Unnatural Issue (21 page)

In return she heard all about who was courting, who was marrying, who was “no better than she should be”—the latter seemed to be confined to a couple of girls in the village of Branwell—that the vicar was well-liked but his wife “had a tongue in her head,” and that there was a most intriguing visitor here.

“Oh, Quality! A lord!” exclaimed one of the girls. “Lord Peter Almsley, Master Charles’ old friend from Oxford! And a nicer gemmun you could never ask for! His man, too, polite as polite!”

“Aye, Garrick’s a favorite here,” the cook murmured, her eyes twinkling. “Were I twenty years younger—” she sighed theatrically, and the girls giggled.

But there was another undercurrent here, one she sensed by what they were
not
saying. Every time the subject of conversation got around to anything that might lead to hints of magic, there was a quick veer into something else altogether. Susanne was too used to dancing that dance herself not to see them doing it.

Which either meant they were
all
geased against talking about the subject, or they were keeping her from getting any hints of it. She rather doubted the former, but the latter?

With narrowed eyes, she assessed her fellow diners. One by one, she looked for signs of magic on them.

It was with considerable shock that she realized that at least part of the strength of the magic hereabouts was in these unassuming people!

Oh, they weren’t very strong, but there were a great many of them, and a bucket could as easily be filled drop-by-drop as by a barrel. All it took was time—

Just as she wondered if she should show her own colors, Cook clapped her hands to get their attention.

“All right now, I’ve given thee a bit extra time because we have a new girl. But the work needs doing.” She stated it as a fact, rather than as an order, but the reaction she got would have done justice to the troops of a great general. Everyone got up off the benches, took their plates to the sink, and went straight to work.

One of the girls—Susanne was pretty sure her name was Polly—came and tugged on her hand. “Cook wants thee in dairy, ’tis what I do too,” she said.

“We will be milking?” she asked.

Polly laughed. “Lord love thee, nay,” she said. “The herdsmen do that. Just dairy.”

Susanne was a bit relieved that there was to be no milking; there were always cows that seemed to take it into their heads to be the very devil whenever they were milked.

As she knew, when it wasn’t a small place with only a couple of milk-cows, the chief business of a dairymaid was to
clean,
not just ordinary surface cleaning. Every bit of the dairy was scrubbed twice daily at a minimum, because the least little bit of foulness could, and probably would, contaminate milk, cream, butter and all, and spoil it. Polly would have taken care of the morning scrub, but it was afternoon now, and it was all to do over again to get ready for the evening milking. So first they scrubbed with ash and water, floors and walls. Then they changed to a different set of brushes and scalded and scrubbed the milk-pans from the stack—they were already clean, but you skipped this step at your peril. They scalded all the tools, scrubbed and scalded the churns, scalded the very brushes they had been using to scrub with. Then they scrubbed their hands and arms, put on enormous clean aprons, so big they were practically dresses, and went to the rising-room where the milk from the previous day and this morning waited in its flat pans. The cream had risen satisfactorily on the former; she and Polly loosened it from the edge of the pan by running a clean finger around the inside, then, as Polly watched critically, Susanne took a skimmer and began to take the cream off the top of the milk. When Polly was satisfied that Susanne knew what she was doing, she tackled her own set of pans.

“Will we be churning?” Susanne asked, as she transferred the cream into her cream pot.

“Aye, we make all the butter for the Hall,” Polly said with pride. “’Twill be fresh today, tomorrow ’twill be salted for winter. An’ once a week, ’tis cheese.”

Susanne blinked. “I’ve never made cheese,” she faltered. She had, of course, but it was plain white cheese, not the sort the gentry ate.

Polly laughed. “’Twould be a wonder if tha had,” she chuckled. “Nay, no worries. I’ll teach thee, ’tis no harder than butter.”

A little of the cream went into a pitcher that one of the kitchen maids came to get, along with cans of the skimmed milk for cooking. The rest of the skimmed milk was collected by someone else and carried off. Polly and Susanne turned to their churns.

At the end of the day, they carried cakes of fresh butter up to the Hall, along with a can of fresh milk for Cook, and left the rest of the afternoon’s milk standing in the clean and scalded pans. “Eh, tha’ can see why I need help!” Polly laughed, as the two of them entered the kitchen and handed over their goods. “I was havin’ to make more cheese an’ less butter, for I couldn’t get to the cream before it began to turn.”

Now, Susanne absolutely did not believe that, for she had sensed Polly using very gentle Earth magic to keep the cream from spoiling. And she had augmented that, since it was exactly the same sort of thing that she herself had done. There was Earth magic in use all over that dairy—to keep the milk from turning, the cream from spoiling, the butter from going rancid, the cheese from acquiring molds that were not desirable. All very minor magics, but the impact was not so minor, not on a place that had as many people to feed as Branwell Hall did.

Supper was a relatively light meal for the servants; the gentry might eat heavily, but the servants’ main meals were breakfast and luncheon. The day was nearly over for Polly and Susanne; they would get up at dawn or before to clean the dairy and clean and scald all their implements and pans and pots. It was clear to Susanne that this was a much larger dairy than anything she was used to; it was very likely that Branwell Hall provided not only for its own needs, but sold a substantial surplus. As a consequence, a lot of the duties that a dairymaid had in smaller households were given to other servants.

“Where will I be sleeping?” Susanne asked diffidently, as both of them spread the fruits of their labor over fresh, hot rolls that tasted utterly heavenly.

“Oh, with me. Housekeeper’ll have got tha’ uniforms already, like mine.” Polly smoothed down her light blue dress with pride. “And she’ll have got tha’ bundle to our room. Put tha’ gown with mine, they’ll be taken off for washing, I’ll show thee where.”

