Patrick deWitt - Undermajordomo Minor

Here Agnes’s mind would set to turning, and she would ask, “Do you think we might do with less pepper, sir?”

“Excellent idea, Agnes — and just as you say, why not try it?”

So, Agnes would recreate the stew, halve the pepper, the dish would become suddenly edible, the Baron would proclaim her a genius, and she would float about in a cloud of pride and adoration all the rest of the day.

The man was charm personified, in other words, and Lucy was unabashedly in awe of him.

On the evening prior to the Baroness’s arrival, Lucy watched from his window as the Baron roamed about in the field separating the castle and village. He walked for long moments with a still face, his hands behind his back, but then began murmuring to himself, then speaking, and with increased animation, gesturing this way and that, a sly smile on his face. Lucy recognized that the Baron was imagining he was with the Baroness, and practising the things he would say to her. At one point he drew his hand to his mouth, searching for some suitably clever phrase, perhaps; upon locating it, then giving voice to it, his eyes grew bright with pleasure. Lucy found a commiserative affinity for the man growing in his heart, and was made apprehensive by this fact. For if love had so degraded a personage of the Baron’s powers, what might it do to him? Folding up his telescope, he pushed the thought from his mind. It was too unsettling to regard directly.

On the appointed day and at the appointed hour, the Baron stood on the platform awaiting the return of the Baroness Von Aux. His hair was combed severely and his expression was severe, and the flowers he held in his hand were gripped with severity, fixed as he was in fevered expectation. Mr Olderglough was sombre; he stood beside the Baron, and Lucy beside Mr Olderglough. They were each of them looking straight ahead, beyond the tracks and into the unpeopled, forested lands. It felt as though the train were late, this because it was.

“She herself has held it up,” muttered the Baron.

“Oh, sir, come now,” said Mr Olderglough. “Why would she do that? And how would she, even.”

“She has found a way — just to niggle the wound. And I’ll wager that when she does arrive, she’ll have some handsome young valet at her side.”

“She would never, sir.”

“Wouldn’t she? You forget the fiasco with Broom.”

“I have forgotten nothing. But I don’t see the purpose in making such assumptions before we’ve set eyes on her. It is a new day, sir.”

“It is a day like any other.”

“It is a fine and clean and just-born day. There has never been a day quite like today.”

“Bah,” said the Baron, and he stepped away to privately putter.

Lucy asked Mr Olderglough, “What were the circumstances of Mr Broom’s departure, did you say, sir?”

“I didn’t say.”

“Would you say now?”

Mr Olderglough made a pained face. “A wickedness took hold of him, so that his position became untenable. He tried to shed the wickedness, and I also tried to help him in this. Alas, at day’s end there was nothing to be done about it.”

“But how did he die, sir?”

“He fell down the Very Large Hole,” said Mr Olderglough, this stated as though it were elementary.

“A very large hole,” Lucy said.

“ The Very Large Hole, yes.” Mr Olderglough turned and pointed to the loping hills beyond the castle. “There’s only the one. Though one is enough, I should think. Just ask Mr Broom, eh?” He shook his head. “It was a poor ending for the boy. I was sorry about it. I had hopes for him. Ah, but his greeds and desires got away from him, as greeds and desires are wont to do.” Mr Olderglough chuckled. “I’ve just had a recollection, boy. Would you like me to share it?”

“All right.”

“I don’t want to force it on you.”

“No, I’d like to hear, sir.”

“Very well. I was but a lad, sitting at the breakfast table with my father. Unbeknownst to him, I’d taken and eaten the last sausage, knowing it was his by rights, for I’d already had my fill. When he saw the empty plate, he looked at me and said, ‘Some wear greed as a fine suit of clothes. But you, my son, bear its stamp ever more poorly.’ Now, what do you think about that?”

“I don’t know what to think, sir.”

“Do the words not resonate with you?”

“Not so very much, I don’t think.”

“They did with me. And after he said it, I remember, he stuck me with a fork.”

“With a fork, sir?”

“Jabbed me, really. I don’t mean to imply the fork was horizontal to my flesh. It was more a punctuation of the thought than actual physical torture. Father was a performer in that way.”

At the far end of the platform, the Baron was speaking plaintively into the air. Lucy watched him awhile, then turned back to Mr Olderglough. “I can’t imagine your having a mother or father either, actually, sir.”

“No? Perhaps you think I was hatched from an egg, eh? And perhaps I was — I’ll never tell, boy.” He bent his ear. “Did you hear a choot?”

“A what, sir?”

“A choot.”

“Is that a type of bird?”

“It is the sound the train makes. Choot, choot. ”

The train was indeed approaching, and the Baron returned to stand beside Lucy and Mr Olderglough. The flowers were trembling in his hand and he said, “I’ve gone all shivery, Myron.”

“Think of the glad times you’ve passed with her, sir. She is still that same fresh young woman you courted those many years ago.”

“If only that were so, I shouldn’t have a care in the world.”

As the train pulled into the station, the Baron cast the flowers into its wheels and screeching machinery; the three men watched as the petals were consumed. When the train came to rest, they were drowned in surging clouds of steam, and they each of them closed their eyes.

The Baroness’s disembodied voice was deeper and richer than Lucy would have thought it might be. There was nothing masculine about it, but it possessed a weight at its centre — it cut the air and carried itself.

“Will no one help me down, I wonder?”

A smart wind reared and drew past, yanking the steam clouds away, and there she was, in the crisp blue air at the top of the stair, in black and shining fur, her hand outstretched, gloved and likewise black. Her face was sublimely beautiful, and yet there was a darkness residing in her eyes, a cold remove, and Lucy knew that the woman in the painting was not she who stood before them. Whereas the woman in the painting was filled with a humble grace, this person had been corrupted clean through. Lucy was afraid of her, and made no move in her direction; and so was the Baron stuck fast. Finally Mr Olderglough stepped across to receive her, leading her down the steps to stand before the Baron on the platform.

At the start these two stared at each other, saying nothing, and without so much as shaking hands. The Baroness was a portrait of restraint: her thoughts and feelings were mysterious, and she watched her mate with her chin held at a tilt. The Baron managed to mimic her composure for a brief time, but soon his facade began to twitch, and at last he came apart, consumed by naked emotion. Weeping grotesquely, he dropped to his knees, gripping the Baroness about her legs, heaving and sobbing and acting as one oblivious to opinion and utterly without shame. The Baroness did not have an immediate reaction; she merely observed, and with a half-interest. As the scene played out, however, then did her features take on a softer light, and now she removed a glove to stroke the Baron’s head. Bending down, she whispered some encouragement into his ear, and he nodded, standing stiffly and re-establishing or attempting to re-establish his dignity.