“Go,” she whispered. “I hear the coach. Be good, and stay out of your aunt’s way if you can. Thomas will look after you. He will help us find your father. And remember that I love you, and always will.”
Lucinda gazed into the older woman’s crinkled eyes, now watery and blurred with sentiment. And reflected sadly that this might be the closest thing to a declaration of love that she could ever expect to have in her life.
12
QUICKSILVER
Lucinda gripped the window ledge on either side of her with outstretched arms, trying to anticipate the bumps, to ride the coach as if it were a horse. But unlike horse riding, this form of transportation was irregular, without any particular rhythm to it, so that the random jolts and stumbles caught her unawares. Her sit bones were being pummeled to a bruising pulp, her jaw kept snapping shut, and her neck ached with tension. To make matters worse, she felt an urgent need to relieve herself. She gazed out of the window in despair. They had only been on the road for a few hours; the journey was to take over two days. She did not know if she could take much more of this.
Luckily she did not have to. The coach drew to a halt in the middle of a beech tree wood.
“Hoi there, Missy, time for old Giles to stretch his legs.” The gruff voice of the coachman wafted into her window, along with his rather sour smell. Lucinda, not wanting to offend such a nice old man, tried not to draw back, but reached inside her cloak for the scented pomander that Lena the laundress had made for her.
“I’ll be going this way,” he called over his shoulder. “If the young lady wishes to take a little jaunt herself, I think she’ll find it very pleasant up yonder.”
The hint was not lost on Lucinda. Gathering her heavy skirts in one hand, she jumped out and skipped up the path he had indicated. Behind a stand of saplings she availed herself of the opportunity so considerately offered.
When she returned to the road, she found a group of youngsters—cottagers’ children—gathered around the coach, peering in through the windows and trying to climb up on the roof. Old Giles was grumbling at them, swatting at them like so many pesky flies.
“Off, off you go, then,” he chided, “that’s enough, that’s enough, make way for the lady.”
The smudged, red-cheeked faces turned and stared at Lucinda. She tried not to laugh, but a giggle bubbled up from her throat nevertheless. They looked so solemn, so awestruck. One of them timidly approached to touch the lace-encrusted flounce of her petticoat. Suddenly overcome with shyness, the little thing turned and ran back to hide behind her brothers.
“Don’t be afraid, I won’t eat you!” Lucinda said. In an impulse, she pulled out the pomander, and held it out to the little mite. “Here. For you,” she offered. The child darted forward, and took it from her reverently.
An unexpected flush of pride pushed out Lucinda’s feeling of worthlessness. No matter how humiliating the last few days had been, no matter how gloomy her prospects, one thing was certain: she was no longer a child, and she was not a guttersnipe. She was a lady, a young lady. The awe of these children was most gratifying. Little did they know that her richly embroidered gown was a hand-me-down, and certainly not this season’s fashion.
She lifted her head high and with mincing step made her way to Giles’ side. The old man bowed low, and, beautifully playing along with her, gallantly helped her back into the coach.
To say that Arabella welcomed Lucinda to Wriggin Hall with open arms would be an overstatement. It is true that when the coach pulled up, she came bustling outside to receive her niece in person; she did so, however, not out of courtesy, but to forestall the servants, who could not be trusted not to gossip.
“Come, Lucinda, this way, this way. His lordship wishes to see you immediately. Hurry along now, come.”
Lucinda, aching and stiff from the long ride, stumbled along behind her aunt. Her numbed brain was trying to make sense of the news that the grandfather who had never acknowledged her existence was now requesting her presence. In trying to keep up with Arabella, she skidded on the gleaming marble and only just managed not to crash into a chair.
Arabella looked back at her, annoyed. “In here,” she snapped. “And watch your step,” she added snidely.
Lucinda tiptoed into the library’s gloom. An odor of sickness enveloped her. Her grandfather was sitting in the far corner of the paneled space, huddled before a flickering fire. He was sitting not in a chair, but in a hipbath. A tall man in a black coat hovered in the background, stepping forward now to rearrange the linens draped over the old man’s shoulders and across his chest.
