Free Splendors and Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz Page B

but now he was weirdly pretty. His hollow cheeks held the shadows, and his pale eyes gleamed silver.
    “Now,” Lizzie Rose said briskly, “what was your dream?”
    She knew he wouldn’t tell her. He never did. She wondered if he even remembered.
    “Nuffink,” said Parsefall tonelessly.
    “Do you want to go back to sleep? I’ll sit by you.”
    Parsefall didn’t answer.
    “Do you want me to tell you a story?”
    She had him there. Caresses he spurned and sympathy he could resist, but Parsefall loved stories. No one had told him stories in the workhouse. As a figure worker, he had learned the plots of Grisini’s puppet plays, but he knew no others. He could not read and he resisted all Lizzie Rose’s attempts to teach him his letters. But stories he loved. He said hungrily, “Cinderella?”
    Lizzie Rose smiled to herself. It was his favorite, and her masterpiece. She had told it many times over and perfected each detail; if she was in the mood to describe every gemstone on the enchanted coach, or every ribbon on Cinderella’s gown, she didn’t spare him. “Wrap yourself up,” she whispered, “and I’ll tell.” She reached for his quilt so that she could wind a cocoon around him.
    Something fell from the folds of the cloth, striking the floor with a sharp
plonk.
“What’s that?” hissed Lizzie Rose.
    Parsefall’s hand moved rapidly, but for once Lizzie Rose was quicker. She snatched the object from him and held it close to the firelight. It was a photograph in a silver frame. “Parse, where did you —?” Then she knew. “You stole this!”
    “Did not,” Parsefall said automatically.
    “You did. You stole it from the Wintermute house. Oh!” Lizzie Rose recalled the frantic haste with which Parsefall had tidied away the blankets that morning. “That’s why you were so afraid of the coppers!”
    Parsefall said, “Woz not,” but without much force.
    “You’re a thief !” Lizzie Rose cuffed him. “Oh, Parsefall, for shame!”
    Parsefall switched tactics. “They’re rich enough,” he said defensively.
    “Rich enough!” Lizzie Rose hissed scornfully. “All their children dead, and you say they’re rich enough! Have you no pity?”
    “One of ’em’s living’,” Parsefall said weakly.
    Lizzie Rose cuffed him again. “Yes — poor Clara!” she said again. “If she isn’t kidnapped and she comes back home. Oh, Parsefall, how could you? Don’t you know right from wrong?”
    Parsefall opened his mouth and shut it again, as if realizing that this was a dangerous question.
    “What are we to do?” Lizzie Rose turned the photograph in her hands, reading the writing on the back. “
Charles Augustus Wintermute
— he was Clara’s twin.” She brought the photograph closer to her eyes. “Oh, Parsefall!” she wailed. “He’s in his coffin!”
    “No, is ’e?” Parsefall took the photograph and peered at it narrowly. “I didn’t look that close. I thought ’e was sleepin’. He’s a real little swell, ain’t he?”
    Lizzie Rose frowned at him. “You shouldn’t call him a swell now he’s dead.”
    “It ain’t my fault ’e’s dead,” Parsefall said, stung. “They’re all dead in that family.”
    Lizzie Rose cuffed him a third time. Parsefall slapped back. He did not hit hard, but the blow served to discourage Lizzie Rose. She hugged her knees to her chest and let her head fall forward. “Oh, Parse! What are we going to do?”
    Parsefall shrugged. Then a look of naked fear crossed his face. “Are you going to tell the coppers?”
    Lizzie Rose shook her head. “No. I don’t know if they’d hang you, but they might. Or they’d put you in prison; I don’t know which. I suppose”— she considered —“we
might
send the photograph through the post. That way poor Mrs. Wintermute —” She stopped. “Oh, no, how horrid!”
    “What’s ’orrid?”
    “Don’t you see? If you were Mrs. Wintermute — and Clara’s still missing! — imagine how dreadful to open a parcel