Chapter 10
"I'll love you, every step of the way." – My dad last night
I awoke not in a van this time, but in an iron bed, and through the mattress filling and the sheets I could feel hard springs. I could also feel someone's toes on my shins, and someone's hair on my forehead. I cracked my eyes open as little as I could manage in the early morning light, that glowed through the huge windows above me like the world was made of fire outside these walls. The hair was my own, as I had taken it out of the ponytail I usually wear, tied up with bits of string I had knotted together, bits that tied up the vegetables the boy brought in. The toes, unless I had suddenly achieved bonelessness, were not my own. The sheets around me were loose, however I felt a certain tightness around my chest. Moving my head down, I saw a mess of dark, almost black hair, and it was then that I remembered that I was not in my own bed, but had fallen asleep with her in hers. Her feet were against my legs, her knees curled up and touching just above my own. Her head was on my shoulder, and her right arm over my chest, with her left curled up under hers. My right arm was splayed out and my fingers were hanging over the edge of the mattress, and my other hand over hers on my chest.
Our plan greeted my mind slowly, and then all at once, and I realised that I needed to get up soon, before the other girls did and do all of my chores if I was to go upstairs. I was sure that someone else would cope with having to stir a pot for supper. Right now, I needed to scrub down all the work surfaces, the floors and remove all of yesterday's ash from the hearth. I then had to light the fire and get it so that it was a constant, with no reason to go out, and then, since by then I would be quite filthy and unable to go upstairs in such a state, I'd wash my clothes. Although… If I did it all in my nightgown I wouldn't have to wash as much… yes, I'll do that.
So I did, and it was so boring and tedious that I won't make you suffer a description. But I was halted suddenly in my fire tending when, as I was just balancing a new log: brittle with dryness from being aged and then sat next to the flames for a time, by 'You're up early.' It was Robin, one of the girls lucky enough to get a proper name, not that anyone else would get why I called it a "normal name". She was short, well, normal person short, so about five two, (whereas I'm practically an elf) and a very bouncy character. From what I had been able to tell from the past few days.
'Um, yeah, I thought I'd get a head-start, and then I can, you know, get on with other things as they arise, maybe practise darning, y'know…' I trailed off, unsure of where the excuse was actually going.
'a head-start?' she questioned disbelievingly, her eyebrows rising as she folded her arms and leant with her hip against the long dark table that served as both a workstation and a place for rest and chatter sometimes. Most of the time we chatted while we busied about and worked our fingers to the bone in cold dishwater, as we were not supplied with running hot. If we wanted hot, it had to have been taken from a pot over the fire. Cold baths, despite leaving your hair shiny, are not great, especially if you have to share the bath with about three other girls. They all seemed to get on with it, but I was still getting used to it… well, I say getting used to it, I never did. I didn't like being naked with the other girls, they all seemed so tall and pretty and skinny and ugh I wished I was more like them, not some nine year old with a fifteen year old's mind, and even my head seemed to be stupid compared to them. Plus, although at first the fascination of living without modern technology down here was cool, by now the hardships of no electricity besides what powered the light bulbs and the pumps for the water, and having nothing familiar around me was becoming downright heart-breaking. But they all seemed to think that there was nothing else that they could think of that they might need or want; they all seemed to just, accept it as if there was no alternative. I envied them.
They knew so much about the kitchens, the basement. They knew the dirty secrets of the Lord and Lady, they all oo-ed and ahh-ed and giggled at his son, Fidelitas. They all moaned about their niece and how she was demanding and spoiled. I didn't have a clue about any of this, I didn't know where I was going, and I didn't even know how I talk to sound like one of the maids! Did they talk to the rest of the people in the house? I supposed they didn't. A talking maid was a noticeable maid, and a noticeable maid is an unsatisfactory maid, and must be removed.
Removed.
After realizing that I had become removed from the conversation, I had failed to notice that Robin had become bored with observing my ramblings in my head and had walked off: unimpressed by my lack of replying to a question she must have asked. I finished off the fire, with the ash bucket at the side to be filled over the rest of the day and to be emptied by eight in the evening. As I did so, I considered whether it might be a good thing to be a terrible maid or not. If I were, I might be removed from the house, because I would not be fit to serve, but then stood the problem of what might happen to me then. Would I be thrown out into whatever was beyond the house's grounds, assuming that is where all of the other girls that had been sorted through had gone… like Ana. Or would I merely be sent back down here, and not removed at all, because this is far enough away for me to never be seen by anyone important ever again? I would grow old and die here, my wrinkled hands, with their veins bulging, still holding a washcloth as I wither away to my exhausted demise?
