Ash & Bramble (15 page)

B
EHAVING APPROPRIATELY IS PROVING MORE DIFFICULT
than I thought.

I am locked up in my attic prison again, this time for snapping at Dulcet when she ordered me to bring a fresh pot of tea to the upstairs sewing room. It was my stepsisters' hour for needlework. They were both working on their trousseaus, the fine linens and underclothes and special nightgowns they'd wear when they were married. Dulcet was sewing lace onto a dainty square handkerchief, the sort of thing that would be completely useless if you actually had to blow your nose into it. Precious was embroidering blue rosebuds around the hem of a silk peignoir. She explained that a peignoir is a light robe to wear when your maid is brushing out your hair in the evenings.

As I brought the tea in, Dulcet set aside the lacy handkerchief and rubbed her eyes; then she poured herself a cup of tea and took a sip. “This is cold, Pen,” she said, setting down her cup with a sniff.

“It was hot when I left the kitchen with it,” I told her.

“Don't talk back,” Precious added, sticking her needle into a pincushion.

“I'm not talking back,” I said.

“Yes you are,” Dulcet said.

I was about to insist that I wasn't when my stepmother bustled into the room, her corsets creaking. “Ah, tea,” she said, sitting with a sigh on a plump sofa covered with blue silk. “Just the thing. Pour me a cup, Dulcie dear.”

“It's cold, Mama,” Dulcet said with a pout, “and Pen refuses to fetch us some more.”

“I'm not refusing,” I put in, “I'm pointing out that the kitchen is three floors down and on the other side of the house, and the pot was hot when I left it. If you're going to drink tea in this room, Dulcie, you'll have to drink it cold.”

On the sofa, my stepmama puffed up her chest and put on her look of outrage. “Really, Penelope. So ill-mannered. Go at once and bring us some hot tea.”

“If you want it that much,” I said, “you should go and fetch it yourself.”

At that, Stepmama heaved herself from the sofa and raised her hand as if she was about to strike me. I took a stumbling step back, my heart pounding.

She lurched toward me, and then she stopped. Her hand dropped to her side. Dulcet and Precious were staring with their mouths open. Stepmama had never threatened to hit me before. “You deserve to be slapped for your insolence,” she said in a strangled voice. “Now go fetch the tea as you are bid.”

I took the teapot down to the busy kitchen, washed it out, filled it with hot water from the kettle and added fresh leaves, put it on a tray, and made my way back up three flights of stairs toward the other wing of the house. In a hallway, I came upon a strange, wild-haired man on his knees, examining what looked like a crack in the wainscoting. He was wearing a suit made of . . .

I stopped and stared. “Is that rat fur?” I asked him, propping the tea tray on my hip.

The man grinned up at me; he was missing his two front teeth. “It is, missy. A ratcatcher, I am. Catching rats where I can find 'em.” He gave the wall a rap with his knuckles and looked me up and down. “Your name wouldn't happen to be Pin, would it?”

“No,” I said, taken aback. “It's Penelope.
Lady
Penelope.” Though no one would know it to look at me.

“Ah!” the ratcatcher said, and, still on his knees, he bowed deeply.

I gave him a nod and went along to the sewing room with my tray and teapot.

Dulcet poured herself a cup and took a sip. “It's cold!” she complained predictably.

“Lukewarm,” I corrected, “and it's only to be expected.”

Stepmama grabbed me by the arm, marched me up to the attic, and locked me in. “Such disobedience, Penelope!” she scolded. “Such willfulness! You will stay here until you can remember your proper place in this household.”

I stay in my tiny prison all the rest of the day. The time passes slowly, measured out in the strikes of the castle clock. Remember my proper place, Stepmama said. My place, I suppose, is to be
good
and
nice
in some way that I'm not. But from the moment I woke up in the cinders, nothing about this place has seemed at all
proper
to me. I wonder what it is that I'm caught up in. No, that we're all caught up in—me, and the servants, and Lady Meister, with her horrible bald patches, and even my stepsister Dulcet, who is not supposed to sing aloud. Maybe everyone in the city is involved.

But I refuse to be part of it. I will not let my choices be taken away from me.

I should be tired, but my new determination makes it impossible to sleep. I want to be up, doing something, but all I can do is pace my prison as the hours pass, marked by the booms of the castle clock.

