Twain's End (18 page)

“Miss Clara.”

Still smiling up at her swain in her mind's eye, Clara turned around. Katy, as rigid and squat as one of the bronze cupids in the Donner Fountain in Vienna, waited in the doorway.

Clara went to her, irritable at being taken from a good daydream. “What do you want?”

“Miss Lyon is asking for you.”

Clara rolled her eyes. Now? But she had better go. She didn't want to alienate Miss Lyon. What a shock it had been when she was attacked. Whose secretary gets mauled by a donkey? She might as well have been boxed by a sheep. And for her to have been laid so low! Miss Lyon had been bedridden for more than a week, lying in her bed as limp as a hot water bottle, while the Clemenses' bills went unpaid and their letters unanswered, the checks from Papa's publishers undeposited. Clara had visited her every day, hoping to cheer her up, to get her up and moving. She couldn't give out, not when Clara
needed her most. How would Clara ever get back to the conservatory in Vienna if Miss Lyon were unwell? Clara had begged Papa to go see her—Miss Lyon was sweet on him, that much was apparent, and he might make her rally—but Papa would only make one perfunctory visit to her cottage. He was gone for under an hour: Clara timed him. So while Clara took no small satisfaction from knowing that their affair had shriveled on the vine, as all of Papa's peccadilloes eventually did, the timing was terrible. Couldn't he have waited to break Miss Lyon's heart until after Clara had gone?

But then, suddenly, surprisingly, Miss Lyon was out of bed and so was Mamma, and both of them hale and happy enough. If Clara could just coax everyone along, her soul-numbing days of being buried alive would be over. Clara had earned her escape; no one was ruining it for her now.

Miss Lyon was waiting in the entrance hall. She was a tiny little thing, dark as an Italian herself, and almost pretty with good health, especially for someone who had just nearly died. In fact, Miss Lyon was positively glowing. Maybe it was all those visits from Don Raffaello, the parish priest, who'd kindly looked in on her when she was ill. Let's face it: some women are greedy for the attention of any man, even a celibate.

“I'm sorry to have taken you away from your mother,” she said when Clara got closer, “but a puzzling situation has come up. A certain dressmaker in town claims that he made you a traveling ensemble.” Miss Lyon pointed her pert little nose at the bill in her hand. “A certain Signor Muratore. He has a shop on the Duomo plaza—does that sound familiar? When I went into town this morning, I looked him up and told him that he must be mistaken, no one in this family plans to travel, but he insisted he was correct.”

No good falsehood would spring to mind. Clara glanced at Katy, who was dusting a piece of statuary with her apron. Clara was fishing for a lie from her by telepathy when, down the hall that ran the length of the entire first floor, a door opened. Papa leaned out. “Oh, there you are, Clärchen. Just who I was looking for. Come here.”

Did he ever consider that she wasn't free to drop everything at his command? “I was speaking to Miss Lyon.”

“I want you to see something.” He ignored Miss Lyon; she might as well have not been standing there.

“What is it?” Clara asked, feeling a little better for Miss Lyon's snub.

“A surprise.”

Clara frowned at the bill in Miss Lyon's hand. She never would have guessed that Italians would charge their customers so fast. They were so slow about everything else. “Coming.”

“You can come, too, Miss Lyon,” Papa said—as an afterthought, Clara noted with satisfaction.

They trooped down the hall with its kaleidoscope of threadbare rugs, Katy following. They came to his bedroom, the largest in the house, fitted out with a fireplace in which a boar might be roasted, and erupting with cascades of lemon satin over the windows and bed.

Miss Lyon hung back by the door, Katy behind her, while Clara stepped forward, a daughter's privilege. “What did you want, Papa?”

“Look at my little prisoner.”

Clara followed his gaze to a water goblet that had been placed upside down on the Persian carpet. Underneath it was a lizard, shaggy with peeling skin. He was the same rust red of the pattern on which he crouched.

“I almost stepped on him.”

