by Jane Feather
"Come and eat, my pet. See the eggs I've made especially for you." Berthe fussed over Maude, shaking out a napkin, ladling eggs onto a platter. "But don't eat too hearty now."
“There’s enough for you, too, Miranda." Maude gestured with her spoon to the stool next to her. "If you like coddled eggs."
"I like everything," Miranda said with perfect truth, taking the stool. "You don't develop finicky tastes when you don't know where the next meal's coming from."
Maude looked up from her plate, her eyes sharply comprehending. "I wonder whose life has been worse."
"Yours," Miranda said without hesitation. She broke bread, buttered it thickly. "Freedom is more important than anything, even if it's hard. I couldn't live like this." She gestured with her knife around the room. "It's all rich and luxurious and soft, but how do you bear never going out without permission, never being able to walk around without someone knowing where you are all the time?"
"I suppose you get used to it if you've never known anything else," Maude observed, pushing aside her empty platter and taking up her spiced ale again.
The door burst open as if under pressure of a whirlwind and Lady Imogen entered. Her gown of black damask filled the doorway like some great black cloud. Miranda swallowed her mouthful and rose with Maude to curtsy.
Imogen gave them both a cursory glance before going to the linen press. "You will have little use for your wardrobe, cousin, since you'll be remaining in seclusion, so your gowns can be put to good use, made over to suit Miranda. There's no point wasting money." With compressed lips, she began to riffle through the contents of the press.
"Your coloring is so similar, almost everything will be suitable," she declared. "Berthe, remove Lady Maude's gowns and have them taken to the green bedchamber. I'll make my selection there."
"Am I to be left with nothing to wear, madam?" Maude inquired, her voice once more faint and reedlike.
"You will have need of little but chamber robes," Imogen told her, stepping back from the linen press, yielding her place to Berthe, whose indignation at her orders was visible in every movement. Imogen watched as the maid pulled out gowns, draping them over her arm.
"Isn't today the day you are to be bled, Maude?" Imogen stood aside as Berthe, with her arms full of silks, velvets, damasks, marched from the chamber.
"Yes, madam."
“Then I suggest you take to your bed… Ouch!" She put a hand to her head, her eyes wide with surprise. "What was that? Ouch!" Her hand flew to the back of her neck. "I'm being stung."
Miranda knew better. Ambushing the unsuspecting was one of Chip's less popular tricks. Her eyes flew guiltily to the armoire, just as another missile struck the lady. Chip was sitting there with a handful of nuts from the breakfast table, lobbing them gleefully at Lady Imogen.
The lady's eyes followed Miranda's and she hissed with fury, retreating all the while to the open door. "By the Holy Rood, I'll have the beast's neck wrung!" she declared, her voice throbbing with fury.
Chip, hearing the tone, let loose a torrent of hazelnuts, aimed with devastating accuracy at his helpless victim. Imogen shrieked, covered her face with her hands, and backed out of the room.
Miles, just emerging from his own bedchamber across the hall, received the full impact as his wife reeled against him, her eyes still covered.
"God's bones, madam! What is it? What's happened?" He steadied the lady as best he could. She was a good three inches taller than he and her bulk was considerably augmented by her immense farthingale and cartwheel ruff.
"Attacked!" Imogen gasped. "That wild beast is attacking me!" She pointed a trembling finger back into Maude's chamber.
Miles peered around his lady wife and a nut struck his forehead as he emerged from the protection of his wife's body.
"Ouch!" He jumped back, rubbing his forehead, ducking behind the armor of black damask.
"Oh, Chip, stop!" Miranda cried, jumping on tiptoe to reach the monkey on top of the armoire. "Come down!"
But Chip was impervious to her pleas. He was enjoying his game far too much; it didn't ordinarily have such satisfying results.
The earl of Harcourt chose this moment to enter the scene. He looked over his sister's head, ducked a nut himself, and said somewhat wearily, "Can't you call him off, Miranda?"
"I'm trying," she said, half laughing, half weeping with frustration, under no illusions that if she couldn't control Chip's less friendly antics, he could quite justifiably be banished from the household, or at least confined in some way that would make him miserable.
"He'll run out of ammunition in a minute," Maude observed, her eyes brimming with suppressed laughter, cheeks bright pink.
Fortunately, she was right. Chip, hands finally empty, began to dance and jabber from the safety of the armoire. It was very clear to anyone halfway observant that he was hurling simian insults.
"Look at him!" Imogen cried in outrage. "What's he saying?" Then she realized the absurdity of the question and took a deep breath, calming herself with visible effort. "Gareth, I insist that that creature be got rid of immediately."
