Corinna looked down to see what Veronica was cleaning and frowned. Dirt. Some small globs and other smeared sections, streaking and staining the otherwise pristine surface. Realization dawned in Corinna and she felt her stomach knot, but not from hunger. Without asking permission, she dipped her hand into Veronica’s bucket and pulled out the back-up rag.
“What are you doing?” Veronica asked, freezing in her own work.
“I’m the one who did this. I can’t let you clean it up all on your own,” Corinna reasoned. She was already hard at work scrubbing the earth from the tiles.
“But it is my job.” Veronica sounded so adorably confused that Corinna stopped what she was doing to look at her. Corinna smiled as though she were talking to a child.
“Veronica, I’m going to help you. You have windows to clean and armor to polish. The least I can do is help clean up a mess I made myself.” She tilted her head toward Veronica and gave her a ‘do me this favor’ grin. Veronica’s face started to light up, but she turned away before Corinna could tell if she was really smiling or if she’d simply imagined it to make herself feel better.
Veronica didn’t respond. Instead, she went back to her cleaning, hair tied back and palms pressed to the floor. She was a simple girl, young and beautiful and rustic. She could become gorgeous if she tried, and Corinna could imagine her becoming someone grand – something similar to Corinna’s mother, she thought; someone kind and gentle but with a strong sense of self and morals. She would be a pretty woman, with dark waves and soul piercing eyes. Right now, she was the youngest person in the house.
“What are you looking at?” she asked, self consciously tucking a section of hair behind her left ear.
“N-Nothing,” Corinna said and went back to scrubbing. She heard Veronica giggle a bit at the oddness, and it made Corinna flush with color. “How did you get into service for Alexander?” she asked to throw off the silence.
“Me?” Veronica moved a bit away from her, following the dirt toward the door. “My family died when I was young, killed before my very eyes. I was forced to watch our house burn down with them still inside.” She was quiet, and Corinna didn’t try to interrupt her. Instead, she scrubbed in the opposite direction, toward the garden. She didn’t know what to say. “After that, I was taken in by the neighboring druids. They took care of me. When I was older, I left them to seek out the king. When he heard my story, the king found pity with me and brought me to work for him. Unfortunately, I was a bit careless these past few years, and I was made to leave Paesaggia to work here with Alexander as a serving girl.”
“How long have you been here?” Corinna asked, shying away from any further subjects of the past. Watching her parents burn to death… It reminded Corinna of her father, and she didn’t want to think of it.
“In the manor? Only maybe…. Six years,” she said. She stood then and walked back to the bucket to refresh her rag. The water within it swirled a murky dark brown as the mud and soil mixed into it. She seemed so calm about the number, but Corinna regarded her with open shock.
“Six years? You’ve all be here for six years? In this big empty house in the middle of nowhere with no visitors and living with that guy upstairs?” Corinna asked. It was seven years ago that the prince ‘died’ in the forest. Had he truly kept the same servants the whole time? They were all alive and well and not as socially awkward as one would expect from being in isolation.
“Well….,” Veronica blushed again and kept her eyes down as she went back to her work. “Isabelle was here before me. I worked with her for a year before she was sent back to Paesaggia. It was me and a man named Cedric for some time, perhaps another year, and then Cedric ran away from here. I was alone for about a week before Isabelle and Gavin appeared on the doorstep with a guard from the palace. They’re both really nice, so it’s not bad company…. And Lord Alexander isn’t so bad. He’s not always grouchy.”
She smiled then, a little jumpy smile as though she found her last comment funny but was afraid to show it. Her eyes glanced up through the empty air and to the third floor hall. Corinna looked too, but there was no one there. She smiled.
“It’s okay to smile,” she said. “He’s probably brooding in a corner somewhere. He won’t know.”
Veronica did smile then, and a small laugh came out of her too, but she bent her head and hid herself in her hair to cover it up.
“You’re sweet, Corinna,” she murmured. “Don’t let this place ruin that.”
“You’re sweet too… and still so after six years,” Corinna pointed out. “I think I’ll be alright.”
There was innocent, comfortable silence then, interrupted only by the sounds of their rags on the tile floor. Corinna had cleaned the floors of her home once, but she had used a horse hair brush. Maybe these floors required something softer? She would have to read up on this as well as gardening. She would become one of those new world women who was rounded and knew a little bit about everything but not a lot about any one thing… except gardening.
The door to the music room opened and shut abruptly, startling Corinna out of her regal daydreams. She cast her eyes up toward the room, but Veronica didn’t even twitch in that direction. Who was going in the music room? She hadn’t even heard anyone on the stairs. Had she been that distracted by her fantasizing?
“Veronica, have you ever noticed music at night?” Corinna asked, remembering the dancing tune that had drawn her downstairs last night in the first place. Veronica did falter at the mention of that. She scrubbed harder than before at a particularly stubborn streak of dirt.
“How are the roses fairing?” she asked.
