by Megan Hart
“I’m not needed to do my job, at the moment, and you look as though you could use some help.”
“The master might be angry, him,” Rossi replied.
Quilla realized something. “Rossi, are you frightened of me?”
Rossi’s laugh was so false it made Quilla’s head hurt. “Me? Afraid of you? No!”
The way she dusted furiously and wouldn’t look at Quilla told a different story. “Rossi. Look at me.”
The younger girl did, reluctantly. “Aye, mistress.”
“You can call me Quilla. I’m not your superior, you know.”
“You’re the master’s own Handmaiden. I’m only a cleaning girl, me.”
Quilla couldn’t deny the truth of that, so she sighed. “Are you afraid I’ll tell the master you haven’t been keeping up with your work?”
Rossi shook her head. A tall girl with skin the color of tea with cream, her dark ringlets piled high beneath her cap, she could easily have worn a ball gown instead of an apron. ’Twas her demeanor, not her features, that set her class.
Quilla sighed again. “Then what?”
“I don’t want to dishonor you, me.”
The words had been murmured so low Quilla had to strain to hear them. “Your pardon?”
“Lolly says Handmaidens is special, and should be treated special. Lolly says you’re to bring about the return of the Holy Family, and we ought not dirty you with our base natures. Lolly says you’re like unto an angel, Lolly says.”
As Quilla had never even passed a word with Lolly, this seemed to be a broad assumption on her part, but Quilla nodded anyway. “Think you angels dare not dirty their hands with common chores?”
Rossi looked confused. “Nay, mistress.”
“Think you the Invisible Mother didn’t care for her family and house?”
This seemed to give the maid pause. “I supposed she had servants to do it for her. Like our lady Mistress Delessan does.”
Quilla laughed. “No. Kedalya had no servants. She’d have picked up a dustcloth, too, if she’d had dusting to do. She was a woman before she bore Sinder’s son, and a woman after, even though she had the love of a god.”
“Ain’t that always the way it goes?” Rossi smiled. “We’s women first, no matter who loves us or what they gives us.”
Truer words had never been spoken. “Women we begin and women we end.”
“You ain’t like we thought you’d be.”
“I rarely am, Rossi.”
Rossi held out the dustcloth. “If you really want to help—”
Quilla took it. “I’d rather have busy hands than idle ones.”
Rossi laughed and got back to work with her feather duster. “No fear of idle hands around this place, Quilla Caden. Plenty of work to be done.”
So they got to it, and Rossi talked while Quilla listened. Rossi spoke of her childhood, which had begun far away, and how she’d come here in the back of a gypsy wagon and was left behind when her family moved on and she decided life on the road was no longer for her.
“I liked the big house, me,” she told Quilla with eyes gleaming at the memory. “I liked the hot water for baths, me. And the clean clothes. I liked the never-hungry bellies, me.”
“I don’t blame you for that. I also like hot baths and a full stomach.”
Rossi lifted a large vase so Quilla could dust beneath it. “I had ten brothers. I’d never have been married off. Too many men thinking they knew best what to do for me.”
Rossi had been at Glad Tidings for two years now, she said, and she didn’t intend on ever leaving. “I loves it here, me.”
From where the pang came, Quilla wasn’t certain, only that it hit her right in the breastbone and made her put a hand there, startled at the emotion. What would it be like, to have a home? A place you loved so much you never wished to leave?
She had her parents’ home, of course, to which she could always return and be welcomed with open arms. Yet on the occasions she did return, her childhood room and the narrow bed both seemed too small to contain the woman she’d become. Once upon a time she’d skipped without thought along the halls of her parents’ home, but now she walked them carefully as a guest.
When she returned to the Order between assignments, she had a private room. A cell, bare and sparse, though comfortable enough. She had a place to keep her clothes and what personal possessions she might have, of which there were necessarily few. She walked those halls with more comfort than she did those at her childhood home, and felt less a guest, but even so, ’twas not home in the way Rossi thought of Glad Tidings.
