[Eleanor]: 668.Amelia.Chapter V

V.

After several more days of riding in wagons of produce, staying at cheap inns or sleeping in hay barns to conserve her diminishing purse, Amelia came to a large town nestled in a valley beside a wide river. She had had plenty of practise explaining her concealment. When asked, she would say that there had been an outbreak of the pox in her village and she was lucky not to be as ravaged as some by the disfiguring disease. No one asked to see her scars, and she never offered any more explanation. There were enough victims of similar illnesses, not to mention accidents and even birth defects, that her disguise was not seen as anything that much out of the ordinary, or at least not worthy of excessive inquiry. She no longer pretended to be a boy but found she enjoyed the freedom trousers gave her over skirts, so continued wearing them.

Immediately upon bidding goodbye to the potter who had given her her last ride, Amelia started looking for work. She began by knocking on servants’ entrances to the mansions overlooking the valley, hoping to find a position as a laundress or scullery maid. After several rejections, she was ushered into the presence of Mistress Roach, a formidable woman with a florid face fiercely wielding a ladle. She was yelling at a kitchen girl who had just spilled a pot of gravy and was madly trying to salvage some before it was all lost. The large woman put down the ladle, wiped her hands on her apron, and turned to greet the applicant. 

“We do need a pot girl,” she said after Amelia repeated her inquiry. “You’re not planning on getting pregnant and married any time soon, are you? No, I suppose not. Do you live in town, or do you need a place to stay? There’s a room in the servants’ quarters that’s vacant, it seems to me. You’ll have to check with the housekeeper.”

Amelia was staggered by her good luck: a job and a place to live! The money from her shorn tresses was almost gone, and she had not known where she would spend the night. One of the other kitchen girls ran off to find the housekeeper and returned with a short, grandmotherly woman with iron-grey hair and a large ring of keys. She showed Amelia to her room, a narrow cell with one small window set high in the wall, a bed with a straw mattress, and a washbasin and ewer on a shelf under a tiny mirror. There was even a bolt on the door so she could lock it, ensuring her privacy. It wasn’t as luxurious as what she had known when she lived with her parents, but it was certainly better than the hay barns where she had been sharing bales with rats and worse on her recent journey. 

Mistress Roach turned out to be less terrifying than she had first appeared, only brandishing kitchen utensils in anger when accidents like overturned gravy pots or burned roasts happened. Large in spirit as well as stature, she was gentle and kind, and the girls worked hard to please her. Amelia’s duties involved scrubbing the big iron pots and utensils used in the day-to-day preparation of the household’s meals. Even though there were only two people occupying the opulent apartments above, there was an army of help to feed every day. Amelia soon met the maids, valets, stablemen and gardeners who made up the employ of the house, and was welcomed into their company with no questions asked about her past or her mask. She introduced herself as Emily, for that name had stuck ever since Gregor had mistakenly used it. With the last of her money she was able to buy a piece of soft leather from the saddle maker in town so that she could fashion herself a more sturdy version of her mask, as the original was showing signs of wear.

Life became routine. Every day Amelia rose early and collected the clean cloths from the wash house and brought them into the kitchen. She filled buckets of water from the pump, and started heating them over the kitchen fire so that she would have hot water for her washing up. It was hard work, and at first she found it very tiring; but as time went on, she became stronger and could lift the heavy cauldrons easily. Mistress Roach was pleased with her work, and would often save her a choice bit of meat from the ham or goose, “to fatten you up, because you’re so thin!”

Two girls in particular took Amelia under their wings. Bess was responsible for keeping the kitchen fires roaring, which meant chopping and carrying wood and pumping the bellows. While not particularly tall, she was extremely sturdy, with muscular arms and huge shoulders. She was always singing as she worked, keeping rhythm with the pumping of the bellows, her dark curls plastered to her forehead over her plump, dimpled face. She also had an enormous appetite, often finishing what others left on their plates. She acted like the protective older sister Amelia never had, even standing up to Mistress Roach when she thought that Amelia was too tired to wash yet another huge pot at the end of a long day.

Where Bess was short and stocky, Louise was tall and thin. She kept her fine blonde hair braided and pinned to her head, but wisps always escaped and hung in her pale blue yes. Her task was to chop vegetables for the endless soups and stews Mistress Roach was always preparing, and the odour of garlic and onions clung to her fingers. Louise was attracted by Amelia’s reticence and sought her out as someone she could confide in, talking freely about her crushes on various liverymen and one of the stable boys. Her dream was to marry and start a family, reminding Amelia of the childhood friends she had left behind.

When Bess sang while she kept the kitchen fires going, the other girls would often join in. Amelia did not know most of the tunes or the words, and was content merely to listen. However, one day Bess started one that she did know, a merry ditty often played at weddings, and she took up the melody with the others. It had been a long time since she had sung, and at first her voice was hoarse and weak, but it grew stronger as she got warmed up. Suddenly she realized she was the only one singing, and abruptly stopped and looked up from the pan she was scrubbing to see that everyone was staring at her, open mouthed.

“What,” she stammered. “what’s wrong?”

Bess was the first to speak. “Nothing at all is wrong, Emily. You have a beautiful voice. Why have we never heard you sing before?”

“I never knew any of your songs until today,” she answered. “Or I would have sung sooner, I guess.”

“Well, you must teach us the songs you know, so you can sing, too,” said Bess.

From then on Amelia taught them her songs and learned the ones the girls already knew. At the end of a long day, when she was weary to her very bones from lifting and scouring, she would lie on her straw mattress and hear the music of the kitchen resonating in her mind before she fell asleep, and for the first time in a long time was content.