Days moved with tedium that I wore like a cloak. I dared not ask about Christmas, for the Haskens shunned the keeping of it. In my real home, the day was celebrated with a small feast and gifts of a shilling for the household servants, and a little special gift for us children. A shawl, some ribbons or lacework, a music box, a few chocolates. My favorite holiday, which Ma called “Hogmanay,” Pa called “Shortest Night,” and these people called “New Year,” came and went before health at last returned to the Hasken household. I dared not hope for Hogmanay cakes or gifts from black-dressed, coal-carrying strangers.
As I milked the final goat that morning, I thought of last Hogmanay and Pa’s gift to me. It was a clockwork music box with a painting of a lady dancing upon its lid. No finery such as that lay in this forgotten place. That music box was in some pirate’s hold now, or sold across the sea. The Haskens’ finest possessions consisted of a single silver spoon, a pewter mug, and two well-used wooden chargers in a chest of unused linens. My hidden treasures could buy and sell this entire house, I thought as I drank a third of the morning’s milk, wiped my face, and carried it into the house covered with a rag.
Mistress was making bread and put it to rise under a dirty linen. She went up the stair. I watched her trudge away and wondered at how she tended her daughters as if they were helpless. While she was up there I added water to the milk to fill it up to the rim.
Birgitta stirred. “Mary, is the milking done?”
“Yes, Birgitta.”
“Would you warm some? My breath comes so hard.”
I made hot milk with tea and sugar. By the time it was ready the girls had come down. They had all suffered from the fever and appeared weakened, frail and thinner than before. Christine looked as if she had eaten nary a bite for three weeks. I poured Birgitta milk without offering to make more for the rest. No one spoke to me and I had learned at the cost of another stropping that I was never to address Mistress without being spoken to by her first. Answering. Never offering. A good slave.
*
On a gray heavy morning at the end of February, when the household was again well, Mistress ordered me to make posset. When I told her I had no idea how, she gasped and told me to learn how to create it. She warmed cider and put it in milk to settle in cups. We made bread, and bean stew, too. Company was coming.
When the sun made long shadows on the snow, Master arrived followed by five people wrapped in cloaks and blankets until they seemed like great beasts filling the room. He called out, “Mary! Come here!” A great unwrapping began with Mistress and Master helping them. Everyone called, “Mary! Come!” I scurried through them as heaps of cloaks and coats dropped onto my arms. I carried them to Birgitta’s empty cot. I took the giant shoes and placed them in a stack by the door. They were a webbing of skin over wood frames, and had caught pounds of snow with their walking.
These people were Master and Mistress Newham, their daughter, Thea, and their son, a boy as tall as his father, older than August. His name was Lukas. He had a gentle face and an easy smile and waving hair at his temples. When he looked at me, I felt suddenly clumsy, as if all my joints did not fit, a mismatched doll like Lonnie. I quite admired his temples, the cut of them, and his clean hair. I wore a kerchief and a house cap, but my hair, an inch long, felt as if it were announced before the world and he would see it and think I was hideous. I backed into the shadows. The last person with them was a woman but was not introduced. She sat by the door, a hood drawn. A servant, I thought.
“Mary?” Mistress called. “Fetch the cups.” For several minutes I passed and poured and mopped up spills. For I did spill the cider next to Lukas’s cup. He looked up at me just as I came to him and smiled at me. Mistress called, “Mary!” but that was no chide to me in the wake of Lukas’s stare.
Lukas’s gray eyes followed my movements and he had started to say, “Thank you,” but his father stopped him before the words were out, saying, “No need to thank a servant for serving, son. They know their place better when you keep yours.” Lukas then looked down his nose at me with almost a sneer when the cider dribbled down the cup, as if I were something less than he, as if I were not fit to pour his cider. I felt crushed in a way I would not have expected. I felt surprised, too, that I cared so much whether this impudent ruffian cared to have me pour his cup. Why, I had never spoken two words to the boy and he had naught to recommend him save a pair of gray, laughing eyes. What would I want with him or his favor? I turned my haughtiest stare to him, but whether he noted it I could not say.