Taking Wing

Banished!

Isabel spends seven long, lonely, frightened days shut in the schoolroom, forbidden to leave the house until Father returns from his travels. Aunt Elinor declares the behavior too shocking for her to punish alone, so Isabel must wait for Father’s judgment instead. When Isabel timidly asks whether she may at least read her books, her aunt’s voice cracks like a whip. She says no, her head is already filled with enough foolish moonshine. She will spend this period of solitude improving her needlework and reflecting on her appalling behavior.

Each day Isabel sits alone with her sampler while weak spring sunshine filters through the schoolroom’s tiny leaded panes, warming her back. Ordinary sounds drift up from below: cart wheels rumbling past in the street, pans clattering in the kitchen, Joan’s bark of laughter, and the steady swish-swoosh of Meg scrubbing the hall flagstones. The whole household goes on as though nothing has happened.

Aunt Elinor sweeps in to inspect the yellow-silk primroses Isabel is stitching. With a scornful tsk, she declares that the loops behind look like a patch of bindweed, and orders the row unpicked and begun again. Then she sweeps back out in a rustle of skirts, though both aunt and niece know perfectly well there is nothing wrong with the work. Isabel has embroidered since she was four years old.

Alone with her thread, Isabel privately admits she deserves worse than her aunt realizes. Aunt Elinor has no notion that Isabel helped steal and sink a boat, and none at all that Meg was with her that night. The two girls have kept carefully apart ever since, so as not to give themselves away. Unpicking her sunny little stitches one by one, Isabel decides miserably that God cannot have meant girls to be as brave and bold as their brothers. Whenever they try, it seems, people only get hurt.

One afternoon, halting footsteps announce Alice, who arrives with a piece of warm gingerbread and sympathy for a long week spent shut indoors with needle and thread. Isabel confides that everything she does displeases her aunt, and that she fears Aunt Elinor would like to unpick her the same way, as if she could be started over like a row of stitches. Alice shakes her head and insists Aunt Elinor cares for her more than she knows. Alice says that when Meg turned up missing that night, her mistress was beside herself. Grown men fear to walk London’s streets alone after dark, let alone a maid of only twelve summers.

Isabel blurts that they had not been alone, that Meg’s uncle had brought them safely home. Then she catches herself, realizing what she has given away. Alice says quietly that she already knows the whole of it. She lent Meg some of her own clothes to wear until Meg’s could be dried.

It has never occurred to Isabel that the shabby little dress Meg had been standing in is the only one she owns. Her face burns as she remembers running straight into the house that night without another word to her friend, leaving her shivering in her wet things. Alice presses further, reminding Isabel that Meg could have lost her position over the whole affair, and that her family depends on her wages.

Ashamed, Isabel thanks Alice humbly for holding her tongue. Alice answers that she did not do it for Isabel’s sake alone, but for the sake of Mother, and how it would ache her lady’s heart to see her daughter now. Isabel throws herself into Alice’s arms, weeping that she feels as though she has been holding her breath all week. She confesses she is frightened of what Father will do to her. Alice strokes her cheek and says only that he is a good man who will do what he thinks best.

When Isabel protests that she does not see why life must be so terrible, Alice answers gently that it is terrible, and also wonderful, and everything in between. She says wanting what one cannot have only blinds a person to her own good fortune. Isabel lives in a fine house with a father who cares for her. People do not always appreciate what they have until it is gone.

Alice’s sad smile reminds Isabel, with a fresh pang of shame, that Alice’s own family died in the plague years before, leaving her alone in the world. Isabel promises to try to do better.

Later, Isabel creeps down the hall and waits by the kitchen door until Meg hurries out, looking flustered. Meg jumps with fright at the sight of her. Isabel puts a finger to her lips and slips the parcel of gingerbread into Meg’s pocket. To her astonishment, Meg bursts into tears, blaming herself for ever taking Isabel out in that boat. Isabel claps a hand over Meg’s mouth, afraid someone will hear. Meg’s voice cracks as she confesses her uncle says she was only showing off, and that she cannot imagine how Isabel will ever forgive her for nearly drowning her. Isabel insists it is she who owes the apology, since she called herself Meg’s friend but thought only of herself that night.

By now both girls are crying in earnest. Then Joan’s singing suddenly erupts on the other side of the door, so exactly like a braying donkey that the two of them exchange incredulous glances and dissolve into giggles instead of tears. Wiping her eyes, Meg jokes that they make a fine pair. When Isabel asks softly whether the barge that floated past that night was not beautiful, Meg’s eyes sparkle in the dim hallway. She agrees that it was beautiful indeed, though she admits she feared at the time it might be the last sight she ever saw in this world.

