Ambergate (13 page)

“I was thinking about Sukey,” she whispered. “She didn’t remember her real name—Miss Suzanna she was called during salons.
We find it so hard to remember things about our past lives once we’re here, and we don’t want to, anyway.” She sniffed and
wiped her nose on her lace sleeve in a way that Anora would not have approved. “But I keep thinking about her wandering about
the streets without knowing who she is now, and she’s so ill, you know—she has the spitting sickness.”

“You mean,” I said, “that Anora cast her out when she was dying?”

Becca blinked the tears from her eyes and looked at me earnestly. “It wasn’t Anora’s fault. Anora wanted to protect us from
catching it. She had to send Sukey away. Any employer would have done the same. She explained that to us.”

The spitting sickness was greatly feared, it was true: though it did not affect so many, it lingered longer and was as lethal
as the Miasma—the plague—itself.

“Anora hates disease,” said Becca, sniffing. “In the summer we get plague-runners from the Capital docking in Poorgrass Kayes.
Anora’s always fearful that one of their passengers will attend a salon and bring the infection with them. She makes us scrub
ourselves with vinegar and lemon after each salon and inhale the vapor from a special brew she boils up herself.” She shuddered,
and looked at me, red-eyed. “I came here with my parents on a plague-runner, you know. We came to escape the Miasma—it was
bad in the Capital that summer—then when we arrived in Poorgrass, my parents couldn’t find work, try as they might. They went
back to
the Capital eventually, but I—I’d met Anora by then, so I stayed.”

“So you do remember who you are,” I said. “Why don’t you leave this house, and try to find your parents again?”

She shook her head violently. “Oh, I couldn’t, not now. I’d be too frightened to leave Anora.”

“If I had parents, I’d risk anything to find them,” I said, but she shook her head again.

“Anora says they are most likely dead. She is my mother now”

There was a sudden rap on the door, then Connie’s soft voice in reproof. “Becca, my dear, so much talking! Do you want Anora
to come up?”

“Sorry, Connie, dear,” said Becca contritely.

“Don’t forget your prayers. And wash first. We must be clean for the Almighty.”

“Yes, Connie,” and she scrambled off the bed obediently and went to the jug of water.

Side by side we stood at the bowls to wash ourselves. I was careful to hide my brand mark, for I thought that having lived
in the Capital Becca would know what it was. “I could pretend you are Sukey,” she said suddenly, as we stood there. “You have
much the same color hair and build.”

“But I’m not Sukey,” I said.

She went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “Soon you’ll lose your accent and talk like Sukey did—as we do, even Rose, who is from
over the sea. Anora will teach you.”

A shiver went through me. “I am not Sukey, and I don’t want to talk like her—or any of you,” I said, surprising myself with
my passion.

She looked bewildered, uncomprehending. “Who are you, then?”

“I don’t rightly know,” I said truthfully.

“That’s what happens: you forget. Soon you won’t care, you’ll be Sukey if you stay here,” she said, and smiled in triumph.
“You will stay here, won’t you?”

I bit my lip and did not answer.

She went to kneel on one of the mats. Pulling a red enamel locket, like a tiny seed on a chain, from the neck of her nightgown,
she began to murmur to herself. She looked the very picture of a devout supplicant.

“You have such a lovely amulet, Scuff, much finer than mine,” she burst out after a while, sufficient prayers evidently having
been said for the time being.

I put my hand over the amber at my neck protectively. Aggie’s face came into my mind from a long while ago.

“It’s not mine—it was lent to me,” I said in a low voice. “I mean to return it to its owner one day.”

I was relieved she didn’t ask more questions; in fact, she scarcely seemed curious about my past at all. Instead, she gave
me a reproving look. “You should say your prayers. Sukey and I always said our prayers together.”

I knelt beside her on the other mat. I thought I should give thanks to the Almighty for letting me escape the soldiers once
again, for giving me a safe lodging for the night. But instead of the Eagle’s all-powerful gaze, I could only see Erland’s
white, stricken face as he lay on his pallet, wounded.

This was the price the Eagle demanded. In return for my safety, Erland had been hurt. I held the amber to me until it
warmed in my clenched hand, and I prayed for his recovery most fervently.

