The Sisters Mederos

by Patrice Sarath

  “I say,” protested her uncle.

  Alinesse grew exasperated. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Tesara.”

  “He’s making the girls leave. And Port Saint Frey is running out of housemaids. It’s not as if they’re lining up to work here, and Uncle makes it worse. It’s rather foul, don’t you think – Uncle flirting with the girls?” Tesara gave a shudder.

  “Tesara!” Alinesse said.

  “I say!” Uncle protested once more.

  “I’m going,” Yvienne interjected, hoping to divert the escalating hostilities. “Is there anything else we need from town?”

  The combatants said no, and she escaped thankfully.

  Chapter Four

  Yvienne held onto her hat with one gloved hand and tight to her shawl with the other as the wind caught both the instant she stepped outside the kitchen door. She walked briskly toward the business district. Goodness only knew what excuses she would have to make to the manager of the housing agency about Uncle.

  Mastrini’s Household Staffing Agency was on the second floor of a crooked row of shops that was one street up from the harbor. The traffic bustled here and Yvienne had to step lively over the cobblestones. Carts rumbled up and down the steep street, for though this wasn’t the Crescent it still rose up the hills overlooking the harbor. She stepped aside for a beer wagon laden with casks and pulled by a team of huge sorrel horses with flaxen manes.

  If House Mederos had retained its status she would never have come here unescorted. Despite everything that had happened, their loss had given her something unexpected – her freedom.

  Here people were surly and busy, but they looked her in the eye as equals. No one tugged his forelock or curtseyed, and one young man even took her elbow and pulled her aside to make room for two men coming up the hill with their sailor trunks hoisted high on their shoulders. He was off before she could do more than stare at him with an open mouth.

  She could hear the strange calling shouts of the hawkers on the harbor level, their singsong notes a kind of language that she could almost understand. People threaded themselves all around her, and soon she fell into the same rhythm. She lengthened her stride, her skirts swishing, and walked purposefully like everyone else. She did have somewhere to go. She had business to attend to.

  There was Mastrini’s. Its sign with a white glove signifying household staff pointed upwards, a clever direction. She hastened up the dark narrow stairs and came to a single door at the landing. The same white glove, this time in a come in position, beckoned to her. Yvienne knocked, and then let herself in.

  The clerk looked up at Yvienne’s entrance and rolled her eyes.

  “Miss Mederos,” she said starchily, for all that she was Yvienne’s age or even younger. “Really, we can’t continue on like this.”

  Yvienne was peripherally aware of a personage in plain rough clothing and a deep poke bonnet sitting on the bench by the door.

  “Miss Mastrini, please. It won’t happen again, I promise,” she said.

  “Heather Moon said that your uncle was lewd and unbecoming.”

  Yes. That was Uncle all right. She looked the clerk straight in the eye.

  “I’ll make him stop,” she said. Her declaration was met with the clerk’s skeptical demeanor. “Please,” she added, desperate. It wasn’t that she and Tesara couldn’t do the work. They had been thoroughly trained in the scullery arts at Madam Callier’s. But it would kill her parents if their daughters, their hopes for the future, would be reduced to scrubbing floors.

  The girl sighed. “I suppose I can see who we have.” She said it with the air of someone who didn’t think it would do any good.

  Yvienne reached into her small purse and handed her a folded paper, meticulously written out. “I’d also like to give you this.”

  The girl scanned it and raised an eyebrow. “You wish to be a governess?”

  “I think my qualifications will suit.”

  Her vitae were woefully short, but she had learned something in spite of all of Madam Callier’s efforts. And she could hardly do worse than the average governess.

  “Do you have any letters of reference?” Miss Mastrini asked.

  “No.”

  “Well then, I’m afraid–”

  “Miss Mastrini, they all know me. They know my family, they know my situation, they know everything about me, including that I’m desperate, poor, and the smartest girl in Port Saint Frey. Surely there’s someone who is looking for a governess for their girls who knows they can trust one of their own – even one such as me.”

