Unnatural Issue

by Mercedes Lackey

  The young woman sat up slowly, then got to her feet and gave a little deferential curtsy. “Begging your pardon, m’lord,” she said, instantly. “Aye, m’lord, come looking for work. Didn’t mean to trespass here, but I been crossing moor, ’twere dark when I got here, and yon storm—”

  “Oh, nonsense,” Charles replied, waving his hand. “The gates are unlocked and that was a wicked storm last night. Since you aren’t from Branwell Village, you couldn’t have known that you could present yourself at the kitchen any time if you’re looking for work.”

  “I am, m’lord!” she said eagerly, looking up at both of them, directly in their eyes. “Been working for an old man, he died, here I be, no job and no one to give me a character. I’m a plain housekeeper, plain cook, kitchen maid, good in yon dairy—”

  “Jill of all simple trades eh?” Charles interrupted her. “Excellent. Just run off to the kitchen, we can use another dairymaid, Cook told me that weeks ago. Tell Cook I said to take you on trial.” Charles smiled at her, and she looked dazzled for a moment. “You’ll find the kitchen that way,” he continued, pointing, by way of a hint.

  She shook herself out of her daze, bent, and picked up a bundle from among the rugs, then curtsied again. “Aye, m’lord,” she said hastily. “Thank you, m’lord.”

  Charles didn’t wait for her to withdraw, although she scampered off like a puppy after a stick; instead, he urged his horse back toward the door. Peter followed.

  “Do you always do that?” Peter asked curiously, once they were out of the building. “Offer strays a job?”

  Charles nodded absently, as if there were something else occupying him. “Usually. If they’re up to no good, the offer of work generally makes them do a bunk, and if they’re honest, they’re grateful. But in this case, Peter, it would have been a crime to turn her away! Didn’t you feel it?”

  “Feel what?” Peter asked, reflecting that at the moment the one thing he was feeing was thick.

  “Magic! Earth magic! The girl is an Earth mage!” Charles exclaimed. “She’s heavily shielded, but there’s no doubt in my mind. As soon as she realizes what she’s stepped into, she’ll fit in here in no time.” Charles looked to Peter as if he were going to start rubbing his hands together in glee at any moment.

  “Oh,” Peter said, blankly. Then, “Oho! That was what I was—”

  But Charles snorted. “Don’t pretend you were sensing Earth magic, Peter, old man. I saw you. The girl is a handsome thing, I’ll admit to you, and I don’t blame you for looking, but she’s not to be meddled with. We might have a wild past, but this is the twentieth century. You can’t trifle with her, and you certainly can’t marry her, so it’s best not to think about her at all.”

  For one moment, Peter was taken aback. In the next moment, it was a good thing that Charles had ridden on ahead, because he was consumed with outrage. How dare Charles suggest that he would—

  And then the outrage was replaced by a more impersonal indignation. Just what kind of arrogant blighter was Charles Kerridge, saying “You certainly can’t marry her”? Not that Peter was interested in marrying anyone at all but, since when was Charles Kerridge so much loftier than this girl? For all Charles knew, she was a better magician than he was! And what was wrong with—

  Then the indignation ran out too. Everything is wrong with the idea, he thought bitterly. It was that old double standard of “gentry” and everyone else, and never mind that attitude should have died with a stake in its heart ages ago. The fact was it was alive and well.

  Take Peter himself, for instance. Oh, it was all very well for people like him to run about the Continent and toy with opera singers and ballet dancers and professional courtesans, but the arrangements were always perfectly understood by both parties, and the boundaries were established from the beginning. There were generous presents, generous living arrangements, and generosity when the time came for the arrangement to end. But there was no talk of marriage.

  Despite certain aging peers making a habit of marrying actresses, these were aging peers, with no other family, and these days people were amused rather than scandalized. But if someone Peter’s age and rank even hinted at an interest that was anything other than irregular, there would be hell to pay.