Night has fallen by the time Isabel, watching at the window, sees a torch bobbing through the dark. She hears the chink of coins as Father thanks the linkboy who lit his way home. Ordinarily she would run down to meet him for a great bear hug and his usual question about whether his kitten has missed him. Then she would keep him company while he ate his supper, before he doled out some trinket bought on his travels. Tonight, instead, she waits to be called. She sits for what feels like hours with only a flickering stump of candle for company, breathless as though she had been running too fast.

At last Isabel hears footsteps, and Sabine’s voice, tight with unhappiness, tells her that Father wants her. When Isabel asks fearfully whether he is very disappointed in her, Sabine answers that they are all disappointed, since Isabel has ruined everything. Then Sabine bursts into tears and flees across the landing.

Isabel makes her way downstairs feeling sick with apprehension. She knows she is no longer Father’s precious child, his funny chatterbox, his mischievous kitten, but only a great tall girl, a foolish young female who has failed to know her place. She knocks at the door of Father’s writing closet and goes in. Father sits at his desk writing in his smooth, flowing script, while Aunt Elinor stands anxiously at his side, clasping and unclasping her hands. He looks up and says he has been told of her misbehavior. His voice is so cold that it frightens Isabel far more than shouting would have.

Isabel apologizes humbly for offending Father, but he says that is not good enough. She owes him a full explanation, since she knows perfectly well she is forbidden to roam after dark. He demands to know what she was doing out alone at that hour, to come home in such a bedraggled state. Isabel’s voice quivers as she says she cannot tell him. She hates concealing the truth from Father. But if she told him what had really happened, Meg would lose her position, and her family would suffer for it.

Father gives her an incredulous look and asks if that is truly all she has to say. Her knees threaten to give way beneath her, but she manages to stay standing. She answers bravely that it is all she has to say, sir. Father leaps to his feet, and for a moment Isabel fears he might actually strike her. He thunders that he can scarcely believe she is Mother’s daughter. He says it is bad enough that she betrayed his trust and disobeyed him, but now she shows him complete disrespect besides, and he will not tolerate it.

The cruel words cut Isabel to the quick. But she only says quietly that she gives him her word it will never happen again. Father answers, cold and contemptuous, that she is right. It will not happen again. He says he and her aunt have agreed that things cannot go on as they are.

Father sits back down and rereads a letter already lying sealed with wax upon his desk. To Isabel he seems changed into a frightening stranger, someone who no longer knows her any more than she knows him. He stares at her as though all of this had come about only because she had stupidly insisted on having an adventure.

Caught between the two people she loves best, with no way to make things right between them, Isabel can only whisper that she is sorry. She knows, though, that it is too late for apologies. Father draws a deep breath and asks whether she remembers Mother’s half sister, Aunt de Vere. Isabel twists her hands in her skirts to still their trembling and says yes, that her aunt had been at Mother’s funeral.

Father explains that Aunt de Vere, a widow, is very religious and has devoted herself to serving others. She has asked more than once whether he would send Isabel to live with her. He never approved of the custom of sending children away to strangers, and always refused. In light of recent events, however, he has changed his mind, and has already written accepting the offer.

If her aunt is still willing, Isabel is to go live with her in Northamptonshire as soon as it can be arranged. When Isabel finds her voice to protest, Father cuts her off, thundering that she has grown too wild of late and her wings must be clipped. She will live with her aunt in the country and continue her education there until he decides to send for her.

Signing the letter without looking up, Father adds that this means, of course, she will miss her sister’s wedding. He says that has distressed Sabine greatly, but Isabel left him no choice. Isabel feels trapped in a nightmare, unable to believe her own father could simply send her away from her home and family. She can scarcely recall her mysterious aunt at all. She had endured Mother’s funeral wrapped in a private fog of misery. She retains only a vague impression of a tall, large-boned woman with uncomfortably piercing blue eyes.

Father carefully folds the parchment, seals it with wax, and presses his signet ring into it. Then he says huskily that the letter will go out in the morning, and that she may go.

Numb with shock, Isabel climbs to her chamber, where she can hear Sabine’s muffled sobs beneath the bedcovers through the wall. She longs to put her arms around her sister and beg forgiveness for the unhappiness she has caused, but she does not dare. A frightened wail rises from across the landing. Since Sabine only weeps on, and Alice is downstairs, Isabel goes in to her baby sister instead.

Isabel perches on the narrow little bed, gathers Hope into her arms, and murmurs that it was only a dream and she is here now. They are the very words her own nurse once used to comfort her, back when Father was still proud of her. She smooths Hope’s soft hair, breathing in the pungent herbal salve Alice has rubbed on the baby’s chest to ease her breathing. Then she asks if she would like a lullaby. Hope nods solemnly, fat tears still rolling down her cheeks. Isabel sings softly until the two of them drift off to sleep together.