Ember Island (24 page)

“You may not call me Nell,” Nell said to Tilly.

“Be respectful, Nell,” Sterling cautioned.

“I’m pleased to meet you, Eleanor,” Tilly said.

“Why are you Miss Lejeune and not Mademoiselle Lejeune? Why do you have an English accent? I thought you would be French.”

“Enough!” Sterling snapped. “Nell, Miss Lejeune is your governess and you will treat her with the respect that is due to her. Now. I have spent long enough away from my desk. Nell, I would like you to show Miss Lejeune around the rest of the house and, in particular, show her to her own room and bathroom. Miss Lejeune, you will ordinarily eat with Nell and me. You have missed lunch, but supper is at six. I won’t be joining you this evening as I have a meeting, I do apologize.”

“Of course, sir.”

“If you are hungry in the meantime, see if you can find the cook or the housekeeper. Try the kitchen, the laundry, or anywhere in the east wing. We don’t stand on ceremony here. We are a long way from society, so we don’t have a bell to ring for tea or any such method. If you need something, find somebody to help you. My office is through there. I’m best left undisturbed.” With that, he gave Nell another cautionary glare, and went off through the door to his office. It closed quietly behind him, leaving Tilly alone with Nell.

They looked at each other. Neither of them smiled. Seconds ticked past. But then Tilly began to see the ridiculous side of the
situation. Both of them trying so hard not to be the first to make any kind of concession to politeness and warmth. Here she was, a grown woman, competing with a child. Laughter became trapped behind her lips and it became increasingly hard to hold back her smile. Nell caught it and she, too, struggled to contain her laughter.

So Tilly let it go. She tilted back her head and laughed out loud, and Nell did the same. Then Nell reached for Tilly’s hand and said, “Come, let me show you the house.”

“Thank you, Eleanor,” Tilly replied, taking her hand.

“Nell.”

“Tilly.”

Hand in hand they moved down the hallway. “Just remember this: the wing to the west is the wing that is best. That’s where my room, Papa’s room, and your room will be. And the library too, of course, which is where Papa wants our lessons to be. Papa has his own bathroom, but you will share with me. The east wing is where the servants are, where things are stored, and where the kitchen and laundry and lamp room are. I’ll fetch you at suppertime to show you the dining room, but it’s next to Papa’s office. He finishes work at six.” Nell opened the door to a small room with books on every wall, a huge gleaming table set up in the middle. “My classroom.” She dived onto a wooden cat, about the size of her two fists and painted white, that sat on the desk next to her papers. “And this is Pangur Ban. I’ve had him since I was four.”

“He’s very handsome.”

“He comes everywhere with me. He watches me when I write.”

Tilly glanced around. “Your father has a lot of books.”

“Papa is not much interested in books. He likes facts and figures much better. These are all mine. I don’t ask for toys. Pangur
is all I need. I ask for books.” She approached one of the shelves and ran her fingers lovingly over the spines. “What is your favorite book?” she asked.

“I love many books. Your father told me you are partial to Arthurian romance. Is that so?”

“I’m mad for it. Anything from the medieval period.”

“I’m very fond of
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
,” Tilly said, remembering that it was this admission that secured her the job.

Nell turned and squealed. “Oh! It’s my favorite! You know, when I was eight or nine, I used to wear a green sash all the time, and pretended it was Gawain’s baldric.”

“I’m surprised you could read and understand the poem at that age.”

“I read before I was three,” she said proudly. “I have a good brain and a fair hand and I love to write my own stories. Look.” Nell placed Pangur Ban carefully on the desk and picked up a sheaf of papers. “I’m writing an epic poem in the style of
Beowulf
at the moment. There are many monsters.” She began to read: “
The creature’s jaw dripped vile gobbets of blood and gore; and the hero shuddered all the way into his soul with mortal horror
.”

“That’s very . . . colorful,” Tilly said.

“I’m very proud of this one. What I am terrible at is embroidery.”

“I can help you with that,” Tilly said. “And perhaps you can introduce me to a few medieval stories that I don’t know.”