But, after sitting and thinking for a few seconds, the realization that there were no girls here older than about twenty something, possibly younger. So what happens if you get too old for this place? I should ask… but would they know? They seemed to know the gossip here, but never question anything other than why Her Ladyship always wants her bed so warm before she gets in (apparently it's stifling, and they didn't know why on earth she can stand it's heat.) And what about me? To be honest I thought I would have already made several escape attempts, but I hadn't even begun planning one. The windows I'd seen were all too high, or the lead meant that I was barred in. I would have to be cleverer than just breaking out. I had to learn what was on the other side of the glass; at the other end of the long, shingle driveway I saw. Maybe today would be my first chance.
On realising that I wasn't going to keep talking to her, Robin walked over to the oven, turning the heat on to ready it for upstairs' breakfast to go in, a breakfast I could only dream of: bacon, eggs, toast with jam, mushrooms, potatoes, sausages, the whole lot going to waste of course. Whatever they didn't finish came back down to us, by which time it would be cold, laughing at us who weren't allowed to use extra energy to reheat it for ourselves – how could they possibly pay for the energy it used, when they were only living in a mansion, I mean, how unthinkable!
I rose from the flagstones, brushing myself off, ran on my toes, as quiet as I could back to the room we all slept in, where my uniform was folded, hanging over the bars as the foot of my bed, which the girl still lay fast asleep in. Smiling gently at her, I pulled off my nightgown, and buttoned up the shirt. The collar was becoming less stiff, which was more comfortable, but I wondered if this would be noticed when I went upstairs – would it give me away? I met a problem on pulling on the blue pinafore; I could not do the button at the top of the zip at the back. I couldn't angle my arms to do it, especially not backwards.
The Sun began to sigh through the chequered ribbon of windows along the top of the rooms walls, and the girls at the other end of the room began to stir, obviously used to waking up at the same time every day. My heart raced, so pulling my pale, scratchy socks and black shoes on, I bounded back out of the gallery, apron in hand, back into the kitchens.
This time I could stare at the kitchens with a sort of relaxation that I had never encountered here before, and that gave me time to reconsider why I might be here. The first possibility was obvious: that I had been kidnapped to work here as a serving girl. But had they targeted me, or was the act opportunist? The other option was that I was taken here for another reason, and that the kitchens was just a sort of holding bay? That might explain the limited ages of the girls here, at least. And the Girl was much younger, and had already been assigned a different job to most of us… It seemed to be a contending idea.
Another thing I will do today. I will find her a proper name. It was getting so tedious to keep having to refer to her as "Girl", and it seemed so distant and clinical, like I didn't really know her.
Well, of course I didn't really know her… She didn't really know her, did she? So I made it another mission of the day to ask her things and play and talk with her, and get to know her as well as I could, so that soon she and I could figure out what her name should be, or she might even remember it.
Just then, she shuffled out into the kitchen with some others, her eyes blinking, half closed. I skipped up to her, crouching down to her level and tickled her, taking her by surprise a little "Hey, open those eyes sleepy head, we've got to be ready for today. You still up for me coming with you?" She smiled and nodded, giggling and pushing my fingers away from her tummy, as I threatened to tickle her. "Come on then, let's get you dressed. Do you want help tying your apron on again?" I stood up and she followed me back into the gallery to the small pile of clothes that hung over the footboard of her black iron bed. She pulled on all of it up to her dress, which she needed my help to do the buttons up on the back, then the apron, as she hadn't yet learned how to tie the bows behind her back. The buckles on the shoes, however, were no problem. We'd added the buckles using scraps of old belt one of the other girls had collected – one had a very small buckle, probably from a woman's belt, and so Fox had stitched it onto her shoes to keep them from falling off. "Lovely, now can you help me with mine?" I asked, turning my back to her and holding up my hair, coming down slightly so that she could easily get to the button at the back of my own dress, which she nimbly did up.
As the clock in the kitchens on the mantle began to chime six o' clock, She and I sat down and wolfed some porridge, and began to help prepare upstairs' breakfasts. We would then take up this girls breakfast for her to eat it in her bed, apparently.
Once we were both ready to go, and She'd eaten her porridge, we made our way up the dark staircase, for the first time in my life.
I knew what to expect when I reached the top, of course, but that didn't mean that the long climb wasn't really nerve wracking. The channel was only wide enough for us to go in single file, so I went in front, her hand gripping the hem of my dress.
So that was chapter ten, eleven months late. I abandoned this story back in January because I went through some tough times mentally and couldn't focus on as many things as I was trying to juggle. So I am sososo sorry for that. Now that I've given myself some strict rules, and certain stuff has become manageable so that I can just blend it all into whatever I'm doing or forget it for a little while, THE STORY WILL GO ON! Also I've been driving myself mad because i just want to get to the bit that i can't tell anyone about yet because it will literally RUIN the entire plotline buuut I am thrilled to be back writing these characters again, because it's like theyr always with me and they hold my hand. (Yuck mushy forget i said that)
Don't forget to leave a reveiw, even if its just like "yh ur stuffs ok" just because i get so excited when anything is sent to me!
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