Wasp (17 page)

The fuzz on Beth’s scalp thickens. Her sores have healed, though the Fixer insists she keep rubbing in his foul-smelling potions to keep the skin supple. Her eyes are brighter and her body is filling out. Climbing the stairs no longer leaves her breathless, and she’s better able to keep up with Eloise in the course of her daily chores.
I look like a boy,
she thinks, regarding the slim, short-haired creature reflected in Hummingbird’s looking-glass.

Other jobs swallow up her time. She fears the Masques will run her ragged with errands. Sewing, laying out their night shifts, fetching books or evening possets. But they are kind. Generous even. ‘Let me help you with that,’ a girl called Dragonfly says, watching her struggle with a pail of scented water for someone’s bath.

When Beth spills red wine over an embroidered kerchief belonging to Raven, she is favoured with a dry smile and told it will probably wash out, though they both know it won’t. At certain tasks she is good, at others hopelessly clumsy. ‘We can’t be perfect at everything,
enfant
,’ Eloise says when Beth drops a basket load of scrubbed linen the washerwoman had just delivered. ‘A quick rinse and those garments will be good again.’

‘I’m not very skilled at washing,’ Beth mumbles.

‘That is so, but you have to try,
oui
? We need to prise all your hidden things from you, find out what talents lie in that head and those hands. Perhaps you will surprise yourself.’

‘Perhaps I shall turn out a dunce.’

‘But you can smile beautifully. I have seen it. Sometimes such a smile is all that is needed. It can buy hearts. Don’t forget.’

There are lessons of another sort. When Hummingbird is not out on one of her Assignments she and Beth share supper in their room at a table in front of the hearth.

Beth pokes a lump of stewed vegetables with the tip of her wooden knife. ‘When shall I have some proper meat? My belly stopped aching days ago. Everyone says I’m looking better. It’s torture sitting here watching you eat roast chicken, and that beef pie you had yesterday looked like it had come straight off the king’s table. All I get are fish, vegetables and fruit. This lime juice makes my cheeks pucker.’

‘You’ll get more hearty food when your teeth are better,’ Hummingbird replies. ‘They still look ready to drop out of their sockets and your breath is a fright. I got a faceful of it last night when you rolled over in your sleep.’

‘Blame those draughts the Fixer makes me swill. I don’t know why he doesn’t just poison me outright and be done with it. And he keeps prodding me like I’m a shank of pork hanging from a flesher’s hook.’

‘The Fixer needs to check his handiwork. Don’t be hard on him.’

Beth stirs her food and swallows it. ‘It seems I’m always being examined, observed or corrected.’

Hummingbird puts down her cutlery. The window behind her throws most of her face into shadow. ‘We both know where you were before you came here. You can’t survive a place like that without growing claws and scratching. All the pretty things your mama taught you are soon forgotten when you find yourself fighting to live through another day. That’ll always be a part of your life, Kitten. You can’t cut it from your mind like a surgeon hacks off a rotten leg. While you share my room I’m responsible for you. I have to make you fit for our society, and there are harder ways to learn than the methods I use.’

‘You make me sound like a trained animal.’

‘Trained is exactly what you’re going to be.’

‘Or?’

‘There isn’t any “or” about it. If you don’t perform it reflects on me and I don’t want the Abbess on my tail. Now eat that supper and I’ll share a word with the Fixer. It may be we can slip something a little tastier onto your plate for a night or two.’

‘Is Moth sleeping better? Is she taking a draught?’

‘Too many for my liking. The only way you’ll quieten that one is to knock her with a brick. Laudanum can make you dull-witted. Herbs may help. He knows a good apothecary who can supply him. The other quacks aren’t much use. Most of the concoctions they peddle will likely poison you. That would certainly cure the sleeplessness. Moth’s remedy will need more than a few roots crushed in a pestle, I suspect.’

Bethany’s visits to the Fixer continue. He bids her walk in front of the mirrors, sometimes naked, then stand, then turn, then sit. He runs his hands down her legs and along her forearms. ‘Your limbs are strengthening,’ he says. ‘I can feel the muscles taking shape, growing beneath the skin.’

He makes her talk and hum, then open her mouth and go ‘Ahhh’ in a great drawn-out sigh. He bathes her eyes again, turning the world into a bright blur. He shaves under her arms and checks between her legs. She draws away, covering herself with her hands. ‘I don’t think it right for you to do that any more.’

He grins. ‘Rediscovering our modesty, are we? That’s good. The lady within is beginning to assert herself. But you’re right. There’s no need to do it now. You’re as clean as a freshly scrubbed pot and, coming from where you did, you can count that as something of a miracle.’

That evening, Beth sits with Eloise in the empty parlour, sipping coffee and chewing a selection of soft fruit. ‘Why do we always have this room to ourselves? I think I’ve counted three other people in the time I’ve been here.’

The maid is swaddled in a tall armchair, slippers off, her feet propped on a stool. She draws on a long-stemmed clay pipe and blows a lazy cloud of smoke towards the ceiling. ‘This is a place of come-and-go people,
enfant
. We are busy all the time. Running errands, keeping our little family happy. Friendships are difficult. The House makes so many demands, as you will discover when you sport an Emblem on your own pretty cheek.’

‘When is that likely to be?’

Eloise shrugged. ‘Depends on you,
enfant
. Some are born with a gift for the work. Others learn slowly. I would say you are doing well enough. But the real tests are yet to come. Then we shall see what you are made of,
oui
?’

