Ashes

by Ann Hunter

Henrietta dragged Rebecca inside and shut the door. The inside of the house was papered in yellow damask, likely to hide the smoke that seeped in through the window cracks. A thin layer of grey dust rested upon the cherry wood dining table.

  Henrietta led Rebecca upstairs. She took her into the first room on the right, papered in a delicate floral urn pattern of baby blue and white. Well it would have been white save for the dust. The window was open in this room. A small pile of ash lay on the floor beneath it. The curtains rustled briefly before settling still as death.

  “She’s here,” Henrietta said. She grasped Rebecca’s hand and swung her toward the bed. “She’s come, Lilly.”

  A body lay in the bed that was as pale as the ash in the sky. Rebecca’s eyes opened wide as she heard her name whispered over and over again by the shell of her mother. A bony hand reached out to her. Rebecca’s hand trembled but she took it and fell beside the bed. “Mother!”

  Lilly whispered her name again so softly it was barely audible.

  Rebecca pressed her cheek against the knobby fist and let tears fall freely. When she looked up, Lilly held a small leather book in her other hand. She croaked the word book. Rebecca nodded and took it, sliding it into her apron pocket.

  Lilly’s parched lips fluttered, “Me. Orchard.”

  Rebecca choked against the knot in her throat. She felt her chin gently being nudged upward so that she looked at her mother. “St - stop. Andrus,” Lilly stammered.

  “Why? How?”

  “Machine.” Lilly broke into a racking cough. She rolled onto her side attempting to stifle it. Lilly’s collarbones and sinews contracting tightly. She fell back onto the pillows stacked in a tall pile. She stared at the ceiling and gasped.

  Rebecca grit her teeth at the sound of it. Lilly looked back at Rebecca with watery eyes. “Destroy… destroys us.”

  “I do not understand.”

  Lilly swallowed with great effort. “Book.”

  Lilly began to cough again and called out to the Maker. “Khronos. Khronos.”

  “Do not leave me Mother!” Rebecca begged. “Farmer Diggory is just outside with his cart. We can get you home. We can make you well. All you need is country air. Preacher said you would come home and never…” Rebecca bit her trembling lip as she realized what the words meant. She shut her eyes and a tear slipped out. “…never depart again.”

  Lilly looked at Rebecca with a faint smile. Her eyes closed. “Marry… marry the prince.”

  Rebecca clutched her mother’s hand tightly as Lilly breathed her last.

  VI

  Rebecca stood solemnly as Lilly’s casket was lowered into the ground. They had dug the grave near Lilly’s favorite spot in the apple grove overlooking the cottage. Sunshine cascaded onto a golden meadow just a few feet away at the edge of the tree line.

  Lilly’s wooden coffin had been encased in copper and embellished with cogs and gears all intertwined amongst each other. A gentle, early summer breeze rustled the leafy tree tops. Birds sang cheerfully. A rough hand slipped in to Rebecca’s. She looked down and followed the attached arm upwards. Her father smiled down at her.

  Rebecca’s eyes flashed and she yanked her hand from his. Preacher’s graveside dedication passed in and out of her ears as though they had been stuffed with cotton, or water was lodged in them from swimming in the pond. “…Of things come to pass in justice or unjust, not Khronos the Maker of all can make the end unaccomplished.”

  Rebecca shut her eyes as a tear slipped down her cheek. She recalled helping prepare her mother’s body for this moment. Lilly’s wrists and feet had been delicately bound with silk ribbon in her favorite color. Sprigs of rosemary and forget-me-nots were placed over and around her, and Rebecca had braided poppies into her dark blonde hair for the time of the Ever Sleep. A single lilly blossom had been slid between her pale, stiff hands. They dressed her in a simple silver gown, trimmed in copper.

  Rebecca opened her eyes and looked to those who surrounded the grave. Every one still living in the hamlet had come. Preacher led them now in prayer. Their heads were bent, each clad in a deep purple that was nearly black. Farmer & Mrs. Diggory, Doctor Proctor and his wife, nearly every one from church, and of course the Bartlebys. They had a son about Lilly’s age with shaggy brown hair who kept opening one eye to gaze upon her. He offered a smiled, but was met only with Rebecca’s emotionless gaze.

