The Mapmaker's Children (16 page)

B
OSTON
, M
ASSACHUSETTS
J
UNE
1860

T
he half a dozen beagles of Beacon Hill Yodeled their greeting when Sarah entered. The good-natured animals nosed at her skirt and licked her boots in welcome before the mistress of the house called out, “Come in, young ladies! Don't be afraid.”

A potbellied beagle pawed at Auntie Nan's hem until she pulled it up by its short front legs. The dog nestled in her arms, accustomed to the perched position.

“The little ones are merely saying hello.” She extended her free hand to Sarah the way the men did in business agreements. “I'm Mrs. Nancy Santi, but I've been a widow for more years than I was ever a missus, so those who know me well call me Auntie Nan. I insist you do the same, as I fully anticipate we are to be good friends.”

She winked at Sarah, who found her altogether astonishing. She'd never known a woman to behave in such an assertive manner.

“Now, which of the Miss Browns are you?”

“Sarah.”

Annie curtsied, as was the proper etiquette. “And I'm Annie Brown, Mrs. Santi.”

“A pleasure to host you both at my home—or, as the locals refer to it, the Hound House.”

She laughed—with pride or contempt at the gossipy moniker, Sarah didn't know her well enough to decipher.

“Here at your feet are Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Magdalene, and this here is old Rahab, the harlot.” She lovingly jostled the dog in her arms. “She's been with me fifteen years, mama to the pack. And a fine
pack they are, old girl.” She scratched the dog atop its head, and it yawned in hedonistic gratitude.

“Delighted to meet you—all.” Sarah curtsied to the hounds.

Annie sniffed indignantly, and the dogs replied in kind. She was perpetually offended these days. Sarah had catered to her melancholy for as long as she could, but her sister had become nothing short of bitter wormwood. She no longer liked to be touched or enjoyed any optimism—spoken, sung, or written. Sarah missed the old Annie. The sister who was always close by, smelling of garden herbs and dried flowers. Now whenever Sarah took a step near, Annie took one away, so that there remained an iron column of coolness between them.

In contrast, Auntie Nan radiated warmth like a phoenix. George and Freddy flanked her like wings, and Sarah's cheeks heated through in their company. It'd been months since she'd seen Freddy in person, but their letters had grown ever more familiar.

Sarah knew it wrong to think so fondly of the Hills. They were part of a memory that should've been agony. But she would not live like Annie, sad and tormented.

“The kind Misters Hill.” Sarah extended a hand in similar fashion to Auntie Nan.

Seeing it, Annie's neck and shoulders stiffened to a crucifix.

“My dear.” George took Sarah's gloved hand in both of his and held it. “Marvelous to see you again. Mrs. Hill and Alice were terribly disappointed to miss visiting. Alice made me vow to give you each one of these.”

He pulled a small account book from his vest pocket. Inside the cover were two pressed shamrocks. “From our garden. Alice hopes you are well and happy. As does everyone in New Charlestown.”

Sarah pressed the petite clover to her nose, the barnyard and Virginia sunshine faint but distinct.

Annie, too, seemed briefly transported. She tenderly stroked the four-leaved keepsake. “Please, thank Alice for us.”

Freddy stepped forward, his fair skin made ruddy by the southern sunshine, a colorful version of the winter phantom. Sarah was glad for it.
She'd already amassed one too many specters in her life. No more of the dead. She wanted life.

He bowed. “Welcome, ladies.”

Auntie Nan ran her fingers under Rahab's chin but kept her eyes on Sarah, watching closely. “Now, now, let's not keep the girls standing in the foyer forever. Winifred! Wini—” she called.

A plump, matronly woman in a maid's uniform appeared.

“We'll take tea in the doll parlor.” Auntie Nan set Rahab down on the ground. “Boys, fetch the luggage. Winifred has a bad back, and I had to let the butler go after I found him guzzling my best brandy. A jolly fellow, but now we know why.”

Winifred nodded. “To be certain.”

