by Holly Webb
“Oh, Lottie!” Ermengarde hugged her and rubbed her hand over Lottie’s fair curls. “Whatever did you do that for? You can’t have just forgotten about the window?”
“I didn’t want her to see me,” Lottie gulped, feeling for a lump on the back of her head. “Oh, ow … it was embarrassing, I was looking at her, and then she turned round and I just wanted her not to see I’d been staring.”
“Well, why shouldn’t you look at her?” Ermengarde said, blinking. “She wouldn’t complain, Lottie, she’s a just a scullery maid. What would she say?”
“Is she a scullery maid, then? Oh, I suppose you can tell from her apron…”
“And I know she is, because Becky spoke to her. It was Sara who got the last maid her new situation, you know. Becky told this one – her name is Sally – that if Miss Minchin or the cook mistreated her, she and Sara would help.”
“I wonder if Miss Minchin knows.” Lottie shuddered. “I’d hate to be Sara if Miss Minchin found out that Sara had been interfering with her servants.”
Ermengarde snorted. “Sara was never afraid of Miss Minchin, Lottie, you know that. She would just stare at her when she was being told off, as if she was a princess, and Miss Minchin was, oh, a horrible old prime minister or something like that. You know I’m not good at telling things the way Sara does. Besides, now that Sara is an heiress again, Miss Minchin wouldn’t dare say a word against her. She can’t risk Sara or Mr Carrisford telling anyone that she turned Sara into a slave while she was poor, can she?”
“I wonder how long this scullery maid will stay for. I’d simply hate to work for Cook – you can hear her shouting even from up here sometimes.”
“She told Becky that it was better than where she was before. She came from some sort of orphanage. She said that little attic room Sara used to sleep in is luxury. She’s used to sleeping in a dormitory full of girls and having to work in the laundry. Anyway, someone from the orphanage will come to check that she’s happy. If Cook’s too horrible, the orphanage people will take her away again and send her somewhere else. They won’t be able to get away with not feeding her, like they did to poor Sara.”
Lottie shivered. “But she never said, Ermie. I could have given her my dinner, I would have done! All I ever did was give her crumbs out of my pocket for the sparrows round her attic window.”
“Sara was far too proud to tell us that she was hungry.” Ermengarde sighed. “I didn’t notice. I’m not good at noticing, I just let things happen to me. Then as soon as I tried to help, Lavinia told Miss Minchin.”
Lottie flushed. “Only because I told Lavinia, but really and truly, I didn’t mean to. She was saying horrible things about you, and about Sara. She said to Miranda that it was a good thing you never spoke to Sara any more, she was sure you were much improved. And then I said that was all she knew, you talked to Sara almost every night…” She laid a hand on Ermengarde’s arm. “You do know that I never meant for her to tell Miss Minchin, don’t you?”
“Of course I do, goose.” Ermengarde stood up. “I have to go and learn my French vocabulary, Lottie, or Monsieur Dufarge will smirk at me again.”
Lottie nodded, and rested her head against the window, gazing across the square, only half-seeing the houses and the occasional carriage rolling by. She was seeing Lavinia instead – that sharp face, sharp nose, lips drawn back from sharp little teeth as she went to slap her. Lavinia looked like a woodland beast, swathed in all those furs. Lottie smiled, imagining the Lavinia-beast slinking away between great dark trees. And then she wrapped her arms around her middle, smiling even more as she remembered Ermengarde protecting her, the way she’d gone pink with amazement and pleasure when she realized what she’d done.
But Lavinia’s boasting about her presentation had left Lottie feeling strange and unsettled. However horrible Lavinia was, it was quite obvious that she was the spoiled darling of her family. The diamonds and furs seemed to make that clear, and all the fuss over her appearance at court. Lavinia said her mother had cried at the sight of her in her presentation dress and feathers, and that her older brother had taken charge of her bouquet, fetching the flowers himself from the very best florist in London. It was a side of Lavinia that Lottie had never seen – someone whose family adored her.
