P
Pia
Guest
When I think about it, I suppose it was all about choices. I could have said ‘no’ when Mistress Elizabeth asked me to help her. But I didn’t, I suppose because somehow I felt obliged, but really I think because deep inside, ever since I’d entered her service in the great house I’d been under her spell, bewitched and dazzeled by her beauty.
Her husband, the Duke, was old and could not make her happy, and I knew she took men secretly to her chambers. And I felt somehow privileged when she told me, as I combed her golden hair, about the young Count and how they made love together and her ideas for the future when her husband would no longer be a burden and his wealth would be hers. The more we talked, the more I understood her impatience and her longing to be rid of him, and it seemed almost natural when we began to hatch our plan. I suppose I thought at the beginning that it was just a game, the sort of gossip and dreams you share in those moments at the end of the day when you become tired and the dim candles flicker in the chamber, but the more we talked the more real the plan became.
And now I had another choice to make, the hardest of my life. It had all gone so dreadfully wrong. The coachman had tried to keep going when we stopped him and even though it was night there were people who saw what we did. It was meant to seem like a robbery, the sort of hold-up that were all too common in the city in these times, but nothing went to plan. There was so little time and the snow made everything harder and in the end betrayed us. I didn’t remember to take the things from him, and there was so much blood and I know my hands were covered and as I jumped from the coach he looked down at me and our eyes met and I know he saw through my disguise and knew just who I was; and they simply had to follow the marks in the snow which led back to the postern gate of the house.
I hid the clothes in the little space behind the stairway that ran to the kitchens and tried to wash myself clean, but even as I was doing so the militia guard arrived with the coachman and the others who had seen the incident and the house was filled with noise and shouting. They pulled me out from the kitchen and marched me up the stairs to the hall and at the same time they dragged Mistress Elizabeth from her rooms above and led her down the staircase to stand next to me. And the other servant girl from her chambers, who was called Anne and was the same age as me. The coachman was shouting and told them to go to the servants quarters and get the footman who he said was the lover of my Mistress, which I knew not to be true, although he had spent some nights with her when she was lonely. But now he was implicated too. And so we were all lined up in front of the marble fireplace in which, I remember, the embers of the logs glowed a deathly red in the irons of the grate.
Her husband, the Duke, was old and could not make her happy, and I knew she took men secretly to her chambers. And I felt somehow privileged when she told me, as I combed her golden hair, about the young Count and how they made love together and her ideas for the future when her husband would no longer be a burden and his wealth would be hers. The more we talked, the more I understood her impatience and her longing to be rid of him, and it seemed almost natural when we began to hatch our plan. I suppose I thought at the beginning that it was just a game, the sort of gossip and dreams you share in those moments at the end of the day when you become tired and the dim candles flicker in the chamber, but the more we talked the more real the plan became.
And now I had another choice to make, the hardest of my life. It had all gone so dreadfully wrong. The coachman had tried to keep going when we stopped him and even though it was night there were people who saw what we did. It was meant to seem like a robbery, the sort of hold-up that were all too common in the city in these times, but nothing went to plan. There was so little time and the snow made everything harder and in the end betrayed us. I didn’t remember to take the things from him, and there was so much blood and I know my hands were covered and as I jumped from the coach he looked down at me and our eyes met and I know he saw through my disguise and knew just who I was; and they simply had to follow the marks in the snow which led back to the postern gate of the house.
I hid the clothes in the little space behind the stairway that ran to the kitchens and tried to wash myself clean, but even as I was doing so the militia guard arrived with the coachman and the others who had seen the incident and the house was filled with noise and shouting. They pulled me out from the kitchen and marched me up the stairs to the hall and at the same time they dragged Mistress Elizabeth from her rooms above and led her down the staircase to stand next to me. And the other servant girl from her chambers, who was called Anne and was the same age as me. The coachman was shouting and told them to go to the servants quarters and get the footman who he said was the lover of my Mistress, which I knew not to be true, although he had spent some nights with her when she was lonely. But now he was implicated too. And so we were all lined up in front of the marble fireplace in which, I remember, the embers of the logs glowed a deathly red in the irons of the grate.