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She took the tray from my hands, and set it on her laps.
“Mi lady,” I said, and turned away as she got right down to her meal.
“What is your name?” she said just as I got to the door. I froze in my steps, my heartbeat racing again at an escape rudely terminated.
“Mi lady?”
“I meant, by what name are you called?” she said.
“El-el-Eleanor, mi lady,” I stammered.
“Come over here, come keep me company.”
“Mi lady?”
“Do not speak to me with your back turned, and I asked you to come keep me company,” she said.
Tears rose to my eyes, but I blinked them away as I turned. I was certain that this was
it; this was the end. I would go to her, and she would steal my soul, and I would die. Still, I went to her—inching slowly as I did—for I did not know to do anything else.
“My, my, how frightened you look. So dreadfully pale,” she said. I could hear the laugh in her voice. It was only proper, I reckoned. A mouse, once caught in a cat’s paw had no say in the matter if he chose to make it his plaything.
“I reckon I must be a bit of a Lady Bathory to you.”
“Mi Lady?”
“I steal the souls of little girls, maidens, don’t I?” she said.
My eyes must have looked like mice holes as they drew wide in horror. Somehow she had known, somehow she must have seen the thoughts that were rolling through my head, and she must have been angry for being so slandered, and I realized I had to tell her that the thoughts were not actually mine, but malicious spiteful things I had her from my fellow servants, and I was nearly done spilling out all their names and what they had said before even this realization was done.
“Easy, easy, child,” she said, laughing uncontrollably at something I had said, when she should have been furious. “I am sure if the girls were to find out how very easy you were made to spill the beans, they would not speak with you anymore. My, my, I did not mean to frighten you this much—and I haven’t even started.”
I just stood there, feeling like a fool which I most definitely was. I could neither quite understand what had just happened nor why she was taking things so mildly, for that matter. If Lady Patricia, in whose service I had been before coming to Stonehall, were in her shoes, she would have rounded up all the servants and whipped up a storm by now.
“Come here, child, I want to look at you,” she said.
I wiped my face and walked right to her. It might be odd, but it seemed that so thoroughly unburdened of the weight of the whispers of my fellow servants, I became light footed as I went to her.
“Sit,” she said, and I glanced around for a stool on which to sit, but she pushed the veil even wider open and put the tray aside, pulling up her legs to make space for me.
“Here.” She patted the space on the bed before her. There was such kindness in her almond eyes and warmth in her smile that I did not even question if indeed this was some trap to get me punished for assuming too much. I sat on the bed.
“There. Eleanor. That is your name, is it not?” she said. And though I could not see, for I was looking straight ahead and away from her, I could tell that she was looking at me, staring as one would a curiosity.
“It is,” I said. “My name is Eleanor.”
“And it is a beautiful name for one so fair,” she said.
My cheeks grew hot immediately that mi lady, herself, should pay such a compliment to me. She, who was so divine and so graceful. Even now, I can still smell her. She smelled of roses of the garden, like she bathed in them every evening. I have since come to learn that ladies of such wealthy houses do in fact partake in such fanciful things—wasteful of the things that edifies God.
“Tell me, Eleanor; do you like apples?” she said.
There it was; the trap so artfully set had sprung, and I was caught. I could either tell the truth, which she definitely already knew, or I could tell a lie, and risk her sore displeasure.
“Come on, I still remember how fondly you looked to the trees the day that you were brought here,” she said. Looking at them was not all I had done to those trees since the day of my arrival, but she already knew that. I chose not to think of the issue of what Henry, the stable boy, had begun to do to me by those trees; which is to say that I did think of it, but quickly drew away from the thought for fear that she would see it in my mind.
“I do, mi lady. I do like apples,” I said.
