Pippa fingered the ring, which she wore on a chainaround her neck.
And holding on to it tightly, she finally fell asleep.
Chapter Seven
Dear sweet heavens,how could cleaning be so infernally difficult!
Pippa had always thought herself a reasonably clever girl. She might not be a genius like her father, but she had solved every riddle and puzzle he had set before her with ease. He had taught her logic and rhetoric, drawing her into the debates he liked to hold with Klemens. While other girls were drilled in embroidery, sketching, and music, she had been schooled in mathematics, logic, and the rudiments of philosophy.
But scrubbing and scouring? No one had ever instructed her in that particular art. After only a fortnight, the skin of her fingers was already cracked and blistered from lime, borax, and vinegar.
With a muttered curse, Pippa flung the rag onto the floor.
Her task that morning was to climb onto the wide stone balustrade and polish the two baroque candelabras that stood atop each pedestal at the turn of the staircase.The wrought iron was a nightmare of upward-tilting arms, elaborate twists, and curling branches that caught every drop of wax and every speck of dust. Two hours of scrubbing, and it looked no better than when she had begun.
She had scraped off what wax she could with the blunt wooden tool, then smeared on the prescribed mixture of linseed oil and graphite, meant to make the black iron gleam. Instead, the runny paste had dripped onto her cheeks and stung her eyes whenever she craned to reach the upper branches of the lamp. The result of her labour was a greasy, streaked mess.
“With luck, Frau Benedikt won’t notice,” she muttered, rubbing at the stubborn metal with what little determination she had left.
Frau Benedikt noticed.
Frau Benedikt noticed everything.
An errant curl escaping its hairpin, a loose shoelace, a dirty fingernail, a speck of ash on a sleeve, a trace of dust on a mantelpiece, a single blob of wax clinging to a candlestick—nothing escaped her hawk-eyed scrutiny. It was as though her gaze could pierce the thickest Hofburg walls and ferret out every tiny imperfection.
Naturally, she at once spotted the state of Pippa’s labours. With grim satisfaction, she summoned the maids to gather at the foot of the staircase, forming a semicircle around Pippa and her unfortunate candelabrum.
She extended one long, bony finger toward the lamp. “This,” she hissed, “is a disgrace.”
Pippa cleared her throat and eyed the dripping contraption, from which oily black drops spattered,staining the pale stone beneath. She was inclined to agree.
“Greta,” Frau Benedikt snapped, causing the poor girl to jump in fright, “show her how it is done.”
The girl stepped forward. She quickly mixed the paste of linseed oil and graphite together in a bowl and applied it to the iron. Under her deft hands, of course, the horrible mixture transformed the candelabra into a sparkling miracle.
“You really have a talent for this,” Pippa could not help but exclaim with admiration. “You have magic hands.”
“Quiet,” Frau Benedikt snapped.
“I beg your pardon,” Pippa mumbled. “I merely meant to say that I must have mistaken the proportions of linseed oil and graphite. Though the overall calculation was correct, I must have confused the two.”
“When will you finally learn not to speak out of turn to your superiors?” If Frau Benedikt were a dragon, her eyes would have shot deadly flames of ire at her, consuming her on the spot, reducing her to a pitiful pile of ashes, which Greta would have to sweep up.
Pippa snapped her mouth shut and blinked at her.
She had been taught to treat all servants with kindness, making no distinction among them, and never in her wildest imagination had it occurred to her that servants themselves could show such disdain, clinging to their hierarchies as though they were holy writ.
Granted, Frau Benedikt, as an upper servant, deserved a measure of respect, while she, Pippa, as a lowly maid, stood on the lowest rung. No doubt theLipizzaner stallions in the imperial Winter Riding School enjoyed more status than she did at present. But must that woman make it so very apparent? She made Pippa feel more insignificant than a beetle—though, really, there was nothing wrong with beetles, Pippa thought fiercely; on the contrary, she liked beetles.
Still, the way Frau Benedikt spoke, the way she carried herself, one might think she considered her importance greater than that of the empress herself. And yet Frau Benedikt, properly speaking, was still only a servant, like herself. How was that fair?
Before Pippa could open her mouth to protest, the infernal woman stepped up to her, wrinkled her nose and said, “Fie! You smell like the stables.”
Pippa lifted her sleeve and sniffed. In truth, she thought nothing wrong with it. It was a familiar smell, one she grew up with, it was the smell of her childhood, of nature, of countryside. So she shrugged. “There’s a whiff of horse manure, no doubt from having had to brush the stuff off the carpet the entire morning, but it’s really not that bad.”
The maids gasped, but Pippa ignored them. “It’s really not as bad as the time I fell into the dung pile behind our barn and was covered from head to toe in horse sh…” Her voice petered out as Frau Benedikt’s eyes took on an expression that made even Pippa feel uneasy.
The maids’ snickering petered off to an awkward silence.
