A Girl Called Foote Read online

  “What, the two largest of the top row?” Papa asked, rumpling Jonathan’s hair. “Those are blind dormers.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There is no usable space behind them. They were put there simply because it makes the house look nicer.”

  “You mean no one can look through them?” Jonathan asked, baffled, as the carriage jolted into motion.

  “The last person to stick his nose up against that glass was the glazer who installed it, nearly 150 years ago, tapping it into place where it would serve no purpose other than glorious pretense.”

  “What?” Jonathan asked with such incredulity that his father laughed aloud.

  Windows with no purpose but to make the house look more grand?

  “Are you going to score a few runs with that new cricket bat today?” Sir William asked.

  Jonathan nodded his head absent-mindedly, still contemplating.

  Windows that are only for show? How perfectly stupid!

 

  The Picking Up of Pebbles

  ~ Lydia, age 11

  Hillcrest Farm

  Upon entering the kitchen, Lydia saw her mother peering through the window out at the graveled yard.

  “What is it?” Lydia asked, setting the egg basket down on the table.

  “Your father’s having Jack pick up pebbles again,” her mother replied, her mouth arching into a little smile. “Most farmers sweeten their deals with a sip of brandy, but your father prefers to use Jack’s spittle.”

  Walking to where her mother stood, Lydia looked out to see Jack, bending over, a long strand of saliva dangling from his lips. The men on either side of him watched as he suspended it lower and lower until it touched the ground. Its end rested there for a second before he slurped the whole thing back up again.

  Here’s his favorite part, thought Lydia, knowing there was a gleam in her brother’s eyes.

  Jack smiled smugly at the men, then opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue. Though she couldn’t see it from the distance, Lydia knew that on its tip a tiny pebble was perched.

  “There’s a boy!” Smythe’s voice carried across the yard as he roughly pounded his son’s bony back.

  “Ha ha!” laughed Farmer Midwinter. “He’s got the trickiest spit in the county! Do it again!”

  “Sally!” Smythe turned to holler toward the house as Jack spat out the pebble. Pert, the dog, bounded about them excitedly. “Bring out a bottle of me best!”

  Sally shot Lydia a look. “It sounds as if they reached an agreement on the cow. It’s to be spittle and brandy.”

  As her mother hurried off, Lydia turned her attention back to the scene outside where Jack, his hands on his knees, was again the men’s focus. She smiled lightly and reached for the egg basket.

 

  Vomiting Cherries

  ~ Jonathan, age 12

  Whitehall

  Once again, Jonathan sat in the crook of a cherry tree though his lanky body made this less comfortable than in years past. Every spring, he would heft himself up into the burgeoning branches and feast upon their bountiful fruit.

  He belched as his stomach reminded him of its limitations.

  Just one more, he thought, reaching for a dangling ruby fruit. A bee buzzed around his sun-warmed head.

  He spat out the stone and the bee flew off to different territories.

  Maybe just one more, he thought and reached over his head again.

  Just as his eye settled on what would possibly be his final mouthful, he heard a shout in the distance, and another. He looked around, seeing no one in the yard or orchard. Then the horizon erupted with screams and anguished cries.

  In spite of his painfully full belly, Jonathan dropped from the tree and began to run in the direction of all the noise.

  It’s down by the lake, he thought, tearing westerly through the trees. He flew over the gravel drive and splashed through the lakeside muck.

  There he saw Glaser and Hardy out in the small rowboat. Glaser was standing and had a long pole that he kept pushing down into the water and then pulling up again. The other man used the oars to try to direct and steady the boat. A large lump like a soggy blanket was between them. Various servants stood on the far bank. Ploughman was stumbling from the direction of the house, slowed by her age and lack of coordination.

  “No! More toward this side!” someone shouted from the lakeshore north of where Jonathan stood.

  Hardy rowed this way and that as Glaser used his pole. Ploughman, now at the shore, began to talk with the others and then wailed aloud, her hands at her face.

