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Chapter 4
The Servants Are Much Nicer
Morning was somewhat hard to find. For Tabitha and Wulafric (being under the bed) it was shrouded both by the bed-skirts and the clouds, although its light managed to wake both of them up anyway. Tabitha woke with a start, her breath coming fast until she realized that it was morning and the world was a better place now that Great-Aunt Hilsida was not banging at the door. Wulafric licked at her face and wriggled out from under her arm to stick his head out from under the bed. His tail wagged, batting Tabitha’s nose. She smiled, the smile giving her the strength to push past the puppy and enter the world again.
There has never been a study written on the most powerful smiles of the world and what they have allowed the bearer to do, but if there were, Tabitha’s would fall in the top 100, coming in right below the smile that allowed Rosa Evans to charm the judge into letting her brother go (this is only remarkable if you know that Jod Evans stole three horses, five chickens, ten pigs, and almost one cow. It was the cow that got him caught, and it was the judge’s own cow). All that is to say, this was a smile that could rearrange the order of the natural world, so instead of staying curled up under the bed all day long crying her eyes out, Tabitha merely felt hungry.
The smile propelled her to the window where she saw a wide open land sparsely decorated with trees and the occasional stone wall. She thought she might have seen some sheep in the distance, but they seemed to be doing somersaults, so Tabitha assumed that her eyes were playing tricks on her. (she was right, but if she had ever heard of the famous somersaulting sheep of Salzburg, she might have reconsidered).
The door handle jiggled, then a knock sounded at the door. Wulafric whined and looked at Tabitha. She had clenched her fists at the knock and backed as far into the stone of the window as possible (not very). There was another knock, this time accompanied by,
“Miss? It’s all right, I’ve brought you some breakfast. Don’t worry, it’s just me.”
And although ‘it’s just me’ was hardly encouraging, it certainly didn’t sound like Great-Aunt Hilsida. Tabitha unlocked the door to find a maid with a tray of what was indeed breakfast. Wulafric crowded her ankles, sniffing industriously. The maid beamed a smile down at him.
“Roger said you had a dog.” Tabitha cocked her head in a silent question. “Roger, he’s the Butler. Right awful looking isn’t he? But he’s the one who most deals with her, so we try not to trouble him. He probably told you you had to look after this one, didn’t he?” Tabitha nodded. “Well, I brought you some extra sausages for ‘im, and the cook don’t mind making ‘em, so there you are.” The maid put the tray down on a small table next to the bed. She stared at the bed keenly then back at Tabitha. “Didn’t get much sleep did you? Rogers said it was one of those nights. But when we heard you were coming we tested all the rooms and this was the one with the stoutest door. Held out all right, did it? None of the ones in the servants quarter lasted long, so we all sleep elsewhere, only coming here to do our work, and that only before—before she has her afternoon tea. Only Rogers stays after that, and not if it’s one of those nights.”
Tabitha decided to speak up. “What’s in the tea?”
“Oh, that’s a nice breakfast tea with a bit of honey, we weren’t sure what you—“
“No no, not my tea, her tea. What’s in her tea?” Tabitha had decided to adopt the maid’s habit of speaking of Great-Aunt Hilsida as a pronoun with a decided emphasis. It somehow seemed the thing to do. (if Tabitha had been the sort to be fanciful, she would have recognized the impulse at once—to not say someone’s name for fear of summoning them or attracting their attention. But since Tabitha was Tabitha, it never occurred to her.)
The maid’s eyes widened. “Ohh, her tea. Well, other than tea…” she trailed off and seemed reluctant to speak of it. Tabitha put her hands on her hips and her most obstinate expression on her face. The maid wilted. “She puts something else in it. Peter the footman thinks it’s just spirits, but Roger says it’s laudanum, and he would know, being much nearer to her than the rest of us, God protect ‘im. Now eat up, and I’ll take the tray back down. Be sure to get a good lunch too, ‘cause there won’t be anyone in the kitchen after that. I’ll leave you a tray in your room that’ll keep ‘til dinner. Best we can do.”
