The Wet Nurse's Tale (5 page)

Neither of us said anything for a tiny second. Then I said, “Beg pardon, sir,” but I wasn’t sure whether it was for belching or for just being there.

Quick now, he tied his breeches back up and then looked up at me again.

“Is that you, Susan?” said he, much like he didn’t believe it himself.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Were you spying on me, Susan?” he said, angry-like, though I was there first.

“Oh no, sir,” said I. “I was eating an apple, if you please, sir.”

“Could not you eat your apple on terra firma then, Susan?” he said but as I did not know what he meant, I didn’t answer. So he said, “Well then, you’d better come down, I suppose.”

“Yes, sir,” I mumbled but could not move. There was not a way I knew to climb off the tree without showing him more than he ought to want to see. He seemed to understand this and turned his back while I came down which I did without much grace, more like I fell out of the tree than anything else, in my haste to fix myself up a bit.

“You’re at home in a tree, then,” said he after he’d turned around. I nodded and smiled though I dared not meet his eyes.

“That’s a high branch,” said he, surveying it, like, and I nodded again. Generally, I am not a shy person but I know my place and more than anything I wanted to curtsy and walk away and leave him there under that oak. It seemed, though, that he wanted to speak to me.

And then, Reader, I’ve never been more surprised. “It is too bad about your sister,” said he, and at that, my mouth fell open, I could feel it, and I stared right into his face.

“Ellen, wasn’t it?” he said, not meeting my eyes but staring off in the direction of the Great House.

“Yes, sir,” I said and then, because I couldn’t help it, “she was a darling.”

He looked at me, but this time I couldn’t tell whether it was pity or maybe just he’d had enough of talking to a servant and he said, “Yes,” and then looked away at the view once again. I bobbed my curtsy and I mumbled a good-bye and then I walked off, quiet-like, as if there was a polished floor for me to not click my heels on.

One afternoon, not long after I’d met the young master on the hilltop, I was cleaning the grate in the mistress’s own bedchamber and thinking about my dinner, when the door opened and in came my lady herself. “Oh,” said she to find me there, and I bobbed and sorried and she said I might stay and complete my work. I’d only just begun but I speeded up double time so that I might leave her alone the sooner. As I scrubbed and scraped, I saw from the corner of my eye that she’d taken a seat at her little white desk to write a letter. Someone had thrown something sticky—a caramel perhaps—into the fire and part of it had melted on the hearth and I needed my scraper but I tried my best to be silent. If you were to ask me, I’d tell you that silence is half of your chores all by itself.

A knock came upon the door and the lady started. I continued to clean til she said to me, “Susan, see who it is,” so I rose from my knees and opened the bedroom door wide. There stood Anne, the Bonney sisters’ tall, pale cousin, daughter of the mistress’s sister, whose own marriage had not been as fortunate as my lady’s.

“Come in, Anne,” said the mistress. “I’m writing a letter and I want you to check my spelling.”

“Yes, Aunt,” said Cousin Anne and drifted in, the way a tall, bony girl will. I noticed she had a new frock, when all I’d ever seen on her was her sprigged lavender and her Sunday yellow, not so good for her complexion, according to Ellen. I returned to the grate.

“I’ve apologized to Mrs. Presset for Freddie’s bookishness. I do feel that it’s a good match, you know. Just read the whole thing, will you? I find myself so distracted these days.”

Anne read as my mistress rose from her desk and entered her clothes closet. “Oh my,” we heard her say, “these are all so boring.”

“This is fine, Aunt,” called Anne. “I just corrected a word or two.”

“I do need something new,” said the mistress as she came out of the closet, “but I’ll wait for London, I suppose. Your new dress becomes you nicely, you must remember to thank your uncle for it. Now then, let me see . . . Oh, is that not how ‘friendship’ is spelt? I’m such a goose. Anne, do be a darling and see to the rose gown in my cupboard there for me. Minette is bringing me some chocolate, but I find I’d like to change my clothes before I finish that letter and finish it I must. It must go out in today’s post.”

“Certainly, Aunt,” answered Anne, walking into the closet her aunt had just left. From where I knelt I could see her in there, shifting the gowns, feeling the stuffs. I watched from the corner of my eye how she laid a lace sleeve against her arm and a silk sash to her waist. She took the rose dress off its hook and draped it over her arm to bring it out, and then, suddenly, almost as if she could not help what she did, her hand reached into a bowl on a little table and she took up a necklace. For one instant she held it up and watched the jewel at the end of it as it shone and then, quick as a cough, she put it in her pocket. She was hidden from Mrs. Bonney’s eyes the whole time. There was no way for that lady to have seen her.

She came out of the closet with the rose dress over her arm and a smile on her face. “Here’s the rose, Aunt. I’ll help you with it. Now, the letter. It is urgent?”

“Yes,” said the mistress, “and I do hate urgency. I’m sure this letter and its urgency is why I feel as if I’m all over pimples on my face. Look at this one on my lip. Do you see it? Look here.”

I crept out of the room with my scullery brushes.

Later that night, I finished the pots by myself. The cook had gone to bed, as had Mary, and the new girl, a horrible thing called Letty, had already slipped out of the downstairs door for who knows what sort of mischief. It was quite late. Dinner had been delayed for the master, who’d finally felled a great buck he’d spied a month before and had pursued as if . . . well, I told myself, I wouldn’t start up again lest I upset myself. I couldn’t stand to cry into the pots; it was too lonely a thing.

