Chapter 20 Grace
Day of auction
The scent of lavender and something sharper, something chemical, is the first thing that registers.
It claws at the back of my throat, a cloying promise of the day to come.
My eyes are still heavy with a sleep that was more like a temporary escape, a brief ceasefire in the war against my own reality.
But the women are here, and the ceasefire is finally over.
There are two of them, their faces set in masks of bland efficiency.
They don’t look at my eyes, only at the task before them.
Overseeing it all, a statue of cold judgment, is Mrs Vale.
She stands just inside the door, her arms folded tightly across her chest. Her gaze is a physical weight on my skin, stern and impatient, as if she’s waiting for me to break a rule I haven’t even been told yet.
I move like a doll, my limbs stiff and uncooperative. They lead me into the bathroom where steam is already beginning to fog the edges of a huge, sunken marble tub. The water looks impossibly hot, sending tendrils of vapour into the cool air.
They don’t ask, they simply divest me of the simple cotton shift I slept in. The air hits my skin, raising goosebumps. I want to cover myself, to hide from their clinical eyes and Mrs Vale’s piercing stare, but my arms remain at my sides.
There is no point.
Modesty is a currency I spent long ago, and when tonight comes…no, I cannot think on it. Even now. I cannot.
I step into the water and it is scalding, a shock that steals my breath. I gasp, but the sound is small and swallowed by the tiled room. I sink down, the water closing over my shoulders and for a blissful second the heat is a blanket, hiding me. But it doesn’t last.
The two women kneel on the tiled floor, taking up rough-textured cloths and bars of soap that smell aggressively of lemon and rosemary.
They scrub. There is no gentleness to it, it is a scouring.
They work over every inch of me as if trying to erase the very top layer of my skin, the one that still feels like it belongs to me.
They scrub my back, my arms, the soles of my feet.
The cloth rasps over my skin, turning it a bright, angry pink.
I close my eyes, trying to retreat inside my own head.
I thought I had made peace with this. In the weeks of training, the endless lessons on posture and etiquette and obedience, I had built a wall of numb acceptance.
I told myself it was just a transaction.
A new life. A duty. I had recited it like a mantra until I almost believed it but now, as the scrubbing continues, that wall begins to crumble.
The reality of what this day means is being rubbed into my skin, along with the harsh soap.
This isn’t a transition. It’s an erasure.
They wash my hair next, tipping me back to wet it, their fingers digging into my scalp. They lather it not once, but three times while the suds sting my eyes. The scent is overpowering, a floral assault meant to mask any natural scent, any lingering hint of the person I was.
Rinsed and raw, I am helped from the tub. Water streams from me onto the mat, and I stand there, shivering violently despite the warm room. One maid wraps my hair in a towel while the other begins to pat my body dry with a towel so fluffy it feels absurd against my abraded skin.
Then Mrs Vale speaks. “Thoroughly, now. Everywhere.”
One of the maids produces a razor and a bowl of white, slick cream. The fear, which had been a low hum in my veins, suddenly screams into a siren.
“Please,” I whisper, the word escaping before I can cage it.
Mrs Vale’s eyes snap to mine. “The word ‘please’ is for requesting a privilege, Grace. This is not a request. It is a requirement. You must be properly cleaned and made presentable, so our Lords can have a good look at you. So that you will be ready for your new owner immediately upon purchase.”
Owner. The word lands like a blow. I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste blood. Using the sharp, metallic pain to ground myself, to keep the tears that are welling up from spilling over. I cannot give her that. I cannot give any of them that.
I shut my eyes again as the maid applies the cold cream to my legs.
The razor follows. It’s a swift, practiced motion.
The sound of the blade scraping against my skin is obscenely loud in the quiet room.
I feel the drag of it, the slight pull and then the strange, naked sensation of the air on a patch of skin that hasn’t felt it since I was a child.
I try to disconnect. I think of the orchard behind my parents’ house, of climbing the old apple tree and feeling the rough bark against my palms. I think of the sun on my face, but the memory is thin and fragile, and it shatters as the razor moves up my thigh.
My breath hitches. I am trembling again, and the maid pauses, her hand steadying me with impersonal pressure.
They do my arms next, the pale hair on my forearms vanishing in swift, sure strokes, then my underarms. Every stroke of the razor feels like it’s stripping away not just hair, but a layer of my humanity. Reducing me to something smooth, unmarked, and passive.
