The Last Duchess Read online

  Why had her mother and father ever sought to emigrate? The Elffish looked to be a prosperous and plump, contented people. Pattern felt a stab of longing. Here was proof that a taste for adventure was most likely to end in disaster. If only her parents had been satisfied with their lot, she could have had a real home, and a family, in this pleasant place.

  As the evening light grew low, the horse and trap approached the jumble of red roofs and grey gables that was the city of Elffinheim. There was a statue of a knight in the main square, a small yet fearsome dragon by his side, and Pattern thought it was St George, before realizing it must be Elffin, the Welsh prince who gave the Duchy its name.

  But with her final destination so near at hand, she became too distracted by her conversation with Baroness von Bliven to take much pleasure in the sights around her. In one shaky breath, the Baroness had called her goddaughter nervous and fanciful; in another, she had warned Pattern to trust nobody. If the Grand Duchess was unstable, paranoid even, and chose to accuse Pattern of some crime . . . what could she do, alone and friendless in a foreign country?

  Since she had no other guide, Pattern took out the book given to her by Mrs Minchin, The Duties of a Lady’s Maid, and turned to the chapter on ‘Change of Place’. She read:

  Never give your ear or your countenance to those malicious gossiping persons who would put you up against your situation, by telling you all manner of stories of the family; for it is a thousand to one that such stories are untrue.

  The Baroness was good-hearted; of that Pattern was sure. Yet she was also very sick, and perhaps her judgement was unsound. Pattern resolved to think no more of plots and poisonings. Nevertheless, as the groom drove the trap through the wrought-iron gates that led to the Castle of Elffinberg, she felt her spirits sink deep into the soles of her sensible boots.

  The castle lay at the end of a two-mile-long avenue carved through a pine wood. It was a vast and ugly pile, half Greek temple, half Gothic cathedral. Its ranks of pillars were stained by the droppings of many generations of pigeons, the tiers of windows looked as if they were rarely cleaned, and the plasterwork was cracked and yellowing.

  The main portico overlooked an immense cobbled forecourt and a fountain that dribbled water from a tangle of sea horses and mermaids. Pattern – naturally – was delivered to the back entrance, past stables large enough to house several herds of horses, and into a paved yard where scraps of dead leaves and rubbish swirled. There she was met by a bootboy, who went to fetch a slovenly-looking maid, who went to fetch the Head Housekeeper, who went to fetch the Master of the Household.

  All of this took a great deal of time, and Pattern, left to wait on the doorstep like an unwanted parcel, felt most uncomfortable. The Master of the Household, when he finally appeared, looked to have been roused from his tea, for there were crumbs all down his shirt and jam on his collar. He read the Baroness von Bliven’s letter slowly and grudgingly. ‘I suppose,’ he said, even more grudgingly, ‘you’d better come in.’

  Pattern was passed back into the care of the Head Housekeeper, Mrs Parry, who was small and pursy, with shiny black button eyes. ‘My,’ she said, on first seeing Pattern, ‘but you’re a dismal scrap of a thing,’ before asking her if England was as wet and dirty as everybody said.

  Pattern replied that it was, on occasion.

  ‘Well, I dare say one gets used to it. I doubt you’ll be here long enough to get homesick, in any case.’

  With these discouraging words, Mrs Parry informed Pattern that the Grand Duchess was indisposed and would not receive her until later that evening – if at all. In the meantime, she was to be given a tour of the service quarters. It appeared that a number of noble personages had apartments within the castle, and that attending to their needs provided employment for half of Elffinheim.

  They began in the servants’ hall, a draughty dungeon of a place filled with much noise and disorder. From there Pattern was whisked past laundries and larders, sculleries and butteries, pantries and spiceries; rooms for trimming candles, for storing root vegetables, for polishing silver and for blacking boots . . . Bells rang at every moment, from every corner, and people dressed in all manner of shabby uniforms hastened to obey them. It was an underground labyrinth, damp and dim as any cellar, though a great deal more confusing.

