The Curious Case of Mary Ann

by Jenn Thorson

  It was at that moment, a man’s voice called out. “You stay there, you hear me? You’ve nothing to offer me! Not now, not ever! Nothing at all, I say.”

  She leapt back, startled. Surely, he couldn’t be speaking to her, could he? How would he even know she was there? Did light from her meager candle seep so powerfully into the room?

  “Hello?” Mary Ann whispered through the door. “Hello, who is this?”

  And then came the laughter, deep, gleeful, and entirely disturbed. It was a one-hundred-and-eighty degree change from the voice’s desperate tone just moments before. It took the breath right from her, and she started down the stairs, covered in chill, the maniacal cackling still in her ears.

  She would have run all the way down the stairs and straight to her bedchamber had she not heard the clap of feet on the floor somewhere below. The echo made it hard to determine from where the sound came, so she stopped short halfway down the steps. She blew out the flame and pressed up against the staircase wall. The clapping was closer now and she realized shortly it was the First Footman whose name, she’d learned, was Mr. Francis. Clip-clop, clip-clop into the kitchen he came, a kerosene lamp in tow. A second later, she heard the swinging door of the larder. “Oh, yes! I thought we’d a bit of this left!” And Mary Ann suspected she knew his aim: the carrot cake with sugared fruit on top. At dinner he had stood tableside, and she’d caught his expression of wistful longing.

  There was silence for more than a few moments and she wondered if the cake lived up to his dreams and whether it was worth the inevitable staff interrogations that would take place should that slice be missed tomorrow.

  She supposed it was. Because he came trotting out now, wiping his face with the back of his wrist, bobbing his head in the light like a fellow who knew something good when he’d got it. And in a jiff, he had trotted off again into the night.

  Mary Ann ran back into their quarters and hopped into bed, just as Mrs. Cordingley tucked her needle into the pincushion and said, “Lights out then, ladies.”

  Emmaline emerged from the unending feast of her mind, snapping the cookbook shut and tucking it under her pillow like the locket of a loved one. She turned an eye to Mary Ann. “Why, you’re very red, aren’t you? Were you always so flushed or are you not quite well?”

  “Oh, just Red Turvian born and bred,” Mary Ann said.

  Cook piped up, “The bread’s tomorrow’s task.”

  “Yes,” agreed Mrs. Cordingley, stiffly. “Stop showing off and trying to get ahead, Tamsin. It doesn’t become you. Makes you look arrogant.”

  Mary Ann wasn’t about to argue. “Yes, Mrs. Cordingley,” she said.

  The lamp went out thereafter.

  

  “Bewareeeee,” said a voice light and squeaky. And it was a groggy Mary Ann who rolled over to her bunkmate. Had Emmaline started talking in her sleep, too? Between the mystery snorer and this ungodly murmuring, Mary Ann feared she’d never get a good night’s rest.

  “Bewareeee,” said the little voice again, but it wasn’t coming from Emmaline’s side of the bed. It was alongside her own. “Do not pursue the death of Rowan Carpenter or you, too, shall meet his fate! Meddle again and it will be at your own risk!”

  She was sure this was not Emmaline now and she was fairly certain she was awake. She grabbed the candle from her side table and lit it with shaking hands. Something moved as she shone it around the room. She didn’t see anyone, but one thing on the floor did catch her eye. There were glistening droplets leading from the opened door to the side of her bed, and now under it. She leapt to the floor and dove under the bedskirt, trying to see through the dim. She heard a rustle, swore she saw the far edge of the dustruffle move, and heard something scurry around the other side. Mary Ann pulled herself out from under the bed just as the door squeaked shut.

  “What are you doing?” This was Mrs. Cordingley’s voice now, heavy with sleep. “Put out that light. I swear, you girls will be the death of me. I knew I should have taken that job at the laundry.”

  Mary Ann quenched the candle for the second time that night. And when dawn arrived, and the house came alive again, even the mists of sleep did not prevent her from leaping out of bed immediately and looking at the floor where the shimmering trail of droplets had been.

  Of course, there was nothing there, nothing at all.