Most of the girls at Miss Minchin’s were there because their families were out of the country, either living in India, as Sara’s father had been when he’d left her at the school, or perhaps stationed abroad with the army. Visits from parents were few and far between, and once girls finished at the school, they often went to join their families abroad and didn’t come back to visit. Not that many of them would want to come back and gloat anyway, Lottie thought, wrinkling her nose. That was just Lavinia being Lavinia.
So, most of the time, Lottie didn’t feel any different. Ermengarde had relations in England, but Lottie didn’t envy her them at all. A series of stuffy, critical aunts visited Ermie on a rota to complain at her and tell her that she was clearly too fond of cake and that her French accent was abominable and her knowledge of English literature needed to be improved at once, it was a disgrace to the family that she was so foolish.
Who would wish for relatives like that? Lottie was certain that it was her aunts, and the disappointed letters from her father (who hardly ever bothered visiting himself) that made Ermengarde so shy and tongue-tied. They told Ermie that she was stupid, over and over, so Ermie was convinced that they were right. Nicer families would have accepted that schoolwork wasn’t what she was good at and praised Ermie for her sweet temper and her friendliness, instead of making her miserable.
It was quite hard not to tease her sometimes, though, Lottie thought, giggling to herself. Ermengarde would believe anything, if one said it with a straight enough face, which was particularly funny in history lessons. When they were studying Joan of Arc, Lottie had convinced Ermengarde that the Arc was the same sort as Noah’s, and that the saint had been trying to get the French to build an ark to escape from the English. Miss Minchin had not approved of Ermengarde’s account of the battle at Reims.
At least Ermengarde’s nasty aunts came to see her, though, and her grumpy, critical uncle. Ermie even went back home to stay with her father every so often. Lottie hadn’t seen her father for two whole years. She hadn’t been home since she was four years old, when he had left her at Miss Minchin’s.
Would she be here until she was seventeen, as Lavinia had been? Another seven years of Miss Minchin’s icy sniffs and Miss Amelia’s fussing? Lottie drew up her knees, wrapping her arms around them and huddling into the corner of the window seat. Seven years! And then what would happen? Would her father arrange for her to be presented at court, like Lavinia? Would she go back home to live with him? She could hardly remember what the house looked like. How could she call it her home?
Lottie leaned forward, pressing her eyes against the muslin of her dress to hide that she was crying. Suddenly, it all seemed desperately dreary.
Chapter Two
“Lottie, you’re here!” Sara came hurrying down the stairs to hug her, swinging her round delightedly. “Oh, it seems ages since you last visited, I missed you.” She led Lottie towards the pretty drawing room at the back of the house. “How is Miss Minchin’s? Oh, Lottie, whatever’s the matter?”
Lottie frowned. “Nothing. Why?”
Sara was gazing at her, with green eyes troubled. “I … don’t know. For a moment, you looked so sad. Desolate, almost.”
Lottie paused, just for a second, before she smiled and shook her head. She wasn’t quite ready to talk to Sara about yesterday. She didn’t want to talk to anyone.
Sara turned swiftly at a scrabbling noise from further along the hall. “Boris! Were you begging in the kitchens?” she murmured lovingly, as an enormous dog appeared in the doorway. “You bad dog. Yes, you are.” She rubbed her hands over the great boarhound’s ears and he gazed up at her adoringly.
“Hello, Boris,” Lottie said, a little shyly. She wasn’t much use
d to dogs and Boris was so big, he daunted her. He was the size of a small pony and his jaws were massive. But Lottie had never seen him be anything other than gentle, and he clearly adored Sara. Mr Carrisford had bought him for her and had a silver collar made for him that said, I serve the Princess Sara. Boris did look as though he thought he was a princess’s dog – he was always so serious.
Boris snuffled politely at Lottie’s outstretched fingers and allowed her to scratch him under the chin.
“You must come and see what Uncle Tom has given me,” Sara said, laughing and seizing Lottie by the hand to pull her into the library. “It is the funniest thing.”
Lottie followed her eagerly. Mr Carrisford was always giving Sara presents. He had spent two years searching for her after her father had died, desperate to tell his old friend’s little daughter that the diamond mine they had owned together was full of diamonds after all, and now half of it belonged to her. He had made himself terribly ill, fretting about the child left alone, and now that he had found Sara, he would do anything to make her happy. The presents he gave her were always beautiful. “Is it another monkey?” Lottie asked hopefully. “You did say that he thought perhaps the monkey needed a friend.”
