[Eleanor]: 668.Amelia.Chapter VI

VI.

Word eventually reached the master of the house that there was a girl in the kitchen who sang like an angel and he was intrigued enough to send for her. The servant charged with this task had to wait for Amelia to finish scouring a pot and then dry her hands before accompanying him upstairs where the family lived, oblivious to the hard work that went on below their feet providing for their privileged lives. She jammed her rough and reddened hands into her pockets as she was brought before the master and mistress and introduced to them.

“Why are you masked, girl?” asked the mistress, upon seeing the leather cap that covered Amelia’s hair and half her face.

“It was the pox, ma’am,” answered the girl. She silently prayed they would not make her remove her disguise, but her answer seemed sufficient.

“I hear you have a beautiful singing voice,” said the master. “I would like to hear it for myself.”

“Thank you, sir,” replied Amelia, “but I’m sure it’s nothing out of the ordinary.”

“That’s not what I’m told,” disagreed her employer. “Come, sing something for us, some ditty your mother sang to you when you were a child.” 

Amelia thought for a moment, then started singing the lullaby her grandmother used to croon to her at bedtime. She began quietly and then became more confident as she sang, her voice growing in volume and richness. When that one ended, she began another, one the girls sang while they worked in the kitchen. Then she stopped, not knowing what to sing next. 

“Lovely,” breathed the mistress, “absolutely lovely.” There were tears in her eyes.

“Thank you, Emily,” said the master. “You may return to your duties now.”

The silent servant took her back the way she had come and Amelia wondered what had just happened. The mistress had actually wept, there was no doubt about it, and the master had had a strange expression on his face. Something odd was at work, and it irked her for the rest of the day as she scrubbed pots and polished silverware. 

In the evening, after the dinner dishes were washed and put away and the maids were free to do as they pleased, Amelia went to her small room in the servants’ quarters and locked the door. Alone, she removed her mask and gazed upon her features in the bit of mirror over the wash basin. She was extremely pale now, more so than usual, and some of her short auburn hair stuck to her perspiring forehead while the rest went every which way in unruly spikes. There were circles under her clear grey eyes, and she looked drawn and tired from the hard labour she daily endured. Still, if anyone had chanced to espy her through the small window high in the wall, he would have been struck by her beauty, undiminished by fatigue and a bad haircut.

A sudden knock at her door startled Amelia from her self-examination. “Who’s there?” she called. There was a giggling of female voices and then Bess called out. “Come, Emily. We’re going into town for some ale and soup at Gareth’s. There’s a troupe of traveling musicians in from the provinces, and they’re supposed to be good.”

Amelia felt the ache in her shoulders and lower back. Then she remembered how singing for the master and mistress had lifted her out of herself for a short while that day. It would be nice to hear someone else make music for a change. “I’ll be right there,” she called, and quickly donned her mask and put on a clean blouse and a fresh pair of trousers.

The town had several taverns catering to different social castes and tastes. There were the seedy dives along the waterfront frequented by riverboat men, prostitutes, cutthroats and thieves, and the elite clubs in the better neighbourhoods that appealed to successful merchants and well-heeled visitors. The true upper crust, like Amelia’s employers, did not go to pubs. They drank at home, either alone or in the company of their fellow aristocrats. The inn where the kitchen girls went was nearer the lower town, without being rundown, and often brought in traveling musicians to entertain its clientele. Amelia had been there before and liked the proprietors, especially Martha, who wouldn’t stand for rowdiness from the patrons and protected the girls from inappropriate attention. Her beef and barley soup was extolled as being the best in the province.

When the girls arrived, they were warmly greeted by Martha and her husband Gareth, given hugs and set up with flagons of ale, huge steaming bowls of soup and slabs of freshly-baked, crusty bread. The musicians were only just setting up on the small stage at the back under the boar heads and deer antlers, and there was an air of expectation filled with excited chatter. Amelia turned to Louise who was busily spooning up the excellent soup. She smiled as she caught a whiff of garlic from her friend’s fingers, and said, “I’ve never heard quite a buzz like this before. These musicians must be really good!”