In the morning, nobody comes for a long time. I'm beginning to think rather desperately that they've forgotten me, when I hear the key at the lock. Anna, prim and neat in a freshly ironed uniform, opens the door. “You're to come downstairs, Lady Pen,” she says.

Getting to my feet, I study her for a long moment. She
casts down her eyes and folds her hands in front of her.

“Anna,” I test, to see if she is as obedient as she seems. “Do you have any holes in your memory?”

She flicks up a frightened glance at me, but doesn't answer.

“You do,” I say for her. “So do I. I can't remember anything before that morning when you found me sleeping in the hearth.”

“Shhh,” she says. “We can't talk about it.”

“We
must
talk about it,” I insist. “Do you know what is happening?”

She shakes her head. Nervously she checks over her shoulder, then steps closer. “People disappear,” she whispers. “They are here, and then they're gone, killed maybe, or taken somewhere. Not many of us notice, and most are too afraid to speak up about it.”

“Lady Faye,” I suggest. “She has some sort of plan.”

Anna nods.

“What is she, exactly?” I press. “What does she want?” Because Lady Faye must have enormous power, to rigidly control so many people, for whatever purpose.

“We don't know,” Anna says, shaking her head. “She's nothing to do with us—with the servants, that is. We try not to do anything to catch her attention.”

Well, for me it's a bit late for that.

“We have to fight it,” I tell her.

She stares at me, as if the possibility of resistance hasn't
occurred to her before this. “We can't be talking about this, Lady Pen,” she whispers, checking over her shoulder again. “You must come downstairs, as you are ordered.”

I nod, understanding. “Can I wash up first?” I ask. My dress is in a state, and I don't smell very good, even to my own nose. My hair is a tangled, greasy mess. “And can I have something to eat?” After going without much dinner and with no breakfast at all, I am rather ragingly hungry.

“No, I'm sorry, my lady,” Anna answers, all proper again, keeping her eyes lowered. “They want you in the drawing room at once.”

Feeling quite certain that I haven't learned my place in the household, and determined to fight against whatever is being planned for me, I follow Anna downstairs. My stepmama is in the drawing room with my stepsisters. I catch my breath. Lady Faye stands by the mantel, all finely carved grace in her signature ice-blue velvet; she gives me an edged smile as I come into the room. All I can do is stare back at her. She is the power here. How can I resist her? What can I
do
?

My stepmama is wearing a new dress of dark-blue bombazine trimmed with sky-blue ribbons that clash with her red face. “You're a very lucky girl, Penelope,” she says. “Lady Faye has offered to give you another chance, and of course I could not refuse such a request. You will receive a young gentleman suitor in one hour's time.”

“But first she must be transformed,” Lady Faye says.

“Wait,” I put in. “A gentleman? A suitor?”

“Oh, transformed to be sure,” Stepmama agrees, fawning on Lady Faye, ignoring my questions. “She cannot receive her future husband looking like that.” She wrinkles her nose. “You look frightful, Penelope.”

“I can hardly help it,” I snap. I've been locked up in the attic for a day and a night and working in the kitchen before that.

“Really, you should be ashamed,” my stepmama says. She seems very tightly wound.

By the mantel, Lady Faye is smiling sharply as she watches us. “Precious,” she says, “can I leave Penelope's transformation up to you?”

My stepsister turns pink at the attention. Then she looks dubiously at me. “I hope so, Lady Faye.”

“It may seem an impossible task,” Lady Faye says, “but you must try to make her presentable, at the very least.”

“I don't want a husband,” I put in, but it's as if I haven't spoken.

As Precious pulls me toward the door, Stepmama follows; in the doorway she grabs me, her fingers digging into my arm. “Lady Faye has chosen you, Penelope,” she hisses through a fixed smile. “We cannot risk her disapproval. You simply
must
behave yourself.”

With that, I am whisked up to Precious's room to be transformed while Stepmama, Dulcet, and Lady Faye wait in the drawing room.

If there is one thing Precious understands, it is fashion. She knows the very latest dress patterns and is always impeccably turned out.

