“I do. I use it sometimes in my work, if I need it to strengthen my remedies.” She rose and went to lift the screaming kettle from the stove and pour the boiling water into the teapot.
Frances asked Beryl, “So why do you think I have it? You hardly know me!”
Beryl nodded. “That’s true, Frances, and I’m sorry. I dislike speaking ill of the dead, but that is your mother’s fault. Sarah didn’t care for me. For us.”
“Why not?”
“As we’ve said, she was afraid. She didn’t want to be associated with us, even after your father abandoned her.”
“She said,” Harriet interjected, “that she didn’t want us putting ideas in your head.”
“But now you are putting ideas in my head!” Frances said, her voice strained by confusion and uneasiness. She wasn’t sure she believed what these two were telling her. She hadn’t yet puzzled out a reason for them to lie, but they must want something from her. People always wanted something. Men were the worst, but women could be more dangerous. More subtle, harder to read.
Harriet said, “We’ve talked this over.” She had found a tray in the cupboard, and she set it beside the stove. As she arranged cups and spoons she said, “We decided, though we are sorry for it, to go against your mother’s wishes. We are all that’s left of your family, and we felt we needed to speak to you for your own sake.”
Frances shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s a shock, I know,” Harriet said. “You must understand that it’s not safe to have the ability and not develop it. Terrible things can happen. Have happened.” She carried the tray to the table and set about pouring tea into cups.
Beryl said, “Come and sit down now, Frances. We’ll explain it all to you.”
It was a long explanation, and it took an entire pot of tea and the little sack of pastries Beryl and Harriet had brought to get through it. When it was over, Frances’s head brimmed with family history, rules for practice, places to find what she would need, and warnings about the dark practices of her ancestresses, Christian’s descendants.
“You must come and live with us, I think,” Beryl said, as if Frances had no say in the matter. “I will teach you, as I taught Harriet. In my tradition, of course.” She sniffed. “It would be just as well if Christian’s line died out, in my view.”
Frances considered. On the one hand, she would not be surprised if it turned out that all of this was merely the fantasy of a batty old widow and the delusions of a bereaved spinster. It might even have been concocted solely for the purpose of deceiving her, although she couldn’t see the motivation.
On the other hand, she had longed for years to escape this dingy apartment, this drab neighborhood. Though she felt no familial affection for Beryl or Harriet, Cousin Beryl’s home had to be an improvement on this place. Sarah had often complained that Cousin Beryl had been fortunate to marry a man of means who left her a comfortable widow, while her own husband had vanished from her life along with the few things of value they possessed.
Frances wanted to ask how many servants there were in the house in St. George. She wondered if she was to have a proper bedroom, or if she would be expected to sleep in the maid’s quarters. Cousin Beryl might even give her an allowance, if she was to become her ward.
She kept these thoughts to herself. Even if she had chores to perform at her cousin’s home, or perhaps would be compelled to serve as Cousin Beryl’s companion as she got older, it would still be better than trying to survive in this place.
She had no place else to go, in any case. The only work available to her was the sort her mother had done, taking in laundry, cleaning other people’s homes, backbreaking labor. Working in a factory, imprisoned all day in a room full of machines and other unfortunate girls, was unthinkable.
She decided to play the grateful younger relative and wait to see what would come of Beryl’s invitation. She mustered the soft smile she sometimes used on gentlemen who held a door for her or retrieved her dropped handkerchief. “I’m very grateful, Cousin Beryl,” she said, letting her voice be small and sad. “I didn’t have any idea what I might do next, now that Mother is gone.”