What the maid did not tell Tabitha—and did not in fact know—was that the laudanum was not Great-Aunt Hilsida’s problem. It cannot be said to help matters any, and on most occasions made things worse, but the laudanum came after the problem. What problem is that? Well, some years ago, Great-Aunt Hilsida was incredibly sick with a terrible fever. Doctors came and went but none could seem to do anything. Throughout it all her staff were in constant attendance (they had not yet moved out of the house), especially Roger the Butler who was nearly always to be found by her bedside with cooling cloths for her forehead. And just when it seemed that she might indeed die, Great-Aunt Hilsida started to hallucinate and gibber, throwing her arms and legs this way and that, shouting about how the dogs were barking, she could hear the dogs barking (those of an uncharitable nature would say that she was hearing hellhounds coming for her soul), and why did everyone have pineapples in their ears? She became convinced that Roger the Butler was some sort of canine spy hiding behind a screen of pineapples, and managed to deck him. She then ran out of the house attired only in a thin nightgown and disappeared for five hours until she was found swimming naked in the miller’s pond singing ‘Lucy Lulla-bye.’ Her fever was gone, although after that night she was never the same. (Great-Aunt Hilsida was never what you could call an agreeable person, and most of the stories told about her date before the sickness, but after that night, Great-Aunt Hilsida was quite mad. Sometimes. The rest of the time she was simply herself, but most found it hard to tell the difference.)
It was during the sickness (or perhaps the five hours in which she disappeared) that something went wrong in Great-Aunt Hilsida’s head. Everything became overturned and upside down. She would set the maids to sweeping the lawn, claiming that it was too dirty to bear. She would call for dinner foods at breakfast time, and breakfast foods at dinnertime. She would demand to eat in the dining room, but would wait on the lawn for tables and chairs to be brought out to her. She took to wandering the halls at night and sleeping in the day. On occasion she treated the servants like children and insisted on locking them in their rooms—which was in fact the outdoors.
By this time the servants were having a hard time pretending that all was normal and well, and it was quite restful really to get ‘locked in their rooms’ because John the stable boy had made a section of the stables very livable, and the Gatehouse wasn’t that far away for a place to sleep, and had the added benefit of being far away from her, as they started to call her. On other occasions, she could be found back in the miller’s pond (it seemed to have some claim upon her) swimming naked and singing songs from her childhood.
Various doctors again came and went, with most of them recommending the calming influence of Laudanum. After a time, Roger the Butler could see no other choice or possibility for restoring even a bit of his employer’s sanity, so in one of her more normal (that is to say angrily disagreeable) moments, he bravely broached the idea to her, and uncharacteristically, she agreed. But rather than helping, as it has already been stated, the laudanum only appeared to increase the problem. Sometimes. Great-Aunt Hilsida’s rages were more extreme and violent, but they were mostly fewer, especially when nothing was done to upset her. So all the servants (by popular accord) moved out of the house and into other quarters, only setting foot in the house during the mornings and early afternoon, before she had her tea. Only Roger stayed, unless her violence was too great. And after he saw what the laudanum did to her, he tried to find a moment to introduce the idea that maybe she should stop taking it, but it was too late. Great-Aunt Hilsida quite liked the laudanum and ordered him to always keep a ready supply of it on hand. He obeyed. And the house fell into disrepair for who was there to see it? And what reasons were there to clean it well when their work was undone by her at every turn? So it went undone.
Tabitha knew none of this. She only knew that her Great-Aunt Hilsida was even worse than she had ever thought, and that the laudanum was to blame. (she had guessed that it was Great-Aunt Hilsida herself who was responsible for all the broken rooms and shattered furniture, and it followed that the laudanum was responsible for her state of mind, so it was the laudanum really that had torn up the house and forced the servants into a traveling exile to and from the house each day). Tabitha decided that this could not last. She would not let it. And how was she to restore the balance of the house so decidedly weighted in favor of her Great-Aunt Hilsida and her laudanum? Why, remove the laudanum of course.
Feeling much better now that she had the beginnings of a plan (Tabitha adored plans, as it is readily seen), she decided that some exploration was in order.
Number one, to find the laudanum and destroy it.
Number two, to allow Wulafric to stretch his legs and use a convenient bush. Perhaps that should have been first, since it really was the first thing Tabitha did do, but she thought of it in that order, so it has been put down that way.
