The Gate Amidst the Ivy
Chapter Seven
(Ino, let's stop fighting.
Yes, you're right… It's impossible to stay mad at you anyways!
What?
Well, you're always so sad, and your big green eyes look so wounded and pained, and I just feel guilty all the time—
Ino, stop being silly!
I will once you get rid of that huge forehead!
What! You pig! Ino-pig!
Two girls bursting into companionable laughter.)
When they arrived at the main castle, Sakura could hardly believe the luxury she found herself surrounded in. The carriage had stopped at the front of the castle, the front reserved only for the ladies and lords of the highest class. Even minor nobles generally used the side entrances, and commoners and servants like the two of them used the back entrances…
Footmen wearing uniforms of imperial red and gold opened the door for them, bowing low. They helped Ino out first and then Sakura, and the entire experience was surreal—the few times she had ever ridden a carriage, she had never been helped down it.
Her second shock came as she took in the main castle's appearance. Balconies and towers and high windows, hundreds of them perhaps, gave the castle a sort of grandeur she had scarcely ever imagined even in her dreams. Meticulously trimmed hedges and manicured lawns only added to its beauty, its beauty that screamed of wealth. Her previous home in the village was not even the size of one of these lawns. Sakura almost wanted to comment about it to Ino, regardless of their fight.
Once the footmen helped them out, they disappeared discreetly to… to wherever footmen discreetly disappeared. Maids dressed in dark silks, utterly impractical for the work Sakura usually did, came out and curtsied politely. Their faces were studiously and carefully blank, but from the less-than-sincere nature of their bows, Sakura could tell they wondered what such poorly-dressed commoners were doing at the front entrance of the castle. She chanced a glance at Ino, but the blonde's face was impassive.
"You shall be coming with me," one of them told Sakura demurely. She had long, spiky yet soft-looking blonde hair, with shallow doe-like brown eyes. Sakura paused and nodded hesitantly, noticing that Ino was being led in a completely different direction. The two girls exchanged a tension-filled glance before allowing themselves to be swept away.
"Beg pardon, but where shall we be going?" Sakura inquired the maid that had spoken to her.
(You're going to be coming with me, Sakura.
But where are we going? Mama, where is she taking me?
To the castle, of course. To your new job.
I don't want to go! I want to stay!
Don't be ridiculous. Don't be selfish. Ma'am, my daughter's usually not like this, I hope you understand—
I understand perfectly. Children can be so silly sometimes, can't they?)
The maid gave her a cold look, at odds with her polite manners. "I am to help you get acquainted with your quarters in the servant's wing. I have been told that footmen will arrive with your belongings shortly, which is why you will find your room largely unfurnished."
"I—thank you," murmured Sakura awkwardly, unsure how to act around such palpable disdain. She decided to try and extend the hand of friendship one more time. "If I may ask," she attempted again, "what is your name? In case I have any trouble at the castle…"
The maid gave her a glance saying quite clearly that no, she did not have any right to ask, but answered anyways, "I am Fumiko Ayame, daughter of Fumiko Daitaro, the famed rice merchant. You may call me Fumiko-san."
Sakura bristled at that. "Very well then," she said equally coldly. "I am Haruno Sakura." She did not have any impressive titles to add to her name, but continued anyways, "You may also call me Haruno-san."
The black-haired maid looked icily amused. "Of course, Haruno. I doubt we shall be seeing much of each other, however. I am handmaiden to the Lady Hideki Isabi, not a common servant. Which wing will you be working at, by the by?"
"I do believe that's hardly any of your business, Fumiko." Sakura put a slight stress on the last word, deciding to return Ayame's favor—or lack thereof. "Since you asked, however, I shall tell you that I am not assigned to a wing at all. I am to be a handmaiden to the Lady Ino."
Ayame sneered imperceptibly—it was really little more than a slight curl of her lip. "The Lady Ino, you say? I can't say I've ever heard of her. You didn't mention her surname," she added, an unspoken question at the end of her statement.