Papa's writing must not be going well if he was excited about a lizard. She had seen him struggle with writer's block a thousand times before. He claimed that it didn't bother him, but it did. She recognized the moodiness, the tendency to focus on trivial matters, the quickness to anger. But writers' children knew how to deal with these things.

“Isn't he smart?” she exclaimed in the voice one would use to cheer up a small boy. “He knew to go on the bit of the carpet that was just the color of himself. He's hiding in plain sight—isn't that clever!”

“Not so clever,” Papa said in that slow way of his, “if it almost got him stepped on.”

“Are you going to keep him for a pet, Papa?” she said brightly.

“Should I?”

“Mamma might like him. She's getting so much better.” She noticed Miss Lyon, lingering in the doorway. Katy had gone. “Miss Lyon, help me catch him.”

Miss Lyon hesitated. As harsh as Katy was, Clara thought,
she
never hesitated. She was as loyal as she was belligerent. Clara was taking Katy with her when she went to Vienna, to protect her from any unpleasant men. Let Miss Lyon hesitate all she wanted at Mamma's bedside.

Finally, Miss Lyon came over—wasn't that grand of her?—and, one knee at a time, Clara got down next to the upside-down goblet containing the ragged little fellow. When Clara laid her head on the dusty carpet to examine him, she could see his heart beating through his thin skin.

“He's so fragile! How am I going to move him without hurting him?” She sat up. “Give me that,” she ordered Miss Lyon, indicating a piece of stationery on Papa's bedside table.

Miss Lyon stepped forward and picked up the paper, then, glancing at it, stopped.

Clara snapped her fingers. “Give it.”

Miss Lyon did as told.

Still on her knees, Clara looked at the paper. Papa's handwriting. Her gaze went to the top of the page.
Dearest Lioness.

Papa dug in his coat pocket for matches. “Aren't you going to slide it under his feet?”

Clara snapped, “Yes,” but couldn't move. It was as if poison were leaking from the ink on the paper into her hands, sickening her, paralyzing her.

Papa ambled over, took the paper from her hands, and turned it over. Supporting himself with a chair, he got down next to her, his
unlit cigar still between his fingers. He lifted a side of the glass rim and slowly slid in the paper. “We Clemenses,” he drawled, “are true bleeding hearts. I got it from my mother. She shamed me for throwing a stone at a bird when all it was doing was singing its song.” He gently knocked the edge of the paper against the creature's immobile feet. “Have you ever seen a family that got so worked up about the welfare of a lizard?”

Clara scrambled upright. “Oh, we're kind folks, we Clemenses, saviors of reptiles, champions of birds. The only creature we'd mistreat is our own slave.”

Miss Lyon took a step back.

Clara smiled grimly. “Tell her, Papa. Tell Miss Lyon about your slave. Tell her what your father did.”

Papa patiently coaxed the lizard to step first with one foot and then the other onto the paper. “My father,” he said, concentrating on his task, “was a quiet man, a good man. He was a lawyer by trade. He never struck me but twice—for lying, it turns out, a fine example of his restraint when he could have used those same grounds to beat me every day of my life.” He sat back on his heels. “But he did whip our slave. Whenever he felt the need. It was a master's right.”

“I wish you'd never told me that when I was a little girl,” Clara said bitterly. “I don't know why you couldn't have kept it to yourself.” She turned to Miss Lyon. “So you see, we are not who you think we are.”

“No one is ever who you think they are, Clärchen. You're not telling Miss Lyon anything new.”

A cow lowed in the distance; chiffchaffs wheedled outside the open window as the three stared at the reptile, motionless under the glass. Clara glanced up just as Papa caught Miss Lyon's gaze. She saw the understanding flowing between them.

“Why isn't he moving?” Clara exclaimed. “You've hurt him!”

Miss Lyon dropped next to Papa, lifted the glass, then blew on the creature, stirring its shreds of skin. She looked up at Clara. “I think he feels too safe. He doesn't realize he should run.”

“Then he's a fool.” Clara reached down, snatched the lizard by the tail, strode to the window, and flung him out.

