LATER
Later yesterday I met Lydia’s four older children. The two daughters are awkward and ungainly girls, both with an intransigent dirtiness about them. The younger one, eighteen perhaps, would not be bad looking if she were cleaner, and if she would stand up straight and comb her hair. The older, however, Gloriana, a maiden of some twenty years, is taller than any woman I have ever seen. She has a face that could carve stone and hands as big as a large man’s. I knew at once who was responsible for the bruises on Elladine’s face. Gloriana’s hands twitch, knot, twitch again whenever she looks at Elly, like creatures with a will of their own. She is as full of anger as Elladine is, though from a different cause. An ugly girl who hates girls who are not. When I heard her voice, it was no surprise. Hers was the knife-edged shriek from the kitchen. That both of the girls are slovens simply fills out the picture. Their shifts have not been washed in many a season, their nails are brown with unthinkable dirt, their hair, I warrant, is as full of lice as mine was when I woke at Westfaire.
The boys, Harry and Bert, looked slightly less dirty when I met them. I believe their relative cleanliness may be due to their having been caught in the rain oft times while hunting. Both are beefy boys, red in the face, big in the teeth, with small eyes and large noses. They are even taller than Gloriana. Though Lydia is a woman of average size, her first husband must have been a giant to have begot these monsters.
Of the twins, the least said the better. They have been spoiled so rotten that they smell of corruption. Neither has ever been forced to do anything he or she did not want to do. They have two voices: a whine; a scream. They have no graces at all.
So, if the family is of little use, what about the servants? There are serving women about the place, but I recognize none of them. Besides the two who eventually finished cleaning my room, I found several more, enough to do the washing, sweep out the filthy hall, bring in wood for the fire, heat the kettle and fill the tubs. Lydia’s daughters could have bathed. Their clothes could have been scrubbed. I wonder why they choose instead to go about in dirt? Well, they could do as they chose, but the Dower House need not follow their example.
I slept last night in a clean chamber. I rose this morning at dawn. I found the maids still sleeping, routed them out, and set them to work, though they grumbled mightily when I told them to clean the fireplace in Elly’s chamber, saying that she always did that herself.
“Elly,” I explained sweetly, “is my nephew’s daughter. She does not sweep chambers, carry out slops, or make up fires. You do. You do it well and consistently or you will be eaten alive by dragons!” I glared at them and they cowered.
Elly came upon me in mid-dudgeon, carrying a pail of ashes. She shook her head at me angrily. “It won’t do any good,” she sneered. “Stepmama won’t keep after them once you’re gone. They’re lazy sluts, all of them.” I noticed again that her nails were black.
“They certainly won’t do it if you do it for them,” I suggested. “Go wash your hands.”
One of the maids sniggered behind me. I set a small imp to pinch her black and blue, and her howling could be heard for half a mile. It had a salutary effect on the others. I smiled at Elly, who regarded me with dawning interest.
“You know what these sluts call me,” she asked. “Ella of the Ashes. Just because I carry out the ashes so I can get the fire in my room to burn. The others are so lazy, they’d rather freeze. They all pile in one bed together to keep each other warm. Like pigs.”
“Why won’t Lydia exert herself a little?” I asked, truly interested in Elly’s perception of the situation.
“She doesn’t want to keep Wellingford. She wants to sell it. That’s why she doesn’t take care of it. It used to be beautiful. It’s all ugly now.”
“Whether she wants to keep it or not, there is such a thing as pride,” I said. “Only those without any are filthy and lazy. Perhaps she needs to be taught.”
“When pigs have wings,” said Elly with an ugly snort, leaving me.
It was only later I thought what she had said. Ella of the Ashes. Cinder-Ella.
“Puck,” I cried.
He was there, looking at me sidelong.
“What is this?” I demanded, half hysterically. “I’ve been in the twentieth, Puck. I’ve read books. I’ve seen Disney, for the love of God. I know the Cinderella story. What is this?”
“Did you think the stories were made up?” he asked me. “Did you think there was no real Beauty, no real Cinderella, no real Goldilocks or Rose Red or …”
“But why me? Why my daughter?”
He shrugged. “Did you never notice, in the twentieth, how legends gather around some people. There is the truth about a man, and then the part truths that gather afterward, and then the myths that follow later yet. A legendary man tends to have legendary sons. Power attracts power, so power gathers. It is one of the truths of magic.”
“Am I to expect, then, that there will be a prince?”
He shrugged again. “It