  Mounds of dirt began to heap upon Lilly’s casket and each member of the congregation tossed in a small cog or gear. They lined up to give their condolences to Rebecca and her father. Robert Tremaine smiled and shook every hand and hugged every woman who wept upon his broad shoulders. He assured them all would be well.

  Rebecca grit her teeth against the bile rising in her throat. She watched them all go. Mrs. Diggory had generously invited them back to the farm for tea and brunch. Robert looked down at Rebecca, and she glared back at him.

  “Where were you?” Rebecca demanded.

  Robert dropped to one knee as though to look a young child in the face. “I came as soon as I heard.”

  “You should have been here,” she seethed.

  He bowed his head and nodded. “I know.”

  “Why weren’t you here?”

  Robert glanced up. “I have been trying to sell our wares in places where King Andrus has no authority.”

  Rebecca clenched her fists and backed away. “I needed you. She needed you!”

  Robert rose and pulled a small, fat coin purse tied to his hip. “I can provide for you, Rebecca. We will be on our feet and running again soon.”

  She shook her head fiercely. “I do not need you now, Lord Robert Tremaine. You failed. You failed your daughter and you failed your wife.”

  “It is unacceptable, I know, but what choice did we have?”

  Rebecca turned her back on him. “There is always a choice.” She began marching toward the cottage. The hens scattered before the angry flutter of her petticoat and gown.

  “That’s absolutely right, Rebecca,” her father called after her. “There is a choice, and my choice was to do right by my family and make sure they wanted for nothing.”

  Rebecca rounded on her heel. “We wanted you!”

  Robert leaned back as though the force of the words sent him reeling.

  Rebecca stormed toward him, stabbing a finger into his chest. “You did not provide the one thing we needed. You failed. I have worked this estate single handedly for the last fortnight. I have been robbed of my last spring as a child. I may never know where I fit in The Great Wheel because I am stuck here working nonstop to keep us afloat. I do what is necessary, not what is right.”

  Robert sniffed. The muscles in his jaw flexed. “As have I.”

  “Mark me, Lord Robert Tremaine,” Rebecca growled, “as Lady of this estate, I will not have a man who fails me. Leave.”

  Robert lowered his voice. “You want to play the little woman, then? So be it. It is my estate. You may never have ownership of it. It is unlawful for the fairer sex to do so.”

  Rebecca grit her teeth as she tried to stifle a roar. The look they exchanged in that moment was hotter than Robert’s forge. Rebecca turned once more. A new fire burned in her heart. Unlawful or not, the estate was now hers in her own eyes. Her father had not been there to work it, to tend it, to love it. Thus he had no right to it any more than Gregory Diggory did to the truffles in the yard. If he wanted to keep the place running with his coin, so be it, but Rebecca would not allow his shadow to so much as cross the kitchen floor.

  “We make our own destinies, Rebecca,” Robert called. “It is not some magical song on the air or voice on the wind. We choose our path. If we do not, The Great Wheel does it for us.”

  Rebecca slammed the cottage door.

  *** *** ***

  “Do you remember that day, Father?” A steady drip pinged against the stoney prison floor. The last of the sunlight streamed through the single barred window upon Rebecca’s unkempt hair. Her back was to Lord Tremaine. “Do you re
member the day we buried my mother?”

  Lord Tremaine was slow to answer. “I… I do.”

  “Do you remember what happened next?”

  Lord Tremaine adjusted his wig and shifted his weight. “About when do they bring the supper?”

  Rebecca’s line of sight immediately shot over her shoulder to him. Though her eyes were dull, they flashed with contempt.

  Lord Tremaine avoided her eyes and moved to a bench in the corner. He leaned forward with his arms against his legs and doffed his wig. His brown hair was cropped short, peppered with patches and streaks of white and grey.

  “That was the last time I saw you, Robert Tremaine.”

  Lord Tremaine shook his wig, the black ribbon that tied it into a tail brushed against the cold floor. He looked up with his mouth parted, running his tongue over his lower lip as he stared upward. “They do bring supper, don’t they?”

  Rebecca clenched her fists and looked back out the window as the last light of day slipped behind the clouds, igniting the sky with shades of pink and orange.