“Veronica,” Corinna scolded. She was avoiding the subject. She must know something.
“You’ve been tending to the garden all day. Are you finished?” the servant asked, continuing to act as though she hadn’t mentioned the music at all. Corinna frowned and then bit the inside of her cheek. There was no use trying to get it out of her. Veronica was clearly going to choose stubbornness over compliance, and Corinna doubted anything she said would change the young girl’s mind unless she made her feel guilty… and Corinna was not the kind of person to purposely make another woman feel guilty.
“No,” she said and sighed. She returned most of her concentration to cleaning the last bit of dirt, though a part of her still lingered on the upstairs music room and the first floor ballroom behind her. “I’ve only gotten one bush in the ground. However, I am finished dragging dirty trees through your halls.”
Veronica looked over at Corinna with some surprise – surprise that Corinna had called it ‘her’ halls. Corinna smiled back like a loon and then made one last swipe at the floor. With that, her side was done, and she stood to return her rag to the bucket. Somehow Veronica managed to get to it at the same time as she did despite the servant having a bit more dirt to clean up. Corinna glanced over at the front door but found the whole area to be spotless.
“You’re amazing,” she complimented. “No wonder this place is always so spotless.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Veronica assured, keeping her eyes down again and concentrating her gaze on the bucket as she lifted it into her hands. “I’ve just gotten quick after all these years.”
“Well I can see it all paid off. Maybe you could teach me how to be fast sometime,” Corinna partially joked. Veronica blushed lightly and shook her head in an adorable fashion.
“I-I wouldn’t know where to start. I don’t think you can teach speed… not really,” she murmured. Corinna smiled then and placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Let me know if you figure something out. In the meantime, I’ll carry that bucket for you, if you want. It looks heavy,” she said. Veronica had been a servant for six years, but Corinna had worked the farm. She figured she could handle a heavy bucket easier.
Just then, the third floor burst into noise. The left side bedroom door slammed open and Alexander’s thunderous footsteps stomped out into the hall. He bent over the side and looked
straight down at Corinna and Veronica three levels below. He let out a growl that Corinna didn’t understand the reason of and gripped the railing.
“Hey, boy!” Alexander called down. “Come up here and clean my room. It’s in shambles!”
His teeth seemed to gleam in the light of the late afternoon sun. His fur glinted and shone like fields of dying grass. Corinna still despised the look of him. She still didn’t like him, as the lord of this house or as a person.
“I’m not a boy, and I’m not your servant, Alexander. If anything, I’m more like your prisoner,” Corinna replied calmly. She knew Alexander would be able to catch what she said with those animal ears of his. The prince stood up and crossed his arms as best he could.
“Either way, you’re mine, and I’m commanding you to come and clean my room. Now get up here before I come down and drag you up three flights of stairs to do it,” he said. Good Lord, what a snob.
Corinna sighed and gave Veronica an apologetic look before trudging up the stairs, but since she was in no hurry to help Alexander, she walked as though it was a laborious task and moved slowly as though she were walking through a thick mud. To her surprise, Alexander stood there, in front of his room with his arms crossed, the whole time and said not a word. He didn’t yell, growl, or even pace. He just shifted to follow Corinna’s position as she got closer, and he did nothing else.
“Finally,” he grunted when Corinna made it to the top of the flight. “Clean it up before Isabelle brings me dinner or I will do the same to your room.”
Corinna doubted this was much of a threat since she could always move down into one of the servant rooms, or that was until she saw what Alexander had done to his room. The furniture was virtually untouched. It was just a chair and a table that were broken. However, Alexander had torn and thrown every piece of visible paper or writing utensil, including the colored ink pots and charcoal pencils. It was as if Alexander had been angry at the things that made the room personalized. Two pictures were crushed face down on the floor, glass cracked and barely contained under the weight of the frames. It wasn’t much destruction, but the idea of Alexander destroying her personal effects was definitely frightening. Corinna turned to the prince and scowled disapprovingly.
“You wouldn’t dare touch my things,” she said. In an afterthought, Corinna realized this wasn’t the best thing to say. It was almost like issuing a challenge to the beast. Alexander must have caught that connotation as well, because he smirked and leaned in close.
“Try me,” he whispered, but in his beastly voice it came out like a rumble and was twice as loud as it was meant to be.
And then Alexander was bounding, literally bounding, down the stairs. Corinna watched as he hit the bottom floor and then sprang off in the direction of the garden. Oh, he better not be heading out to ruin the flowers again. That would just be juvenile and completely unfair.
Corinna turned from the banister and cautiously entered Alexander’s room. It felt like she shouldn’t be in it, like it was invading on the prince’s privacy. The room was dark, with only one of its two windows drawn open. It was about the size of Corinna’s room, perhaps a bit larger. There was a desk by one of the windows, like the one in the study on the second floor, and a living room set of couches like Corinna’s only this one had end tables at the end of every couch. The fireplace was grander than Corinna’s, with deep red oak paneling and the rest made of marble.