  The room was silent. She was deeply ashamed that the person on the bench had to hear her plea. Miss Mastrini pursed her lips and then came to a sudden decision. She smoothed out the resume and stamped it with a red ink stamp. Approved, Yvienne read upside down. The young woman dated it and scrawled her signature.

  “I won’t have something for you right away,” she said. “It might take a few days. I’ll send you a letter if we do find an engagement.”

  Yvienne wanted to clasp her hand gratefully, but she settled for heartfelt thanks. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  “Now, as for your housemaid situation, unfortunately–”

  The woman on the bench stood and Yvienne turned around. “Miss Mastrini,” she said in a firm, clear voice. “Perhaps I would be a good fit for this household.”

  “Miss Angelus, we haven’t even taken your vitae,” Miss Mastrini objected. “And believe me, a different posting would be better for you.”

  What an extraordinary name. Yvienne watched as Miss Angelus untied her old-fashioned bonnet and took it off, allowing them to get a good look at her. She was a tall, broad-shouldered girl, built for work, as Cook might say from the old days. She was not a young girl, but she was not old, being perhaps in her eight-and-twentieth year, or thereabouts. She was not beautiful but striking, with full lips, dark hair, and dark eyes under dramatic brows. In other words, Uncle Samwell would soon be lewd and unbecoming yet again. She felt a pang of disappointment.

  “Let me introduce myself,” Miss Angelus said. “My name is Mathilde Angelus. I am twenty-seven years old, and I’ve been working in a kitchen and a domestic situation my whole life. I can cook dinner parties for two dozen and breakfast for the family. I’m clean, neat, and particular, and I can housemaid and nanny. I’m new here in Port Saint Frey because my family has moved from Ravenne and it is up to me to help my mother and father as they make a new life away from the mines. I’m not married, I don’t hope to be, and if your uncle tries anything on with me he’ll be very sorry. I don’t run from a lewd man, but I don’t suffer them neithereither.”

  Silence rang in the tiny office, broken only by the ticking of the carriage clock on the mantel behind Miss Mastrini.

  “Lovely,” Yvienne said, when she could break the spell of wonder and admiration. “When can you start?”

  Chapter Five

  Yvienne was still floating from her memory of meeting the wonderful Miss Angelus and daydreaming about the young woman’s first encounter with Uncle as she pattered down the stairs, but her nerve faltered a little when she came to her next address. Treacher’s Almanac was on a bent little alley that curved away from the harbor between leaning buildings. The hustle and bustle of the main thoroughfare was distant here, and the two-story houses with their patching stucco and whitewash crowded out the sky. The little track stank of the sewage that dampened the gutters.

  “Honestly,” Yvienne muttered. Surely Port Saint Frey could do a better job of keeping its streets clean of night soil. With the back of one hand up against her nose and mouth, she held up her skirts and minced across the path to the red door with a sign of a printing press swinging over it. The name Treacher’s Almanac and Notices had once been picked out in gilt but was faded and barely legible now. Yvienne rapped firmly on the door.

  After a minute, she got tired of polite knocks. She pushed down on the door handle – it gave, and she opened the door.

  At once she was
assailed by the smell of ink and paper dust, and a powerful chemical aroma of wood alcohol. Yvienne sneezed.

  “Pirates not welcome!” she heard someone yell and the sound of much clattering and banging. “Nothing to steal anyway!”

  Stifling a laugh and another sneeze, Yvienne called out, “I’m not a pirate. I’m a visitor.” After a long moment a rotund gentleman came out from the back of the shop. He was untidy, inkstained, bearded, and becrumbed. He was in a shirt and trousers and stocking feet, and his suspenders hung off his shoulders as if he found them uncomfortable.

  He squinted at Yvienne and his eyes brightened with recognition.

  “The elder daughter of House Mederos,” he said. “Interesting. Interesting.”

  She curtseyed. “Yes, Yvienne Mederos. Are you Mr Treacher, sir?”

  “I am. The one, and thankfully, the only. Come in.”