Beth clears her throat. ‘What tests are these?’

Eloise sucks on her pipe and says nothing. Beth feels a stab of irritation. ‘In my place of employment servants never mixed with the rest of the household. Most were beaten if found to be lazy or impudent. They expected to be treated that way.’

‘Is that so?’ Eloise replies. ‘And how would you know such a thing? Did you ever ask what they thought of all that hard work they dealt with so obediently? The scrubbing, washing, fetching, cooking?’

Eloise leans over and taps her pipe out into a bowl. ‘Tell me also,’ she says in a gentle voice, ‘what makes you think you are now any less of a servant?’

Beth stares at the smouldering ash.

‘I thought not. Think before you speak,
enfant.
You cannot bring such high-handed baggage into this dangerous new world. There are those who are less forgiving than I.
Alors,
more coffee?’

Beth wakes from a shallow sleep. She slips the cover off and rolls out of bed. Hummingbird’s place is empty, her pillow a bunched-up shape in the dark. Already Beth is getting used to her companion’s toing and froing.

She kneels and fumbles under the bed, her fingers catching the rim of the pot. Liquid slops onto her hand. Full. She stands, groping for a hand towel. A privy lies at the end of the corridor. Beth steals out of the door and along the corridor, fingertips brushing the wall. No lights under any of the doors. No other sounds in the dark. She reaches the end of the passage and ducks into the cupboard that serves as the privy. Sprigs of fresh lavender cluster in brackets on the wall. Beth hoists her shift and settles on the wooden board. Outside, a muted chime announces the second hour of the new morning.

I shouldn’t have drunk such a large posset before turning in,
she thought.
Not on top of all that coffee.

Beth stands, dabs herself with a square of linen and steps back into the corridor. The House never truly sleeps. Girls often return from Assignments at three or four of the clock. Beth wonders if the front door is ever locked, if anyone has risen in the night and left, gone away, taken their chances in the darkened streets dressed only in a shift. Every evening, Eloise takes their house gowns away and brings fresh ones the following day. Where are the beautiful dresses worn on Assignments?

Perhaps I could hide in an alley ’til the morning and pluck garments from a wash line,
Beth thinks.
Or I could filch an item from the House, a clock or small tapestry, and trade with a beggar for their coat.

A noise jolts her out of her thoughts. She pauses, straining to hear in the gloom. The House settles around her. Walls and floorboards creak as they relinquish the previous day’s heat. But there it is again. A low hiss followed by a muffled whimper.

Beth inches along the passage. The hissing sound repeats itself. Has a cat got into the House? Dare she run the risk of treading on it in the dark? She leans forward, trying to gauge the distance. A soft laugh echoes in the dark followed by another hiss. No cat, then.

She takes a few cautious steps. A figure looms out of the shadows, bent against one of the bedroom doors. A finger of light spills from underneath, revealing stockinged feet and the hem of an elaborate gown. Hands, pale even in this light, are cupped against the keyhole.

Hissssssssss
.

A yelp from inside the room follows muffled sobs. Beth coughs. The figure jerks upright, then scampers off down the long passage. Beth fumbles to the door and presses an ear to the wood. Inside, a voice, hoarse with crying. ‘Go away.’

‘Moth?’

‘Please go away.’

Beth creeps back down the passage to her bedchamber. Moth is not at breakfast the following morning. Nor the day after.

A Trip to the Woods

Beth tugged at her riding habit. The garment was green and velvety, and as heavy as a sack of potatoes. A tall hat was tied onto her head with ribbons.

Under her feet was a cobbled yard. She’d never walked on cobbles before and twice nearly fell flat on her face in the boots she’d been obliged to wear. Stable doors lined the yard on two sides, the wood painted a shiny black.

‘Let’s go riding,’ George had said, striding into the schoolroom where she’d been trying to bend her mind around one of those thick books. ‘I know you can handle a mount passably well. It’s too fine a day to tuck yourself away here.’

She put down the book. ‘The children—’

‘Are deep in slumber. We won’t see them until tomorrow, I’ll wager. The games you had them play this morning left them quite exhausted.’

‘Is there no one else who can go with you?’

‘My kipper-faced groom has put his back out, the fool, and I’m in the mood for some fair company. Come now, don’t make me ask again.’

Of course she’d had no choice and had to suffer the help of a pouting maid to put the riding habit on.
What am I really doing here?
she thought, watching bugs skit lazily across the surface of the water trough. She wasn’t that good a rider. Father got a horse from the squire, a stout old thing that was no use to either plough or hunt, but it plodded the miles around the estate without fuss. He kept it in a woodshed turned stable and taught Beth the basics of riding. Though she had no grace for the saddle, the beast bore her clumsiness with good humour.

George strode across the yard. Calf-high boots kicked up puffs of dust. Tight breeches were topped by a sharply cut brown jacket and he slapped a riding crop against his thigh as he walked. ‘I thought we might ride up to the ridge. Give you a chance to spread your wings a little.’

A boy walked out of the stables with a face so riddled with spots he looked poxed. He gave Beth a look of such cheek she wanted to bury the end of her boot in his rump and see how he felt about that. A horse trotted out behind him, already bridled and saddled. A hunter, sleek and grey, the flanks like satin
.
Better than anything Beth ever saw at Pendleton horse fair.

‘This is Odysseus.’ George slapped the beast’s flank. ‘I had him brought from Spain. He’s the fastest horse in the southern counties.’

‘Have you ever raced him?’

‘His reputation is solid enough.’