“You can’t be too clean in a dairy,” Susanne said sagely, and she was rewarded with Polly’s nod of approval.

“Aye, it’s clean uniforms every day for us.” Polly helped herself to a big bowl of soup as the communal pot came by, and so did Susanne. Both did the same with the stewed turnip tops, which had a satisfying amount of bacon added. The food was all plain and good. They finished off their meal before the rest, who were still sending up grander food to the gentry’s table. Polly stood up and bade a cheerful good night to the others; Susanne took the hint and followed her.

The room she would share with Polly from now on was just under the attics; from the look of things, the floor they were on was where all the servants slept. Sure enough, Susanne’s bundle was on her bed, and there were three clean blue dresses and six bleached white aprons and matching caps hanging on a hook on the wall.

“Change apron after nuncheon,” Polly said by way of explanation. “Cap too.” She showed Susanne the basket just outside their door where they were to leave clothing to be taken away for cleaning. Susanne donned her somewhat threadbare nightshift with a little embarrassment and sensed that Polly was eyeing it with curiosity, but the girl only said, “Old man tha’ was with wasn’t half the skinflint, eh?”

“He’d pinch a farthing until it squeaked,” Susanne replied.

“Well, ’tis different here. ‘Do not bind the mouths of the kine that tread the grain.’ ” Polly said piously, and climbed into her bed.

Clearly it
was
different here. The two of them had their own little beds. Back at the Manor, Prudence and Patience had to share a bed not much bigger than these were.

Outside, it was just dusk; dim blue light filtered in their window, which Polly left open to the breeze. The pretty muslin curtains fluttered as Susanne turned on her side to watch. Polly was asleep in moments, but Susanne still had too much to think about to get to sleep just yet.

This place—it was unbelievable. How could she ever have fallen into a situation so perfect? She would have been suspicious of some sort of trap, except that the magic didn’t lie, and this place was—good.

But above and beyond all that . . . was Charles Kerridge. He was the handsomest man she had ever seen in her life. The way he had immediately sensed her panic and moved to calm it when she first woke to find him looking down on her—

I’ve never met anyone so handsome
or
so kind,
she thought dreamily. She hadn’t had much time to think about him until now . . . but now that she did, the memory of those mild gray eyes looking down on her was enough to give her shivers. And she knew that she would have taken a far worse position than dairymaid in order to be near him.

And with that, and vague daydreams of how she could—somehow—gain his attention, she at last fell asleep.

“S
O, the new dairymaid is an Earth magician?” Michael Kerridge asked, buttering his toast as he lifted an eyebrow at Peter and Charles.

The windows on the garden were wide open, and birds of every description were singing their hearts out. Peter could not help but reflect that this was one of the things that made him—briefly—regret living in London. The part of town where he lived might be genteel, but it could never give him birdsong with toast.

“It would seem so, oh Pater Familias,” Charles replied. “And very closemouthed she is about it, and herself. She hasn’t come out and declared herself even to young Polly, and Polly hasn’t done anything to hide what witchery she is doing in the dairy.”

The servants were all being their willing spies on the new girl; it was Polly who had first seen that the girl was helping her own magic along, told Cook, and Cook who had set the others to find out what they could. Peter thought this was an estimable system, one that could be put together only in a place like this, where literally everyone had magic, or something as compelling, in common. Common good, and commonality.

Alas, it seemed that most people were more interested in conflict than commonality. Especially—

He wrenched his thoughts away from the increasing tension across the Channel and back to the subject at hand.

Elizabeth came in on that last. “I can only tell you that Polly told Cook, who told me, that the new girl is helping her, strengthening her spells but not in any way that Polly has actually caught. Under other circumstances I would admire her circumspection, but at the moment it is rather aggravating.” She joined them at the table. “She’s been just as silent on the subject of where she came from before this. I’ve no notion who could have trained her in the first place, although it is entirely possible it could be someone we never encountered, some irascible old hermit who has no use for other people. Earth mages do tend to bury themselves in the countryside. It might even be the old man she claims she was the servant to. But on that subject, she has given no details at all, which makes me begin to doubt this old skinflint hermit ever existed. I don’t doubt that she is a decent young woman,” Elizabeth added hastily. “I merely am concerned that she might be running from something.”

“Something that might follow her here and cause trouble?” Richard replied with a frown.

“I’d suggest an abusive husband,” Peter said slowly, “Except that I didn’t catch anything like that about her, and—well, let’s just say I’ve seen girls who’ve been running from that sort of thing before. They tend to be skittish ’round the lads, and this one ain’t. It’s a trust sort of thing. When the fellow you thought you loved turns out to betray you, you rather lose trust in all fellows.”

Elizabeth nodded. “It could be anything from a debt she can’t pay, being turned out of her home by her parents, losing her parents and having nowhere to go, or running from an unwanted suitor to, well, running from someone really dangerous. And . . .” she hesitated a moment. “It is just barely possible it could be that she encountered the necromancer you are looking for, at least recognized that he was dangerous, and fled. I know that if I were all alone and knew no other magicians, that is what I would do. I would run as fast and as far as my legs would take me.”

The breeze coming in from the garden seemed, for a moment, to grow colder.

Peter pursed his lips. “You know, that could be the answer. The necromancer must be working far from others to avoid being uncovered. You don’t have any guesses as to where this girl is from, so she, too, would have to be from some isolated place. As circumspect as she is, she would probably uncover him before he uncovered her. Getting the young woman to confide in us could solve my problem and hers in one go. If we can get her to tell us who and where he is, we can deal with him and protect her at the same time.” He considered this while eating thoughtful bites of buttered toast. “The question is, how to get her to talk.”