The crowd grew and the volume level in the tavern became louder in anticipation of the music. Amelia kept sneaking glances at the stage and the instruments arrayed there in readiness. A dark harp leaned against a stool, and pale ivy seemed to snake up the curve of the column. Amelia’s heart skipped a beat as she thought she recognized it, and she slipped away from the table and approached the stage to get a better look. It was her very own, left behind when she fled her village and the life that had become intolerable. As she stood rigid with shock, the troupe members started filing onto the stage and taking up their instruments in preparation for the first song. One of them jostled Amelia and she came out of her trance in time to see a tall man with sandy brown hair stoop and pick up the harp; then the first number began.

If she had been able, Amelia would have left the tavern and returned to the privacy of her tiny cell in the servants’ quarters of the great house. But the room was packed and she could barely make her way back to her friends. They had finished their soup and were sitting on the table facing the stage, where they made room and pulled her up to join them. She was grateful for their camaraderie, and once the music began, she was glad she had stayed.

There were five musicians on the small stage at the end of the tavern common room. At the back, a curly-haired man playing a variety of percussion instruments provided the beat for a flutist, a guitarist, and the harpist she had seen earlier. The troupe’s front man was a fiddler who called the numbers and set the tempi, occasionally engaging in banter with the audience. The harpist was the main singer and the others joined in with harmony, and at times took verses on their own.

The music was very good and the crowd in the tavern swayed and clapped and some even attempted to dance in the narrow spaces between the tables. Amelia could not help but be swept up with them, tapping her feet and humming the tunes she knew. At one point, the fiddler started playing a song she remembered well and she sang aloud. Before she knew it, hands had pulled her from her perch on the table with her friends, and she found herself being half led, half carried to the stage where she continued to sing, albeit a little dazed and confused by this attention. When the music stopped, the applause was tremendous, and she burned hot behind her mask, attempting to slip out of sight and back into anonymity. But her voice had been heard, and she was kept onstage for a second and then a third song before she was at last able to disappear back into the throng.

The rest of the evening passed in a blur. As the musicians started packing their instruments away and the kitchen girls were getting ready to go home, Amelia suddenly remembered her harp and made a mad dash for the stage. The tall harpist was carefully wrapping his instrument in a dark blue velvet cloth before putting it into a plain jute bag and slinging it over his shoulder. Amelia cleared her throat and the man turned around.

For the first time she had a good look at him. There had been too many people in the room before blocking her view, and when she was actually on stage singing, she had been too overwhelmed to peer at her accompanists. The harpist was a tall, thin man in his mid-20’s, dressed in loose, comfortable clothing. His sandy brown hair was in need of a trim, hanging on either side of his long, narrow face and his eyes were a crystalline blue that looked past her as he sought the source of the sound. Amelia gasped. He was blind!

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she faltered.

“Ah, the girl with the silver voice!” he responded in a pleasant baritone. “You were a welcome addition to our concert tonight.”

“Thank you,” Amelia answered shyly and blushed. She had never met a blind person before and was a little disconcerted by his vacant gaze. “It was fun; a little unnerving at first, but fun.”

“It was fun, wasn’t it? I have always wanted to harmonize with someone who can actually sing, so it was a pleasure for me as well. Not that my fellow players can’t sing, they just don’t have voices as beautiful as yours.”

Even knowing he could not see her, Amelia blushed again at the musician’s high praise. “I used to play a harp like yours,” she said. 

The tall harpist took the bag from his shoulder, opened it and removed the instrument, unwrapped it from its velvet cloth and handed it to her. “Play something for me,” he said.

