by Lisa Jensen
I never make it past the third tier of gentlemen, however; one of them takes the gloves from me and trots down the steps with them to the broad gravel drive, where Master and his companions are readying their mounts. But it doesn’t matter. Master has seen me, if only for an instant. My new life has begun.
I am up late. The air is close and heavy, but the fat, wet clouds have not yet delivered their burden of rain. The other girls are snoring in their beds, but I am up and about.
I didn’t see Master all day, and tonight he is out. I think of him so often, I’ve grown careless in my work. I’ve just remembered a plate I left out of its cabinet today while I was cleaning. I must go place it back on its rack behind the glass before Madame Montant finds it in the morning. I cannot risk a reprimand now; one more misstep, and she will turn me out. I’m sure of it. And how could I bear to leave Master’s service now that he has noticed me?
I creep out of the maids’ quarters and into the housekeeper’s private cubbyhole. Madame Montant keeps her ring of keys on a little end table beside her bed at night, but she takes drops to help her sleep. The little bottle of inky purple liquid stands on the table as well, and I find her bundled up in her dressing gown, her breathing wet and heavy. I crouch beside the little table, careful not to let the keys clank together, and fiddle off the one I need.
I slink out into the great kitchen to light a candle from the hearth fire, then make my way into the chamber to unlock the glass door of the cabinet. That the silver commemorative dish, a gift to the master for some noble service, still sits forgotten on the table before the cabinet is testament to how few people ever come into these rooms. As I replace the fine piece on its rack, I gaze for a moment at the Beaumont coat of arms etched into its surface, a Beast Rampant, disparate parts of eagle, lion, and stag, on a shield above a row of spearheads. The arms of a noble warrior. The beast’s mouth is thrown open in a savage roar.
The shadows around me suddenly seem more menacing; I hastily close the cabinet door, turn the key in its lock, and pluck it out. The flame of my candle blazes in the glass panels — and something thumps in the dark at the far end of the room. My heart flies into my mouth, and I drop the key as an indistinct shape lumbers up in the opposite doorway.
“A light! A light, by God’s good grace!” It is Master’s voice, and I almost sob with relief. He shambles toward me, toward the light, without his body servants or any of his gentlemen. All alone. He enters into the circle of flickering light and peers at me.
“You, girl. You’re one of mine, aren’t you?”
I bob into a breathless curtsy. Perhaps he doesn’t recognize me out of my uniform. And a new kind of anxiety grips me, as I realize just how out of uniform I am in my chemise, barefoot, with my hair down. I can’t think what to do. Madame Montant would have the flesh off my hide for not fleeing at once, yet I dare not behave rudely to the master.
“New about the place, eh?” The effort of craning forward for a closer look nearly topples him off his feet.
Servants are cautioned to be silent above all things, yet surely I must answer a direct question. “Yes, sir.”
“It speaks!” He raises an eyebrow. “Have you a name?”
“Lucie, sir.”
“Lucie,” he exclaims. “A light, in this most black of nights! Oh, I have great need of your light tonight, little candle.” Up close, I see the state of his clothes, his collar carelessly open, doublet mishooked, the hem of his shirt hanging out in back like a forgotten tail. His hair is unbound, swinging free about his shoulders. He sways a little toward me again, but he’s sure enough on his feet to keep himself in balance.
“Light me upstairs, girl. I’ve had a beastly night, and there’s no point in rousing the others at such an hour.”
“I cannot, sir.” How do I dare refuse him anything? But I must not be caught flaunting the rules of his household, if I wish to keep my position. “I’m not allowed upstairs,” I manage to explain.
“Not allowed?” He reels up to his full height, his expression as dark as the thunderous clouds outside. “Who is master here?” he barks.
I cower before him, alarmed by this outburst. But his anger clears in an instant, and he composes his features. Perhaps he was only testing me. Perhaps my virtuous character has pleased him.
“Come along, Lucie.” His voice has softened as he nods toward my candle in its dish. “I shan’t breathe a word to a soul, I promise you,” he whispers confidingly.
