On the other hand, what else did I have to while away a bit of time? And, empty or not, dark or not, it was part of my new domain, whatever it was.
A ladder. I needed a ladder, or a big pair of steps. Tall as I was and low as the first floor ceilings were in Rose Lea, that hatch was annoyingly just out of reach. I paused, thinking, and then remembered the overgrown shed about twenty yards from the back door. If there was a ladder to be had, it would be there, I reasoned.
I reasoned correctly. It was there. In fact, they were there - two ladders and a pair of steps and, although they were a bit ancient looking, they all seemed sound enough. I did a quick guesstimation and decided upon the shorter ladder. It was longer than the stepladder, but lighter and short enough for me to manoeuvre up the stairs inside.
A torch. Aha. The kitchen cabinet. I remembered seeing the chunky old flashlight there earlier, but did the batteries still have anything in them? They did. Hallelujah! And almost new, to judge from the powerful beam the thing threw out. Up the stairs I went again, up the ladder, pushed against the hatch with my one free hand and lifted it easily, bringing down only a slight cloud of pale dust.
Pausing long enough to sneeze just the once, I ascended further and peered over the edge, raising the flashlight and aiming it into the darkened depths of the roof space. A floor! Yes, a floor: boards neatly nailed, a bit dusty, but solid looking. Gingerly I pulled myself up and sat with my legs still dangling down into the bedroom below and once again used the flashlight to good effect.
Oh-ho! What was this I saw? More trunks, similar to the ones down in the small bedroom, but possibly a bit older and there were more of them. I counted. Six in all, plus a suitcase that was so ancient looking that I wouldn't have been at all surprised to find that Noah had taken it with him on the Ark.
'Well, well,' I said, to the empty space. 'More treasures to explore.' I climbed right up, until I was standing on the floor itself and found I could do so without stooping, so long as I kept somewhere near the middle and away from the sloping eaves. I hesitated again, listening carefully. Not that I hate mice, well, not exactly, but anything that scuttles in the dark tends to make me twitch a bit and, as I've subsequently learned, it pays to be wary of anything that scuttles in the dark, particularly the things with only two legs.
But that can wait for the moment, which was more than I could do back then. I approached the nearest trunk, which also appeared to be the largest, set the torch down so that its light shone towards my quarry and reached for the lid, my pulse quickening. After all, I'd already realised, the dust up here showed that I was the first person to venture thus far in a good few years, so anything I found now was a bonus. Nothing in any of these trunks would be on the inventory, so who knew what surprises I was about to find?
Well, I didn't for one, that's for certain, but the surprises that were to follow from my latest discovery were nothing I could possibly have imagined, not even in my wildest dreams!
Early on the morning of the fifth day, the two maids appeared together and Angelina knew that her enforced solitude and the welcome respite it had brought, were over. She struggled up into a sitting position, the bedcovers drawn protectively over her knees and held tightly to her bosom, for she had now divested herself of her original underwear and wore only a thin shift to bed.
'Time to have you up and out of there, missy,' Meg announced brusquely. 'Master reckons you've had plenty of time to reflect and now it's time you started to learn how to behave properly around here.'
'I care little for what your master thinks,' Angelina replied defiantly, 'and furthermore, whilst he may be your master, he is certainly no master of mine and I shall tell him so in no uncertain terms!'
'Well, is that so?' Meg said. She placed her hands on her hips, threw back her head and laughed out loud. 'Well, I do believe I've heard everything now,' she continued, suddenly reverting to her normal stern composure. 'You listen to me, girlie, and you listen good.
'I may be just a servant and you may think yourself to be high and mighty and better'n the likes of me, but you're as much a chattel of Sir Gregory as me and Polly here is. Way I heard tell, your ma and pa died a good few years ago - out in India, wasn't it? - and now there's just you and you're a burden on the poor old fool who's had to bring you up since.
