Wasp (8 page)

Morning. A maid stood laughing in the doorway. What was so funny? She gestured at the horseshoe of furniture gathered around the four-poster and said, ‘You’re supposed to sleep in here, not shove everything about. And look at that bed. Were you fighting with the coverlet?’

Short and pasty-faced, this servant bore an accent that put her nowhere within the county borders. But words weren’t needed. Every gesture was a sentence. Each step across the rug, hand on the bedclothes, cough or sniff said something.
Who is this clod? Look at what she’s done. Wait ’til I tell everyone.
The stuck-together mess of drowned ashes in the hearth didn’t improve her demeanour.

‘I was too hot,’ Beth explained, cheeks pink.

The maid cleaned out the fire and set a new one. ‘I shall not light it. You can do that yourself, or not at all.’ She lifted the water jug out of its basin and shook it. Empty. ‘I’ll bring you more, and a clean gown just as I’ve been told. But don’t think I’m going to run around after you if you make a sty of this room again.’

In the days that followed, Bethany learned the politics of her station. Servants took breakfast at six of the clock. Too high for the kitchen, too low for the dining room, Beth was an in-between person, not quite gentry or servant. Everyone seemed uncertain around her. Eventually she took her meals in her room.

What day was it? Tuesday or Wednesday? She’d lost count. Daffodils bordered the lawn and the air whispering through the crack of the open window carried the change of season. She paced the rugs, ate whatever she was given and stood in the corner when the maid grudgingly brought a fresh pot and changed the bed linen. Some nights sleep came easily, others were starved of it. Each morning Beth dressed herself in the clothes Lord Russell had ordered for her. Practical yet still finer than anything she’d worn at home. The fastenings proved slippery. That mopsqueezer of a maid did nothing to help.

Beth had hoped to see Julia and Sebastian immediately but both children were in Bath and wouldn’t return before the week’s end. ‘This will give you time to settle,’ Lord Russell explained.

What to do? A few books sat on a shelf above the hearth but most were either printed in what she thought was Italian or turned out to be heavy, scholarly tomes that tied her head in knots. The weather chose to be fickle. One day the wind blew the wrong way and smoked the room out. She nearly choked before the maid arrived, muttering, to damp down the fire.

‘I’m going out of my wits,’ she whispered to herself.

She’d hoped to spy her father working around the grounds, but he’d been sent off to arrange new plantings for the spring. Lord Russell was also noticeably absent, his interests taking him off to every corner of the estate. Beth thought about asking if she could go home until the children returned, but realised if she did so settling here would prove impossible. Besides, she needed to draw up a daily plan for her charges. It was so hard to think.

Finally the overcast sky split into blue and grey patches. Beth decided to risk a stroll in the grounds. Outside, cool air gusted over her. She lingered on the step, closed both eyes and breathed deeply. This was unlike Dunston air, which even in winter was thick with woodsmoke, horseshit and stewing vegetables. Instead it was akin to standing on top of Farley Hill with a fresh northerly in her face. Her lungs burned, her blood sang.

Invigorated, she took a few steps across a yard paved with broken stone. Ahead was a fountain. Bethany had only seen one other, in Dunston square. It never worked. The bottom was choked with dead leaves, bits of sacking and rubbish tipped in from the weekly market. Men watered their horses at the village trough.

She remembered the back-cracking work of hauling a pail up from the stream behind her cottage so the family nag could have a drink, yet water squirted unchecked from the outlets of this elaborate sculpture in a fine, clear spray. The centrepiece was a naked stone boy, a jug raised in both hands. Rainbows coloured a wet mist which coated Beth’s face and hair.

Outbuildings clustered around the courtyard, hemmed in by a wall twice a man’s height. Through an arch, she glimpsed a bridge over a reed-peppered moat. Hooked by curiosity she passed through, listening to the ticky-tack echo of her heels. Beyond, grass lawns sloped gently away. At the bottom sat a round pond like a big silver eye. More reeds poked through the water, and lily pads spotted the surface.

