“Yeah?” I replied. I did—but it felt like any other answer would have personally offended the man.
“Just checking. Never know with you lot. Last time we had a southerner here, they asked for oat milk!” he said, affronted. “It’s oats. It’s not got any damn milk. Turned out they wanted watery porridge!” he huffed as he stirred the pot with a large ladle.
“It’s rabbit,” he told me—I assumed referring to the stew. “Someone get me a bowl,” he called into the kitchen, and a woman with her hair tied in a tight bun and net over her head took a bowl from a stack and handed it to him.
“You want bread?” he asked, but didn’t give me a chance to answer.
“Bread!” he shouted, and the same woman who had given him a bowl, walked into the pantry that Elise had shown to Selene and I, and returned with a small roll. He poured a few ladles of steaming stew into the bowl and handed it to me.
“Careful, it’ll be hot,” he warned as he shoved the roll towards me, and I managed to hold the bowl with one hand and take the roll with my other.
“Go sit in the servant dining room,” he ordered.
“Thanks?” I replied, confused by the whole interaction.
“You don’t know where the servant dining room is, do you?” he asked, and shook his head. “You’re new, I’ll forgive you,” he said, again speaking before I could reply.
He turned around to shout, but the woman who had answered him both previous times, stopped him.
“Give it a rest Daniel,” she said, chuckling, “You’re going to scare the girl.”
She smiled at me and stepped forward, taking the hot bowl from my hands.
“I’ll carry this for you, hun, and show you to our dining room,” she offered.
“Yeah, thank you,” I replied, grateful to have the hot bowl out of my hands. It was always a little chilly in the Ardens mansion, but the palm of my hand stung from the heat of the bowl.
I followed her out of the kitchen.
“Don’t pay any mind to Daniel. He takes his role too seriously. Thinks he’s better than the rest of us because he went to some fancy cooking school and gets paid more than most here. I’m Abigail,” she introduced herself.
“Percy,” I said, “Yeah, he was a bit intense. I worry what would have happened if I had said I was vegetarian.” I laughed.
Abigail laughed too. She was older than me—certainly out of her youth, but not old enough to feel like I was talking to my senior.
“He’d have burst a blood vessel. You’d have still left with rabbit stew.” We both laughed.
“The servant dining room is just down here,” she said. “Not far from the kitchen. You can get a meal here every morning from six until about eight, and then again in the afternoon—usually something cold like a sandwich—at around twelve. There’s no set time. If you turn up and there’s something left, it’s for the taking. If not, there’s another hot meal around four untilabout seven. Again, it’s first come, first serve. But if you miss a mealtime, you can grab something from the kitchen.
“Daniel’s loud and arrogant, but he won’t see any of us hungry. He’ll chew you out for messing with his kitchen, but it’s all show—got to remind us he’s in charge.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said as we entered a large room with lots of tables closely packed together, and longer tables that were mostly empty now apart from large jugs of water and juice and stacks of cups.
Abigail placed my bowl down.
“I’ll leave you to eat.”
“Thanks, Abigail. Before you go, what do you guys do around here for fun?” I asked.
At the castle, there were games rooms, a swimming pool, lounge spaces, open areas to bathe in the sun or picnic—so much for servants to do in their spare time. I assumed hidden in some dark, cold corner, the Ardens mansion hid similar spaces for the servants.
“Not much,” she sighed unhappily. “We mostly just work. Some of us go on hikes up the mountains when the weather is nicer. We take cakes and wine,” she smiled. “Otherwise, there isn’t much to do until we’re home. We work in shifts here. Six months of work followed by six back home. We don’t get much free time,” she explained.
“The servants don’t live here, with their families?” I asked, confused. I had assumed that Ardens Estate would be where the servants lived, like at Borealis Castle.
“Some do. Daniel’s got his wife with him, and he works full year. But most of us don’t. I’m a winter servant. The weather is harsh here, but it means my family doesn’t have to feed meduring the worst of it, and I get to enjoy my summers. Why would you think we live here?” she asked, amused, as if the suggestion was absurd.
“The servants at the Borealis Castle—they live on the grounds. For generations. But not everyone is a servant. Some work outside of the Castle grounds in the King’s City, but they still live with their families on the grounds. Things are different there,” I said, my voice trailing off. I worried revealing my sadness.
