Drea
Things were going back to normal in Camelot. As I could not go back to Clunsdale and live there all on my own, a place was found for me to stay: I was apprenticed to a basket maker whose husband worked at the castle as a stable hand. Their children were grown up and didn't live with them any more, so they had a spare room that I could sleep in. Their house with the basket workshop out front was in the lower town.
I didn't like either of the two people. Gertie, my mistress, was lazy and greedy. For the first year I was only on trial, she said, and would receive no wages apart from food and lodging. The room I slept in was cold, filthy and damp. Her husband, Elvin, was a fat, smelly, unwashed man with rotten teeth, bloodshot eyes and bits of food always caught in his beard. He also drank too much. They both had a bad temper. They never smiled or said a kind word to each other, nor to me.
The only thing I liked about being there was to make the baskets, because I liked working with my hands. At first, handling the wickers made them bleed and ache. But slowly they became callused and strong, and the baskets I made were becoming saleable. I would sit in the workshop for hours, eager to see my work in progress being finished. I experimented and thought up new ways to make patterns with the wickers. That was the only thing I could do that made me forget all the other things around me.
I struggled to press the image of Percival to the back of my mind. I kept saying to myself he would never look in my direction. I was only a child. He was a man, who had his own life and his own friends. He was even a knight of Camelot, equal of the nobility even if he was not born into it. He would never concern himself with someone like me.
For a time I thought I had managed to forget about him, but when the nightmares of Clunsdale haunted me and I woke up, alone in the cold and the dark, his name was still the one I whispered out in front of me to whisk away the horrors.
I hoped that when my trial year was over, I would be able to save up the wages I would be receiving and make a new start for myself when my apprenticeship was over. Maybe I could go to another town and set up my own basket workshop. As the months passed by, it clearly showed that I was a talented basket maker. My mistress' customers praised my new patterns and methods and her sales went up. She never mentioned to anyone who made the new baskets, though.
When a year had gone by I began to receive wages, but they were so low that I suspected I was being cheated. I just did not dare to ask anyone about it for fear that Gertie would hear. If she did, I could probably say goodbye to any wages at all. Luckily I was able to save up most of what I got. I would rather do that than buy things for myself, like new clothes or fancy things. No one hardly ever looked at me anyway, so I had no reason to dress up. But still, I feared I would not have enough to set myself up when the remaining three years of my apprenticeship had gone by.
I had thought things would get better now that I was a paid apprentice, but they only got worse. As I was learning more and more, my mistress began to spend less and less time in the workshop. Instead she let me take care of business while she went out to visit her daughter or some friends of hers, or she simply stood chatting in the streets for hours when she was supposed shop for new supplies. She even gave me house chores as if I was a servant she could order around as she pleased. If I complained, she called me ungrateful, or even threatened to get her husband to beat me when came home at night. He was never home during the day, no matter if he had night shift or day shift. He spent most of his spare time in the tavern. Luckily she never made good on the threat.
"You seem like such a pleasing girl. Why don't you find some friends instead of staying in this shop all day?" an observant customer, a smiling, middle-aged woman, said one day. I know she meant well. But she could just as well have asked me to pluck the stars out of the sky. I could never make friends with anyone, not when things were like this. Not when I was like I was. They would think I was weird, not right in my head. Perhaps I wasn't.
I was very lonely, but simply to speak to other people made me nervous and insecure. That could not be normal. I felt lost, sort of unhitched and trailing after life. Who would ever understand the chaos that went on inside my head? It was all a big mess.
I was still in love with Percival, but to me, being in love was not something pleasurable, it was torment. I also disliked everything about myself. And I was so ashamed of the fact that I let myself put up with the treatment I received from Gertie and Elvin, but I had nowhere else to go.
The sales from the workshop still went better and better. Gertie spent the extra money on new furnishings for the living room and bedroom, better clothes and things like that. But no improvements were made to my room. I did not get better wages either. When I plucked up the courage to ask for it, my mistress replied: "Don't be ungrateful, little Drea. You know I would pay you better if I could, but I really can't afford it." That was obviously a lie. She just didn't want to spend it on me. Then, with a little laugh, she added: "What would you need money for, anyway?" Not that she was interested in hearing my answer. The only thing I benefited from was the better food, even though it did not raise my failing appetite much.
