by Finley Aaron
Ella sniffled. She’d heard all this story before, more or less, but never quite from that perspective. “So how did you get over it?”
“I stopped wanting what I couldn’t have. I married your father and settled down, and we’ve been quite happy.”
“But you at least got Arabian horses out of the deal. What am I supposed to do? What? Do you think I should marry a knight?”
“Perhaps.” Nora took her daughter’s hand where it rested on the horse’s back.
“I’m fourteen. I’m not ready to marry.”
“Sometimes,” Nora said as she squeezed Ella’s hand, “we’ve got to let go of what we think we want, and take joy in what’s been given to us. In that way, we often find that what we really want has been right in front of us all along.”
Ella drew in a deep breath. “What’s in front of me, is that I need to muck out the barn. And then…I guess I need to finish packing to go to Madame De Bouchard’s.”
“That’s my girl,” Nora squeezed Ella’s hand one last time before letting go.
“But mother?” Ella added.
“Yes?”
“I really wanted to go to tournament with Henry. I mean, I really, really wanted to.”
“I’m sorry, Ella. It’s time you learned to be a lady.”
*
Ella traveled to the De Bouchard estate the following afternoon. By horse, the ride would have taken under an hour, even at a moderate pace. But since Ella had her wardrobe to transport, and since Madame Augusta De Bouchard had strict standards regarding what was appropriate, the family traveled by carriage, which took a couple of hours.
Madame Augusta lived in a large house on a small estate not far from a village. The carriage splashed up the lane, which had once been smooth and wide, gracefully shaded by rows of trees, but had long before become overgrown, so that hardly any sunlight reached the road. The road was bumpy with potholes—some of them so deep with rainwater, they had tadpoles swimming in them—and the carriage lurched so badly, Ella asked to get out and walk.
This seemingly innocent question led to a long lecture from her mother about appropriate lady-like behavior. “Part of the reason I’ve chosen to send you to Madame De Bouchard is that she has very high standards. We’ve let you run nearly wild, and you need the kind of overcorrection Madame Augusta can provide. You need to learn to become a lady. Being a lady means acting like one, even when the carriage lurches.”
By the time Nora finished her long speech, Ella’s stomach had begun to lurch along with the carriage, and she feared she might vomit if she opened her mouth, so instead she nodded meekly and remained silent.
The carriage slowed as they rounded the last bend in the lane before reaching the house. Ella craned her neck to get a better view of the mansion, which sat glumly atop a hill, its thatch roof shaggy and moldering.
Ella could see that the house had once been lavish and ornate, but it was in dire need of nearly every possible attention. The roof almost certainly leaked. Most of the windows were shuttered closed, and those that were open held no glass. Everything that could be painted was in need of being painted again; stones had fallen from the chimneys and walls, and needed to be mortared back into place.
“Hmm,” Nora whispered, her face showing traces of disappointment in spite of her forced smile. “It’s not as impressive as it once was, but as we all know, Madame Augusta’s husband has not been well for several years. I’m sure with a bit of attention—”
The front door opened, and Nora fell silent.
As the carriage came to a full stop, a cluster of peacock feathers emerged near the top of the doorway, followed by a hat of bright peacock green (the feathers, it turned out, were stuck in the hat). Under the hat, a bony woman in a peacock-green gown stepped into what, moments before, had been a beam of sunshine.
But the clouds had covered the sun, and the woman walked, instead, through gloom.
She was followed by two other feathered hats, neither quite as impressive as the wide eyes that nodded from atop the peacock feathers. One wore a gown of yellow-green, the other brownish-rose.
Behind them came two more girls, these in simple cotton gowns. Whereas the first three held their heads high, so that anyone might see up their nostrils, the latter girls looked downward, barely lifting their eyes at the newcomers.
These five females formed a line from the door, halfway to the carriage.
Robert jumped down from the driver’s seat and came around to help Nora and Ella down. Under any other circumstances, neither Nora nor Ella would have wanted any help, but, as Nora had ardently explained to Ella ahead of time, it was only proper they have help.
Even if that help was completely unnecessary.
Nora had also given Ella instruction on proper introductions, which was why Ella knew to follow her mother half a step behind and a bit to her right, to offer a deep curtsy to Madame De Bouchard when introduced, to likewise curtsy (but not as deeply) to her two daughters, Agatha and Bertha (who were one and two years older than Ella), and to simply nod her head to the two ladies-in-waiting, Cecile and Helene, who would be her peers.
Then Madame Augusta invited them inside for tea. Once inside, she asked Ella to serve.
It was a test, obviously. One of many that she would be asked to perform. With the help of Cecile and Helene, Ella was able to get through without any major mishap, but Madame’s eyes were on her the entire time, her mouth a sneer so ingrained, the woman’s wrinkles showed the expression even when her face was at rest.
Once Ella had served, Augusta asked her to sit—then proceeded to point out every possible detail—from the fold of the napkins to spilt grains of sugar—that Ella had done wrong.
Augusta’s message was clear: Ella was not yet a lady, and the Madame knew what she needed to do to become one.