What can I do? I’m not allowed to disobey him. He gestures out the door to the entry hall and the grand central staircase so long forbidden me. All is swathed in shadows, but I can light his way in the darkness. Praying that Madame Montant will not waken and catch me, I take up the candle, and with Master at my heels, I cross to the stairs and ascend.
The dark rectangles of paintings on the staircase walls flicker in and out of the light, portraits of Beaumont ancestors following me with their disapproving eyes. But the master has given me an order, and I must obey.
Past the first bend in the stairway, we climb to the second-floor landing. He directs me through a grand passage to the tall, handsome doors of what must be his private apartments. My hand trembles on the ivory handle, but he is beside me, nodding me on, so I take heart, plunge the handle down, and enter.
He takes the lead now, with me scurrying alongside to light his way. We pass through a long, formal salon; in the moving light, I half glimpse the dark shapes of chaises and bedsteads where his household gentlemen must sleep, but none of them are about. We proceed into a more comfortable sitting room, where he signals me to stop. In the shadows, I see an enormous white marble fireplace. The head of a god protrudes from the mantelpiece, and leaping stags are carved over the looking glass above. Opposite is a tall wardrobe, its panels of inlaid wood glistening in the candlelight. Master’s hunting boots are tossed aside at the foot of the wardrobe, one propped upright against the cabinet, the other slumped across the carpet; there is something so intimate about their wanton disarray. But he has gone to a corner occupied by a stuffed velvet chair and footstool. He grasps a heavy glass decanter off the end table but, finding it empty, sends it clattering back to its tray with an oath. He strides to another pair of doors and throws them open into the dark.
“Come along now, Little Candle,” he commands me, and I bring the light. But I pull up short when I see an ebony bedpost curving out of an alcove in the shadows. Surely, he cannot expect me to enter his private bedchamber?
“Ahh!” he cries. From where I stand in the doorway, my candle illuminates a hunting wineskin on a strap over the bedpost, and he races to it. He pulls out the cork with his teeth and spits it out. He tips the skin up to his lips and smiles, even as he savors its contents. I stand there, watching him in the light, his head tilted back, eyes half-closed in rapture, his mouth working industriously. It embarrasses me to witness such a private moment, and my gaze skitters aside, in search of somewhere else to land.
When he notices me again, he nods toward another marble fireplace that overlooks the foot of the bed. Fat beeswax candles in iron holders stand on either end of the mantelpiece, and I am directed to light them. But I dare step only one bare foot across the threshold, when I think how gladly Madame Montant would turn me out if she ever found out I was even upstairs, let alone here in this room. But Master could dismiss me tonight, this minute, as late and dark and cold as it is, if I were to balk at his command.
“Don’t dawdle there, girl!” Master barks, sounding so much like Madame Montant that I am startled into obedience. I am a servant, I remind myself, invisible. A candle to light his way. My only duty is to be silent and obedient, to light his rooms and take myself off, not to annoy him with foolishness.
So I enter the room and light the candles. I glance furtively into the glass above the mantelpiece, half dreading, yet almost hoping to see the lady in the rocking chair again, to feel less alone in this awkward moment. But I see only a dim reflection of the far corner of the room, the
indistinct shape of a dressing table in the shadows, and the folds of a heavy curtain drawn across a window, perhaps, or another alcove. I feel a servant’s anxiety that the hearth is cold below me, and Master’s next words speak to my thoughts.
“Gave my men leave to see to their own affairs,” he grumbles. “Never thought I’d need ’em again tonight. Never thought to be sent packing. Damned impudent bitch.”
I turn back in some alarm, only to find him sprawled in a stuffed chair just outside the wide, deep alcove where his bed is enthroned, grinning up at me. His angry words must have been meant for someone else.
“You see the state I’m in on my own. Helpless as a babe. You’ll have to do my boots for me.” He cocks his head like a quizzical bird, and his grin broadens. “If I may presume.”
“Of course, sir.” My hand shakes at the impropriety of this moment, even as I blow out my candle and set its dish on the mantelpiece. How many household rules have I already broken tonight? I can only pray that no gossiping servant caught sight of me on the forbidden stairway and that I can leave just as invisibly.
