by Helen Peters
I took out my tinderbox, laid the square of cloth on the hearth and, without hope, struck the flint against the steel. Sparks shot out and, to my astonishment, one of them landed on the tinder and began to smoulder.
“It’s caught!” I called to Polly, who was dusting the dressing-table.
“Quick,” she said, “put a match to it.”
I held one of the wood splinters (they were dipped in sulphur, Polly told me) against the smouldering tinder. To my delight, a little flame appeared at the tip of the match. I inched it towards the fire and held it to the thinnest piece of kindling. A splinter began to glow orange.
“Oh, go on, go on,” I murmured, crouching over the tiny flame.
The splinter curled up and turned black. I blew gently on it, as I’d seen Polly do, but it remained resolutely black. I sat back on my haunches and sighed.
“Sorry, Polly. Failed again.”
“It’s a good job it’s not Tuesday,” said Polly as she crossed the room. “That’s carpet-cleaning day.”
“But you’ve cleaned the carpets today.”
“No, today’s just sweeping. On Tuesdays we have to sprinkle damp tea leaves on them and sweep them off.”
“Tea leaves?”
“They attract the dust, that’s the idea. Once a month we do it with damp salt, and you should see how black the salt gets. Salt works better, I reckon. But salt costs, and the tea leaves have already been used, so they’d only go to feed the pigs.”
We were in Sophia’s dressing room, which was now Anna’s bedroom. It was such a weird thought that here I was, working as a housemaid in the exact same place where, two hundred years in the future, my godmother was asleep in bed.
“Right,” said Polly, “that’s done. Now for water.”
“Oh, yes, please,” I said, suddenly realising how thirsty I was.
Polly gave me a funny look. “You like carrying water?”
“Carrying water? What do you mean? Why do we have to carry water?”
“So the family can wash, of course. You must have had servants carrying water for you, surely, before you came down in the world?”
“Oh. Yes, of course.”
“You take that bowl.” She indicated a marble-topped table on which stood a huge china bowl and matching jug. The bowl was half full of water, with a film of soap scum floating on the top.
“I’ll fetch Sir Henry’s,” Polly said. “We empty them in the scullery sink and clean them out.”
“Imagine,” I said, as we carried the heavy bowls downstairs, “if the water could be carried around the house in pipes, and you could just turn on a tap and it would pour out.”
“Carried around the house in pipes?” said Polly. “What are you talking about?”
“Never mind. Just thinking aloud.”
What was I doing, carrying Sophia Fane’s dirty washing water down three flights of stairs? It was madness. But the time travel only seemed to happen at night. So I was going to have to put up with being a servant for the rest of the day. Great.
We walked through an enormously long brick cellar, lined on both sides with hundreds of wooden barrels.
“The beer cellar,” Polly explained.
“Wow. You people drink a lot of beer.”
We carried the bowls along a corridor, past a series of rooms that Polly named as the servants’ hall, the dairy, the game larder and the pantry. As we passed, she said hello to a maid working in the dairy. I was curious to see what she was doing, but Polly hurried along too fast for me to stop.
As we got to the scullery where I washed up last night, Alice emerged from the kitchen with a pile of dirty pans. The cook’s voice shouted from behind her. “And then get straight back here and peel those carrots, you useless little slattern.”
Alice gave me a look of loathing as she walked into the scullery, where a little girl was washing up at the sink. She was so small that she had to stand on a wooden box. She must be Nell, the scullery maid who fainted last night, I thought. If only I had those rubber gloves to give her.
Alice dumped the pans on the draining board. She stepped back for Polly to enter the scullery, but she didn’t wait for me to go in. Instead, she walked out and shoved me in the elbow, sending the greasy water in my bowl slopping on to the floor.
“Hey!” I said. “What did you do that for?”
“Clumsy idiot,” she said, a malicious gleam in her eye. “What a mess you’ve made.”
She walked back into the kitchen and shut the door behind her.