The rest of their conversation was very nearly as painful, and I’d give it all to you word-for-word, but I won’t repeat such hogwash humblebrag, nor would anyone care to read it.
When tea was over Ella was told to clean up with help from Cecile and Helene. She fled to the kitchen, relieved to be away from the woman and her ridiculous standards.
“What does it matter which way the napkins land on people’s laps?” Ella asked the other two girls in a whisper.
Rather than sympathizing with her, or giggling as she might have hoped, Ella got lectures from them on the proper way, along with horror stories of the times they got things wrong. In their own ways, the girls were trying to warn her—to protect her from making the same mistakes they’d made before.
But their words carried another message, one they hadn’t intended. They told Ella that she didn’t belong there—in that house, or in that world. She hadn’t wanted to come, but now, she wanted even more desperately to leave.
And yet, when she finished in the kitchen and returned to the others, she found her parents had already gone.
“They’ve left without saying goodbye?” Ella wondered aloud, hurt and mystified, because her parents had never parted ways with her without hugs and assurances, before.
“I thought it best,” Augusta said briskly. “Now, your luggage is waiting in the drive. Bring it in and we’ll have a look.”
Ella was confused by the Madame’s instructions, but since the woman had already shown herself to be impatient and demanding, Ella hurried to obey. She carried the bags inside.
“Set them down,” Augusta ordered.
Ella began to lower them onto the table.
“Not there! You’ll scratch the wood!”
Ella bent down to place them instead on the floor.
“Not on the floor—you’ll get everything filthy. Have you no standards? What kind of idiot have they sent me? The chairs are fine, just set them down!”
Ella placed the bags on chairs, still puzzled by what this was all about. She’d traveled extensively in various cultures, and stayed at inns across two continents, so she understood that people did things differently everywhere. She’
d expected to be asked to take the bags to her room to unpack, but supposed Madame De Bouchard wanted to see what she had for clothes, perhaps so she could advise her in the future about what would be most appropriate to wear for upcoming occasions.
Why Agatha and Bertha had to watch, Ella wasn’t sure.
But when Madame had her remove her dresses one-by-one from the bags, and hold them up for all to see, the girls inspected them, criticized them, and then began placing them in two different piles on the table.
This was also rather confusing, as the two piles held similar items of clothing, and each girl claimed a pile. They became positively irate with one another when Ella produced a pink gown. Both Agatha and Bertha wanted it for her own pile.
It was about that time Ella began to wonder what the girls were really doing.
Were they claiming her clothes? For themselves?
It seemed an absurd idea. She was slimmer than either of them, and the dresses would have to be taken out to fit (but then, Augusta had inspected the inner seams, and approved heartily of the extra fabric inside). Still, the more the girls talked, the more Ella became convinced the De Bouchard daughters intended to keep all her clothes.
When the bags were empty of all but her simple cotton work dresses, Madame Augusta told Ella to stop. “Take Agatha’s clothes to her suite, and Bertha’s to hers.”
“But, they’re my dresses,” Ella protested. “My mother made them for—”
Before Ella could finish her sentence, Madame Augusta struck her with a slap across her cheek, hitting her with such force, she heard ringing in her ears.
Through the ringing, Augusta’s voice carried like the cry of a demon. “Insolent child! Never question what you are told! Take the dresses to the girls’ suites, and then you may muck out the horse stalls!”
Tears stung Ella’s eyes, but she blinked them back, too proud to let them fall.
She’d done nothing wrong. The dresses were hers—her mother had made them to fit her exactly. But what could she do? Even if she fled to the stables, stole a horse, and rode home, she’d only bring dishonor to the family, and likely be sent back to apologize.
Perhaps it was a test. Surely her clothes would be returned to her once she proved herself to be an obedient handmaid.
Ella scooped up the first pile of dresses.
“Those are mine,” Agatha said, glaring at her with icy eyes. “Bring them to my room. This way.”
Ella followed, and heard Madame Augusta issuing orders to Cecile and Helene to follow her up, to put the clothes away properly.
When Ella returned downstairs, she scooped up the other pile, and carried them to Bertha’s room.
Then she went back down for the rest of her things, hurrying out of fear that Madame might do something terrible, and take them away from her, too.
Indeed, when she reached the room, Augusta held one of the dresses near the window. She appeared to be inspecting the stitching.
“What do you want?” Madame screeched when Ella entered the room.
“I came to take my things to my room,” Ella replied in a voice she hoped would not sound insolent, and added a deep curtsy, partly for effect, and partly because Madame Augusta stood so rigidly tall, laced as she was in a tight corset, Ella half expected she wouldn’t be able to bend over to slap her, as long as she herself stayed low.
“Your room is in the attic. Top floor. You’ll share the space with Cecile and Helene.”
Ella started to turn toward her bags, but Madame nearly screamed.
“Don’t turn away from me when I’m speaking!”
Ella turned back promptly, and bowed again for good measure. “Yes, Madame.”
“Go muck out the stables. The cows are also in need of milking, and if you see anything else that needs done, do it. Then you may take your things upstairs.”