Quilla nodded and smiled at all the right places in Rossi’s conversation, but her thoughts spiraled around this sudden discontent. A home, a house, a place to call her own, with people in it who loved her, and not what she could do for them or what she meant to them. A place where she need not fear being cast out for not being what she was expected to be, because she was accepted as she was.
Disturbed, she paused in plumping the cushions on the floral-patterned settee. Rossi, despite her earlier reticence, continued chattering, not noticing Quilla’s sudden silence.
In all her years of Service, Quilla had never minded moving on. She’d never regretted, nor looked back with anything but fondness on the patrons whose lives she’d touched, no matter how briefly. She’d done her job the best she could, satisfied with the knowledge she was doing her part in filling Sinder’s Quiver.
Never had she thought beyond that. Not until today. Not until this place . . . and this patron.
“You keep squeezing it that way, it won’t fit back on the settee.”
“Your pardon?” Quilla looked up, realizing she still clutched the pillow. She looked down and softened her grip. “Oh. Mercy. I was distracted.”
Rossi’s merry laugh was like the burble of a spring-running creek. “Ah, I talk too much, me. Florentine does say so, all the time.”
Quilla smiled and put the pillow back and smoothed the fabric. “No, your company is most pleasant. Don’t let Florentine tell you otherwise.”
Rossi tossed her hair and looked coy. “Oh, I know how to work that one, me.”
What exactly she meant by that, Quilla had no time to speculate, for the pounding of feet in the hall outside made them both turn. In the next instant, the parlor door flew open, and a small figure with bright golden hair burst through it, mouth chattering.
“And there were monkis, on leashes,” he was saying. “And Uncle said he would buy one for me if I was a good lad and did my studies, but I said no, I would rather have a dragon.”
“Indeed,” came a familiar, deep voice, and Gabriel followed his son into the room.
Quilla paused, but Rossi froze. The maid ducked her head and curtsyed, bobbing up and down with so stiff a posture Quilla was afraid the lass was going to hurt herself. Quilla straightened her back and smoothed her hair off her face.
Gabriel’s eyes flickered over her, then to the maid, but he said nothing. The next figure through the door was the Mistress Saradin, who swept inside like a queen entering her court. Her attire had looked spectacular from a distance. This close, Quilla could see how fine it truly was. Not one part of Saradin’s gown, not the buttons nor the thread, was of common material. She wore it with the same casual air she might wear a flaxen slop dress—but only, perhaps, because she saw no reason to flaunt it at the moment.
This was clearly because she did not notice she and her husband were not alone in the room with their son. Her eyes slid over Rossi and Quilla as though they were part of the furnishings. Rossi looked relieved. Quilla caught Gabriel’s eye. Did the mistress not know he had a Handmaiden? Or did she not care?
“Dane, love, a dragon would take up far too much space, and can’t be house-trained.” Saradin’s voice was like the chirping of a bird. Dainty and bright, like her hair and her dress. She settled into a chair by the window and patted her lap for the boy to sit, but he ignored the gesture and bounced up and down. “A monki would be a fa
r better pet.”
“Dragons are more fun because if you yank their tails, they fall off and grow another one!”
Saradin chuckled. “ ’Tis up to your father, then.”
Dane wiggled around. “Papa! May I have a dragon, please?”
Gabriel tore his eyes from Quilla. “No, Dane.”
This started a round of protests so violent Quilla winced. Saradin laughed and pouted toward her husband. Gabriel looked pained. Rossi had begun easing out of the room, her fingers on Quilla’s sleeve encouraging her to follow, but Quilla wanted to see how her patron handled his son. She could not imagine he would suffer such impertinence.
“Oh, Gabriel. Tell the lad he can have a dragon.”
