by Jo Baker
When he joined her, he talked incomprehensibly, and smelt of malt and horse, and they were out again in the wide dark, the wheels rumbling along the well-made roads. After a while, he fell silent, and that was a relief; Sarah had nodded, smiled, but had no idea what she had been agreeing with all this time. A while later—it was hard to gauge the passing of time, after so long on the road—there was a crossroads, and he slowed the wagon, and they turned. The lane brought them into woodland; they turned again, this time at a gate lodge that loomed pale in the night. The driver exchanged a few words with the lodge-keeper who swung open the gates for them. Sarah could make neither head nor tail of what they said.
The lamp swung from its stand, illuminating the wagoner’s sharp features and the weave of the blanket over Sarah’s lap, and the rumps and tails of the two drays, but little of the world beyond. The pain had become familiar by now; she accepted it; the long drive up to Derbyshire had given her time to become accustomed to the completeness of her loss. Everything that she had ever known, everyone she loved, every fond association that she had formed had been stripped entirely away, and all that was left was the raw and tender pith of herself. It had, of course, been her heartfelt wish for as long as she could remember, that she would see something of the world beyond Longbourn; she should, she thought, have been more precise in her wishing. She should have wished for happiness in which to see it.
The wagon had been ascending for a half-mile or so through the woods, and Sarah’s head was nodding, drooping to her chest, when the bony elbow of the wagoner jolted her alert. He jutted his chin, indicating where she should look. She looked.
They were out of the woods, and there was a wide stretch of sky, and the moon bald and white and cold above. The house stood on rising ground at the far side of the valley, backed by a ridge of wooded hills. The façade was skimmed silver with moonlight; its reflection glimmered in a spreading pool at its foot. Pemberley. It was beautiful, and vast, and strange.
The wagon trundled on, but Sarah’s gaze was stuck; she twisted round in her seat to keep the house in sight. It was so extraordinary: how did it all start, property and wealth and beauty like that? Who staked out a fence, strung out lines and said, This is my land and nobody else’s; these fields are mine, these woods are mine; this water, reflecting the white moon, is mine; and all the fish that swim in the water are mine; and all the birds that fly and roost in the woods are mine; and the very air is mine while it moves over my land; and all of this will be mine, and after I am gone, it will be my son’s; and it will never leave our hands, not while there are still sons left to inherit it. Because there was, there must have been a time before, when the fish swam and the fowl flew and were not anybody’s at all, and the world was young, when Adam and Eve staggered out of Eden all baffled and ashamed.
And then the view was gone, the wagon turning into deep shadow, and the moonlight was cut off and they were confined to the narrow circle of the lamp, and a long cavern of trees, and the sudden flap and flurry of a startled bird. From the view-point she had seen the road twist up towards a bridge and the grand front door; they were not following that road: she looked to the wagoner, the haze of stubble on his cheek and the shadowed eyes.
“Why do we go this way?”
He cleared his throat, and spoke carefully: “Servants’ and suppliers’ way.”
She huddled deeper into her old pelisse. She had been three long days on the road, but all this time the idea of arrival had seemed to retreat as she approached it. She wished the journey over, but she did not want to arrive.
They crossed the stream on a narrow rumbling wooden bridge, just wide enough for the wagon; there was another brief glimpse of the house, in three-quarters profile, and the water spreading out into a mirror. Then they were back in the woods, and the track wheeled round, and they approached the working part of the house.
The wagon rolled into a courtyard. A stable lad came up to the horses, and a pair of liveried footmen approached the wagon, carrying lanterns. Inside, figures darted past the narrow barred windows like shuttles through a loom. There was a burst of noise as someone came outside; the door fell shut and the sound was cut abruptly off. One of the footmen reached up a gloved hand to her. She took hold of it and, stiff from her journey, climbed down from her seat.
