by Amanda Elyot
Lady Wickham regarded C.J.’s sloppiness with evident distaste. “I have asked Cook to make a rice pudding, so you will need to fetch rice, of course, and eggs. We will need a sugar cone as well. I am told that we still have butter, and I do not wish to make excessive expenditures.”
C.J. finished her list, and after waiting for her to securely close the brass inkwell, Lady Wickham rapped her sharply across the knuckles with her fan. Had the inkwell been open, the writing desk would have been ruined, as the blow caused C.J.’s hands to fly up from the surface and fall back against it with some degree of force.
“What was that for, your ladyship?” C.J. asked, her eyes welling with tears. She kneaded her sore knuckles.
“For handling your quill in such a slovenly manner. I confess that I continue to remain astonished at how a young lady with such an evident sensibility for literature can be so inept with its essentials. Paper and ink do not come cheaply, Miss Welles, and you squander my materials like a drunken sailor!”
Lady Wickham handed C.J. a small purse. “I know to the farthing how much money is in this reticule, Miss Welles. And I have calculated the cost of each item you have listed. I expect you to return the purse to me with one pound, six shillings inside. Anything more, and you will receive my thanks for being an astute shopper. Anything less, and I will punish you for the thief you revealed yourself to be on the day that I found you and so magnanimously offered you a position in my establishment.”
C.J. descended into town with Mary trotting along like a spaniel at her heel. One item on Lady Wickham’s list had caused her particular distress. “Wherever can we find a sugar cone?” she asked Mary, searching in great puzzlement for an ice-cream vendor and wondering why Cook would require such an item in order to make a rice pudding. “And what’s so amusing about it?” she added, in response to her companion’s sudden peal of laughter.
“Why, Miss Welles,” the scullery replied, pointing at a foot-high white obelisk in a shop window, “you’re looking at it!” C.J. winced. She had never heard of a cone made of sugar and therefore had yet to recognize one in its pristine form, despite some experience in Lady Wickham’s kitchen. “I am so glad of your acquaintance, for I had no cause to smile before you came to Laura Place. If you are not havin’ a joke on me, you must be an angel visiting straight from heaven and have lived on naught but ambrosia to know so little of baking ingredients.”
C.J. made a pretense of sharing the joke, but despaired of what might happen should she make a similar slipup in front of a less devoted audience. Rather than call further attention to her ignorance, she elected to change the subject. After purchasing the sugar cone for Cook, C.J. removed the smudged list of grocery items from the deep pocket of her dress and reviewed its contents. “I suppose we should get the candles next, then, as they are nonperishable,” she suggested.
Mary stopped dead in her tracks. “Where did you get that?!” she asked in dumbfounded amazement.
“Does not Lady Wickham dictate a list to you when you go for her purchases?”
“Oh, noooo. She just tells me what to get, and I try best as I can to commit it to memory. If I get distracted and forget to bring somethin’ back, she beats me. But how did you come by a list?”
“I wrote it,” C.J. replied simply.
“I thought it was just somethin’ Lady Wickham made up so the magistrate would give ’er someone cheap to replace poor Fanny. You really can write?” the girl marveled, even more awestruck now.
“Can’t you?”
“Cor, no!” the scullery maid replied. “Can’t read neither. Same as Tony. Servants like us—we’re not expected to know our letters, though most of us know our numbers, seein’ as how we have to make purchases for the masters and mistresses. Besides,” she added, tugging at a lock of hair that had tumbled out from under her white mobcap, “who would teach us?”
Chapter Five
Wherein a secret is confided, cruelty exposed, evil confronted, and our heroine creates quite a stir.
