The water swirling, frigid, choking her–
Flashing lightning, the silhouette of the Blessed Angeline against a night-black sky, chilled iron grip around her biceps–
Bright green light, shadowy floating figures moving too fast–
“Aah!” Sarai burst up out of the water, scrabbling for the edge of the pool and taking great heaving breaths. The tranquil water of the bathing tub lapped at her breasts and back as she splashed to the shallower edge and leaned on the side. Something was missing, something lodged beyond the edge of her mind. She couldn’t quite grasp it, and she shuddered, suddenly cold despite the warm water.
“Are you all right?” asked a kind voice, and Sarai rubbed a hand over her eyes, then looked up at an attendant standing above her, blonde brows furrowed above kind blue eyes.
“Yes,” Sarai croaked, voice hoarse, and she cleared her throat. “Yes,” she tried again. “I’m fine, thank you. Just–water in my nose, that’s all.”
The attendant stared at her a moment longer, attention drifting to her scraped collarbone and the large bruises forming on her hip and upper arm, and her frown softened. “Let me know if you need anything, Miss,” she said, and Sarai swallowed and nodded, hating herself for letting the assumption go unchallenged but glad for the end of the awkward conversation.
She climbed from the tub, brushing her hair out and drying off before tugging the gown she’d stolen over her body. Her undergarments weren’t a total loss, now that she’d rinsed them and let them sit on the drying rack, but she winced at the state of her shoes, the leather salt-speckled and stained. They’d have to do, though. She wasn’t planning on visiting the castle barefoot. She slid them on her feet and headed up the hill.
AFTER MONTHS AT sea in cramped and dingy quarters, the castle, even the back passages and servant corridors, was nearly more splendor than Sarai could take. She stayed close to the walls as the servant girl who’d greeted her suspiciously at the door to the kitchens led her to Gretchen’s chamber, calling “Miss? You have a visitor.”
Sarai took a moment to wonder at the formal address as a familiar voice called from inside asking them to enter. As the door swung open, Gretchen looked up from her sewing and gasped when she saw Sarai. She leapt from her stool and threw her arms around her. “Sarai! Where have you been? Oh, we’ve been so worried! I thought you’d been kidnapped, thought you were dead somewhere!”
“I’m not dead, Gretchen, I promise,” said Sarai, laughing. “I’ve been away, that’s all.”
“Away?” Gretchen’s voice was muffled in her shoulder. “For months? With no word?”
Sarai grinned, the tension of the last few hours easing at the feel of her cousin’s arms holding her tightly. “Remember how I always used to watch the boats?”
“Yes.” Gretchen pulled back, her hands staying gently on Sarai’s shoulders. “You always threatened to jump aboard and never come back.” She narrowed her eyes. “Dessie, thank you, you may go.” The girl who’d brought Sarai up bowed and left, closing the door behind her. “Sarai.”
“Yes?”
“Please tell me you didn’t. Please tell me you didn’t run off, leaving us all to worry, because you wanted to have an adventure.”
Sarai sighed. “Not just an adventure, Gretchen. I was so trapped here, so hemmed in by everything. I needed to get away from it all. From Father, from all of it.”
“And you couldn’t have left a note? Let us know you were all right?”
“I thought you’d all guess. After Father and I fought—”
“You fought?”
Sarai stared at Gretchen. “Yes. The day before I left. He didn’t tell you? I thought he’d let everyone know I wasn’t his daughter anymore, in his mind. I told him I wasn’t taking over the farm, that I wouldn’t sit home minding the pigs while everyone else my age sought their fortunes here in the city.”
Gretchen’s brow furrowed. “No, Sarai, he didn’t tell us anything. If he had, then yes, we would have guessed where you’d gone. You know he doesn’t like to talk to us, to any of Auntie Marian’s family. When I didn’t hear from you, I went out to see him and all he would tell me is you were gone, nothing more. I had to drag even that much out of him. We had no idea where you’d disappeared to, and no clues to figure it out.”
“So you really thought I was dead?” Sarai’s voice was softer now, and she stepped closer to her cousin. “I’m sorry, Gretchen. I should have written, should have let you know what I was planning, but it all happened so fast. I thought he’d tell you I was going to find a ship, an adventure. That’s what I told him.”
