The Gilded Cage by Lucinda Gray

doorknob, but it opens easily. Stella would most certainly whine if I left her behind, so I let her pad along beside me.
    Undetected, I walk to George’s chambers. I expect to be flooded with sadness when I open the door, but the room no longer holds any trace of him. It’s as flat and indifferent as a stranger’s lodgings, filled with the bright new things that he barely touched. Only the painting retains any trace of him, still sitting grimly on its easel in the center of the sitting room. I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for here, but when I study the painting afresh, I find it.
    There’s something within its painted surface that I didn’t see before: in the distance, on the left-hand side, the very edge of Walthingham’s walls intrudes into the image. The dried paint feels grainy under my fingertips. I imagine George bending his head to his work, sketching in Walthingham, painting layers of gray over ghostly white branches. Did an approaching shadow fall over his canvas? Did someone call his name? A stranger, or someone he knew, someone he trusted? Using a dull painting knife, I slice the canvas raggedly from its frame.
    Downstairs, now wrapped in my heavy cloak, I slip through a side door, clutching the rolled canvas and the painting knife—for protection or for luck, I’m not sure which. I hear the buzz of Grace and the housekeeper making their plans as I exit. “Please clear the flowers away, Mrs. Whiting,” says Grace in a tone of light regret. “We needn’t ask our guests to dwell on the family’s loss.”
    Her words cut me. The elaborate mourning customs of English society dictate that I wear black for half a year—yet my heart, hidden beneath dark crepe, is expected to be a forgetful thing. I try to forgive Grace, who barely knew my brother, but I feel a grudge nesting its claws into my chest. She is already moving on, and means to move the house with her.
    The air outside is silent but for occasional trills of birdsong, and I see neither John nor Henry. It’s for the best, as I’m in no mood to keep my opinions to myself. Unfurling the canvas, I try to imagine George’s last trek across Walthingham’s grounds. I begin to walk counterclockwise around the house, keeping it always to the left of me, as the painting dictates. I give the west wing a wide berth, unwilling to go near its strange topography of uncut stone. An inviting footpath angles into the forest, and I take it on a whim. Low-hanging branches clumped together with ice give the path the appearance of a cool white tunnel.
    Sure now that I’m beyond sight of prying eyes, I follow the path into the woods. My dog and I walk in silence, deeper into the trees. Black branches shudder against a nickel-colored sky, and my boots crunch on the ground. The cold is starting to seep through the soles already. Stella frisks at my heels, unbothered by the air; I envy her furry coat.
    If I turned left, I’d soon reach the overgrown track once used to carry stone from Walthingham’s quarry. To my right, the treacherous half-frozen lake is just visible through the trees. I continue down the path, passing through the sparser woods at the edge of the tree line. When I see in the distance a decrepit lodge hunched between two great oaks, it brings to mind the strange old gamekeeper—McAllister. I’m certain this must once have been his cabin, and I wonder why Henry never hired another to his post. If nothing else, it would serve to deter poachers.
    I trudge in my ruined boots deeper into the trees, until the lodge stands between myself and open ground. Its roof slumps with snow and lack of patching, and several windowpanes are shattered into sparkling spiderwebs. My skin prickles as the trees overhead encroach on open sky, folding me in with their whip-thin arms. A thaw is coming: The air is fresh with the scent of wet wood, and the air rings with the musical pops and