Then it is time for the most intimate violation. The maid’s hands are firm, positioning me. The cream is cold. I flinch violently, a full-body shudder I cannot control.
“Hold still,” Mrs Vale’s voice is a whip crack. “You will be still.”
A tear escapes then, tracking a hot path down my temple and into my hairline. I am powerless to stop it. I squeeze my eyes shut so tightly that I see bursts of colour against my eyelids as I try to leave my body entirely.
I am not here on this cold mat,
I am not in this gilded cage.
I am anywhere else. Somewhere nice. Somewhere warm, where the sun shines and the birds sing and….the razor moves with a terrifying efficiency, cutting through the desperate images I try to conjure in my head.
It is clinical, methodical, and utterly dehumanizing.
The sensation is bizarre and unsettling, a profound vulnerability that makes my stomach clench.
They lift, they slice, they shave around me and I can feel it; I can feel that blade gliding over my flesh, touching the metal bar that is hidden there.
It’s sensitive, too fucking sensitive. Even this, as unintentional as it is, sends a sensation through my body that feels far too fucking close to something like pleasure.
I see them look; I see them exchange glances. I can even guess the thoughts in their head. That I’m already so close to a jezebel that I deserve the hand I’ve been dealt.
When it is done, I feel exposed in a way I never knew was possible.
The torture doesn’t end there. Once I am shaved, they do something else, they use something else. I don’t understand what the fuck this procedure is for, why I would need water up there and why the fuck I would be flushed out?
Mrs Vale stands and watches the whole thing and if anything that makes this even more degrading, even more dehumanising.
I want to scream, to yell, to lash out and demand that these people treat me with respect. I’m a person after all, I’m a human being, not some piece of meat.
But to them, to the Brethren, I am not. No, I remind myself. I am a prize, captured, and about to be sold.
They dry me again, patting gently now that the scrubbing and shaving are done.
Then comes the oil. It is poured from a crystal decanter, warmed, and rubbed into my skin by four hands. They massage it into my shoulders, my back, the length of my legs, the soles of my feet. The scent is jasmine and sandalwood. Rich, heavy, and expensive.
No doubt it’s meant to be alluring but to me, it smells like surrender.
The perfume gets caught in my throat, and I have to fight not to cough, not to show any more weakness.
They lead me, slick and shining, to a full-length mirror framed in gold leaf. I don’t want to look. I keep my eyes downcast, fixed on the intricate pattern of the rug.
“Look,” Mrs Vale commands.
My eyes, against my will, drift upwards.
The woman in the mirror is a stranger. Her skin glows under the bathroom lights, flawless and unnaturally smooth. Her hair is slicked back from a face that is pale and drawn, but it’s the eyes that undo me. They are huge in her face, pools of fear so profound it seems to swallow the light.
They are my eyes.
This is it.
This is what will be paraded, examined, and bid upon.
This polished, perfumed shell is what I have become.
I thought I had come to terms with my fate. I had wrapped it in logic and necessity, a bitter pill I convinced myself I could swallow but now, staring my future in its terrified, glassy eyes, the numbness shatters completely.
A sob rips from my throat. It’s a raw, broken sound.
I can’t hold them back anymore; the tears come in a silent flood, streaming down my cheeks.
I don’t make a sound beyond that first gasp, but my shoulders shake with the force of my crying.
I hug my own arms, but my skin is too slippery to get a grip. I can’t even hold myself together.
The maids look away, uncomfortable. This display of emotion is clearly not part of the preparation schedule.
Mrs Vale unfolds her arms and takes a step forward. She doesn’t look uncomfortable, she looks annoyed. She stops behind me, her reflection looming over my shoulder in the mirror like a dark spectre.
“Cry all you want,” she says, her voice low and cold.
“Get it out now or sob your way onto that stage. It makes no difference to me, to us. If your new owner likes your tears, I’m sure he’ll have ways to make you cry often, and if he doesn’t?
Well, you’d better learn quickly how to stop being such a baby. ”
She turns me away from the mirror, away from the shattered girl crying in the glass.
“Now,” she says, all business once more. “The dress.”
The maids jump to action, relieved to be back on familiar ground. I stand there, still as a statue as they begin to dress me. The fear hasn’t left, but it’s no longer a wild panic; it has crystallized into a hard, dread certainty in the pit of my stomach.
I cannot escape this. I cannot stop this.
There is nothing I can do to get out of this. I’m on a freight train, hurtling towards the end of the line and I know when I crash, it’s going to hurt.