And number three, Tabitha was in a house that was the epitome of all the gothic novels she had ever read—how could she not want to explore it for her own sake? She would not be Tabitha if she felt otherwise.
So after a trip outside to let Wulafric sniff most of the bushes before choosing a particularly grand shrub outside what Tabitha thought might be her parlor to do his necessary contribution to the growth of all things, Tabitha and Wulafric wandered the halls of Great-Aunt Hilsida’s wrecked house. In one room where the prevailing color scheme seemed to be blue, all the furniture was mostly intact, but upside down. The mice seemed to favor this room (all that stuffing being in easy reach now) and had stolen most of the cushioning off the upside down furniture. Wulafric went sniffing into all the corners and Tabitha heard a slight rustle and scamper as mice fled before him (mighty hunter, all hail!) and smiled. In another room where the color scheme was mostly pale colors and white walls, there were ashes scattered all over the floor and charcoal handprints all over the walls and one enterprising smear across one corner of the ceiling. In a red room there was green paint covering the floor like grass, and in a green room there was red paint splattered like blood. All of these rooms had their doors broken open, and all of them were destroyed except one: the gold room was untouched. Tabitha could verify this to anyone because she spent more time in this room than any other, trying to find what her mad Great-Aunt Hilsida had done to this room. But she couldn’t find anything. The door was just as shattered as any in the house, but Tabitha eventually decided that the room was left exactly as it had been.
It was getting on to almost after lunchtime now, and the afternoon light was beginning to come in all orangey-yellow through the windows and set the golden room afire. Tabitha sat on the golden brocade settee with Wulafric dozing in her lap as she watched the shadows move over shelves and around tables until she realized that she had better go to the kitchens to see if anyone was still there to feed her.
The kitchens were empty, but true to her word, the maid had left a large plate of dinner in Tabitha’s room (cold meat, bread, cheese, two apples, a pot of jam, and what might have been a custard) along with a smaller plate (more cold meat along with a raw meaty bone) for Wulafric. The sound of contemplative hunger was all that was to be heard for a few minutes, during which time Tabitha realized just how silent the house had been all day long. She and Wulafric had often seemed like the only souls in the house, and perhaps the only souls in the whole visible world. At home there was always some bustling noise from outside coming in and making itself comfortable, let alone the noise of industrious servants and the grand declarations of her mother. Here there was nothing of the sort. Even she didn’t appear to make much noise—at least, in the day time. Tabitha glanced nervously at her door. It was still standing open, and she wondered if she ought to close it. (remember, Tabitha didn’t know that last night was not quite typical of Great-Aunt Hilsida. Great-Aunt Hilsida’s fits of rage, although frequent, were not nightly occurrences, and in fact Tabitha had nothing to fear this night, although as it has been said already, she did not know that)
The light from the sun was almost gone and there were no candles yet lit in Tabitha’s room. She supposed she would have to light them herself, as there would be no servants to do it for her as they were all elsewhere hiding. She did not think even for a moment of Roger the Butler coming up here to light her candles. Tabitha thought she might like to avoid asking Roger the Butler for any favor, big or small. He didn’t seem the type for lighting a young girl’s candles. Although truth be told, the Butler back home would not have either, but that was only because he had three footman under him as well as there being three maids, three undermaids, and the Housekeeper herself as a last resort for lighting candles. The Butlers Guide to Butlery did expressly state that there was no task which a Butler might refuse to do for his masters, but then it went on to also state that the very best Butlers always found someone else to do the distasteful or dirty tasks. There was in fact an entire chapter on delegating tasks; who was it best to delegate what task, and how to keep the master from either finding out, or caring. Roger the Butler seemed more the sort to look at her as if she was daft for being unable to light her own candles, and Tabitha hated being looked down on and patronized to.