  What are they doing? Jonathan wondered, walking towards the people on the shore.

  “There! My God! There!” Glaser pointed down into the water and Hardy rowed the boat nearer to the spot. Glaser cried out for Hardy to help him so he stood and the boat began to rock violently. They bent their legs to settle it and pulled up on the pole.

  The people on the shore screamed and gasped as something like a humongous fish broke the water’s surface. It was caught on a hook at the end of Glaser’s pole.

  “Too late, dammit!” Glaser shouted. “Too late!”

  Muddle-headed servants. What did they drop in the lake? mused Jonathan approaching the group on the shore, peering intently at the mysterious lump. They’re always losing their heads over someth…

  The lump had a purplish sleeve and at its end was a hand. A large, pale hand. Realization hit him.

  Father!

  At the same instant, the sight of a dark-haired head lolling atop the soggy thing in the boat became clear.

  Will!

  A scream unlike any sound Jonathan had ever made ripped out of him and all the eyes that had been staring at the boat turned to him. Ploughman began to run at him at a speed that no woman with her physique could possibly reach.

  “Don’t look!” she screamed. “Don’t look, Master Jonathan!” And then she was there, tackling him with her doughy form, blocking out the terrifying sight.

  Standing, she dragged him to his feet, and began pulling him toward the house. He wailed the whole way there, weak-kneed and stumbling, but did not resist her determined grip. Up the steps they climbed, both of them shaking.

  Once through the door and in the entryway, Jonathan stiffened and pushed Ploughman’s hands away. Leaning over, he clutched his stomach and heaved an enormous amount of dark red vomit onto the black and white checkered floor.

  He stood, staring down into the foul muck of too many half-chewed cherries, remembering the stillness of the sodden lump in the boat and the soggy mass at the pole’s end.

  Will and Father…

  His stomach emptied itself again.

  ***

  One week later, Jonathan sat on a bench beside Sophia at the grotto. His swollen eyelids felt heavy and his nose was rubbed raw.

  Gone, he thought, the emptiness of the word pinging around in his hollow core.

  Gone.

  Before this week, he had never cried in front of Sophia, but now he did so shamelessly and sometimes noisily. Her own tears fell silently, slipping down her cheeks unchecked, falling onto the front of her black velvet bodice.

  They had returned from the churchyard hours ago and the sun was setting over the horrible lake. The sinking sun reminded him of the coffins being lowered into the freshly dug pit.

  He raked the arm of his jacket over his nose, the sleeve rough with dried mucus.

  “Sir Jonathan,” said a voice behind him.

  Jonathan turned to see Pryor, clad in his black servant’s wear, standing a few feet away.

  “Sir Jonathan, Lady Clyde wants to see you in the blue drawing room.”

  Instinctively Jonathan grabbed Sophia’s hand and the two children silently rose from the bench, turning toward Whitehall.

  “I wonder why me and not both of us,” mumbled Jonathan.

  Sophia shrugged one shoulder, tightening her grip on his hand.

  Their steps echoed loudly across the
entry hall and down the passageway to their mother’s favorite room. When they entered, Sophia stayed by the door.

  “Come here, my boy,” Lady Clyde said from her settee, extending her arms to Jonathan. Her eyes were swollen and red and her head seemed dwarfed by the largeness of her pregnant belly.

  Jonathan felt new tears well in his eyes as he crossed the room to her.

  “This has been a terrible time for us. And for you to see…what you saw. I’ll never forgive the servants for allowing that.” She pulled him down next to her and put her arm around him.

  He felt stiff and awkward.

  “Did you like the monument?” she asked. It took a moment for Jonathan to realize she meant the granite angel that had been erected at the graves. He shrugged, thinking her question odd.

  “We can go there and see their gravestone and think…” she paused, her voice gruff, “…of the goodness we had in them.” She patted his knee with one hand and stroked his head with the other. He relaxed a little, leaning his shoulder into her.