  7

  Mary Ann was starting to wonder what was real and what was not, these days. Not that Turvy — or Neath for that matter —would ever be called sensible. Or stable. Or not completely off its trolley. But when one lived there, one had certain expectations for the place. One learned to work around the land and each other’s eccentricities. One sallied forth, pondered very little, and adapted nicely. But lately, life seemed to be somewhat more … itself … than even usual. Either the place was becoming much more Muchy or quite possibly, Mary Ann had lost the plot.

  There was also the uncomfortable thought that, if the events of the previous night had been real, then someone knew exactly who she was, where she was, and that she was trying to solve her father’s murder. She greatly preferred the “it was all a vivid dream” theory, to being found out and duly warned. She supposed a warning displayed at least some goodwill on her visitor’s part; it was a greater courtesy than her father had gotten. But it did add certain complications to an already thorny time.

  These were the issues she considered as she worked on the upstairs family quarters. She had just finished Lord Carmine’s and Sir Rufus’ chambers. The first involved more time gathering up bits and bobs than anything else; the elder man was prone to scattering his possessions over flat surfaces like a whirlwind ripping through a variety store. On the other hand, the young knight had a methodical precision to his belongings that made Mary Ann’s job quite easy. She wondered if it had always been so, or if the joyful gleam of life having been stricken from him, Sir Rufus found what solace he could by ensuring his boots all faced the same direction.

  With those rooms tidied, buffed and gleaming, Mary Ann now paused at the door to Lady Carmine’s room. She had not, in her time so far, seen Lady Carmine aside from the portrait in the sitting room downstairs. That was elegant but a bit over-red to suit Mary Ann’s taste: the ginger hair, red dress, red chair, red floor and red tapestry behind her suggesting that to the artist, too much of a good thing meant he was only just getting warmed up. Word had been, Lady Carmine was under the weather of late and shouldn’t be disturbed. Someone did, indeed, seem to be in the room, for through the morning dim, light filtered around the door seams with the uneven flicker of a kerosene lamp.

  She had turned away from the door, a certain squeak of her shoe on the floorboard, as a light, shaky voice called, “It’s all right. Please come in.”

  Mary Ann pushed open the door and a rush of cold air surrounded her. The floor was a sheet of ice. There was frost on the windows. There was a light coating of snow on the blankets and side tables. A grey cloud perched right above the head of Lady Carmine’s bed. It seemed a parasol had been set up to shield her from the most direct precipitation, but wind had blown it askew so the lady’s long hair was frosted into a pale orange and her red bedclothes a pink. The poor woman was shuddering from the top of her head to her blanketed toes.

  The first thing Mary Ann did was drop her bucket and scrub brush, and slide across the icy floor to put the parasol back in its place.

  “Oh, thank you so much!” murmured the lady, her face flushed with cold. “I daresay, I woke up with a much higher wind-chill than yesterday.”

  Mary Ann nodded and bee-lined for the fireplace. The fire was low, so she put on a few more logs and tended them with the poker. Wherever was Celeste? Shouldn’t she be helping here?

  “We haven’t met, but I assume you’re the new housemaid my husband was telling me about,” rasped the woman. “He said your name is Marion? Darienne? Tamelyn? Tamsin?”

  “Yes, My Lady,” Mary Ann said. Now that the fire was showing some energy, Mary Ann moved to th
e bedding, shaking off a layer of snow and replacing the topmost cover with a fresh quilt.

  “Well, which is it, dear?” the woman asked.

  “Whichever is your preference, My Lady.” She moved to the windows. They were completely iced over from the inside. She looked around and spied the silent butler on the table. That might work. She grabbed up the dustpan portion and used it like an ice scraper, in hopes of getting at least some morning sun in — until the next frost, anyway.

  “You poor child,” the patient was saying, and Mary Ann was surprised to still be on Lady Carmine’s mind. “You’ve forgotten your name, haven’t you?”

  “Forgotten it, My Lady?”

  “Oh, it happens,” the woman said sympathetically. “Ask my sister. She forgot her name once. Terribly difficult for her.” Scrape, scrape, scrape. “For a period of time she felt quite strongly her name might be Herbert. But Father’s favorite hound was called Herbert, so it caused all sorts of confusion between the three of them. She came out of it quite well, though, once the hunting season was over.”

