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darkroom,” she says, pushing forward with her feet until she feels the metal basin of developer. She bends down, dragging Annie with her.
    The cellar still smells of coal, the dusky bloom of it flowering in the bricks, in the air.
    Isabelle and Annie kneel by the tub while Isabelle pours developer into it and then immerses the glass plate. It is as big as a book, and she has to be careful that she has covered all of it. She counts the developing time off under her breath. She has brought Annie with her because she can’t let her go yet, can’t let her move beyond this moment, this photograph.
    Annie can smell the coal. She can hear the quick sounds of Isabelle breathing beside her, and over that the slide of liquid pouring over the negative plate. Crouched in the dark in this small hole of a room they are like animals, hiding. She feels both panicky and calm.
    Isabelle fumbles around in the dark, bumping her hands through the developer basin until she finds the treated glass plate.
    “Done,” she says, and hauls Annie to her feet, back up the stairs and outside.
    After Isabelle has clipped the photographic paper into the developing frame and laid the whole contraption down on a flagstone in the sun, she sits on a bench at the side of the path and motions for Annie to join her.
    “But, ma’am,” says Annie. “I still have work to do.” It is getting late and she is now behind in her duties for the day.
    Isabelle waves her hand. “There’ll always be time for cleaning,” she says.
    Whose time? thinks Annie. The Lady is much too cavalier on the subject of cleanliness. How would she feel if her chamber pot wasn’t emptied every morning, or her bed sheets changed? But Annie doesn’t protest again. It feels nice to sit in the sun on the bench in the middle of the day. It feels slighdy wicked, in fact.
    Isabelle can barely keep still, keeps hopping up to check the exposure, unclamping the frame, and peeling back a corner of the photograph.
    “Almost,” she keeps saying. “Almost.” She seems very much like Mr. Rochester in her impatience.
    When you just sit somewhere and don’t move, the whole world comes to you. Annie sees things she has never noticed before. Birds and insects circle in the trees above her. Flowers tilt their heavy heads towards the soft-grass ground. The smells of the summer are wide. She looks up at the sun strained through a mass of cloud. How is it then that she sometimes misses Mrs. Gilbey and Portman Square? Is it only because it has been familiar to her? Is that all it is about? The small basement kitchen. The fifty stairs from there to the top of the house. The small darkness of her room, not unlike the coal cellar that she’d crouched in with the Lady Isabelle. The Lady’s breathing in the dark next to her, a hoarse, hollow sound.
    Isabelle is up off the bench again, peeling back the corner of the photograph with one of her blackened hands. “Look,” she says. “It’s starting to appear.”
    Annie slips off the bench and goes over to Isabelle.
    Isabelle peels some more of the photo back. It is exactly right, that look in Annie’s eyes. It has survived the process of the photograph. It is strong and unwavering and griefstricken. It is the vision Isabelle had, made flesh. It is a work of art, her art. It is a miracle.
    The exposure is still too light and the photograph will need to be fixed, washed, and toned to bring out the shadow areas, but Isabelle knows already that it is a success.
    Annie, who has never really looked at herself before, sees the image on the paper and doesn’t identify it with herself. A girl holding on to the ankle of a man. Guinevere and Arthur. She can believe that. She can believe that it is true, that she and Isabelle have made that story come true.
    “Look at you, Annie Phelan,” says Isabelle. “You are made from light.”

Ophelia
    Isabelle rushes to Eldon’s library, the still-damp print pinched between thumb and forefinger. It twists and