The Gates of Sleep

mouthfuls today at luncheon and dinner, and no breakfast at all. Just you tuck into that! I’ll wait and take the plates away.” She winked conspiratorially. “We’ll let that housekeeper think that Mister Reginald’s eating a bit more than usual.”

Since Marina was already tucking in, wasting no time at all in filling her poor, empty stomach, the little maid beamed with pleasure. “If you really don’t mind waiting,” Marina said, taking just long enough from her food to gulp down a lovely cup of chocolate, “You ought to at least sit down.” She paused a moment, and added, “I’m sure I oughtn’t to invite you, according to Aunt Arachne.”

“Madam is very conscious of what is proper,” the maid said, her mouth going prim. But Marina noticed that she sat right down anyway. She considered Marina for a moment more, then asked, “Miss, how early are you like to be awake?”

Oh no—surely Madam wakes up before dawn, and I’m supposed to be, too, she thought, already falling into the habit of thinking of her aunt as “Madam”—”Oh—late, if I’m given the choice,” she admitted, shamefacedly. “No earlier than full sun, seven, even eight.”

“You think that late?” the maid stifled a giggle. “That Mary Anne, she won’t bestir herself before ten, earliest, and Madam keeps city hours herself. We—ell, miss, what do you say to a spot of conspiracy between us? Just us Devon folk—for we can’t be letting Mister Hugh—” and here she faltered, before catching herself, and continuing resolutely. “We can’t be letting Mister Hugh’s daughter fade away to naught. I’ll be bringing you a proper breakfast sevenish, and a bit of proper supper after that Mary Anne has took herself off of a night. So you won’t go hungry, even if that Mary Anne has got a bee in her bonnet that you ought to be scrawny.”

Marina was overwhelmed, and couldn’t help herself; this was the first open kindness she’d had since she’d been kidnapped—was it only yesterday? She began to cry.

“Oh miss—there now, miss—” The maid plied her with a napkin, then ran into the bedroom and fetched out handkerchiefs from somewhere, and dabbed at Marina’s cheeks with them. Very fine cambric they were too, her aunt certainly wasn’t stinting her in the matter of wardrobe. “Now miss, you mustn’t cry—Mister Hugh and Missus Alanna wouldn’t like that—”

For a moment, Marina was tempted to tell her the truth, all of it; but no, this girl would never understand. “I’m—alone—” she managed, as the maid soothed her, sitting beside her and patting her hand. That was true—true enough. Not the whole truth, but true enough.

She didn’t cry herself sick this time, and perhaps it was the best thing she could have done, though it was entirely involuntary, for by the time that she cried herself out, she knew that she had friends here, after all. She also knew, if not everything there was to know about the “downstairs” household, at least a very great deal. She knew that the maid was Sally, she was going to marry the footman Peter one day, that Arachne had dismissed the upper servants—the chief cook (replaced by her “chef”), the housekeeper and butler, her own personal maidservant, the valet.

Of course, the maidservant and the valet were still stranded in Italy, poor things. The other servants weren’t even sure they would be able to get home, for Arachne had left orders that Marina’s parents were to be buried in Italy where they had died.

“‘Where they so loved to live,’ that was what Madam Arachne said. And it isn’t my place to say,” Sally continued, in a doubtful whisper, “But it did seem to me that Mister Hugh and Missus Alanna loved it here. This is where the family was all buried, and I know Mister Hugh felt strong about his family.”

But Arachne couldn’t replace all the servants—trained city servants weren’t very willing to move to the country, not without a substantial rise in wages. So a substantial number of the lower servants were the same as had served Marina’s parents, and they remembered their kind master and mistress. Although they knew nothing about Hugh’s sister, except that she’d fallen out with her parents over her choice of husband, that counted more against her than her blood counted for her.

And although they were very circumspect with regard to Arachne and her son, they were all very sympathetic to Marina, especially after seeing the ordeals she was undergoing at the hands of Arachne and Mary Anne. She was Devon-bred as well as born, almost one of them, even if she did come from over near to the border with Cornwall. If they didn’t know why she’d been sent away, at least she hadn’t been sent far; she wasn’t a foreigner, and she didn’t have any airs.