There turned out to be a small tinderbox next to some candles on the mantelpiece, and very shortly Tabitha had several candles lit as well as the fire in the fireplace going. The outdoor light was completely gone by now, and Tabitha thought she could hear someone walking around downstairs. She listened closely: it didn’t seem like Roger the Butler (a sway-step sounds somehow different than other forms of locomotion) and the only other person in the house was her. And since Tabitha was listening very hard, she could even discern the sound of her cane as she walked: step, thunk step, step, thunk step. The sound grew louder and then fainter as she walked below Tabitha’s room and into another room or hall. Tabitha got up, disturbing Wulafric who was industriously chewing on his bone, to close her door and lock it. They spent a pleasant while in front of the fireplace, secure in the knowledge that she could not get in. But it was not too long before Wulafric became aware that some bushes needed watering, and even young as he was, he understood that there were no bushes inside the house. He reluctantly stood and walked to the door, looking back at Tabitha and whined softly. She looked at him, a little rock of dread settling in her stomach. She wanted to take care of him as she ought, but opening that door and going outside…well, it must be done so she would do it.
The door slowly opened, and two small heads peered around it into the dim corridor. One candle was held in Tabitha’s firm grasp and they crept their way to the nearest staircase and outside door. Wulafric took care of some bushes near the stable, and while waiting for him to finish, Tabitha was startled into looking up by the sound of wings over her head. What she saw was most astonishing.
Having lived her whole life in the city, she had not seen many stars due to the ever increasing prevalence of street lamps, but out here only her candle lit the dark world and the skies above were unimpeded by man made obstructions. The stars shone with brilliant fire and twinkling majesty, crowning the heavens with more splendor than ever sat upon a monarch’s brow. The sky seemed crowded with them all, the blackness overwhelmed with pin-pricks of light that danced in Tabitha’s eyes as she gazed ever upward. Wulafric (having performed his duty admirably) leaned against her leg, rubbing his head against her calf, causing her to look down. “Oh Wulafric,” she said to him, “There are so many of them, and they are all so beautiful. Is it not wonderful?”
It would perhaps be polite to leave Tabitha alone with the stars for a moment until she is ready to return indoors. Great beauty is not often appreciated as it ought, and moments when one can see clearly what lies around us everyday are very precious.
When Tabitha finally came back to earth it was to the knowledge that she was very cold (she had left her coat on the back of a chair in her room) and getting very tired. Her candle had blown out but the light of the stars were bright enough to lead her back—she thought. And she was right—except that starlight wasn’t terribly good at showing the bucket that tangled between her legs and made her fall flat on her face right outside the stable entrance. Although not given to shrieking when surprised, Tabitha did give a sort of ‘urk’ that was combined with a ‘gaaa’ that blended into a loud ‘oof’ when she hit the ground.
“Who’s there?” A voice spoke from inside the stable. “Roger, you there? Who is it?” The door cracked open, the person behind it clearly ready to shut it if the person outside turned out to be her.
“It’s me,” Tabitha said automatically, instantly feeling keenly both embarrassed for her fall, and for the inadequacy of that response which countless numbers of people have felt from the beginning of time. (It is strange that the automatic response of most people is to reply ‘it’s me,’ even when the person asking ‘who’s there’ doesn’t know who they are. This has caused no end of trouble and embarrassed confusion when ‘it’s me’ is taken for someone else and either harassed or welcomed profusely. In fact, most cases of mistaken identity can be traced back to that fateful phrase ‘it’s me,’ which goes down as the third most awkward phrase of all time. The second is the improper application of ‘you too,’ (which has been around for much longer than people realize), and the most awkward phrase of all time only appears in an obscure dialect of ancient Babylonian that hasn’t been uttered in thousands of years, but the awkwardness of it is so absolute that not even time can dull or override it. The only saving grace is that it cannot be spoken as it no longer exists, or else it might cause another empire to collapse)
“Who’s me?” the speaker showed some intelligence on wanting to know who ‘me’ was before letting down their guard.
“Tabitha.” Said Tabitha, getting up and dusting herself off. Wulafric was wagging his tail and jumping up and down, thinking that her falling on the ground was an invitation to play. (it doesn’t take much for a dog—much less a puppy—to think a person wants to play, and Tabitha had fulfilled the two requirements: she was alive, and she was there).
The door opened a little further until Tabitha could see a crack of a person, no, a boy about her height standing silhouetted against the light from inside. He obviously came to some decision about her because he swung the door fully open and Tabitha could see that he was indeed a boy a little older than her with hair of the deepest black (although run through with bits of straw).