  And to show a similar interest in servants? His mother’s outrage would last until Everest melted. There would be more trouble than he could sort out in a year. All very well for the squire to marry the Poor But Honest Country Lass in some romantic bit of fluff, but the plain truth was, it was impossible. She’d never fit in. She’d be snubbed by the other women in Charles’ circle; country society was even more backward in that regard than London society. Her former peers would be insufferably jealous and hateful. Her life would be confined to Branwell Hall.

  So incredibly unfair. Because if she was strong enough to have shielded her magic from him, she’d have made a perfect partner for Charles—

  Oh, good lord, now I’m matchmaking, he realized with chagrin.

  “Well, if we can tame this one down quickly enough, she might be able to provide me with the information I need,” he said, urging his horse up beside Charles.

  “She’s certainly stronger than I am,” he agreed. “It will be a matter of winning her trust, though, and seeing just how trained she is. I don’t recognize her, I doubt Alderscroft knows of her, so she might be entirely self-taught, which could be less than useful.”

  “And she might run off when she realizes she won’t be able to steal the butter,” Peter added glumly. “Just because she’s pretty and an Earth mage, it doesn’t signify that she’s honest.”

  Charles grinned. “Do I detect a sadder-but-wiser tale behind your words?”

  Peter snorted. “Moi? Mais non! I was as wise in the wicked ways of the world when you were still in your cradle, my lad. Just reflecting on the failings of mankind.” He rubbed the side of his nose as their horses ambled off down a shaded lane. “Mankind, be it noted, not womankind. No, her tale has the sad ring of truth to it. I can certainly imagine someone hired out to an irascible old skinflint who dies without making any provision for her. I just hope she really does have the skills she claims, for her sake as well as yours.”

  Susanne wasn’t sure where that story about an old man dying and leaving her without a place came from; it just popped into her head, and she recited it with (she hoped) the conviction of the honest. The story certainly explained away everything that needed to be explained, and in a reasonable fashion. The moors were dotted with reclusive old men with just enough money to hire a single girl to “do” for them, and girls like Patience and Prudence were often desperate enough to take any work at all, never thinking ahead to what would happen when their employer died. By the time Susanne got to the kitchen door, she had her story firmly in her head.

  The door was open, and inside was all abustle with preparations—not for breakfast, for that was long over, and the cleaning up for that meal was half done—but for luncheon. She opened her mouth to say something, when someone who wasn’t the cook spotted her.

  “Tha must be Mary’s eldest, Jane, and thee’s come not a moment too early!” the woman exclaimed, and the next thing that Susanne knew, she was enveloped in a bleached, clean apron and elbow-deep in bread dough, doing the kneading before the second rising. No sooner had she finished that than she was presented with a mammoth bowl of potatoes to be peeled for boiling, and when those were done, with another mammoth bowl of turnips to be mashed for the “downstairs” meal. She set to all of these tasks with rising cheer; she knew she was good at them, and she was going to make a good impression by helping without complaint and even without being officially taken on!

  It was only when the gentry’s food was sent upstairs and the “downstairs” meal laid out on the now-clean kitchen table that anyone actually took a good look at her.

  “Mercy me, thee’s not Jane!” exclaimed someone at Cook’s end of the table.

  For a moment she, and they, stared at one another. She clea
red her throat and put on her broadest accent. “Eh!” she said. “I come across moor, when Marster died an’ left me nowt, not even a character. I come lookin’ for work. Marster Charles said I was to let Cook know to try me in dairy.”

  The Cook looked her up and down, then smiled. “Well, ’tis true tha’ didn’t sneak away from a mort of hard work. Thee’s not the first Marster Charles sent here. Thee’s a good hand in kitchen. We’ll try thee in dairy. But first, thee’s earned tha nuncheon.”

  The kitchen maids on the bench nearest her grinned at her and scooted over, making room for her. Someone found her a plate, a cup, and some cutlery, and then the cheerful chatter, like a tree full of starlings, began.

