Patrick deWitt - Undermajordomo Minor

She paused to look across at him.

“Why did you bring me my cap?” he asked.

Her eyes hooded when he asked this, as though she thought he wasn’t playing fair by bringing it up.

“Why did you?” he persisted.

“You seemed to think we didn’t like you,” she said. “I wanted to show you we did.”

“But that’s all this is,” he told her, folding back the wrapping.

She drew a hand across the cape’s collar. “It’s too dear.”

“Who’s to say, though?” Lucy took up the cape and stood, holding it out before him. “Won’t you try it on, at least?”

“I shouldn’t,” she said.

“Please,” said Lucy.

“I can’t.”

Memel’s voice called out from next door: “Cease torturing the boy, already.”

“And us,” Mewe added.

“Try on the cape,” said Memel.

“It’s obvious you want to.”

At this, Lucy and Klara both went red in the face; but their self-consciousness soon gave way to stifled laughter. Lucy relocated his courage and approached Klara with the cape; when she stood, he rested the garment on her shoulders, and now she wrapped herself up in it, moving to the mirror in the corner of the shanty that she might admire herself. Lucy followed and stood behind her, watching her face, her pleased expression, and then his own. Closing his eyes, he was run through with a streak of pure happiness, for now he knew he truly was in the midst of an intrigue, just as Mr Olderglough had said. When he opened his eyes, Klara was watching him in the mirror with a look of fondness or perhaps, for all he knew, something more than that.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” he answered.

“How does it fit?” Memel asked.

Lucy awoke to the sound of the area war. Sitting up in his bed, he trained his telescope over the mountain’s face and to the pivot of the battleground. He took an idle pleasure in witnessing the birth of the cloud-puffs, these “rudely bloomed” (the phrase had ambled into Lucy’s mind) then thinned by the wind, only to be replaced by yet more puffs when the following volley occurred. He could make out the soldiers’ movements but not their faces, and this was preferable to him. From this distance it all seemed something more like an elaborate stage play than actual combat — some ambitious recreation of a factual happening.

He worked all that morning assisting Agnes in the cleaning of the larder and ovens, then chopping and stacking wood through to lunchtime, but with his afternoon free, he wandered into the village. He had his pipe with him, the pipe he’d yet to master; it smouldered and had to be relit time and again, but no sooner had he done this than the wind would shift and hurry the smoke up his nose or into his eyes. Coughing, and with tears skating down his face, he put the pipe away. The puppy sat in his coat pocket, as before, taking in the sights with interest.

Lucy saw Klara standing in the marketplace, showing off her cape to a half-dozen village women, a meaty group of red-faced peasants turning her about as they studied the garment. Klara was smiling with pride as they handled and rotated her. Lucy stepped nearer, and now he could make out their conversation.

“And what does master Adolphus think of it?”

“Do I know any Adolphus?” Klara asked innocently, looking this way and that. “I see no Adolphus around here.”

“And how long has he been gone this time?”

Klara threw her hands up in the air. “Bah!” she said. Lucy entered into the group and Klara, beaming, told the others, “Here, now. This is the gentleman who brought the cape.”

The women swarmed Lucy, grinning devilishly, prodding him with stubby digits and speaking of him as though he weren’t there at all:

“What are his intentions, do you think?”

“Will he give her a ring next, I wonder?”

“Adolphus will rip this one in two.”

“Clean in two, I should think.”

“Will he buy me a cape? You can plainly see the state I’m in.”

They slapped at Lucy’s back, laughing and congratulating him for his boldness. He smiled weakly but said nothing; he didn’t suppose there was one among them he could better in a fair fight. Once they dispersed, Lucy was left alone with Klara, and these two stood awhile, looking at each other. Winter sunlight spilled across her face; Lucy’s vision smudged and blurred.

“Would you walk with me, Klara?” he asked.

“Yes, I’d like that,” she answered, and they fell into line, stepping through the marketplace, neither of them knowing just what to say. When Klara spied the puppy in Lucy’s pocket, she took her up to hold her, asking Lucy what she was called. He explained the name hadn’t arrived yet, and now Klara grew thoughtful, peering at Lucy from the corner of her eye. “Perhaps you might name her after your sweetheart, wouldn’t you think?”

“I suppose I could,” he said. “Only, I don’t have a sweetheart.”

“Oh no?”

“I did have one, once. Marina, she was called.”

“That’s a pretty name. And whatever became of her?”

Lucy watched his breath horseshoe in the wind. An unpardonable lie came to him, and he clapped his hands to welcome it into the world. “If I’m to tell you the truth of it,” he said, “she died.”

“Oh, no,” said Klara. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“Yes, thank you.”

“But how did she die?” Klara asked. “That is, if you don’t mind talking about it.”

Lucy held up his hand. “I don’t mind at all.”

“You’re certain?”

“I don’t mind in the least. Which isn’t to say I enjoy talking about it.”

“Of course not.”

He cleared his throat. “Yes. Well. We were happy enough, Marina and I — in our modest fashion. But then she got it in her mind to marry, and when I wouldn’t go along with this, she became so distraught about it that she killed herself.”

Klara gasped. “Oh, but that’s dreadful!”

“It was a sorry occasion,” Lucy agreed.

“And why wouldn’t you marry her?”

“She was not my own true love,” he stated simply.

“But you were hers?” Klara ventured.

“I suppose I was. As a matter of fact, I can state that I surely was, for she told me this many times over. So, when she came to understand I would never be hers alone, then did she hang herself — and from a tree before my own house.”

Klara covered her mouth; Lucy nodded sympathetically.

“Perhaps worst of all,” he continued, “she had pinned a note to her dress, a note addressed to me, but which all the citizens of the town read before I had a chance to. In this way, all were made to know the finest details of her ruination.” Here Lucy paused, as if the memory were too much a burden to recall.

Klara laid a tender hand on his forearm. “Is this why you’ve come here?” she asked. “To get away from the memory of it?”

“That’s partly the reason, yes.”

“Only partly? I would think that would be reason enough, all on its own.”

“Yes, surely it would be. But then the matter was compounded by another unpleasant element, this in the shape of a local man, named Tor. He had always been after Marina, but he was such a stupid and ugly and sickening individual that she rebuffed him at every pass. This ate at Tor like a rot; then, once she had hung herself, for another man no less, Tor swore an oath to all who would listen that he would avenge her honour.”

“By coming after you, do you mean?”

“Just that.”

“And did he do this?”

“Yes, he was a man of his word, I won’t deny it. In fact, hardly any time passed at all before he broke into my house and came upon me like a storm while I slept.”

“While you slept!”