  “Will you go…” he hiccupped as he tried to stop the tears. “Will you go with us tomorrow morning?”

  “Yes, darling,” she crooned. “We’ll go together tomorrow morning. We’ll go whenever you’d like.”

  Jonathan couldn’t remember ever crying in his mother’s arms before. Once when he was very small, he had fallen on the gravel getting out of the carriage and skinned his knee. She had been right there so he had reached for her.

  “Nurse?” she had said. “Oh, blood. Mind my satin, Jonathan. Nurse!”

  His nurse had swooped in and lifted him, clucking like a hen.

  Now, here he was, her warm arm tight around him, and she was promising to visit the graveyard with him in the morning.

  “Can we walk there?” he asked, a little calmer.

  “Why ever would we do that?” She laughed lightly. “We’ll take the carriage, of course.” Then she sighed heavily.

  “Darling,” she said slowly and sighed again. “You are growing older and I believe I need to familiarize you a bit more with the ways of this world.

  “It is good for your sister to hear this as well, I suppose,” she continued, though she didn’t invite Sophia to join them on the settee. Suddenly, the child within her lurched, pushing against Jonathan’s arm.

  “Did you feel that?” she asked, laughing and clutching her belly.

  Jonathan nodded, his lashes still wet.

  “As I was saying,” she put her arm back around him and continued, “darling, have you ever wondered how it is that you came to live in such a great house and that you are so well known in and beyond the county?”

  Jonathan shook his head slightly, wanting to talk more of Will and Papa.

  “Please understand, this is not something we talk about with others, but your father and I made what most would call an ‘advantageous marriage’. We both benefited vastly from our union. You see, your father was born with a prestigious lineage but over the last century, the wealth that formerly accompanied his estate dwindled. I, however, was born into the Fanshawes, a rather unknown family that, over the past century, acquired a large fortune through commerce and trade. When my father died, I inherited it all.

  “Now that your father and elder brother…have passed from this world…you have inherited the baronetcy.” She paused. “Therefore, when you come of age, you shall have wealth and a title.”

  Jonathan sighed, picking at the cuff on his jacket.

  “Did you know, darling, that your brother was William Walter Clyde the Fifth and your father was William Walter Clyde the Fourth?”

  Was…he thought and nodded his head. His little sibling bumped against his arm again.

  “Yes, of course you did. And you know that your grandfather was William Walter Clyde the Third and so on all the way back to the year 1640 when William Walter Clyde the First was born.” She paused. “It is a very old name, dearest.”

  “Yes, it is,” he mumbled, absent-mindedly.

  “…and it would be a great shame if it ended now as there has been a Sir William Walter Clyde living at Whitehall since 1697.” She paused again and took a deep breath. “Therefore, I have decided that you, darling, will carry it on.”

  She smiled into his face as if she had just promised him a new horse.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, suddenly listening.

  “From now on, we shall…everyone shall refer to you as William Walter Clyde the Fifth.”

  He stiffened and leaned back from her. “But that is…was Will’s name.”

  “It is a family name and a very important one,” she explained.

  “But…I’m Jonathan and he was William,” he said, with equal patience.

  “Don’t think of it so much as a name as a title. He carried it for a while and now you shall carry it.” The smile had completely faded from her face. Little lines around her mouth grew deeper as her lips settled into a tense pursing. There was a note of annoyance in her voice as she added, “This is all very important.”

  “Important to whom?” Jonathan asked, suddenly wanting her arm completely off of him. Springing up from the settee, he firmly planted his feet in a wide stance and nearly shouted in her face, “He was William and I am Jonathan!”

  “I just lost a son and a husband. This is a very difficult time for me!” his mother said. “Don’t make it more so by being obstinate. You shall be known as William henceforth and that is final. I trust that as you mature, you will understand the importance of all of this.”

  Jonathan stared at his mother, her face set as hard as the stone angel’s. It was a familiar look, very different to how she appeared just a moment ago.

  Jonathan felt something inside him flip.

  No, he thought. No.