A tardy sun appeared and began warming the land. A duck floated in the middle of the pond. Another two lurked in the rushes, beaks tucked under their wings. Sunlight shimmered off the coloured feathers. Any travelling man would have their necks wrung and their carcasses plucked. Dunston went without ducks for winter upon winter when the tinkers were camped on the common.

On the far side of the pond stood a short, round tower of grey stone topped with crumbling battlements and studded with slit windows. It reminded Beth of a gnarled thumb poking out of the soil. Patches of moss greened the stonework. She glanced at the sun. Still early in the day, so she drifted down the slope towards the tower. Beyond lay a row of trees. Crows dotting the upper branches took flight, black wings flapping.

The tower was more strange than ugly. The door lacked latch or handle. It was plain wood, stained dark, with no bolts or keyhole. Beth stretched her neck, trying to peek into one of the windows. It didn’t look the sort of place anyone would want to live in. She glimpsed snatches of things but couldn’t tell what they were. For a second she thought something moved, but wasn’t certain. Clouds rippled over the sun and odd shadows flew everywhere like swooping blackbirds.

A splash from the pond. One of the ducks stretched its wings. The land was still half asleep.

She ran a hand over the door. Wood felt warm where sunlight played across it. A splinter dug into her finger. Beth yelped and slipped it into her mouth. She glanced back at the walled-in house. For a moment she fancied she could see George Russell galloping across the grass on his hunter, a breathless fantasy in cream cravat and tasselled tricorne. All this supposed freedom and she didn’t know what to do with it.

The door swung open. Beth screamed. The noise sent the ducks flapping off. Hot air wafted over her, and queer smells flooded her nose. She couldn’t make another sound. A figure stood in the doorway, clad in a brown smock, with long grey hair tumbling about its face. Its mouth opened.

‘Come in,’ it said. ‘I’ve been expecting you.’

Friends and Enemies

Bethany tingles all over; a warm, fresh feeling. She’s been scrubbed to her roots and no longer feels greasy or smells of old sweat. The tattooed maids sprinkle her with rosewater, pull a clean linen dress over her drying body and slip her feet into a pair of cloth slippers. After retying the linen cap, the flower-cheeked woman leads Beth out of the room and along a lantern-lit passage hung with tapestries. They all depict fierce beasts and dense pagan forests.

‘How long have you been a servant here?’ Beth asks.

‘I’m no maid, Kitten. As you heard me say to Ebony Mare, we all take our turn pampering the new girls. It reminds us what we once were.’

‘What were you?’

‘Cold, hungry. The same as you.’

‘And what are you now?’

‘Think of me as a business associate.’

The corridor ends in a scarlet curtain. Beth is ushered through. Beyond lies a dazzling hallway draped in more of the scarlet cloth. Marble pillars climb to a domed ceiling from which dangles a chandelier that glitters like ice. The floor is also marble, and cool even through her slippers. Black-and-white rings ripple outwards from the centre. Directly across from her lies a wide staircase, carpeted in red, that spirals upwards to a gallery. To her left is a closed door, painted a glossy black. Beside it stands a desk similar to a lectern in a church, only bigger.

Two tall windows either side of the door throw slabs of daylight across the marble. Beth cranes to see if she can spy anything of the street outside but the tops of some railings are all she can glean.

Ahead stands a set of double doors. Beth’s escort pushes them open and enters the room beyond. ‘The Kitten as requested, Abbess,’ she announces. Bethany creeps in and finds a circular chamber with more scarlet drapes that loop and swoop around cream walls. Underfoot, a red carpet splashed with white goatskin rugs swallows up her steps. In the middle of everything a crescent of embroidered sofas, fat as pregnant cows, have been arranged around a polished table.

Seated is an old woman, slim and finely boned. Coloured patches cover her face and arms, leaving no scrap of bare flesh bigger than a farthing. And that hair. Long, almost to her waist, and lightning white. But her eyes are blue, like the sky during the height of summer when all the clouds have been baked out of it.

The Abbess pats the cushion beside her. ‘Come, sit down. I like a busy face and yours is full of questions.’

