“Why did Catherine, and not your father, enroll you in the vicar’s school?” Hazel interrupted. She found his information about Christmas interesting, as she did most of Duncan’s lectures, but she was more curious about his personal history just now.
“My father never attended school himself and did not properly appreciate the value of education, though he supported me in pursuing my own.”
“Catherine appreciated education?”
“Yes,” Duncan said, nodding as the breath clouded the air before him. His nose was full red now, and Hazel suspected hers was as well. “She was very well educated for a woman. I only decided to talk to her because she would read stories out loud and I realized she said the same words each time she turned the page, which meant the black marks on the page must be the words she was saying. It was quite a discovery for me.”
“What do you mean you decided to talk to her?”
“I did not like her at first because she was a fancy lady.”
“A fancy lady?” Hazel said, not laughing, though she wanted to.
“The sort of woman who wears big hats and bright colors, like the squire’s wife. The type of woman who yelled at you if you didn’t wear shoes or stood too close to their carriage. I did not talk to her for the first month in hopes she would go away.”
Hazel turned to look at his profile as they walked along the sidewalk. “A full month? Did she live in the same house?”
“Not a house. The apartment in Manningtree.”
“Manningtree?” It was a village to the south, but Hazel had never heard of any connection Duncan had there. “Haven’t you lived in Ipswich all your life?”
“No, but it feels as though I have because most of my childhood memories are centered here. I was six years and one month old when we moved to Ipswich.
“You and your da?”
“And Catherine.”
“How old were you when your mother died?”
“Four years and eight or nine months, I think. She died in the spring. I remember because we had looked at the tulips the day before when we’d gone to the bakery, and the dog bit my leg.”
A dog bite? Hazel was losing her place in the story. “Wait, how did your mother die?”
“She was run over by a carriage when she went out to get some bread the day after I was bit by the dog.”
Hazel shuddered. “That’s awful.”
“Yes. It must have been very frightening. I do not remember much about it because the dog had bit my leg the day before, and I was upset about that for a very long time. I do not like dogs, and sometimes I think I do not like carriages either because a carriage killed my mother, but then I did not see that happen so I did not experience the fear and shock of it and so I should not have that same association with carriages that I have with dogs. I think I dislike carriages because they smell bad and they take me far from the surroundings that are familiar and comfortable.”
Hazel needed to refocus this conversation or she would never make sense of any part of it.
“Do you know how old you were exactly when Catherine moved in with you and your da?”
“Five years and ten months.”
“A year after your mother’s death. How do you know that for sure?”
“A few days after she came—and before I had started talking to her—we went to a May Day celebration and she bought a book from a vendor, which was the book she read over and over until I asked her how she knew the words the black marks represented. I had never seen a book before.”
“And you moved to Ipswich when you were six years and one month old.” That meant Catherine had been with them for only a few months. “Did you move into the Burrow Building when you came to Ipswich?”
“Yes.”
Uncle Elliott had offered free rent because Catherine had promised she and Leon would marry; Harry had told Hazel about the unfulfilled promise of marriage when he’d first told her of their illegitimate cousin.
“So then, when did you begin attending the parish school?”
“When I was six and two months old. I had learned to read the book myself by then.”
“She taught you how to read a book on your own between May Day and September? Four months?”
“I am a very fast learner and have an excellent memory.”
“That is remarkable,” Hazel said.
“Mr. Marcum says I have a brilliant mind, but Mr. Shopledge, my literature teacher at Resins, said my brain was broken.”
“It is not broken.” Hazel was offended on his behalf, yet he shared the information without the least bit of malice.
“It is broken,” Duncan said evenly. “I am intelligent and capable in many ways, but in other ways I do not understand what everyone else seems to already know.”
That was actually a rather astute description. They turned a corner and were now walking into the wind. Because Hazel had her cane in one hand, and Duncan’s arm in the other, she could not hold onto her hat, which meant the brim flipped backward. At least she’d used enough pins to secure it so there was no fear of it being blown off. And her face was nearly numb now, so the cold was not so bracing.
“Did you ever not talk to Catherine again? The way you did when she first came?”
“Sometimes, but never for a month—that was the longest I had ever not spoken.”
“I cannot imagine not talking for such a long time,” Hazel said. “How would you communicate?”
“I would not communicate,” he said, shaking his head and kicking at a rock on the sidewalk. “I would pretend that I was the only person in the whole world and all the other people were statues, and since statues cannot talk, I would not hear them when they spoke to me. Catherine called it my ‘going-inside time.’”
“Did you do this often?”
“Not as often after I went to school. It does not work well to treat a teacher as a statue.”
Hazel quirked a smile and thought of how Audrey would sometimes turn her chair to face the corner when class became too loud. Had she been shutting out the voices like Duncan did when he’d pretended other people were statues? Was it a way to regulate anxiety? It would take a great deal of determination and a great lack of empathy for those on the receiving end of such behavior.
They walked in silence for a bit, then Duncan pointed. “There is the church.”
Hazel followed his direction and could see the top of the church on the next block, thank goodness—had she ever walked this far before? Without the new boot, she’d have never been able to do it.