The Stepsister's Tale

It was late, and the cow and goats would be uncomfortably full of milk. Jane hurried to the barn, which was familiar and calming after the strange, awkward-feeling parlor with those two new people inside it. Even when the house had fallen into disrepair, they had kept the barn sound and dry. Here the wood was solid, and instead of odors of mold and decay, she was bathed in the warm, living smells of healthy animals and clean hay.

The big door was open to the fenced-in field, letting in the morning sunlight and the rapidly warming air. A few flies buzzed, and the spiders crouched in their webs, ready to run out and wrap up anything that flew into their traps.

Baby shifted her heavy weight from one foot to another and swished her tail against her rump. The two new horses poked their brown noses through the bars of their stall, and she gave each a rub. “At least you’re friendly.” She laughed when they tossed their heads as though nodding in agreement.

She always tended to Sal first. The old gray hunter didn’t look like much now, but in his day he had been famous. “Like Lady Margaret taking a fence on Saladin,” people in the village still said, when they meant that someone had done something in a particularly fine way. His back was swayed now, and his eyes were dim, but when the girls blew one of the rusted hunting horns that hung in the nearly empty tack room, his neck would arch and he would paw the ground, and they could see a shadow of what he had once been.

“Good boy.” She rubbed Sal’s hard forehead between the ears as he ate. An impatient moo broke in on her thoughts, and she pulled the milking stool and bucket over to Baby.

Betsy and her puppies must have just woken up, and the fat little bodies squirmed over one another to get their breakfast. Betsy saw Jane looking at her and thumped her tail. Jane poured a little milk in the bowl that one of the puppies was blindly trying to climb out of, and Betsy lapped it up. Jane milked the goats next and then fed all the livestock. While they ate she mucked out the stalls and scattered a handful of straw over the floor. She drove Baby and the goats out to the pasture.

She was about to go back to the house when she thought she saw something flicker in the woods. She stood still and shaded her eyes against the early-morning sun. Yes—there it was again. Something pale flashed behind the trees and then disappeared. Fairies? No, they wouldn’t dare come so near the barn. Fairies and witches and all their kind were terrified of iron, and there were rivets and old horseshoes and nails all over the barn. Outlaws? She had heard of them living among the trees. She strained her ears and thought she heard a little ripple of laughter and then a few notes from farther off. The notes were repeated, and then echoed closer by. She turned and ran back to the house.

In the South Parlor Maude had put out their least-stained tablecloth and least-chipped dishes. A tall vase of bright blue flowers stood in the middle of the table. No one else was there.

“Maude!” Her sister looked up from the fire she was tending. Jane told her what she had seen and heard.

“It was probably just one of the people of the woods,” Maude said, but Jane heard the uncertainty in her voice. There was nothing that would bring one of the wild folk close to their house—she and Maude had gleaned all the nuts and berries and most of the edible roots, as far into the forest as they dared to go.

“I heard singing,” Jane said, but before she could continue, Harry came in, stretching and yawning.

He called back over his shoulder, “Come, Ella dear. Breakfast time.”

After a moment, she appeared. This time she was wearing a yellow frock, with ribbons threaded through the lace at her neck and wrists. Her long pale hair was held back by a matching ribbon.

Without looking at Mamma or the girls, Isabella sat down at the table and placed her hands in her lap. Mamma took the eggs out of the water with a wooden spoon and placed them in a blue bowl on the table. Mamma looked at Harry.

He cleared his throat. “Ella, dear, what do you say to your mother?”

She looked up at him and then at Mamma. “I say to my stepmother that I had eggs for supper last night, and I would like something different for breakfast today.”

Mamma crossed her arms. “There is nothing else yet. When we’re finished with breakfast, we will all unpack the carriage and find what else there is.”

The girl’s eyes were shining with tears. She stood and flung herself on Harry. “Take me home, Father,” she sobbed. “They hate me here.”

“Darling,” Harry soothed his daughter, stroking her hair. “This is your home now.”

She raised her swollen eyes to him. “This is not my home. You can’t make me stay here! You can’t make me live with this—with this wicked stepmother, and these two ugly stepsisters.”

Chapter 4 (#u7bd853b0-545a-5b30-be18-6249a4e20660)

Jane felt as if Isabella had kicked her. “Mamma is not wicked!” she said. “She’s been kind to you. Kinder than you deserve!”

“Child—” Mamma began, but then she glanced at Harry and stopped. Go on, Jane thought. Tell her not to talk about us like that. But Mamma said only, “Breakfast is on the table,” in an odd, tight voice.

“A lady doesn’t show her feelings,” one of Mamma’s favorite sayings, rang in Jane’s head. She had never seen the wisdom of it, but she couldn’t risk upsetting her mother further. A thin white line ringed Mamma’s mouth, and a vein beat visibly in her temple. “I’m not hungry,” Jane said.

“Sit,” Mamma snapped, and Jane sat down and picked up her spoon. Maude was already halfway through her egg.