There was a globe in the corner of the room, near the door where Corinna was. In the opposite corner, back by the windows, Corinna saw the door that would lead further into Alexander’s chambers, but she highly doubted Alexander wanted her even peeking into those rooms much less exploring them or cleaning them. There were more hooks around these walls, more suggestions that the house had once been home to many marvelous paintings. Alexander’s room didn’t even have a painting over the fireplace, just a slightly lighter square where one used to be. Alexander’s room was red, but a lighter red than the blood in Corinna’s avoided bedroom. This color reminded Corinna of strawberries. It was accented with browns so as to blend well with the wooden furniture. Corinna had to admit that she actually liked the set up, save for all the currently broken materials. If she actually liked Alexander, she may even have considered spending more time in this room. It was darker than her yellow sitting rooms and much more comfortable than her bedroom.
Ah, but she was only in this room to clean it, she reminded herself. Grabbing a small bin located on the opposite side of the door from the globe, Corinna walked further into the room to begin her clean up and sprucing of Alexander’s room. It would be better when it was all over and done with. Then Corinna would finally be able to eat something and take a break.
Chapter 9 – In the Yard
“So how often do you go inside?” Corinna asked. She wrapped one arm around a post and leaned against it, including with her head. She was watching Gavin work and unsaddle a large chestnut horse.
“Well… I am in there early in the morning to eat breakfast and at night to eat supper with you and the others. Whenever I am not doing that or sleeping, I can be found out here. Unless Alexander comes to see me before I turn in for the night and asks me to do something else, I am almost always out with the horses,” the knightly servant answered. He pat the horse’s nose and it trotted into its stall as though he’d told it to do that.
“What can you do all day with horses?” Corinna looked around but saw only piles of hay, no jumps or hurdles she’d seen used to train horses. She saw no packed track for the horses to run on to build stamina. It was just one large field of grass around them with a small spot set up specifically for growing hay for the troughs.
There were no trees in the area save for the yew Corinna sat under the other day, two apple trees behind the stables, and three oak trees spotting the yard in a seemingly random manner. The stables were a lot closer to the fence than anywhere else Corinna had been, and she could see its high, dark, twisted metal body and they way it curled itself around the yard. It may as well have been bricks. Corinna could see the forest around them but never touch it or walk into it.
“Well mostly,” Gavin began, pulling Corinna from her thoughts. “I wake up and give each of them something to eat. I give them an apple with breakfast once a week, if they have been good. Thanks to Morgana I have all the fresh apples I could ever hope for. Then I take each horse out, one at a time, and brush them. I saddle them up and ride them around to keep up their strength and stamina. I brush them again, maybe give them a bath, and then let them go out to the fields.”
“It takes all day? There are only five horses, and that’s including mine,” Corinna said, motioning to the few stalls.
“Yes well, I give my all to these animals. When I say I ride them, I do not mean for just a few minutes. I can be up in each saddle for up to three or four hours each. I stretch their legs, then they trot and then canter, and then I have them practice jumping over the hay rolls, backing up… really anything I can think of at the time. It is my duty to make sure they are in perfect condition should anyone choose to ride one,” Gavin said, beginning to brush out the horse he’d just unsaddled.
“You talk about duty all the time. You sound like a knight.” Corinna grabbed a brush too and started to brush out the fur on the opposite side from Gavin, who laughed.
“No, but it is my dream,” he said. “I always wanted to be a knight. My father instilled such a dream in me a long time ago, when I was just a boy. He taught me all about duty and honor and valor. When he died, I knew it was what I had to do, so I set out for the capital to request the chance to try.”
“And what happened?” Corinna asked, looking at her friend over the horse’s back. Gavin shrugged and bent down to clean out the hooves.
“Well I am not a knight, am I?” he asked.
“I guess not.” Corinna pat the chestnut horse and walked around to the stall with Archimedes. She ran her hand along the horse’s cheek and it nickered in a friendly manner. C
orinna smiled. “At least you still remember me. Sorry I haven’t been out to see you.”
Corinna pat the horse’s wide back and ran the brush over his dark fur. Ripples ran under Corinna’s touch as the great beast shivered, and it was familiar and beautiful to Corinna. She smiled refreshingly and leaned on the horse, which braced under her to support her weight. It seemed to know exactly what Corinna needed. Corinna took in the scent of the horse and the familiar berth of it. Slim, speed horses were good for messengers, but only draft horses were built for farm work. Oh, and, Corinna so loved her Clydesdale.
“Do you really like horses?” Gavin asked, leaning on the edge of the stall.
“I love this one,” Corinna allowed. “I love big horses.”
“Heh. You have something against saddle horses?”
“No. They’re beautiful, but there’s so much grace and power in a draft horse. They can accomplish anything they set their minds to,” Corinna said, pulling herself back from Archimedes’ body and patting the spot. The horse whinnied and pawed the earth.
The Rose Chateau Page 9