“Child,” said the old man hoarsely, and motioned the reluctant girl to come closer.
She approached him, trying not to stare at the red, watery eyes and the contorted, drooling mouth. A lop-sided periwig drew attention to his papery skull. Something dreadful had happened to his nose: the nostrils were gaping holes. Lucinda had never smelled or seen such sickness before. She gagged a little.
“You have been a wicked girl,” he stated.
She bowed her head.
“Turn around,” he commanded.
Obediently, she shuffled around in a complete circle.
He said nothing more, but made a suppressed sound. It could have been a sneeze, or maybe it was a snigger—an old man’s titter.
Lucinda caught a glimpse of the retainer in the black coat bending over her grandfather as she obeyed her aunt’s hiss to leave the room at once.
In the 17th century, to cure the pox was an impossible goal. This fact did not, however, stop physicians, apothecaries and quacks from experimenting on their patients in hopes of stumbling upon a palliative that might bring them fame and riches.
Lord Hempstead had been undergoing the quicksilver cure under the supervision of a Dr. Hoogschotel, from the Spanish Netherlands, who had brought with him the latest ideas from the Continent. When he had first arrived, Dr. Hoogschotel had laughed heartily upon hearing that the local surgeon’s idea of therapy had been to wrap his lordship’s syphilitic genitals in the innards of a freshly slaughtered chicken.
“No, no. No, no!” he exclaimed at last, wiping away a tear, “Dese English barbers! Poor deffils, dey’ll belief anysing!”
The consensus nowadays within the enlightened medical community, he went on to explain soberly to Lady Arabella, was that the morbus gallicus, or French disease (as it was known in England), was best persuaded to leave the body via the secretions. One could swaddle the patient in heavy blankets and make him sweat it out; emetics and purgatives were often administered, and of course therapeutic bloodletting was always helpful. There was lately also a school of thought that proposed that the best channel for ridding the body of the pox was the mouth. And the quicksilver, amongst its many other miraculous properties, causes great quantities of saliva to well up under the tongue. Quicksilver had already proven itself the most effective treatment for the localized lesions of the pox, so it was fair to conclude that the wholesale administration of this heavy metal was the way to go.
(Privately, some advocates of the mercury therapy would admit, if pressed, that there were some unpleasant side effects. You could expect to see mouth-ulcers and abscesses in your patients, loss of teeth and hair, rotting of the gut, and kidney failure. In fact, most patients did not survive the cure. But since death could be attributed to so many other causes, and since the quick-silver was so very expensive, the victim’s family was usually left satisfied that everything humanly possible had been done to save the departed one.)
So it came about that Lord Hempstead spent several hours a day drooling copiously from the mouth whilst seated in a bath of quicksilver. It was in this posture that Lucinda had found him on her arrival at Wriggin.
Little did she know that her grandfather, incorrigible to the end, was—how to put it delicately—stimulated by the thought of a young maiden discovered in the company of an older man with, to be blunt, his pants down. If his lordship was no longer, alas, in any physical shape to ind
ulge his appetites, he felt he should at least be allowed to enjoy the simple pleasures left to him by the vestiges of a lewd imagination.
Happily Lady Hempstead, being no longer of this world, was spared the sight of her husband reduced to such a sorry state. She had been carried off some years earlier by the small pox—an irreproachable, if very nasty, disease quite unrelated to the venereal version.
Her mother’s death had left Arabella more firmly in control of the house than ever. She was determined, however, not to let her father’s life slip through her hands, and was doing everything in her power to keep him alive. This she did not out of love, but out of fear of what would happen to her after he died. There was no reason to think that Robert would keep his spinster sister in charge of the household once he came into his inheritance. Consequently, upon their father’s death, Arabella’s role would change overnight from the tyrant of Wriggin Hall to that of poor relation, dependent on the hospitality of others for her room and board. Since the waspish Arabella was not considered an asset to have around—and even she knew this to be true—it was not a happy prospect.