  Stifling her misgivings, she followed him into the backroom and gasped at the scene. The front room was all dimness and squalor. Here there were books and back issues of the almanac in wonderful, polished and dusted barrister cabinets. Along one wall were other newspapers from other cities and she was drawn to them at first, taking a few steps, then remembering, regretfully, what she had come for.

  “Mr Treacher, I’m not really a customer.”

  “Really,” he said drily. “Well, such is my luck.”

  “You see, I believe I have something you want.”

  “You have?” He cocked his head sideways. “I do?”

  “Yes. In a word, sir. Access. I can be your eyes behind the doors of the wealthiest merchants in Port Saint Frey.”

  Those round, protuberant eyes locked on hers. His expression grew calculating. Yvienne felt hope rise.

  “You see – what Treacher’s Almanac could use is a… a names column, you know – when you talk about all the top people. The Gazette has one.”

  “I know what a names column is, and I know that the Gazette has one,” he said.

  “Well, everyone loves to be talked about. The parties and the dinners, the masquerades, and the send-offs. It would be a smash. I could get all that for you and then your almanac will be a must-read.”

  She held her breath, waiting. His brow furrowed; he no longer looked calculating but doubtful. “I don’t understand, Miss Mederos. You are no longer welcome in their homes. So how will you get access for a names column?”

  “Leave that to me.” If Mastrini’s found her a position, she could do quite well as a governess. The children’s companion was a silent observer of all that went on in a merchant house, both in the schoolroom and outside of it. She had reason to know from the years and many women who had taken the position in House Mederos. Governesses and nannies knew all the best gossip.

  Treacher raised a surprised brow and gave a little grunt. “I must say, you’ve surprised me, though I can’t imagine how you could go about it. And even assuming you can get me items I can use, I can’t pay you. Can barely pay the printer’s devil, and he’s my sister’s grandson.”

  “That’s all right. You can give me something in return.”

  “Mmm-hmmm.”

  She pressed on in the face of his skepticism. “My family was framed. I would like to prove that.”

  “Oh, you do.”

  “I want to see the transcripts from the hearings of my uncle’s and my parents’ testimony and the testimony against them.”

  Treacher laughed out loud. “You’ve come to the wrong printer. The Gazette won that business. Underbid me, the bastards.”

  “You had it six years ago.” She remained steady.

  “Damn it, girl. If you know all that, you know that the hearings are closed. Even if they left me the transcripts, which they didn’t, mind you, they’re printed under guard of Guild agents and delivered directly into their hands when the ink is dry.”

  “But you have to see them to transcribe them. So, you could tell–”

  He stopped laughing. “Tell what? Those records are under lock and key in the Guild offices, where they remain under guard night and day. If I had anything to tell you, there isn’t a single magistrate in Port Saint Frey who would take the case of my word against the Guild’s. I could crow like a rooster for all the good telling will do.”

  “Mr Treacher, you print the truth and make sure all men know it. Surely you can help me.”

  “The truth is no good to a dead man, Miss Mederos. Or a dead maid. Take my advice – don’t poke the Guild.” He meant it. He was no longer avuncular or jolly or patronizing. He would not be moved. She understood no when she heard it. She curtseyed again, hoping it conveyed her Alinesse-worthy level of disapproval.

  At the front door, she paused, and then drew another piece of paper from her reticule. This page was grimy and wrinkled; it had lived in her purse for two weeks. She had written it the first night back with their parents. The paper had been cadged from a torn eviction notice, and she had written in as small and neat a hand as she could, scraping the last of the ink.

  He still watched her, a funny man with a large belly scarcely contained by his straining trousers and drooping suspenders. With sudden determination she unfolded the paper and left it on the counter by the door, giving it an extra pat for emphasis. If he threw it on the fire, so be it. She could write it again, if need be, though she knew she would never be able to recreate each loving, angered word. She let herself out, and the sewer smell rose up into her throat, sickeningly.

