The liquid was only lukewarm by now, but it was crystal clear. She would have preferred a washcloth, but was given none. Nevertheless, it was a joy to be able to get clean, yet another opportunity she’d always taken for granted until now. She almost laughed to think how incommoded she had felt on the few occasions when her landlord needed to shut down the boiler in her apartment building.
“I live here too,” Mary finally ventured shyly.
“Do you?” C.J. asked, having once learned that a maid of all work such as Mary usually didn’t live on the premises but instead dwelled with her family in a poor and unsavory section of the city. “Which room is yours?”
“This one,” answered the maid, her open countenance displaying no sign of jest or merriment.
“But Lady Wickham told me this was to be my room.”
“’Tis your room, Miss Welles. But ’tis mine too. I don’t mind. I’m happy to have the company. I was very lonely after Fanny left.”
“Oh,” C.J. said, making polite conversation. “What happened to Fanny, then?”
“I can’t say. That is, I don’t know, miss. She got herself in the family way and Lady Wickham tried to beat the devil from the blackness of her ruined soul and then she turned her out.”
C.J. was aghast. “With nowhere to go? Pregnant?”
Mary’s hand flew in front of her mouth to cover her shocked expression. “Oh, you mustn’t use that word. That’s a vulgar word, that is. Lady Wickham expects her servants to behave genteel.”
The word pregnant was considered uncivilized? They had decades to go before the eminent Victorians would take it upon themselves to sanitize the English language. Good thing C.J. hadn’t blurted out the phrase knocked up. Perhaps she should try enceinte from now on, although she doubted that Mary Sykes possessed a keen grasp of French.
“She lays great store by gentility, and yet she turns a preg—, a young woman about to be a mother into the street. I suppose Fanny was unwed as well.”
“Of course she was, Miss Welles. That’s why she was turned out. Lady Wickham said she was a disgrace. I’ll never forget how hard Fanny cried when it happened.” Mary turned away and C.J. noticed a reddish mark upon the girl’s left cheek. She was about to make an inquiry, but something made her change her mind.
“I am sorry that you lost a friend in Fanny as well, Miss Sykes.”
“Oh no,” the mousy girl gasped. “Mary. You must call me Mary.”
“Then you must call me Cassandra.”
“Oh no, Miss Welles,” said the maid in a hushed voice. “That would never do.”
“Why not? We are both in servitude, assigned to sleep in the same room, even expected to share the same bed.”
“Miss Welles, you are a lady’s companion,” the girl explained, as though she were teaching catechism to a heathen. “I am a scullery maid. Sometimes, when Lady Wickham needs us below-stairs servants to serve the meals or tea in the parlor, or to sweep and dust . . . which is almost all the time,” she added, blushing, “we get to mingle with the gentlefolk; and when I’m above stairs, her ladyship sometimes refers to me by my family name—Sykes—as befits an upstairs servant. But ladies’ maids and companions are more genteel-like. It’s not proper to call them by their Christian names.”
It was quite an education. C.J. had read what she thought was a great deal about the English class system, and she knew, even from watching years of Masterpiece Theatre programs and numerous Merchant-Ivory films, that there were different strata of servants, but it had not occurred to her that among the servants themselves there were proper forms of address for each individual station.
C.J.’s existence in the infant nineteenth century was most certainly an enlightening, albeit rather nightmarish, one thus far. At every turn, she acknowledged with much dismay that she was much further removed from this world than she had once imagined she might be. If she could make such a gaffe with a serving maid, what might happen if she slipped up among their betters, an incident that was certain to occur at any time? Not for a moment could she relax her guard, and yet no matter how vigilant she was, it was equally certain that her ignorance could betray her. Every aspect of her daily life would be affected, from the laws of the land to the minutest personal details, and no end of embarrassment might be in store for her. What would she do when she got her period, for instance? She would feel so foolish asking Mary about what was such an obviously routine custom. Even the most private matters of personal hygiene posed the threat of exposure. How could C.J. explain, let alone discuss, why she lacked any familiarity with such a normal ritual?
She wondered what was going on in her own era back home. Had her disappearance been noted at all? Did they miss her? How would she be able to return—and what if she couldn’t? What then? If she was able to return, how much time would have passed? Would she find, like Rip Van Winkle or the hapless Usheen in the legend of Tir-na-Nog, that generations were born and had died in her absence?
“What are you doing to me?” she asked Mary when the girl knelt beside the hip bath and began to inspect her scalp.
“Looking for lice, Miss Welles. Were you in the jail?” C.J. shivered and nodded, not keen on where this exchange might be leading. “If I find lice, her ladyship will toss you right back into the street. But if Tony can manage to distract her for an hour, I can run to the chemist for some tea tree oil to wash your hair. That will kill
