CHAPTER TWO
I n the next few days , she and the other women were separated. Some went to the kitchens. Others, with more delicate hands, were sent to the Coloring House where dyes for fabrics were created and used. Petra proved she was more capable than the women who went to the kitchens, but she lacked the touch for knowing when to pull fabric from the soaking tubs.
She, and others like her, were moved to the Washing House. Located behind the Palace of Embroidery, the women who washed were not the respected maids who sewed fine robes for the house of the emperor, his mother, and the ladies-in-waiting.
Petra’s new home was a branch of the Embroidery Palace, though, situated far enough that the women who lived among spools of colored threads would not be bothered by sounds of scrubbing and splashing.
It wasn’t inauspicious to be a washing maid. If she proved herself, she might be promoted to delivering fabric bundles to the Palace of Embroidery and have the opportunity to be seen.
That was the chance Petra needed. Of shorter stature and with childlike features, she was comely and not intimidating. Her presence would not offend nor demand attention and couriers were meant to move like the wind, a presence quickly fleeting.
The Washing House, the kitchens, and the Coloring House worked around the clock. Maids moved in shifts to keep up with the demand of all the palaces and halls in the Cloistered City. The Hall of Noble Palace Guards, the Hall of Respected Servants, the Palace of the Prime Minister, the Royal Garden Keepers Longhouse, the Hall of Renowned Scribes, the three palaces of the high captains of Shivalry, the halls of captains four and five, the network of palaces of the emperor’s ladies-in-waiting, the Hall of Couriers, the Palace of the Benign Mother-of-State, the Hall of Healing, the Longhouse of the Road Guards, and, of course, the Grand Palace of the Emperor.
Clothes from all came to the Washing House.
It was dizzying. Bodies and hands in constant motion with little patience for those who were learning. Petra and several of the girls were reprimanded like shocks of lightning when they moved the wrong way or obstructed another’s path. One of the washing nannies kept a supple willow switch up her long sleeves and its bite left a mean welt across the backs of thighs.
Like a great mechanical clock in constant motion, sacks of clothes were delivered with sewn labels indicating the owner. At the first cleaning station, elk-hair brushes were used to whisk and thrush dust, skin flakes, dirt, and hair. It was an attentive process and the nanny who oversaw learning knew what fifty short, quick strokes sounded like and would libel the girls if they miscounted.
From there, fabrics were carried to soaking bins. Maids used large paddles to slowly turn the items five times to the right and five to the left for an hour. Those who stirred ensured their motion was so gentle it did not incur bubbles.
The women who wrung and scrubbed took the sodden bundles to their large, shallow basins. Here, propped on knee pillows, Petra, and those like her, squeezed, rubbed, and twisted, constantly draining the basins until the washing water ran clear.
This might take minutes; it might take hours. The maids who scrubbed were afforded vials of smoothing cream for their hands. Dry skin split and could catch on fabric.
When at last clean, the items were taken to rows of fine cordage where they were draped and dried. Then maids bundled the clothes and set them to be picked up by the servant from the respective hall or palace.
All these tasks moved in relative quiet, like the path of a river—constant, constant, constant.
In his early letters, Aldney made mention of the persistent hum of the city. Unnoticed by those of rank, he wrote that he often found it difficult to relax his body or still his mind. Seated in the familiar surroundings of home, Petra wondered how such constant commotion would not be unlike the winds of a storm, persistent enough to become expected and, therefore, soothing.
She understood now.
Hopefully, the tightness in her stomach would lessen before she took on habits other maids used to calm themselves. The pebbles of soap made for long chewing and vinegar, if heated and inhaled, was powerfully head-clearing, akin to stupefaction.
Those first days were difficult. Petra had grown up working. Her own clothing she mended, and cooked meals for herself and her mother. Every night she went to bed grateful for nighttime. Life here, however, was as different as boiling water is from still. Bruises mottled and colored her knees and shins. Her elbows and wrists ached like rheumatism of the elderly. It seemed as if her fingers might stay permanently curled, her knuckles locking and solidifying like claws. Getting up and down at the end and beginning of every shift made her legs quiver. Her shoulders shook and she thought her arms might dislocate.