Papa pushed himself up, using the chair. “Congratulations, Clärchen. You just killed him.”

Clara was looking outside, stricken, when the maid Teresa rapped on the doorjamb. “Excuse me, ma'am, but your mother is calling for you. She is not feeling well.”

Clara felt the fury rising in her. “Tell her no! Tell her I'm not coming!”

“But Signorina—”

The shock in the servant's eyes only goaded her. “Tell her I hate her!”

“Clara!” snapped her father.

She turned on him, so cool, so hard, so perfect and impenetrable. Something burst within her. “Why doesn't she just die? How I wish she were dead!” She swept the papers from her father's desk. “How I wish all of you were dead!”

Miss Lyon flung herself forward to save Papa's papers. The sight of her grasping at them set Clara on fire. Screams tearing her throat, she heaved chairs, threw books, smashed lamps. The clunk of metal, the splintering, the shattering spurred her, as did the servants appearing in the doorway, blinking stupidly. She rushed at them, howling, enjoying their terror, and then hurled herself at the mantelpiece. One swipe of her arm nearly cleared it. She stopped. At the end of the mantel, alone on its tripod, stood a picture of Papa and Susy dressed for their parts in a play that Susy had written. With a shriek, Clara grabbed it with both hands and raised it over her head.

The butler, Ugo, tackled her. She fought against him, scratching at his homely face, at his garlicky breath, relishing the pain of his rough hands upon her.

“Let her be!” Papa roared.

Reluctantly, Ugo loosened his grip.

She shoved away Ugo, then clutched the picture to her chest.
Her voice was in shreds. “Susy hated you.” She flung the words at her father. “She hated you, you know.”

He lit his cigar. “I know.”

“Everyone hates you.”

He waved out his match. “No, Clärchen. Just the ones who truly know me.”

Katy bustled in and took in the scene with a woeful look. “Oh, Miss Clemens!”

“They're killing me,” Clara sobbed hoarsely.

Katy cradled Clara to the bolster of her breast. “Oh, Miss Clemens, what have you done?” She escorted her mistress, clinging to the portrait, past the rest of the gaping staff.

March 1904

Florence, Italy

H
IS DERBY CLAMPED DOWN
against the March drizzle, Mr. Clemens held the umbrella over Isabel. “Warm enough?”

She flexed her cold fingers within her gloves. “Yes.”

They exchanged a smile before Isabel turned to face the iron-strapped door of Count de Calry's riverside palace. It was a miracle that they were there. Mr. Clemens rarely called upon anyone; he turned away visitors to his house. The humorist who was loved around the world, Isabel was finding, did not generally like people. Yet when Mr. Clemens was considering the invitation to call on Count de Calry and Isabel had remarked, while filling her pen with ink to decline it, that she wondered what the inside of a real Florentine palace looked like, he had agreed to go—
if
his secretary could come. Mr. Clemens had been especially kind to her since he had come to the
villino
after the countess's beast had attacked her, when, lightly touching her hair, he'd admitted how much he'd come to depend on her—how much he and his daughters had come to depend on her. Theirs had become a special friendship. Couldn't a secretary and her employer have a special friendship?

The door creaked open upon ancient hinges. A heavy-lidded manservant showed them into a marble hall that smelled of the muddy Arno, which the palace overlooked. They waited, raising eyebrows
at each other, until footsteps echoing from the high ceilings announced the arrival of the count. He entered, all smiles and sleek in a finely cut suit.

“Signore Clemens!” He shook Mr. Clemens's hand, then took Isabel's hand, kissed it, and stood back to behold her with eyes as brown and noble as a stag's. “The esteemed secretary.” He offered her his arm. “Shall we?

The smell of musty cloth intensified as Isabel strolled with the count up a grand marble staircase and through a hall hung with tapestries, Mr. Clemens trudging behind them. They came to a room littered with bronze statues, glass-fronted cabinets full of curios, pots of ferns, armor, paintings, an elephant's foot. “My private lair,” explained the count.