“Have you read
The Canterbury Tales
?” she asked, with a sly tilt of her head.

“Yes, of course.”

Her eyes widened. “Don’t ever tell Papa that there are rude ones. He’d take the book away.”

“I shan’t.” Tilly thought about the copy of
The Canterbury Tales
in the library back at Lumière sur la Mer. Ashes now.

“What is it?” Nell asked.

Tilly shook her head, confused. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“An expression crossed your face. Like a goose had walked over your grave.”

Tilly told herself to guard her expression more carefully around the girl: she was very sharp. “I was thinking about the library in a house I once lived. A house on an island, but very different from this one. All the books got burned.”

Nell recoiled. “Books all burned? That’s utterly tragic. Whose was the house?”

She had said too much. “It was a long time ago. Somebody I knew. The house was called Lumière sur la Mer.”

“The light on the sea? That’s lovely. We should give this house a similar name. Light on the sea, stars on the water, something like that. What do you think?”

“Stars on the water is nice.”

“Come, I’ll show you your room. You are probably tired and in need of a rest.”

Nell, who had now warmed up considerably, led Tilly down the western corridor and opened up the door to a small but cozy room, with blue flocked wallpaper and a big oak canopied bed. Tilly went to the window and drew the curtain. It looked directly over the garden.

“This is lovely,” Tilly said. Through the hedges, she could make out the figure of a woman, all dressed in white. She wondered if this was the female prisoner Sterling had spoken of.

“The bathroom is next door,” Nell said, “between your room and mine. I’ll leave you be now and come fetch you for supper.”

“Thank you, Nell.”

Nell left, then a second later was back, before Tilly had had a chance to sit on her bed and ease off her shoes.

“Tilly?”

“Yes?”

“I hope we may be friends.”

Tilly smiled. “I’m sure we will be.”

•

Tilly often dreamed of fire. Surging fire, running from it, ashes swirling all around her. Nothing more clear or specific than that. This night, her first night on Ember Island, she woke from the dream to the crack of thunder.

It was late. Very late. She had left her window open an inch for the sea breeze—she didn’t think she’d ever get used to the sticky nighttime warmth here—and now a cold wet wind was whistling through it. She rose, drew the curtain, and closed the window. She could feel with her toes that there was water on the floor and hoped nobody would find out she had let the rain in on her first night here. Tilly lit a candle and bent down to mop up the water with the dress she had worn that day, then hung the dress on the back of her chair and extinguished the candle. She stood at the closed window, watching the storm. The rain sheeted down with a power and intensity she had never seen. The garden heaved under the weight of the water.

What had the gardening prisoner done? Did she deserve to be locked up in a miserable prison on an island where, as Dr. Groom had said, all the colony’s outcasts finished their journeys? Did she deserve it any more than Tilly might, if people knew what she had done?

I got angry and set a house on fire, then I locked my husband and his lover in.

No, that wasn’t the whole truth. That was the version of events
she tortured herself with on nights as black as these. Yes, she had been angry. A fire had started accidentally. She had locked her husband in a room that was easy to escape from, to give her enough time to run because she feared for her own safety. She had no idea the house would go up, she had no idea that his lover was upstairs. She could not possibly have foreseen the consequences of her actions.

But it didn’t matter how many times she had reassured herself, the black feeling hung about her and wouldn’t go away.

N
ell was terrifyingly precocious. Tilly struggled against the feeling that she could not teach the girl anything she didn’t already know. The first Latin and Greek exercises Tilly set for her had induced in Nell fits of laughter.

“But, Tilly,” she said, pink cheeks shining. “That’s far too
easy
.”

She had settled when Tilly suggested she do a double translation of parts of Bede’s Latin
Ecclesiastical History
and was now quietly working away, her pen clinking on the lip of the ink bottle then scratching at her paper. Nell insisted upon not using a slate and pencil. She loved pen and ink, had developed a tiny, flowery script all her own; and apparently her father indulged her by giving her paper from his own office. A warm sunbeam came in through the tall window, between the heavy drapes, and illuminated their papers and books. Tilly supervised while idly unpicking Nell’s stitching from that morning. The problem was Nell didn’t have the patience for sewing. She raced ahead, keen for it to be over so she could galvanize her brain again. Tilly couldn’t
blame her. The girl was clearly formed for more important things than cross-stitch.