  Pattern struggled to keep the pace, let alone remember all the information she was so carelessly and quickly given. She could not help but be concerned as to the whereabouts of her luggage, which had been taken off by a bootboy, and she feared the worst as to the tidiness of her hair and the cleanliness of her hands. Everything was so large and elaborate that she felt very small and insignificant indeed, and quite unequal to whatever tasks should be asked of her.

  Finally a little page-boy scampered up to whisper in Mrs Parry’s ear: the Grand Duchess was ready for them. By now, Pattern’s throat was parched, and she was near faint with hunger. But there was no time for refreshment, let alone a moment to wash away the dust of the journey or re-pin her hair. Instead, she followed the rustle of Mrs Parry’s skirts up creaking staircases with splintered hand-rails, along limewashed corridors and round cramped corners, through a baize-lined door that swung silently behind them – and into a spacious, well-lit hallway, whose carpet was soft as moss.

  The doors to the Grand Duchess’s bedchamber were at the end. It was a room as big as a field, with a four-poster bed as a big as a cottage. The bed was walled with drapes of purple satin suspended from an enormous golden crown near the ceiling. Light glowed from a scattering of candlesticks; every window was shrouded in curtains of dusty plum-coloured velvet. It was stuffy and silent and seemingly deserted.

  Mrs Parry advanced upon the giant bed. There was a set of portable steps propped against the end. Mrs Parry paused at their base, head bowed. She gave a small cough.

  ‘Crumpets and crinolines! Am I never to have any peace?’ exclaimed a peevish voice from within the drapery.

  There was a sound of creaking bed-springs and flounced linens. The curtains twitched, and a small sharp face framed by a large white nightcap poked out. The face was scowling.

  ‘It is the Young Person from England, Your Highness,’ murmured Mrs Parry.

  Her Royal Highness Arianwen Eleri Charlotte Louise, Grand Duchess of Elffinberg, looked Pattern up and down and curled her lip.

  ‘An English spy! How novel. I suppose they have run out of the native sort.’ Then: ‘Go away,’ she said. ‘Go away, both of you, and leave me alone. You make me bilious to my bones.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  You must recollect there is no place wherever where every thing will be as you wish it, and this ought to make you bear with many little things that are not so agreeable.

  J. Bulcock, The Duties of a Lady’s Maid

  Pattern ate a solitary supper in her room. It would have been better to join her fellow servants in the hall, and so begin making the alliances necessary for working life. By rights, she should have been invited to take tea in the housekeeper’s sitting room. But although Mrs Parry’s offer of a supper-tray might be seen as an indulgence, its message was clear: Pattern was on her own.

  Her attic room was, by virtue of her position, a little way apart from the other maids’. It had a good-sized window and a lockable desk, and the bed was brightened by a patchwork counterpane. It did not take long to unpack her box and arrange her things: three dresses and one smock, two petticoats, two nightgowns, two chemises, four pairs of drawers, two nightcaps, and four pairs of stockings. There was room in the mahogany closet for twice as much.

  In spite of such magnificence, Pattern’s night was not a comfortable one. It was the first time she had ever slept on her own. She missed the night-time breathing and rustling of the other girls at Mrs Minchin’s Academy. Even the snores of Baroness von Bliven’s maid would have been welcome. She was a stranger, alone a strange land. The silence and vastness of the castle closed around her, even blacker than the night.

  The morning did not bring m
uch cheer. One of the Third Housemaids brought her breakfast, banging down the tray on the desk so that the tea slopped and soaked the bread. She was a red-headed girl of about sixteen, with a saucy tilt to her nose and a snap in her voice.

  ‘You must think very highly of yourself, I’m sure,’ she said, without opening or introduction. ‘Swanning in here with your hoity-toity English airs, and stealing jobs from under the noses of honest Elffish folk.’

