Page 6 of The Scarlet Ball

“I smell blood,” Mr. Howard said from the opposite seat. “It hasn’t been spilled, though, has it, darling?”

“I am too careful by far for that, Henry,” Mrs. Howard said, distracted as she twitched the green baize curtain back to inspect the street outside. The rain had faded to an angry drizzle, the streets drained somewhat from the initial deluge, but echoes of angry thunder promised New York that the storm, far from being done with us, was only waiting like a cat at a mousehole.

I could move my hands now. I could move anything I liked, and after the torrent of pain, the raw, strange, sour feeling of a too-sharp knife parting what had once been whole, a kind of hot numbness had taken me over. It wasn’t the languorous, luxurious ease of opium or the excitingly heavy weight of absinthe. Instead it was as if someone had pulled out all of my teeth and for some reason, I simply did not care about it. I thought in a kind of horrified way that perhaps she had done exactly so. I had a memory of my teeth pulled out and laid on a cloisonné tray in two rows for inspection. Two had not passed muster and been replaced with two pearls, or perhaps I had only dreamed that. I hoped I had only dreamed that.

The carriage slowed to a crawl and then a stop entirely, and Mrs. Howard let the curtain drop. The only light came from Mr. Howard’s fingertips where he idly sketched strange figures in the air. They would flame up, and for a moment, I thought I could perhaps decipher them, and then they were replaced with some new shape, the idle kind of magic that rich men used to impress women. The figures swam like fish in water, and when he caught me looking, he smiled and winked.

Our little secret, such winks said, but I didn’t wink in return. I was afraid to. The face I wore, the new face, felt as if it could come loose at any moment. At any moment, the silk thread Mrs. Howard had used to connect it to my skull would fail, and it would fall into my lap, and oh, but I would bleed, a gush of blood to stain all this velvet, it would never come out, it—

Mrs. Howard jabbed me hard in my side, skillfully finding the place between the bones of my corset where it would hurt the worst.

“Don’t lose your nerve now,” she said. “I chose you because you could be still and silent, because I believe you can follow orders if it will make you money. Has any of that changed?”

I wanted to scream at her that of course it had, that I had changed. She had changed me. Judith Ban, the industrious determined girl who worked for Madame Valois and lived with two other girls on Mulberry Street, didn’t wear Worth dresses. She didn’t wear pearls at her throat and her ears, she didn’t ride in carriages that moved like boats on a calm river, and her face was the one she was born with. She sure as hell wasn’t white.

I was someone else now, but it turned out that that person could also be still and silent. She was afraid and furious, but she was still ambitious, and under the face Mrs. Howard had given me, I felt something like an itch. She had sewn so fast—I imagined an insect trapped under the skin feeling for some exit, and then I realized.

I wanted to smile, because madly, strangely, and truly, I wanted to see what would come of all this. She had taken my bag with its handy stone away from me, but somewhere under the layers of cotton and silk and skin, I was still myself.

I have never been helpless.

I held that thought in my teeth, and I waited as the carriage rattled on to our destination.

Where Howard House stood in arrogant and isolated height, the de Lange house sprawled like a cat, long and wide, uncaring of what mayhem it might cause merely by its presence. It had gone up in less than a year, stone and glass and polished wood that hadn’t even had time to grow dusty yet. They had a ballroom, some celestial thing with a vaulted ceiling and floors of Italian marble, but of course they had not opened those doors yet. Instead, they were holding a dinner at the start of the New York season. Intimate, was one of the words that Mrs. Howard had used; exclusive was another.

Still there was a line of carriages approaching the door, and the Howards’ carriage, delayed by her hasty substitution of me for her granddaughter, lingered near the end. It would have been a matter of a few minutes to simply descend and walk, but of course that was not the done thing, and instead we waited until the carriage drew abreast of the house.

Mr. Howard stepped onto the street and turned to hand down both me and Mrs. Howard. His hand through our gloves—his finest white kid, mine only lace—was too hot, and he smiled.