Gretchen let out a watery chuckle. “I’m glad you’re not dead, sweetie. And now I understand why Uncle wasn’t as worried as the rest of us. He seemed angry, not scared, which worried us even more, especially when he wouldn’t talk about it.”
“His damned pride,” said Sarai. “He didn’t want you all to know he lost his temper, and he can’t control his own family. He doesn’t change. Well, I’m not going back to the village. That’s for certain. Not after everything I’ve seen.”
“How did you get a job on a ship, anyway?” asked Gretchen. “I’ve never heard of a woman sailor.”
Sarai looked away, fighting a smile.
“You dressed as a man, didn’t you? Just like those old stories we used to read.” Gretchen shook her head, but there was an undertone of admiration in the tilt of her head. “Cousin, you’ve always been the bold one.” She stepped back, taking in Sarai’s appearance, and her smile faded. “So why have you come back? What happened? You’re all bruised—did they find out about you?”
Sarai shook her head, her own good humor fading as well. “No. The ship—it was lost.”
Gretchen gasped. “The storm last week? You’ve been on your own since then?”
“A week?” Sarai shook her head. “No, only a day or so ago, yesterday morning.” She looked out the window at the clear blue sky and the dry streets below, no sign of mud between the stones. “We weren’t more than twenty miles out to sea. It must have been a different storm.”
“Were you far from land? It’s been clear for days, Sarai. Nothing but a few passing clouds. Not even a shower.”
“Nothing? But we were due back today, and we were just off the coast,” said Sarai, shaking her head. “I don’t understand.”
Gretchen sighed. “It doesn’t matter, sweetie. You’re safe. That’s the important part.”
Something tickled the back of Sarai’s mind, something not quite right, but she brushed it aside. “The rest of my crew—there’s been no word of the wreck, has there? No other sailors washing ashore? No news of the Blessed Angeline’s fate?”
Gretchen shook her head. “I’m sorry. Nothing.” She reached out and took Sarai’s hand, squeezing it. “Look,” said Gretchen, pointing at the window. “I can see the edge of the water. If I’d known you were out there, I would have been watching every day.” They sat in silence for a moment, looking at the tiny sliver of ocean visible from Gretchen’s window. Nearly glass-smooth, small specks of ships were floating gently on the blue.
“You’ve found a nice place for yourself,” said Sarai, swallowing hard and fighting back the pressure behind her eyes and desperate to change the subject as images of the crashing surf and cracking lightning flashed through her mind. “You’re more than a kitchen maid now.”
“I’m an assistant handmaid,” said Gretchen proudly. “I handle napkins, and whatever the Queen’s handmaids require of me.”
“That’s the other reason I’m here,” said Sarai, shifting awkwardly.
Gretchen’s brows drew together, but she waited for Sarai to continue.
“My ship is gone, and I can’t go back to the farm, Gretchen. You know what my father will do. If he ever speaks to me again, it will be to marry me off and trap me in the pigpen for the rest of my life. You said if I ever needed a recommendation—”
Gretchen was already shaking her head, and Sarai tried not to let her disappointment
show on her face as Gretchen took her hand and tried to explain.
“I’m sorry, cousin,” said Gretchen, not meeting Sarai’s eyes. “I know you’re in a hard place. But my position here isn’t as secure as I’d like it to be, and with you having been missing so long, well–”
“It raises eyebrows,” finished Sarai, the beginnings of a headache forming over her left eye, behind the tears she was holding back. She felt them pressing forward harder than ever, hot and salty as the sea she might never sail again. “I see.”
“It’s the new chamberlain,” pleaded Gretchen. “Please, I wish I could help, but he’s so firm on virtue that any hint of impropriety can get a girl tossed into the streets.” She stared at Sarai pleadingly and Sarai sighed.
“It’s all right. I understand. You can’t risk it.”
Gretchen closed her eyes, throat bobbing. “It’s not that I don’t want to—”
“I know.”
“But—” Gretchen stopped and turned to the window, shoulders tense, and stood silent for a few moments, then let out an explosive sigh. “No.”
