Chapter Thirteen #2
Elin blinked. “It counsels the importance of prudence.” She began to sway on her feet, and I wondered if we would need smelling salts.
“And what,” I asked, taking her elbow and leading her to a chair, “did you determine in your moments of cautious listening?”
“After consideration, I might now tell Rosie that I do not think her hat is ugly.”
“See?” Rosie sniffed, glaring at Mathilde. But her elder sister only crossed her arms and raised a questioning eyebrow at Elin.
Elin, cowering under the force of Mathilde’s glare, explained at last: “I was reading. I must have dozed off for I didn’t hear you come in, and then it was too late to reveal myself. It does get awfully hot behind those curtains.”
Satisfied, I turned back to the girls, but Elin continued: “Though, if I may—I beseech you to scorn your vanity. Appearance is but a fleeting shadow. The pursuit of inner beauty should be your greatest endeavor—”
“Elin.” I stopped her. The girl, soberly dedicated to properness and correction, could not see her own contradictions—or how fine a line lay between preparation, which she esteemed, and pride, about which she lectured.
“When a young woman does not have the opportunity to speak, it is, on occasion, only her appearance that she can use to recommend herself. While we’re on the subject: How is your dress coming along for the ball? ”
I had given her a length of fabric to begin working with. I was waiting until market day—and hoping to see some of her pennies—before purchasing the rest.
She hesitated. “I have been working diligently. Though—I am greatly troubled by a few trifling details. The bodice, and the arms.” She paused a moment. “As well as the skirt.”
“I see.” I nodded. Elin had learned to stitch the perfect sampler, but had never been required to complete the finger-breaking work of piecing together an entire dress.
More diminutive than her stepsisters, she had benefitted from hand-me-downs that only required minor improvements—bits of lace and bows. “And the coins you are to give me?”
“Wenthelen is helping me with the ashes.”
“I see,” I said again, feeling the beginnings of a curdling inside of me.
“For the dress, I thought, perchance, Rosamund may find the kindness in her heart to assist me.” She turned to Rosie. “‘Knowledge is a treasure: In the pursuit of it, do not hesitate to seek guidance.’”
“Rosamund will have no time to work on your dress. She will be working on her own.” I glanced to the other two young women. “For we are all going to the ball.”
Rosie shrieked, a high-pitched squeal of unbridled excitement. “Oh, Mother, I do not know what to say. It cannot be true. It must be. I thank you!”
Mathilde, looking pensive, sank back to her chaise. “We will have to get started on everything right away.”
“Yes, we will,” I agreed. I looked around at their upturned faces. “We’ll start by picking some apples.”
Elin, for once, was silent on the matter of virtue.
Over the years, I had learned many ways—sending Wenthelen to market to sell apples chief amongst them—to save or make small amounts of money.
Cutting barley and rye and oats into your wheat lowers the cost of bread.
If firewood is scarce, meat can be boiled.
Old scraps of linen can be collected into a rag bag and sold to a paper maker.
Bones make good fertilizer. Textile guilds will pay good coin for homespun white warp. Brickmakers will even purchase dust.
After Robert died, when our financial situation was made clear, I had all three of the girls stand with me when I gathered the staff in the entry hall.
Here was our retinue: footmen and porters and grooms and cooks.
Buttoned fronts and stiff, correct posture.
I had only been introduced to them as their new lady months before.
Now, readying to voice our collective turn of fate, I stood without Robert at my side.
“My late husband,” I said, trying to hide my tremble, “has left this household in a sorry state. I have been made to understand many of you are owed wages. We do not have the funds to pay you.”
An angry murmur rippled through the entry.
A laundress’s face contorted in rage. A gardener began to protest, and I felt the girls’ fear beside me.
I held up a hand. “In exchange for your discretion, I can outfit you handsomely with goods from this home. I will pay twice your owed wages in goods. They will all catch a fine price in town. You’ll see me in Robert’s office by order of your stations. ”
The anger dissipated, and so did the people.
All the stiff backs slumped. The crowd began to collapse and flow down the stairs and out the door.
So quickly our life was leaving us. How easily I had spread our ruin.