Polly came out of the scullery. Her serene expression turned to a frown as she saw the puddle on the floor and streams of water flowing down the channels between the flagstones.
“Oh, Evie,” she said. “How did you manage to do that?”
“I didn’t. Alice shoved me, on purpose. She hates me. She’s hated me from the first moment she saw me.”
Polly said nothing. She fetched two cloths from the scullery and handed one to me.
“Why does she hate me?” I said, as I mopped up the water. “I haven’t done anything to her.”
Polly got down on her hands and knees and started mopping.
“She’s jealous,” she said.
“Of me? Why?”
Polly laughed. “Beats me. You can’t even light a fire.”
I couldn’t help laughing too. It was hard to feel miserable with Polly around.
“She hates being a kitchen maid,” said Polly.
“But why would that make her hate me?”
“Because she wanted your job.”
“She wanted this job? Why’s it better than being a kitchen maid?”
“Imagine being stuck in that kitchen working for that nasty old cook all day long. Old Winter loathes all kitchen maids. She makes their lives a misery.”
“I don’t see this is much better,” I said. “I’ve already been hit three times by Mrs Hardwick.”
“At least she’s not breathing over our shoulders all day long though,” said Polly. “Mostly we get to work by ourselves. And Alice wanted to work with me, of course. Who wouldn’t?” She grinned at me. “But Alice can’t sew, and you have to be able to sew to be a housemaid. I was lucky that way. We was all taught to sew, where I grew up.”
“Did you grow up near here?” I asked, wringing my cloth into the bowl.
“Over on the edge of the village,” said Polly. “In the workhouse.”
“Oh.”
We’d learned about workhouses in history, when we did the Victorians, and, from what I remember, they were cruel, horrible places, the absolute last resort for people who had nowhere else to go.
I mopped up water from between the flagstones. “So are you … an orphan?”
“I don’t know. My mother died when I was a baby, so they told me. They found me on the workhouse steps one morning. They reckoned my father took me there and then left the village. Probably went off to find work.”
“He abandoned you? That’s terrible.”
Polly shrugged. “Happens to a lot of people. Times is hard, with that dratted war.”
War? Was England at war in 1814? I almost asked which war, but stopped myself just in time. I didn’t want Polly to think I was even more stupid than she thought I was already.
“At least he took me to the workhouse,” she said. “So he must have cared about me. Else he’d have just left me to die. And here I am, alive and well.”
“How long have you been working here?”
“About two years now. I was hired out to the silk factory, but it was terrible work and somebody told me about a girl what worked here. So I ran away one day and just turned up here. I said I was a hard worker and good at sewing and old Hardwitch agreed to try me out. I was lucky – they’d just had a maid leave, so they needed another pair of hands. She’s a tough old boot, Hardwitch, but she’s got a decent heart. It’s buried pretty deep, but it’s there.” She stood up. “All done. Get rid of that water and give your hands a wash, now the fires are done.”
I tipped
the dirty water down the sink that Nell wasn’t using, and then Polly put the plug in. I said hello to Nell, and she gave me a frightened glance in reply. She only looked about ten, poor thing.
While Polly sloshed water into the sink from a bucket, I opened the kitchen door very slightly and peeped through. It looked much more cheerful in daylight. Mrs Winter waddled to the oven, stooped down and took out a big tray of perfect bread rolls. She might be evil but she could clearly cook. The smell of fresh bread made my mouth water. My stomach felt hollow from hunger.
“Come on, Evie,” said Polly. “Hurry up and wash your hands.”
I took the bar of soap and plunged my hands into the cold water. Polly held out a scrubbing brush.
I recoiled in horror. “Are you mad? It’s bad enough putting soap on these cuts. How do you stand it?”
Polly smiled sympathetically. “It’s terrible at first. But the skin toughens up after a while.”
“Why don’t you wear gloves?”
“We had a girl last year tried that. Bought a pair of leather gloves and they were ruined in a few days. I’m not about to spend my earnings on leather gloves to watch them getting wrecked. Better to grow a thicker skin, I reckon, don’t you, Nell?”