I must find my employers
, I thought.
For if I don’t, Erland won’t know where to come when he is recovered. I shall never see him again
.

I scarce slept that night, although in comparison with a grass pallet on the bare earth, my bed was wondrously comfortable.
But the strong drink I’d been given made my heart pound. The sheets and woolen blankets felt strange and light after so many
nights beneath sheepskins. They carried the same faint odor as my nightdress. I was lying in another girl’s bed: a usurper.
Outside, the wind rose to a shriek and threw rain, hard as hailstones, at the rattling window. This was the storm Erland had
talked about; I prayed Gadd had returned safe before it.

All night, streams of water cascaded down the panes. Gradually, the room filled with the gray light of morning. Becca stirred
and turned toward me sleepily, and her face broke into a beam of pleasure. “Sukey! You’ve come back!”

“It’s Scuff, not Sukey,” I said, hating to see the way her smile crumpled away.

“Of course it is. I’m sorry,” she said stiffly, and rose to pull on her wrap, shivering in the damp air. “Come, we must arise,
else Connie will bother us with her chiding. There’s so little time.”

“What is it that must be done by the three of you until the salon?” I asked, curious. “There’s all day before it.”

“Anora always rests before a salon, and so must we, but not until after noon. During the morning we dust and polish and choose
our dresses and wash our hair. We’re all busy. Ma Drazel will be doing the cooking in preparation for tonight. The salon begins
at six.”

“I must search out my new employers this morning,” I said.

Becca gave me a strange look then, but I didn’t heed it. I went to the window to see if it had stopped raining. It was a sullen,
overcast morning, but dry now. Below us was a huddle of mean cottages on a shingle bank, then half-drowned mudflats that stretched
away until they met dark gray water.

“Hurry and dress yourself,” said Becca in an agitated way, and she thrust a dress at me from the cupboard. I shook my head
and turned to the chair on which I’d piled my own clothes the night before. They had all gone, save my jacket with the precious
letter in the pocket. I thought I’d not slept during the night, but I must have done so, for someone had secretly entered
our room and stolen my skirt and shirt away.

“That will be old Ma Drazel, doing Anora’s bidding,” said Becca, seeing me standing as if stunned. “She creeps about so silently.
That’s why you must be careful what you say.” She flourished the dress at me again; it was made from charcoal wool. “But see
what you have instead. Is this not so much finer than your own? And tonight you shall wear silk!”

So in the end I took the dress, for I thought at least I
would look respectable when I found Mistress Bundish later; and it had long sleeves that hid my scar.

We had our breakfast, the three girls and me, at a long table in the kitchen. It was in the basement of the house, a whitewashed
room, airy but warm and of a good size, hung with copper pans that gleamed in the gray light from the windows. There was a
long stove, well-blacked, and I could hear the furnace roaring in preparation for the day’s cooking.

There was no sign of Ma Drazel. We had passed the larder on our way in, and I had seen the food laid out: bowls piled with
fruits of all colors, pans of raw vegetables, carcasses of meat beneath stiff gauze covers. Ma Drazel seemed a methodical
housekeeper, yet compared with Murkmere, how easy it would be to keep house here.

I could cook in this kitchen
, I thought, and my eye lingered on the iron saucepans stacked on the scrubbed sideboard.

For breakfast we had fresh bread with creamy butter and a jelly of plums to spread upon it, and frothy milk to drink. I had
never eaten such a splendid breakfast before. Yet though the girls were fed so well, their pretty, rounded cheeks were pale
as candle wax in the daylight.

“Do you go to the market in Poorgrass?” I asked at some point.

“Oh, no,” said Connie, wide-eyed.” Anora does not like us to walk in Poorgrass. It is not safe for us, she says. You were
fortunate to arrive here unmolested last night. The fishermen are a rough lot, Anora says.”

“Do you never breathe the air outside?”

“Sometimes we do,” said Becca, leaning forward over the table. “If the weather is fine, Anora takes us out in the pony and
trap, out to the countryside. Then we walk a little, don’t we, girls?”

“Yes, we do,” said Connie, nodding. She frowned at Becca. “Becca, elbows. What would Anora say?”