If the shame that currently clung to Lucinda was a secret source of pleasure to Lord Hempstead, it was doubly so to Arabella. Not only did her niece’s arrival provide her with the opportunity of licking a fresh new victim into shape; it was also so very gratifying to have a taste of another’s downfall, another who was, it had to be admitted, considerably younger and lovelier than herself. And to top it all, the little slattern was the lovechild of a sister whose own ruin had been the result of those exact same unfair advantages!
Lucinda’s shame just proved to Arabella once again that Beauty and Virtue were irreconcilable, and she thanked the Lord devoutly for having made her own person so perfectly Chaste, Pure and Undefiled.
“Now then,” she said sternly to the girl, “what are we to do with you?”
It was a rhetorical question. Arabella already knew exactly what she was going to do with her.
“I have decided that in order to improve your character, we must put you to work.”
Lucinda nodded.
“And I don’t mean needlework, either.”
A response was expected, so Lucinda shook her head no.
“Labor, undertaken with godly devotion, cleanses the impurities from the soul,” Arabella explained. “You, madam, have always had it too easy. My sister has been much too indulgent.” She sniffed. “In my opinion, you youngsters have always had far too much leisure, far too little supervision and in your case, far, far too little discipline. I have always maintained that one such as yourself, being the Issue of Scandal, ought to have been more closely watched and guided. Clarissa has never listened to me, but now she admits she was wrong,” casting her eyes upwards to heaven, “poor, poor Clarissa. Leisure and Freedom, Leisure and Freedom, they are the Poisons of Virtue.”
She stopped to catch her breath.
“Now. We shall start with”—she fixed her good eye on Lucinda’s garments contemptuously—”your appearance. You will change out of those clothes at once. They are indecent, and unfitting of your station. My maid has laid out a more suitable gown. You will pin your hair back, away from your face—” here she inclined her head, to demonstrate on her own sparse skull a tightly pinned knot, “…so, and you will wear the bonnet I have picked out for you. At all times, do you understand?”
She threw the stricken Lucinda a sickening look of sympathy. It was a thousand times harder to take than the more usual tight-lipped malice. Her voice even climbed an octave, and in an uncharacteristic falsetto, she added, “You may go now, dear. Supper has been laid out for you in your chamber. Go! Tomorrow we begin.”
Lucinda looked around the dank little room to which she had been assigned. A bed, a chest of an inferior quality reserved for servants, and on it, a cracked wash-bowl, a candle and a bible; a low table set with a bowl of cold porridge and a tumbler of water; a small shuttered window. Nothing more, except for the bundle containing her personal possessions—her knife and spoon, comb and nightshirt—and the somber-looking clothes laid out on the bed.
Lucinda did not sleep very well that night. She tossed and turned in the unfamiliar bed until daybreak, when she fell into a deep, desperate slumber.
She awoke with a start, afraid it must be later than Arabella would consider decent. At home there had always been someone to wake her and keep her on schedule. The place where her face had been pressed into the pillow was damp: a round, wet spot attesting to the heaviness of her troubled sleep. She wiped her mouth and shuddered, remembering her drooling grandfather. In an instant she was out of bed.
Fortunately, dressing herself without assistance did not pose a problem, since she had never rated a personal maid. Her early training in self-sufficiency had made her limber, double-jointed almost, and, arching her back and twisting her elbows behind her, she managed to reach every little hook and lacing-hole.
