She shook her head at me and then gestured up toward the rooflineabove us. “Mama, the line between possibility and fantasy is proving to be exceedingly fine.”
I looked up at the hole, which had not improved itself overnight.
“We only have to get to the wedding,” I assured her.
Mathilde paired no words with her look of disgust and, exasperated beyond measure, turned on her heel.
The afternoon was busy with every manner of preparation. Sweeping the floors and beating the carpets. Placing new candles in all the rooms. Hanging pomanders to ward off the smell of smoke and rot. Everyone helped. Mathilde finished the bread and cleared the prior day’s storm debris from the drive. Rosie assisted Wenthelen with the roast and sweetmeats. Alice gathered firewood and set the table, with Morwen’s assistance, laying out our best—and our only remaining—silver and crystal and porcelain. Even Elin helped, folding lace-trimmed napkins into a ruffled pile.
I took Lucy out in the afternoon to hunt. She killed two pheasants. A good catch, but we had had a miserable go of it: Gone was the playful bird from the day before. She was hungry and jumpy and agitated, less satisfied with her bounty than she should have been. I was eager to get her back to her mews, and, after I handed the birds to the kitchens, I secured Lucy and excused myself to the cellar house.
The distinct, yeasty smell of fermentation always invokes memories of my father: the rough cloth of his apron, the crumbs that would catch in his beard. Our cellar, a damp and dark outbuilding filled with cider barrels, smelled more of fruit and of rot than the bready aroma of ale in my father’s clothes and hair. But the dank room still called him to me—an edge of comfort in an otherwise cold space.
Near the door, next to a pile of rusted garden tools—a long-handled axe and a crusty shovel—a row of open vessels housed cider in various stages of fermentation. I lifted the cloth from one barrel and saw the sediment had settled well enough. There was little active bubbling; thedrink was ready to be poured. I was readying a funnel over an empty barrel when I heard a noise behind me.
Morwen stood in the gloomy light. “Oh!” she said, as if it were I who had surprised her.
“Come and help me.” I shifted so she could hold the other side of the barrel, which grew heavier in my arms.
After the briefest hesitation, she took hold of the vessel. “They said I’d find you here.”
Together, we tipped the contents into the barrel. The liquid glugged slowly.
“You make the cider?” Her chest heaved from the effort.
“We’ll serve it tomorrow.” I waited and then lifted the fermentation vat at the last moment—to keep the sediment from pouring. Then we both straightened, righting the cask once more. “One of those.” I nodded toward the racked barrels on the other side of the room. “I just needed to transfer this one when it was ready.” I leaned down to secure the bung in the side of the barrel and added: “We all make it.”
She nodded, more to herself, as if confirming something. “Ma’am,” she said, “I thank you for taking me in. I cannot stay.”
I was surprised. “You are giving notice?”
“I will take leave in the morning.”
“Whatever do you mean?” Despite Morwen’s earlier reluctance, she had proved capable for the rest of the afternoon. Polishing, yes, but she’d also wiped the tables with wax and cleared some of the white dust that had drifted from the upper west wing. “You cannot leave!” I stopped and corrected myself. “You may leave, but I do not want you to.”
“I’ve already packed my things.” She avoided my eyes.
“I am sorry our household is not more traditional.” I sank to perch on one of the nearby sealed barrels and watched her, standing uncomfortably on the dirt floors. I could not help but feel, as I had when I’d met her, that she was hiding something. “Morwen,” I asked her, crossing my arms, “what is your story?”
“My story, ma’am?” she repeated, alarmed.
“Where do you come from?”
“My prior employer—”
“I mean where areyoufrom. Do you have a family? Anyone to return to?”
She hesitated. “No, ma’am.” She shook her head. “I had eight siblings but my mother made it clear when I left that there was no room for me to return. And that was years ago yet.”
I settled fully onto the barrel and surveyed the room. “Growing up,” I told her, “we had a cook and one maid, and then, when I was older, my father hired me a tutor. Agatha.”
“Ma’am.” Morwen eyed me.
“You see, there were no women in the house. I had no sisters. My mother was not alive. And so this tutor was brought in to show me all that was involved. To make up for what I supposed my father thought of as years of missed instruction. Agatha was so intimately involved in my life. More than lessons. She meted out my punishments. She hit my hands with such force. I remember, still, watching the blood snake into the wash water after. Like little forked tongues.”
Morwen made a small sound of objection, but I continued: “I do not mean to say she was cruel. Rather, that she was so wholly involved in the administration of joy and pain throughout my day. She’s a part of my life, still, in that her many lessons are carved into my memory. Indelibly. Inescapably!” I laughed to myself. “My father thought she was the best thing for me. She was well paid and highly valued. And despite how I hated those lessons, despite that pink wash water, she proved to be immeasurably valuable to me over the years. Yet—”
Here, I paused and hopped down from my place on the barrel. “Yet, she lived in a little room at the top of the house. She took her meals there or in the kitchens and did not eat with us. I realized, later, that she was such a part of my life, and I knew—still know—nothing about her.”
