Carnegie’s Maid: A Novel

April 2, 1867

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Stolen moments in the park. Grazing of fingertips in the hallway. Animated business discussions in the servants’ hallway. Whispers in the dark parlor after Mrs. Carnegie had retired for the evening. My time in New York consisted of snatched minutes, fleeting but treasured, where we discussed the future in terms of the upcoming months when the path had been paved for Andrew’s mother to accept our relationship. I allowed myself to hope that the realization of all my dreams—saving my family and having Andrew—was within my grasp.

But when the season ended and we returned to Pittsburgh, we crossed the threshold into Fairfield and found a very different home from the one we left. The house was now inhabited by the new Mr. and Mrs. Carnegie, who had made themselves very much at home during the months of our absence. Calling cards were left for the new Mrs. Carnegie instead of my mistress, and the former Miss Lucy Coleman now set the daily menu with the housekeeper. The younger Mr. Carnegie’s friends arrived after dinner for rounds of billiards. The newlyweds often played music together in the parlor and read together in the library.

Only the staff remained the same. Mr. Ford continued on with his masterful meals, beaming his affable smile as if his own family was not still among the missing, while Mr. Holyrod, his team of footmen, Mrs. Stewart, Hilda, and the ever-changing cast of housemaids soldiered onward. Running the house quietly in the servants’ realm and maintaining Fairfield as if unchanged, they knew better than most how different the house was under its new master and mistress.

Andrew needed to leave. Soon, Mrs. Carnegie would need to leave as well. What would happen to us?

For the next several weeks, until we arrived at a strategy, he said, Andrew decamped to the Union Depot Hotel, a fine hotel that occupied the lot adjacent to Union Station in downtown Pittsburgh. This location made his lodgings convenient to his office and the train station, from which he traveled often to the Middle West, Washington, DC, and New York City, but inconvenient to visiting Fairfield.

Meetings required creativity, even more so than in the close quarters of the St. Nicholas. I made my errands to my mistress’s hatmaker and glove store take an unusual route past Andrew’s office on Grant Street, where a tea shop empty in the midday made for a quiet few minutes together. Andrew ensured that he arrived for his visits to his mother, which now required prior appointment, an hour before their designated time, when she was still out at a call or resting, which allowed for a private conversation in the library.

Sometimes, when I engaged in these little subterfuges, I thought of Dad and Mum. What would they think of this life I was leading? When Dad began planning the Fenian revolt and sent me to America to support the family, he knew that this country would call upon me to change in some way. But surely, my many duplicities were not what he intended when he and Mum sent me to America, no matter my síofra nature. Would Dad judge me harshly, particularly given the risk to which he’d subjected our family? I contemplated whether the God I once prayed to daily in the whitewashed Catholic churches of Galway would judge me harshly too.

• • •

Hurrying around the back of the house after one of my subterfuges—my ruse of an errand completed by the pharmacy bag I carried in my hands—I stepped through the servants’ door and bumped into Mrs. Stewart.

“My apologies, ma’am.”

“It seems you’ve forgotten your way around Fairfield after your long stay in New York City,” she said, straightening her crisp, white collar as if I’d knocked her to the ground instead of barely brushing against her skirts. I knew the staff perceived my trip with the Carnegies as a vacation of sorts, and this was another of her little punishments.

“Just hurrying to get my mistress what she needs, Mrs. Stewart.”

“Always the perfect servant,” she retorted.

I pretended her snide comment was a compliment. “I do my best.”

After hanging my coat on the rack, I crossed the kitchen and began climbing the stairs.

“Oh, wait,” Mrs. Stewart called to me. “I think I have something for you.” She fished around in her apron pocket and pulled out a letter.

Almost two months had passed since I’d received a letter from my family, and I practically ran across the kitchen to fetch it. “Thank you, Mrs. Stewart.”

I climbed halfway up the servants’ stairs and sat on a step. Here, neither the kitchen staff nor the Carnegie family could see me while I read my letter. I ripped it open.

Dearest Clara,

I do not know whether this letter will find you in Pittsburgh or New York City or how long it will take to reach you. I hope its travel across the Atlantic is swift, because I cannot bear this news alone. I know not how to write this except plainly, even though my very being resists writing the words because their memorialization makes the unimaginable real. Cecelia has died.

It started with a cough. A simple cough the sort we have all suffered through before in the relentlessly wet winters. Before, when we still had the farm, Mother would lay warm poultices on our chests, remember? Scented with her dried herbs, specially mixed for whatever ailed us, those poultices smelled like recovery. But we have no herbs now. No poultices. Only a damp, shared attic room in Aunt Catherine’s house where we sleep on folded packets of clothes while drafts blow through our hair at night. Dad suffered from the cough as well and still does, but nothing like Cecelia had.

We had been saving most of the money you sent for boat tickets to America. It was meant as a surprise for you. Lucky we had been so thrifty, because we had money enough to summon a doctor when Cecelia worsened. The medicine he prescribed drained the remainder of the savings but kept her cough at bay for some weeks. Still, it was not enough. It was too late.

Our little Cecelia is gone. We are heartbroken, as I am sure you find yourself now as well. Dad says he is well enough, but please pray for him, as work has been impossible. We are existing on our needlework and abject sadness.

Your loving sister,

Eliza

I put my hand over my mouth to stifle my sobs. I could not allow this fate to befall another member of my family. I knew what I had to do to save them.