[Eleanor]: 668.Amelia.Chapter VII

VII.

Amelia found herself unable to concentrate on work. Mistress Roach scolded her for leaving a burnt patch on the bottom of a saucepan and she absentmindedly put the ladles on the wrong hooks. A week passed and Amelia was still making mistakes, leaving the wash water to boil over or forgetting to retrieve her cloth from the bottom of a soup pot. Bess joined her as they were finishing up in the kitchen for the day, and followed her back to her cell.

“What’s the matter, Emily?” the big girl asked. “For a week now you’ve been distracted. You’re dropping things, making mistakes, not getting the pots clean. I’m worried that you might hurt yourself or cause an accident in the kitchen. It’s not exactly the kind of place you want mistakes to happen.” Amelia remained silent. “And another thing, we haven’t heard you sing for days now,” continued Bess. “You used to be singing all the time. Is there something wrong? Are you sick?”

“No, Bess,” whispered Amelia. “I’m fine. I mean, I’m not sick. No one will catch anything from me, don’t worry.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” cried Bess. “It’s you! We’re all worried about you. Ever since we went to Martha and Gareth’s last week you haven’t been yourself. Louise won’t tell us anything, saying she promised not to. What happened there?”

“I’ll tell you,” answered Amelia. “but first, tell me something. How did you end up here tending the fires in Mistress Roach’s kitchen?”

“That’s no secret,” Bess replied. “My father is a blacksmith and I used to help him in the forge, pumping the bellows for his fire. When it was time for me to move out, I naturally looked for something I was good at, and I’m really very good at that!” She laughed, flexing her well muscled arms and shoulders. 

Amelia smiled. “Why did you leave home? What do you mean that ‘it was time’ for you to move out?”

Bess sighed. “My mum kept having one baby after another and it got to the point where if I didn’t find work, they would have starved, I ate so much. So here I am! I make sure to send some of my pay home every month to help out. I don’t want my younger brothers and sisters going hungry. Why? What about you? How did you end up here?”

“Oh, Bess,” Amelia said, trying to keep the tears out of her voice, “I’m the only child my parents have, and I’ve disappointed them so. My father is a greengrocer and my mother a flute teacher. Her mother, my grandmother, played the harp. She was my favourite person in all the world when I was little. She used to sing me to sleep at night, and she taught me to play. When I turned eleven she gave me a beautiful harp. She died when I was fourteen.” Amelia stopped suddenly, unable to continue. Bess put an ample arm around her and waited for the slim girl to regain her composure.

After a bit, Amelia continued, “My parents love me, I know, but not like my grandmother did. They always expected I would make a good marriage and then be off their hands. But I couldn’t.” Here she trailed away, touching the mask that hid her. “Music meant everything to me and I never wanted to marry, or have children. And then something happened, something terrible, and people blamed me for it. Maybe I was to blame a little, but I wasn’t the only one. And they made me feel like a monster, and I just couldn’t live there anymore.”

Bess waited for Amelia to dry her tears before picking up the thread again. “I left home without telling anyone, ran away like a thief before dawn, and came here where no one knew me, and I found work scouring pots. I left everything behind, even my harp. I remember looking back that morning at my village and wishing I could have brought it with me, but it was too big and heavy to carry. That night at Gareth’s tavern, I saw it. The blind harpist told Louise and me that he’d bought it in my old village at a stall in the market. I just don’t know how it ended up there. I’m so anxious, Bess. I simply don’t know what to do.”

“Emily, love,” said Bess soothingly, “there must be some way to find out. We’ll get to the bottom of this mystery and sort it all out for you. Now, you get some rest. I know how tired you are. Tomorrow will be different. You’ll see.” She gave Amelia a last hug and left.

Amelia bolted the door and then threw herself on her pillow. Seeing her harp in the arms of a stranger had filled her with fears and anxieties and unanswered questions. She had never told her parents she was leaving nor informed them of her destination, not wanting them to know where she was lest they decide to drag her home again, perhaps to an arranged marriage she did not want. She had no desire to hear the kind of news that her village would generate: who was married to whom, who had had a child—tidbits that would only make her feel even more an outcast. Perhaps they presumed she would not return and sold her belongings so they would not be reminded of her betrayal. 

A more dire possibility was that her parents had died. They had been well when she’d left, robust even, and it had not been a year since she had last seen them. Even though she had never felt the warmth from them that she had from her grandmother, they were still her parents and she loved them. 

It was the not knowing that was eating at her, making her hands tremble so that she dropped things, suppressing her appetite so that Bess had more than usual off her unfinished plate. The past was catching up with her, and it seemed that all her running away had been for nought. But at the same time, there was something indefinable that had been growing inside her from the day the master and mistress had asked her to sing for them, the same day that she had sung in front of the large crowd at Gareth’s tavern. It was like a burbling spring welling up from the depths of her soul that she could not cap. The past week she had kept silent for fear it would burst forth, but it was just a matter of time before she could no longer control it and she wasn’t sure what would happen then. All she knew for certain was that she needed her harp back, that holding it in her arms had made her feel complete in a way that nothing else did. She had handed it back to Frederick saying she never played anymore, but she knew she had lied as much to herself in that moment as she had to him. She just hadn’t known how much until now.