Leporello on the Lam

by William Stafford

  He held out a gnarled and filthy hand that was more of a paw. The penny dropped. Or rather, I dropped the half a crown into his horned palm, managing to my great relief not to make actual contact with him.

  ”Keeps a goat, don’t she?” he nodded. “On account of her averrrsion to cow milk, I gi’e ‘er a goat and she lets my girls have free access to her paaasture.”

  ”Oh?”

  ”So ye’d best get back and milk the bugger.”

  ”Ah.”

  ”You know how to milk a goat don’t ye?”

  I couldn’t say that I did.

  The horrible cowman shook his head in mock despair. He began to make obscene motions with his hands. ”I could come and do it for ye,” he offered, “for another coin.”

  Scandalised and affronted, I strode away from that disgusting creature as fast as I could. It was only when I reached the back door of the house that I realised he might have been talking about milking the goat.

  ***

  I returned to the weed-ridden yard to find the back door open and Donna Flavia standing by the well, her arms folded indignantly. Her foot – she was wearing heavy boots, I noticed – was tapping as a sign of her impatience. The rest of her attire was striking also; she was wearing the livery of a housemaid except on her it looked like a costume.

  ”Leporello!” she screeched. She could have been an operatic soprano with that voice. “There you are!”

  I could not deny it. Indeed it would have been foolish of me to try. ”I thought you had absconded! Run off! Fled! With my best bucket!”

  I glanced down at the object in question, which was still dangling from my fingers. I held it out to her like a child in a nativity play offering myrrh to Our Lord as a baby.

  ”And I have yet to have my morning milk! How do you expect me to have my morning milk when you have absconded with the best bucket? Hmm?”

  I knew better than to point out that her precious ‘best bucket’ had been in such a filthy state it couldn’t have been used for milk for many a morning, but I’ve dealt with the nobility all my life. It doesn’t sit well to contradict them. I recognised her outburst for what it was: she was afraid I’d abandoned her as, it appeared to me, everyone else had abandoned her. Only it would not do for a woman of her station to admit as much to someone as low in rank and status as I. Far better to sublimate her anxiety into anger and lash out, thereby risking bringing about the event she is so afraid of in the first place.

  I should be one of those people who go around looking into people’s problems and offering to sort them out for a fee. What do you call them? Oh yes! Charlatans.

  I realised then the reason for her outfit. She was the one to milk the goat every morning – of course she was.

  ”I’m sorry to cause you any distress, Milady,” I bowed low, banging my unfortunate shin with the pail. I screwed up my face to quell the tide of bad language that was surging up in my throat. Donna Flavia read this expression as sign of my extreme contrition. Her mood lifted instantly and humming some old tune she led me to where what she called the horned beast resided. She pronounced it as two syllables, “horn-ed.” It is this kind of affectation that the nobility are all about.

  There followed a lesson the like of which my master and I never received at the hands of our governess, although I imagine he received plenty of private lessons at and from her hands when I was playing sentinel in the corridors.

  The impropriety of it all was what made it amusing to my immature little mind. Milady Flavia maintained a neutral expression as she demonstrated the proper technique for “grasping the dug” (her words) and “squeezing the teat”. I found myself biting quite hard into my knuckles lest I explode with laughter and embarrass the poor lady further. The delight on her face when I, after several tentative tries, produced a squirt into the precious bucket, was like the sun coming out after the threat of rain. She clapped her hands rapidly and laughed with such merriment I caught a glimpse of how she must have been as a young girl. What life does to us, I reflected, to make us hide our younger selves from us! What had happened to you, Donna Flavia? I wondered but did not ask, to make you lose your light?

  When there was what looked like an adequate amount of the pale and creamy in her bucket (Stop it! You must not snigger as my master would have!), Donna Flavia produced a tin cup and scooped some of the milk into it. She swigged it down and was not shy of letting out a satisfied gasp. A white moustache adorned her lip until she erased it with the back of her hand. She held out the cup to me.