AT MARY’S TENTATIVE REQUEST, C.J. began teaching her the alphabet. The latter was pleased to be able to accomplish something truly useful, and the former displayed a livelier mind and quicker aptitude for retention and comprehension than C.J. ever would have guessed, owing to the dull vacancy of the girl’s usual expression. Mary might never be clever in any extraordinary way, but since C.J.’s arrival, there was a brighter aspect to her eyes. The unfortunate turn of events that had brought C.J. to Lady Wickham’s spartan home on Laura Place had produced quite an unexpected result: for the first time in her life, C.J. felt responsible for another human being. A bond had been forged between the twenty-first-century actress and the illiterate nineteenth-century scullery maid. Through it, Mary was blossoming; and in some respects, so was C.J., and for this unusual renaissance, they were both grateful. If C.J. had made a conscious decision to look after Mary, she could not recall the moment it was fixed. In many ways, Mary fascinated C.J. The girl, most likely still in her teens, had never been encouraged or even expected to have an independent thought in her head and had not a bone in her body that was not the property of her employers, whereas C.J. came from a world where women had fought hard through litigation and legislation to be treated as free-thinking, equal members of society. Yet as each day passed, it became clearer that it was the unschooled Mary, and not C.J., the privileged and educated woman, who better understood the nature of their universe.
C.J. was mulling this over one evening as the two young women readied themselves for bed. Mary had slipped off her shift, and C.J., not meaning to watch her, couldn’t help but notice the thinness of the girl’s arms. How she could handle her menial drudgery with so fragile a form was remarkable, for she seemed to pick at her food whenever the servants gathered in the kitchen for meals.
“You should put some meat on your bones, girl,” C.J. said, trying to make light out of her worry that the maid might in fact be ill.
“Oh, I don’t like meat, Miss Welles.”
“You mistake my meaning, Mary. I mean you should eat more. You eat less than a gnat and you’re as thin as a rail.”
“But I did understand you, Miss Welles,” the girl replied obstinately. “I’m not plump like my sisters, and I know I’m not pretty like you. I shall never be otherwise unless I have a stronger appetite, but I never could bring myself to eat the flesh of the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. I look in their dead sad eyes when I’m sent to market and I can’t bring myself to take them home with me so they can be our supper.” C.J. listened quietly, wondering how many Georgians dared to be vegetarians by choice, as opposed to the happenstance of abject poverty. “That’s why I can never eat the mock turtle soup. Were you born in the countryside, Miss Welles?”
“No . . . I’m from a city . . . a very big city.” She was tempted to add, “ever so much bigger than Bath,” but feared becoming responsible for further elaboration.
“If you could see the mournful look in a calf’s brown eyes and see how gentle he is, and as innocent as a newborn, you would never stand for him havin’ his head chopped off just to make some nasty old noblewoman a tureen of mock turtle soup!” Mary had driven herself to tears. “And when she sends you out to fetch a chicken, and the poulterer takes it from its cage—clucking and squawking like the dickens because it knows what’s about to happen to it—and you watch the man wring its neck right there in front of you . . .” The scullery maid’s sobs racked her slender body. “What did a chicken ever do to Lady Wickham that it should deserve to lose its life?”
C.J. tenderly draped an arm over Mary’s bare shoulder and drew her close. Side by side they sat on the edge of the bed. “It’s all right, Mary,” she soothed. “It’s perfectly reasonable for you to feel this way.”
“No. No, it’s not,” Mary wept. “You don’t understand, Miss Welles.”
C.J. noticed an angry-looking mark on Mary’s upper arm where her fingers had been resting. “Mary, what’s this? How came you by this bruise?”
“Oh . . . I bumped into the . . . a . . . hanging cupboard in the kitchen when I was fetching a . . . I was rushin’ too fast you see, because Lady Wickham asked . . .” Mary’s untested imagination failed her. She was no good at dissembling.
“My poor Mary,” C.J. said softly, stroking the injured area with her thumb.
“I’m such a clumsy girl. I’ve always been clumsy . . . everybody says so . . . that’s why I’m usually in the scullery instead of bein’ an upstairs maid, except that Lady Wickham’s too stingy to engage a separate upstairs maid, now that she’s turned Fanny out. There’s not much I can break in the scullery. And I’m too ugly to work upstairs and serve the guests. That’s what my other employers said.”
C.J. was at a loss for words. “Mary—”
“I got myself turned out of my last position for disobedience. They put me on the street and I had nowhere to go. Constable Mawl arrested me for vay . . .” The girl searched for the correct word.
“Vagrancy?”
“Yes, that’s it,” Mary sniffled. “That’s how Lady Wickham found me. I was brought before the judge. Just like you.”
Disgusted, C.J. shook her head. “Mary,” she murmured gently, “let’s try this again. How did you get this bruise?”