“Yes, Madame.” Ella curtsied again, then hesitated, unsure if she was actually dismissed, or if she was going to be screamed at again if she stepped away.
“What are you waiting for?” Madame Augusta screeched. “Go! Get on.”
And as Ella fled the room, she heard Augusta mutter, “Idiot.”
Chapter Nine
Ella wasn’t exactly sure where to find the De Bouchard stables, but earlier, when she had been in the kitchen, at the back of the house, she’d noticed a door that led outside. Now she went through the door.
The day was still cloudy, and getting on toward evening. The area had seen rain several times in recent days, and the rear gardens, where they weren’t overgrown with weeds, were mostly mud and puddles.
Since she was still wearing her new visiting dress, and since she doubted there was any way she could reach the barn without getting muddy (not to mention mucking out the barn without being soiled by muck) she took off her outer dress and draped it across the back of a chair in the kitchen. Fashions of the day being what they were, she still had on an under-layer of less formal clothing, which would not be so terribly spoilt by mud and muck.
There were several pairs of wooden overshoes by the back door, all of them crusted with mud already. Ella’s feet were too small to stay in any of them when she removed her leather slippers, so she kept the slippers on, shoved her feet in the overshoes, and hurried back outside to see what she would find.
As Ella followed the pathway through the weed-filled garden, the plants began to thin, until Ella could see past them to the outbuildings.
There was a chicken coop nearest the house, though Ella didn’t see any chickens near it. She’d passed a few on her walk through the garden. Those animals had been scrawny, their feathers patchy—which meant they were either molting, or infested with lice or mites. This saddened Ella because, though horses were her favorite animal, she’d always enjoyed the chickens at Caprese, and had given them all pet names.
The chickens at Caprese were all fat and healthy, but these clearly had been neglected.
Beyond the chicken house, down the muddy path, sat a much bigger building, its roof in even poorer repair than those of the house and chicken coop. She might have thought the building abandoned, but since there weren’t any other buildings in sight, and it was the largest, and shaped like most other barns, Ella was forced to assume she’d find the stables inside.
She began to approach the building, picking her way around the soupiest puddles of mud, when she heard growling, and looked over to see a large dog lying on a knob of grass. He was watching her, head low, baring his teeth, growling.
“It’s fine,” she informed the dog. “I’m going to the barn. I’m okay. Stay.”
Up until the moment she said “Stay,” the dog had been growling and baring his teeth. But with that word, the dog whimpered and ducked his head.
Ella hurried past, reaching the barn and pulling the heavy door open carefully, as it wobbled unsteadily on aged hinges.
The smell hit her first. She was used to barn smells—the sweet scent of hay, the smells of horses and their manure. But this barn smelt heavily of manure and mold. To her surprise, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness inside, she saw large shapes moving inside.
“What are you doing in here today?” She asked as she approached the nearest horse—or, more accurately, the horse approached her. “Shouldn’t you be out to pasture? Has no one let you out?”
The mare whinnied and nodded her head, as though in answer to Ella’s question. Five more horses and a couple of cows followed the first animal outside, and Ella was surprised by how thin the horses looked. At least two of them had open wounds that needed attention, and all of them had overgrown hooves. The sight of them nearly broke her horse-loving heart.
“I’m not sure what Madame De Bouchard is going to teach me, but I think there are a few lessons I could teach her,” Ella said to herself as the animals went past, clearly eager to find a place to graze.
Ella found a pitchfork and the muck wagon. Both were next to a large pile of old muck, which had clearly been rained on, possibly several times, since it was du
mped there—a strong indicator that no one had mucked the stalls in at least a day or two.
Not that Ella was surprised at all by that point.
Her experience inside the barn confirmed her suspicions. The straw—what there was of it—was filthy.
The only slightly-positive discovery was that there was, at least, a trough of water inside, though what little water was left was mostly a skin of algae.
Given the smell, Ella decided to muck the stalls first, then deal with the water trough.
She scooped the dirty straw quickly, knowing there were more tasks ahead of her than she had hours of daylight left to complete. When she finally got all of the dirty straw removed, the only “fresh” straw she could find was up in the loft, under gaps and holes in the roof, so that it was soaking wet and moldy. She could see a few spots where others had tried to pull out the least moldy, not-as-wet straw, but even that was far worse than anything she ever would have considered using as bedding for her horses at home.
This left her in a quandary. The project had already taken longer than the same task would have taken her at Caprese, and she feared Madame Augusta would be furious if she took too long. But there was no easy way around it. She needed to put fresh straw in the horse stalls—fresh, not moldy.
While Ella was rooting in the loft amongst the straw, I had been flying around investigating things, and so I was the one who first spotted the scythe. Dark as the barn was, in order to see anything, I had turned up my glow and let myself grow to about the size of an apple.
Fairies are useful for more things than just magic and mischief.
The scythe was hanging on the barn wall among a few other tools. I quickly flew back to Ella. “There’s a scythe on the wall. You could cut straw,” I told her.
Ella didn’t hesitate, but clambered back down from the loft, followed my light to the scythe, took it down, and inspected it.