Once
Page 24
One morning, she woke up to the sunlight and the silk and the lack of anyone besides herself and just laid there. She looked out the window at the clear, blue sky. She took in the tiny, distant sounds of doors opening, pails being set down, and footsteps in the hall as the maids took care of the empty rooms that mirrored her own.
She missed it.
She blinked. That feeling had been unexpected. Never, in all her years, had she thought she would miss scrubbing or making beds or cleaning out the fireplace or even changing sheets. Sewing, cooking, dusting—she actually missed all of it. It had been the bane of her existence before, but now—somehow it actually sounded like an improvement over tinkering and technical reading and discouraged boredom.
She pushed herself up on one elbow.
Who said she couldn’t do those things?
Everyone knew she was the governor’s wife in name only, so acting as though it were below her dignity was a joke. And yes she was supposed to be inventing and making grand things—but since she wasn’t, and couldn’t seem to, what harm would taking a cleaning break do?
“Janine?”
The machine whirred to life and its blue eyes blinked on. “Yes, Amanda?”
She sat up more fully and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “Bring me the simplest dress I have.”
Janine blinked. “What is ‘the simplest dress I have,’ Mistress?”
Amanda smiled. “Never mind. I’ll get it.” She stood and plodded across the floor to her wardrobe. She opened it and looked through the colorful labyrinth of silk and linen. In the very back, she found it.
Black, cotton, simple, with a clean white collar and cuffs.
Amanda thought back to the black dress she’d been sewing back home, the dress that was to be her finery, and smiled. “Perfect.”
By the time Mary arrived, Amanda had already pulled down the bed covers, smoothed the sheets, fluffed the pillows, and was pulling the covers back up until they were as smooth as a calm, clear lake.
The maid stared. “I can do that, ma’am…”
“No, it’s all right.” Amanda gave the pillows a few finishing tweaks. “Could I have a feather duster?”
Mary’s round face crinkled. “May I ask the purpose, ma’am?”
“For dusting, silly goose.” Amanda took the time to stop and look at her maid and saw a girl not much older than herself. “And don’t call me ma’am, please. I’m Amanda.”
Still frowning, Mary said, “Yes ma’am. That is… yes. All right. I’ll get it.” And she vanished down the hall.
She returned moments later with a fluffy gray feather duster, which she handed to Amanda. She held onto it an extra second, reluctantly, but at last relinquished it. “Can I get you anything else, ma’… Amanda?”
“No thank you. I’m just going to dust for a bit.”
Mary kept her eyebrows furrowed, but nodded. “Yes m… all right. Just… ring for me if you need me.”
Then the maid left, and Amanda turned, and began to dust her way around the room.
About halfway through her task, the door hinges creaked ever so slightly, and she turned to see a young housemaid, blonde hair wisping from under her cap, standing there with a feather duster of her own.
“Oh…” The maid blushed. “I’m so sorry, ma’am. I thought you had gone…”
“No, come on in. It’s fine.”
The girl advanced slowly, and Amanda stifled a laugh at her shocked face.
“Do you always dust this room?” she asked, hoping to put the girl at ease.
“No ma’am. Sometimes Jane does it.”
“And what’s your name?”
“Ellie, ma’am.”
“Short for anything?” Amanda picked up a jewelry box to dust under it.
“Short for Eleanor, ma’am.”
“You don’t have to say ‘ma’am’ every time. I’m not much older than you.”
“Yes ma’am. I mean no ma’am.”
Amanda smiled and put the box back down, then hesitated, looking at it.
“Ellie,” she asked at last, “how long does it take you or Jane to dust a room?”
Ellie shrugged. “Depends… mostly about twenty minutes, I suppose.”
Amanda looked at the duster in her hand and ran her fingers through the feathers. Then she laid it down. “I’ve got to go. See you later.”
She didn’t see whether the young maid gave any response because she dashed through the door that led to her workshop, closed it, and stood leaning against the wall, thinking.
Twenty minutes to dust a room.
She darted over to a shelf to pick up a handful of gears.
Perhaps not all inventions had to be grand, world-changing affairs. Or perhaps a small time-and-labor saving device could indeed change the world. One wad of dust at a time.
She smiled.
Three days later she emerged from her workshop triumphant, holding a boxy contraption less than a foot long with an electric cord wrapped around it. She dashed down the hall, peeking in each room. In one she spotted a slender girl dusting, and poked her head in the room. “Ellie?” she said.
The girl turned around but it was a brunette with a small, sharp nose.
“You must be Jane,” Amanda nodded. “Where’s Ellie, please?”
The girl pointed to the right. “I think she’s in the next room, ma’am.”
Not sparing another word Amanda spun around and trotted into the next room, where Ellie was dusting a desk.
“Ellie, would you help me with something?”
The maid turned and looked at her, head tilted to one side.
“I’ve made something, and I need you to test it for me.”
“Yes ma’am.” Ellie laid the duster down and approached shyly. “What is it?”
Amanda’s smile hurt her cheeks. “It’s a duster.”
The girl’s eyes widened.
