy.
He was standing right behind her. This time, her gasp was not feigned, and her flinch was almost enough to knock the tray out of her hands. Dr. Murphy smiled as he took it from her.
“Thank you, Helen,” he said. “I will not need you for the rest of the afternoon. If you have any personal business, this would be a good time to attend to it.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and bobbed a curtsey. He was already walking away by the time she straightened. Perhaps that was for the best. She sagged against the counter, heart pounding, and waited for the fear to pass her by.
Dr. Murphy didn’t look back. He walked out of the kitchen and toward the stairs, head held high, the picture of a man who had never been afraid of anything in his life—or perhaps the picture of a man who had been so afraid, for so long, that he no longer knew how to show it. Fear was weakness in his world, as sure as it was in the world outside the Holy City, and sometimes the only solution was to freeze it out.
The carpet was soft beneath his feet, plush and yielding. Sometimes he wished it were socially acceptable to have hardwood floors, like the ones he’d grown up with, the ones he still insisted on in the kitchen and the washrooms. They were easier to clean, and they didn’t feel so much like walking on cobwebs. He’d stepped in a terrantula’s burrow when he was a boy, putting his foot clean through the crust of earth that covered it and into the spongy mass within. The beast that had spun the web had been gone or dead, but that hadn’t stopped the terror in the moments when he’d been trapped, before his older brother had doubled back and yanked him free. Carpet was too much like that long-gone burrow, and he hated it.
(Sadly, he worked for Hellstromme, and a certain amount of “keeping up appearances” was required, even if his doors rarely opened to anyone outside of his household. The master wanted people to believe that all his scientists were good, moral, upstanding men of virtue. Why that meant carpet was less than clear, but Michael had never been a man to argue with those he chose to follow.)
The stairs were carpeted as well, but more thinly, in a runner rug patterned with roses. It had been Grace’s choice. She’d fallen in love with the design the moment she’d seen it, declaring it a garden for the eyes, and when she’d told him that she had to have it, well, he’d done his duty as a husband and obliged her, hadn’t he? Everything she’d told him she wanted, she’d had, as soon as she’d proven herself deserving. He had never left her wanting. But she had left him, running out the door like a frightened hare as soon as she realized that their life together would be more than dinner parties and dresses. He had needed more from a wife than a pretty ornament for his parlor, and Grace had balked.
The door at the top of the stairs was locked. Helen had a key, as did Josiah, his doorman. Michael would have been more comfortable if only he had been able to open that door, but he understood the necessity of equipping his household. If there were an emergency—if, God forbid, the house caught fire or something happened to him while he was away—someone would need to be able to get into the second floor and tend to what waited there. He could be a careful jailer. He could not be an absolute one.
A twist of his key and the lock was open, the door swinging wide to reveal a meticulously clean hallway. The carpet that dominated downstairs was here as well, but covered in a sheet of pressed canvas, giving it almost the consistency of honest wood. It was necessary, to keep the dust down. The curtains that blocked the windows were equally necessary. Some of his medicines reacted poorly to light and needed to be kept in a cool, dry place. Coolness had been the greatest challenge: Deseret was a desert territory, and the sun held dominion over all. Half of his time over these last eight years had been spent in devising more and more clever mechanisms for steam-powered cooling engines. He had them down to the size of a gold bar, tiny and cunning and capable of keeping the house no warmer than a spring afternoon. The trick was proper calibration of the balance of ghost rock and mercury at the engine’s heart, measuring it out in specks no bigger than a grain of sand. The sun held no more dominion here.
The door at the end of the hall was open, barely more than a crack. Michael stood a little straighter, put a smile onto his face, and proceeded toward it, stopping just outside.
“My, my, my,” he said. “It looks as if Helen has failed to do her job once more, leaving this door open. I shall have to let her go.”
There: a sound, distant and faint, but distinct all the same. The enraged squeal of a child hearing her misdeeds blamed on someone else.
“Oh, my,” he said. “Was it not Helen? Was it, perhaps—you?” He thrust the door grandly open on the last word, revealing the room beyond.
It was a confection of lace and silk and gauzy netting, all of it white, all of it cleaned daily by Helen, who rotated the draperies according to a set schedule, removing anything that looked even slightly dusty, or dingy, or otherwise imperfect. It was less vanity than it was necessity: there was no way to keep the room truly sterile, not exposed to the rest of the house as it was. All the doctors he’d consulted had told him the same thing, saying that infection came from allowing too much mess near someone who was already ill. He might not be able to stop the infections entirely, but he could create an environment in which they would not thrive.
The bed was larger than a child’s bed would normally have needed to be, for it was her entire world. The mattress had seen countless tea parties and slow, meandering adventures for her plush toys, which were, like the draperies, replaced on a regular basis. In the middle of it all lay a little girl, dwarfed by the size of the bed around her, and by her own frail frame, which looked utterly breakable, like the slightest touch would shatter her forever. Pillows propped her up, holding her just shy of a seated position, so that she could watch the door or, on good days, the window, where the curtains were opened only on Michael’s word.
They were closed now. Electric light filled the room, pale and more forgiving than sunlight. He could almost pretend that there was color in her cheeks, which seemed pale as milk even when compared to the white-blonde of her hair. Her eyes, a brown so dark that they could look black to the casual glance, were holes drilled into her face, gazing at him out of eternity.
“Hello, Papa,” she said, after a pause to catch her breath. “Where’s Miss Peg?”
“Helen and I thought that it might be best for me to bring your lunch today, pet,” said Michael, walking across the room and settling on the bed next to her. She shifted a hairsbreadth closer, enough that he could feel the heat coming off of her perpetually feverish frame. She was never cold. That, too, had influenced his design for the cooling machines. With her body set on consuming itself to stoke its own inner fires, it only made sense to keep the house as cool as possible. It might bring her more toward balance.
