The flattened shoe was too tight and gave me blisters. The other one was loose and floundered upon my ankle, causing me to trip. This house where I had been lodged was somewhat bigger than our kitchen, though the whole of it including the fenced yard would have fit into the first-floor ballroom at Two Crowns. I dumped their pots and wiped them with a towel. Not in all my days had I known any such duty, and every time I performed it, I vomited everything I had eaten until at last I fainted and the old woman, Birgitta, dragged me into the house.
Birgitta talked and scolded without stop. Mary, this, Mary, that, until my ears felt as bruised as my arms. I was made to bring in snow and melt it in a pot for cooking and cleaning. Birgitta told me to peel vegetables but hit me for the result, saying I wasted too much. She constantly referred to the single table over which hung two copper kettles and a prong for meat as “the kitchen.” I did not dare ask whether there weren’t a proper kitchen. No home I knew had a kitchen in the house. Too dangerous and hot with all that cooking. Birgitta bade me to clean the master’s boots but beat me for not knowing to rub them with a lamb’s wool bob she kept in a wooden safe with tallow and old candle bits.
One morning Birgitta led me to a shed hard against the house which held a stack of logs as tall as the house and several feet thick. She lectured me in her droning, nasal voice about their last house girl who had pulled the pile down upon herself. I watched a mouse pitter around in a corner, thinking that I wished the whole pile to fall upon Birgitta. I imagined Birgitta aboard ship. I would bet my one good shoe that no becalming doldrums existed which she could not break with speeches about scrubbing, tending, sewing, and milking goats, goats, and goats, buckets and stools. What they ate. What they excreted. When to set the ewes and when to butcher the kids. Everything about goats tied itself to Lent and Easter and Passover, Midsummer Day, and the black days of the moon. How to tell if the goat had been possessed by a demon or spirit of Satan, for goats were easy prey to that Villain. If I asked a question I was as likely to get a rod as an answer, so I did not inquire as to the nature of a goat that made it Satan’s prey, after, of course, unchaste little girls.
Morning and night I carried pots. After a while, I was able to keep down my food by covering it with the towel first, holding my breath, and closing my eyes. I ate at the foot of the table if anything was left in the trencher after the family gobbled their fill. Sometimes there was little but drippings and a crust. Each night I pulled off the miserable shoes and I tried to rub my frozen toes to keep them from hurting so, but they hurt worse with every passing day. They stung so that I could not sleep at times. Birgitta watched me at every moment, quick to bring that rod down upon my shoulders. I crept into my small hole under the bearskin, more tired from work, more bruised by beatings, until I felt at last I might cry out in my sleep as Patey had done, “Not again!” I wrapped my feet in the bottom of my skirt and put them against the chimney, curled up like a housecat, waking stiff and cold.
By the passing of another week I almost looked forward to the dumping of pots for the chance to emerge from the house, to look for a road or path, some way to leave. My main reason for staying, however, came as Mistress Hasken settled her girls for the night, telling them stories of “the old country,” as she called the place. It did not sound anything like the Scotland and England I had heard of, but was wintry as this, full of harsh people and wolves, as well. In one of the stories, a queen saved her three daughters from being eaten by wolves—massive hairy animals with teeth like daggers and a never-ending hunger—by throwing out their worthless servant girl when the wolves clawed at the door. At night, the howl of wolves in the distance made me too afraid to sleep, much less think of running. If only there came a night without wolves, I decided, I would know it was safe. I lay awake, after the stories and their shared kisses and tucking in of wrapped, heated stones from the fire. Every sound triggered my heart to beat faster, my eyes to open wider. An owl called. Something rattled in the thatch. I often slept with my arms over my face so nothing could claw at my eyes.