She brushed the wispy strands of hair, at least what remained of it. Orpha leaned her head back, her lips parted in the beginnings of a smile and her watery eyes closed in ecstasy. Gaps showed where she had sacrificed a tooth for every child she had borne.
Due to her reigning vanity, Orpha allowed only Juliet and Mary to attend her. Bright, unforgiving light streamed in from the window, illuminating what scarlet fever had wrought, a receding hairline withdrawing to the last third of her scalp. How ironic—Orpha was Hebrew for skull.
Two years before, Juliet sat at her dressing table at her ancestral home, Faulkner Manor, her hair brushed by her nurse, Moira O’Neill.
Sometimes the bad things that happen to us in our lives put us directly on the path to the best things that will ever happen to us.
Moira had pounded the thought into her young charge’s head. Moira, the closest substitute for a mother, yielded a love for a child desperate to be loved. Her heart squeezed at the thought. Moira had long since gone to Heaven.
After that, Juliet’s life had been a series of horrors. They had been herded off a ship in Philadelphia, scrubbed of lice in a freezing river, and then paraded on a platform for the sale of their indenture. She shivered at the thought.
While standing on the block, the captain had bowed to her, swinging his arm above the masses, and mocked her, saying, “Her Majesty here, has grandiose illusions. Thinks she’s nobility.” The men hooted and shouted, the women tittered.
He had bent close to her ear. “I have the power to make ye disappear if ye don’t keep yer mouth shut.” He was part of the prosperous business in white slavery where huge profits were gained. Juliet shuddered. The leering looks of men who checked her teeth and touched her in intimate places had her fearing for not only her future, but her life. Juliet’s heartbeat raced faster with each stroke of the brush.
Mary’s beauty attracted even worse behavior, men laughing and joking with crude innuendo, outbidding each other as they fondled her under her dress and pressed themselves against her. She and Mary were both sold on the auction block to a hideous woman and her husband, yet Juliet thanked providence for the miracle of being sold to the same master.
“What did you say?” Orpha narrowed her gaze at Juliet, hauling her from the ugly memories.
“Nothing, Mistress.” Best to work hard and keep her mouth shut.
Mary backed in, laden with a heavy tray of oatmeal, fresh baked bread, layers of smoked bacon, steak and eggs. Juliet’s stomach rumbled. She had not eaten since the morning before. Their master gave the servants barely enough food to exist, parceling out each morsel as if it were gold. While she’d gotten used to eating less, her boney body evidenced their cruelty.
“Master Hayes is due home today. I want the house cleaned top to bottom.”
“Yes, Madam.”
Horace had cut into the trade routes, carving out the middlemen by buying furs directly from the Indians, and then supplying traders with goods who traveled north. As a King’s man, he had learned the Mohawk language and combined his personal business with diplomacy, acquiring thousands of acres of Native land and becoming very wealthy.
He was gone most of the time, leaving the running of the farm to his wife, who lived to beat, starve and confuse her servants. Orpha relished telling tales of Indian atrocities in case any of the servants thought to escape—as if they required her divination. The whipping post in the front yard stood a grim reminder of the punishment those who had attempted escape received.
Carrying two heaping buckets of fireplace ash, Mary staggered to the door. Juliet nodded to her, a silent assent of the ordeal to come. Master Hayes had a taste for the serving girls and provided a constant struggle with his cat and mouse games.
Juliet placed a glosser cap over Orpha’s bald pate. “Will that be all, Mistress?”
Orpha watched her in the mirror, locking her gaze on Juliet, and then rose with a self-important swirling of her heavy robe. She lowered herself against the pillows on her bed, picked up a hunk of bread and lathered it with warm butter. She popped the whole thing in her mouth and smacked her lips. Juliet’s mouth watered and she turned to depart.
“I did not give you leave. Plump my pillows.” Orpha tucked a finger up under her cap and gave her bald head an idle scratch. How Orpha delighted in making Juliet stand and watch her eat.
While Juliet rearranged the pillows, Orpha took a hunk of bacon and chewed, grease trickling down her chins. “Stick that abominable red hair in your cap. You should be ashamed to have it seen.”
Juliet clenched her teeth. All her life she’d been ridiculed for the color of her hair. Her father’s sister possessed a rabid contempt for Juliet’s Gaelic ancestry and browbeat her into believing she was the devil’s agent and induced to criminality because of her red hair.
To counteract the hurt enacted by her cruel aunt, Moira had wiped Juliet’s tears. “Your Irish mother had the same color hair when she was young, and later it deepened into a beautiful shade of red.”
Juliet tidied the well-appointed room, Orpha’s fanciful frontier imitation of Versailles with blue-colored silk peacock wallpaper, cupids painted on the ceiling, and matching draperies.
“You may go. Don’t forget to heat the water for my bath.”
Juliet bobbed a curtsy and closed the door.
The blast of heat from the kitchen warmed her. Mary cut slices of bread and ham and shoved them across the table. “Hurry up, the cook has gone to the privy.”
The girls stuffed their mouths with warm bread and butter as Mary peered through the window. “A half-moon is carved in the top of the door for the witch to escape.”
How many times had Mary made the superstitious comment over the year of their indenture? “She will not slither through the crescent.” With her fingers, Juliet scooped up jam from the compote and closed her eyes over the rare feast.
Outside the cook stamped her feet on the porch to rid them of snow. Juliet wiped the crumbs off Mary’s face, and jammed slices of ham and bread into her pocket.