  She felt dullness with the letdown of her foiled errand. She had been so sure that Treacher would join her crusade. He was a fire breathing muckraker. His alter ego Junipre was read and condemned by everyone in the city for his audacious editorials that took on the Guild, the merchants, the Constabulary, and the society of Port Saint Frey. Instead, the reality was that for all Junipre’s bluster, Treacher was as cowed by the Guild as everyone. She almost imagined the Guild telling him, Not this, Treacher.

  The Guild files were under lock and key as he had said, and they might as well have been on the moon for all the chance she had to get at them. The Guild headquarters was a grand, multi-columned, gargoyled, copper domed extravaganza that overlooked the harbor from a long block of the Esplanade. It was guarded night and day. If she found her way inside, she would need to find the record room. And once she found the records, how to find the ones pertaining to the Mederos affaire? I need someone on the inside, she thought. Could she flirt with a guard or a young clerk? She knew little of flirting, but that didn’t matter. Girls at the academy flirted all the time, with the unlikeliest of candidates – it didn’t look that hard.

  A harsh shout broke her reverie and made her jump and look around her. In her plotting, she had walked into the street, as bustling as ever with carriages, carts, and teeming humanity.

  “Don’t just stand there, move it, move it!” a burly fellow yelled. “God, you idiot woman, move your arse!”

  Hastily she jumped back as two men came running through, one blowing a whistle to clear the way, the other carrying a messenger’s satchel. A street urchin laughed as she was almost bowled over, and Yvienne scowled and straightened her bonnet, loathing the impertinent brat.

  “Miss Mederos!”

  Yvienne turned. It was Miss Angelus, carrying her basket, standing under Mastrini’s white hand. She must have finished giving her vitae to the agency.

  “Oh!” she gulped. “Miss Angelus. How good to see you again.” How embarrassing, for her new housemaid to see her naive employer almost get run over by a messenger and mocked by a street brat.

  “Are you lost? What were you doing in that alley? This part of Port Saint Frey is hardly safe.”

  Yvienne sighed. “An errand. However, it didn’t go as planned.”

  Miss Angelus held out her arm and Yvienne slipped her hand around it. “Let’s walk together, all right? You can catch your breath and we can become comfortable with each other.”

  “That’s a wonderful idea, Miss Angelus.” Yvienne had the extraordinary feeling that she had
just been rescued, but Miss Angelus was so tactful about it that it felt more as if they were two friends meeting for a stroll.

  “Call me Mathilde.”

  “And I’m Yvienne,” she said. Not Miss. Not Miss Yvienne. Just Yvienne. She felt herself relax. If Uncle meddled with this one, he would have Yvienne to answer to, not just the formidable Mathilde.

  “Good. Yvienne. I like that.” Mathilde patted her hand and bent her bonnet toward Yvienne as if they were having a lovely cose. “Don’t look about you, and just keep walking. There’s a man following you, and I think he means mischief.”

  Chapter Six

  The dark and quiet kitchen suited Tesara, and she reveled in her solitude. Yvienne had gone off to Mastrini’s, and her parents and Uncle retired to their usual corners: Brevart in the parlor to read from week-old papers by the light of the window, Alinesse to sit with him, and to respond to his commentary on the stale news with snide remarks. Uncle went off in a snit to his bedroom upstairs, though she knew from experience that he could stand his own company for only so long.

  Alone, Tesara examined her hands as best she could in the dim light from the small window over the dry sink. The fingers on her left hand were gnarled and clawed, and though she tried over the years to straighten them, they remained twisted as tree roots. Madam Callier’s punishment had been most effective. For six long years she had been unable to summon up the power that she had so casually wielded during her childhood, associated as it now was with the sound and pain of her fingers cracking. The memory sickened her as it always did, bringing on a wave of nausea that had not lessened over the years. Six years, and she had forgotten that gathering current, the mischievous tingle. She couldn’t even remember how it felt to make papers blow through the hall or candles to light with a single easy thought. Half-heartedly she tried to concentrate on the small stub of unlit candle on the kitchen table. She flicked her fingers at it. Nothing.