The girl dissolved in a flood of tears. It was useless to try to maintain the deception. Miss Welles could see through her as clearly as if she were a windowpane. “L-L-Lady Wickham,” she sniffled in a hoarse whisper.
“Why did she do this to you?”
“Because this mornin’ I would not bring back the rabbit she asked me to buy for supper. I could not force myself to do it this time. Miss Welles, it breaks my heart to see God’s defenseless creatures strung up like highwaymen at a butcher’s, and when she asked me why I returned empty-handed . . . well . . . it’s a sin to tell a lie, Miss Welles. It’s the devil himself whisperin’ in your ear. So I told her the truth.”
“And she struck you.”
“First she grabbed my arm here, so I could not run away,” Mary began, displaying her bruised upper arm. “Then she swung her stick at me and hit me in the same place with it. Fairly lost her balance, she did. In-sub-or-di-na-tion,” the girl said, her voice still choked with sobs. “She said she’d have Tony take the lash to my back if I ever tried anything like that again.”
C.J. tried to conceal her boiling rage. The child had the sort of open heart that would no doubt have expressed more concern for her friend’s anger than for her own mistreatment. “Poor Mary,” she murmured. She drew the maid to her and rocked her in her arms, stroking the girl’s dull brown hair. “Sleep now. In the morning, we shall set things right.”
Mary was too exhausted to protest or try to convince her idol of the inadvisability, not to mention impossibility, of ever affecting a change in their circumstances. If Miss Welles wanted to indulge in dreams, who was Mary Sykes to cruelly dash them?
THE FOLLOWING MORNING C.J. began her crusade. “How dare you, you bitter old crone?” she bravely demanded of her employer. “Striking a defenseless scullery maid! Some civilized nature you’ve got—you, who consider yourself superior because you admire Dante and Shakespeare! A fine example of Christian charity! You sit smugly in church every Sunday believing yourself a better representation of humanity because you can read and write and comprehend the bishop’s lofty sermons. But do you ever practice what he preaches?”
Mary lurked in the doorway to the parlor, dust rag in hand, trembling like a leaf in an early November wind.
“Your insubordination astonishes me, Miss Welles! The manner in which I treat my servants is no concern of yours, and I would advise you to keep about your own business or you will mightily regret the consequences.”
“I cannot stand idly by while you beat them,” C.J. insisted stubbornly, completely unaware of how punishing such “consequences” would be, despite her knowledge of Lady Wickham’s cruel reputation.
“Come here!” C.J. obeyed, head held proudly, almost defiantly, in the face of Lady Wickham’s admonishment. “Never, in all my seventy-six years—never—have I experienced such impertinence from a servant. I regret the day you came to my attention, Miss Welles. You are an ungrateful chit who does not deserve the excellent considerations I have afforded you. This house has been turned upside down and inside out since your arrival. You have encouraged others in my employ to contradict and countermand my orders, to slack their duties and shirk their responsibilities. I have even done you the kindness of purchasing candles for the domestics to enjoy in their quarters in the evenings. Never has such generosity gone so unappreciated.”
“This does not concern me. Mary Sykes is a human being, your ladyship. She is not a slave.”
“You are correct, Miss Welles. Mary is a domestic servant who earns a wage for her labors. She was born to be one and shall remain one for the rest of her life if she does not end up in the jails or on the streets, which is what she deserves for her defiant behavior.”
From her position in the doorway, Mary gasped and paled. Realizing she had just given herself away, she turned to leave, in an effort to pretend that she was just passing by.
“Stay where you are, Mary,” Lady Wickham snapped. “I am not going to blame you for your recent transgressions. I am fully aware that Miss Welles has put inappropriate notions of grandeur into your thick head—ideas which a girl like you is incapable of acquiring on her own. Therefore, I am willing to overlook yesterday morning’s disobedience, and give you another chance to reform your ways rather than turning you out on the spot, an act which, I confess, was my first inclination.”
Mary dropped a grateful curtsy to Lady Wickham.
C.J. was appalled. “Mary—,” she began, but the scullery maid shook her head and stifled her tears. “You don’t understand, Miss Welles,” she said shakily.
