The Grey Dawn

by Stacey DeMichael

  Daniella was right. They needed a solution, a real solution, and for the life of her, she couldn’t think of one. It was amazing that they had made it this far alive and together since their father’s death. Maybe she should have become a governess. She could have sent the money to Daniella and Christopher. But leaving two minors alone in the world, hoping for their safety without being able to provide for it, and trusting that the money would arrive in her siblings’ hands and not be stolen in transit seemed hopelessly, foolishly optimistic. She wondered if anyone would hire her now that she looked nothing like the rich merchant’s daughter she had once been. She rolled her eyes and rolled over onto her side.

  Choices only come once. Even if she should choose to reapply as a governess, she would have to choose between food and the parchment for a letter of inquiry and still find a way to pay for the delivery of such a letter. She rubbed her temples and rolled over again, trying to find a more comfortable position. There was no reason to feel the grinding guilt she felt now over a choice she could not unmake. There was never a going back, only a going on.

  She rolled over once more and pulled the blanket over her chilled shoulder. She yearned for her father. He would have known what to do. But her father was gone. Nothing, not his body, his merchant ship nor his goods, were ever recovered. He had been taken from her. Lost. Everything except their very lives had been lost, not in a single moment, of course, but piece by piece, day by day, like a cancer, consuming them slowly, inexorably, until she knew it would claim, at the last, their lives.

  She listened to the wind and could feel its bite as it drove through their small cottage. She pulled her blanket more tightly against her body. Certainly, this night’s chilly fall breezes after such a warm day were foreboding of a bitter winter to come. Most families had been sowing, storing, and saving, and even so, not all would survive to see the spring blooms. The three of them had nothing, living each day only to hope for a way to make it through just one more. In the deep darkness of the night, Ellalee knew the terrible truth. They wouldn’t all be alive by spring. Her guilt gnawed her soul.

  And who would care? She thought bitterly.

  If the poor were truly blessed, she would look forward to heaven, but the suffering between now and then and, worse yet, watching her siblings suffer was more than she could bear. A tear slipped silently down her cheek. She prayed again, the same prayer she had prayed every night. In reality, it was more mantra than prayer because she didn’t really expect the divine intervention or the spiritual comfort. No, not really. Not deep down. It was just a way to voice her silent groaning of her most desperate fears. Lord, let me keep my family together. Let me keep my family fed. Please Lord. Amen.

  Chapter Two: A Tale for a Tankard

  Mistress Bane, housekeeper for Baron Bressott, looked down her snub nose at Ellalee who arrived at the servants’ entry of the manor bearing the nobility’s freshly laundered clothing.

  “You are late,” said Mistress Bane’s in her nasally voice. Her stringy hair was strangled into a tight bun with large parts of her pink piggy scalp peeking through. Her bosom heaved with feigned indignation, and her countenance bore the entrenched lines of someone who scowled fervently and frequently. For a moment, Ellalee pondered the cosmic justice of facial lines which permanently imprint an individual’s most often made expressions for popular consumption. Ellalee stopped frowning.

  “It was raining, Mistress. I didn’t want the clothes to be wet when I delivered them,” Ellalee replied making sure to keep her eyes down. Mistress Bane savored casual cruelty. She ruthlessly ruled her microcosm, zealously enforcing her will in a thousand small cutting ways on all that had the misfortune of answering to her. Since her father’s death, Ellalee had come to realize insignificant people bolstered their self-importance by tormenting the unfortunate souls under them. When Ellalee’s father had been alive, Mistress Bane would have been far below her social status, and this sad fact was not lost on Mistress Bane. Cosmic justice indeed.

  “Then you should have brought the clothes earlier. I’ll not pay full wages for late work.”

  “You know that’s not fair. You barely pay me as it is.” Ellalee felt her cheeks go red. She hated having to beg, but if she didn’t get at least most of her full wages, she would never feed her siblings through the next couple of days.