The meal was silent, except for Harry’s quiet coaxing of Isabella. While the sisters cleared the table, Mamma showed the man the rest of the house. Jane listened as their footsteps echoed, listened to their low murmurs. They were in the kitchen, then the pantry, then back out into the hallway, past the staircase and into the North Parlor and the ballroom. She hoped they would not go upstairs. It would violate that ghostly region if someone strode in and threw open the shutters to reveal the dust and decay or pulled down the bed curtains to expose the rottenness under their beauty.

When the adults came back, it appeared that they had not indeed gone that far. “I had no idea that it had gotten this bad,” Harry was saying. “The staircase is nearly rotted through and should not be used. The North Parlor looks to be in fairly good shape, and the ballroom is still beautiful. I remember the hunt ball when we were fifteen, Margaret, the one where your parents announced your engagement to Daniel. The two of you stood together in the ballroom while the orchestra played above you. It was a lovely room.”

“I remember,” Mamma said softly, and shook her head. “The hopes we have when we’re young, Harry...”

He nodded. “Things don’t always turn out the way we think they will, do they?” He put his hand on hers and gave it a squeeze.

She smiled up at him. “So, you think that if we start on the roof—” They made plans the rest of the morning.

Maude had pulled out their mending basket, and Jane reached into it and took out a stocking. “What are you doing?” Isabella asked.

Jane shook out the stocking and showed her the hole in its heel. “Darning. It’s hard to make it smooth, but if it’s lumpy, it will raise a blister when you walk. Do you want to do one?”

Isabella looked at her, bewildered. “Why do you do that?”

It was Jane’s turn to be bewildered. “If I don’t, Mamma won’t have a stocking to wear.”

“Why don’t you just throw it out and buy another one?” Isabella persisted.

“Buy another one?” Maude asked. “You don’t buy stockings. You make them. Or Mamma does. She’s teaching me how. She can teach you, too.”

Isabella said, “I didn’t know they were something you could make.” Maude and Jane looked at each other and then bent over their work. Isabella spoke again. “When I was at the palace—”

“You were at the palace?” Jane asked, and Maude said, “I don’t believe you!”

“Oh, yes, I was.” Isabella smoothed her bright skirt over her knees. Jane once again became aware of her own too-short dress, patched and mended, with threads hanging off the frayed ends of the sleeves. “Father had business with the king, so we came to your country for a visit. While Father was in the throne room, my mother took me to visit her friend, who was a lady-in-waiting to the queen. I even saw the prince. He came to the stable as we were leaving, to find a manservant he suspected of stealing his horses’ oats. He was beautiful.”

“Was he?” Maude asked. “I mean, was the man stealing the oats?”

“I don’t know. The prince didn’t either, but he had the man taken out and whipped anyway, as a warning. I was wearing silk stockings, and when I curtseyed they tore on a splinter, and after we went home Mother threw them away and gave me new ones.”

“Silk stockings!” Jane tried to keep the awe she felt from showing in her voice. She had heard of such things but didn’t know that they really existed. It was as if Isabella had told them that she had ridden to the palace on a gryphon and had been presented with a pet dragon.

“I don’t believe—” Maude started, but Jane cut her off.

“We have to take care of the milk,” she reminded her sister, and they left, Maude muttering, “Liar” under her breath.

In the dairy, Maude poured the cream from that morning’s milk into the butter churn and pumped the handle. Jane uncovered the bowl where she had mixed starter into milk two days before. She lined a sieve with cheesecloth, spooned in the soft white mixture, and placed it over a bucket to catch the cloudy whey. Later, the people of the woods would fetch the bucket, and at Christmas time, they would thank Mamma with the haunch of a fat pig, its flesh sweet with whey, to feast on. Jane’s mouth watered at the thought of the crisp skin and juicy meat. Mamma said that when she was a girl it would be a whole pig for the servants to roast on a big spit, but that was when there had been a large household to feed.

Maude took the top off the butter churn and peered inside. She reached in a finger and pulled out a glob of butter, inspecting it with satisfaction. Then she popped it in her mouth and covered up the churn again. “Mmm.” She closed her eyes in enjoyment, then opened them. “Janie, do you like having a new sister?”

“She doesn’t feel like a sister. And it’s strange having that man around.”

“I know. I thought I would like to have a papa. I like when Mamma takes me to Hugh’s cottage and his father is there. He always gives me a sweet.” Maude churned a few more strokes. “I don’t think this man will give me a sweet.”

No, I don’t think he will, Jane thought, wishing suddenly that her sister wouldn’t talk like a baby. Maude inspected the cream again and held out her hand. Jane passed her the slotted spoon, and Maude fished out the pale gold lumps, setting them to drain on a cloth. Jane poured the buttermilk into another bucket and set it in the back of the dairy, near the cool stream. Jane looked at her cheese once more and saw that it was dripping nicely.

While Maude went to hunt for eggs, Jane returned to the house, but her path was blocked by a large cart in the drive. It was full of boxes and bundles; three men from the village were unloading them. “Where do you want this one, Mistress?” a big man asked Mamma. He shifted his weight as he balanced the edge of a large crate on the side of the dry fountain.