Rose touched my shoulder, and her long dark eyes crinkled. “It is so good that you are with us. We are as we were before when
Sukey was with us, four sisters together!”

“You shall be so happy with us—shan’t she, Rose?” said Connie, and she squeezed Rose’s arm fondly.

“So happy,” echoed Rose.

I did not protest immediately that I was not staying. I looked thoughtfully back at her—at the three of them, smiling at me
so warmly, so open-heartedly. I had always wondered what it would be like to have a sister, and, if I stayed, I would have
three; I would be part of a family. This would be my home, and Anora—she would be my mother, as she was to them. I would be
loved here, and safe. Was it really worth searching out Mistress Bundish, whom I did not know?

But what of Erland?

I could leave word for him somehow, so that he would know where I was. The stall keepers in the marketplace would surely know
him and Gadd from the times they came to Poor-grass Kayes. Maybe I could leave a message with them.

It was easy—so easy—after all, to make the decision to stay.

“You are staying, aren’t you, Scuff?” said Becca, and she
leaned across the table again, elbows forgotten, her round eyes fixed pleadingly on mine.

But when Becca asked me, I found myself saying as gently as possible, “I can’t be sure yet.”

I would seek out Mistress Bundish first, I thought, and talk to her. It might be that she would not want another servant,
anyway, and then my decision would be even easier.

Becca looked crestfallen at my reply, but I noticed a meaningful glance pass between the older girls that made me wary, as
if they knew something I did not.

“Come,” said Connie, rising languidly. “We mustn’t sit about chattering on a salon day. What would Anora say? Now, Scuff,
we need flowers in the reception rooms. Can you arrange flowers in a pretty fashion?”

I was not sure what she meant, but she took me into the pantry and showed me a quantity of flowers standing in buckets, and
some tall glass containers cut with diamond patterns.

“Take the flowers out of the buckets and stand them in the vases, so they are not too crowded but show to their best advantage.
Can you do that?”

“I think so,” I said. I took out one of the flowers and stared at it. It was most exotic to my eye, with long, pointed leaves
and a neat oval head of closed, pale pink petals.

“These come from the Flatlands over the sea,” Connie informed me kindly. “There are lots of foreign things here in Poorgrass
Kayes that you will soon become familiar with.”

She left me to the flowers, and, frowning a little, I set about putting them in the vases. I thought it seemed wrong
and unnatural to uproot such beautiful flowers from the earth and bring them inside a house.

When I had finished, I picked up one of the vases and carried it carefully up the narrow stairs to the hall. There was no
one about, but I remembered the room I had been in last night, the parlor where Anora had taken me, and so I took the vase
in there.

The yellow silk wallpaper was too bright in the daylight; it did not seem as beautiful as it had by candlelight. The cushions,
into which I had sunk so gratefully, were garish. In the bowl on the chest, the petals of the hyacinths were turning brown.
I put the vase down hastily on a table, making sure the base was dry and would not mark the wood.

I put the other two vases into the front room, where the salon would be held. A thin daylight coming through the shutters
showed the outline of an upright piano and overstuffed satin chairs and couches. Thick drapes were looped back with silky,
tasseled ropes; behind them were shadowy alcoves, with chairs placed together. My nose was sensitive after so many days in
the open air: I could smell gentlemen’s sweat and stale wine in the air, and it was not pleasant.

I put down the flowers on top of the piano. Silence hung heavily around me, so that I was startled when I heard a soft footstep.
When I turned, Connie was watching me. “I did not expect you to bring flowers into the drawing room.”

“Did I do wrong?” I said.

“Anora does not like us to come in here during the day.” She looked at me with a little gleam in her eye. “But Anora is upstairs
in bed.”

She went to the shutters and opened them. For a moment we were both dazzled. I could hear the outside world coming into the
room: the trundle of wagon wheels over the cobbles, the shouts of children playing, the ring of iron on iron from the shipbuilders’
yards.

Connie stared about in surprise. “It is not so very pretty, is it, in the light?” And she closed the shutters once more. “What
shall you sing tonight?” she said listlessly, leaning back against the piano in the sudden silence.

“I’ve not thought. What do you sing?”

“I play the piano,” she said airily. “I had lessons, you know—in my old life. I came from a good family.”