  “If you don’t like it, find work elsewhere. The baron can find many others who would do the work and who would get the laundry here on time,” Mistress Bane replied parsing out too few coins into Ellalee’s outreached hand. Then with a puffed-up smirk, Bane put the remaining coins in her own pocket which she then patted.

  “Mistress, please, we will starve.” Ellalee heard her voice crack, and she coughed to clear her throat. “Please.”

  “A day without food will be a good lesson to be on time,” Mistress Bane said shoving a new laundry basket into Ellalee’s arms with such fervor that Ellalee stumbled backward, falling down the three stone steps onto her backside. Her tumble into the still-wet mud of the manor yard had no doubt marred her own dress, adding to her work. It would be a long embarrassing walk home.

  Ellalee heard the door snap shut as she pushed the basket aside, and opened her hand, tears overflowing. She stared miserably at the pittance of coins before she clenched her fist and shoved to her feet. Part of her wanted to hurl the coins at the door, and part of her wanted to bang on the door until she was paid fairly. In the end, she did neither. She clenched her fist even tighter on the coins, hoisting the basket of soiled clothes onto one shoulder, and spun around towards town, head down, walking furiously. There would be no meat this week. There would hardly be food enough for one person for one meal. Things just kept getting worse.

  Daniella firmly believed in God’s providence, Ellalee thought as she wiped angry, unwanted tears from her cheeks, ducking her head so that those she passed wouldn’t see. Was this God’s care? If it was, she was deeply unimpressed.

  Ellalee readjusted the large bundle of laundry on her shoulder as she bypassed the butcher without so much as a glance, likewise the fish monger. There would be no meat this week and no bread from the baker. The most she could hope for was enough grain to make a pottage, mixed with enough water to kill the hunger pains for a time. She negotiated mightily for such a pittance of barely that miller’s wife went from irritated to irate and would have refused to sell Ellalee anything at all if Ellalee hadn’t finally conceded and apologized.

  Ellalee felt bone weary, no, soul weary. If she hadn’t had a younger sister and brother to care for, she might not have cared to continue this battle with life. A plunge in the Wasenwater ought to do it. She wondered wryly if she would she drown or freeze first this time of year. She gave a caustic snort and wondered morosely who would care? How she would have loved her father’s strong shoulder where she could have laid her head and her heavy burdens and her heavier heart. She was failing, and she never perceived herself to be that sort of girl. A failure. She remembered a time when life seemed so bright and beautiful and full of promise. Now, those memories were worse than dreams, they were the façade of a farce. This was reality, a reality that barely bore cause to keep bearing it.

  She readjusted the laundry basket once more with one hand while she examined the small bag of barley in the other. She tightened her lips, determined that somehow she would manage to make due. With inward thoughts on outward worries, she was nearly past the tavern without having looked up long enough to notice the large crowd gathered. It wasn’t until a man trod heavily on her foot that she turned her angry attention to her surroundings.

  As the man tipped his hat to her furious frown, she saw that he was simply trying to move into better viewing. Her attention was then drawn to an oily stranger making quite a show of his tale. The stranger had small beady dark eyes, slicked back non-descript brown hair and a long hooked nose that leaned heavily towards his nearly non-existent lips. He was standing in the doorway with a mug of ale in one hand and the other wildly gesticulating a
s he spoke. “So then I says to meself, Dessie old chap, this ol’ place is cursed, but I wasn’t afraid of no ghosts. Not at first. No, not me. I didn’t even scare at the ghosts that wailed through the nights. For that kind of pay, I believed I could muscle through the days and plug my ears through the nights. It wasn’t until they found the barn boy dead, not a mark on him. Then I knew. It was ghosts who dun it. No doubt about it.”

  There was a collective gasp. Ellalee dropped the basket of laundry from her shoulders and listened in along with what seemed like the rest of the villagers.

  “But I was still determined. The pay being what it was,” the stranger continued. “Maybe he just seemed like a strapping young lad. Maybe he was ailing and who knew? I’ve seen it ‘appen afore. But by the end of the month, they were all sick, even the earl. Thought it was the food. The cook there, well, she denied the whole matter. Turns out she was right too. You know what it was?”