  ”We must find you a cup of your own,” she said excitedly. Perhaps it was the realisation that she no longer had to squeeze the teats herself that had pleased her so obviously. “But just this once you may share mine. Quickly now, while the milk is still warm.”

  Ugh. I wanted to question whether it would not be preferable and more sanitary to boil the bloody stuff first but I guessed that would take the shine off her mood, so I took the cup from her, swept it through the bucket so that it caught only a small amount then gingerly, like a child sipping its first wine, sampled the tangy liquid. Donna Flavia was watching me keenly as though urging an even younger child to take its first steps unassisted. I forced my lips to smile. The milk dribbled out. It turns out I am not a swallower.

  ”Silly!” She swatted at me with the back of her hand. “Now, come, Leporello. I’m going to put you to work, I’m afraid. And it’s going to be hard. Very hard indeed.”

  She turned on her heels and strode back into the house. I didn’t know what to do with the bucket. The goat was offering no advice so I brought it inside with me – the pail I mean, not the horn-ed beast.

  ***

  Put me to work she did. Over the next couple of weeks, I toiled for that woman. It was mainly cleaning, clearing out the spiders, the mice and the beetles, gradually, corner by corner, reclaiming rooms of her neglected house and rendering them fit for human habitation. Hers was a supervisory position, of course, and when I suggested it would be expedient to get a team of men in from the village she would only say that it wouldn’t do at all and then she would sail away.

  Every night I would stretch my aching limbs on the kitchen table but at least I had acquired a cushion or two and an old blanket. I was growing accustomed to my unyielding bed and my back and legs were glad of the rest. Donna Flavia had offered me a room at the top of the house but since it was I who would have to clean it up, I declined.

  If only sleep would be a more constant visitor. No matter how exhausted I was in body, my mind could not find peace. If I did sleep, the visions of my master’s downfall would wake me suddenly, snapping me awake with a gasp and drenched with perspiration, and always at the same point in the dream: just as the floor beneath our feet began to rumble and to crack. Perhaps my mind was trying to protect me from the horror that followed. If I awoke before that event could be replayed, I could convince myself it had never taken place.

  As rooms became cleaner and more orderly, more of the lady in Milady emerged. It was as though I was restoring her to her former high-handedness. She was not cold and unfriendly towards me. She was courteous and kindly, if ever more distant. I did not glimpse the laughing girl I’d seen during my milking lesson again. In fact, the horned beast and I were forging a stronger bond than Milady Flavia and I.

  Sundays I would walk with her – well, ahead of her – to church. It was my lot to clear any offensive items from her path. By which I mean pieces of shit. Such things had never bothered my master and why should they? It was not he who cleaned his boots. So I would find a long stick and sharpen the end and use this to impale any turds in the lane and fling them, discreetly, into the ditches or the hedgerow. Cow pats required special treatment, especially if they were fresh and still runny but let us not dwell on such things. Sorry to have brought it up.

  I was not permitted to attend the service alongside Milady.
I was expected to sit in the gallery above with the other servants. Bugger that for a game of conquistadors. I wasn’t going to expose myself to the gossip of my peers or subject myself to their interrogation. All they wanted to know about was Don Giovanni this and Don Giovanni that and, especially, Don Giovanni the other. I couldn’t bear it. What was sensation and gossip to them was still too raw and horrible for me to deal with, much worse than any runny cow pat in the lane.

  So I would see her to the door where Father Lorenzo would welcome her in and I would claim to have need of scraping something off my shoe lest I profane the floor of the house of Our Lord. Father Lorenzo ceased making eye contact with me. I don’t think he was bothered if I paved my way to salvation or not.

  I would wait outside in much the same way that I was wont to lurk while my master went about his business. The muted drone of Father Lorenzo’s sermon was more than enough religion for me and the half-hearted hymn singing was just meaningless noise.