Amelia cradled it in her arms, tracing the ivy design inlaid into the dark wood. She knew this instrument so well, every curve, every crevice. But it had been many, many months since her fingers had plucked its strings and made a melody fly from them. Her hands were stiff from working in the kitchen, and her nails were short and ragged. She sat on a nearby bench and started picking out a simple tune, one of her earliest pieces, and found she had not forgotten how to play. She closed her eyes and, forgetting her surroundings, began singing an old folksong her grandmother had taught her when she was still a child, innocent and untroubled by loss and betrayal.

The last sounds faded completely away before she raised her damp eyes and found herself the centre of attention, for a circle had formed around her: the musicians of the troupe, Martha and Gareth, the serving wench, and Louise, who had stayed behind when the rest of the girls left for home. There were tears in Martha’s eyes as well, and a thoughtful expression on the handsome face of the tall blind harpist. Amelia started handing the harp back to him before remembering that he couldn’t see. Instead, she clutched it to her breast, feeling the familiar weight and shape of it.

It was Louise who spoke first. “Emily, we have to get back. It’s late.”

“Emily?” said the blind harpist.

“Amelia,” the masked girl whispered.

“Amelia,” repeated the tall man. “That is the harp’s name.”

“It’s my harp,” Amelia said quietly. “My grandmother gave it to me. How, where…,” she started to ask, but found she couldn’t, fearing the answer.

Martha, Gareth and the serving wench went back to cleaning up, the other musicians resumed packing away their gear, and the tall harpist seated himself gracefully on the edge of the stage as he told Amelia and Louise his tale.

“Several months ago,” he began, “we were playing in a town many days’ travel from here when a fight broke out among some drunks in the tavern. I don’t know how it began, since we were in the midst of a tune at the time, but it was in full force when we stopped, and someone threw a bench at the stage. I happened to be in its way. My wrist was broken, my harp snapped in two, and that effectively put an end to the show that night. Although I was unable to play for several weeks, my wrist healed completely. My harp, though, that was another story. It was beyond repair.” He sighed. “I was very fond of that harp.”

Here he paused and rubbed his right wrist in remembered pain. Amelia could well imagine a tavern fight in her old village. There had been some pretty rough customers, and the proprietor there, unlike Gareth, had not had the policy of refusing to serve ale to men who had clearly had enough. She thought fleetingly of Bartholomew and Crispin who might still be alive if they had not been allowed to become so drunk.

“Luckily,” and the harpist waved in the direction of the fiddler who was now listening to the tale, “Jason wasn’t about to let me starve on the street, so he kept me about, letting me sing and look pathetic. Still, I needed a new instrument, something I could at least practise on with my good hand while the other healed. We made inquiries, and it turned out there was a market on the morrow where we might acquire a replacement. It was there that I found your harp at an instrument seller’s stall. The bag it was in had ‘Amelia’ embroidered on it, but my troupe members didn’t think that was masculine enough for me. I still have it somewhere if you would like it back.”

Jason laughed at this point and said, “It wasn’t just the name on it that was inappropriate. The bag was yellow silk with pink flowers embroidered all over it. Not the kind of thing a strapping specimen like Frederick should be seen toting around. Well, not the kind of thing the rest of the boys would want to be seen with, anyway.” 

“So, you don’t know anything else?” asked Amelia, her heart thumping loudly in her breast with anxiety. “You don’t know why it was at the stall, why it was being sold?” 

“No, sorry,” answered Jason. “We never thought to ask.”

Amelia sighed. “I really have to go. Here, I don’t play anymore anyway.” She reluctantly handed the instrument back to Frederick, noting that it seemed very small in his long arms. Before anyone could stop her, she grabbed Louise’s hand and pulled her out of the tavern.

“Emily,” asked Louise, “what just happened there? Was that really your harp? I never knew you could play like that!” Amelia said nothing, lost in her own thoughts. Finally as they neared the manor house, she spoke.

“Louise,” she begged, “please don’t tell the other girls about this, at least, not yet. I still need to figure out what’s going on.”

Louise gave her a big hug. “Everything will be fine, you’ll see,” she reassured the masked girl, and then added, “I won’t say a word.”