"Indeed," hummed Sakura noncommittally. It would be no surprise that Ayame hadn't heard of Ino, of course, and it only meant that Ayame looked down upon Sakura even more, assuming her to be no more than the handmaiden of some minor noble. "I can't say I've heard of the Lady Hideki, either," she deflected—it wouldn't do if Ayame attempted to make any queries into Ino's past.
She was successful at deflection, at least. Ayame stiffened at the implied insult and said softly, "I'm not too surprised. It always takes the junior servants some time to get accustomed to the ways of the main castle. Haruno, we have arrived at your quarters. Feel free to acquaint yourself to your quarters. A servant will be sent to you within the hour, where you shall be formally introduced to the pertinent staff. Don't embarrass yourself."
(Alright, Naruto! I did your tie. Now, don't embarrass yourself! This is an important party!)
Sakura started. During their conversation, they had made their way inside the castle, up winding staircases and intricately decorated hallways. They were now in such a hallway, with doors interspersed at even intervals. Ayame stood beside the door, clearly waiting for Sakura to open it, and Sakura felt her cheeks warm at the tacit insult. Any servant introducing another servant would have opened the doors for him or her, and the fact that Ayame did not do so meant the girl considered Sakura beneath her notice. If Sakura opened the door herself, that meant she accepted that her place was lower than Ayame's, and her pride would not let her do that.
The pinkette stared frigidly at Ayame, who stared impersonally back. They stayed like that for a few minutes, though it seemed a few hours, and slowly, painfully slowly, Ayame raised her hand and turned the doorknob. The carved wooden door swung open with a slight creak.
Sakura sailed past Ayame, her head held high, and tried to conceal her shock at the size of the room. It was large and airy, with a high, wide window in the center of one wall. There was a four-poster bed tucked into one corner with thick cotton sheets, a dresser, bureau, and full-length mirror in another corner, with space left for a plush chair and personal belongings. And there was only one bed…
Sakura noticed Ayame had not yet left. "These… quarters are… individual quarters, yes?" Sakura clarified hesitantly.
(This room is so…
What?
So… um, cozy. And these are individual quarters, correct?
A snort. Of course not. Who do you think you are, handmaidens? You'll be sharing these rooms with three other girls, four in total.
Oh…)
The other girl smiled, but it was not friendly. It was an expression of cruel amusement, humor at the expense of another. "Yes, of course. I don't know how conditions are at Castle Konoha, but the overseers would never dream of making us share quarters."
Probably to prevent them from murdering each other, if they all act like Ayame, thought Sakura privately to herself. "Thank you for your help, Fumiko," she told Ayame insincerely, omitting the standard addition of I am indebted to you used in polite company. From the slight narrowing of Ayame's eyes, Sakura knew the other handmaiden had noticed that and had accurately guessed the intentions behind it.
"It was my… pleasure, Haruno," sneered Ayame, though of course it was difficult to call the girl's studiously blank expression sneering. Then she left through the door, leaving it open, not even showing Sakura the courtesy of shutting it.
Waiting until she could no longer hear Ayame's receding footsteps, Sakura walked to the door and closed it. She noticed in fascination that it even had a lock that could only be opened from the inside, a luxury not given to Castle Konoha's servants. When she tried it, the door locked with a sharp click.
Slowly, she made her way to the comfortable queen-sized bed. It was only once she sat down that she noticed how much she had been trembling. She felt like crying. She had only been here for a few hours, and already someone hated her because of her lack of status. She wanted to sob. No, she wanted to go back to Castle Konoha. She wanted her friends, her true friends, Umayo, Tenten, Izanami… even Aoki, taskmaster that she was. They didn't look down on her, expose her to such senseless, ridiculous hate.
She stared at her hands, wanting to cry but refusing to let her tears fall. When there was a knock on her door fifty minutes later, she met the disdainful brunette servant with dry eyes and steady hands.
The days passed into weeks. Sakura was given etiquette lessons by impatient instructors (near the beginning, she had been incredulous that servants were required to take etiquette lessons, but reminded herself that she was at the main castle, not Castle Konoha). She learned that the king was to be spoken of to others as His Royal Majesty, the prince was to be referred to as His Most Gracious Excellency, high-ranking nobles must be spoken to as Your Eminence or Your Serene Excellency, and that minor nobles were always to be called My Lord or My Lady but never anything else—they were nobles, true, explained her instructor, but not important ones, and so they mustn't get a swelled head, after all. She found it all ridiculous, quite frankly.
