“Oh,” the girl said. “Good morning, miss. May I open the windows?”
“Please,” Jane said with a yawn.
The girl walked briskly to the window and bound the blinds, A flood of light poured in and Jane had to look away. The girl returned to her place at the foot of Jane’s bed. “I have come to help you with a bath, if you’ll be needing it.”
Jane looked at the girl well for the first time and had a faint recollection of seeing her serving food at dinner the previous night. “If I’ll be needing it?” Jane asked, her eyebrow raised. “A bath or your help?”
“Me help, Lady Jane Marsh of England” the maid returned.
“No, I shall do well enough on my own. Thank you.”
The girl nodded and was about to walk away. “Please hold on,” Jane said. “Are there… other bath chambers that I can use?”
The girl’s forehead furrowed. “Other bath chambers that ye may use?”
“Yes,” Jane said. “Yesterday, you see, I bathed in a bath chamber that appeared tae be Alis- the laird’s. I am asking if I could bathe in a different bath chamber.
“Oh,” the girl said, understanding finally. “There are more in the castle, Lady Jane Marsh of England, but the laird’s is nae doubt the best.”
“That stands to reason, but I would very much prefer a different one,” Jane said.
“I shall ask Lady Catrina, Lady Jane of England,” the girl said,
“Thank you,” Jane said, and the girl nodded and turned to go. “Wait,” Jane said. “What is your name?”
“Fionnula,” the girl answered.
“Fionnula,” Jane repeated. “That is a lovely name.”
“Thank ye, Lady Jane Marsh of-”
“My name is Jane. Simply Jane. And I am not a lady.”
Fionnula’s eyes widened. “Ye are nae a lady, miss?”
Jane chuckled. “I mean it in the titled sense. Of course, in morals and conduct, I am a lady. But in the sense of a titled lady, as in the wife of daughter of an Englishman with a title, that I am not. My family is gentry, not nobility.”
“Oh,” Fionnula said.
“Yes,” Jane said. “And you must confess that it is a mouthful, ‘Lady Jane Marsh of England.’ You can call me Jane, simply.”
“What dae yer servants in England call ye?” Fionnula asked.
Jane cleared her throat. “‘Lady Jane,’ but that is only because my father has aspirations to nobility through-” She caught herself in the nick of time. The memory of Eleonor’s betrothal to the Duke of Lancaster mainly because of her father’s desire for power and influence filled her with sadness. She thought of Eleonor, and what she must be doing now.
“Then I shall call ye that,” Fionnula said. “I must go now, Lady Jane.”
“By all means,” Jane replied.
Fionnula walked out of the door. Jane got out of bed and walked to the window. Outside the castle, it was bustling with activity. She supposed a castle was, in a way, a palace, or, at least, a lord’s home, and she wondered at the fact that it seemed like the walls separating the nobility from the commoner, both literal and figurative, were lacking here. Surely that was dangerous? In England, many a commoner had attempted to kill, or at least cause bodily harm to, a lord because of something that he had done to him. Tommy Ballows, for instance. His case had been the news for weeks. The feudal lord over the land where he was a lowly carrot farmer had sired all of Tommy Ballows’ children. The first two were girls. And if Tommy Ballows noticed that their hair was the color of corn while he and his wife had jet black hair, he did not show it. But then his wife had given birth a third time, and it was a boy with a mop of blond hair on his head. Ballows had lodged an axe in the lord’s chest two days later. Ballows’ last words on the executioner’s block one day later were, “I did not fret about the girls but he stole my heir. The bastard stole my heir! May he burn in hell just as I will.”
Jane’s father was sympathetic to the man’s plight, which was odd because he had said, very many times, that commoners’ lives were in the hands of their feudal lords and they could do whatever they wanted with them. “A hero if there ever was one,” he’d said about Ballows, his excitement a little startling. “A foolish hero, but a hero all the same.”
Now, Jane turned away from the window just as Fionnula returned. “Lady Jane,” she said, “I will show you to another bath chamber. Are you set for a bath now?”
“Yes, thank you,” Jane said.
After her bath, Catrina came into the room. She smiled. “Jane. You are well rested, I hope? Fionnula told me that ye wanted a different bath chamber?”