  Mary Ann nodded. Scrape, scrape, scrape …

  “Do you recall anything about your background? Your childhood?” asked Lady Carmine.

  “There is nothing much to tell, My Lady.” Mary Ann had learned long ago, when people asked questions like that, they were typically using it as a segue to tell you about themselves.

  “Nonsense, dear, everyone has a tale to tell,” said Lady Carmine. “And it’s so dull for me up here. Do you have any parents? Any family? Tell me about them.”

  “Well,” said Mary Ann, hoping to stall and go invisible, yet finding herself noticeably Not. In her panic, she began, “My father was a botanist and sea captain for the Royal Red Navy and my mother, a favorite seamstress to the Red Queen …”

  Once the fantasy started to unfurl, it took on a life of its own. In no time, her father had fought pirates, explored mysterious new lands, and put the fox in foxglove. Her mother had designed and sewn the Red Turvian flag and made Queen Rosamund’s robes for Red Turvy’s five hundredth anniversary celebration. Besides this, never were there two more doting parents. When he was on leave, her father would teach Mary Ann sea shanties and how they’d sing by the fire while her mother sewed. When he was away, he would send messages across the water by flamingo twice a day, telling them of his devastation that they had been so cruelly parted. Then her father died in a typhoon off Hither, caused by the poorly-timed head cold of a giant. Her mother developed a rare metal poisoning from sewing needles and passed soon thereafter. And that was the reason Mary Ann was alone in this world.

  It was as Mary Ann finished her tale and came once more to her own body and mind, that she saw the window scraped clear of frost. Great steaming lies, it would seem, may have aided in its removal.

  But Lady Carmine seemed none the wiser. “You poor child. What a sad story it is,” she murmured, brushing snow from her pillow. “So much tragedy so young.”

  “I was fortunate to have had the time with them I did,” said Mary Ann, sweeping off the tables, brushing the snow into her scrub bucket. This last statement has been the only truthful thing she’d said in the past ten minutes. And it was strange, because the image of sitting around the fire, singing, together and warm lingered in her vision, causing a melancholy feeling to overcome her. “I’ll tell Cook to send up some more hot tea.”

  CLANG!

  SNICKER-SNACK!

  WHHONNNNNG!

  SNICK!

  Who would have thought it? But while Mary Ann had discovered that her inner landscape held an uncharted ocean of lies, Sir Rufus was, at his core, a man of his word. He’d said he would request Mary Ann’s time to help him train, and sure enough, she had only begun to fluster the moldings when Mrs. Cordingley came rushing in saying Mary Ann had been excused from her chores for a few hours — that the knight wished her to report to the stables immediately. “Why he should want your help, I can’t imagine,” Mrs. Cordingley editorialized, “but it is not ours to question. He promised to have you back for lunch preparations. So go! Be quick about it, girl.”

  Mary Ann was nothing if not quick. She arrived at the stables in a flash and barely a moment later found her plain squire’s sword clashing with the Vorpal one with a bright, ringing sound. (BWINNNGG!)

  “You’ve got a strange lot of upper body strength for a girl,” said Sir Rufus, scowling as the impact rolled down both their arms. It was a sensation that woke up the body and the spirit. (CHIIINNNG!)

  “A regular exercise regimen of housemaid’s work, Sir,” she responded, as the swords clashed again. (JANNNNGGG!)

  “Housemaid’s work,” he sniffed. “Are you sure you haven’t been juggling elephants?”

  She lunged, the move sending him a bit off balance. “If you’d prefer, we could trade our sword work for a week of laundry baskets, water fetching and potato bushels. I think you’d find it enlightening. And enheavying.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she wondered why she said them. Why were these walls coming down between her brain and mouth, all of a sudden? Why was she so bold and boundless? So daring and deviant? It was absolutely scandalous. Perhaps it was so many days of poor sleep.

  But Sir Rufus just grumbled as he regained his footing and went on the offensive. (CLANNNG!) He wasn’t amused, certainly, since he was incapable of that these days. But there was no sense of malice or even that she’d overstepped her position.

