Mercedes Lackey - Fairy Godmother

And when she thought about how the flowers from her mother's grave had been crushed, the few things she could call her own left in ruins, her eyes burned and new sobs choked her —

"Ahem."

She squeaked and jumped, and cast startled eyes on the open doorway.

There was a man standing there. He stepped into the light, and she saw that it was Monsieur Rabellet. He carried a bundle under one arm, and his face was suffused with guilt.

"I am sorry, Ella," he said, flushing with shame when he caught sight of her tear-streaked face. "They were looking for valuables, and they started in on your room before I could stop them. It was the latecomers, you see, the ones who got nothing because — "

She sniffed, and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, but said nothing; she just stared at him, and let the tears come, weeping silently. She was not going to make this easy on him. If he'd cared to, he could have stopped them. He was a big man, only the blacksmith was bigger.

"At least I kept them from tearing up your clothes!" he protested, and flushed again. "At least — no more than they already were...." He coughed, and swallowed audibly as she fixed him with a look that she hoped would stab him to the heart and double his guilt. "The wife gave me a piece of her mind when she found out."

Well, Madame Rabellet had always been kind to Elena, who had given her the respect due to a fine craftswoman, and always been ready to lend a hand at the fittings, proving herself so useful that Madame Rabellet had never needed to bring her Apprentice-girl with her.

"Anyway, when she found out, she sent me back here with this — " The man took two steps forward into the room and thrust the bundle at Elena, who automatically put out her hands to take it from him. "She said it wasn't fair — said God gives blessings to the charitable — said — " He was backing up as he babbled, as if the accusations in her eyes were arrows, wounding him, and when he reached the door, he whirled, and fled, leaving her alone as his hasty footsteps on the floor and the staircase echoed through the empty rooms. She sat there, unmoving, until the slamming of the front door woke her from her shock.

She looked at the bundle in her hands. It was fabric — it was woolen, dyed a golden-brown. Not new, but sound, in good condition, and so far as she could tell, not stained, either. She unfolded it, to find that it was a large, plain shawl, and it was only the covering for a bundle of clothing.

A skirt, a blouse, and a bodice; like the shawl, the fabric was not new and the skirt and bodice had been re-dyed. The skirt was a heavy twilled linen, and there was a kerchief that matched, dyed a dark brown, the bodice was black, and the blouse a pale color that was not quite white. They all looked to have been made from much larger garments, cut down when the seams were too worn to hold, but the fabric itself was still good.

They were not patched, not torn, not darned. In fact, they were stoutly-sewn and well re-dyed. These were the sorts of things that a dressmaker assigned to a new Apprentice to make, simple garments to teach her to sew a "fine seam."

They were the best pieces of clothing that Elena had owned since her father had died. They were also exactly what she needed to carry out her plan.

When the rest of the town discovered — as it must, given that Madame Blanche and Madame Fleur were two of the most inveterate gossips in the Kingdom — that Elena had been left behind to live as best she could in the empty house, a few of the more guilt-stricken arrived to leave small offerings at her doorstep. Most she never saw; she heard footsteps on the path, and by the time she got to the front door, the gate was swinging shut and there was a basket or a bundle on the doorstep. In fact, except for Monsieur Rabellet, she didn't get much more than a glimpse of a skirt or a pair of legs.

But the offerings were welcome — indeed, desperately needed. A warm woolen shawl, a kitchen knife and a very old and very small frying pan, a loaf of bread, a ball of cheese, a blanket, a pat of butter, a pannikin of salt and a twist of tea. So she wouldn't go hungry tonight, nor cold. Madame Blanche completed the offerings in person, delivering a half dozen eggs and some bacon just as the sun began to set.

She found Elena on her knees at the hearth in the kitchen, getting the fire going again, and ready to toast some bread and cheese for her supper.

"Well!" she said, looking with approval at the food. "I was hoping someone would have a guilty conscience! Good." Her mouth firmed with satisfaction. "So, now the robbers have taken care of what you need for now, but have you thought about what you're going to do?"

Elena sat back on her heels and looked up at her kindly old neighbor. "I have, actually — I thought it up the day Madame told me that she and the girls were going. I just — " She shook her head. "I wanted to tell you, but Madame swore me to secrecy.

She told me that she was going to leave me here to look after the house, and that was when I made up my mind what I was going to do when she was truly gone."

"You did? Well, good for you!" Madame Blanche went out into the kitchen garden and came back with some bits of herbage pinched off the new growth in the herb bed. "Here you are, dear. Those will go nicely in coddled eggs. So, what are you going to do?"

She took a deep breath. "I'm going to leave. I'm going to leave here and never come back."

Madame Blanche blinked, as if she could not quite believe what she had just heard. "I don't suppose you would care to explain that?"

"Tomorrow is the Mop Fair," Elena elaborated. "Anyone who is looking for a servant is going to be there. And you said yourself that everyone in the town knows that I've done every bit of cleaning, mending and tending in this house for — years, anyway. I'm only a plain cook, but anything else, I can do."

"But — but you're not a servant!" Madame Blanche said, looking blank. "You're from a good family, Elena! Your poor mother — if she knew, she'd be weeping at the thought. It's one thing for me to do my own cooking, but — "

"I may not have been born a servant, but that's what I am now," Elena said firmly. "I'm too old to become an Apprentice in any decent trade even if I had the fee, so that is what I am good for now." She bit her lip, and continued, bitterly, "You know that's the truth, that it's all I'm good for, now. Madame Klovis saw to that; I have no dowry, no prospects, nothing to offer a young man but myself, and what young man would marry an old maid of twenty-one who brings him nothing but her two hands and a few housekeeping skills? Unless I dispute it, within days, the magistrates will turn this very house over to the creditors. Even if I do dispute it and win, what am I to do? It won't be long before Madame Klovis returns — for you surely don't think that she'll have any better luck elsewhere in her fortune hunting any more than I do — and I will be back to being her unpaid slave."

"Well," Madame Blanche said, blankly, "I suppose that all of that is true...."

"So there you are," Elena said, trying to sound determined, and not bleak. "This is my only chance to get away from her. And if I am going to have to spend the rest of my life, mending and tending and cleaning, then I am — by Heaven! — going to be paid for it!"

And at least I'll have three meals a day and two suits of clothing a year as well, she reminded herself. Every servant, no matter how lowly, was entitled to that and her bed and board and pay. It would be more than she had ever gotten out of Madame Klovis.

Madame Blanche took a deep breath, as if she was about to dispute Elena's view of the situation, then let it all out in a tremendous sigh. "I am afraid, my dear," she said sadly, "that you are correct. And you are a very brave girl."