“No what?”
“No. You’re my cousin. You’re family going through a rough time. I’m not throwing you out in the cold. What would my mother think?” She shook her head. “Come on.”
Sarai followed Gretchen into the back of the chamber to her chest of clothing. They’d always been approximately the same size, both stout and strong, though months of hard labor had turned some of Sarai’s curves to muscle. Gretchen’s time in the laundry rooms and the kitchen had given her broader shoulders and strong arms, thicker than Sarai’s, but they were close enough that, when Sarai pulled one of Gretchen’s gowns over her head, it fit her comfortably. Gretchen also found her a pair of neatly embroidered slippers and a small pile of underthings, then kissed her cheek.
“I’ll find you something to do, but in the meantime, try these. I’ve lingered too long here, and I need to get back to my duties, but wait here for me, please? Don’t disappear again, sweetie. We’re going to figure this out.”
“I’ll be here,” Sarai promised, clutching the clothes to her chest as Gretchen backed out of the room and closed the door. “I promise.”
In the small, quiet room, Sarai took the first deep breath she’d managed since she woke up on the beach.
She looked around the room with interest, the distraction of Gretchen gone. Sarai had always been curious about the palace, though not curious enough to take Gretchen up on her offer until now. The chamber was small but airy, the large window letting in a broad sweep of sunlight on the linens of the bed and the clean, smooth wood of the floor. Gretchen had a little table beside the bed with a pile of books and a tiny vase of flowers, and on the wall hung an embroidery Sarai remembered from Gretchen’s childhood home. She lay back on the bed and breathed in the scent of dry air and peonies.
She woke to quiet voices just outside the door, Gretchen’s and one she didn’t recognize. She sat up, pushing off the blanket someone had tucked around her as she slept, and swung her legs off the bed to stand.
“—she’s my cousin from one of the villages inland,” Gretchen was saying. “I know you were looking for a new maid—”
“Does she have any experience?” asked the other woman. “This isn’t a charity, Miss Farmer.”
“Oh, yes,” said Gretchen, and Sarai winced behind the door. “She worked for a merchant woman back in her village, but when the woman passed away, her sons had their own maids.”
“Well.” The woman didn’t sound convinced. “I’ll give her a chance. But I’m taking your word for her work ethic, Gretchen. Make sure she doesn’t embarrass us both. Bring her to me tomorrow morning, and we’ll find her a place.”
“Oh, thank you, Ma’am!” gushed Gretchen, and footsteps rang out through the door. It opened a moment later and Gretchen entered. She grinned at Sarai. “Are you ready to be a ladies’ maid?”
Sarai smiled weakly. “I guess I am.” She followed Gretchen from the room into the hallway. “So you like it here?”
“It’s a good position,” said Gretchen. “And it pays well.” She glanced out a window into the stable yard below. “And it certainly lets me meet new people.” She smiled up at Sarai. “I haven’t told Mother or anyone, but I’m engaged to be married next year.”
Sarai gasped. “Gretchen, that’s wonderful! And he’s kind to you?”
She nodded. “But we can’t afford our own land, not yet. His name is Rory, and he wants to build a farm out near his parents, to the north of the city.”
“You’d go back to farming for him?”
“It’ll be different with me in charge.” Her smile turned mischievous. “And if your father ever comes to visit us, I’m pushing him in the pigpen myself.”
SARAI STARTED AS a general maid. She didn’t last long there: she did her best, but she was hopeless with a broom and needle. Then Gretchen sent her to the nursery to help with the other servants’ children, but a day of toddlers’ screams and she was begging for mercy. The stables didn’t work out, nor did the kitchens, where the windowless heat left Sarai breathless and panicky in hours. By six weeks in, both Gretchen’s patience and that of her boss, Agatha, had begun to run thin. They finally found her a job in the laundry, scrubbing sheets and tablecloths and mopping up the water spilling from the huge tubs on to the flagstones. If she closed her eyes and swayed a little, the wet stone was almost like the deck of a ship, the creaking of washboards the mast as the sails filled, the wet, boiling air nearly sea breeze. She’d managed over a month there, with just occasional moments of unexpected, unexplained terror.
