“Why, Miss Welles,” the scullery replied, pointing at a foot-high white obelisk in a shop window, “you’re looking at it!” C.J. winced. She had never heard of a cone made of sugar and therefore had yet to recognize one in its pristine form, despite some experience in Lady Wickham’s kitchen. “I am so glad of your acquaintance, for I had no cause to smile before you came to Laura Place. If you are not havin’ a joke on me, you must be an angel visiting straight from heaven and have lived on naught but ambrosia to know so little of baking ingredients.”
C.J. made a pretense of sharing the joke, but despaired of what might happen should she make a similar slipup in front of a less devoted audience. Rather than call further attention to her ignorance, she elected to change the subject. After purchasing the sugar cone for Cook, C.J. removed the smudged list of grocery items from the deep pocket of her dress and reviewed its contents. “I suppose we should get the candles next, then, as they are nonperishable,” she suggested.
Mary stopped dead in her tracks. “Where did you get that?!” she asked in dumbfounded amazement.
“Does not Lady Wickham dictate a list to you when you go for her purchases?”
“Oh, noooo. She just tells me what to get, and I try best as I can to commit it to memory. If I get distracted and forget to bring somethin’ back, she beats me. But how did you come by a list?”
“I wrote it,” C.J. replied simply.
“I thought it was just somethin’ Lady Wickham made up so the magistrate would give ’er someone cheap to replace poor Fanny. You really can write?” the girl marveled, even more awestruck now.
“Can’t you?”
“Cor, no!” the scullery maid replied. “Can’t read neither. Same as Tony. Servants like us—we’re not expected to know our letters, though most of us know our numbers, seein’ as how we have to make purchases for the masters and mistresses. Besides,” she added, tugging at a lock of hair that had tumbled out from under her white mobcap, “who would teach us?”
Chapter Five
Wherein a secret is confided, cruelty exposed, evil confronted, and our heroine creates quite a stir.
AT MARY’S TENTATIVE REQUEST, C.J. began teaching her the alphabet. The latter was pleased to be able to accomplish something truly useful, and the former displayed a livelier mind and quicker aptitude for retention and comprehension than C.J. ever would have guessed, owing to the dull vacancy of the girl’s usual expression. Mary might never be clever in any extraordinary way, but since C.J.’s arrival, there was a brighter aspect to her eyes. The unfortunate turn of events that had brought C.J. to Lady Wickham’s spartan home on Laura Place had produced quite an unexpected result: for the first time in her life, C.J. felt responsible for another human being. A bond had been forged between the twenty-first-century actress and the illiterate nineteenth-century scullery maid. Through it, Mary was blossoming; and in some respects, so was C.J., and for this unusual renaissance, they were both grateful. If C.J. had made a conscious decision to look after Mary, she could not recall the moment it was fixed. In many ways, Mary fascinated C.J. The girl, most likely still in her teens, had never been encouraged or even expected to have an independent thought in her head and had not a bone in her body that was not the property of her employers, whereas C.J. came from a world where women had fought hard through litigation and legislation to be treated as free-thinking, equal members of society. Yet as each day passed, it became clearer that it was the unschooled Mary, and not C.J., the privileged and educated woman, who better understood the nature of their universe.
C.J. was mulling this over one evening as the two young women readied themselves for bed. Mary had slipped off her shift, and C.J., not meaning to watch her, couldn’t help but notice the thinness of the girl’s arms. How she could handle her menial drudgery with so fragile a form was remarkable, for she seemed to pick at her food whenever the servants gathered in the kitchen for meals.
“You should put some meat on your bones, girl,” C.J. said, trying to make light out of her worry that the maid might in fact be ill.
“Oh, I don’t like meat, Miss Welles.”
“You mistake my meaning, Mary. I mean you should eat more. You eat less than a gnat and you’re as thin as a rail.”
“But I did understand you, Miss Welles,” the girl replied obstinately. “I’m not plump like my sisters, and I know I’m not pretty like you. I shall never be otherwise unless I have a stronger appetite, but I never could bring myself to eat the flesh of the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. I look in their dead sad eyes when I’m sent to market and I can’t bring myself to take them home with me so they can be our supper.” C.J. listened quietly, wondering how many Georgians dared to be vegetarians by choice, as opposed to the happenstance of abject poverty. “That’s why I can never eat the mock turtle soup. Were you born in the countryside, Miss Welles?”
“No . . . I’m from a city . . . a very big city.” She was tempted to add, “ever so much bigger than Bath,” but feared becoming responsible for further elaboration.
“If you could see the mournful look in a calf’s brown eyes and see how gentle he is, and as innocent as a newborn, you would never stand for him havin’ his head chopped off just