The servants continued to be casually cruel to her, leaving her out of gatherings and inside jokes. Despite her relative isolation from them, she heard whispered rumors that a new lady was to be introduced to the court. The servants wondered what sort of relation she had with Prince Sasuke, and Sakura smirked to herself when she heard their guesses. She knew exactly who was to be introduced and why, and it felt good in an almost pathetic sort of way to know something the other arrogant, uppity girls did not.
(There's a party tonight—just a gathering for us—are you coming?
Of course! Don't tell Sakura about it though, no doubt she'll come along and ruin it all—
A girl with black hair and green eyes just around the corner, deathly quiet, trying to hold back tears.)
Her private quarters had become a sort of sanctuary to her. They were small compared to the other servants' quarters, but they were larger than her previous quarters—and she'd had to share that with three other servants. She carefully arranged her few books around the room, frowned at the pitifully small space her dresses took up in the castle-provided dresser, and occasionally allowed herself to feel loneliness. She had heard little of Ino—she assumed the blonde was being given etiquette lessons as well, lessons on how to properly present herself as the wife of His Most Gracious Excellency Prince Sasuke. What would Ino's full title be once she was officially Bonded to Prince Sasuke? Sakura sifted through her near-photographic memory, attempting to recall her first etiquette lesson. Ino would become… Her Most Gracious Excellency Princess Ino Uchiha, Consort of Prince Sasuke Uchiha, Prince of Konoha, Sovereign-Prince of Fire Country and Prince-Elect of Fire Country Dominions beyond the Seas, Defender of the Peace.
Sakura snorted. Defender of the Peace. King Itachi, Keeper of the Peace, and his brother Prince Sasuke, Defender of the Peace. Ridiculous, really, when one considered Konoha's armies—yes, armies, stationed everywhere throughout the country, full of young men—young boys, really. Just the past year King Itachi had had to put down several rebellions in the south, and he had put them down violently—and still, one of his titles was Keeper of the Peace. Hah.
On the upside, she'd been fitted for new gowns recently. Even her pale blue muslin gown was not of a high enough standard for servants of the main castle, so the sneering overseer had given her a half-day off work once to go into town and visit a dressmaker. The prices were unimaginable to her, but her overseer had assured that the castle would reimburse the tailor and that a portion of her pay would be docked until the bill was paid off as a result, so Sakura bought three dresses with a largely clean conscience. One was an emerald green velvet that complimented her eyes, or so the dressmaker had told her; another was a deep blue silk that was only to be used for balls, never cleaning, insisted the dressmaker; and the last was another lighter green dress like peridots that also suited her gorgeous eyes, praised the dressmaker.
Their voluminous skirts hid the worn muslin dress and her shabby frayed maid's dress. She had taken to wearing the emerald green dress when she was working, as it was darker and showed stains less than the silk and the pale green dresses, though the tasks she'd been assigned rarely ever gave the opportunity for gathering stains. She was never made to dust or cook or clean—that was reserved for the lower servants, the servants who had not had the fortune to be young and beautiful handmaidens, because of course youth and beauty was a requirement for those higher positions. Instead, Sakura had to deliver messages, guide nobles, demurely wait on ladies while they breakfasted, and other such boring tasks. And still she hadn't seen a single glimpse of Ino anywhere…
A knock on her locked door. "A moment, please!" called Sakura, getting up and walking over to the door. She unlocked it, and one of the lower servants looked at her and curtsied deeply. "Yes?"
The other servant was a brunette with strands of blonde through her hair. She had curious catlike green eyes, but despite the uniqueness of her features, she could never be called pretty. Perhaps it was her plumpness, or the red pockmarks on her face, or the large scar across her right arm.
There was a silence. Sakura self-consciously patted her pink—no, her black hair, assuring that her wig was properly attached.