I go to his chair and kneel before him, and he stretches out one long leg. I hope he can’t feel how my hands tremble as I brace his square boot heel on my knee and wrestle down the deep cuff of fawn-colored leather. I tug at the heel, but my grip shakes so, I lose my purchase. As I grope in too much haste, I jam a finger into one of the razor points on his gilded spur. The prick startles me, and I pull my hand away, but I do not drop his foot. For an instant, we are both transfixed by a tiny bead of red blood on my white fingertip.
Then his eyes narrow. “Be more careful, girl.”
I am too much of a goose to respond with anything more than a nod of apology as I bend again to my task. The boot’s muddy sole stains my chemise, but I finally get the thing off. He lowers his stockinged foot, and I seize the other raised boot and prop it in my lap, handling the spur with better care. This second boot comes off without incident, and there is a moment when I cradle Master’s muscled calf and elegant heel in my hands. He reclines in his chair, watching me. But he does not pull his foot away, and I dare not insult him by dropping it to the floor.
“You’d never turn a fellow out of your bed, would you, Little Candle?”
What a thing to ask! My heart races. My eyes drop. What answer can I give that will not make me seem wanton or ignorant?
When he speaks again, his voice has ripened. “Never had the opportunity, is that it?”
“N-no, sir.”
“A creature of virtue — what a rarity!”
I can’t tell if he is mocking me, but my cheeks flame, and he laughs, a cold, mirthless sound. I wish I were far away from here.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I mumble. Servants are accustomed to apologize, even when we have done no wrong.
“Why, there’s nothing shameful about virtue,” he says with a sly emphasis on the last word. Then he yawns and prods at me with his foot. “Do the bed, girl.”
I stumble up, glad to be farther away from him, yet even more eager now to finish up and be gone. I go into the alcove that cradles Master’s bed like a shrine. The polished bedposts gleam in the soft light, framing the dark jewel colors of the satin counterpane and a mountain of gold-braided pillows. I curl my pricked finger to my palm and reach forward, digging under the pillows with my other hand and fingers, feeling for the hems of sheets to turn down, when I hear him rise to his feet behind me.
“But there’s no point to virtue, either.”
His voice is right in my ear, and I am shoved facedown into the pillows, my flailing hands sliding over satin. My fingertips are so roughened from scrubbing that they snag at the fabric, but I’m still unable to get a purchase, as my chemise is thrown up around my waist and my legs are pried apart.
“Chevalier!” I gasp. “Please! No . . .”
But I am crushed with the impact of Master’s weight and his heat and all his fury as he falls on me from behind, tearing me up inside.
How it hurts, the sudden shock of it, the furious impact again and again. But humiliation ravages me more completely than any pain. I am weak, foolish. I can’t defend myself. His arms are stronger than mine, pinning me down as my clutching fingers rasp uselessly over the satin counterpane.
Searing pain and shock and shame overwhelm me. If only I could die, right here on this spot, yet I continue to feel everything, every lurch of his body against mine, every gust of his sour breath on my shoulder, my neck. Each instant is an eternity. The longer he bores into me, the less able I am to fight him, the less of me there is to defend, until I am an empty nothing. An object to be used at his whim. A thing.
He goes on grunting and sweating until he expels a last rush of wet, foul air, and he is finally done with slamming into me. He sprawls forward over my back to hiss in my ear.
“Your virtue is cured, Little Candle.”
Then he rolls off me into the embrace of his pillows, chest heaving. The tone of his words tells me how pleased he is with himself. He makes a dismissive gesture with his hand, and the empty thing I have become peels itself away from the fine counterpane.
I stagger for the door on shivery limbs, aching everywhere, mopping feebly at my legs with my chemise. I leave the candle behind, and I stumble through the dark rooms for the passage, bruising my toe on an end table, my knee on a door frame. But I cannot bear the light; I am too filthy to be seen, not by him, nor the ancestors hanging in the stairwell, nor what is left of myself.
I can hear the rain outside racketing at the glass windowpanes like savage laughter. Deep-bellied thunder booms, and I shrink from a flash of lightning, feeling my way to the stairs to crawl down them slowly, painfully, almost on all fours, hand over hand on the balustrades. I imagine I’m leaving a trail of slime behind me, like a garden snail, oozing over each carpeted stair. I can’t hide my shame. Everyone will see it, follow it, and know what I’ve become.