“I've had two of my favorite rooms made up,” Auntie Nan continued. “Annie will be in my garden room. And Sarah in my Italian art room, as it contains a number of paintings I think she might enjoy. I hear you are a young
artista
.” She winked at Sarah. “Be off, men. It's time for women's gossip.” She fluttered her hands at George and Freddy, then wrapped one arm around Sarah's waist and the other around Annie's, ushering the girls into the interior, which smelled of rosebuds and bergamot.

“Do you like Earl Grey? I order it from a fine tea shop in Scotland. The proprietors procure the leaves through an Italian grower. So it has the zest of Italy and the refinement of Great Britain and is therefore the
perfect
blend.”

She laughed to tears. A private joke.

Seeing Sarah's bemused expression, she explained: “The Hills being of Scottish descent and my late husband being Italian. An inventor and tradesman”—she lifted a hand to the chandelier overhead—“with a taste for extravagance.”

She twisted the wedding band she still wore on her finger, and Sarah was struck by a realization: Auntie Nan was still in love with her husband, despite his passing, no children, and years of widowhood. Unlike her own mother, who'd pledged her life to her children and was too old to remarry, Auntie Nan had been relatively young when her husband died. With her own financial stability and youth in her favor, she could've
started anew with anyone she pleased. She could've had a houseful of children by now; but instead, she had the hounds. It moved Sarah, bittersweet as it was. She understood that her life would be devoid of such romantic paradigms but…for the moment…could imagine no greater love than fidelity through that ultimate separation.

When the parlor curtains opened, Sarah gasped. Dolls. Everywhere: lining the shelves, in glass bookcases, on the settees and chairs and ottomans round the room. Arranged like elaborate flower petals on the side tables, colorful skirts flared, row after row to a pistil center puppet standing tall. Some, like Alice's Kerry Pippin, made of fine porcelain heads but many made of wood and soft muslin. A rainbow army of vestiges: children, dogs, cats, penguins and owls, horses and centaurs, creatures of myth and reality and every fusion between. All the painted eyes stared straight at them.

Auntie Nan seemed not to notice the collective force of their watchfulness. She sat on one of the two sofas unoccupied by miniature figurines and motioned for the girls to join her. One of the beagle pups sprang to her lap, with another soon by her side. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John—Sarah couldn't tell which, but she prayed that all of their namesake saints might preserve her.

The girls perched side by side on the edge of the divan. Annie's head turned slowly, taking in the room, then stopped with a nod at the table by their knees: an eddy of dolls with whiskers.

“I dare say, I've never seen anything like these before.”

“And you won't! I procure from around the globe and had those custom-made by an astonishing European artist. I sent him a drawing of Rahab's litter, and he created those for me. Admittedly, they look more like cats than pups.” She smiled and patted the dog in her lap. “I'm a collector.”

Sarah and Annie nodded.

“My husband introduced me, and the hobby remained long after he took his leave. Each room of the house has a theme. After I filled up the rooms at Beacon Hill, I purchased a country estate with enough space to last me through the end of my days. I've got a doll parlor there,
too. In fact, I'm waiting on a new order of fairy dolls from a Welsh toymaker—an innovator, really. Head to toe, they are no bigger than a foot. A smaller doll is so much easier to carry from place to place, don't you agree? It's difficult enough for a mother to carry her baby in her arms. I imagine even more cumbersome for a child to carry a doll of life size. The fairies are the perfect solution, so I purchased every one in his workshop. They should be here any day now.”

“But what does a person want with so much of one thing?” asked Annie.

Only Sarah could hear the accusation in her tone.
Gluttony, greed
, it whispered.

“I don't keep them all. Just the few I find most interesting. The others, I give away.”

Winifred rolled into the parlor with the tea cart. “The last of the petticoat tails,” she announced. “We'll have to send out for more shortbread.”

Auntie Nan nodded. “I leave the pantry inventory to your exceptional keep.”

“Best that way, ma'am,” said Winifred. “Otherwise, we'd be eating one kind of food three times a day for months.”

“On the contrary, Winifred! My hobby is proof that I am a woman who loves variety!”

Winifred blustered good-naturedly, then poured the tea. “Here you are, misses.” She handed them each a cup of Earl Grey with a sugar biscuit on the saucer.

While Auntie Nan went on about the diversity of dolls she'd amassed from China to Paris, Sarah sipped and crunched, sipped and crunched, until the shortbread was gone and her teacup drunk.

