Mama has fallen ill. I read the opening of my brother’s letter again, the first I had received from Jack in two months. In the garret of the master’s estate, I had counted each day by scraping a line through the mahogany beam above my allotted bunk.
The physician said it is consumption. He said she only has a year, at most. Each word clings like the lichen that grows on the sessile oaks outside. Mama’s favourite oak. I feel tears race down my burning face. I do not have the means to visit Mama on my own.
Our one comfort is that a school friend of Mama’s is visiting from the American continent to help. Mrs. Daisy Kelly. She is using what money she has to transfer Mama to St. Vincent's Hospital. I was too young to remember when she last visited us—but I know you will.
Jack was right. I remember Mrs. Daisy in the sitting room of our old home, before Mama was evicted. She was sewing primrose and heather onto a bonnet Mama would keep years after Mrs. Daisy travelled to New York with her husband.
“Reminds me of our time at the old hedge schools,” Mrs. Daisy nodded to Mama, who sat at the dining table with Jack and me. As Jack babbled in his highchair, Mama taught me to read and transcribe passages from the Haydock Bible.
“Hedge schools?” I paused my recitations.
“Oh yes,” Mama rejoined, “that’s where I met Mrs. Daisy.”
“Catherine, you will write to me when I leave Ireland?” Mrs. Daisy entreated Mama; her eyes were downcast as she threaded the flower bundle above the brim.
“How could I not?” Mama and Mrs. Daisy exchanged glances. The silence lasted long enough for me to notice Mama’s burning blush.
“And you can write to Mama!” I exclaimed to Mrs. Daisy, and they both laughed.
“Indeed, Miss Betha. Now,” Mama gently slid the Bible toward me to point out a verse. “Can you read this verse out loud?”
I had become familiar with the sounds of the English language. The language of the Crown.
“F-For… For what doth it profit a man…”
“Good,” Mama praised.
“...if he gain the whole world… and suffer the loss of his own soul?”
“Betha?” The memory fades. “What are you doing? It’s 6 o’clock already, we’re meant to be tidying the rooms on the second floor!”
A hand grasps my shoulder, making it impossible to conceal my tear-stained face from Nellie. She is the only other maid still in the garret.
“Why are you crying?”
“It’s nothing.” I hastily wipe my face with a cloth.
“What’s that?” Nellie reaches for the letter, which I pull away in time. “Is that a letter from your family?”
“Yes, it’s—”
“You’ve got to get a move on! A guest is coming from London—Lady Norris wants everything to be perfect—she’s told Mrs. Wilson she wants all the maids to keep the house spotless.”
“I’ll be down soon.”
Nellie steps back and dusts the shoulders of her uniform.
“Don’t tarry any longer.” She makes for the staircase. Before she is out of earshot, I hear her whisper to herself, “You Fenians can be so slow.”
If Mama’s fate had not been spelled out like it was in Jack’s letter, the morning would have passed like any other. The dusting of Tudor tables, the fluffing of embossed pillows, and the opening of windows. Yet, Mama was wasting away twenty miles from this estate.
That was it. I would seek leave from Mrs. Wilson to visit my family as soon as I could. However, before I can, Lady Norris walks out of her bedchambers, adjusting her gold earrings.
“Betha! Be a dear and polish my cheval mirror. I thought one of you would have cleaned it by now.”
I nod once, then hesitate when Mrs. Wilson appears at the bottom of the staircase, speaking with the butler. Lady Norris clears her throat, her relaxed features hardening into powdered porcelain.
“Now.”
“Yes ma’am.”
I dart into Lady Norris’ room, pulling out a cloth from my apron before approaching the gilded mirror. Lifting a hand to start scrubbing, I gaze at the maid looking back at me. I see her hazel eyes, her sprawling ginger hair fanning out of her cap, her freckles. She sees me, how I resemble Mama. But I cannot read her expression. What is behind those hazel eyes that is so easy to overlook? Who is she since she arrived at the estate? The Irish Catholic domestic servant? A suspected spy for the Fenians? Nineteen years of age. Yet, I cannot recognise the young woman in the mirror—it has taken less than two decades to feel as if I have lived a lifetime.
There are several blotches baked into the looking glass, grey clouds gathering along the mirror’s edge. I scrub and scrape and scour. I push against the mirror, and the mirror maid pushes back with equal force. No matter how hard I scrub, the stains will not fade. I think once more of Mama. How she had been abandoned by my father. The English landlord whose insults, like bullets, pierced Mama—Irish swine, devilspawn, dissemblers. My cloth hand trembles and closes into a fist. Mama—Mama burying her terror of not knowing where we would all sleep for the night—
I slip, and the cheval mirror flips between its varnished wooden columns. It teeters backwards and, before I can catch it, slams against the floorboards, shattering into several sharp fragments. I rush to the ground to pick up the shards, shame already piercing through me like the blades of glass had become rainfall.
“What was that sound?”
I wince, knowing I only have a few seconds of grace.
Turning towards the doorway, I expect the looming shadow of Lord or Lady Norris—only to see the outline of Miss Eliza Norris, the only daughter of the Norris family. She is about my age, if not older. She had been the only family member to show me kindness, gifting me her quill pen and notebook. My heart leaps. How will she react? Will she call for her mother? Will I be fired?
I now know that I have lost my only ally.
“Here,” Miss Eliza rushes to the corner where Lady Norris’ broken mirror lies. She kneels beside me and creates a pile with the shards of glass.
“Miss, you shouldn’t—”
“Let me help you, just this once,” Miss Eliza interrupts.
“Please, you’ll hurt yourself—”
“I insist.” Miss Eliza extends a hand over a shard of glass trapped in the gap between two floorboards. She has just about loosened it before her finger slips, a drop of blood spilling and emblazoning itself onto the shard.
“Miss Eliza, you’re bleeding!”
“Here, give me that cloth.” Miss Eliza gingerly wraps her bleeding hand, before continuing to gather the shards in one place.
“I’ll lose my position for this,” I whisper, more to myself than Miss Eliza. “If I don’t—by some miracle—your father certainly won’t let me leave this estate to visit my Mama.”
“Visit your Mama?”
“My brother wrote to me and told me she will die within the year,” I cry. “I have to see her. I want to be with her.”
I close my eyes, envisioning Mama with Jack outside the door, wringing my hands, only to feel a warm palm enclose them both.
I look directly into Miss Eliza’s silvery-blue eyes. Still bearing the cloth in one hand, she raises the other to my chin and wipes away a stray tear, leaving behind the trace of a burning blush.
The doorway darkens as a tall figure enters Lady Norris’ room, his voice booming, before I can discern the master of the estate.
“What is the meaning of this?” Lord Norris marches into the room, pointing at the shattered glass, and then me. “O’Sullivan! You—”
“Don’t say a word against her, sir.” Miss Eliza stands in front of me. “It was me. I had asked Betha to help me with my necklace when I turned and knocked the mirror. Whatever you have to say, say it to me.”
I am breathless; I do not know what to say or think.
“What’s that in your hand?” Lord Norris makes to snatch the cleaning cloth from Miss Eliza, but she clings to it fiercely.
“Stubborn girl! Your mother treasured that mirror!”
I take a step forward.
“I… I will get the other maids to help sweep the shards.”
I pace towards the doorway, unable to look Lord Norris in the eye. As I take another step past Miss Eliza, she gives me the cloth, its unstained side upturned.
Lord Norris jerks his head at this exchange—the blaze in his eye, so familiar. The evil eye, Mama called it.
I hesitate at the doorway, but Miss Eliza impels me with an inaudible ‘Go’.