The wagoner slung her box down onto the cobbles; the footmen unloaded Elizabeth’s luggage. Sarah moved out of the way, behind the growing bulk of boxes and trunks. She pressed her eyes with the heels of her hands, her fingers cold against her forehead. What to do? Where to go? The whole world was wide and dark and empty, and no corner of it was hers.
A woman bustled over; Sarah tugged her sleeves down, straightened herself, and tried a smile.
The housekeeper was fifty perhaps, and had a lawn cap and a nice clean collar. She carried a lantern. She spoke first to the footmen, about the destination of the trunks. She then asked the wagoner to go in and partake of some refreshment, and offered him a bed for the night in the menservants’ quarters, since otherwise he faced a long cold road back to town tonight. The stable lad had unhitched the drays, and now led them off for fodder and rest. Every act, every instruction, seemed to signal that this was an expansive, accommodating place; that its inhabitants were hospitable, and mindful of the responsibilities of high rank.
Sarah stood, her one box at her feet, while all around her was returned to order and quiet: the luggage was spirited inside, the horses disappeared into the stables, doors were shut, and there was only the muffled hum of the kitchen, as work continued inside. Only then, when all was calm, did the housekeeper turn her attention to Sarah.
“Is that you there? The mistress’s maid?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m Mrs. Reynolds, I’m the housekeeper here.”
Sarah curtseyed.
“Well, come on, then,” she said. “Let’s get you settled in.”
Sarah crouched to lift her box.
“I would have had that carried up for you. You should have said.”
“Sorry.”
She followed Mrs. Reynolds and her candle through the flagged, echoing entrance and down a hall, lugging all her possessions with her. Fatigued, it was a struggle just to keep up with the housekeeper’s quick tread, and to pay attention to all that she was being told.
Mrs. Reynolds kept naming rooms as they passed. The boot room. The gun room. The still room, the pantry, the butler’s pantry, the cheese store. Then she pushed a door, and they stepped into a wall of heat. The kitchen; a flurry of activity, a man cook barking orders, kitchen maids and boys jumping to comply, chopping and stirring and basting and sweating.
The housekeeper negotiated all this with calm indifference, skirting patches of activity and nodding to the cook, and smiling at a kitchen maid who caught her eye. Sarah, following in her wake, was jostled out of the way and chivvied along, and felt her colour rise.
They were skimming along a corridor; candles burned in sconces at intervals along the walls. Sarah swam through a patch of candlelight, dropped into a pool of darkness, and then back out again into the light, again and again, following the flickering burn of Mrs. Reynolds’s candle. She was mesmerized by the housekeeper’s swishing skirts, the tap of her shoes on the stone flags, and the stream of information flowing from her about the workings and the hierarchies and the layout of the household. She must memorize her way, so that she might find it again, but there was nothing to fix on—scrolling walls, the flares of candlelight and plunging darkness, and all so fast—it blurred and blotted.
They turned up a flight of bare stone stairs, and swept along lime-washed corridors, and up more stairs, wooden now, climbing up and up, her box heavy under her arm, her skirts gathered in a hand, her head light. They came out into a narrow landing and an attic hallway; there was a strip of matting on the floor, and a row of little wooden doors, endlessly repeating down the length of the hallway, till all was lost in dimness.
“This way.”
T
he servants’ attics stretched—Mrs. Reynolds informed her, as door after door slipped past them in the candle’s glow—the whole length of the wing. Then the housekeeper stopped suddenly, bringing Sarah up short; they stood outside one of the doors. It was just the same as every other they had passed.
Mrs. Reynolds twisted the little doorknob, and pushed. “Here we are.”
Sarah followed her in. Narrow wooden beds stood on either side of the room; there was a worn rag-rug on the floor between them; there was space for little else, beyond a deal washstand at the end of the room. It stood beneath the sloping window, set with a candlestick and an earthenware bowl-and-ewer. A stranger’s locked box was tucked under the right-hand bed.
“There is water for you to wash. And there, that’s what you wear.”
She gestured to a neat pile of black flannel and white linen on the left-hand counterpane.