  The ones nearest her plied her with questions about where she had come from and what she had done until they were satisfied and turned back to their own gossip. Susanne was quite sure that Cook’s sharp ears caught every word of her answers, and she was pleased to find that the others made sure to include her in the gossip by explaining who they were talking about as they twittered. Susanne was careful to keep her story as simple as possible; she had been taking care of an old man who never saw anyone and lived in a lone farmhouse out on the moor to the east. Her mother had hired her off; Susanne borrowed Prudence’s family shamelessly for that part of the tale. Yes, she had done something of everything for the old man. A cousin had turned up when he died and turned her out. No, she couldn’t go back home, there were too many mouths to feed as it was. Everyone nodded at that. So she had come across the moor to find another place.

  From there, her story swerved right into the path of pure truth. She talked about making her way across the moor with her meager belongings, sleeping rough. She spoke of outracing the storms, elaborating on it as the eyes of the other maids widened. She talked of finding the unlocked gate and hoping this was a sign she could find a place.

  She deviated from truth a little, then, claiming she had stumbled into the carriage house when the deluge began; no one begrudged her taking shelter without leave when a storm like that one was raging.

  In return she heard all about who was courting, who was marrying, who was “no better than she should be”—the latter seemed to be confined to a couple of girls in the village of Branwell—that the vicar was well-liked but his wife “had a tongue in her head,” and that there was a most intriguing visitor here.

  “Oh, Quality! A lord!” exclaimed one of the girls. “Lord Peter Almsley, Master Charles’ old friend from Oxford! And a nicer gemmun you could never ask for! His man, too, polite as polite!”

  “Aye, Garrick’s a favorite here,” the cook murmured, her eyes twinkling. “Were I twenty years younger—” she sighed theatrically, and the girls giggled.

  But there was another undercurrent here, one she sensed by what they were not saying. Every time the subject of conversation got around to anything that might lead to hints of magic, there was a quick veer into something else altogether. Susanne was too used to dancing that dance herself not to see them doing it.

  Which either meant they were all geased against talking about the subject, or they were keeping her from getting any hints of it. She rather doubted the former, but the latter?

  With narrowed eyes, she assessed her fellow diners. One by one, she looked for signs of magic on them.

  It was with considerable shock that she realized that at least part of the strength of the magic hereabouts was in these unassuming people!

  Oh, they weren’t very strong, but there were a great many of them, and a bucket could as easily be filled drop-by-drop as by a barrel. All it took was time—

  Just as she wondered if she should show her own colors, Cook clapped her hands to get their attention.

  “All right now, I’ve given thee a bit extra time because we have a new girl. But the work needs doing.” She stated it as a fact, rather than as an order, but the reaction she got would have done justice to the troops of a great general. Everyone got up off the benches, took their plates to the sink, and went straight to work.

  One of the girls—Susanne was pretty sure her name was Polly—came and tugged on her hand. “Cook wants thee in dairy, ’tis what I do too,” she said.

  “We will be milking?” she asked.

  Polly laughed. “Lord love thee, nay,” she said. “The herdsmen do that. Just dairy.”

  Susanne was a bit relieved that there was to be no milking; there were always cows that seemed to take it into their heads to be the very devil whenever they were milked.

  As she knew, when it wasn’t a small place with only a couple of milk-cows, the chief business of a dairymaid was to clean, not just ordinary surface cleaning. Every bit of the dairy was scrubbed twice daily at a minimum, because the least little bit of foulness could, and probably would, contaminate milk, cream, butter and all, and spoil it. Polly would have taken care of the morning scrub, but it was afternoon now, and it was all to do over again to get ready for the evening milking. So first they scrubbed with ash and water, floors and walls. Then they changed to a different set of brushes and scalded and scrubbed the milk-pans from the stack—they were already clean, but you skipped this step at your peril. They scalded all the tools, scrubbed and scalded the churns, scalded the very brushes they had been using to scrub with. Then they scrubbed their hands and arms, put on enormous clean aprons, so big they were practically dresses, and went to the rising-room where the milk from the previous day and this morning waited in its flat pans. The cream had risen satisfactorily on the former; she and Polly loosened it from the edge of the pan by running a clean finger around the inside, then, as Polly watched critically, Susanne took a skimmer and began to take the cream off the top of the milk. When Polly was satisfied that Susanne knew what she was doing, she tackled her own set of pans.