“Should we shield our ears from the secret talk of women?” George asked, peering furtively from the parlor curtain.

“The talk of men is far more mysterious and befuddling.” Auntie Nan beckoned for them to come in.

“Spot of tea, sir?” Winifred offered.

Freddy waved a hand and murmured, “Thank you but no.” He caught Sarah's eye and smiled.

Her cheeks burned. A biscuit crumb came loose from her back molar, and she gulped it down.

George pulled his pocket watch from his vest and inspected it. “Auntie Nan, don't we have reservations at the Atwood and Bacon Oyster House?”

“Yes! The time got away from me. I haven't even showed the girls to their rooms.” She clapped, and it set off a flurry of motion.

The hounds awoke, yapping and sniffing, as if they'd just become aware of the newcomers again. Auntie Nan led the pack to the second-floor landing.

“Sarah.” She swung open the bedroom door to the glimmer of lemon wallpaper scalloped in gold.

The bed linens and furniture were done in a matching daffodil, giving the room the illusion of being sun-gilded no matter the hour or season. Every available wall space was hung with oil paintings, landscapes, and still lifes: orchards in endless bloom; ripe plums betwixt bread loaves; allegorical figures at play along a lush river valley. Sarah had never seen a chamber so grand.

“And now, Miss Annie,” Auntie Nan sang from down the hall.

Sarah turned to find Freddy still at the doorway. “I hope you'll be comfortable,” he said.

“Quite.” Sarah clasped her hands at her waist securely and looked at a painted landscape on the wall closest to him.

It featured three figures: a half-naked woman breast-feeding her child and a young man gazing on. Her mother might've requested a room change. Her father would've insisted. Sarah thought the painting exquisite. She could nearly hear the gurgle of the brook and feel the thunderclap of the lightning across the canvas sky. Her heart beat in double time at the fleeting dream that she might walk through the frame into that world—leaving behind this one and all its trappings.

“The Tempest.”
Freddy pointed from the doorway. His arm, alone, dared broach the threshold. “The painter is Giorgione. It's a replication, but Auntie Nan likes to surround herself with unconventional beauty, whatever its form.”

Sarah liked Auntie Nan even more for taking such care to bed her in that particular room. Had it been Priscilla who'd told her of their interests: Annie's penchant for herbs and floriography, Sarah's for pigments and glazes. Or someone else?

She went to
The Tempest
so that only a breath of air separated her from the canvas. The paint whirled across the scene's sky and wicked up gently in the grasslands. The skin of the woman's breast and body was smooth and pink and matched her child. Replica or not, notable talent had been involved. Her fingers twitched to touch, but she kept her hands at bay.

“I think your aunt is one of the finest women I've ever known,” she said, still staring into the open expressions of the painted figures. “I admire her.”

“Of course you do. She'd turn all of Boston on its head if she could. She's not one for bowing to decorum, either.”

Sarah met Freddy's stare and that fiendish grin she recalled from the barn that night in New Charlestown.

“But you are,” she said. It came out more as a question.

“In some cases, yes. You can't influence the masses for good if you shock them with a slap. At least that's how my father interprets the Holy Word.”

Sarah raised her jaw up firmly. “That's not what
my
father believed.”

“No.” He looked away. “How best to spread the message is as subjective as how best to eat an egg, I suppose. But we can agree on the basics: it must be cracked open, yes?”

A laugh popped up Sarah's throat. “Agreed.” She looked back at the canvas. Thick, opaque colors. Egg tempera paint.

“My mother fries them in a skillet until the edges are curled crisp,” she said. “But once, on a visit to one of my father's wealthy associates, they served soft-boiled eggs in silver cups. I thought it the most decadent and delicious meal. Like a mouthful of silk ribbons.” She could nearly taste it again. “It was later discovered that while the man owned no slaves of his own, he'd bought the eggs from a slave-owning farm. Father said we'd been tricked and possibly poisoned.” She shrugged. “Maybe so, but they were still the best I've ever eaten. Laid by a hen well cared for. I was
grateful to the slave who nurtured it. My mistake was telling my father as much. He washed my tongue with Epsom salt water.”