'The master made a contract with his lordship and that contract ain't gonna be broke, no matter what you say or do, so you'd better get used to that. In fact, you oughta count yourself lucky, getting yourself a fine man like Sir Gregory for a husband and you nothing but a slip of a thing. Huh, you ain't even got titties worth a fumble and a man likes a woman to have a decent pair of udders, I can tell you.'
Angelina stared at the maid, open-mouthed at her sheer impertinence, despite everything that had already happened. And, in that same moment, she realised the truth, saw through the disdain and the unbecoming arrogance. Sir Gregory Hacklebury was bedding this coarse creature, maidservant or not, and Meg was not going to stand idly by and see her favoured position eroded by the presence of his intended wife, whoever she might have been.
'Up now, missy,' Meg ordered. 'Up now, 'cos we have to get you dressed and the master has given precise instructions on that matter.'
'And if I refuse?' Angelina pouted stubbornly and Meg's dark eyes flashed.
'It'll happen all the same,' she retorted. She turned to her companion. 'Polly, go along to the yellow room and wheel the lacing frame in here. I think her ladyship needs a demonstration and the frame will settle her nonsense at the same time.' As the younger maid put down the small bundle she had been holding and turned back towards the door, Meg grinned maliciously.
'I was hoping you might still have a streak of rebelliousness in you,' she said softly. 'Now I see you have and that's going to make this all the more enjoyable - for me, anyway!'
Clothes!
Clothes, clothes and more clothes. Oh, how I love clothes, especially new ones. Well, these clothes weren't new, far from it - quite the opposite, in fact. At a guess, the newest item in that first trunk had to be at least sixty or seventy years old and most of the garments were much older even than that. Like I said, I know my history, so I knew a trunk load of Victorian costumes when I saw it. And, although these things were old in terms of when they were first made, they were actually like new and the colours, so far as I could tell by the light of my torch, seemed as strong and as vibrant as they must have been when they were first worn.
Not only that, I realised, as I held the first dress up, but these things had not belonged to Great Aunt Amelia, not unless she had shrunk considerably over the years. No, whoever had worn these things had been bigger and taller - someone nearer my size. Someone exactly my size, in fact.
'Triple wow!' I breathed. 'Dress up time!' My mum always reckoned I was a frustrated actress and, apart from a couple of roles in school drama productions, she was right. I was frustrated and I did like the way I could become a totally different character on stage. Costumes and make-up. Hide behind the mask. Put on the motley, or whatever.
I scrambled back down the ladder and dragged the bed across the room, placing it as nearly underneath the open hatch as I could, without fouling the ladder. The bed was unmade and stripped bare, but there was still a mattress and it was clean. Perfect. Up I went again and very soon it was raining clothes down onto that bed: dresses, shoes, boots, stockings, underclothes, corsets...
Corsets! Wow, and what corsets they were! Black, red, white, frothy and frilly, boned, laced - someone had definitely had a penchant for this sort of thing and someone had definitely spent a lot of money satisfying it. Whether the two someones were one and the same person, or whether they were two entirely separate someones, I had no idea. Furthermore, I didn't really care. I emptied the first trunk, working like a demented windmill, decided against moving on to the other trunks, on the basis that the bed below had now disappeared beneath an avalanche of silks, satins, velvets and lace, and descended to have a closer look at my new treasures.<
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I sorted through everything carefully and carried my favourite items through into the main bedroom, grinning like a Cheshire cat. This was going to be great fun.
'Oh, Mr Darcy!' Okay, these things were from a later period, but you get the idea. Besides, I was much too tall to make a decent Elizabeth Bennett. However, a grand Victorian duchess, that was a different matter.
I quickly stripped off my jeans and T-shirt, both of which were now smeared with dust streaks and much in need of a spell in the washing machine that I didn't yet have here at the cottage. Never mind, I told myself, they can wait. Besides, what girl in her right mind worries about a pair of old jeans when she can have something like this instead?