“What is it?” she sat up a little, straining to see.
“Apples, and cheese, and chicken.”
“Will you eat with me?” She turned hopeful eyes toward his face, lips drawn into a practiced pout.
Michael’s heart seemed to swell and shrink at the same time. Fatherhood was nothing like what he had expected it to be. Nothing, it seemed, had been, not since the day he had taken a wife. “There’s not enough for both of us, poppet,” he said. “I will sit with you while you eat, and we can talk about your day. Will that suffice?”
She frowned, but only a little: the true victory had already been won. “Do you promise not to go away until I finish?” she asked.
“Only if you promise to eat every scrap and crumb on this plate,” he said.
“What if I’m not hungry?”
“Then I must conclude that my presence dampens your appetite and remove myself as the cause of the problem.” He made as if to stand.
Her hand shot out with surprising speed, grasping his elbow. He stopped immediately. She could be swift—remarkably so, given how thin her limbs were, how devoid of muscle—but she was not strong, and she was so much more delicate than she seemed. If he hurt her unintentionally, he would never forgive himself.
“No, Papa, I’ll eat,” she said, eyes wide and pleading.
“All right,” he replied, and settled back on the bed, reaching over to smooth her hair with one hand. She smiled at him. He smiled back. “Hello, my Annabelle.”
“Hello, Papa,” she replied. She let go of his arm and reached for the tray, making little grasping motions with her hands.
Michael picked it up and placed it gently across her thighs, propping it so that most of its weight was supported by its wooden legs, which had soft felt on their bottoms, to keep them from bruising her. She bruised so easily these days. More easily all the time, it sometimes seemed, no matter what he did to try to make things better for her.
“Is this all right?” he asked.
She shifted slightly. “I’m well, Papa.”
“Good.” He stroked her hair before leaning back to watch her eat.
Annabelle moved with that same eerie quickness when she grasped her food, consuming it in small, neat bites that she scarce seemed to chew before swallowing. She had little sense of taste, thanks to some of the treatments she had received; all food was simply sustenance to her, intended to fuel her broken, breaking body. Still, there were things to be learned in what she chose. She had never been distracted by tastes or preferences, and selected her meals purely on the basis of the signals she received from her stomach. Today, she began with the chicken, moved on to the cheese, and finally, almost grudgingly, began to eat her apples.
“Don’t you like them, pet?” he asked.
“They taste like medicine,” she said.
Given how numb her tongue was, that meant that she disliked the tingle of the acid in the fruit. Interesting. “Can you eat them anyway?” he asked. “For me? I would very much appreciate it.”
Annabelle nodded and continued dutifully eating her apples.
Michael watched her, stomach twisting, already regretting what he would have to do. She was such a delicate child, had always been a delicate child. She deserved so much better than the life she’d had so far. She deserved green fields and blue horizons, she deserved to run and play and be as free as the children of the families around them, the ones he sometimes saw kicking a ball in the street or flying kites on the butte. Annabelle had done nothing wrong, nothing that should have seen God confining her to this cottony prison of a room, to her fragile cocoon of a body.
He had done wrong, oh, yes; he had been a sinner in the days before he’d settled down and taken a wife, pledging to be true to her and to the teachings of the Church, to do what he could to serve state and Science at the same time. Dr. Hellstromme was a great man. Being chosen as one of his protégés was an honor almost beyond dreaming of, so impossible that Michael had scarcely dared to hope for it before it had been given to him. That, alone, should have been enough for him. He had had a beautiful wife and the patronage of a great man.
But no. He had wanted more. He had wanted children, and when Grace had failed to provide them in the natural manner of things, he had turned to the one mistress who had never done him ill or let him down, the constant that had defined his entire adult life: to Science, glorious and shining and profane. He wondered, sometimes, how the Church could justify its co-existence with Science and all Her wonders, for She was so clearly a divinity in Her own right, something that each and every man who prayed at Her beakers and burners set before the grace of God Almighty. Even Dr. Hellstromme was a part of the sacrilege, for what could he possibly be apart from the high priest of their chosen, pagan goddess?
Science, and Dr. Hellstromme, had guided his hand, had helped him mix the medicines and measure the treatments that would enable Grace to do her wifely duty and provide him with an heir. She had been willing, at first, afraid of being put aside or joined by a sister-wife if she remained too long barren. No one would have questioned him for either one, and indeed, taking a second bride would have been in many ways easier. But he had always liked to run a tidy household, and the men he knew with more than one wife seemed to be forever embroiled in this petty dispute or that marital quarrel. He and Grace had long since worked out their peace, and he saw no reason to unsettle that, not when children would already change the delicate balance in their own way. Children always did. Grace was the woman he loved. Grace was the woman he had wanted to be the mother of his children.
Grace was the one who had, at his request, consumed the tinctures and suffered through the procedures, until he knew what it was to feel like God Himself, creator of all life. He had watched his wife’s belly swell, and he had been so proud that he had felt as if his head would burst. Even Dr. Hellstromme had been proud of him, singling him out for praise, holding him up as an example for the rest of the scientists in Hellstromme’s employ. Dr. Michael Murphy was going places.
Then the babies had been born, two of them, so entangled that it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.
Then he had realized the price of his hubris, as Grace had screamed and the battle for his daughters had begun.
Idly, absently, he reached out and stroked Annabelle’s hair again, thinking of his other daughter, his lovely Pearl, who was still alive, and strong, and healthy, and hale. Who would save her sister, and in saving Annabelle, save him.
“We are going on an adventure, my poppet,” he said, and there was nothing in his eyes but hope.