And one and all, these downstairs servants hated Mary Anne.

“Fancies herself a superior lady’s maid, she does,” Sally sniffed. “Too good to eat with us, has her meals with the butler and housekeeper, if you please. And it isn’t as if Madam Arachne doesn’t have her own maid, for she does, a French woman. Well, things have changed for us.” She sighed pensively. “But miss, we’ll take care of you, don’t you worry. If Madam Arachne wants you to be made a lady like her, we’ll help you out, till there isn’t nothing you don’t know. There’s Peter, he served with Lord Bridgeworth, and he knows all the right things—and it wasn’t as if Mister Hugh and Missus Alanna weren’t gentry. We’ll help you, for you’re ours, and we won’t ever forget that!”

Marina swallowed down another lump in her throat and a spate of hastily suppressed tears with her hot chocolate.

“Thank you,” she said, hoping she put the gratitude she felt into those simple words.

By the warm smile on Sally’s face, she did.

Morning brought Sally with a proper breakfast tray—the kind of hearty breakfast Marina was used to getting at home—from thick country bacon to hot, buttered toast. There was only one thing missing, oat porridge, which was just as well, since she would have felt homesick on seeing it, guilty if she hadn’t eaten it, and miserable if she did. Sally waited while she ate, and whisked the tray away, leaving her to go back to sleep again if she chose.

Which was a confirmation this was all being done in secret, abetted by a conspiracy among the lower servants, the ones who remembered her parents.

For some reason, they did not trust her aunt to treat her properly. Why? She couldn’t think of any reason why Arachne would mistreat her on purpose—she was clearly a very cold woman, but she seemed determined to do her duty to Marina. Even if her idea of her duty was not what Marina would have chosen for herself. She wasn’t stinting on wardrobe, that was sure. The clothing that she’d had made for Marina was of first quality and highest workmanship.

But servants saw and heard everything. Probably they were only worried that she was so unhappy and was being bullied. In any case, life was going to be much easier with the kind of help they had already offered, and she was not going to betray them by any carelessness on her part.

So she made sure that there was no sign that anyone had been in her rooms, and tucked herself back up in her bed, dozing until the odious Mary Anne appeared to wake her by pulling back the curtains and making a great clattering of noise with the breakfast-tray that she had brought.

It was breakfast for an invalid. A nauseated invalid. Or someone afraid of getting fat. Weak tea, and four pieces of cold toast.

With a silent prayer of thanks for Sally’s foresight, Marina drank a cup of the tea, but before she could eat more than a single piece of the toast, Mary Anne insistently dragged her out of bed and into her clothing. “Madam’s modiste is here, and miss must be measured again and select fabrics and patterns,” the maid ordered. “Madam is also selecting clothing, and miss must not monopolize the modiste’s time, nor keep her waiting.”

This was said as Mary Anne was lacing up her corset, and as Marina suddenly remembered a trick that one of the ponies used to employ, of blowing himself up so that his girth couldn’t be tightened. And it occurred to her at that moment that if she could just manage the same trick, herself—

So she secretly took in the deepest breath that she could, and instead of trying to draw herself up, hunched herself over, sticking her stomach out as far as she could manage and obstinately tensing the muscles of her midsection against the tightening of the corset-laces. Mary Anne tugged and pulled, but to no avail; when she gave up and tied the laces off, tying a modest bustle on the back of the corset and pulling the first of the three petticoats over Marina’s head, Marina was able to straighten up without feeling as if she was going to faint from lack of air. Her corsets were only a little tighter than she would have tied them herself. Not as comfortable as no corset at all but not a torture either.

There was nothing to show that Mary Anne had been doing any rummaging about among the books that Marina had put on the shelves last night, but that was not to say that she wouldn’t later. For now, the modiste was waiting in the sitting room, a patient little woman with sad eyes and gray hair, done up in a severe, but impeccably