  “You left me alone. For two years not a word. Only a coin purse in Henrietta Bartleby’s brood nest once a month.”

  “That was Farmer Diggory.”

  “Yes, I’m sure it was,” Rebecca said coldly.

  Outside the cell door, they heard the guards lighting the torches. Metal cups began to rack against iron, demanding food and water.

  “At the end of my fourteenth summer, young men began calling. They all said the same thing. It was not right for a lady to be alone. A man needed to be about the place to run things. Part of me agreed. The other part hated you so much that no man was welcome. I grew a good arm that summer.”

  Lord Tremaine was on his feet, trying to peek out of the peep hole in the cell door. “How do you mean?”

  “If the mud clods did not scare them off, the rocks eventually did.”

  Lord Tremaine looked over his shoulder. “Rebecca,” he scowled.

  “What would you have had me do? Invite them in? Serve them tea? Ask them to marry me? You said yourself the estate was not mine to give. I was part of that estate, and the estate became part of me. The way the sun rose over the orchard and duck pond. How the soil responded to my touch or the sound of the hens and the chicks each morning as they searched out the grubs. No one knew it better than I. Save for Lilly.”

  The sound of a metal plate scraping under the door rang their attention. Lord Tremaine paced around it. He chewed on his wig momentarily before asking. “Do you plan on eating that?”

  Rebecca frowned at him.

  Lord Tremaine dove for the plate. He sat against the wall and tore into the food as though he had not eaten in days.

  He chewed enthusiastically, occasionally wiping his mustache on the edge of his ruffled cuff. “This is very good. Not only for prison food, but overall.”

  “It is food fit for royalty. They want me to stay alive. Have you forgotten already? A life sentence in prison is a fate worse than death. They want me to know what I’m missing. It is why they gave me a window to the outside world. To sit idly by…”

  Lord Tremaine raised his hand to stop her from speaking. “Please. I am eating.”

  She raised her own hand until Lord Tremaine’s head fit between her finger tips across the cell, as she had done to King Andrus as she passed him the night Lilly had died. She pinched her fingers together until Lord Tremaine’s head disappeared behind them. His hands continued to move over the plate of food in his lap eagerly. It reminded Rebecca of a headless chicken.

  “Two years I was alone, until they showed up.”

  *** *** ***

  Fifteen-year-old Rebecca stooped sadly over the lifeless body of Petunia. A fox had gotten her in the night, but apparently been scared off by a larger creature before it could make a meal of her.

  Rebecca stroked her feathers, smoothing over each silky vane. Behind the barren forge, she was sure she could make out what had scared off the fox. Familiar grunts and squeals echoed against the building.

  She scooped up Petunia and marched toward Gregory Diggory. He had gotten fatter over the years and his eyesight was terrible now. He’d come to respect Rebecca and she merely had to talk to him to get him to follow her. The corn she kept in her apron pocket did not hurt either. “Come on you unctuous son of a sow.”

  Gregory Diggory wrinkled his snout at her cheerfully and began trotting up the road to the Diggory’s farm. Rebecca continued to stroke Petunia’s lifeless body. She had given Rebecca several good clutches of chicks and served well. She only had one last purpose to fill, and that is why Rebecca chose to bring her.

  Gregory Diggory bumped into one of the posts of his pen and grunted as he fell his behind. Rebecca nudged him in the direction of the open gate with her hip. The old boar oinked almost gratefully and ambled in. She latched the gate and pointed a finger at him, telling him firmly, “Stay.”

  Rebecca climbed the stoop of the Diggory’s farm house and rapped on the door. Mrs. Diggory opened it up, wiping her floured hands upon her apron.

  “Lady Tremaine, what a pleasure.”

  Rebecca thrust Petunia toward her. “I need you to clean this.”

  Mrs. Diggory’s eyebrows raised. “Now, Rebecca, you are a grown lady. You know how to prepare that bird.”

  Rebecca held Petunia by her ankles. “I also know you purposely let your pig out to wander my property. It is high time you do me a favor for once. Now, am I going to make rashers of that old boar or are you going to clean me a chicken?”

  Mrs. Diggory smiled slowly. And carefully took the bird.

  Rebecca backed down the steps, pointing her finger at the old farmer’s wife. “I loved that mule-brained old bird.”

