The Aviary (10 page)

Clara had brought in the oil lamp, planning to read before going to sleep. She undid the strings on her pinafore and pulled her poplin dress over her head. She slid into her nightgown, then undid the clasp at the back of her neck
and removed Mrs. Glendoveer’s locket. As she lifted the necklace, Citrine burst into a chant.

“Tsip-tsip! Tsip-tsip! Tsip-tsip!”

Clara dropped the necklace on her bureau and went to the cage. The bird stopped.

“Oh! I wish I could figure you out, Citrine,” she said. At last, Clara decided to retrace her steps. She moved backward to the bureau, reached on top, and pulled up the locket by its chain, swinging it in front of the cage.

“Tsip tsip tsip tsip tsip tsip!”

The bird began her dance again at such a pace that Clara feared for Citrine’s health in her weakened condition.

“It’s the locket, isn’t it, Citrine?” she asked, once the necklace was safely coiled in her hand.

“Tsip-tsip!”

“There can be no doubt of it.” Clara stared down into her palm. “But what am I to do?” She addressed the bird:

“You want something of me, yes?”

“Tsip-tsip!”

“Do
you
want the locket?”

“Tsip.”

“Would you want me to do something with the locket?”

“Tsip-tsip!”

Citrine had a way of making her chirps communicate more than a simple yes or no. She could sound disappointed
or enthusiastic. This time, Clara could only describe the bird’s attitude as forthright.

Keeping a close eye on Citrine, Clara clicked open the locket and shook the key loose. “Is this what you want? Do you want me to use this key? Do you want me to look in Mrs. Glendoveer’s book? The one with the baby picture in it?”

“Tsip-tsip!”

“Yes?” To Clara, Citrine’s voice had a hoarse edge, and she realized how strenuously the bird had been trying to alert her.

“You must think I’m very slow.”

This time Citrine actually shook her head.

“Tsip.”

Clara put on her wrapper and pulled her slippers out from under the bed. Why would a bird want to see Mrs. Glendoveer’s family album?

“Citrine … you aren’t Mrs. Glendoveer, are you?”

The bird closed her eyes and gave a resounding
“TSIP!”

“All right, all right,” Clara said. “You must forgive me. I’m becoming too suggestible. The next thing you know, I’ll be running around declaring that this whole house is enchanted.”

Clara was only a few steps out of her room when she heard a crisp
“Tsip-tsip!”

She was torn between retrieving the album and going to the library to find herself a sensible book to read. But
there were very few distractions in the Glendoveer mansion for a young girl alone, and the questions in Clara’s mind only grew more persistent.

“I must get Mrs. Glendoveer’s book,” she said at last. “Now!”

Clara headed upstairs to Mrs. Glendoveer’s room. She almost did not want to open the door—she had avoided the room since the old woman had died. But now she counted to three, held up her lamp, turned the knob, and pushed the door open.

Clara inhaled. The room still smelled of dried lavender and was exceptionally cold. In the old days, the place had been the warmest room in the house, with its green enameled stove always stoked. Despite the room’s familiarity, it took all of Clara’s courage to shut the door behind her.

Now, where was Mrs. Glendoveer’s alligator chest?
It was still in the corner, but covered over with an embroidered shawl. Two candlesticks were arranged on top. It might have been a table in a Gypsy restaurant. Clara moved the candles and opened the box.

Empty?

She had seen that box full just days before Mrs. Glendoveer died.

“This is impossible!” she said. Only her mother could have taken the locked album. What could it contain that it should have been confiscated so quickly? Clara had the key—surely Mrs. Glendoveer had wanted her to look inside.

She opened the drawers in the nightstand and the chifforobe. Empty. The jewel box? Gone! The only thing that hadn’t been cleaned out was Clara’s old school desk.

She sank to the cold floor and leaned against the bed. “I’m so dim!” she said. “If I’d had an ounce of sense, I’d have been in this room two weeks ago.” Daphne never would have hesitated, of that she was sure.

