She managed to produce a tiny tear and allowed it to slide daintily down her cheek.
“Of course,” Beryl said briskly. Frances could see she was not the type to comfort crying girls. She wiped the wasted tear and dried her wet finger on her dress.
“It will be hard work,” Harriet warned. “You have a great deal to learn, since your mother taught you nothing.”
Frances ignored this. She resented Harriet insulting her mother, though she could understand it. Sarah had not been an impressive person. She had been both weak and passive. If there had been some ability she could have called on, to Frances’s way of thinking she should have done it. Still, Frances hated Harriet looking down that long Bishop nose and giving orders Frances was obviously expected to obey without question.
She drew a breath that trembled a little, audibly, to show she was doing her best to collect herself. “Cousin Beryl? There is one thing you haven’t told me.”
“What did we forget?” Beryl asked.
“I still don’t understand why you’re so certain I have it. This—this Bishop ability.”
“Oh,” Beryl said, with a wave of her hand. She was putting on her coat and arranging her shawl over it. “That’s Harriet’s doing. It’s a rare gift. I don’t have it myself, but she developed it at an early age.”
“What gift?”
Harriet said, “I think of it as the knowing. I don’t have a better word. I often know things when I’m working. I can’t explain it.”
“And you believe I have the ability.”
“I don’t believe anything. I know you have it.”
This had to be a good thing, Frances thought. Even if Harriet was wrong—and in this case she hoped she wasn’t—she could pretend to have the ability. It would be worth it to live in a decent house and meet a better class of people. Perhaps Cousin Beryl would buy clothes for her. She said, in her most girlish voice, “You’re going to teach me, Cousin Beryl? Really?”
“Yes,” Beryl said. She was drawing on her gloves, but she paused and gave Frances a solemn look. “But remember, Frances—no one must know any of this outside of our family.”
“Why?” Not that there was anyone Frances could tell, but she thought she should know.
“Because we can accomplish things other people can’t. We can control our own lives and affect the lives of others. Such power frightens people, and frightened people can be dangerous.”
“More specifically,” Harriet added, “frightened men are dangerous to the women who have frightened them.”
“Exactly,” Beryl said. “Men control the government, the money, even the law. All we have is our ability, and too often it’s not enough.”
Frances knew how cruel men could be. She was accustomed to the screams of women being beaten by their husbands or lovers or customers, as the case might be. She saw them in the market and in the shops, their faces bruised, their arms in slings, sometimes leaning on sticks to relieve the pain of their injured legs.
Harriet was watching her, and those stone-gray eyes seemed to see right into her brain. “It’s not just physical abuse,” Harriet said. “A woman can be thrown out of her house. Separated from her children. Accused of hysteria or outright insanity. If a man speaks against her, no court will hear her side. She can be put away on the flimsiest of excuses, relegated to a hospital or a jail, even an insane asylum. It’s how they deal with our sort in this new age, if we are exposed.”
Frances said, “I will be careful, Cousin Harriet. Cousin Beryl.”
“Good.” Beryl settled her wide-brimmed hat on her head. It was old, Frances noted, but of quite good quality, perhaps even a Victorine copy. She would like one of those for herself.
Beryl asked, “Do you need time to get your things together, or will you come with us now?”
“I’ll come now, Cousin Beryl.” Faced with this new opportunity, there wasn’t a single thing she cared to carry away from this hovel of an apartment. “I’ll come right now.”
9
Harriet
Harriet had tried to warn Frances. She had assisted Grandmother Beryl in the instruction of their young cousin, the two of them introducing her to the practice as judiciously as they could. They had explained herbs and their uses and made Frances memorize dozens of them so she could recognize the leaves and roots by sight, both in the wild and in the herb shop. They taught her to make the simple things first, slurries and poultices, salves and ointments, before moving on to