  During these weeks I had much to think about and puzzle over. As I cleaned and repaired and righted the furnishings of Donna Flavia’s house, I could not help notice of what poor quality it all was. Some of the chairs were sturdier than others and she still had a few robust pieces: an armoire, a table, but there was nothing of any value in the whole place. There were patches on the walls where paintings had once hung. For a candlestick she instructed me to use an old wine bottle because, apparently, this was “fun” and “quaint” and “charming”. She ate as I did, from wooden platters with the same rough utensils. There was no sign of silverware, bejewelled goblets or even a glass to be found although it was evident they had once been present. Canteens and drawers lay empty like raided tombs. My master would have considered this the worst deprivation and would not have suffered it, but Donna Flavia appeared not to register her disappeared wealth. She seemed content with her lot, even seeming to grow happier as my work continued.

  And what about me? Was I also content?

  Not really. I was glad of the physical labour, which is something I never thought I would own, but if only my mind, especially at night, could find something to occupy it other than nightmare and memory.

  ***

  One day, about a month after my arrival, I was serving up cold cuts from the rabbit I’d snared, skinned, cooked and roasted the day before (I was becoming quite the landsman! ) accompanied with a selection of skinny tubers from the scraggly vegetable patch, when Donna Flavia came into the kitchen. This was something she hadn’t done for a fortnight or so; now there was more order in the house, she was observing the boundaries between nobility and servant. This breach of etiquette and the agitated expression that wrinkled her lips into a moue like a cat’s arse told me something was up before she uttered a word.

  ”Leporello, you must go to the village.” She was struggling to keep her voice steady. She leaned on the back of a chair for support. The wood snapped, unable to take even her slight weight, and she stumbled forward. With true grace, she composed herself within a split second as if it had never happened. “At once.”

  ”Milady, I will. What do you need?”

  ”I need you to go to the village. Pray, do not question me.” The red flashes of embarrassment that had sprung to her cheeks were bleached away by a sudden pallor.

  ”Are you unwell, Milady?”

  ”Do you remember when I told you not to question me? You are to go to the village and seek out a – a- um.... a seamstress! Yes, a seamstress! I have need of a seamstress.”

  ”Milady, perhaps I – I was accustomed to repairing many of my master’s garments. He was forever catching them on hedges, gates, sword points...”

  ”If I tell you to go the village and fetch me a seamstress, then go to the village and fetch me a seamstress is precisely what you will do, or forever leave my employ! Do I make myself clear, Leporello?”

  Her dander was well and truly in the up position. I was puzzled. She hadn’t been like this for a long while. I’d thought we were rubbing along quite pleasantly (not like that, you beasts!). Something had rattled her.

  ”I shall take your luncheon through to the dining room,” I said, flatly, “and then I will find you your seamstress.” I nodded to her. She nodded to me. I may even have clicked my heels together, I’m not sure.

  ***

  I had had very little occasion to go down to the village, other than the stroll to church and back, since I started working for Donna Flavia. Twice she had insisted I take the evening off and had dispatched me to the tavern where, because she had not paid me and could not pay me, I sipped one tankard of ale, bought with a coin from my diminishing supply, and tried to ignore the whisperings of the locals. I would much rather have been curled up on the kitchen table, that’s how uncomfortable these visits to the tavern were.

  I strode down the lane, muttering to myself. A seamstress. This was a new one. And how would the services of such a creature be remunerated? From my sorry purse, no doubt. I was keen to get this errand over and done with. The sun was climbing ever higher in the sky and growing stronger in its ascent. It would soon be siesta time and not only would I be caught out in the hottest part of the day, but every other bugger would be indoors, including all the seamstresses. Perhaps Donna Flavia imagined the village was teeming with them, like they were weeds in her back yard.

