Bell Weather by Dennis Mahoney

neighboring room. Molly passed the hours reading, and when Elmcross Church finally tolled three, she blew her candle out, crept to the third-story window in her shift, and quietly opened the sash.
    A thick warm fog had drifted over Umber from the sea, and all she could discern, thirty feet below, were the wrought-iron spikes of the fence surrounding the house. The rest of the street was pillowy mist, seeming substantial enough to catch her if she fell. She stepped out onto the narrow ledge and closed the sash behind her, fearing a draft under the door would rouse Mrs. Wickware. The only light came from the moon, which was gauzy in the fog and illuminated the haze rather than anything within it.
    She had climbed throughout her life and had rarely fallen, thanks to her natural balance and an absolute, delusional belief in her abilities. The day in the library when Nicholas cracked his tooth had been the closest she had ever come to serious harm, but now, creeping farther and farther away from the safety of her window, she thought of the iron spikes and lost her purchase on the wall. She flailed her arm in circles, grabbed the corner of a shutter, and pivoted on her toes until her body swung outward like a door upon a hinge.
    Her shift flapped. Her hair swung darkly in her eyes. A second later, she was back against the wall, clinging tight, panting against the shutter wood and doubting her resolve. Then a long knotted rope tumbled to her side, dangling from a window of the garret overhead, where Nicholas, invisible, was waiting in the shadows.
    She safely reached the rope, and then she climbed and shut her eyes, still reeling from her slip, and didn’t look again until her hands were on the sill. Nicholas pulled her in; his feeble grip was actually more a hindrance than a help. She clambered into the garret and sighed against the wall. The effort had exhausted her, but her weariness was nothing compared to that of Nicholas, who sat on the floor and shivered in the damp night air. When she hugged him, he was cold and smelled of chemicals and sickness. He had long been known to dose himself in secret when he needed. Yet his eyes were ghostly bright, reflecting the moon but seeming to glow much stronger from an indwelling light.
    He opened a basket at his side and handed her a fat buttered roll, a small flask of wine, and a cold piece of mutton he had somehow procured without detection. Molly kissed his cheek and fell immediately to eating, greasing her lips and buttering her fingers.
    “How were your leeches?” Nicholas asked, pleased to see her eat.
    “I don’t know how you bear it three times a week.”
    “I remember they are creatures feeding to survive. I cannot loathe a leech for following its nature.”
    Molly held his wrist, examining the veins, and said with a mouthful of roll, “I’m astonished you have any more blood left to suck.”
    Once her eyes adjusted to the dimness of the garret, she saw its cobwebbed corners and unadorned walls, along with a rocking chair, covered by a sheet, that Mrs. Wickware had stored after rearranging the house. It had been Frances’s chair in her bedroom, a room now occupied by Jeremy, whose burliness and weight had called for stouter furniture.
    “Has she written?” Molly asked.
    “Possibly,” Nicholas said. “The mail is taken to Mrs. Wickware directly from the door. I have hit upon a way to send letters out. Receiving them, however—”
    “Have you told her how we’re treated?”
    “The news would make her suffer. I have told her we are well and miss her every hour.”
    Molly flumped backward onto her heels, sitting apart from Nicholas and lowering her head. The roll that she’d been chewing turned doughy in her mouth.
    “She’d be here if not for me. It’s all my fault! Frances, Mr. Stevens … Most of the servants try to avoid me. And you,” she said, looking up to glower. “I know you play a role when Mrs. Wickware is watching, but you play it so well it almost