  Mrs. Diggory nodded. “I will treat her with the utmost respect.”

  “I would hope so.”

  As Rebecca strolled back down the road toward the cottage, she noticed a carriage, pulled by fine black horses, had pulled up. Footmen were unloading crates and cases. Rebecca’s pace quickened until the rustle of her petticoat was like the beat of owl’s wings on night.

  By the time she reached the cottage, she had to grab the front doorway to stop herself from running. She swung around inside from the force of it and saw two young women, not much older than she, gawking at the kitchen.

  They wore fine gowns over stylish petticoats and embroidered stays. When they saw Rebecca, they both jumped with a squeal and placed their hands over their expertly laced, bodiced stomachs. “You gave us quite a fright.”

  “Indeed!”

  “Oh, mother! Look who’s here.”

  Rebecca looked between the girls. They wore too much makeup and not enough self control as they roamed about picking up Rebecca’s things and inspecting them with looks of great judgement. One was as red headed as the dawn, and the other fair skinned and black of hair.

  Footsteps took each stair with a certain level of gravity to draw one’s attention. Rebecca looked over to see an older woman even more dolled up that the girls. She pursed her lip and looked Rebecca up and down. “Oh, good. We do have servants, girls. For a moment I was afraid we’d be living in this hovel like peasants.”

  Rebecca’s fingers dug into the wood of the door frame. “I’m sorry. Who are you?”

  “I am Lady Hesperia Tremaine.”

  Rebecca blinked and choked. “I do not think I caught that. Could you repeat it?”

  The red haired young woman leaned toward the elder and murmured with her hand beside her mouth. “I think she might be a tad dumb, mother.”

  “Tremaine,” the woman repeated. “Lady of the estate. Did Lord Robert Tremaine not mention we’d be arriving?”

  The room began to spin. Rebecca gripped the doorway even tighter to steady her self. “I’m afraid I did not receive the letter.”

  “Well then,” Hesperia clasped her hands together, “Now you know. Here we are. We will be taking dinner as soon as we assess the accommodations.” She motioned to the red head beside her.
“This is my eldest, Cassandra.” They both looked at the black haired girl. “And this,” Hesperia said with a certain air of dismay, “Is Cassandra’s sister, Brunhilda.”

  Brunhilda turned and waved her fingers cheerfully at Rebecca. “How do you do?”

  Hesperia rolled her eyes and sighed exasperately. Cassandra shook her head. “Oh, Hilda, how many times must we remind you that you do not need to go out of your way to be polite to the help? They are like animals. She does not know about manners.”

  Brunhilda blushed apologetically.

  Heat rose in Rebecca’s chest.

  “Do not you see, Hilda?” Cassandra said, “you are embarrassing her.”

  “Tell me, servant,” Hesperia said calmly, “do you plan to stand there all day or are you going to go about your business? Are you deaf as well as dumb? I said we shall be taking our dinner shortly.”

  Rebecca blinked. She curtsied politely. The room had not stopped completely spinning yet. She staggered outside and wilted against the side of the cottage. Her hands went to her stomach as she tried to catch her breath.

  She had been Lady Tremaine for over two years now, and now this imposter waltzes in here and simply takes it away. How dare she! And those two ninnies who called themselves girls…

  Rebecca’s heart pounded against her rib cage. She leaned her head back and looked up at the sky. No, no, perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps she was being too quick to judge. They did not know any better. What reason did Robert have to mention his firstborn to them after the way Rebecca had treated him when last they met? He would not have wanted to scare off a potential mate with stories of a proud girl gone rogue.

  Rebecca smoothed out her apron and tried to make herself look a little more presentable by glimpsing her reflection in the window glass. Her hair was a bit unkempt, and there was a smudge of dirt on her cheek which she licked off with the rub of her thumb. No wonder they mistook her for the maid! She would go in back there and make right with them. She had often daydreamed of what it would be like to have sisters close to her age. Now was the time to find out. With a little work, they could be a family. Perhaps even a happy one. Having a new lady of the house would be a huge relief to Rebecca. She would welcome a slower pace. Perhaps her father would even come home now that he had a better reason to. She could come to forgive him over time.