“You may need to make adjustments to the garments; feel free to do so in your own time. There is a small sewing box under the washstand you may use. But I think it will fit you well enough for now. I should say you are much the same size as Miss Darcy’s maid.”
Sarah set her box down on the left-hand bed, crumpling the counterpane. Mrs. Reynolds lifted the candle from the washstand, lit it from her own, and set it back.
“You’ll share with Anne, that’s Miss Darcy’s maid; she has been doing for Mrs. Darcy till you got here, she can instruct you in the differences of the work here at Pemberley. And if you come down to my rooms once you are washed and changed, I will give you supper, and then show you the way to Mrs. Darcy’s dressing room. Anne will have started the unpacking by then; you can assist her.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“I think you will do very well here,” she said. “You seem a decent, good sort of a girl.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Reynolds.”
The housekeeper seemed to be about to go, but then she paused.
“We were, as you might imagine, anxious as to how you would turn out. Not knowing anything about you, but knowing the household that you come from. Longbourn is a small sort of a place, and the standards there may be very different. But I think we shall find you quite acceptable.”
Then she left, taking her candle with her.
There were hours still to be got through. Hours and hours and hours.
Sarah sat down, took off her bonnet and laid it down on the counterpane. She had a bed to herself now. She undid her pelisse and shrugged it off, looked down at her familiar old boots on the strange rug. A rug made by unknown hands, out of rags she didn’t recognize: back at Longbourn she would have recalled an old spencer, coat or blanket that had been shredded up to make it.
But there was no point in dwelling on any of that now.
She heaved herself up, and soaked a washcloth, and wrung it out, and scrubbed her neck and face and washed behind her ears and then cleaned her nails. When she was clean and dry, she fished her key out of the pocket hanging inside her skirt, and unlocked her box. She got out her best cap, which Mrs. Hill had trimmed for her with a new ribbon, and put it on, and tucked all her hair away into it. She put on the maid’s uniform, which hung loose around her waist and arms and bosom. She tucked in a kerchief. She wished that she could change her shoes, because her feet ached, and the boots were clumsy old things, but there was no help for that. She lifted her candle, and closing the door behind her, counted the doors till she reached the top of the stairs, so that she might find her way back there again.
Sarah really did try to be happy at Pemberley. As she had been promised, the nature of the work was light in comparison with what she had been used to at Longbourn. At Pemberley, there was an army to cart water and wood and coals, to cook and scrub and polish; she never saw a pig-bucket, nor a pig, from one week to the next, though of course there must have been such things, even at Pemberley. She was left only with the care of Mrs. Darcy’s person, its clothing and adornment. But this had become, all of a sudden, a labour of Hercules.
Elizabeth, being naturally very lovely indeed, had hitherto possessed only a healthy degree of interest in her appearance; a ball was worth dressing for, but she had never concerned herself particularly with her day-to-day toilette, and had been quite prepared to go muddy-hemmed, rosy-cheeked and shiny-nosed into the family breakfast, and could take tea with the neighbours quite happily in a faded outgrown gown of her sister’s. But now, her time at the dressing table took on all the solemnity and self-scrutiny of prayer.
“Will I do?”
“You will do very well.”
“Do you really think so?”
Sarah was threading a ribbon through Elizabeth’s curls, in preparation for the young lady’s descent to breakfast. “Of course. You will very much more than do. You look lovely.”
Elizabeth did not even smile. “You must understand that I am anxious to be quite as he would wish me.”
“I’m sure you are.”
“You do not understand, Sarah. You really do not understand a thing at all.”
That afternoon, Sarah returned to Mrs. Darcy’s closet to dress her hair again before dinner. She found Anne was already there, armed with fragrant pomade and pearls; Sarah was not required. Miss Darcy’s maid did, of course, have a better understanding of the current fashions, having spent time at Bath, and London, and Ramsgate, in the course of her employment.
