Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Pippa’s dress was heavy, dark wool, with a coarse linen apron and a white cap perched on her head. The cap bothered her most. It was far too big and kept slipping into her eyes, so she had to shove it back every other step.
“You will have to alter it yourself,” Marie remarked, eyeing her up and down. “And shorten the hem too, unless you want to tumble down a staircase.”
Alter it? Pippa suppressed a groan. She was hopeless with a needle. Her father once forbade her to mend his socks after she sewed one shut.
Her first assignment was simple enough, or so she thought.
“Sweep the main corridors and stairs,” Marie said, thrusting a broom with bristles stiff as wire into her hands, along with a hand shovel.
“All of them?”
Marie only lifted a brow.
“But how many staircases are there, exactly?”
“Maybe forty, not counting the ones in the servants’ corridors.”
“And each staircase has how many steps?”
Marie stopped to stare at her. “Countless steps. What does it matter? They have to be swept either way.”
“It is just that knowing the precise number of steps involved would help create an estimate of the time needed for the task.” Pippa paused to shove back her cap.
“For example, if each staircase has thirty steps per flight, and there are four flights to each level, that would be one hundred and twenty steps. I gather there are four floors, so that makes a total of four hundred eighty stairs to be cleaned for a single staircase. Multiply that by forty. How long do you need to clean a single step, normally?”
Marie stared at her as if she had sprouted horns.
“What kind of odd question is that? It’s not as though we stand there with a pocket watch timing ourselves as we clean.
It does not matter because your calculation is useless.
Every staircase in the palace is different.
If you want an exact number, that is impossible.
One thing and one thing alone matters: it needs to be clean before the guests, or anyone in the imperial family, show up.
If the emperor finds mud on his stair, you will be turned into the street, with no reference, no work, and no one to pity you. ”
“But sweeping one thousand nine hundred and twenty steps is impossible for one person to do on her own, several times a day!”
“Which is why Greta will help you.” Marie beckoned a girl with flaxen hair and a wide nose, who smiled shyly at Pippa. “Start at the entrance hall and work your way up.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” Greta said as they walked across the courtyard, casting curious, sidelong glances at Pippa. “I’ve had to manage most of it alone since Susi resigned. It’s a mountain of work. Here it is.”
The ‘mountain’ turned out to be the grand staircase, lined with a deep red carpet. At the bottom, where the carriages stopped, the carpet was blackened with mud and, Pippa’s stomach turned, caked thickly in horse manure.
“You’ll need a stiff brush for this part,” Greta explained cheerfully, already kneeling. “The stairs are easy. The carpets are the devil’s own work.”
Pippa stared at the mess in horror. Never in her life had she done such work. She was a professor’s daughter. She had read Voltaire and Descartes in the original French. She had never scrubbed horse droppings.
And yet, hadn’t Father always insisted that all class distinctions were man made?
Easy enough to say, of course, in a house where Sepp and Lotta had always done the dirty work.
What would he say now, if he saw her on her knees, scouring imperial manure?
Perhaps he would have cast aside his radical ideals.
“What are you waiting for?” Greta asked, scrubbing away with alarming efficiency. “We need to do this quickly before the carriages arrive.”
With a sigh, Pippa pushed the cap from her eyes and dropped beside her. If cleaning dung would bring her one step closer to Klemens, then dung it would be.
“Really, I don’t understand it,” she muttered. “They arrive in carriages, so where do they pick up all the dirt?”
“Not everyone arrives in carriages,” Greta said as she brushed vigorously. “Many walk. And they wipe their shoes on the bottom stairs before moving on. Which is why the bottom stairs are the worst.”
Pippa set to work and scrubbed vigorously.
“What are you doing?” Greta shrieked.
Pippa looked up, indignant. “What? I’m cleaning!”
“Not like that! You’re grinding it deeper into the carpet. Watch.” Greta whisked a smaller brush into her hand and, with a few deft strokes, flicked out the worst of the filth and brushed the rest away. In moments the patch was clear.
Pippa’s own section looked distinctly worse. She had managed to work the muck into a glossy brown smear.
“If Frau Benedikt sees this,” Greta whispered urgently, “she’ll turn you out on the spot. She once dismissed a girl for leaving a streak of ash on a grate. One mistake, that’s all it takes.”