I am too filthy to live.
It grieves me to waken. Last night I felt snuffed out, a candle flame disintegrating into the black nothing, yet this morning my eyes open again. Death has not released me. But I am no longer alive, for a thing cannot live; it only is.
I go about my toilette as well as I might, reeking of shame. I’m certain they can all smell it on me. It is almost midday when he calls for his bath. Half a dozen stout body servants carry up buckets of hot water drawn from the well and warmed over the kitchen fire, baskets full of thick towels and fragrant oils that foam and soothe. But I will never be clean, never again.
What can I do? There is no one here I can confide in, no one to whom I dare confess my shame. The stranger who is my Aunt Justine will not comfort me for disgracing her. Madame Montant will turn me out, as she did the last foolish girl in my place. And where should I be then? Mama will not have me back. Without my situation, I am ruined, beyond all redemption, without friends or money or skills to sustain me. All I possess now is my shame, the burden I can never escape. It meant nothing to him, robbing me of my virtue, but a poor woman who loses her virtue has lost everything.
There was some disturbance this morning when Madame Montant, making her rounds, found the key to the cabinet I opened last night on the floor where I dropped it. But the cabinet was locked, nothing inside had been stolen, and since there was no obvious place to lay blame, the housekeeper could only conclude that it must have worked its way off her ring yesterday.
Days stretch into weeks, and I am quicker about my duties to avoid any contact with him, not even a glimpse. Madame Montant stops scolding me, pleased with my improvement. I speak to no one, and no further notice is taken of me. I try to believe that if I’m quiet enough, insignificant enough, someday I might disappear altogether, like the dew off a rose. I will escape my memory, my shame, even my flesh, and the torment of my life will end. I pray for that moment.
And yet I continue to live.
I can’t always get away quickly enough. This morning, he’s ridden early to hounds, and before I am done with
my scrubbing, he and his men come roaring out of the park into the vast yard that lies out beyond the back of the moat, the dogs yelping at their heels. My chamber window affords a better view of their clamor than I wish to see, as the men form a hasty circle and restrain their dogs, then shout for the servants. It is even more distressing when I see what they’re playing at. A young doe has been wounded in the chase, and the servants drive her into the open for the hunters’ sport, into the circle of laughing men and slavering hounds. Blood gushes from a wound in her haunch, and the tormented creature limps about drunkenly as she struggles to leap on her lamed leg. Pawing desperately at the ground with her forehooves, she careens this way and that within the circle, veering away in panic from the noise and the scent and the thickening bloodlust of her captors. No one laughs more heartily than the chevalier. At last he gives a signal, and they loose the dogs. The doe freezes at the sight of the mad eyes and foaming mouths of hell that bear down upon her from all sides, the last thing she will ever see before they tear the life from her body.
He calls off the hounds while there is still enough carcass left to salvage, which he carries across the back bridge over the moat and into the house in triumph for Cook to clean and dress. Through the chambers he goes, trailing mud and blood from the kill that the maids will be expected to clean — again — as his hounds snarl and howl outside. I am ordered to the kitchen with my pail, and he appears to take no notice of me as he marches past; what is the ruination of a housemaid to him, after all? But at the last moment, he turns his fine head and looks directly at me with a look of smug satisfaction, of possession, the way he looks at any of the other things that he owns. And I wither where I stand, reduced to an object once more, in his sight. It makes him smile; my humiliation amuses him. He will never let me forget it.
As the frazzled kitchen staff scurries about, he calls for wine, and I see Charlotte nearby, all agog, wrestle out a goblet from some shadowy corner. A senior member of the kitchen staff grabs the hammered pewter goblet out of her hand, hastily pours in a tot of wine, and presents it to the chevalier. As he grasps the stem and turns about, I am near enough to see a long-legged spider appear around the curve of the bowl and crawl down onto the chevalier’s fingers. He bellows an oath, sends the goblet flying under an angry red arc, shakes his hand as if he had palsy, and stamps furiously on the floor where the creature landed.