Chapter 2
II
Iam freezing, thirsty, and ravenous by the time Bayard comes back to walk me to the kitchen for dinner.
Actually, “dinner” is a complete overstatement because all there is on the table is a heel of bread, a piece of cheese, and a glass of water.
Even though I’m relatively hungry, I’m not particularly bothered.
It’s not much different from what I usually eat at home.
Still, today, I’d have liked a bit more.
The kitchen is just as dark as the rest of this desolate building and I’m too weary to strain my eyes to properly look around. I start dragging my body to the table when Bayard shoves a piece of old-fashioned soap at me.
“You don’t eat?” I ask while I attempt to wash the filthy cellar bits off my arms at the comically large kitchen sink. I’m doing a terrible job of it, trying not to drench my uniform in the process.
“I take all my meals in my quarters,” he replies curtly.
“And the other staff?” I ask, heading over to my plate.
“Other staff? There is only me,” he says without elaborating. When I glance up, he’s standing stiffly on the other side of the kitchen, looking like he’s never been comfortable a single second of his life.
“And me,” I add.
“Yes, and you,” he says.
Did I just hear an ominous note in that statement, or is my hunger making me imagine things?
“Eat. Then return to your quarters.” He turns on his heels and walks out of the kitchen.
The bread is so dense and dry, it rivals a cleaning sponge, and the cheese isn’t much better off.
I wash it all down with the water, wanting to get this meal over with as fast as possible.
Then I drop the now-empty dishes in the sink and find my way to the main stairway leading to the living quarters.
There’s just one small problem. Even though I tried hard to memorise the layout of this place earlier, I seem to have failed miserably. Because now, I’m utterly and completely lost.
I find myself in a non-descript hallway.
Dark wooden floorboards stretch endlessly in both directions.
The narrow stone walls crowd the sides, rough-hewn and uneven, making the corridor feel claustrophobic.
Lights that look like flickering torches dimly illuminate it in regular intervals.
They don’t look electric or smell like wood fire, so I approach one to see what exactly it’s made of.
If I had to guess, I would say they’re gas lamps. Odd.
I pick a direction and follow it for what seems much too long, even for a building this size. At this point, I almost feel like I’ve been walking in a circle. The tiny medieval-style windows come and go as I continue, showing the exact same thing no matter how far I walk: overgrown woods.
When the corridor finally turns, I expect more bare stone. Instead, heavy tapestries line the walls, stopping me in my tracks. I’m pretty sure these weren’t here before.
I hesitate for a moment, wondering if I might have accidentally found my way into the forbidden area of the building, the one that I should under no circumstances ever go to. What had Bayard said again? The west wing is strictly prohibited! Or was it the east wing?
This is probably the moment most normal people would turn around and follow the rules their employer so carefully explained. But, of course, I’m not a normal person, and with my curiosity driving me forward, I continue to follow the tapestries until I reach a door.
Without a moment’s hesitation, I open it and step inside. I’m not entirely sure what I expected to see on the other side, maybe some kind of grand chamber, with a giant canopy bed and a suit of armour in the corner, but it certainly wasn’t this.
The room is completely wrecked. Like someone dragged random furniture from a dump and then trashed everything meticulously.
Every single thing inside is broken. Remnants of curtains hang in front of a large filthy window that barely lets sunlight in from outside.
There are piles of what looks like shredded wood, cloth, metal, and other unidentifiable materials all over.
It smells odd. Not bad, exactly, but before I can place it, I hear muffled sounds nearby.
I freeze on the spot, my instincts screaming at me to hide.
But there’s nothing left whole enough to crouch behind.
I stop breathing, straining to pinpoint the sound’s origin.
I realise, thankfully, they’re originating from the room next door.
I move toward it, careful not to make the old wood creak below me.
It’s more of a challenge to squeeze through the piles of broken furniture without making any sounds.
Difficult, but not impossible, and I manage to get closer.
As I put my ears on the wall, its cold surface makes me shiver.
Trying to concentrate as intently as I can, I hear words coming from a deep voice.
“I underst… No, I do not…” it says quietly, followed by a pause and then footsteps.
