A Pearl for My Mistress

‘Well, then I am telling you. You can read however much you want there.’

A weight seemed to lift from Hester’s shoulders. She had already imagined the trouble of carving out time for trips to the nearest town’s library; or, even worse, the nightmare of living without any new books at all.

‘Thank you, my lady,’ was all she could say. ‘Thank you so much.’

‘You are welcome. Now …’ Lady Lucy touched her newly arranged curls ‘… I think that’s quite sufficient. I wouldn’t dare keep you here for too long; I imagine you have plenty of duties to attend to.’ Her tone and smile were as courteous as they could be; however, from her eyes’ expression, she could just as well have been a military officer saying Dismissed. ‘As do I.’

***

Lucy was a child of winter.

She was born in the crispy frost of January, in the deafening silence of snow-covered countryside.

She was born in the early years of the war, which later passed into the realm of legends. On the Continent, emperors fought with kings, and the fields were soaked with blood. Here, the lights went out, and the country stood in the hushed silence of terror.

Lucy was the first child of a young, sweet, impossibly proper couple – as proper as they came in those turbulent days. She was really supposed to be a boy: a sunny heir, the first of more to come, the harbinger of hope. There would have been joyful celebrations; there would have been tables laid out for tenants. Maids in pristine aprons would have patiently queued to receive a golden sovereign each from their benevolent master.

As it was, there were only veiled consolations.

‘Don’t worry,’ the well-wishers must have said. ‘It will all turn out properly next time.’

No one recounted such words to Lucy, of course, but it was easy enough to imagine them. They appeared in her mind so readily, as if they were lines in an already written novel, just waiting to be called to light. Ordering life in the format of a novel made it so much easier for her to understand.

Lucy was also, at least, supposed to be cheerful and hearty, never bothering anyone with fevers or complaints. She was supposed to be stout and perfectly healthy, a lover of horses and hunting, her cheeks bright as apples. Instead, she turned out to be weak and pale, rarely getting through spring without a flu. Later, she learnt to apologize for it.

And the next time never came. Little Lucy didn’t, of course, know the word ‘miscarriage’ – she was shielded from this improper knowledge as she was from many others. But, as she grew and found out, the strange, unnamed tragedies of her childhood suddenly blossomed with blood and meaning.

She was, in other words, a walking spectre of happiness that never came. She was a living reminder of a failure. She was the failure incarnate.

There was a way to atone for being a failure, and that was to become perfection.

After all, diamonds could be cut and polished. Why not people?

The polishing came in many ways. There were books she wasn’t supposed to read (at least, if she didn’t want them to end up in the fireplace). There was a list of people she could correspond with (all related and female), provided, of course, that her letters were dutifully submitted for inspection. There were things she was never supposed to ask about.

There was a catch, though: namely, that Lucy wasn’t a diamond, and thus didn’t patiently sit on a pillow and wait for the tools to cut her. She learnt to evade the questions and hide the books, to invent codes for letters, to guess the moods, to coax the smiles she wanted and sometimes the permissions she needed. She learnt to navigate the labyrinth of traps (which was hard, as their positions changed every time) and to tread on eggshells.

This latter skill was vital for every inhabitant of the house, from Her Ladyship to her housemaid. After all, her father’s rages were the stuff of legends. They were always called that: rages, with a tint of awe. Never tantrums or, God forbid, hysterics. These words were reserved for Lucy herself, for the times she raised her voice.

She learnt a lot of things, and she went through life with the apologetic air of someone who wasn’t really supposed to exist.

At least, so it was until the last year. Until Lucy learnt with growing surprise that, perhaps, there was someone who might actually be very grateful for her existence.

Very grateful indeed.

Chapter Two (#ulink_599b98af-8a5b-526d-aeb6-9bfb0fc89013)

Hebden Hall wasn’t a house, or even an estate; it was a world of its own, and it took time for its map to imprint on Hester’s mind.

There were whole clusters of rooms with unclear purpose: lamp rooms and hamper rooms and flower-arranging rooms. There were clusters of rooms long since shut, and in her more fanciful moments Hester liked to pause by these doors and listen, imagining the cries of a madwoman or the footsteps of a ghost.

But these were, of course, just silly fantasies. The key was turned on all these endless chambers, Snowflake parlours, and Lilac bedrooms, for more practical reasons: the house would have become totally unmanageable otherwise. With the skeleton staff that was left, taking care of it all was beyond possible.

The world of servants, the world downstairs, was a separate universe in its own right. Its sheer size whispered to Hester the stories of the past grandeur, of the disciplined army that must have once dwelled there.

This quiet spirit of forlornness didn’t spare even the servants’ hall, the heart of all things. Among the rows of bells that hung there, most had been deadly quiet for over a decade, intended for long-since dismissed servants. In its cavernous space, Abigail the red-haired housemaid looked painfully small as she sat there in the evenings, mending the towels with a coarse flaxen thread. Her movements were mechanical, but her eyes were alive; she hummed to herself the latest jazz melody, if she couldn’t put the actual record on.

Or, at least, Hester supposed it was the latest. She wouldn’t be surprised if by the time a fresh hit reached the world of Hebden Hall, in London shops it was already moved to the classics department.

Her anxiety waned a little as the time passed. Gradually, her days were drained of the sense of apprehension and filled instead with a sense of routine.

Then, Hester finally decided to clarify a silly little question, which had been disturbing her mind since that first day. It was embarrassing, really – to see a girl for several weeks and doubt whether you knew her real name. She couldn’t bear asking such a question in the hollow space of the servants’ hall; she’d have to wait until they were alone.

Thankfully, such an opportunity presented itself every day.

It was seven in the morning, and the sky was still veiled in a murky haze. Hester gulped down her tea as fast as she could, balancing the tray on her knees. The housemaid, meanwhile, was laying out and kindling the fire. Her face was pallid, and her eyes rimmed with red; the strands of ginger hair, straying from beyond her lace bonnet, seemed to be the only splash of colour in the world.

Hester hesitated for a moment; then she carefully put her cup away.

The tea would do for now. Her real breakfast would be later, after the masters had already been safely served theirs.

She wasn’t sure how to approach the subject.

‘I know it sounds rather silly …’

‘Aye?’ Abby turned her head. Her eyes, Hester noticed, were dim blue.

‘I was just wondering … well … is your name really Abigail?’

‘Of course!’ The girl laughed. ‘What else could it be?’

‘I don’t know. Mary? Rose?’ Hester never felt more stupid in her life. It wasn’t the girl’s fault, after all, that she had such a housemaid-ish name.

‘Oh! My sister’s Rose.’

‘Really? It must be nice to have a sister.’ Hester was relieved to find at least some kind of point of rapprochement. She was eager to ask any question now, just to bury her embarrassment. ‘Does she live somewhere around here?’

‘No, no. She stayed in the Highlands.’

Abigail’s accent left little room for doubt.

‘The Highlands? Must be a lovely place.’

‘Nae, not really.’ The first flame had already been woken up by Abby’s sure hands, and the faint glow turned her hair into threads of fire. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t have to march down here to find a decent job.’

Hester blinked. ‘What do you mean, march?’

‘I mean march like the soldiers march.’ Abby looked a little amused by this strange misapprehension. ‘Actually, I took me Da’s army backpack with me,’ she added, ‘so I really felt a wee bit like a soldier.’