"Uh—ma'am—there is to be a ball on the morrow," began the servant officially. Sakura almost winced at the servant's rough, grating country accent—there was yet another reason the poor girl had never become a handmaiden. "An', um, Mrs. Aimi tol' me—"
"You mean the Matron Aimi?" hinted Sakura at the servant, trying once again not to wince. Her accent at the beginning had been tolerable, almost, but now she was slipping further into the country slang for which commoners were so disdained by the ladies.
The servant gave her a confused look. "Yeah, Mrs. Aimi. Anyways, she tol' me ter tell yeh that yeh are ter take the morrow off ter ready yerself fer the ball. Yeh are to accomane—no, accoma—"
"Accompany?" assisted Sakura, withholding her sigh.
"Yeah, accompany. Yeh are to ac-com-pah-nee"—she pronounced the word carefully, and still managed to butcher it with her accent—"the Lady Ino the entire night a' she is intrerduced ter the court."
"Thank you," responded Sakura. "You are dismissed."
The servant frowned at Sakura, giving her a strange look. She curtsied again, not as low as she had the first time, and muttered, "Yes, ma'am" before leaving.
Sakura noticed with mild irritation that the servant hadn't closed the door. She went to do so, thinking to herself that perhaps the poor ignorant creature didn't know any better—
Wait. Poor ignorant creature? And had she really thought of her as a lower servant during their conversation? What on earth? That servant did harder work in a day than most of the handmaidens did in an entire year. And why had she winced so at the servant's accent? Most of her friends back in the village had spoken in the same way, though Sakura had never picked up their rougher nuances, due mostly to her mother's influence and then to Tsunade's. Even some of her friends at Castle Konoha spoke like that—and she had always found that rough accent endearing, unique. And why had she corrected the servant? There were subtle differences between missus and matron, but they were really the same thing, after all, only that matron was more accepted in polite society. But she wasn't a lady, and neither was the servant—only the ridiculously posh actually used matron instead of missus!
Had she really become like those frigidly cruel servants she hated? Had she really adopted the sort of casual arrogance that disgusted her? When had she stopped appreciating the good things that came her way, her sheer luck? After all, how many could boast of having three regular, filling meals each day, and large soft bed, five gowns, and a comfortable room to live in? Surrounded by such wealth, unimaginable to most who lived in Konoha, Sakura had stopped appreciating.
She opened the door again, stepping out to the hallway, ready to apologize to the other servant for her careless cruelty. But she had already gone, and Sakura was left feeling more alone than ever.
Yes, I know, no SasuSaku interaction this chapter either. Sorry! :( But just to make it up to you guys, I'll let you know that I have a big plot point involving the two of them, with lots of good old gooey interaction between the two of them, coming up… NEXT CHAPTER! So don't lose faith. xD Oh, but updates might not come soon after this because finals are coming up. -cowers-
It made me shrivel up and die inside when I wrote "Ino Uchiha," btw.
And to those of you who couldn't understand the servant:
"Ma'am, there is to be a ball tomorrow. And Mrs. Aimi told me—"
"Yeah, Mrs. Aimi. Anyways, she told me to tell you that you are to take tomorrow off to ready yourself for the ball. You are to accomane—no, accoma—"
"Yeah, accompany. You are to accompany the Lady Ino the entire night as she is introduced to the court."
I totally BSed the stuff about titles and how to address nobles. So if I got something totally entirely wrong, just remember, I've never attended etiquette classes like Sakura has. xD Oh! But an interesting tidbit—"Keeper of the Peace" is actually a historical title for kings. Or queens. Whatever floats your boat.
I was surprised at all the Ino-hate last chapter! :O I was trying to make her a sympathetic character, or at least make her motives understandable, because quite frankly, maybe that's what I would have done in her situation. xD Maybe. I don't actually know, now that I think about it…
Review! You guys gave me a ridiculous amount of reviews last time, like around forty I think, so keep it up! You're all amazing. :D Thanks to everyone who reviewed last time, and to everyone who's going to review this time! I'm hoping to break the 200 review mark with this chapter, so please help me in my quest! ;D
published 1.10.10
(HOLY CRAP HAPPY 2010 EVERYBODY!)