Sara looked back at her, smiling. “No, I told Uncle Tom that I thought one monkey was quite enough. He’s so naughty. He slipped out of the front door yesterday and Ram Dass and I had to run around the square chasing him while he leaped about in the trees and threw leaves at us. But Monkey loves this new present too, even though really it belongs to Boris. Boris! Boris! Come on, we’ll show Lottie your present.”
A new collar, Lottie wondered. Or perhaps a coat, although it was surely too warm for Boris to wear one? But what Sara showed her was a strange, glittering toy building, somehow balanced on the arm of the library sofa.
“We won’t disturb Mr Carrisford?” Lottie murmured, looking around.
“No, no, Uncle Tom has gone out to his club,” Sara explained. “And if he were here, Lottie, he would be delighted to show you. You know how much he likes people to enjoy his presents.”
Lottie smiled. Every so often Mr Carrisford would send her back to Miss Minchin’s with a positive armful of bonbons to share with the other girls, or some silly little clockwork toy. Once it had been a whole orchestra of tin instruments and Miss Minchin had made Lottie take them back after Miss Amelia developed a migraine. “I know,” she agreed. “But I can’t see what it is, Sara. It looks like some sort of small building – like those beautiful Indian shrines you showed me the other week.”
“You are very nearly right. You really need to see it in place to understand what it is.” Sara nodded mysteriously. “Boris, darling, come here.”
The great dog nudged up next to her, his tail waving in excitement, so that it thumped heavily against both girls’ dresses. Sara lifted the gilded box from the sofa, and placed it on the dog’s back, crouching down to buckle a strap underneath.
“Oh! It’s like the things the elephants wear!” Lottie exclaimed. She had seen lots of books about India with wonderful pictures – Mr Carrisford even had a photograph on his desk of him on the back of an elephant, sitting in a little canopied seat. “I didn’t recognize it, until it was on Boris’s back. What is it called? I’ve forgotten.”
“A howdah.” Sara straightened up, gently pushing the howdah to make sure it was secure. Boris looked around at his back uncertainly, but he didn’t seem to mind, even though the howdah must have been heavy.
“Where did it come from?” Lottie asked, admiring the gold paint and the little fringed canopy over the top. The dome of the canopy made the howdah look like a tiny temple on Boris’s back.
“Uncle Tom sent for it from India for me. He wrote to one of his friends months ago, asking him to have it made and sending Boris’s measurements for the straps. It was a surprise, but he says that he almost told me about it so many times. He couldn’t bear waiting. You haven’t seen it properly, though, Lottie. Wait a moment, I must find Ram Dass.” Sara hurried out, and Lottie heard her calling in Hindustani to Mr Carrisford’s Indian servant. There were hurried footsteps, and then a flurry of squeaky chattering noises and Lottie smiled delightedly. Mr Carrisford’s little monkey fascinated all the girls at the seminary. Once, when Sara was still working as a servant, he had escaped across the roofs and come in at her skylight window. It had been the monkey who found her, after all Mr Carrisford’s searching. Sara had gone next door to take him home and Mr Carrisford had discovered that the child he had been looking for had been in the very next house all along. Whenever the girls at the seminary went out walking or to church, everyone peered at the windows of the house next door, hoping to see the monkey climbing the curtains or simply watching the passers-by.
Now Sara came in with the affectionate creature sitting on her shoulder, clinging to her hair with his wrinkled grey old man’s hands. He was chattering away to her as though he knew exactly what he meant, even if no one else did, and as soon as he saw Boris wearing the howdah, he squealed with glee, and sprang on to the great dog’s back. He climbed into the padded howdah and lolled there, like some noble traveller.
Boris turned round to look at him, and then looked patiently back at Sara.
“Doesn’t Boris mind?” Lottie asked.
“Not if it’s only for a few moments.” Sara patted the dog’s nose gently. “The very first day it came, we did keep it on him for rather too long and he grew tired of it. But he was very good, he simply sat down and let poor Monkey slide out of his seat. Just watch.”