“Highly unfair,” Pippa declared, though her cheeks burned. “I’m new here and have never cleaned before.” She bit her tongue at Greta’s startled look. “I mean, I have never cleaned this sort of carpet before. It is so very imperial, you know.”
Greta tilted her head, puzzled, then nodded. “Yes. Very imperial.”
“But what I meant to say,” Pippa added quickly, “is that it’s unfair to be treated so harshly. Besides, Frau Benedikt is not here.”
Greta paled and cast a nervous glance over her shoulder. “Don’t say that. She has eyes and ears everywhere. One just has to mention her name, and she appears, sprouting from the ground.”
They had been scrubbing for what felt to Pippa like half a lifetime, yet had managed no farther than the middle of the first staircase, when the rattle of wheels echoed through the archway below.
A carriage rolled to a halt. The horses tossed their heads, nostrils steaming, while footmen darted forward.
The door swung open, and down stepped a gentleman in delicately tailored breeches and satin slippers, as if he had just emerged from a ballroom.
Pippa froze, her brush halfway to the bucket.
She and Greta exchanged a look of dawning horror.
They were kneeling squarely on the stairs, buckets, bristles, and knees in the muck, and there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide at all.
They scuttled backwards, dragging their brushes and buckets with them, and the gentleman strode up the stairs as if in a great hurry.
Pippa pressed herself against the marble balustrade, turning sideways, Greta doing the same. Her breath caught; her pulse thundered. Perhaps the gentleman would sweep past them without notice.
From the corner of her eye she saw the flash of a stockinged leg, cream satin breeches, and shoes adorned with buckles so large and gleaming they seemed to cover half the shoe.
Those buckles must have cost a fortune, she thought wildly, even as he ascended.
Relief flickered through her, for he had not seen them, or else chose to ignore them, when a sudden clatter and muttered oath froze her blood.
The brush.
She had left a brush in the middle of the stair. And the man promptly stumbled over it. He gripped the bannister just in time to prevent himself from tumbling headlong down the stairs.
Greta gasped.
Pippa wanted to sink into the stone floor. Panic propelled her forward on her knees. “I am sorry, so very sorry, sir, please forgive me, please accept my most humble apologies.” She ducked her head, words tumbling out, her gaze fixed on the polished shoes before her.
Above her came a soft, amused huff. Then he bent, lifted the offending brush, and held it out to her.
She looked up, straight into a pair of sharp hazel eyes.
The stranger was striking: pale face, prominent forehead shaded by unruly fair hair, nose long, lips curved in a smile that was as condescending as it was beautiful. His lower lip is fuller than his upper, her mind noted, absurdly.
Two crisp white shirt points framed his chin above a bright red silk cravat.
His black tailcoat was heavy with gold oak-leaf embroidery, and a broad crimson sash slanted across his chest, a jewelled star gleaming on his breast. Cream satin breeches and massive shoe-buckles completed the picture of a man who could belong nowhere but the highest rank of society.
“Th-thank you,” she stammered, taking the brush. But he held on to it firmly as his gaze bore into hers.
“And your name, Fr?ulein? So I may know whom to thank for attempting my assassination with a scrubbing brush.”
She felt all the blood drain from her face. Her mouth opened and closed several times before a sound came out. “Philip—I mean, Anna Braun, mein Herr. Sir. Your lordship.” She looked at him woefully. “Your Ma-Majesty?”
He uttered a laugh so soft it caused her arms to break out in goosebumps. Then, with the faintest bow of his head, he relinquished the brush.
Pippa clutched it, still kneeling in the muck, stunned and mortified.
Greta made a strangled noise beside her. “Oh, my heart! Oh, my nerves!” She pointed a finger up the stairs, shaking heavily. “That, that…that was Prince Metternich.”
Metternich! Of all people, it had to be him. Prince Metternich was the Austrian minister of Foreign Affairs and the host of the impending congress. He was powerful, charming, cunning and ruthless. He had set up the most elaborate spy network history had ever seen.
Pippa dropped back, collapsing onto the stair, her limbs having turned to water.
“Now that,” she told Greta, her lips pale, her hands shaking, “was the most terrifying encounter in my entire life.”
A queasy feeling churned in her stomach. She’d nearly given her real name away and only caught herself at the last moment.
Something told her he would not forget the name Anna Braun so easily.
Then another thought hit her: she had just met the man she was indirectly spying for.