Nell gave her a nervous little smile.
So rubber gloves hadn’t been invented in 1814. I imagined how out of place my bright-yellow washing-up gloves would have looked in this world.
“Poor Nell was in dreadful pain with her hands when she started,” said Polly, “but they’re better now, aren’t they, Nell?”
She ruffled Nell’s hair with her work-worn hands. “Right,” she said. “Let’s clean these bowls out and take them back upstairs.”
I’d never thought before about what it would be like to live in a house with no running water. Well, I can tell you now, it’s a nightmare.
After we’d done the washstand bowls, we had to fill massive metal watering cans with hot water from the copper and take them to the dressing rooms. Stupidly, I filled my cans far too full, so the hot water kept slopping over the top and scalding me. I had to set them down and rest every few steps and my back and hands hurt worse than ever by the time I finished.
I met Polly on the landing as I came out of Sir Henry’s dressing room. “Ready for breakfast?” she said.
I looked at her warily. “Eating it, or taking it to other people?”
Polly laughed. “Eating it, of course.”
“Oh, yes, please, I’m starving.”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wished I could take them back. Polly was so thin that her bones jutted through her skin, but she hadn’t complained once.
Polly led the way back downstairs. The clock on the first-floor landing showed half past eight.
Only half past eight! I’d already done more housework that morning than in the rest of my life put together. By rights, I should have still been in bed. If I had to work this hard all day, I’d probably be dead by evening.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Breakfast
“We have our meals in the servants’ hall,” said Polly as we walked through the beer cellar.
It wasn’t really a hall, more like a very plain dining room. There was a fireplace at one end, but no fire in it. The only furniture was a long wooden table, laid with plates and knives, with benches down both sides and a chair at each end. In the middle of the table sat a solid-looking loaf of bread on a board and a dish of butter.
George and another man walked in, talking, and sat on one of the benches. They wore brown leather aprons over their jackets.
“William, this is Evie, the new housemaid,” said Polly. “William’s the other footman, Evie.”
I said hello. The men nodded and continued their conversation – something to do with a horse that Sir Henry was thinking of buying. William was as tall as George, and looked about the same age, but thinner and paler, with dark hair.
Polly and I sat down on the other bench. Suddenly I had a thought. Perhaps the gardeners had their breakfast in here. If Sophia wasn’t going to listen to me, then maybe I could talk to the gardener she was in love with instead. After all, he was a servant too. Surely he wouldn’t hit me if I tried to speak to him.
I was about to ask Polly when the door at the other end of the room opened and two girls walked in, giggling. They were older than me and Polly – fifteen or sixteen maybe. One was tall and skinny, with dark hair and eyes, and the other was shorter and curvier, with a freckled face and curly red hair showing under her cap. This was the girl I had seen working in the dairy earlier. They sat opposite us and looked at me curiously.
“This is Evie, the new housemaid,” said Polly. “She’s come from London.”
“Pleased to meet you, Evie,” said the red-haired girl.
“Hello,” I said.
“Evie, this is Betty,” said Polly, indicating the red-haired one. “She’s the dairymaid. She’s in love with Dan Greenwood, the farmer’s son over at Home Farm.”
“Polly!” exclaimed Betty. “What a thing to say!” But she looked pleased.
“And this is Mary, the laundry maid,” said Polly, pointing to the dark-haired girl.
“And she’s not in love with anybody,” said Mary.
“Mary pleases herself,” added Betty, and Mary giggled. Her hands looked even redder and sorer than mine.
“Set to with that loaf, will you, George,” said Mary. “I’m crust-hungry, I am.”
George started sawing slices off the dense loaf.
“Will the gardeners be coming to breakfast?” I asked Polly in a low voice. The others were talking, so I didn’t think they’d hear me, but Mary’s ears pricked up.
“Oh, interested in the gardeners, is she?”