I picked up the first dress, held it up against myself and looked into the dressing table mirror. No, if I was going to do this I was going to do it properly. I rummaged through the underclothing I'd carried through, made my choices and then quickly removed my bra, pants and the rather threadbare socks I'd been wearing under my jeans.
Now, I have a pretty good figure, or so I've been told. I'm a fair bit taller than average for a female, but everything else is in proportion.
There was a sort of shift thing; a chemise, creamy satin, which I knew had to go on first. Taking a deep breath I raised it over my head and lowered it again, wriggling my arms through the shoulder straps and smoothing out the fabric as it fell about me. It sent a shiver up and down my spine and I almost...
No, we won't go there - not just yet, anyway.
But it did feel wonderful and I found it hard to believe that this delicate and flimsy confection had probably been made over a century before and almost as probably not worn since much after that time. I shivered again and picked up the red corset, with its black piping and black lace trimmings top and bottom. It was surprisingly heavy for something that looked so frivolous and I quickly realised that the boning and sturdy seaming that had been so cunningly concealed by the seamstress were largely responsible for this unexpected weight.
I had chosen the red corset particularly because the laces were at the front and the fastenings at the rear and it fitted loosely enough to begin with for me to swivel the thing around and tackle the steel hooks and eyes in front, easing them back around to my spine when I had finished with them. I wriggled my hips, adjusting the 'sit' of the thing and positioning the half cups beneath my boobs and then, still holding it in place with my left hand, reached for the dangling laces with my right.
There were actually two sets of laces. One started from the top, lacing downwards, the other from the bottom, lacing upwards, the ends of both sets meeting somewhere halfway. I gathered the ends carefully and gave them an experimental tug. Immediately the corset began to close around me and, after two or three more tugs, I found I could let go with my left hand and nothing tried to slip down.
'Excellent,' I said to myself. 'Could have been made for me.' Except it looked like the original owner had probably been a fair bit slimmer around the middle, for there was still quite a large gap between the two halves at the front. Unless...
No, surely not? Of course not. There was no way I could lace the thing that tightly, not without risking terminal asphyxiation, anyway. However, I was game to go as far as was comfortable - relatively speaking, that is - so I renewed my assault on the laces, this time with both hands.
The lacing frame was a quite simple construction, but it had been designed and built for strength and durability and the small wheels on its base made transporting it from room to room a simple matter, even for a slightly built female and Polly was certainly not that.
As she pushed it into the bedroom, Angelina saw that it comprised a plain base, constructed from several lengths of planking braced together, from which, at either end, rose a tubular metal pole some seven or eight feet in height. Closer inspection showed that these poles were, in fact, each comprised of two sections, the upper of which telescoped into the lower, with corresponding holes in each, together with a locking pin, enabling the overall height of the horizontal bar which hung between the two uprights to be adjusted up and down.
A few inches in from either end of this horizontal bar, which was perhaps five feet in length, dangled a leather cuff, both now hanging open and waiting, Angelina realised, for her wrists. Gamely, she managed to swing her legs out of bed and stood up, facing her would-be tormentors with as much dignity as she could muster.
'That... that beastly medieval torture instrument will not be necessary,' she said stiffly. 'You may do with me as you will and I shall not struggle. As you say, I am but a slip of a girl, so to do so would be totally futile, I can see.' Meg paused, regarded Angelina steadily and for a few seconds it appeared that she might accede to this request, but then a look of sheer darkness clouded across her eyes and the smile that spread upon her face was sheer malice.
'I think not, milady airs-and-graces,' she hissed. 'Whilst it would give me great delight to give you a sound hiding anyway, I think you will make a pretty sight squirming on this frame, so up you shall go and no further arguments. Now, will you remove that shift, or shall we tear it from you afterwards?'
Angelina felt her stomach knotting into a tight fist, but she retained sufficient resolve not to grant the insolent maid yet another victory.