“Finished the first one!” Nell declared.

Tilly looked over her work, realizing she was anxious. She needed to find at least one error to prove to the girl that she was worthy of being a teacher and not just a fixer of poor cross-stitch. “Very good,” she said, slowly. “But you’ve mixed up your cases here. Ablative?”

“Ah, yes. You’re right.” She smiled slowly. “I’m working too fast to try to impress you.”

“Impress me? Or intimidate me?”

Nell laughed. “I think the former. Though I have done quite a lot of the latter with past teachers, I must admit.”

Tilly hid her smile. “Now translate it back into Latin. Without looking at the original.”

“Right.” Nell put her head down, flicking through her dictionary and grammar guide. The little wooden cat watched over her.

Tilly read over her shoulder. She had chosen the famous remarks about man’s life on earth, likening it to a sparrow flying through a hall on a wintry night:
what follows it or what comes before, we have no way of knowing.
The warmth of the room ebbed away on reading the line. Where was Jasper now? Was he in heaven? Or somewhere else? Was he aware of what had happened to him? Would he hate her for what she had done?

A soft knock at the door made them both look up.

“Papa, my new governess has set me the most difficult task,” Nell said with an excited smile.

“Is that so?”

“She is performing it alarmingly well,” Tilly added.

“I mixed up my cases,” Nell said, and again, she sounded thrilled. Not frustrated or ashamed.

“Then you need to slow down and take more care,” Sterling
said. He turned his eyes to Tilly. “I’m pleased that she’s enjoying working with you.”

“So am I.”

He folded his hands behind his back. “I have considered your request from yesterday and decided the answer is yes.”

Tilly was baffled. “My request?”

“Yes. About the garden. I’m going to have 135 clear you a spot and you may do what you like with it.”

“One-three-five is the prisoner’s number,” Nell said, sensing Tilly’s confusion. “We don’t call them by their names.”

“I see. And will I have to . . . work with 135?”

“She is perfectly safe and approachable and will show you where everything is. But you need not talk with her or have anything but the barest interaction with her. Prisoner 135 works the garden because she loves it, she’s very good at it—we won a government award for our gardens—and her conduct here has been beyond reproach. Prisoners often earn the better jobs around the island for good conduct. The uncontrollable ones end up chained together in the cane fields.”

“And does 135 have a real name that I could use when I speak to her?” Tilly asked.

He frowned. “I’d have to look that up, but I’d certainly discourage you from becoming friendly with her, no matter how well behaved she is.”

“Prisoners are prisoners for a reason,” Nell said, with all the conviction of somebody who had been drilled her whole life to repeat a phrase.

“Yes. Well.” Sterling cleared his throat. “In any case, Miss Lejeune . . . Tilly. In any case, I’d be happy for you to spend some of your free time in the garden. I want you to be happy here.” He shifted his gaze. “Nell’s education means a great deal to me.”

“Thank you, Superintendent Holt,” Tilly said.

As soon as he left, Nell leaned across to Tilly and said, “Hettie Maythorpe. That is 135’s real name.”

“How do you know?”

“I see her nearly every day. I was curious. I had a look in Papa’s registry. Don’t you dare tell him.”

Tilly trod cautiously. “It is very improper for you to look at your father’s paperwork, Nell. Now back to work.”

Nell reddened, chastened, and put her head down to continue working. Secretly Tilly was dying to ask if Nell knew what Hettie had done. She rose and went to the window. The sun was warm on her face and dazzled on the cane fields. She thought about men, chained together out there.

“Finished!” Nell declared.

Tilly turned. “How much sugarcane is on Ember Island?” she asked.

“Forty-five acres of it. You’re thinking about what Papa said, aren’t you? About the chain gangs? They have to chain them up. The cane gets so high in autumn that escapees could hide in it.”