“Place your hands on the table and bend over, Miss Welles,” Lady Wickham commanded. C.J. obliged fearfully. “Come closer, Mary, and take your hands away from your eyes. You will watch what happens to rebellious serving girls who question their betters. Even a lady’s companion remains subject to punishment.” At the first crack of the ebony cane on her backside, C.J. cried out in pain. “This reprimand injures me more than it does you,” the old woman scolded, punctuating her words with heavy wallops that landed on C.J.’s back and thighs.
“You’ll break her spine, your ladyship!” Mary cried, as the blows rained harder down the middle of C.J.’s back.
“Regrettably, Miss Welles, your independent spirit and defiance will deprive me of your services, and I shall be unhappily required to sacrifice my reading and my correspondence until you have learned the error of your ways. You will go to the scullery and will not be permitted above stairs, except to sleep in your chamber, until further notice.”
Lady Wickham was visibly exhausted from exacting C.J.’s punishment. “Come forward, Mary.” The maidservant approached her employer with no small degree of trepidation, her cheeks stained with tears from witnessing her champion’s punishment. The crack of a slap rang out against her damp flesh.
“But Mary didn’t do anything, your ladyship,” C.J. protested through her own tears. Her temerity was rewarded with an equally sharp blow to her own cheek.
“I do not have to explain my actions to my servants!” Lady Wickham snapped. “But as I am a munificent woman, I will enlighten you, Miss Welles. Mary was chastised just now as a reminder to curb her attempts at independent thought. You were disciplined for daring to question the actions of your employer.” Lady Wickham waved her hand dismissively. “I expect this to be the end of the matter. You are both excused.”
C.J. WIPED THE GRIME from her brow with the back of a sticky hand. Flecks of soot flew into her face, stinging her eyes as she used a bellows to fan the flames of the small coal—the portion commonly used to start the coal fires before more lumps were added to the grate. It was miserably hot and her lungs burned from smoke inhalation. Had she been pressed into service on a chain gang, the labo
r could not have been more arduous than the exigencies of a Georgian kitchen.
Mary sat nearby, scrubbing rust from the bottom of a pot that Lady Wickham was too penurious to place on the rubbish heap.
“Why don’t we just bolt?” C.J. whispered. “We could sneak away in the dead of night. Anything would be better than this.” She nearly choked on another mouthful of smoke.
“Are you daft, Miss Welles? If they catch us—and they will, make no mistake—they’ll beat us for sure! Maybe worse.” Her eyes widened with fear. “They could hang us!”
Stretching her cramped arm muscles, C.J. nearly knocked over the rat shelf suspended above her head. Mary had explained that the shelf’s position rendered it impossible for the rats to get to any food placed upon it—hence the nickname. “For the life of me, I cannot make it past my third day down here,” C.J. bitterly replied, wiping her hands on her greasy apron. “I can’t imagine how you do it every day.”
Mary shrugged resignedly. “It’s my place, Miss Welles. One must accept their lot, and it’s no good tryin’ to change things.”
Mary was too ingenuous to indulge in exaggeration. If servants who went AWOL might really be subject to death by hanging, there appeared to be no alternative but spirit-crushing servitude. Admittedly, C.J. did not know enough to elude either her employer or the authorities; and Mary was equally ill equipped, for different reasons. It was both sobering and depressing for C.J. to acknowledge that Mary was probably right: to survive in this world, she, too, would have to adopt Mary’s resignation to her “lot.” C.J. began to regret having agreed to help Mary improve herself. Perhaps the poor girl had been better off in her previous state of defeated complacency. A little knowledge could indeed be a dangerous thing sometimes.
Lady Wickham was expecting a guest for afternoon tea, so Cook ordered the two young women to make the “new tea.” “Like the voice of a little bird, her ladyship is: cheap, cheap, cheap,” scoffed Cook. “She even makes her own new tea ’stead of buying it off the vendors.” She noticed C.J.’s uncomprehending expression. “You must have been quality once,” the thickset woman remarked, “not to know about new tea.” She showed C.J. how they took the used tea leaves and dried them over a heated plate. “For green tea, we add copper dye,” she told a horrified C.J., who wondered what the copper was doing to their systems when they drank the doctored beverage. “When her ladyship wants black tea, which she prefers, we add logwood dye to give it the right color. She even serves her guests the smouch.”