And Quilla learned something new about her patron, something she would not have guessed had she not seen him struggle so mightily. No matter what his wife had done, and no matter how ill-behaved his son, Gabriel Delessan carried an enormous burden of guilt. Quilla saw it in his eyes when he looked at the pair of them, two golden heads so much alike, two sets of merry bright eyes. Guilt forced him into indulgence . . . and he hated it.
“Should Jericho be able to find him a dragon—”
Dane whooped and jumped up and down. Saradin clapped her hands. Gabriel scowled and let his gaze slide over Quilla’s face as she at last let Rossi pull her from the room. The last she saw of him was his pained expression as Dane began running around him in circles.
Hand me that—”
She placed the vial in his hand before he could finish, and Gabriel nodded. They’d been mixing chemicals for hours, setting each to bubble over the small gas flames and moving to the next without pause. He worked in silence broken by little more than occasional muttered calculation or exclamation of annoyance. Quilla had thought Alchemy to be more mystical, akin to sorcery almost. She found the reality of the craft, the sheer laborious difficulty of measuring and mixing, astounding and dull. No wonder he was so often grouchy.
And then, the joy.
“Huzzah,” Gabriel murmured.
She couldn’t have been more shocked had he leaped into the air and done a jig. She looked up from the notebook in which he’d ordered her to write down everything “And by everything, Handmaiden, I mean each and every one, not only the ones you feel are worthwhile.”
“My lord?”
Using a pair of metal tongs, he lifted one of the vials from its place over the flame and held it up to the sunlight. The liquid within, which had begun as a cloudy, stinking concoction of dull gray, had turned into a clear, odorless substance shimmering with a faint rainbow of color.
“This is worth its weight in gold. More than its weight, as it weighs very little.” Gabriel snapped his fingers for a funnel, which she gave him, and he poured the vial’s contents into a bottle and stoppered it, then set the bottle in a rack.
“What is it?”
“A cure for lovepox.”
Her impressed expression must have pleased him, for he gave her what, for him, was the equivalent of a broad grin, though it really only touched the corners of his mouth. “That will feed this household for the next year and keep it clothed, as well.”
“That small bottle?”
He nodded and held out his hands for her to strip the gloves from. “The men with the money to buy a cure, fortunately, are also the ones most likely to contract the disease. One to three drops of it will suffice for all but the most advanced cases.”
Quilla looked at the bottle, then back to him. “You must feel very satisfied.”
He’d been looking over the notes she’d taken, but now he looked up at her. “Because my work will provide for my family and staff? Yes. Of course.”
She shook her head. “I meant because your work will help people. ’Tis easy enough for a man to earn a wage at work that helps nobody but himself.”
He straightened. “Men who contract the lovepox deserve to face the consequences of their lasciviousness.”
Quilla hung his long gloves on the rack and brought the basin and cloth to him from their place on the small table near the chaise lounge. “Your judgment is harsh, my lord.”
He dipped his hands in the water and washed them, then held them out to her for drying, an unconscious action that made her smile inside. He would be allowing her to wash his hands next, without knowing it.
“Lovepox is perhaps the most easily prevented disease you can get,” Gabriel said, “when all you must do in order not to contract it is bother to bathe. Stick your cock in whatever you please, but by the Void, wash it after.”
Quilla knew little of lovepox, as it was a man’s disease and not a woman’s. “Yet you make the serum anyway.”
“Because no matter how simple a thing it is to wash your prick,” Gabriel said, “there will always be men who can’t be bothered to do it. And if their filthy habits can provide coin for my family’s benefit, why should I not?”
There could be no disputing that logic. Quilla unbuttoned his white coat, and hung that on the rack as well. She smoothed his vest and reached for his black jacket, holding it while he slipped his arms into it. Her hands tightened his tie while she spoke.
“Surely there are other things you make that have a more noble purpose.”
He pointed at the wall of cages full of skittering mice, which she had learned were experiments. Not pets. “I’m working on many things. Yes.”
“So you see, your work is so satisfactory. Because you do help people with it.”