  Pattern kept her voice as steady as she was able. ‘My family were Elffish-born. I believe that is why the Baroness—’

  ‘Elffish-born? Ha! Now you show yourself to be a fraud as well as a thief, for nobody leaves Elffinberg without the permission of the Ducal Family. It’s forbidden.’ The girl tossed her head. ‘Well, I don’t know what trick you pulled on old Bliven, but the joke’s on you. The GD is a wildcat, make no mistake. She came near to scratching out the eyes of her last maid. And kicked the one before that all the way down the grand staircase.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Pattern, very innocently, ‘you and your friends must be highly relieved not to have been selected for the position.’

  The maid gave her a hard stare. ‘Don’t flatter yourself that Her Highness wants you any more than we do. She went to her godmama’s sickbed at first light, but as soon as she returns she’ll be sure to send you packing. There’s folk who say Her Highness is cracked in the head, but she’s smart enough to know a swindler when she sees one.’

  With this parting shot, the maid shut the door behind her with a bang that made the plaster walls quiver.

  Pattern sighed, just once, as she drank her cold tea and ate her stale bread. (The spilling of the tea had done little to soften it.) Her reflection in the glass above the washstand did not hearten her. She was wearing her best black satin dress, a present given to her by the Baroness, but the picture she made in it was not convincing. She looked like a little girl who has got at the costume box.

  Pattern straightened her shoulders. She already had the skills to be a good servant. With experience, she would become one of the best. She was not equipped for friendship any more than she was for adventure. Her talents lay elsewhere and she should be proud of that.

  And she would not listen to the voice in her head that asked: What, after all, is the point? Is a good servant of any more value than a reliable clock; of any more worth than a comfortable shoe?

  It was time to make ready her mistress’s chamber. Alas, without Mrs Parry to guide her, she was soon lost in the maze of narrow passages and winding stairs designed to keep servants out of sight on their rounds. Expecting to come out in the hallway outside the Grand Duchess’s apartments, she found herself instead in a long gallery lined with marble busts of Dukes and Duchesses past. A couple of footmen were idling by the stairs.

  One of them, a pimply fellow with a sneer, had seen her hesitate. ‘And where are you scurrying off to, Miss Mouse?’

  When she explained the matter, he thought it an excellent joke.

  ‘You? A lady’s maid? Are you even grown enough to tie your own bootlaces?’

  ‘Perhaps it is not a child, but a dwarf,’ suggested his friend, who was long-faced with wrinkled stockings.

  ‘I am fully grown in capability, if not in years,’ said Pattern, with as much dignity as she could muster. ‘And I’m sure I have a good three inches’ more height to come.’

  The Grand Duchess’s apartments, when she finally found them, were in sad disarray. Petticoats and shawls and shoes were strewn on every available surface. There were soapy puddles on the floor and crumbs of cake in the bedclothes. Who had drawn the Grand Duchess’s bath and brought her breakfast and helped her dress? If the chambermaids had been at work, there was no sign of it.

  Pattern began by throwing open the windows. Then she pulled back the heavy satin drapes around the bed and set about airing the linens. She plumped cushions and straightened furniture. She tidied away the scattered garments to the dressing room, cleaned the smudged looking-glasses and put fresh water in the jugs. In a backstairs cupboard she found a broom and cloths to sweep the room of dust. After this she washed the hair combs, replaced the caps on bottles of lavender water and almond oil, and tidied drawers stuffed with ribbons and pins and other trinkets. She felt better now she had work to do. A neat room always gave satisfaction to a tidy mind.

  Once the chamber was set to rights, she decided to take a pile of mending down to the servants’ hall. It was likely royalty threw out their clothes as soon as they were soiled or torn, but she would not want to presume on it. And in the hall she might find someone who would take pity on her long enough to explain her duties in full.

  After the reception she had had so far, she half expected the entire room to fall silent on her entrance, and stare at her with pursed mouths. It was a relief, then, when nobody seemed to notice her slip in. Though perhaps this was small wonder, for her fellows were far too busy with their own affairs – flirting, squabbling, grumbling, gossiping – to pay any mind to hers. She set to quietly darning stockings in a corner, and though a few people glanced her way, it appeared her invisibility trick had been restored.