“Here, I’ll show you.” Amanda glanced around the room and found a steel electrical outlet near the base of one wall. “Hold this.” She thrust the contraption into the maid’s arms and began to unwind the cord. She plugged it into the wall, then darted back and pointed to a switch. “This turns it on. You just flip that, and then point it wherever you need to dust.”
The girl looked down at the switch. “What does it do?”
“It sucks the dust away. Would you try it?”
Eyes still wide, Ellie hesitantly touched the switch, then started a bit as the machine whirred to life. The noise it made was constant but not overly loud, and the girl gripped it in both hands and trained it at the desk she had been dusting.
Poofs of dust made their way from the wood and disappeared into the device like magic.
Ellie gasped, and flipped the switch off. “My land,” was all she said.
“It should make your dusting much faster,” Amanda nodded, cheeks still hurting with delight. “Just be careful not to suck up other things… valuables or your hair, for instance. Not that your hair isn’t valuable.”
Ellie giggled.
“But when that light comes on,” Amanda pointed to a tiny red bulb on the top, “it means the machine is full and needs to be emptied before you dust any more. Come find me when it happens, and I’ll show you how.”
“All right.” In her excitement, Ellie dropped the “ma’am.” “Wait,” she called after Amanda, who had turned to go.
“Yes?”
The girl glanced at the machine, then at Amanda again. “Where are you going?”
“Well where do you think I’m going? To make another one for Jane.”
Ellie smiled.
Once her mind had latched onto the idea of creating machines to help with household tasks, inspiration flowed like one of the fountains in the front gardens. She made more dusting machines, including one that was specially made for Janine to hold and use. It could be plugged directly into the AI, removing the cord’s limitations. Next, she started work on an apparatus to help file away the grime that the steam always depo
sited on the inside of the heaters. It took a couple tries, but it too became a success. She made two of those, too, one for each of the scullery maids.
Somewhat irrationally—or so she thought at first—she said nothing to Byron about these developments, and she rather hoped he wouldn’t find out. As time went on, she realized that her hesitance was born of embarrassment. He had such high and fine ideals of what he wanted machinery to accomplish—dreams of high-functioning artificial intelligence that could help run businesses and dramatically improve his state. Why would he care about dusting machines and heater cleaners?
Not to mention when he thought about how much lower these creations were than, say, Janine, he might begin to question things. And of course, she couldn’t have that.
So she just kept busy, and when he asked about her day, she eluded his questions with generalities.
One day she had awoken early with an idea for a larger dusting machine for carpets, and bolted for her laboratory without taking the time to dress properly. When Mary tapped at her door hours later, the growling of her stomach revealed that she had inadvertently skipped breakfast.
“You must be exhausted,” the maid said. She nearly always dropped the “ma’am” now. “I was just coming to call you for luncheon.
Amanda mentally surveyed herself. “Maybe slightly tired,” she said. But it was a better tired than she’d felt for months.
Mary chuckled. “Well, your meal is almost ready. Would you like to change?”
The pointed comment, reminded Amanda that she was still in her dressing gown, and she smiled sheepishly. “All right. I’ll be down in a moment.”
“Very well, ma’am.” Mary turned to leave, but Amanda hesitated, then called to her.
“Mary?”
The maid stopped, and turned back, eyebrows raised.
“Could I eat with you instead of in the dining room?”
It was Mary’s turn to hesitate. She raised her eyebrows further. “I… I suppose you could, ma’am. I take my luncheon in the servants’ hall…”
“Could I eat there, then?”
Mary didn’t reply for a moment.
“Please,” Amanda said. The idea of eating with a group rather than alone at the big table was sounding better and better as she thought about it.
“I don’t see why not, ma’am. That is… Amanda. Come down whenever you’re ready, then.”
Amanda changed into a yellow linen dress and scurried downstairs.
At first, the amount of servants was intimidating. Amanda felt very out of place, not only by virtue of her colorful clothing but by the familiarity everyone shared. Other than Mary, Ellie, Jane, and the footmen who served in the dining room, the servants were barely more than strangers to Amanda.
They offered her a seat between Ellie and Mary, and she took it gladly and partook of the cold turkey and cheese they served. By the end of the meal, she had made the acquaintance of the cook, Mrs. LaFaye, the kitchen maid, Lilly, the butler, a fatherly, gray-haired man named Southworth, and a stable boy, Pete. Before she had only seen them here and there, like phantoms throughout the house, appearing and then disappearing out of the corner of her eye while she worked or studied.
“They like you,” Mary whispered as Amanda exited the servants’ hall. The sentiment replaced the slight tension in her chest with a fuzzy warmth.
After that she tried to read some more about circuitry, but her exhaustion pushed her to sleep in the library chair. She had been awakened by Mary, who shook her urgently and told her that Master Byron was home, and asked her if she wanted to change. For half an instant her fogged brain entertained the thought of appearing at dinner as she was, in her plain linen with hair pulled back in a simple braid. Instead, she opted to change, have her hair done, and appear at supper the fine lady the rest of the world thought her to be.
As always, he updated her as to his affairs over the bisque and salad and fresh bread. He had been drawn again into some dispute over some legislation involving the nuances of audio contracts, but still found time to take the other AI machine to a toy factory for a demonstration. The owners seemed to show interest but in the end sent him away noncommittally, which to him was proof that the Tyrellian Corporation’s representatives had been there first.
