Lizzy threw her hands up in delight as if her girls had performed a three-part Bach chorale. To us, she said, “The industry is frightfully disorganized. I am certain it is due to masculine pride. Every blacksmith makes bolts with whatever whim of thread and diameter he imagines while spreading butter on his crumpet. Then they all refuse to cede authority to one another. But we make only four sizes, all with exact threads, and with the steam engine, even a child can cut dozens in an hour!”
“What do you do with them all?” I asked.
“The girls sell them, and we share the funds for cake. There is a carriage maker not ten minutes’ walk from here.” Softly, she added, “That is to teach them that their work has value. None of these children have families that can provide a livelihood. I hope to start them in their own businesses so they do not die in the mines or sew twelve hours a day for pennies.”
While Lizzy thanked the students, Harriet whispered to me, “This is a peculiar school.” I nodded, pleased by Harriet’s unconvinced tone.
We returned to the white building and visited the classrooms, which we had seen briefly yesterday, then went upstairs to the boarding rooms. There were eight rooms with two beds per room, each bed shared by two children. It was as pleasant and spacious as most family homes, although simply furnished. Lizzy explained, “I would rather teach more children than hang paintings. This enterprise has taken six months, and it is a token against the teeming children in London with no chance of education.” She sighed. “It is overwhelming if I think of the numbers. But when I think of the children we do help, I am encouraged. It is so much more than sponsoring a favored child in the country, which is the fashion for wealthy London couples.”
The last door of the hallway was closed. Lizzy stopped with her hand on the knob, unusually hesitant, and her deep brown eyes met mine. “One of ouryoung ones, Nessy, is in here with a cough. When I come to the school, I visit to cheer her up. Emma, I wonder if you would see her?”
I heard the question in her tone. Could I enter a sickroom without collapsing? And, hidden but more desperate, the thin thread of hope.
I rested my lace-enclosed fingertips on the doorjamb. “I would like to visit, if I may prepare first. But Lizzy… I have been in sickrooms. Do not imagine I am your husband’s legend. I am the same as I have ever been. It will not help.” Lizzy nodded tightly, her eyes overly bright, and I knew this child had no passing cough.
I began the ritual I used with Papa. My dress was hidden under my long coat, but I aligned the coat clasps, then perfected each seam on each gloved finger. But something was different. Already, the threat of illness felt distant. An echo of the scarlet that filled me yesterday remained, smoothing my mind.
Was I the same as I had ever been?
I nodded to Lizzy. She opened the door, and we filed in. The air was sharply cold, the window propped wide to the winter day. This treatment was described in the newspapers, and my heart sank. I knew what sickened the girl.
One bed was made and untouched. The other held a solitary small figure curled beneath stacked quilts and wool blankets.
I sat in the chair beside the bed. “Good morning, Nessy. I am Emma.”
The girl turned her face from the pillow. Her childish plumpness had melted to hollow adult beauty, her eyes sunken, huge, and brilliant, her cheeks porcelain white with bright roses—the false bloom of consumption that was perversely celebrated by fashionable cosmetics.
“How do you do, miss,” the girl whispered. The handkerchief in her hand was stained dry brown and damp crimson.
“I have been touring the school,” I said. “But they tell me I am too old to attend!” I pouted, and she gave a weak smile.
“Nessy has been a student for four months,” Lizzy said behind me. “She sold me a daisy in St. James’s Park, and she had no home, so I asked if she would like to learn to read. We are only waiting for her cough to improve so she may begin her classes.” Lizzy’s voice was brittle with cheer.
I picked up a book beside the bed. “Shall I read to you?” The girl nodded. I opened it at the marked page and resumed a story about a plucky young rabbit. By the time the rabbit had escaped a fox, the girl’s eyes were closed. I fell silent and watched her thin chest rise and fall.
What did it mean to be a great wyfe of healing?
I closed my eyes, then loosened each finger of my lace gloves. Swiftly, I tugged the gloves away and dropped them behind me. The lingering hint of scarlet within me stirred, cooling a rush of fear.
I opened my eyes to the girl’s resting countenance. Behind me, Lizzy and Harriet were so still, they might have been holding their breath.
I placed my bare palm on Nessy’s forehead, then had no idea what to do next. Outside the window, a sparrow chirped the finish of its song and fluttered away.
I began to feel something. To become aware, like the moment on the river when I sensed the wyfe’s terrible injuries. Knowledge of the girl’s illness grew in my mind. The unthinkable vileness. The evil rotting her lungs.
Go away, I thought ferociously. I pressed with my palm and said aloud, “Heal!” Nothing changed, and I felt foolish.
Curls of colorless miasma were seeping between the floorboards. They searched hungrily, climbing the girl’s bed. I took my hand back and hid my palms in my coat, and they faded.
Nessy’s eyes fluttered blearily open. “Are you the angel come for me?”
“No, dear. I am just a friend who likes to read to you.” My voice sounded perfectly natural, the sole skill I had mastered while caring for Papa.
“We have had physicians visit,”Lizzy said when we were in a small office downstairs. “The last one said I should not have taken her in. He had the temerity to scold me! ‘Do not make yourself anxious over sick orphans. Hundreds die every day.’?” She blew out a furious breath. “I should ask Dr. Davenport to come. Mary is a good judge of people.” She gave me a tiny smile. “It was good of you to try. Did you… learn anything?”
I had felt the girl’s lungs rotting to mush within her. Anger filled me—at the cruelness of illness, and at grandiose legends. “I felt enough to know I did nothing. This talk of healing is a bad joke.”
Lizzy nodded, her thin smile lost. There was no hint of accusation, but I remembered Yuánchi’s words:You must bind to find your strength and know your limits.