  The noon-time meal, when it was as served, was as plain and badly cooked as her supper the previous night, and eaten amid much elbowing and complaint. From the chatter around her, Pattern gathered there was a great rivalry between Mrs Parry, the Housekeeper, and Mrs Fischer, the Cook, who could only be united in their hatred of Mr Jenkins, the Master of the Household. Perhaps this explained why there was no upper servant present to supervise the conduct of the hall.

  Even in less rowdy surroundings, Pattern would have struggled to follow the conversation. The Elffish accent combined a Welsh lilt with gruff Germanic tones, and it took Pattern some while to accustom herself to it. She was forced to say ‘I beg your pardon?’ three times to an old woman she passed on her way back upstairs.

  ‘She asked if you had seen the keys to the walnut chiffonier,’ said the red-headed maid who had brought her breakfast. ‘But it seems you are deaf, as well as bungling.’

  The girl whisked past someone else Pattern recognized – the pimply footman from the gallery. He gave her a complacent smile.

  ‘Poor Miss Mouse, still scuttling about from one hole to the other! Why do you bother to toil down here? Nobody wants you below stairs, nobody will miss you above.’

  Pattern did not deign to answer. Yet she was, in truth, of little use to anyone until her mistress returned. Perhaps she should use the rest of the day to take a tour of the town and so acquaint herself with her surroundings.

  There and then she decided to steal her first ever holiday.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It will only render you an unprofitable servant if you set your mind on holiday-making, and look upon your duty as drudgery . . . Fun is a thing that does not always lead to the best consequences; and it is possible to be very happy and cheerful without it.

  J. Bulcock, The Duties of a Lady’s Maid

  An hour or two on Sundays was the most free time granted at Mrs Minchin’s Academy, and to take a whole afternoon for herself was an unimagined liberty. Pattern did not know whether to be impressed or appalled by her daring.

  She made her escape on a footpath that ran parallel to the grand avenue through the wood. It was a walk of two miles, but the further she got from the castle the lighter her step became.

  The path emerged a short distance away from the avenue’s gatehouse. There Pattern found another gate in the iron railings that enclosed the park, though unlike the ornate main entrance, it was small and rusting – and locked. Pattern took out the set of keys she had found in her bedroom desk, and was gratified to find one that fitted. Leaving the pine wood, she crossed a wide meadow and then a bridge, whereupon she found herself only a little way from the centre of town.

  For a capital city, Elffinheim was exceedingly small. Yet Pattern, who had seen many of London’s dingy backstreets and few of its famous monuments, was quite ready to be impressed. She wandered throug
h narrow streets of high overhanging houses, across sunny cobbled squares, and along the banks of a shallow brown river lined with lime trees. She admired the little Gothic cathedral and the parliament building with its high domed roof, and spent a pleasant half-hour in the market, where women sat chattering by their stalls of Welsh cakes and pickled cabbage, smoked sausage and bara brith.

  One of the stalls sold curious lockets that were open to display bits of feather, coloured beads and what looked like splinters of bone. Pattern bent to look closer. She thought they might be religious relics of some kind.

  ‘A charm to keep you safe, my love,’ croaked the aged stallholder. ‘No sorcery can get past it, nor monster neither.’

  ‘Sorcery?’ Pattern repeated, bewildered.

  ‘Not with one of these beauties around your neck. Cast-iron protection against demons and shape-shifters, and all manner of magical muck! Come, my little dear, I can do you a special price . . .’

  But Pattern had already turned away, anxious to lose herself in the crowd. Quaint local customs were all very well, but it seemed Elffinberg harboured some more unsavoury superstitions. Or perhaps the populace was unduly influenced by those romances which Mrs Minchin so despised – the ones full of dangerous ideas and fantastical happenings.

  From the general chatter, Pattern heard that the Grand Duchess rarely showed herself to the people, and thus had a reputation for being very proud. Her Uncle Leopold was more popular, but the ‘Old Duke’, the Grand Duchess’s late father, was more beloved than both of them, and widely regarded as a saint. In addition to this, she learned that the price of sugar was criminally high, and that the fishmonger on Denbigh Street was suspected of improper relations with the Captain of the Guard’s wife.