Miranda finally had Chip secured in her arms. She looked pleadingly at Lord Harcourt. "It's a game he plays sometimes. I'm truly sorry, but I think he knows Lady Imogen doesn't care for him, and he's taken offense."
Gareth moved a foot and crunched on a hazelnut. He looked around at the littered floor, then he looked at Chip, who, from the safety of Miranda's arms, put his head on one side and winked one bright eye. Miranda was a study in contrast. She was swathed from neck to toe in the elegant and luxurious velvet robe, but her narrow feet peeping from the hem were bare and curiously vulnerable. The long, slender neck rising from the fur-trimmed collar was surmounted by the small head with its urchin crop. Part lady, part vagabond. And extraordinarily appealing.
For a moment he forgot what had produced the scene, forgot the fulminating presence of his sister, the laughing Maude, the hapless Miles, all standing around him, all waiting for his next move. He was lost in the contemplation of this small figure, this wonderfully paradoxical creature. And he felt the strangest sense of opening inside him, as if some part of him that had been kept closed and dark was reaching for the light.
"Do try to keep him under control, Miranda," he heard himself saying.
"Oh, I will," she said, her face breaking into a radiant smile of relief and pleasure. "Of course I will."
Lady Imogen made a disgusted sound, then turned and sailed away down the corridor. Miles hesitated, then he too scurried away, his long-toed slippers slapping on the wooden floor.
"My lord, is it right that I should have taken all Lady Maude's gowns to the green bed
chamber?" Berthe, her voice throbbing with indignation, returned from her errand.
"What's that you say?" Gareth glanced across at Maude's maid, who stood in the doorway, hands folding against her skirts, her mouth pursed, her gray eyes glittering.
"My lady's clothes. Lady Dufort said they were to be given to the other one." Berthe nodded toward Miranda. "My lady's to be left with only her chamber robes."
"Don't be absurd," Gareth said. "You must have misunderstood Lady Dufort. In the short term, Miranda will borrow some of Maude's gowns that will be suitable for formal social occasions, until we can have a wardrobe made up for her. I expect her ladyship wishes to look through them all in order to make a selection."
"That wasn't what I heard," Berthe mumbled, going to the fireplace where she began to stir the coals with jerky stabs of the poker.
Gareth frowned, then decided to let it alone. He turned to leave just as the door opened and a man in a rusty black doublet and old-fashioned striped hose bustled in with a cracked leather bag.
Gareth recognized the household's physician. "Are you ailing, cousin?" He glanced over at Maude.
"I am to be bled, my lord." Maude lay back on the settle, while Berthe hastened to take off one of her slippers.
"Do you have the fever?"
"My lord, it is Lady Maude's day to be bled," the physician announced, taking a sharp knife from his bag. Berthe fetched a pewter bowl from the cupboard beside the fireplace.
"Do you make a habit of it, cousin?" His frown deepening, Gareth approached the settle.
"I believe regular bleeding is necessary for her ladyship's health, my lord," the physician intoned, bending to take Maude's foot in one hand, his knife in the other. "It thins the blood and prevents overheating." Berthe knelt beside him, positioning the bowl to catch the blood.
Gareth raised an eyebrow. The prescriptions of physicians were always a mystery to the layman but he assumed the man knew his job best.
"It seems foolish to be bled if you're not ill," Miranda declared. "Mama Gertrude held that cupping and leeches weakened the body."
"Who's Mama Gertrude?" Maude inquired, turning her head against the cushions at her back just as the physician opened the vein in the sole of her foot. Blood spurted into the bowl.
Miranda flinched just as Maude did. She could feel the sharp sting of the knife in her own foot, the sensation of welling blood.
"Does the sight of blood bother you?" Gareth asked, seeing how white she had become.
Miranda shook her head. "Not usually."
Interesting, Gareth thought, glancing between the two girls. Maude was lying back, her eyes closed, face as pale as Miranda's, no longer interested in the answer to her question. Miranda abruptly turned away and began to fondle Chip, murmuring to him.
"I'll leave you to the physician's ministrations, cousin," Gareth said, striding to the door. "Miranda, I believe Lady Imogen wishes you to try those gowns without delay. We shall be attending court this evening and you must have something suitable to wear. Some adjustments may well need to be made."
"Court?" Miranda gasped.
