Sara
The clucking and scratching of the hens outside my window woke me long before dawn. I breathed in the cool air, staring into the darkness, riding out the last of a dream that both puzzled me and left me aroused in a way I’d not known before.
The image of the dreamy, handsome, dark-haired man drifted still in my half sleepy state, and I fought the urge to run my hand down my body, the way he had done to me in my dream, to tuck my fingers between my thighs and rub away the clutching ache my dream lover had left behind.
I could almost still feel his warmth. The shiver as he touched me. The filthy words he had whispered in my ear that left me aching and my cheeks hot. I slipped my hand down my nightdress to where the tension tightened in my belly and battled this urge.
I stopped just above where the pulsing still lingered knowing my own hand could not give me the same tawdry feelings the mysterious man in my dreams had delivered.
Instead, I forced myself off the threadbare mattress that served as my bed, crossed the chilly darkness of my room in a single stride and lit the stubby remnants of last night’s tallow candle. The oily wick crackled, then settled to a dull glow. The bare slate stones were icy on my feet, and I shivered as I pulled my woolen shawl around my shoulders. It was a patchwork of colors after years of mending, but simple and worn as it was, I cherished it. It was a tapestry of my life, stitched together from what I could find to make something that was beautiful and almost whole.
Wrapping my arms around my body for warmth, I shuffled quickly out into the kitchen and awakened the smoldering embers in the fireplace with the poker. I added two heavy bricks of peat to the grate, and rubbed my hands in front of the low flames, then swept the errant ash around the hearth back into the glow of the coals.
Glancing at the neatly stacked pyramid of apple-wood logs to my left, I longed to put just one or two on as well. But I cast that foolish thought from my head. Roaring fires were expensive and were only to be lit when my mother, father, and sister were awake. No matter, my chores would be more than enough to warm me up even as I headed outside into the damp morning.
From a chipped crock that I kept in the woodshed, with a stone on top to keep out the mice, I took a few handfuls of feed and scattered it around the chicken run. The hens dove for the food, while the cock strutted back and forth along the fence line, waiting for dawn.
Mornings were my favorite time. The quiet, the calm, the orderly pace of the chores of the day. The way the dew gathered on the papery purple leaves of the thistle. I didn’t have much to myself, but I had my mornings under the wide sky and that was more than a girl like me had any right to ask for.
Sometimes, I wondered why I was so lowly. So much a cast-off in my family and this world. But, in the end, I knew wondering only turned to sorrow—and there was enough of that in my life already.
Instead, I raced happily and busily against myself to finish all that needed to be done before my family awoke.
Using the frigid well water, I scrubbed my sister’s frock, my father’s undershirts, and my mother’s nightclothes against the washboard until I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore. These I hung out on the drying line before warming my hands on the fresh eggs, nestled in each nesting box. I placed each egg carefully in a basket and set them aside to take to market.
Back in the kitchen, the fire had come back to life, driving away much of the night’s chill. I set about preparing a stew for later. I chopped the onions and carrots as quietly as I could, so as not to wake the house. To the stew I added a single lamb chop that I had gotten from the butcher the day before—an extravagant treat that he gave me in exchange for only a few eggs.
The rheumy old butcher always squinted and told me I had the prettiest eyes in the land; that one glance at them, even with his failing sight, was enough to keep him satisfied to the end of his days.
“Aye, like the first queen’s eyes, they are,” he would say, somehow the wrinkles around his mouth both sad and happy at once. “I knew her, you know. Butcher to the royal household for many a year before the new queen insisted on choosing her own staff. But emerald eyes like that, lass…they could bring down kingdoms.”
When I heard my family stirring, I quickly tidied the kitchen to erase all the evidence that I’d been up and about for so many hours. My family was never happy with me it seemed, but they in their own way didn’t want evidence of how hard I worked while they slept. I placed the lid on the pot of their breakfast porridge slightly off center, so they could smell the cinnamon and cloves that steamed up from the oats. Then I put one thick log on the fire before hurrying to my room and shutting the door behind me, careful not to let the latch click too loudly.
Though they never said out-right that they preferred to wake up without my face being the first one they saw, I could tell as much from a look or a sigh. Although over the last year or so, my father had started being nicer to me than he ever had before. Well, not exactly nice.
Different. More attentive.
I’m sure most girls would have enjoyed the change in their fortunes, but I tried to avoid him even more. He had always looked after himself, first and foremost. And it made me wonder what it was that he wanted.
In my room, I brushed my hair as best I could, staring in the gloom into a small bowl of water from the well, as I always did, in an attempt to see myself. My mother and father refused to spend money on such frivolities as mirrors and looking glasses, not for me. Nobody would care to see me anyway; I had long since grown accustomed to acting and feeling like an invisible girl. The rest of my family had brown hair, but mine was jet black—my mother said it made me less pleasing to the eye than my sisters, and kept me out of sight whenever there was company.
My sisters, two now married off and one still at home, all had birthday suppers and I remembered them all, since I was the one that had made their special pastries and always cleaned up after the celebrations from an age far too young to handle such duties.
But as for me, I wasn’t even totally sure of my age. I thought I must be close to being nearly eighteen, though when I asked my parents simply grunted some irritation and sent me on my way.
I changed out of my shawl and night things into my plain homespun shift dress, a hand-me-down from my eldest sister. While Bridget, my one sister who still remained at home, was given occasional gifts of new fabric with which to make herself attractive dresses, I could never hope for such things.
Beautiful clothing was not for me, my mother assured me. And, looking down at my hips and curves beneath the shift dress, so boxy and homely and plain, I knew she was right. Even so, the dress wasn’t entirely without its charms. I’d added embroidered flowers down the side of the skirt, and a little lace at the collar, along with nipping in the waist, just a little, to make the most of the unshapely figure God had given me. Doing so had drawn poisoned glances from my mother and Bridget, but so long as I kept mostly to myself, so far they hadn’t insisted that I undo my changes.
Once I knew my family was out of the kitchen, I quietly left my room and tied my apron around my waist. I grabbed the basket of eggs to trade at market, and dropped a few coins I had saved from making corn husk dolls and selling them on my trips to market without my father or mother being the wiser into my pockets, then made for the front door. There stood my father waiting for me, smiling and a knot in my stomach formed.