“Almost precisely like a man, eh?” he asked softly, but before I could respond, Mrs. Howard shepherded me into place between them, herself on my left, Mr. Howard on my right. They’d grown a double row of silvery poplars on each side of the walk up to their door, branches woven overhead and shielding us and the red carpet they’d laid out for their guests from the rain. A pair of footmen in actual powdered wigs stood by the grand doors, which opened of their own accord as we approached, and the servants stepped smartly to either side to allow us to enter.

“How very traditional,” Mrs. Howard murmured in tones that could cut glass.

The de Langes’ mansion was lit from the lawn to the street, but inside, the house was nearly as dim as my boardinghouse, the only lights the ones carried by the footmen stationed at the doors. They could direct the guests as needed, but I guessed they were also meant to turn the odd adventurer from the parts of the house where he or she was not welcome. Instead we circulated in a large and airy gallery among some fifty people. Out of habit, I searched out the single men and found none.

There were many trios just like ours, an older couple with a girl between them, the girls as silent as I was, as beautifully dressed, taking the same tiny steps with feathers balanced on their heads. I noticed the odd girl or two with no father but only a mother, and these girls seemed to burn like torches swaddled in silk and satin, their eyes wide and throwing back all the light they could catch.

Mrs. Howard would stop occasionally to speak to the other matrons, but I saw with interest that the men did not speak at all. They were restless, and when they drifted too close to one another, there was a brief bristling pause. I thought of the dogs that roamed the streets, and waited for the inevitable snarl and snap, but none came; presently, a clear bell rang out and we were allowed to proceed to the dining room.

Before we left Howard House, Mrs. Howard had summoned up from the kitchen a drink of warm water with burnt toast crumbled into it. The result was strained through a pure white cloth, and this she had me drink under her eagle eye.

“There,” she said. “That’s enough to keep you going.”

I thought perhaps she meant that I was only to eat the smallest of bites, take only the smallest sips of cordial, but she corrected me. I was meant to be hungry tonight, not a bite eaten. Not a single one. I thought I understood. Hunger was something the young ladies of New York kept furled in their hearts, a gift for their husbands when the time came, perhaps, but never in evidence before. They were too rich, too well-behaved, too beautiful for hunger, because of course beauty requires perfect stillness, and hunger is always movement toward.

I knew how to be hungry, and at the long table, I took my place between the Howards. The place card before me had been inscribed in an elegant hand, Miss Iphigenia Marshall.

It came to me with some scorn how poorly this might go for the Howards. In the dim light, one assumed that the face she had given me passed for that of her granddaughter, but what a chance she took. There was a breathless moment where I thought about what it would be like to pry at the delicate line of stitches that sat underneath my jaw and filed with military precision up behind my ear. I’ll give Mrs. Howard this, she was a deft hand with a needle, better than some of the girls at the shop, but thread that’s strong enough can be used to cut bread and meat—skin would be nothing to it.

I must have twitched or made some sound, something that indicated my sudden mad urge to show off my face, my foreign and unsuitable face, and laugh at everyone who had sat so calmly around me. The next moment, there was a slight pressure on top of my foot, and I could feel the sharp edge of Mrs. Howard’s heel through my stocking. In any case, she had found the right girl to pay; I didn’t flinch, and she exerted the most delicate pressure against the breakable bones of my foot before lifting hers away.

She meant I will hurt you. She meant I will cripple you, and behind my false face, I smiled. I knew her, or at least I had known iron women like her, and they dressed girls for dinner—and other things, too. I lowered my eyes becomingly, destructive urges quieted for the moment.

To my surprise, it was Mrs. de Lange at the head of the table, her husband at the foot. Mrs. de Lange was as spare as a spill, those thin splinters we used to light lamps and cigarettes from the hearth. Her face did not smile, but her eyes danced, and ruby red and gold flashed at her throat like pirate treasure.

“Welcome, welcome all to my house,” she said, her voice sweet and higher than might be expected. “You are all welcome here, and so will be for all the nights to come. I pray you remember that, and as well that you should remember that in this country and in this city, we are all of us together and alike.”

She paused, and it came to me that her glitter was not a kind thing. It wasn’t the sparkle of paste or even of gemstones. It was the glitter at the edge of a rough butcher’s cleaver, where the nicks will throw back the light and it would cut the moment she touched you.