Clara sat, glum, until she felt a whoosh of cold air up her back as if somebody had opened the door. She ducked down instinctively, which was silly, considering that the lantern’s glow alone would have given her away.

The view from under the bed proved that the door had remained closed. Clara almost laughed at herself until she saw the outline of something flat and rectangular on the floor near the footboard. Lying down, she stretched her arm and dragged the thing into the light.

It was a wooden frame, backed in brown paper. She turned it over and held it to the light. Beneath the glass was a kind of embroidered sampler. Weeping willows rendered in emerald silk draped from each corner of the picture. An angel, much like the weeping statues at the
gate of Mount Repose, covered her face with her hands as her wings dragged on the grass. In front of her were five tombstones embroidered in glistening gray:
HELEN, FRANCES, ARTHUR, PETER, GEORGE WM
.

Clara recognized the names immediately. They were from the wall of the crypt where Mrs. Glendoveer lay. Her heart pounded as she read over the names again and again. Without a doubt, these must have been the Glendoveer children. Had Mrs. Glendoveer done the needlework herself?

And then Clara remembered: back when Mrs. Glendoveer could still get up and down the stairs, she had walked in on Ruby and her mother in the kitchen. Clara remembered because she was just beginning to read well enough to entertain her mother with short stories and tales as she and Ruby tended to baskets of mending.

“I know it’s early, but I’ve come down to say good night to my birds,” Mrs. Glendoveer had said. Glancing over Ruby’s shoulder, she added, “Ah, Ruby, you do sew a fine seam. It’s a shame, sometimes, when I think of all the hours I devoted to my needlework. And now I cannot.”

“Do you miss it?” asked Ruby, looking up. “If you need someone to thread your needle, I’m sure Clara would be happy to do it for you.”

“No,” said Mrs. Glendoveer, growing solemn. “I put my needle down over forty years ago. I shall not take it up again.”

“Of course, ma’am,” Ruby said. She turned her eyes to her work, and nothing more was said.

It was an odd exchange. The mood of the room had
shifted, and Clara had asked her mother what Mrs. Glendoveer had meant.

“It’s hard on the old people,” was all she’d answer, “when they lose so much.”

Clara went back to the embroidered picture and peered closely for dates on the stones. There were none—only a date sewn in the corner of the work: 1855 CNG.

“Cenelia Newsom Glendoveer,” whispered Clara. Counting backward on her fingers, she determined that this piece must have been at least close to the last time Mrs. Glendoveer picked up a needle.

Clara noted some faded thread, light blue, running across the picture’s bottom:

The barely visible words were sewn into the waves of a creek or river flowing in the foreground. Clara put her finger to them, trying to absorb their meaning. And then she noticed something else: a darker blue rectangle had been sewn into the water. What was it meant to be? A raft? An underwater door?

And most perplexing, why was there no mention of baby Elliot?

If Clara thought she’d get answers by showing this work
of art to her mother or Ruby, she would have done so. As it was, she had to assume that this bit of evidence from Mrs. Glendoveer’s past had been overlooked when her mother had cleaned out the room.

Clara dimmed the lantern, went back to her room, and looked for a place to hide her treasure. Between the mattresses, the glass might crack. And Clara’s bed was too high to hide anything beneath it. There was just enough room for the sampler in her bottom drawer where her winter woolens were kept, and so she placed it brown paper side up and covered it with long underwear. Then she lifted the tea towel on Citrine’s cage.

“Are you awake?”

The bird ruffled her feathers and opened her eyes.

“I want to tell you that I tried, Citrine. I went to Mrs. Glendoveer’s room with the key and looked for the leather book. But it’s gone. I’m sorry.”

Citrine cocked her head as if she was trying to understand.

“Is it important that I find it?”

“Tsip-TSIP!” said the bird with emphasis. “Tsip-TSIP!”

