Patrick deWitt - Undermajordomo Minor

She drew back her blanket and sat on the edge of the bed, her bare feet hovering above the floor. A shiver travelled up her spine, and she yawned, and asked, “What is your aim, here, exactly?”

“I have no one aim, ma’am, other than to perform my duties agreeably. In regards to the present moment, my hope is that you’ll forgive me my imposition.”

“It seems likely that I will.”

“That’s my hope.” He held up the tray. “Where would you like me to put this?”

The Baroness didn’t answer, having drifted into some private mood, gazing dreamily at the wall, or through it. Lucy set the tray on a side table and said, “If you don’t mind my saying, ma’am, it’s good that you’ve come.”

“Good for whom?” said the Baroness absently.

“For everyone.”

“I don’t know about that.” She came away from her reverie and turned to Lucy with an expression of amusement, as though he had said something humorous.

“What is it, ma’am?”

“I don’t know what,” she said. “I just felt so happy all at once. Strange.” She touched the pads of her fingers to her fine, pale forehead. There was something in this small gesture which startled Lucy; and he suddenly understood how this person could drive a man like the Baron to the depths to which he had recently sunk.

Lucy wished to mark this understanding of her powers, to comment upon it. He said, “You’re just as Mr Olderglough claimed, ma’am.”

She slid off the tall bed and moved to sit on the bench before her vanity mirror. “Is that so,” she said, her ribboned hair halfway down her back. “And just how did he describe me, I wonder.”

“He said that you were a light in a dark place.”

She was stealing glances at herself, from this side and that; and now she studied her face directly. What entered into a beautiful woman’s mind when she considered her reflection? Judging by her expression, she was not thinking in admiring terms. “Anyway, it is dark here,” she told him. Taking up her tresses in both hands, and in an uninterrupted corkscrewing motion, she coiled and stacked her hair into a tidy pile atop her head; and pressing the bun down with her left hand, she pinned it in place with her right. Lucy had never before seen such effortless feminine pruning, and was impressed by the seamless brutality of it. The Baroness was watching him in the mirror. “So we’re to be friends, you and I, is that right?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“All right, then, friend. Bring that tray over here and feed me while I get ready.”

Lucy thought she had merely been acting playful in saying this; but as she sat by expectantly, now he saw that she was serious, and so he did as she asked, taking a seat beside her and feeding her fruit and porridge and sips of tea while she appraised her face, altering it here and there with creams and powders and colouring, these set out neatly before her in jars and canisters and spray-bulb bottles. Lucy enjoyed his feeding her to the utmost; there was in her eyes a sorrow so profound that it invoked a drop in his stomach. He had no wish to protect her from it, or alleviate it, as he did with Klara; he merely wanted to witness it, and to recall it later when he was alone. He admired her in the way one might admire an avalanche, and his mind meandered, for he was intoxicated by his nearness to so rare a person as she. At a certain point he realized the Baroness was pinching the top of his hand.

“Did you hear what I asked you, Lucy?”

“I didn’t, no.”

“I asked if you might accompany me on a walk later.”

“Yes, ma’am. And where shall we walk to?”

Her eyes became distant. “I will lead the way,” she told him, then asked him to leave, that she might dress for the occasion. Afterwards Lucy stood in the hall outside her door, staring in wonderment at the smarting red smudge on his hand.

The Very Large Hole was very, very large. From the moment Lucy saw it he was made apprehensive by its existence, for all about them was solid earth, and then this gaping and godless emptiness, and he felt he couldn’t credit it. It shouldn’t be called a hole at all, he decided, but a chasm, a canyon. He and the Baroness circumnavigated the expanse, walking together but saying nothing, the both of them eyeing the void as if something were meant to occur there. This created a tension of expectation in Lucy, so that when a bird shot free of the hole and into the sky, he flinched. The Baroness gripped his arm to hearten him, but Lucy couldn’t rid himself of the thought of Mr Broom’s demise, so that he mistrusted the ground to hold them. “Perhaps we shouldn’t walk so near the edge, ma’am,” he said.

“And why not?”

“I’m thinking of Mr Broom’s accident.”

She looked at him pityingly. “But there was nothing accidental about that.”

Lucy felt sickened at the thought of it. “How can you be sure?”

“I knew him well enough,” said the Baroness. Cheerily, then, as one making teatime conversation, she asked, “Do you yourself ever think of suicide?”

Lucy pondered this. “No more than what is customary, ma’am.”

The Baroness looked on approvingly. “That is a stylish reply.”

“Thank you.”

They stepped into a bank of sunlight, and she ceased walking to bask in this. She shut her eyes and Lucy could see the miniature cluster of pale blue veins branching across her eyelids.

“And do you ever think of it?” he asked.

“Mmm,” was her answer. She opened her eyes. “It’s such an odd sensation, being back among you. I was so certain I’d never return.”

“But why did you leave here at all, ma’am?”

“Oh,” she said, “they were becoming impossible.”

“Who was?”

“The Baron. And Mr Broom.”

She pointed at a patch of lush grass some distance back from the hole. “This is where Mr Broom and I would come,” she said, and she sat, pulling Lucy down with her. Looking about, she seemed to be recalling the time she had passed there, and fondly.

“May I ask what the nature of yours and Mr Broom’s relationship was, ma’am?” said Lucy.

She answered, “He was my young man, of course.”

“And what was it that drove him to such despair?”

Here she grinned impishly, but said nothing. Reaching down, she plucked a dandelion and blew away its seeds. These travelled on the air and over the Very Large Hole, where they were caught in its drafts. They drew up in staggered ascension, then hurried down, nearly out of sight, before climbing up, up again. This cycle went on for some time, and was a hypnotic thing to witness. When a downdraft yanked the seeds out of sight, the Baroness gasped. She asked, “How long has it been since I’ve been surprised by anything?”

“I don’t know, ma’am.”

“Far too long.” Pulling up a shock of grass, she said, “The guests will be here soon, Lucy.”

“Are you not happy about it, ma’am?” For when she’d spoken, there was in her voice some element of unease.

“I don’t know what I am,” she told him. The green blades of grass were slipping from her hand, and she and Lucy watched this.

“Why have you returned, ma’am?”

The Baroness shook her head. Leaning in, she kissed Lucy’s cheek, then stood and resumed walking, alone now, adrift in her strange and terrible beauty.

On the morning of the guests’ arrival, Mr Olderglough had taken Lucy aside and told him, “I will look after the Duke and Duchess, and you will mind the Count and Countess. Is that quite all right with you, boy?”

Lucy answered that it was, but it struck him as curious, for Mr Olderglough had never positioned an instruction in so accommodating a manner before. “May I ask why you prefer the Duke and Duchess to the Count and Countess?” he said.