“Anyone who has no place to go,” I called out, “is welcome to stay here for however long is needed.”
Alice helped me. She made suggestions about which pieces in the home—small paintings and candelabra and textiles—were worth what, and how they might be doled out.
Rosie offered me her ribbons, which were not worth much.
Mathilde went through the house gathering silver, and then sat at the table beside me, dutifully recording the depletion of our lives, the redistribution of each bound book and polished spoon, in her neat and even hand.
The immediate problem—paying the staff—was solved, but I did not know how to do what came next: how to cook, how to clean, how, even, to wash my own hair.
After the day ended, I went to Elin. She sat on a swing hung from the oak behind the hall, listlessly pumping herself forward and back, wearing the hat and veil and gloves that protected her sensitive skin from the light.
“I am certain all of this has been disorienting beyond reason,” I said. Wishing I had a chair to sink into, I stood in the grass, facing her. She watched me through the veil, in her unblinking way. She had just lost her sole remaining parent. She was eight years old.
“There’s little I can say to make it better. I know that from my own experience. But I wanted you to know you are not without family.” I took a breath. “Elin, I know I’m not your mother, but I’ll do my best to be a mother to you.”
She tilted her head, considering. After a moment, she said: “No, thank you.” Her voice was sweet and her tone polite.
“But, Elin,” I said, faltering. “It’s only that…
” I trailed off. I had no will left to argue with her, no desire to force her to me, after all my own losses.
I had daughters who had now lost a father figure twice over.
I had to spend another year in black. I had a faceless future that was only a mouth: open, gaping, and hungry.
“Stepmother? You need not concern yourself.” She withdrew her mother’s booklet from her pocket—it had appeared more frequently after Robert’s death—and read aloud: “‘The compass of virtue guides one through the seas of challenges. Even in the darkest of nights, if a young woman nurtures the seeds of virtue—gentleness, goodness, docility—within her heart, life will only reward her.’” She closed the book and raised her eyes to meet mine once more.
“Don’t you see? All will turn out fine.”
“I do see,” I said. And, looking back, I wish I had.
Within a few days, most of the staff had left us.
Wenthelen and Alice stayed—they said they would not be able to find employment elsewhere at their age, but I also sensed attachment, to Elin, and to a manor they had come to know as home—as did a few others, though our numbers dropped each day.
We had food, but our halls, once busy, echoed.
I began to see, to understand, how much work had happened around me without my ever noticing.
Curtains opened in the morning and then closed at night.
Fires lit and grates emptied. Water for washbasins replenished.
Mud cleaned from my shoes. The motionlessness of the house felt not like solitude but like stagnation, reinforcing with each passing day just how much our lives had changed.
Dazed, and with my daughters in tow, I tried to pick up the pieces.
I remember, clearly, Alice showing me how to scour a pot: the initial soak in hot water, followed by scrubbing with straw and potash.
And Wenthelen, lecturing Rosie that all the drippings she was tapping into the dirt could have been saved and sold.
That a kitchen fire had to be started before first light.
That if you used black soap on cambric, it turned the cloth to gray.
That apples stored in the hoardhouse could not be touched, or else they would mold. We all had to learn quickly.
Elin still self-governed with the expectations of the daughter of a lord. She had little ability to think for herself. She had, instead, her book. Her listless behavior was marked not by cunning, but by belief in virtue and its ability to protect—and save—you.
One morning, Elin did not come down to breakfast, and so, leaving Rosie and Mathilde to string vegetables for drying, I went to check on her in the peach room. I found her under her bedsheets, though she had dressed and styled her hair.
“Are you unwell?” I asked.
“Not at all,” she assured me. “It’s only that…” She trailed a finger along the top of her quilt.
Something about her manner made me impatient. “Yes?”
“I used to have breakfast in my room.”
I leaned over and picked up one of her dolls, which had tipped over, and set it right. “You are welcome to bring your tray in here.”
“You see”—she nodded toward her book, which lay on the nightstand—“I believe, well, the book says, that habit and established routine are essential for a well-ordered life.”
I turned away to survey the room filled with toys and dolls, so many of which she’d outgrown. They would gather dust in the coming months. I wondered what they might fetch if I were to sell them.