When he finished, he asked about her day. She thought for a moment, again entering into the debate with herself over whether it was more risky to tell him about her inventions—or to keep hiding them.
“I worked more on programming Janine,” she told him. “I read about positronic circuitry. And I took a nap—reading all of that tired me. Janine is coming along nicely.”
He smiled. “Sounds much better than my day.” He wiped his mouth and stood up. “Well, I’m off to bed. Are you going to bed, too?”
And as usual, she was. After talking to Mrs. LaFaye she had a new idea for a device that could help mix things in the kitchen.
She couldn’t wait to wake up and begin working on it.
VIII.
There May Be Something There That Wasn’t There Before
The days passed. Save for the dressed-up dinners and impending Christmas ball, Amanda could almost have forgotten she was the wife of the governor. When she finished her larger carpet dusting machines, she moved on to a simple apparatus that could release water straight into the mop fibers, so the maids wouldn’t have to carry a pail around and be constantly dipping into it. It took her awhile to perfect that design, and then they wanted four of them, so it was awhile before she saw the last of her mopping devices.
She stopped falling asleep in the chair in the library, and found she fell asleep quick and hard at night. She stopped having breakfast in bed, and started getting up earlier to take breakfast in the servants’ hall. She stopped ignoring or avoiding the servants, and began laughing and talking with Ellie, Jane, Mary, and others. She brought Janine with her to the servants’ hall one day and taught the footmen, Frank and Alfred, how to program her. She took piano lessons from Jane.
And as she worked, her subconscious pining for her husband and her fear that there would ever be a child she must sacrifice on the altar of her lies faded into the background.
One day she stopped work early and slipped into the kitchen an hour before luncheon. She stood in the doorway a few minutes until Mrs. LaFaye noticed her.
“Dearie, what are you doing here at this hour?” the middle-aged woman asked, wiping perspiration from her brow with her sleeve.
“I’m starting work on that mixing machine we talked about,” she explained, taking another step into the stuffy room. “But I really don’t know anything about fancy cooking… I don’t know what requirements you’d have. So I thought I’d watch a bit. Maybe I could even help?”
Mrs. LaFay hesitated, looking Amanda from head to toe in the interim. Finally she nodded. “You can go over and help Lilly with the souffle, if you like. That should help you get a feel for it.”
Amanda cast her gaze towards the youngest kitchen maid, who was whipping eggs in a bowl.
“All right. Thank you.” She smiled at the cook, then sidled over to Lilly feeling very much out of her element. “What’s a souffle?” she whispered.
The girl, who couldn’t have been older than seventeen, giggled. “It’s a sort of cake, miss. Made from eggs.”
Miss. Had the slip been merely ignorance, or had the girl simply forgotten Amanda was, technically, married?
She brushed the thought from her mind and looked at the stiff egg whites. “How long does it take you to get them that fluffy?”
“Oh, ten minutes, I guess. I’m not sure.”
Amanda watched as the girl twirled the whisk with rapid motions of her wrist. “Can I do anything?” She asked after a moment.
“You could stir the sauce if you like, miss. It’s cooling.”
Obediently, Amanda lifted a spoon and turned to the bubbling red that sat on the stove. Maybe she could create a machine that could both mix and stir, she thought as the liquid swirled slowly.
Amanda blinked. Fold? She looked from the eggs to the sauce. “Stir them?” she asked.
“Oh no ma’am, don’t stir them.” The young girl lifted the stiff egg whites and began slowly pouring them into the sauce a little at a time, using the spoon to gently lift sauce on top of egg and egg on top of sauce.
Could the machine be somehow programmed to also fold? Ideas began to spiral as she watched Lilly spoon the mixture into a small dish and place it carefully into the oven. “If you move too quickly it will fall,” she said.
“Is that for dinner?” Amanda asked.
“Yes ma’am.”
“I can’t wait.”
Lilly smiled shyly.
“I’m going to try to make something to help you stir and whip and fold, Lilly.”
The maid cocked her head. “A machine, like you made for Ellie and Jane?”
“Well, not like that, but a machine. How would you like that?”
The little maid didn’t answer, but she hid a broadening smile behind her sleeve.
“Mrs. LaFaye, I have a message from Governor Weaver…” The voice of Southworth stopped short when he saw Amanda standing in the kitchen. “Mrs. Weaver. I apologize, I didn’t know…”
Amanda dismissed his apologies with a wave of her hand. “It’s fine. Go on.”
The butler nodded, and he turned to the cook again. “The governor wants to speak with you this evening after dinner about the menu for the Christmas ball. He thought it might help keep your load light if you start thinking about it earlier this year.”
Mrs. LaFaye laughed. “Oh, so the master knows how to run a kitchen better than I do, does he? Begging your pardon, ma’am…”
Amanda sighed. “Look… you don’t all have to act like I’m some fine lady. We all know that Byron—Governor Weaver—is my husband in name only. Please, don’t treat me like an outsider. It’s not what I deserve, or…” She hesitated. “Or what I want.”