FiftyDoors that Open… and Close.
It’s quite some time before I return to the lodging house, and Ronl sees me back through the rain. I have been well and truly treated, my forearm cleansed, packed, and rebandaged properly, and I have been strictly informed to return the following day for a reexamination. Things are quite sore after all the debridement, and whatever Lena put in the wound’s deep, angry core is stinging, but the care I was given warms my lonely heart to such an extent I barely notice the discomfort.
As we arrive at the first of the lodging house’s three entries, Ronl holds things open and then steps inside with me.
“Oh, don’t worry.” Pushing my hooding back so he can see my face, I smile at him as I focus on his chin. “I’m quite safe here.”
He buys the lie with a bow. “You must return on the morrow, or she will send me to gather you again.”
Putting my hand on his arm, I give him a squeeze. “I promise not to make you come get me.”
Ronl bows again and then glances around. He nods at a few people, then says his goodbye to me and ducks back out into the storm.
It’s as the door closes that I hear the singing. My first thought is of the maid, but that’s not who is vocalizing. It’s two of the working women. They’re over at one of the round tables by the bar, their legs extended and crossed on empty chairs such that their stockinged ankles show beneath the hems of their skirts, their corsets loosened so that their décolleté is not quite so obvious. The pair of them are harmonizing with such purity and ease, I’m a bit in awe, their voices so high and lilting, like birds in the spring. I’m sad that such gifts are squandered for the life they have been forced to live.
Given the morning hour, the pub is comparatively empty, and I glance atthe trestle table in the back. Even Top Hat, as I’ve come to think of him, is not in residence. I’m guessing he owns the place. Perhaps the whole town.
The henchmen-like entourage that was with him is also absent.
Behind me, the doors open once again. It’s a man, not dressed in brown felt, and I move out of his way before I find myself in the kind of trouble I can’t easily solve—
He takes one look at me and jumps to the side. He’s clearly drunk—I can smell the alcohol on him, plus his balance is such that it’s as if the floor under him is unreliable—but avoiding me is clearly important enough to cut through his addled brain.
That’s when I notice the other men who are dotted around the tables. They’re not looking at me. At all. Their eyes are locked on their tankards with such studious nature, it’s as if they’re going to be tested by a schoolmarm as to the froth that awaits their numb tongues.
I tug the hooding back into proper place so that my features are fully hidden.
Obviously, Merc’s presence precedes me, and this gives me a depressing shot of confidence: Even after he leaves, I suspect I’ll still be considered his woman.
After last night, I certainly feel as though I am.
Heading over to the stairs, I stop—and then I reroute to the kitchen’s flap door. Some sixth sense spurs me on, and I put my hand on the sticky panels to give them a push.
The cooking facility is bigger than I thought, as dirty as I feared, and empty of staff. The counters are oriented in a square around a central stone hearth that vents up a chimney that is big as a barn. Multiple oven entry points circle the heat source, and there are cords of chopped wood stacked by each one. Courtesy of all this, the dominant smell is not of food, but of fire and ash, and I’m taken back to the settlement.
Countless loaves of bread are cooling on floured racks, hunks of meat of unidentifiable origins are left out to flies, and vats of stew sit on the floor. Clearly, people survive on the food that’s prepared like this—and I’m one of them. But my stomach turns at all the grease, grime, and debris. I’ve never seen so many discarded grain sacks, although the rat population is no doubt grateful for the sloppy pours into the grain grinder—
A door opens from the back, and I hear a squeak.
As I turn, I catch the short-haired maid making a U-turn to duck back into the half door she came out of.
I speak up quick: “Wait, stop.”
She halts immediately, but doesn’t pivot to look at me. As I trace the trembling of her shoulders with my eyes, I reach out my hand, even though there’s no way I can touch her from all the way over here.
“I just wanted to thank you for the food this morning,” I say gently. “And yesterday.”
“You’re welcome.” She speaks to the wall. “If you’ll excuse—”
“Hold on.”
“I have to go—”
“Why.” I stride across the kitchen, rounding the great oven. “Please, don’t leave—”
“I have to—”
It happens so fast. I come up to her, just as she’s trying to go back through the half door, and she stumbles in such a way that the side of her face becomes visible to me.