I only pick up short snippets, but I can tell that it’s just one man speaking.
“I shall see to it. Do not worry, master.” The voice is clearer now. But before I can hear more, it starts to break up again, seemingly because the speaker is moving away from my vantage point. “…not know this human. Bayard requested…”
Even though it’s hard to recognise the intonation through the wall, the words sound almost defensive now. Then there’s a long pause until the footsteps come closer again.
“I beg, trust me, master,” the voice pleads very clearly now.
I hear something I can’t make out and then a sharp-pitched squeaking that sounds like metal being squeezed dry.
The slamming of a door makes me jump, and I have to hold a hand in front of my mouth not to make a sound.
Loud footsteps storm down the hallway, pausing for a moment in front of the room I’m in.
My body seems suspended, completely frozen in time. Then, at last, the footsteps move away.
I wait a long while with my hand still in front of my mouth, grateful I had the foresight to close the door behind me when I entered. After all, I didn’t particularly want to be caught snooping.
When the building is completely silent again, I quietly sneak back out of the room, making sure I left no signs of ever having been there.
I retrace my steps back out of the tapestried corridor until I find a junction that leads me into the servant’s hallway.
Once there, it doesn’t take me long to get back to my room making me wonder, how I even got so lost in the first place.
Once inside the bedroom, I strip the scratchy uniform off quickly, yearning for a hot bath to wash the dust and sweat off my skin.
I make do with the wash basin and a small cloth.
The water is cold, and there’s barely enough of it to clean myself properly.
But I’m so acutely exhausted that I have little energy to care.
Too weary to brush my hair, I release my long braid and let it fall.
At least, my pyjamas are soft and the bedding is clean, and I’m grateful to get some rest after this very long and very strange day. The moment my head hits the pillow, I hear the quiet click of a key turning in the lock, almost as if someone had been waiting for me to lie down.
I’ve had insomnia for as long as I can remember.
Sometimes I wondered if I couldn’t sleep because I never seemed to feel truly comfortable in my body.
It’s not that I had an issue with any particular part; this bag of flesh just never felt like home.
Even as a kid, I struggled to move my limbs the way I intended.
They’re lean and lanky, sure—some might even say extremely so—but that didn’t explain why I never seemed to be able to use them properly.
It’s like a piece is missing, the one that’s supposed to connect my brain to my limbs.
I feel like popcorn skin stuck so deep in a tooth, it’s impossible to dislodge. Stuck with my family, stuck in dead-end jobs, stuck with myself. And right now? Stuck in this too-narrow bed, desperate for rest but unable to shut my damn brain off.
So I do the only thing that ever even remotely works.
I grab my Walkman from the rickety night table, pull the headphones over my ears, and let the music drench me in a sea of anger and despair.
Straining to see through the dense darkness, I keep my eyes open.
I stay like this until they burn so much that nausea creeps in, forcing me to close them again.
But I fight the urge, fight to keep my eyes open even as they sting, and I see strange things crawling along the edges.
I already know the moment I close my eyes, it’ll be worse. It always is.
Instead, I focus on the words being screamed into my ears, trying not to dwell on why I’m not scared. That’s not a path I’m particularly interested in taking.
Time stretches and slips, and before I know it—
The soft clicking of a key. A lock turning. A sliver of dull morning light spilling across my bedroom floor.
Trembling in the crisp air, I force my stiff limbs out of bed. I’ve always resented my slight frame. No insulation, just sharp angles and shivers. But there’s no shower here to thaw me out. So I resign myself to another day of being chilled in my scratchy uniform and probably a new menial task.
I brush my teeth as quickly as I can, combing my hair and tucking it back under my cap. At the door, I notice a paper has been pushed underneath scrawled with today’s tasks.
“Breakfast is served in the kitchen,” it reads, followed by detailed instructions for the day.
I head down to the kitchen as quickly as I can, hoping that the brisk walk will warm me.
Breakfast is the same as dinner: a heel, a wedge, and a cup.
I wolf it down and look for the garden that’s marked on a map on the back of the paper.
Today’s task, it says, is to weed the flower beds and trim the bushes.