Pemberley was beautiful, no doubt of that. With Christmas approaching, the grounds and trees were rimed with frost and, if you could go out walking in them, and collect holly for the mantelpieces and ivy to twine around the picture-frames and mistletoe to hang from the chandeliers, they must seem very lovely indeed. But what was that to Sarah, confined to Mrs. Darcy’s closet with her sewing? She could not stir abroad. Once Mrs. Darcy was dressed for the morning, and had sat down for Anne to do her hair, Sarah was dismissed, and did not see another soul until dinnertime.
It became apparent almost immediately that she was not to be trusted with anything beyond the simplest work. Fabrics arrived in parcels; Sarah unfurled the cloth and checked it over for flaws, and inhaled the scents of London shops—exotic, spicy, faintly unclean—before folding them and leaving them aside to be taken to the mantua-maker’s in town; she did not have dealings with them again until she hung the finished dresses up in the closet and was done. She was kept at mending, and the making of underthings. She worked with fine white lawn and silk, which she would once have thought a pleasure, but either it was tiny and fiddly, hard on the fingertips and eyes, or it was simply dull: she stitched on ribbon and lace; she re-sewed fallen hems; she joined up the slipped seams of shifts and petticoats. It was novice-work, and it gave her little satisfaction. She would surface to find herself gazing out of the window, with its view out across the side lawns, towards the countryside beyond. Sewing abandoned in her lap, she would stare across the frosted park, to the wooded hills, and the wide expanse of sky.
Her hands grew softer with the softer work. The hours languished. The days ticked by.
More parcels arrived from London, little, lightweight parcels: darned stockings and mended shifts were crumpled to the back of a drawer.
Her body grew soft too: she had never eaten so well in all her life. Eggs at breakfast, meat or fish at dinner, something sweet and comforting at suppertime. Mrs. Hill had been a good plain cook, but this was a different order of a thing, a whole course served in the great cavern of the servants’ dining hall, where she ate carefully and without speaking and did not know where to look, and could make out little of her fellow servants’ thick Derbyshire accents. Tea was brought up to her by a housemaid, with a tray of clinking servants’ china and a filthy look, because no one wanted to play servant to the servantry. Sarah, conscious of this, blushed when the maid clattered the tray down in front of her, and said, “Thank you so much, Lucy,” and then was not sure that the girl was called Lucy after all.
But there was some consolation to be found, in having her own little china pot of hot tea, and her own j
ug of milk, and there was even a little bowl with three lumps of sugar in it. She slipped a couple into her pocket, and later sent them off to Polly, carefully wrapped in tissue-paper, in her next letter.
The Gardiners came to stay at Christmas. Sarah sat by the window of Mrs. Darcy’s dressing room, and sewed, listening to the distant sounds of the family gathered in the grand parlour below. She could hear voices, and the pianoforte, and the laughter of the Gardiner children as they spun and raced around the expansive apartments.
Beyond the confines of Mrs. Darcy’s closet, the house stretched open and accommodating: those spacious rooms, their comfortable furnishings, their warmth and the diversions they contained, of art and music and conversation and books. And beyond its walls unfurled the ordered grounds, the well-managed park, the woods and farms, all full of purpose and comfort and prosperity, and all she could do was be here, in this seat, at this window, stitching a ribbon back onto a petticoat that, for all that Sarah knew, might never be worn again.
If she just put her sewing aside, and went out into the corridor, and opened a few doors and looked inside; if she wandered around some of the unused rooms downstairs, examining miniatures and marbles; if she stepped out through the French windows and out into the air, and followed the gravel walks, dawdling along between the frosted box hedges, and then through the shrubbery; if she strolled out across the lawns to the riverbank to gaze at a slothful trout in a patch of winter sun, and then slipped past the gate out into the woodlands, and climbed the paths worn into the hills beyond—how long could she last, how far could she get, how much could she be in this place, before she was stopped and sent back to this seat here, this little corner?
This was hers: a view of bare elms, a heap of light sewing, a place to sit, a tray set out with things for her tea.