The Damnation Affair

Chapter 14

Tuesday was a blur of half-somnolent anxiety. There were items to be procured for a baby’s care, and the midwife’s fee to pay, and the news to be spread that her girl had birthed and the school was closed for the day. The Chinoise was only a servant, true, and this event should not cause her to leave her duties.

But Cat had been dead on her feet, and Jack Gabriel had, none too gently, told her to take her rest while he made sure the town knew.

She had no idea if it was quite proper or normal for Mr. Gabriel to take charge of affairs, but was grateful nonetheless. Mrs. Ripp, her terrible yellowed teeth showing in a grin, undertook to provide the things the baby would need—for a fee, of course, and Cat had paid without question. Afterward, Mr. Gabriel had words with the crone, and returned a third of Cat’s money.

It was…thought-provoking.

It ain’t mine, he’d said, but it was most odd, that he would take such care over a Chinoise girl’s baby. It was none of Cat’s concern, though, and there was plenty else to worry about on that day.

There was engaging a charmwasher for the laundry, the short coffee-colored chartermage to pay and the certificate for a fresh charing-charm to fill, a delivery of firewood to be attended to, and Cat had not eaten until Jack Gabriel had shoved a plate into her hands and told her to sit down and take a bite. Tolerable biscuits, some half-charred bacon, and there was even boiling water for tea.

She had boiled so much water she doubted she would ever forget the charm itself. It was burned into her fingers, along with its catchword. She wondered if it was the way a Continental sorcerer might feel about a certain charm or mancy, never mind that their sorcery worked differently. Mancy followed geography, as the old saying went.

She’d fallen asleep at the kitchen table, staring at the side of her teacup, and only woke when the sheriff shook her shoulder and told her briskly to get herself up to bed. It was Li Ang’s pallet she slept on through the remainder of that long, terribly hot day, and so deeply she had surfaced in a panic, unable to discern who, where, or even what she was.

Fortunately, the feeling had passed, and she found herself in Damnation, with a baby’s cry coming from downstairs and Li Ang singing to her son in an exhausted, crooning voice. The poor girl had been trying to clean the kitchen, and Cat’s heart had wrung itself in a most peculiar fashion.

It had taken all Cat’s skill to gently but firmly bully the Chinoise girl upstairs and tuck her in with the baby.

This cannot be so hard. And indeed the biscuits were lumpy and her gruel left a little to be desired, but it was nourishing. Or so she hoped, but then dawn was painting the hills with orange and pink, and she had to hurry to reach the schoolhouse at a reasonable hour. Without her parasol, no less.

Her mother would be not just annoyed, but angered. A lady did not forget such things, much less a Barrowe-Browne.

She had half-expected the schoolroom to be empty on Wednesday, Mrs. Granger having had more than enough time to spread calumny and gossip-brimstone. But the students came trooping in, some of them downcast, true, but others bright and cheery—or sullenly energetic—as usual. Now she knew their names, and a curious calm settled over her.

The children did not seem so fractious, now. Even the Dalrymple girls were no trouble, bent over their slates and newly eager to please. Amy, the elder, even elbowed Cecily once or twice when the younger girl seemed likely to bridle, and Cat rewarded the elder girl with letting her touch the pianoforte’s keys during lunchtime. “There are such things as lessons,” she had intimated, and the naked hope on the young blonde hoyden’s face gave Cat another strange, piercing pain in the region of her chest.

Instead of savages, the children now looked oddly hopeful. Their bare feet and ragged clothing were less urchin than primitive, as if the Garden of Shoaal had been re-created here in the far West, amid the dust and the heat and the incivility. Even the freckles on young Cecily’s face had their own fey beauty, tiny spots of gold on fair young skin.

It was there, sitting at her desk and staring across the bent heads as they scratched at their slates, that she realized just how far she was from Boston. Perhaps it was lack of sleep bringing a clarity all its own.

Cat drew in a deep breath, her stays digging in briefly, and wondered if she could march into a pawnshop under broad daylight.

No, night is best. But more dangerous—if you are seen, somehow…

But this was not Boston. She shook her head and attended to the third form, laboriously reciting from the eighth page of Miss Bowdler’s First Primer. “Very good,” she encouraged, though she would have said so if they had been reciting backward charter-cantations, or even the Magna Disputa. “You may lay that aside, and apply yourself to tracing your alphabet.”

“Yes mum,” they chorused, and she surprised herself by smiling.

They waited until the children were gone, then trooped silently in, faces scrubbed and mouths pulled tight. Miss Tiergale took her seat first as Cat brought out the slates.