The monkey was settled now, and he reached one skinny arm out of the golden howdah and slapped at the gorgeously embroidered cloth, thickly stitched and dotted with tiny mirrors, that protected Boris’s back from the tight straps.
Lottie was almost sure that the boarhound sighed. He set off, lumbering slowly around the sofa, with the monkey gazing regally from his gilded throne.
“Miss Sara?”
The two girls looked round and Lottie smiled at Becky, standing by the door in her neat uniform. Becky would never be tall, not after years of half-starving as she grew, but she looked so different now from the yellowish, scrawny thing she had been at Miss Minchin’s.
“The tea’s served, miss, in the blue drawing room.”
Lottie bit her lip. There was a blue drawing room at her father’s house. She couldn’t call it home.
“Lottie, there’s that look again.” Sara lifted the howdah from Boris’s back and laid it on the sofa. She caught Lottie’s arm. “What is it? Don’t say that it’s nothing. Come on. Come upstairs and have tea with me.” She patted Lottie’s cheek. “There’ll be muffins, Lottie, you know you love them. Then you can tell me whatever is the matter.”
Lottie sighed, pulling her face away. Sara would make her tell. She was gentle, always, but so, so persistent. She would strip off Lottie’s comfortable layers until she knew the truth. It would be simpler just to tell her.
Sitting in a cushioned chair, with a cup of tea and a plate of muffins at her side, Lottie made one last attempt at distracting Sara. “Ermengarde said that you spoke to the new scullery maid, Becky,” she said, as Becky poured Sara’s tea.
“Yes, miss.” Becky nodded. “Miss Sara thought it might come easier from me, miss. It was a friendly message, like. To tell Sally that she could always come and speak to me if Cook weren’t treating her well.”
“She has come from the Girls’ Village at Barkingside,” Sara put in. “They will watch over her, she says. Though I can’t say I think much of them, if they sent her to Miss Minchin. Becky, sit down. Drink a cup of tea.”
Becky looked towards the door, as though she expected someone to come and catch her out, joining in with the young ladies, but she perched nervously on the very edge of a straight-backed chair, smoothing her apron over her knees. There was a cup set on the tea tray for her, Lottie realized. Sara and her maid must often drink their tea together. Lottie glanced sideways at Sara under her lashes, confused. The older girl had al
ways been a little strange about this sort of thing. She had hated the way that the cook and the other servants bullied Becky, even before she too was reduced to a servant’s position at Miss Minchin’s. She and Becky had slept next to each other in the cold, dismal attics of the seminary, signalling through the walls to keep their spirits up. After that – of course she couldn’t treat Becky as only a maid. But still… Lottie fought down a chilly disapproval that even she recognized was straight from Miss Minchin.
“Becky, how old is she? The new maid?” she asked politely, trying not to sound anything like Miss Minchin.
“Twelve, miss.”
“Twelve! But she’s so little – she looks smaller than me, I’m sure.”
Becky nodded. “She went to the Girls’ Village when she was half-grown, miss. They’re well-looked after there, but she’d missed a lot of her growing. From not being fed right.”
Lottie nodded and pulled her hand into her lap again. She had been about to take another muffin.
“Why did you look so very miserable before?” Sara asked, laying one slim hand on hers.
Lottie blinked, closing her eyes a moment to hold back a sudden and unexpected sting of tears. “Lavinia visited,” she admitted slowly, wondering how to explain. “Yesterday afternoon.”
Becky made a noise, a sort of disgusted click of her tongue, then she flushed scarlet and apologized. “I’m sorry for interrupting, miss.”
Lottie nodded. “I feel like that too. Oh … it’s silly. It wasn’t that she did anything awful – though she did try to box my ears, and you’ll never guess, Sara, Ermie slapped her hand away.”
“Ermengarde did?” Sara looked shocked and delighted at the same time, her grey-green eyes sparkling. “Oh, Lottie, how brave of her!”
“Yes, she was so surprised at herself that I think she was almost sick afterwards. But that wasn’t it, Sara. Lavinia has been presented at court.” Lottie put her head on one side, distracted by a sudden thought. “Will you be, do you think, when you’re old enough?”