It was hard.
Seasoned maids told her to cover her hands in the allocated salve and wrap them in cloth bandaging overnight to help the skin remain soft. Others quietly told her to sleep on her back so the pressure points she worked so tirelessly on all day would be free of weight in the night.
Petra was grateful her shift fell in the mid-morning. With meals served at the change of shifts, she was able to work, eat, and then go to bed with a full stomach.
During her “free” hours she was able to enjoy the sunrise and go to the Coloring House where she watched sure hands muddle and temper coloring powders.
Only women who had decided to live their lives within the city were given this job. At the end of six years, each maid was offered the choice to leave. With added benefits and indulgences, an increase in pay was given to those who chose to stay.
Six years was too far to make decisions.
For now, learning how pigments were created gave her a better understanding of what was required for dyeing. The older women at the Coloring House were patient with her questions and curiosity. One of them, named Clothilde, Petra grew fond of and always hoped their shifts aligned.
“You are a good girl,” she would say. “I can feel your mother’s pride.”
Each day was not so ideal, though. Expectations and the regimented schedule still left room for the errors of human nature. The work was hard for everyone, but there were women who bemoaned their tasks during sleeping hours.
In pitched, nasally voices, they would talk of former days when overseeing eyes did not watch every movement. Many flailing hands and indulgent snorts of mucus from petulant noses on the verge of self-pitying tears loomed.
Petra shushed them.
“Your skin was brown when you came here,” the measly ones would say. “You were born for work.”
Only once did Petra’s temper get the better of her. Only once did she fling her shoe at an ingratiating voice. Skin kissed by the sun under hard work was an honor. If her mother hadn’t said as much, Aldney had.
In his letters, he would say that if there was not such money to be made working in the royal city, he should be proud to have rough hands and a sunburnt neck. Often, in his letters, she read how he did not like the smoothness of his hands, the manicured nails; he did not think it was the look of a provider.
In the morning, at the bathing wall, a long trough filled with water that had been hot when it left the kitchens, Petra listened to the ones who spoke too loudly of their escapades during the overnight. Meeting men. Sneaking into the kitchens and stealing confections. A few had met ladies-in-waiting on the long, main road of the city and were given scent satchels, or tasked, at the risk of an elegant reward, with finding out when one of the eunuchs’ shifts ended.
Punishment for being caught was between lashings and expelling. Yet the thrill was worth the risk, and they encouraged others to try it.
These women bothered Petra but not more than she was sure her silence and habits bothered them. Her and a woman named Winfred.
They were on the same shift and most mornings Petra saw Winfred in prayer, mumbling words of thanksgiving. Reverence bothers the irreverent and three women who moved in a pod from almost the first hour, always snickered when they passed her.
It grew, however. The dish containing a rice husk mixture used to wash faces and arms on days when full body baths were not mandated—Petra noticed the pod hover around the dish, making it hard for Winfred to get any. The pod also did not like that Petra had little interest in growing companionships or alliances, and a suspicious number of “accidental” legs were stretched across her path.
***
T HE FESTIVAL OF THE Late Harvest Moon approached. All servants of the Cloistered City would receive a serving of orange curd clotted cream. Most nights of the celebration would burst with fireworks dispatched from five different locations along the main road.
Every year Aldney wrote about the festival and tried to describe what fireworks looked like. He said that even if he could paint the colors for Petra, he could not communicate the explosive, crackling sound.
Over the following days, everyone’s hands needed to move faster. Uniforms from the kitchens must be cleaned. Uniforms of guards, too. Servants of scribes brought dusty cloaks of the men who rarely stepped outside. Shifts were lengthened to accommodate the fine gowns of the ladies-in-waiting.
Petra was moved to brushing because her hands were not large enough to keep up with the washing demands. It was furious work that could not be done quickly. However, the willow swatch whip cracked over heads every hour. There must be no stopping, wiping errant hair from the face, or doing anything so self-indulgent as scratch.
Water closet breaks came with six strikes across the thighs. Petra heard rumors of women who had held their urine for so long they fell ill during this time of year.