“Good afternoon, ladies,” she essayed. They were so long-faced she half-expected bad news. God and charter both knew it would be just the time for it.

It was Belle who spoke first, in a rush. “We don’t mean to be no trouble, Miss Barrowe.”

Trouble? Oh, none at all, unless you count the bruise on my arm and the loss of Reputation. It does not seem that I will miss it overmuch here. Her chin rose. “Indeed you are none. In fact, on our short acquaintance I have found you all to be serious and studious.”

“She means with Tils.” Mercy’s cheeks, one with its fading bruise, flushed uncomfortably. “He’s…well, he ain’t a nice man, miss. And he’s been drinkin.”

“That does not surprise me.” She began handing out the slates, her boots tapping the raw lumber with little authoritative ticking noises. “He does not seem the temperate sort.” In any sense of the word.

“Well, you ain’t got to be afraid, not with Gabe looking after you.” Trixie gazed at the ceiling. Today they were all dressed fairly respectably, instead of in their frail flash and feathers. “It’s us what gots to watch our step.”

There are so many grammaticals I could take issue with in those statements. “Mr. Gabriel is charged with the safety of everyone in this town.” She handed Mercy her slate with an encouraging smile.

Anamarie giggled, elbowing the tall one, Carlota. “Not Salt’s, I reckon. He hates that chartershadow.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Trixie was still studying the ceiling, her cheeks flushed from the heat. “Shadows ain’t no good.”

Let’s cease this chatter. “We shall begin with—”

“She’s blushing,” Anamarie whispered. “I think she’s sweet on him, too.”

That got Trixie’s attention. “Who, the shadow?”

“Ladies.” Cat folded her arms. Her cheeks stung, perhaps because of the bruise on Mercy’s poor face. “We have much to accomplish this afternoon. I intend to earn every cent of the fee you have graciously promised me. Take up your slates.”

That served to bring them to task. Her cheeks still burned, though, and it took a while for the heat to fade. It was entirely different than the dry baking outside, and Cat’s head was full of a strange noise. She held grimly to her task, and by the end of the session all the women had firmly grasped not only the basic functions of the alphabet, but also the idea, if not the application, of multiplication.

“It’s all groups!” Anamarie finally burst out. “Say you’ve a fellow buying drinks for you and him. That’s two drinks. And he buys three rounds. Three groups of two, six!”

“Unless Coy waters yours so you can keep a clear head to roll the bastard,” Carlota said, and their shared laughter made Cat smile before the probable meaning of “roll” occurred to her.

“Language, Carlota.” Mildly enough. Cat pulled her skirts aside as she reached to wash the slate board clean in preparation for their practice at writing their names. “Very good, Anamarie. It’s all groups. Multiplication and division—”

“Now hold on,” Mercy finally spoke up. “Let’s just stick with the multiplyin’ until I get that clear inside my skull.”

“I wanta read my Bible.” Belle, suddenly, as she scratched lightly at the wooden frame of her slate with one broken fingernail. “That’s what I want.”

“I’m a-gonna move to San Frances and open up a bawdy house of my own. Be a madam, not the girl.” Trixie waved one airy, plump hand. “Count the money and eat me sweet things all day.”

“Where you gonna get the stake for that?” Anamarie tossed her dark head, her earrings—plain paste, like Mercy’s—swinging against her curls.

“That’s why I said we gotta learn numbers, so Tils can’t short us none no more.”

“Names, ladies.” Cat began tracing them on the board. “Can you tell whose I am writing now?”

A ragged chorus: “A…N…A…M…A…”

“Why, that’s me! Ah-na-mah-ree.”

“Very good. Wait until I’ve written them all to copy your own name.”

“It’s like mancy. Like the charters.”

“Except these don’t glow—”

“Ladies, I know you’re eager to be gone. We must finish this first, however. Please contain yourselves.”

“Why you call us ladies all the time?” Carlota wanted to know. “We ain’t.”

Cat’s patience stretched, but the clarity that had possessed her all day held. “This is the Wild Westron. Anyone can become anything here.” I can even become a schoolteacher, possessed of patience I hardly knew was possible. And helper to a midwife, and a woman who can teach fancy frails to read.

For a long few moments, nobody spoke as Cat traced a C, an A, an R. “Which letters are these? Anyone?”

The chorus began again. “C…A…R…”

Cat Barrowe found herself smiling broadly, facing the board. Yes, indeed. Anyone can become anything here.