  “Will we be churning?” Susanne asked, as she transferred the cream into her cream pot.

  “Aye, we make all the butter for the Hall,” Polly said with pride. “’Twill be fresh today, tomorrow ’twill be salted for winter. An’ once a week, ’tis cheese.”

  Susanne blinked. “I’ve never made cheese,” she faltered. She had, of course, but it was plain white cheese, not the sort the gentry ate.

  Polly laughed. “’Twould be a wonder if tha had,” she chuckled. “Nay, no worries. I’ll teach thee, ’tis no harder than butter.”

  A little of the cream went into a pitcher that one of the kitchen maids came to get, along with cans of the skimmed milk for cooking. The rest of the skimmed milk was collected by someone else and carried off. Polly and Susanne turned to their churns.

  At the end of the day, they carried cakes of fresh butter up to the Hall, along with a can of fresh milk for Cook, and left the rest of the afternoon’s milk standing in the clean and scalded pans. “Eh, tha’ can see why I need help!” Polly laughed, as the two of them entered the kitchen and handed over their goods. “I was havin’ to make more cheese an’ less butter, for I couldn’t get to the cream before it began to turn.”

  Now, Susanne absolutely did not believe that, for she had sensed Polly using very gentle Earth magic to keep the cream from spoiling. And she had augmented that, since it was exactly the same sort of thing that she herself had done. There was Earth magic in use all over that dairy—to keep the milk from turning, the cream from spoiling, the butter from going rancid, the cheese from acquiring molds that were not desirable. All very minor magics, but the impact was not so minor, not on a place that had as many people to feed as Branwell Hall did.

  Supper was a relatively light meal for the servants; the gentry might eat heavily, but the servants’ main meals were breakfast and luncheon. The day was nearly over for Polly and Susanne; they would get up at dawn or before to clean the dairy and clean and scald all their implements and pans and pots. It was clear to Susanne that this was a much larger dairy than anything she was used to; it was very likely that Branwell Hall provided not only for its own needs, but sold a substantial surplus. As a consequence, a lot of the duties that a dairymaid ha
d in smaller households were given to other servants.

  “Where will I be sleeping?” Susanne asked diffidently, as both of them spread the fruits of their labor over fresh, hot rolls that tasted utterly heavenly.

  “Oh, with me. Housekeeper’ll have got tha’ uniforms already, like mine.” Polly smoothed down her light blue dress with pride. “And she’ll have got tha’ bundle to our room. Put tha’ gown with mine, they’ll be taken off for washing, I’ll show thee where.”

  “You can’t be too clean in a dairy,” Susanne said sagely, and she was rewarded with Polly’s nod of approval.

  “Aye, it’s clean uniforms every day for us.” Polly helped herself to a big bowl of soup as the communal pot came by, and so did Susanne. Both did the same with the stewed turnip tops, which had a satisfying amount of bacon added. The food was all plain and good. They finished off their meal before the rest, who were still sending up grander food to the gentry’s table. Polly stood up and bade a cheerful good night to the others; Susanne took the hint and followed her.

  The room she would share with Polly from now on was just under the attics; from the look of things, the floor they were on was where all the servants slept. Sure enough, Susanne’s bundle was on her bed, and there were three clean blue dresses and six bleached white aprons and matching caps hanging on a hook on the wall.

  “Change apron after nuncheon,” Polly said by way of explanation. “Cap too.” She showed Susanne the basket just outside their door where they were to leave clothing to be taken away for cleaning. Susanne donned her somewhat threadbare nightshift with a little embarrassment and sensed that Polly was eyeing it with curiosity, but the girl only said, “Old man tha’ was with wasn’t half the skinflint, eh?”

  “He’d pinch a farthing until it squeaked,” Susanne replied.

  “Well, ’tis different here. ‘Do not bind the mouths of the kine that tread the grain.’ ” Polly said piously, and climbed into her bed.