“Then I shall keep looking,” Clara said.

Citrine tucked her head back under her wing, and Clara went to bed.

“Lazybones, it’s almost two.”

Clara opened her eyes to see Ruby standing over her.
Sure enough, sun streamed through the windows and across the bed. “Why didn’t Mama wake me?”

“She might have, but she’s out to the lawyer’s again. More business with the estate. I told her you must be growing, sleeping in until afternoon.…”

And staying up until quarter to four
, thought Clara.

“I’m going to market soon, and I didn’t want to leave you abed without something to eat.” Ruby set down a tray with milk, shortbread biscuits, and jam. “We’ll be back in time for early supper. All right?”

“Thank you, Ruby.”

Just as she raised a biscuit to her lips, Clara felt a pang of guilt. Citrine’s cage was still covered. She leapt from the bed and took off the towel. The little green bird hopped to the edge of the cage.

“You must think I’m an awful mother,” she said. “Here the sun’s overhead and you’ve nothing solid to eat. I should have been up digging worms before dawn.”

Citrine said nothing.

“I fear you’re angry with me.” Clara went back to her tray and broke off a piece of shortbread. “Here, Citrine, would you like some biscuit?”

“Tsip-tsip! Tsip-tsip! Tsip-tsip!”

“Now you’re dancing again,” Clara said, crumbling the shortbread into the cage.

With every bite, Citrine chirped, twitched her tail feathers, and turned in a circle.

“You like sweets, don’t you? I suppose that’s why they call you a honeycreeper. I’ll have to serve this more often.”

“Tsip-tsip!”

“Clever bird. I can hardly wait to show you off to Daphne.”

Clara dressed quickly and listened for Ruby’s footsteps outside before running upstairs to signal Daphne. With the curtain pulled back, the crowded room appeared less forbidding. The shadows had been banished, and every object begged to be examined.

Clara’s breath caught as she glimpsed her own reflection in a mirror inside the door of an armoire. Looking closer, she saw dresses hanging from a rod.

She pulled out one and then another. They were replicas of each other in different sizes—both in dark olive brocaded silk, one long and one short with pantaloons.

They were very old and brittle at the seams. Clara had not seen pantaloons in anything other than the old books in Mrs. Glendoveer’s library. Curious, she put her shoulder to the door until the armoire stood wide open.

“Goodness.” It was the same with all the dresses: one large, one small with pantaloons. Clara figured that the bigger articles of clothing would just about fit her.

At the bottom of the closet was a series of drawers that held stockings and petticoats, elaborately embroidered. These too were in small and large sizes. The stockings were particularly interesting, made of shimmering ivory silk. Clara and her mother wore nothing but cotton or wool, depending on the season. These appeared almost too precious to be owned in multiples, especially by a child.

She tucked one in her pocket and headed for the door,
clearing a narrow path before her. As she left, she noticed something stuck behind the door.

Clara bent down, pulled out a rolled-up parchment, and blew off the dust. She could hear the paper split along its creases as she opened it.

“REWARD! $25,000!!!” was blazoned along the top.

“FOR INFORMATION LEADING TO THE RECOVERY OF MISSING CHILDREN!”

Below was printed an extraordinary photograph. A group of boys and girls stared back at Clara with direct, unsmiling faces. The caption named them in order of appearance:

Helen, age 4
. (A small girl, the youngest of the group. She had mussed hair and leaned sleepily against her sister.)

Frances, age 12
. (Intense black eyes in a face of fierce intelligence framed by black center-parted hair.)

Arthur, age 9
. (Nearly Frances’ double. The set of his jaw showed both confidence and perhaps a bit of stubbornness.)

Peter, age 6
. (He was small and fair, and had a perplexed expression. He wore a brass-buttoned velvet jacket with a lace collar.)

George William, age 14
. (He looked just like Mrs. Glendoveer! Transparent, wide-set, and dreamy eyes. Fine blond hair. A storybook prince.)