“Why must you insist on turning what I do into some sort of noble crusade for the good of the world?”
“Why will you not allow me to admire your efforts?”
The retort stopped him as he’d been preparing to turn from her. He looked down to where her hands still rested on his tie. “’Tis hardly as wondrous an occupation as filling Sinder’s Quiver.”
The words were kind, but the mocking tone was not. Quilla took her hands away. “I plead your mercy, my lord. I meant not to overstep my bounds.”
Something flickered in his eyes. “I do what I must, as we all do. If there is any great benefit to society because of it, ’tis of little consequence to me.”
“Your work is difficult and tedious, and requires great presence of mind to complete,” she told him, not because she wanted to make him angry but because she thought it was what he needed to hear. “ ’Tis a pity you take so little joy from it.”
“Joy?” he snapped, and then did turn from her. “Do not speak to me of joy, Handmaiden.”
He stalked away, and she murmured, “I would teach you of joy, if you would allow it.”
He paused in the doorway, and spoke without turning. “I have no need to learn it, as I know it full well already. Joy is naught but a pretty word to describe an emotion that exists only to exacerbate despair.”
She spoke no more of it, and when he’d gone she set about tidying the mess he’d left behind. But what to do, she wondered, of the mess someone else had left, not in Gabriel’s workshop, but in the man himself.
Another seventhday had arrived. Another day of rest and meditation. Quilla visited the small chapel again, this time lighting a candle as she sent her words to the Invisible Mother. She did not kneel to pray; kneeling was for Waiting, which she did in Service. Speaking to the Invisible Mother was something she did for herself.
She knew rote scripture, prayers of supplication and of thanks. Ritual words designed to bring comfort when one did not have the presence of mind to think of them oneself. Today, Quilla avoided the structured prayers, which had been written by priests, who were all men. And what did men truly know of what lay in a woman’s heart?
“Help me to help him. Help him to let me.”
She’d been at Glad Tidings for more than four weeks. Time for her body’s cycle to have made one full pass through, though she took daily the dose of powdered tea which kept her from fertility. Time for her to learn the names of all the staff, to be invited to play at their cards and to take meals with them when her day’s serv
ice had finished. Time for the people who lived with her to learn about her, and she them.
But not time enough for Gabriel to accept her.
He allowed her to help him with his work, and to serve him meals, and to help him with his ablutions, to a certain extent. Sometimes he shouted at her with impatience, and never apologized. Sometimes he spoke to her of his work, and exactly why one chemical mixed with another created a third, but only when heated or cooled a certain way. Some days he treated her with cool indifference and others as though he could barely stand the sight of her.
She didn’t expect adoration, in fact appreciated that he did not expect her to adore him in return. It wasn’t that she minded, either, the brusqueness, for she’d quickly determined it was his nature and not any fault of hers when he barked. What bothered her most was that no matter what she tried, or what she offered, he would not allow her to serve him with grace. He balked at every turn. Everything she offered brought a fight. Sometimes, he outright refused her offers. She was not to polish his boots, nor mend his clothes, nor to tie back his hair. She was not to tempt his palate with special foods, though she did her best to ignore that injunction and noticed he grumbled but always ate what she brought, anyway.
In short, she was an apprentice and a housemaid and a cook and serving lass, but she was not what she’d been brought there to be. A Handmaiden.
She thought she knew why, well enough. He didn’t trust her. And she knew why he didn’t, as well. But without him trusting her, she would never be able to fulfill her function.
“Help him trust me, Invisible Mother. Help me be what he needs.”
The sound of shouting made her pause, head tilted to listen. Shouting on seventhday could not be a good thing. She went to the door to listen further, and heard again raised voices, Gabriel’s among them.
She left the chapel and hurried toward the sound of the commotion, which seemed centered in the entrance hall.
“Do not shield him behind your skirts!” she heard Gabriel cry as she came to the edge of the doorway and could see him.