Page 6 of The House of Quiet

Chapter Four

A Bird on the Hunt

Birdie hasn’t slept until dawn since she was ten years old.

That was the year she went to work at Nimbus’s house and learned that maids live not in tandem with the sun but in weary defiance of it.

So when Birdie opens her eyes to a hint of light outside the leaded diamond windowpanes, she panics.

This is the worst possible start to her time here.

After the strange woman in charge led them to their rooms last night, Birdie crept out to explore, but there was someone in the hallway.

Lingering, silent and anonymous in the dark near the stairs.

It unnerved Birdie so much she retreated and tried to rest, but the fear that at any moment the unknown figure would come for her, combined with the idea that somewhere under this same roof Magpie was sleeping, left Birdie shivering for hours.

She’s never slept alone. Her family all shared the same room, with Birdie and Magpie in a single bed. In the houses where she worked, she was always with at least one other maid, though more often it was three or four of them packed in together. She feels so vulnerable, being alone.

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Birdie pokes her head out.

The hallway is clear. Whoever was standing sentinel last night is gone.

Good. Birdie needs to get out of this room.

Despite the windows and the solitude, it feels airless and claustrophobic.

It’s so narrow that Birdie can touch the far wall with her feet while lying in bed.

Her bed, her trunk, and a rickety table with a washbasin on it are all lined up against the wall leading to the door.

At least it’s morning now, and Birdie can look for her sister under the guise of getting to work.

She washes, pins her chestnut-brown hair into a bun, and dresses.

There’s nowhere for her to store clothing, so she rearranges her trunk to air out her spare dress and make sure it doesn’t wrinkle too badly.

Her packet of drawings is still safe, wrapped in the scarves she brought from their neighbor Mare. Blue for her, green for Magpie. A hopeful gift. One Birdie will do anything to deliver. She places the scarves reverently onto her bed, then runs a finger down the bundle of papers.

The first, a sheet slid under the mysterious locked door as she sat outside it her first night in the minister’s house.

She’d been weeping quietly, certain she was alone on the abandoned third floor, until the art landed against her feet: a drawing of a dog so absurd it made Birdie laugh.

And the last, the final sketch her friend passed to her before Birdie left them behind forever.

She takes that one and props it up on the table.

It feels lucky, and she needs all the luck she can get.

Her door opens without a sound, and Birdie lets out a sigh of relief that she’s still alone.

The woman who greeted them last night had been undeniably strange.

She called herself the House Wife and drifted ahead of them vacantly before giving them each a key to the stairs and leaving without a good-night or instructions for the morning.

Birdie half suspected the minister had sent word ahead and the House Wife already knew she was a liar and a thief. But her door isn’t locked, no one has caught her yet, and the whole house is waiting. Birdie will do exactly what she should, so she can be free to do what she shouldn’t.

That familiar terror of disobedience tugs on her as soon as she thinks about breaking rules.

It whispers that she’ll cost her family everything, that she’ll be thrown out, that she’ll lose what little she has.

But she’s already lost everything. Besides, she’s doing exactly what she’s supposed to.

Maybe not as a maid, but as a sister. And as a secret employee of someone other than the house.

Rabbit and Minnow have rooms next to Birdie’s, but neither of them is awake yet.

They were groggy to the point of delirium last night.

The tea the first driver gave them was definitely meant to make them sleep.

No one is allowed to know where the House of Quiet is.

Including the first driver, who didn’t know where the second driver was taking them.

Her secret employer, Dr.Bramble, has been trying to get into the house for years to discover its secrets.

The doctor kept telling her he couldn’t guarantee Magpie would be here, but Birdie’s sure her sister is under this roof.

Her heart races looking at the line of doors marching orderly down the hallway.

Birdie tries the doorknob of a room near the stairs.

It’s locked. Pressing her ear to it, she hears nothing inside.

No soft breathing, no rustle of bedding.

Why lock an empty room? She tries a few others—all locked, all silent.

Magpie was so loud at night. She whimpered and snored and ground her teeth with a terrible creaking noise that made Birdie dream of voyages on wooden boats in stormy waters. Birdie misses that sound so much.

There’s nothing else she can do here for now. Daytime will reveal whether the rooms are empty or filled with deep sleepers.

The stairway goes up past this floor. Are there more bedrooms above her?

The stairs seem to go on forever as she creeps carefully upward to the third floor.

But there are no doors or hallways in the cavernous space.

It spans the entire footprint of the house, ceiling so low she can touch it.

Round windows, the only source of illumination, are set close to the floor instead of at eye level.

It makes her feel oddly precarious, like she’s standing on a table.

The tower above the stairs is hollow; doubtless its twin on the other side is, too.

There’s nothing to discover here. Hurrying down the stairwell past the maids’ floor, she sees no other exits until she reaches the bottom.

The door out is locked. The woman who gave them keys last night told them it would be, but it still makes Birdie nervous.

She feels trapped. With shaking hands, she inserts the key she was given, then lets out a breath of relief when it turns easily.

Shepushes the door open onto the ground floor of the house.

She debates leaving it unlocked for her fellow maids, but they have keys, too.

Last night Birdie had to pretend to be sleepy and confused, so she couldn’t pay close attention to her surroundings upon entering the building.

That was frustrating. Part of her job as a maid is to know the house better than anyone—not just the layout, but the patterns and rhythms of everyone living there.

That way, she always knows where she can be and when she can be there.

Convenient for spying as well, as the minister found out.

She’s in a hallway. To her right is the entrance foyer, and to her left is a fogged-up glass door leading outside. The scent she noticed last night is still here, a little stronger downstairs than it was up. It’s like a dog coming in after rolling in cold, wet mud and grass.

Every doorknob on the way to the foyer is locked. The House Wife might have seemed distracted and vacant, but she doesn’t overlook details. She hasn’t been cleaning well, though. It perks Birdie up. She’s necessary, and she’ll prove useful so no one suspects her.

The floor is polished black tile, which means it shows water stains if not cleaned and dried correctly—and constantly.

Pale white marks show the pattern of a sloppy mop.

Someone had no idea what they were doing.

Maybe another maid like Rabbit, working here because of an ability, not because of any actual skill or training.

The walls are paneled and painted a sickly yellow gray, like an egg yolk boiled too long, and lined with paintings that make Birdie’s arms preemptively ache. They’re in intricately textured gold frames, perfect for catching dust in hard-to-clean places.

Her eyes snag on the images. Children reach up in supplication, grateful and eager smiles on their cherubic faces.

And standing over them, almost as though walking on top of them, is the figure of a man.

As Birdie trails a finger down each progressive painting, the man’s depiction changes from stooped and old to straight-backed and radiant.

The paintings are bad but still aren’t quite as upsetting as a portrait of the minister’s late wife. She had ice-blue eyes that tracked Birdie wherever she was. Why can’t all art be like the drawings her friend made to illustrate her stories, with boldly whimsical ink lines and cheerful characters?

The entrance foyer features a few stiff leather chairs, set up like a sitting room where no one wants to talk to each other. The front door, heavy and imposingly carved with somber children reaching hands upward in supplication, is also locked. Birdie doesn’t have a key for that one.

From this central point where the hallways intersect, all Birdie can see are closed doors. Except one, on the opposite end of the house as the stairs. It’s cracked open. The scent of fresh bread drifts tantalizingly free.

The kitchen has none of the grandeur of the wide halls with their high, wood-paneled ceilings.

The walls are rough, with no plaster or paint covering the planks and the dried mud packed between them.

The ceiling slopes downward toward the exterior wall.

There’s one long table with several chairs and a bench beneath the small, warped windows.