"Aye, I've been bidden to the queen's presence after dinner." Unconsciously, Gareth's voice took on an oily mimicry of the queen's chancellor's tone. "Her Majesty protests that she has seen nothing of my lord Harcourt for so many weeks." He smiled briefly, the smile that Miranda so disliked, and she saw that the sardonic light was back in his eye. Gareth knew perfectly well the queen was simply curious. He had had to get her permission to leave court and travel to France and Her Majesty had been very interested in his errand, and fortunately willing to give it her blessing. Now she would be impatient to hear the outcome.
"Couldn't it wait for a few more days, milord?" Miranda asked. "I don't feel ready yet."
"There's nothing to fear," Gareth said, lifting the hasp on the door. "The presentation will be brief. I have more faith in you than you do, firefly." And now he smiled at her in the way that warmed and steadied her. "You will learn on your feet, never fear." The door closed again behind him.
"I wish I could be so sure." Miranda glanced toward the settle, absently rubbing the sole of one bare foot against her calf. It stung and itched for some reason. The physician was now binding Maude's foot with a bandage while the invalid lay back, eyes closed. "Have you ever been to court, Maude?"
"No. But I know something of it," the other said faintly.
"Will you tell me what you know?"
"For goodness' sake, girl, can't you see her ladyship needs to be quiet and rest?" Berthe demanded, depositing the bowl of blood on the table for the physician's examination.
"I'll come back later, then." Still holding Chip, Miranda left the room and returned to the green bedchamber.
The pile of garments Berthe had transferred from Maude's linen press lay heaped on the bed. For someone who rarely left her bedchamber, Maude had an extraordinary array of elaborate gowns, Miranda reflected, examining the richly embroidered stuff. Most of them looked and felt as if they'd never been worn.
Chip suddenly yattered and launched himself at the open window. He paused on the sill, assessing the fine rain now falling, then disappeared from sight, climbing down the ivy to the garden beneath.
Miranda was only puzzled for a second. A rustle of stiff skirts heralded the appearance of Lady Imogen, who, tight-lipped and grimly silent, entered the chamber with the two maids who had helped with the bath the previous evening.
Imogen stood on the threshold of the room for a minute, glancing warily around. There was no sign of the monkey. She stepped inside, grimly prepared to do her brother's bidding, but at first, after her earlier mortification, quite unable to bring herself to talk directly to the girl herself.
She issued orders to the maids, using them as mediums for communication, but as she watched the transformation some of her bitterness dissipated in awe at her brother's scheme. The resemblance between Maude and this girl was more than a resemblance. It was almost frightening, almost magical.
Miranda yielded herself up to the attentions of the maids, who stripped her, dressed her in clean petticoats, chemise, and a new and very wide farthingale, and then proceeded to try on the gowns in quick succession, buttoning, lacing, tucking, pinning, as if she were a wooden doll. The gowns needed very little adjustment. Her bosom was a little fuller than Maude's, her hips a little rounder. But the difference was barely noticeable.
Imogen walked all around Miranda, now standing in her undergarments waiting for another gown to be put upon her. "It's a pity neither of you has much stature," she mused, almost to herself. "Stature lends grace to the most ung
raceful figure."
Miranda flushed, feeling vulnerable and exposed before this critical scrutiny.
"But by all that's good," Imogen continued in the same self-reflective tone, "you're Maude to the life. It's unnatural."
The maids laced Miranda into a gown of peach velvet with a scarlet taffeta stomacher. Imogen unfurled her fan and again walked around Miranda. "Straighten your shoulders. No girl of good standing would slouch in that way."
Miranda had never given her posture a moment's consideration. She believed she was standing perfectly straight, but now doubts assailed her. If something as simple as how she stood and walked would give her origins away, what chance did she have of convincing people face to face? And the queen? She was to be presented to the queen of England tonight! It was absurd, totally ridiculous. A nightmare. She was a vagabond, she'd spent nights in gaol for vagrancy. She'd starved and slept under haystacks. She'd been found in a baker's shop!
"Lucifer!" A wave of nausea swept through her and she dropped onto the side of the bed, heedless of the row of pins sticking out from the side seams of the gown as the girls fitted it to her body.
"What's the matter?" Imogen demanded.
Miranda stood up again. She had promised Lord Harcourt that she would try her best, and she would not back down on a promise. "Nothing, madam."
Imogen frowned at her for a minute, then said to one of the maids, "You, wench, go in search of Lord Dufort. Ask him to attend me here."
Lord Dufort? What did he have to do with all this? Miranda wondered. But not for long. Lord Dufort appeared in a very few minutes, just as the second maid had removed the peach velvet and Miranda was standing once again in her undergarments. "You wanted me, dear madam?"