  She decided it was best to change the subject altogether, not because of him but for fear of herself. So first she instructed him to try a Diagonal Feign. Then she brought up the one topic she was certain they had in common. “It must be quite the relief to have that Jabberwock business behind you.”

  His sword met hers with some force now. (WHUMPPPPP!) And he said in a wretched tone, “Relief from dark of night only comes to those who can actually feel the sunshine.”

  Mary Ann rolled her eyes. So it was going to be one of those days, was it? She began to understand why the real squires had not put up more of a fight to perform this job. And a thought occurred to her. “Do you not have many friends in the Court with whom you could spend some time? Turvian courtiers or… or … ones from Neath?” The blade was like a fishing line; it lured him in.

  “Waste of time,” he said with a grunt of disgust and a parry, “all of them. I now see how shallow the fripperies of my existence to-date have been.” (CLANK!) “Once, yes, I cavorted among them, all frabjousness and hey-nonny nonsense, but now I feel like I’m seeing everyone from this high tower and the perspective shows it for what it is.” (ZANNGG!)

  And that’s when Mary Ann heard herself say, “Like the person living in the Tower here at Carmine Manor?” It was out before it could be stopped.

  It got Sir Rufus’ attention, too, his sword arm sinking to his side. “What?” He couldn’t have looked more stunned if she’d slapped him. “Why would you say that?”

  It was too late to go back now. “You said it, Sir,” said Mary Ann, putting as much chirpy lightness into her voice as she could muster. “Yesterday.”

  “I did?” His expression was covered in hot, shocked shame.

  She tried a Reverse Thrust. “Yes, Sir. You were talking of your lost humor, Sir. You said, ‘I’ll be an outcast. I’ll be shut away in the Manor Tower just like …’”

  “Well, I hardly meant to.” As if intent negated it. “In fact, I mustn’t say a word more. It is a disgrace upon my family.”

  “Ah.” She used a Right-to-Left Sweep.

  He countered. “A stain upon our name.”

  “Oh.” They followed it up with a Bind and Reversal.

  “A pox upon our nether-regions,” he said.

  “Ooh.” She wrinkled her nose and tried to look anywhere but at the spot on topic.

  “… Metaphorically,” he added with some emphasis and a parry. “Anyway, the whole thing is simply too terrible to consider.”

  “I apologize for bringing it up,” she said.

  “Rightfully,
you should.” He did a Long Lunge now and she instructed him to adjust the back leg a bit. “Anyway, what business is it of yours? You don’t need to know anything about my uncle. My father’s brother. And how he’s in the Tower, secreted away from everyone, because he is …” He exhaled, his jaw trembling with the word, “… sane.”

  Mary Ann’s sword arm dropped to her side. “Sane, really?” She thought about her encounter in the Tower the night before. What she’d heard from that room did not sound sane.

  But he just lowered his sword and nodded like they were on the same page with things. “I know,” he said, still nodding. “I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t mad before — have you?”

  “I’m not sure. I mean, I’ve always thought myself fairly sane,” she admitted, “but lately, I’m starting to believe that’s only a symptom of my madness.”

  “That’s how it happens,” he said sagely.

  She leaned on a nearby fence. “So when was the last time you saw your uncle? Do you not visit him in the Tower?”

  “Father said it was too risky,” Sir Rufus said, wiping his brow with his shirtsleeve. “We don’t know much about sanity but there’s reasonable evidence it’s easily transferred from one person to another. Father said too much contact could cause an epidemic. Sweep across the countryside. Our land would never withstand it.”

  She’d heard Mr. Rabbit speak on this topic once or twice, as well. “Certainly, once one person starts making sense, it becomes so hard to stay immune. Unless a good cognitive dissonance is put into place swiftly, of course. And then —” Mary Ann broke off, noticing something low to the ground barreling toward them. It was that same creature from the day before, the banana skin that wore the panto disguise. Mary Ann had never seen the likes of it and was determined not to let it get away again unquestioned. “You there!” she called. “Stop a moment!”

  “I can’t stop to chat,” it said in a high, cheerful voice. “I’ve got miles to go.”