The sound of breaking glass in the cold pantry startled me and my sleeves still rolled, I went to look. Just the day before a cat had become trapped inside and spilled a jar of cream which I’d had to sop up from between the stones. Wasn’t I surprised when I opened up the door! No cat did I see, but instead twas Master Freddie himself bent upon his knees, staunching a spill of milk with his handkerchief.

“Oh Lord, sir,” said I. “You needn’t ruin your handkerchief. Let me.”

“I seem to have made a terrible mess, haven’t I,” said he.

“Nothing that can’t be mended. Look, that’s that.” I squatted quick and pulled a rag from my waistband and sopped, just like he was the cat, all over again.

“Did you want some milk, then, sir, and shall I warm it for you? And some cake? I think Cook has some cake left over from tea.”

“Thank you, Susan. That would be lovely.”

“Shall I bring it right up, sir?”

“No,” said he. “I’ll have it here, I think.”

He sat right there at the kitchen table while I found another can of milk and forced the stove alight again and found a suitable glass. There was a piece of pound cake that Miller had left on a plate for her breakfast, I felt sure: I cut it in half and gave it to him.

“There now, sir. Is there anything else I can get for you or shall I leave you to your thoughts?”

He seemed to smile a bit at my words. “My thoughts?” he answered.

I giggled just an ounce. “Beg your pardon, sir,” I said. “It’s just something my mother says to us when we’re distracted-like.”

Master Freddie took a bit of cake on his fork. How dainty it seemed compared to what I’d have took if I’d been eating cake. “Do I seem distracted to you?” he asked.

I could have bit my tongue. “Oh no, sir,” I said quickly, looking at the stones under his feet and wishing I were in my bed. “It’s just a saying. You don’t seem distracted, not a bit.”

He put his napkin by his plate and stood. He smiled. “How do I seem then, Susan?”

Here I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t dare to look at him lest I stare. I’ve been teased about my staring. “There, girl,” said my father plenty of times, “what do you see there to make you stop like that, the man in the moon? Hurry up, or you’ll wish you had.”

Indeed, Master Freddie’s question seemed odd to me. After all, what could he care what I should think about how he seems? It’s loneliness, said a voice inside me. Now, it’s a peculiar feeling, the one a servant has when she feels pity for her master. I’ve said it twice now and it’s true. We are used to them being our betters. It’s the system God made and so it must be right and thus it’s strange when it’s turned all topsy-turvy-like. It seems to me now and it seemed to me then that if the young master hadn’t been as solitary as a single bee, he wouldn’t have been sitting downstairs in his kitchen when he might’ve been upstairs in the parlor eating the same cake. It was uncomfortable for me—not just the pity I felt, but also the idea that if I wanted to be a good servant and keep my place and be as I should be, I should contrive to help him in some way. That’s what we’re to do after all, ain’t it?

“I mustn’t keep you from your bed, Susan,” said he. But it seemed to me that he wished I’d let him. I wasn’t innocent, of course, especially not after my poor Ellen’s fate at the hands of his very own father, but then again I was. I was innocent. And so it fared that I felt as shocked as I could be when he put out his hand toward my cheek, just my cheek, mind you, but still. I stepped back with a suddenness that frightened the both of us. He pulled his hand back with a jerk.

“Of course,” he said, low, “I do beg your pardon.” He gave me a little bow, which was the first time anyone had ever done such a thing to me, and picked up his book that he’d laid on the table to drink his milk.

And then no one could have been more surprised than I when I said, “Never mind, sir. I’ll stay with you, if you’d like more.” And by that I meant cake, but as soon as I said it, I wondered what it might sound like and if that’s all I’d really meant after all.

You may wonder to yourself how it is that I could think to offer myself to him. After all, Ellen’s misery at the hands of the young master’s own father still kept my teeth gritted hard enough that my jaw ached; twas not distant enough to have forgot it, nor would it ever be. But Master Freddie was not his bastard father and indeed he seemed so different—as different as I from my Ellen—that perhaps I thought twas a way to bring her back, like as when you misplace a thing and track back in your steps to find it.

When Master Freddie took me by the hand and led me back into the pantry, he treated me very kind. With his own hands, he laid a cloth on the floor for me to lie on, so it wouldn’t be just the stones. He kissed me and petted me til I was ready, but nervous still, so that when he began, I couldn’t but yelp though he was quite gentle. I believe anyone would think he was. When he’d finished, he laid his head on my breast and stayed quiet for a moment, though his body heaved.

“Are you quite all right?” he asked me, after a moment.

“Yes, sir,” I answered.

“It sounds odd that you should call me sir,” he said but as I didn’t answer, he didn’t say more about it.

Quietly, he pulled back on his breeches and helped me up. I felt quite sore and strange. There was a blot of blood on the cloth he’d laid down on the floor and when he saw it he said, “Oh,” and I said, “Don’t worry, sir. I’ll tend to it.”

“Good night then, Susan,” said he, and then he stuttered, “Thank you,” in a tone so low I hardly heard.

“Good night, sir,” said I. When he had gone, I gathered up the cloth. Twas nothing important, just one of the downstairs table coverings, and there were so many. I recognized it though, as I’d washed it and ironed it just that morning.