Betty groaned. “You’re not sweet on Robbie, are you, Evie?”
“Everybody’s sweet on Robbie,” said Mary.
“Except Alice,” said Betty, “who prefers Jacob, for some mysterious reason.”
“Who’s Robbie?” I asked.
“See, Evie doesn’t even know who Robbie is,” said Polly, “so give over with your teasing.” She turned to me. “Robbie’s the under-gardener. Some people,” she said, raising her eyebrows at Mary, “think he’s very handsome.”
“Does he have wavy brown hair?” I asked. “And wear a black hat?”
Polly looked surprised. “How do you know that?”
“I saw him from the window of the White Parlour when I was making the fire. So do they have their breakfast in here?”
“No, the gardeners eat at the farmhouse,” said Betty. “So you won’t be able to feast your eyes on Robbie over the breakfast table.”
Well, at least I knew his name now. That felt like progress, of a sort. And I could try to find him in the garden, if I was ever able to leave the house.
“Don’t go falling in love with him,” said Mary. “They say he already has a sweetheart. Not that we’ve ever seen her.”
“How was the ball, George?” asked Betty. “Was the master pleased with it?”
“Hard to tell,” said George, passing slices of bread around. “He was none the better for what he’d took, but nothing new about that. Miss Fane didn’t half get it once the guests had left.”
“Poor thing,” said Betty. “I never see her no more.”
“He’s banned her from coming down here, that’s why,” said George. “She mustn’t pick up common habits from the servants. Wants her to be a lady now she’s about to get married.”
Mary shuddered. “To that fat old piece of blubber?”
“Rich old piece of blubber, mind you,” said George. “Lovely butter today, Betty. Better than that rotten old stuff you made on Thursday.”
“Oi, you cheeky beggar,” said Betty. “You watch it or you’ll get none tomorrow.”
I was so hungry by now that anything would have tasted good, and that bread and butter tasted better than any meal I’d ever eaten.
“I wouldn’t have old Ellerdale if he was rich as the king hi
mself,” said Mary through a mouthful of bread.
“I would,” said Polly. “I’d live like a queen and never scrub a floor again. I’d have hands as soft as silk and I’d be as fat as an empress. And I’d wear satin and lace from my head to my toes.”
William gave Polly a serious look. “It wouldn’t be worth any amount of riches to be shackled to that man,” he said. “He’s a nasty piece of work. I heard he beat his last wife something terrible.”
“He beat his wife?” I exclaimed. “And Sir Henry still wants his daughter to marry him?”
George snorted. “Sir Henry wouldn’t worry about that. He’s pretty free with his fists himself.”
“But if Miss Fane won’t have him, what will happen to us?” said Mary. “The master won’t be able to hold on to Charlbury much longer if Miss Fane doesn’t make a good match.”
“Maybe she’ll find another rich man to marry,” said Betty.
“Oh, yes,” said George, “and how many wealthy widowers do you know hereabouts? The master’s had this marriage planned for years. No, if Miss Fane refuses Ellerdale, we’re all doomed. There’s not a penny left in the master’s coffers and, from what I hear, he has debts stacked up all over the county.”
“She’ll marry him in the end,” said William. “The master will make sure of it.”
The talk moved on to other topics, but I wasn’t listening any more. Sophia’s father was going to try to force her to marry a violent man, and if she refused, he was going to lock her up for the rest of her life. Somehow I had to warn her. She needed to run away, and she needed to go as soon as possible.
I became aware that a hush had fallen over the room. I looked up to see Mrs Hardwick, the huge bunch of keys dangling at her waist, seating herself in the empty chair at the head of the table. William handed her a slice of bread. Was that all we were going to get? Surely there’d be something to drink? I was desperate for a glass of water.
“How’s your mother faring, William?” Mrs Hardwick asked in a surprisingly kind tone.
William pulled a face. “Not so good, missus. But we’re hoping she’ll pull through.”
“And your brothers and sisters?”