“’m John, th’ stableboy. You’re the miss, right?”
Correctly interpreting this to mean that he was asking if she was the girl who had just moved in, Tabitha nodded yes.
“Why didja come ‘ere? Parents died?”
Tabitha shook her head.
“Father remarried and the new missus don’t want you around?”
Again, no.
“Parents thought this was a nice place to send you for holiday?” All through his questions, John the stableboy’s voice was getting more and more incredulous. Tabitha thought that perhaps she should just tell him the reason or else he might explode with confusion.
“I got rid of three Dancing Masters, one Painting Master, and my Sewing Mistress. Mother wanted me to be accomplished. I didn’t see the point. She thought my Great-Aunt Hilsida could teach me—well, I really don’t know what she thought Great-Aunt Hilsida could teach me. She never said. But she sent me here, and my father didn’t object, so I’ll never speak to him again.”
John the stableboy was a bit stunned at this outpouring of information. “Cor. Want t’come in? She sometimes walks outside at night, an’ we like to keep indoors.” He motioned with his head to the lit interior, provoking Tabitha’s curiosity about just what this stable cum living area looked like. She nodded gravely and urged Wulafric forward with one foot before entering herself. John shut the door behind her and lowered a heavy bar across it. In the light of the stable Tabitha could see that he was barefoot and terribly skinny, although his strength had been admirably demonstrated by lifting that heavy bar.
“She don’ keep no horses anymore, but we leave the first few stalls open for visitors, tho’ don’ know the last time someone stayed above a few minutes, other than you. Th’ stalls in th’ back are where we stay. Come on.”
The stables were surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprisingly) well kept and odorless. Tabitha couldn’t even feel much of a draft, and the warm yellow glow of the lanterns made it all feel safe and welcoming. Of course, the bar across the door keeping her out was a nice touch that Tabitha could appreciate. They passed a couple stalls that had obviously been turned into private rooms with curtains across the doors and small pallets with equally small tables inside.
Most of the servants who stayed in the stables found it just as good as any servant’s quarters, and with far more privacy, as no one was expected to share a stall. John himself got the entire top loft, but he’d been living in the stables long before anyone else, and when the move had happened no one disputed his claim. He sometimes shared with Roger the Butler, but neither of them minded.
In the far back of the stable was what had once been a loose box (a stall at least twice the size of the others if not larger, for when a special horse required a bit more room) and was now a common area complete with a table and benches for the servants to gather around and chat companionably. They all looked up at Tabitha when she and John entered and the conversations paused a moment, but then a few of them nodded thoughtfully and a space was made on one of the benches for Tabitha to sit.
It would be good to take this moment to say that while Tabitha had never been on bad terms with her servants (aside from the time when she set fire to a pillow in the drawing room and then left it smoldering merrily while she went to the kitchen to steal raspberry tarts while all the servants rushed upstairs to deal with the fire) but she had never been in the habit of thinking of them as equals. Servants were there to serve, and although being kind to them seemed to produce better results than insults, Tabitha had never taken the time to really think about her servants or what they did when they weren’t serving (true, the Butler had given her a much read copy of The Butler’s Guide to Butlery, which proved that he did read in his spare time, but Tabitha had never thought to wonder what else he read).
Now here she was, clearly in their domain, and she had no idea how to act. Not that this normally bothered her too much, she just acted as she pleased and it all seemed to come around just fine (the vague thought had been trickling through that perhaps if she hadn’t gotten rid of all her teachers except Arthur the Tutor she might not be in this situation, but Tabitha had been doing a grand job of self-denial on that), but now it struck her that while she was in this horrible place, these servants might well be her only companions other than Wulafric, and although he was wonderful beyond measure, he couldn’t cook her food and make sure her rooms were cleaned properly. For if these servants didn’t want to tend to her, they wouldn’t, and there would be no one to make them (she didn’t count). That caused an awful drop in the pit of her stomach, the realization of her total aloneness in this world, and while Tabitha might have been a bit self-centered and used to getting her own way, she wasn’t mean spirited (usually, unless faeries were mentioned) and she had no desire to be completely alone and unhappy.