  Everyone, both inside the tavern and out, hung on his every word. Ellalee found that even she was holding her breath in anticipation.

  The stranger lowered his voice. “The water. The earl ‘isself figured it out. He hauled up the corpse of the upstairs maid out of that there well. That’s when I thought to meself, it was time to skedaddle. I helped myself to a few frillies since my pay doesn’t near cover ghosts and murder, and I hightailed it to Bressott. Shame about that pretty maid. If only she had come to me, y’ know, for ‘elp, when I offered.”

  Ellalee was shocked to see people step back. She turned her head to watch as several hurried away with backward, wary glances, and still others crossed themselves. The greasy stranger who had just moments ago secured their undivided attention was near instantaneously a pariah amongst them.

  Old Tate came to door and took his tankard back. “You best be gone. If you robbed the Earl de Avium, you’re not long for this world, and I’d rather not have to clean up your corpse from my floor in the morning.”

  “T’was trinkets is all. Nothin’ ‘eed miss,” the stranger said as he reached for his tankard from Old Tate’s gnarled fist.

  “Scat, now. Best be going into hiding. Take my word for it,” Tate said, shaking his head and turning on heel back into his tavern. The man shrugged and left off for friendlier audiences, or perhaps to take Old Tate’s advice as Ellalee noted he glanced several times over his shoulder as he walked away. Perhaps this Dessi fellow also believed in the aforementioned earl’s unearthly ability to track his prey.

  Show over, Ellalee thought and rolled her shoulders before she heaved the laundry basket back onto her left shoulder with a groan. She wondered briefly who this creepy earl was, but decided on her list of worries, that earl ranked a lot lower than the meals she’d be missing.

  As she trudged up the path under the weight of the basket, she noted the oily stranger heading into Wyndale Wood, still glancing over his shoulder. She hoped he’d find a friendlier audience in the next town. At least he got part of that ale, she thought and wondered if she should become a story teller to earn her ale. She could probably come up with some barkers and wondered, after all, if anything the stranger said was even true.

  Chapter Three: Over the Edge

  By the time Ellalee got home with the pittance of food, she could feel the full on throbbing of a blistering headache above one eye and the nausea that came with it. She shoved through the door where Daniella and Christopher waited anxiously. Daniella’s look of utter incredulity when she saw the scant bit of barley made Ellalee irrationally cross with her sister. After all, none of this was Daniella’s fault; she was merely the closest target upon which Ellalee might vent her frustration.

  “It is the best I could do. Bane refused full pay because I was late.”

  Daniella looked up, grey eyes wide. “But it was raining.”

  “And that means exactly what? It is just another reason for that horrible woman to pocket some of our money,” Ellalee groaned and fell into the rocking chair.

  Christopher turned his face, but Ellalee could tell from the shaking of his shoulders that he was stifling his crying. She never blamed her brother for his accident, but she didn’t know how to prevent him from blaming himself.

  “God will provide,” Daniella replied stoically.

  “Really? Manna from heaven?” Ellalee rubbed her eyes with her index finger and thumb and then blinked several times, wishing away her headache. She looked up at her sister and sighed. “I honestly don’t see how. With you, it is always faith without action,” Ellalee responded more caustically than intended.

  “And with you it is always action without faith. Remember how God provided for Mary and Joseph when they were in Bethlehem,” Daniella began.

  Ellalee snorted, “You know, we envision a lovely warm stable with the cows lowing, and the star above glorifying the scene. But it wasn’t like that, Daniella. It was December so it could have been freezing, and stables are dirty, smelly places with poop.”

  “Lots of poop and biting flies,” Christopher added. “And bugs and rats and often snakes.”

  “And the Wise Men didn’t show up that night with their gifts, but a couple years later,” Ellalee piled on.