“Toss me that soap, would you?” called Marian, a girl a few years younger than Sarai. “You look like you’ve never done laundry before.”
“Not this much,” said Sarai, opening her eyes and grabbing a chunk of chalky white soap. “This is ridiculous. How can any group of people need this many sheets?”
Marian smiled. “The king likes his sheets changed every day.”
“Every day?” Sarai goggled. “He sleeps on them once?”
“Once,” she confirmed. “The queen is less fussy. She changes them twice a week.”
“Still,” said Sarai. “Wait, they have separate rooms?”
“All nobles do.” Marian dipped the soap in the tub and began attacking a particularly ground-in tablecloth stain. “It’s more proper, they say.”
“How do they ever make more nobles?” asked Sarai.
Marian grinned. “They’re going to be too busy throwing you out to try if you don’t get scrubbing.”
Sarai groaned under her breath and plunged her hands back into the swirling soapy water. She was trying—she really was, but the work was miserable. She’d never worked this hard, not on the ship, not on her father’s farm. She even found herself longing for the pigs when the smell of lye started burning her nose. At least there she’d be outside, not stuck where the air was stale and hot and the ceiling was a hundred tons of granite.
She made it through another full tub of sheets, passing them off to Rosie for drying, before her shift finally ended, and she could stumble back up the stairs to Gretchen’s room. She ached all over: her knuckles cracked from the hot water, her back aching from bending over the tubs, and her shoulders throbbing from scrubbing. All she wanted was to collapse on her pallet beside Gretchen’s bed and sleep until she had to do it all over again.
The room was blessedly empty when she pushed open the door, and she stumbled around the bed to her chest of possessions under the window. As she knelt to pull off her dress and fold it in the small pile inside, her gaze caught on the thin sliver of blue she could see through the glass. Gretchen had been so proud to have a real glass window, and to have one with the tiniest bit of ocean view—though more a harbor view, the edge of the brackish place where the river met the sea—and she and Sarai spent hours sitting beside it reading, chatting, or just staring, and it always sparked complicated feelings in Sarai: longing and love and fear all mu
ddled together.
Sarai shifted, closing the trunk and sinking down to sit on it and look. The water was barely there, and if she hadn’t had it pointed out to her she might not have even noticed it. But today with the bright sunlight cutting across the water and the breeze rustling the tall grass along the docks, that corner of view was all she wanted to see. She pressed her face to the glass, trying to widen the view, and a white sail appeared over the sparkling water. Someone was out there, right now, about to set sail. Sarai would give anything to be there rather than where she was. This stone room, these thick walls, the silence of the air outside rather than the shush and pound of waves against wood: she couldn’t stand it. The solid, square room pressed in on her from all sides, suffocating her, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe, her lungs filling with something other than air, and she panted, trying to catch her breath as the stone shoved itself closer—
“Hey, Sarai!” Hands grabbed for her shoulders and tugged her back, pushing her down until she stumbled and sat on the edge of the bed. Her head was pressed between her knees, and she swallowed hard and forced herself to hold her breath for a count of five before breathing, cupping her hands over her face. “Hey, sweetie, are you all right?” asked Gretchen, sitting beside her on the bed. “Can I get you something?”
Sarai didn’t answer, focusing on steadying herself. The roaring in her ears was fading slowly, rushing out like the waves as the tide went out. Gretchen sighed and rubbed her back in slow, soothing strokes.
“This isn’t getting better,” Gretchen observed. “Your life here, I mean. I thought it would as you learned to get used to it, but it hasn’t. I don’t know what to do.”
“Me neither,” whispered Sarai. “Gretchen, what do I do? I can’t keep doing this. I can’t stay here in this box. I’m sorry.”
“I know you can’t, love.”
Sarai sat up, pulling a knee up onto the bed to turn and face Gretchen. “But you risked your job for me. I can’t abandon you.”
Gretchen shrugged. “I’ll be fine. It’s not abandoning me if you tell me you’re leaving. And you’ve been here three months. It’s longer than a lot of girls last.”
Surface Tension Page 2