And with the greatest of care that any traveler in a foreign country ever took when meeting the wild natives, Tabitha essayed a small smile, knowing that it is best to appear friendly and helpless in order to win sympathy (she had tried to look helpless before when talking to her father, but up to that point in her life she had not known what being helpless really was: now she had some idea and although she hated the feeling she was quite ready to use it to secure a future that would hopefully involve less helplessness). To her relief, most of the servants smiled back, thinking to themselves what a relief that she wasn’t some hoity toity city girl who would make their lives a misery with demands that they couldn’t fulfill but would have to try in order to keep her from telling her anything. For Tabitha had not yet learned (although she had come close to learning it, but it had more been a natural gift so the raw idea of it had not yet struck her) that in order to have power over others, one must assume that one has the power already, and seeing that confidence, others would assume that the power actually existed, and do their best to do what the person with power wanted.
Tabitha had a full helping of self-confidence, but she was still a small girl who understood that adults ruled the world, and directly opposing them never got her anywhere. Fate must be thanked for ushering her into the servants’ quarter this night, for if she had not gone, she would have turned out rather different, and not at all to anyone’s liking. She would have learned all the wrong lessons about power and control, and none of those about friendship and honest humility. She would have had an iron control over her emotions and a quite formidable mind, but she would never have allowed anything so impractical as love to enter anywhere near her.
It is often the smallest of things that decide someone’s future, so let everyone be grateful that Tabitha is right where she ought to be, or else this story would be much grimmer and have an entirely different ending.
So the servants were pleasant enough to her, although they mostly went about their own business talking to each other about the affairs of the day and local gossip from the nearest village. (Rachel, one of the maids, had family in Cotton-on-mar, and would often visit them and learn from her mother all the news that had happened since her last visit. Rachel enjoyed a role of some importance among her servants, as no one—not even Rachel’s family—would visit her house at any hour of the day or night. So Rachel told the servants all she knew, and they would discuss it at some length, as there wasn’t much else to talk about, except for her stranger exploits). Tabitha listened intently, and occasionally one of the maids or the footmen would take a moment to explain a joke or seemingly innocuous statement that had raised eyebrows and caused a round of ‘well I nevers.’ It was in these moments that she would ask a few questions about this or that, and so Tabitha got a larger working knowledge of the area and all the goings on of both her house and the nearby village.
It wasn’t too long however before Tabitha began to droop with weariness. The servants made moderately discreet eyes at each other asking, ‘what do we do next?’ But John the stableboy beat them to a decision.
“’ere, Tabitha, d’you want to sleep up in th’ loft for th’ night? Plenty room for two, and this ways you don’t chance meeting her—” all the servants shared a collective shudder.
Unsure yet on whether she was brave enough to dare meeting Great-Aunt Hilsida in a dark hallway, Tabitha nodded gratefully and followed John to the loft ladder. An awkward moment ensued when it became apparent that Wulafric was not able to climb the ladder, nor was Tabitha able to carry him one handed, but John lowered a bucket from the top and Tabitha loaded Wulafric into the bucket to be hoisted up.
(Nearly every time Tabitha came to the stables hereafter to listen to the servants, she would climb the ladder to talk with John, and a bucket was lowered for Wulafric. Since this was done when Wulafric was a puppy, even after he grew much too large for buckets of any sort, he took a large delight in the sight of a bucket, much to the confusion of those who did not know any better).
John spread a blanket on top of a soft pile of hay for himself, and insisted that Tabitha and Wulafric sleep on his pallet. Not knowing that it would be polite to refuse (and it must be said that lacking a polite education, John wasn’t expecting her to refuse at all) Tabitha smiled her small unsure smile at him, and in that moment John lost his heart to her forever.
There are those who say that children cannot fall in love, and indeed cannot love properly at all, but they are fools. Such love should be cherished and nurtured, but so often it is not recognized or valued, and therefore it withers for lack of care. John the stable boy was a careful sort, however, and his heart was strong. Though whether it would prove strong enough for Tabitha is something only the future will tell.
Chapter 5
Chapter 5
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