  “Yes, all of that is true. That night would have been very frightening for a first-time mother. I wouldn’t have wanted to have my first baby with no one there but a new husband in a strange place. I am sure that they were also cold, tired, and hungry having traveled so far with naught but what they could carry on their persons or on their donkey, but it does offer a beautiful lesson in perspective.”

  Ellalee shook her head. “How on earth is that perspective, Daniella?”

  “Well, any private shelter would have looked better than some dark alley in a foreign town. Think of what is in the alleys of this town! People dump their refuse and garbage into those alleys. The only people who wander down those dark alleys are cutthroats and thieves. Can you imagine? How grateful then would you be then for a stable! Then think! The very first people that God told were the shepherds.”

  Ellalee was bristling for an argument that even she recognized as being just the unfortunate result of a bad day. “The shepherds were smelly people who lived outdoors with animals, hardly high society. Too bad the kings didn’t get an earlier start.”

  Daniella nodded. “When our father was alive and all was well, I wondered if the shepherds were first because God said that the last shall be first, but having been hungry, I wonder now if it wasn’t for another reason as well. These shepherds would have known who and where the Christ child was. The Bible doesn’t say so, but wouldn’t these shepherds have been able to meet all the family’s first and immediate needs? They would have had wool to keep the baby warm and meat to keep the family fed. God’s providence surrounded them until Mary was recovered and Joseph found work.

  “God continued to provide for the family with the wise men’s gifts. They didn’t know when the wise men arrived that they would need to flee in the middle of the night, but God knew. He provided them with beautiful and symbolic gifts, but also with transportable wealth that Joseph could use to begin again in Egypt. No doubt Joseph would have had to leave any heavy carpentry tools behind in the midnight flight, but he would be able to purchase what he needed when he got to Egypt. The gifts were as symbolic as they were timely. God’s providence reigned over them as it does over us.

  “God never promised to keep us in the lap of luxury, but He always provides what we need, just not always in the way we think it should happen. He promises to lead us to green pastures, but He doesn’t promise that the trip there will be carefree. In fact, He promises just the opposite. We may have to traverse the valley of the shadow of death, but it is to the destination God has set for us.”

  “I have been praying,” Ellalee responded in a quieter voice, ready to reconcile.

  “And thieving before He can answer because you don’t have faith enough to let go,” Daniella said.

  Ellalee’s feelings of reconciliation vanished with a near audible pop. Christopher
, harmony’s child, looked distressed, his gaze flitting between the two of them as Ellalee’s fury roared to the surface.

  “I have kept us fed, risking, at the very least, my hand to do so.” Ellalee felt her efforts were always being spurned by Daniella. “If they chop it off, and Chris and I are both crippled, it will be up to you, Daniella.”

  “And there is where you are wrong. I will do all I can, but it will be up to God.”

  “God helps those who help themselves,” Ellalee retorted.

  “That’s not even in the Bible, Ellalee,” Daniella said as she drifted into the other room.

  Christopher gasped as Ellalee kicked the basket of clothes in fuming frustration. How could anyone stand such pompous, self-righteous inaction? She blew out her breath and gave a weak smile to Christopher.

  “Sorry. Daniella’s holier-than-thou talk is enough to boil my blood sometimes. If all she has to do is pray, and God is some genie in a bottle that will pop out at her mere request, why isn’t someone knocking on our door with food?”

  Christopher looked uncomfortable as he always did when his sisters fought and hesitated an answer to the rhetorical question, “Maybe it isn’t Daniella’s prayers God wants.” With that he grabbed his crutch and limped over to the fire to add kindling, turning his back on both Ellalee and the disagreement. Ellalee let the conversation drop for Christopher’s sake, even though it still broiled inside her. She frowned to herself as she poured water into a pot and hung it over the fire to cook their meager dinner.

  By night fall, Daniella and Christopher had eaten watered-down tasteless pottage while Ellalee, alone, dined on rage. How could she do any more and be any less appreciated? She felt caged in this small oppressive cottage. Finally, when she felt she could bear it no more, she went into the back room and changed into her boy’s clothes so that just for a while she could feel free of it all.