  He took a deep breath and declared, “I will never answer to that name. It is my dead brother’s name, which you seem to have forgotten.”

  She suddenly looked tired, her face loosened into slack blotchiness. “I only want what’s best,” she said quietly. With a slight wave of her hand she turned her face to gaze out of the window.

  Drawing himself up to his full height, he turned his back to her and marched to the door, grabbing Sophia’s hand as he passed, pulling her out of the room with him.

  Once the door had swung shut behind them with a click, Sophia murmured, “Well done, Jonathan.”

 

  Saying the Definitely Wrong Thing

  ~ Ploughman

  Ohhh, Ploughman groaned inwardly. She paused in her mopping of the marble entryway to rub her aching calves.

  I musta mopped this floor eighteen times in the past month. Don’t the Lady know people are comin’ to see the new li’l baby, not the entryway…and with the draining of the lake there’s a lotta new muck to be tracked in when people go traipsing about.

  She pushed a knuckle deep into the meatiest part of her left calf, kneading the ache unsatisfactorily.

  Better not let anyone see me doing this. I might be hauled off by the knacker.

  Just then, the front door swung open. The young heir entered, his trousers and shoes splattered with mud.

  A lifetime of servitude had taught Ploughman to mask the emotions she felt daily, hiding frustration, anger, even happiness from the people she served, but the sight of those dirty shoes about to needlessly defile the floor she had just mopped weakened her will to do so. The fact that it was this boy didn’t help, either. Yes, she had done what she could to keep him from the indelible horror of seeing his father and brother dead, but she would have done that for anyone. Any decent person would have. The boy before her was mischievous, perhaps not maliciously so, but carelessly.

  She leaned on her mop and woefully cast a fleeting look at the boy’s feet, the pain in her calves intensifying.

  The boy glanced at the mop in Ploughman’s hand as he shut the door and then looked down at his feet where her eyes rested. He stood for an instant, contemplatively. Then quietly, he knelt to undo his laces and remo
ved the shoes. Placing them against the wall, he started across the floor, his stockinged feet silent on the hard surface.

  Startled by the unexpected display of thoughtfulness by the boy, Ploughman’s face brightened and she burst into grateful exclamations. “Oh, thank you Sir Jona…”

  Oh, when will I learn? She shook her graying head. She said we all must call him ‘William’.

  “Uh, that is…thank you, Sir William. Thank you.”

  Again the boy halted, but this time the gaze he turned toward her was stony and cold. It bore into the woman, frightening her with its intensity.

  Stalking back to the door, he plunged his feet into the muddy shoes. Stomping, he began to circle the woman, the noise of it filling the room.

  He spiraled inward, covering more and more flooring with dirty footprint after dirty footprint.

  Around and around he marched, drawing closer to her with each heavy step. The thudding cadence was the only sound in Ploughman’s ears. She clung to her mop, paralyzed by fear and wonder, her aching calves forgotten.

  The eerie ritual ceased when the shoes no longer left a mark. As the boy leaned in to within inches of the maid, she could feel the heat from his breath on her forehead.

  In a steady, low voice, he proclaimed, “I am Jonathan.”

  Riveted, the woman studied his face, recalling the sinewy sensation of his elongated body against hers when she had seized him by the lakeside. With wide eyes, she noted the newly darkened hairs upon his upper lip, the cheeks now leaner due to the incessant upward growth of his young body.

  Then, he was sprinting up the stairs, gone with only the abundantly gritty floor to remind the woman of the strange and frightening spectacle she had just witnessed.

  Ploughman let out a shaky breath and stood for a moment, uneasy in the solitude. She walked toward the bucket to dip the mop, filth crunching under her feet with every step.

  The dirt was everywhere, each footprint a testimony of her grievous error. She lifted the dripping mop from the bucket and sloshed it onto the floor, swirling away what she could of the incident.

  Well, I won’t be calling him that again, no matter what the Lady says.

  Forsaking a Room, Gaining a Sibling