Her new clothes were certainly not new, and judging from their sobriety, possibly hand-me-downs from Arabella herself. A shift and petticoat of a much coarser linen than she was used to, and not a scrap of lace on them; a dark gown so decently cut that only the chin and hands protruded; a drab apron (she had to wrap the ties twice around her waist to take in the slack); and, to complete her toilette, some pins for her hair and a pleated bonnet which at first made her very self-conscious, since it was the sort governesses and spinsters wore. There was no glass, so she could not inspect herself. But she knew that if the cottagers’ children who had gaped at her yesterday were to see her today, they would take her for a domestic of no consequence. She squared her shoulders and headed for the dining room, where she expected to find Arabella triumphantly waiting.
13
CINDERSWEEP
The penance Lady Arabella had planned for her wayward niece was a practical one. She was a frugal housekeeper, and closely watched every penny spent on domestic help. She therefore extracted as much labor as possible from her servants, often going to the trouble of making extra work for them, just so that they would not have to sit around with nothing to do. Now the unexpected arrival of the disgraced Lucinda provided her with a golden opportunity: if the girl could be set to work, and proved adept at it, then Arabella might dispense with one of the maids and send her packing. The wages thus saved could be diverted into Arabella’s little nest-egg—a secret stash nurtured by just this kind of economy, which was the spinster’s insurance against a bleak future.
A description of the tasks awaiting poor Lucinda is hardly necessary. We have all had to do housework at one time or another, and the least said about it the better—the boredom, the drudgery, the despair of knowing it has to be done all over again the next day; not to mention the thick taste of ashes and dust, the sting of lye, the numbness, the rawness, the cramp. Bear in mind, however, that these tasks were doubly degrading and unpleasant in an age without running water, flushable toilets or disposable articles of personal hygiene.
To say that Lucinda tackled her work with good cheer, or that her pure young voice was heard ringing in happy song throughout Wriggin Hall, would be a lie. It was a terrible humiliation for her, a dreadful, dreadful comedown in a world where servants had always discreetly taken care of such matters, where “work” meant needlework and young ladies otherwise never lifted a finger except to pick up a comb or strum a lute.
Thomas the footman found Lucinda in the scullery, washing out slimy washbasins.
“Is it…? It must be!” said Thomas shyly. He had, of course, heard all about Lucinda’s arrival and her reassignment to menial labor.
Lucinda looked up. “Thomas! Oh, you’re Thomas, I remember you! Bessie told me to look for you…Oh, Thomas!”
She was in his startled but gratified arms, sobbing her little heart out.
“There, there!” he said, giving her fatherly pats on the back. At last he gingerly pried her arms off his neck and held her at arm’s length.
“Let me look at you! The last time old Thomas saw y
ou, you were just a little lass. How you’ve grown! A lady, a beautiful young lady!”
At that, the sobs redoubled. He decided to change the subject.
“And Bess—how is she? Do you have any word for me from her?”
Thomas and his Bess had kept up a correspondence all these years, as Lucinda well knew, since she had often acted as Bessie’s scribe.
“There wasn’t time to write it down. She sends her love, and hopes you’ll look after me here.”
“Of course I will,” promised Thomas. “I’ll see to it the other servants treat you proper, and do what I can”—he wasn’t sure if this was very much—”to make you feel at home. It’s a shame, a shame, a fine young lady like you, scrubbing basins…”
Lucinda cringed. Whenever she thought of the shameful thing that had happened to her, now made so public by her debasing punishment, she wished she could shrink into a ball, like a hedgehog, and roll away out of sight. Since early that morning, she had been casting about for ways to escape. But where would she go? She had no money, no friends, no relations to save her from this awful fate.
Except, perhaps, one.
“She also—she also said you might help me find my father.”
“Your father?” It took a while to sink in, as Thomas’ mind groped about for the ramifications of that label. “Ah,” he said at last, “You mean your real…father!”
Thomas’ reaction showed Lucinda how far-fetched the idea was. She went back to her scrubbing, her face closed.
“Of course, miss, er, Lucinda—that’s a notion,” Thomas added quickly. “Why not? Your father!” He laughed. “That would show them, wouldn’t it? Her ladyship, she’d have a fit…ah, I beg your pardon…”
Slipper Page 7