'I am perfectly capable of removing my own garments,' she replied testily. She opened her mouth again, instinctively meaning to ask both maids to turn their backs, but just in the nick of time she realised that this would be a sign of weakness and just what the spiteful Meg, in particular, would be expecting. Instead, keeping her gaze all the while on the older maid, Angelina drew the shift off her shoulders and allowed it to slip down her body, stepping delicately out of its folds and confronting the women proudly, aware that already her nipples had hardened themselves into two small cones and had deepened in colour, so that they stood out starkly against the pale alabaster of her firm breasts.
'See, Polly?' Meg said gleefully. 'Two unripe little apples. Her teats are nigh on as big as the rest of her titties. Why, if it weren't for that little cunny I see winking at us, I'd swear she was a boy in skirts.' Despite herself, Angelina felt her cheeks beginning to burn, but she refused so much as to blink and stepped slowly forward. At the side of the frame she paused and then, without further hesitation, stepped up onto the timber staging and held her arms out straight before her.
'Come, then,' she said quietly to the two maids, who had momentarily, it seemed, been transfixed by her unexpected show of calm acceptance. 'String me up on your devilish contraption and do your worst with me.'
As I said before, I was pretty good at English and history, but the sciences, including physics, had never been my strong suit, so my knowledge of leverage and gears was - and still is - pretty basic. It therefore came as a bit of a surprise to me just what sort of results could be achieved from a traditional corset, where the arrangement of laces transfers even a fairly modest effort into quite a breathtaking force - quite literally.
Bit by bit the two halves of the amazing garment began to close in on each other and I quickly mastered the technique, going back over the two end sections to produce extra slack in the laces and then working my way back towards the centre each time, so that I quickly had quite a lot of excess lace ends dangling from my hands. Then, eventually, there was only the narrowest strip of satin-clad me visible between the two sections.
By this time I was starting to feel more than a bit breathless and, as I paused to consider, I realised that I was also becoming just a little light-headed and my heart was pounding furiously, in an effort to replace the oxygen that obviously wasn't getting through to those parts of me that needed it.
I took a deep breath, or at least, I tried to. It was absolutely impossible, the vicious boning trying to crush my ribs for my efforts. I let out a little grunt and tried again, this time concentrating on my upper lungs, the way I'd read that ladies in the past had managed to breathe whilst constrained so mercilessly. It had sounded so simple, when printed on
the page, but this was no historical novel and it took me several minutes to get the hang of it, while all the time I leaned against the wall for support.
At last, however, my pulse settled down to a mild canter and my head cleared again and yes, at that point I should have tied the laces off and considered it a good first try. In fact, if I'd had any sense I'd have loosened the damned corset, or maybe even removed it altogether. However, a combination of misplaced bravado and my innate hatred of being beaten by anything, let alone a mere piece of bloody clothing, led me into realms that would have been better avoided, at least for a while.
I stared down at myself; fascinated by the changes the corset had already wrought to me. I'd always been proud of my figure: slim without being skinny, my height giving me a certain advantage over shorter people, male and female alike, with only my slightly rounded bottom giving me any cause for complaint. What I now saw, however, was something that looked quite different.
My boobs - not large by any standards, but certainly large enough to content those boyfriends I'd let close enough to them - had now been lifted much higher and the half cups at the top of the corset seemed to be presenting them for display, or offering them for - well, I needn't draw you a picture here, I'm sure.
'Blimey!' I gasped, nearly sending myself cross-eyed with the effort of focusing. 'Nell bloody Gwynne!' I started laughing and immediately wished I hadn't, for the whalebone stays immediately reminded me that such a foundation was no laughing matter. I regained my composure and looked further down.
Was that my waist? Ye gods and little swimming things, where had it gone? That wasn't a waist; it was some sort of pipe stem, surely? And where had those hips sprung from? My bum might have been a bit prominent, but I'd never had hips that generous, surely?
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