  I didn’t know where to start so I called in at the smithy to see if someone there could advise me. Perhaps this wasn’t so wise a move, I reconsidered. More heat! And the noise, bloody hell! I would say it was infernal but I’ve seen –

  I cut that thought off at the knees and tried to attract the blacksmith’s attention. He was pounding away with his heavy tool, his bare torso slick with grime and sweat. I watched as he fashioned a glowing red bar of iron into a U. It was a shoe for the horse that was tethered outside – you see, there is very little that escapes me. The owner of the horse was standing a little way off, his face hidden by the scented handkerchief he held to his mouth and by the shadow cast by his three-cornered hat.

  The smith plunged the newborn horseshoe into a bucket of water where it sizzled like a piece of rabbit in hot oil, giving rise to a pillar of steam.

  ”What can I do for ‘ee, Leporello?” the smith rasped in a voice forever roughened by his trade. It always takes me aback when people address me before we have been introduced. It was like being famous – strike that- infamous. I wasn’t entirely sure I didn’t like it, if you see what I mean. “Only I sees you didn’t ride up here on horseback and I don’t do shoes for the likes of you.”

  I bristled at this. “What do you mean, the likes of me?”

  The smith laughed, his eyes twinkling like embers. “Haha! I means ‘uman bein’s is all I mean.”

  ”Oh.” There followed a moment of awkwardness as I attempted to rein in my paranoia.

  ”Well, what is it, man? Only I got this gen’leman ‘ere to finish off.” He jerked his head towards his customer who, rather shiftily it seemed to me, looked down at his buckled shoes.

  I nodded a greeting to him anyway, which he didn’t see but, oh well, there’s a lot of strange people around these days.

  ”Donna Flavia has need of a seamstress,” I decided it was best to come straight out with it and dispense with preamble and euphemism. Oh Lord, I panicked. What if ‘a seamstress’ is a euphemism? My mind raced to imagine what it might mean? I couldn’t think... Seamstress, sewing, needles, thread...

  ”Come undone, ‘as she?” The smith bellowed, by which I mean he laughed loudly at his own little quip and not that he applied his bellows.

  I decided, as Donna Flavia’s representative, to adopt her haughty manner when all around her (that is to say, me) is being facetious. “Where might one find a seamstress, if you please, sirrah?”

  It worked! The smith even stood up straight. He rubbed his filthy beard for a while then pointed at the door with his ton
gs. “Out there, turn right, go through the market square, take a left and it’s the third door on the left. You can’t miss it. There’s a sign with scissors on it ‘angin’ above. Ask for Mimi.”

  I repeated the instructions back to him using my hand to recreate the motions of his tongs. He nodded. I bade him good day, and also to the shy fellow whose head barely moved in response.

  As I left, I heard the smith speak to the fellow and I’m not sure I wasn’t meant to hear. “Apologies, sir, only I thought it best to get rid of him soon as, only he’s bad luck, y’see, devil take ‘im.”

  I sped away from the smithy. “Devil take him”! Why would he use that particular expression? Clearly, word had got out about my master. Perhaps it was the general consensus that I should have been dragged off to Hell with him. Perhaps they blamed me for my master’s downfall? Perhaps I had brought this fate about? Perhaps it was true: I am bad luck.

  Flustered and panicking more than a little, I meandered this way and that before I could recall the smith’s instructions. The market place. This way – no, this!

  The square was empty. Just as well because I was in no mood for suspicious eyes and behind-my-back murmurs. The stalls had all been packed away for siesta and the scene before me had more than a tinge of sadness to it. An empty market place is like finding a child’s toy abandoned in the road.

  What nonsense I speak! I focussed my thoughts on the task in hand and looked for the sign of the scissors.

  It hung, like a dead flag, above a tumbledown shack, its faded design just about discernible after years of exposure to the sun. I knocked at the door, fearing I should put my fist right through it – this is not a boast of inordinate strength but merely to indicate that the door appeared so flimsy and fragile with age it might shatter into splinters should it encounter even the most moderate of blows.

  To my amazement the door did not collapse. In the corner of my eye, I saw movement at the window shutter. Presently, the door moved inwards and a nose and chin appeared. These extremities bore the signs of age, the creases and texture of a well-used sheet of sandpaper.