Beth slips onto the sofa beside the older woman. It’s impossible not to stare at that patched visage. Painted emblems colour her cheeks and brow, and plunge down the neck of her shimmering gown.

‘You like them?’ The Abbess smiles. ‘These patches are copies of all the Emblems in the House. I wear my girls, proud as you like, on my skin for everyone to see. There’s a space for you here,’ she taps an inch of bare skin beside her left ear, ‘just as soon as we decide who and what you are to be.’

‘And what shall I be?’ The girl knots both hands together in her lap. ‘A whore? D’you think I haven’t guessed where I am?’

The Abbess sucks air through her teeth and leans back. A gentle cloud of honeysuckle drifts into Beth’s nostrils. ‘I’ve read about places like this,’ she continues. ‘My employer was a regular subscriber to
Town and Country.
He didn’t care where he left that scandal sheet lying. Even the local milkmaids know about these city vice-pits, and not one of them can read a word.’

‘No immoral earnings are obtained under this roof. The House of Masques is not a market hall for bawds or courtesans. We do not need such creatures to advertise our services, nor are we a facility by which they can fill their own purses. Notoriety of that nature is not welcome. A client who has endured a difficult day may come to us desiring no more than a soothing voice or cheerful melody. We smile, hold hands, whisper reassurances into their ears. Brows are cooled in summer and hearts warmed in winter. Men’s vanity does not wane with the passing months, and our services are always discreet.’

‘Whore, courtesan, it’s all the same. Why was I chosen? The madhouses must closet a hundred girls with faces fairer than mine.’ The Abbess leans forward. Her eyes catch the light and seem to shimmer. ‘For the first few weeks of your stay here, you will work as a maid. You will fetch and carry for your Sisters, clean out their hearths, turn down their beds, empty their pots. You will address them with courtesy at all times. You were nothing when you arrived at the House. Nothing you will remain until you have proved yourself. However, we are not slavers. First you heal. Then you work.’

‘Nothing? But I am—’

A raised hand. ‘You are nobody. The person you were will die on her bed in the Comfort Home. She will be buried under quicklime in a pauper’s grave with no tombstone or flowers. She will be forgotten.’

‘Who are you?’

‘As you heard, I am the Abbess, and we are going to be friends.’

Beth’s escort is waiting in the hall. ‘I shall take you upstairs. Hummingbird is waiting for you.’

‘Who is Hummingbird?’

‘She will be your tutor.’

Before they reach the bottom step, a tall, slender woman in a gold-trimmed linen gown blocks their path. Sun-coloured hair is gathered behind her head and tumbles down her back in a long tail. Blue eyes glitter under sweeping lashes. Her skin is pale, her lips plum dark. On her right cheek is a picture of a bird. Her left sports a second emblem, a pattern of four diamonds — two red and two white — forming another, larger diamond. When she tilts her head the light catches the emblem, turning it blood red. She smells of roses.

‘So, a new Kitten fresh from some country ditch.’ Her bladed voice cuts the length of Beth’s spine. ‘We get our share of farmers’ daughters.’

‘I worked for a squire and his family in a fine house.’

‘Draw in your claws, Kitten. I’ll not have you scratch me. Go on twisting your fingers like that and you’ll have them out of their sockets.’

‘My name isn’t “Kitten”.’

‘I’ve no doubt your real name is very lyrical.’

‘And what are you called that is so much better?’

‘I am known in the House as Nightingale.’

Beth snorts. ‘Not a proper name either.’

‘Inside or outside these walls, it’s the only one I have. You would do well to commit it to memory as soon as you are able. I am not in the habit of repeating it.’

She walks off across the marble floor, gown swishing around her legs.

Into the Night

The cart and Shire were waiting in the yard when the Fixer arrived. The beast was starved to its ribs yet the darkie, big as he was, looked dwarfed beside it. He scooped the girl into his arms and laid her in the back amidst a pile of straw. Next to it was a makeshift crib. ‘I took bales from the stable,’ he explained.