Close to Winfred’s station, Petra worked furiously. It might be days before she could see without squinting, ensuring every fleck of dust was gone from the stitches of needlework. There was no time to admire the colors of the robes in her hands. Reds to rival roses. Blues so deep they must only be known to mermaids. Yellow no cream or butter could rival and shades of green she could not have dreamed.
Yet her focus was broken when Winfred gasped.
Petra looked up. She had frozen, cloth in her hands poised over the water, her round eyes wide. She would be reprimanded for stopping. Petra could be reprimanded for speaking.
“What happened?” she whispered.
Winfred’s frame shook.
“You mustn’t draw attention.” Petra commanded. “What happened?”
“My cream,” she managed. “ She took it!”
A trembling finger pointed at one of the pod women. Not the leader, her cohort Esme.
Petra looked past her, across a commotion of bent, busy bodies, to one whose focus was not at the task between her hands. Hilde. Her beady eyes gleamed and the grin she tried to suppress flattened her lips into a thin line, like a reptile.
For what? Just to see another human being suffer? To push the meek ones aside and gain their allotments?
Petra slid her bottle over. “Here. Use mine.”
“I can’t! We are supposed to have our own. If one of the nannies notices—”
“Then she’ll have words with me. Besides, you need it more with your hands in the water.”
“But...” Winfred shook her head.
Petra understood her thoughts. At another time, not having the lotion would be a verbal upbraiding. Perhaps a missed meal. Right now, the moon increased in size each night, shedding its pearlescent color for the mysterious orange shade it would beam down upon all, like a nocturnal sun, a last reminder of warmth for the months ahead. Right now, it was tantamount to bleeding on the clothes. She’d be thrashed until her skin flapped in the breeze.
The same punishment would be Petra’s if she were caught.
“Put it between us, then.”
“We both can’t use it! There won’t be enough for the day.”
“You use it. Then rub your hands on mine. At least if a nanny comes over, she will see a bottle.”
“Petra...”
“Hush! Nothing has happened. Go back to work.”
Her lower lip trembled but she nodded and turned to the red gown of the eldest of the ladies-in-waiting, who refused to wear any other color.
Both women held their breath when one of the supervisors neared, but she was only concerned with busy hands and lack of conversation between maids.
The simple deception nearly worked until Hilde took lashings for a water closet break, returning with a ceramic bottle in her hand.
She waved it over her head. “Nanny Beulah! Nanny Beulah!”
Winfred’s lips drained of color. She opened her mouth, but Petra caught her wrist.
“Say nothing! Let her accuse first and keep working.”
Beulah, with shriveled lips, and a straight nose, rose from her overseer’s perch. Her brittle fingers clasped the bottle Hilde was only too happy to hand over.
“This bottle is half full,” she announced in her craggy voice. “Who dares not to use their cream?”
The jagged, feeble voice slowed hands and heads turned. Winfred kept her eyes down but her ears flushed redder than a poppy’s bloom.
“I do not want to accuse a sister,” Hilde begged with convincing earnestness. “Had I not found it on her bed just now, I would have said nothing.”
“Speak!” Beulah commanded.
Winfred wept but she kept washing. Petra bit the inside of her bottom lip but continued to count her brush strokes.
“Sister Winfred! Every night she complains her feet are dry. She uses the generous amounts of cream we are given to hoard for vanity!”
With a speed her age would not appear capable of, Nanny Beulah flew to Winfred’s side. Her whip thrashed across the back of the young woman’s neck while she grabbed her under the arm and yanked her to standing.
“Wretched chit! Is this true?”
Petra scrambled to stand but Beulah’s whip snapped at her like a cobra’s strike.
“No!” Winfred yelped. “I’ve done nothing!”
“From whence comes this accusation, then?”
“I have heard her!” Esme chimed in.
“And I,” the third woman of the pod chirped.
“She used to live in a fine home and have beautiful feet,” Hilde furthered.
“She lies!” Winfred cried.
“What good would it do me to lie?”
Petra stood and folded her hands in front of her stomach.