“You
are
lucky,” she says, closing the door to her room, which is, surprisingly, not blue, but decorated in shades of pink and green. The colors shouldn't go well together, but somehow they do, because it is Precious who combined them. “Lady Faye brought you a dress, Pen.” She goes to the bed where a large, square box is sitting on the pink-and-green striped silk coverlet. “No one knows where she gets her clothes, but they are exquisite, far finer than any seamstress in the city could produce.” She opens the box to reveal a dress nestled in rustling silver paper.

It is a simple tea dress with a low neckline and puffed sleeves, just right for an unmarried young girl like me. It is made of silk the lambent blue green of the sky just after sunset. I hold it up to myself and look in the mirror.

“I would kill for a dress like that,” Precious murmurs at my shoulder, and I realize that she is at least partly serious. She points to a screen in the corner. “Take off those filthy clothes,” she orders.

For a moment I consider my options. I could try running away again, but I doubt I'd get any further than I did last time. I could refuse to get ready for the suitor, whoever he is, but I am certain that Lady Faye has brought her footmen along. They'd probably enjoy stripping me naked and stuffing me into the dress.

Frowning, I go behind the screen, where I peel my black dress from my skin and unlace the shoes that pinch my toes. There's a knock on the door and Anna and two other maids carry in a copper bathtub and can after can of hot water. They troop out again, and Precious orders me to get into the steaming tub. The hot, scented water feels so good as I sink into it up to my neck and then duck my head. Taking the makeshift bandage off my wrist, I find that the mysterious gash has healed into a puckered white scar. I wash with lavender soap and scrub my hair, and the water turns brownish gray. I can't even remember the last time I had a bath.

I really can't; it's alarming, yet another hole in my memory. But Precious is impatient, and I don't have time to think about it.

“Stand,” she orders, and as I do she heaves up a can of chilly water and dumps it over my head to rinse me off.

“Brrr,” I complain. “It's cold.”

“Lukewarm,” Precious taunts. “It had to come all the way from the kitchen.” Then she gives me a towel the size of a bedsheet and I dry off and wrap it around myself while she sits me down before her dressing table. It is covered with pots of color and tint and bottles of perfume.

“You have lovely long eyelashes, Pen,” she murmurs, inspecting me in the mirror. She hands me a pot of cream. “Here, rub this into your hands so they don't look so chapped.” She inspects me further. “Your hair is awful.”

I look at myself. It is as if somebody hacked my hair off
short, not caring what it would look like after. As I rub in the hand cream, Precious pulls some scissors out of a drawer and trims the ends of my hair, then brushes and shapes it with her fingers. It curls as it dries, and she gives a brief nod of approval. Then she gives me silk stockings and slippers that look like they'll fit my feet as if they were made for me, and a petticoat. It has lace sewn along its hem; the stitches, I notice, are no bigger than a grain of sand.

She goes to her wardrobe and pulls out a corset. “I won't wear that,” I tell her.

“You'll have to,” Precious replies briefly, “to fit into this dress.”

Unfortunately, she is right. The dress fits only with the corset squeezing me into the right shape. I get it on and Precious laces it tightly.

I look down at my plumped-up breasts. “They look like fruit laid out on a tray.”

Precious gives a surprised snort of laughter. As I turn to her, grinning, suddenly liking her quite a lot, I see her remember her stepsister role. She turns the unladylike snort into a disdainful sniff.

“And now the dress,” she says reverently. She helps me climb into the dress and buttons it up my back. There are shoes, too, dainty slippers the same blue green as the dress. I put them on and we both stand, looking at me in the mirror.

I hardly recognize the girl—no, the young woman—reflecting back at me. She looks older and taller and very
proud. I hate to be so fashionably blue, but the color of the dress suits me exactly; it sets off my dark hair and turns my skin ivory smooth, and even makes the shadows under my eyes look interesting and alluring, and not like simple exhaustion. Not pretty, but not bad, either. “It's all right, isn't it?” I ask a little breathlessly.

Precious's eyes widen. “Surprisingly so,” she says. She leans over her dressing table and puts a little red from a pot on her pinkie finger, then dabs the color on my lips. Then she rummages in a box of jewelry and finds a string of maidenly pearls, which she fastens around my neck. “There,” she says, with an approving nod. “You're actually quite presentable, Pen.”