Jarvit

Jarvit Ch3 p1

Chapter Three

Jarvit you must get out of this house.

         He nodded to himself as he sat crossed legged on the floor of the dry store rubbing black polish into one of D’Braggatio’s fine leather shoes. It was now one of his jobs to clean all the boots or shoes and he hated brushing the expensive velvet shoes D’Braggatio favoured. Jarvit sighed, since his arrival in Simmon Bury, Lord D’Braggatio’s main house just outside the town, Jarvit had been put under Edwerd’s supervision and given all the menial jobs. He had hoped that things would improve for him away from magistrate Hep’s, but there were just two things that made life bearable. One was that he had his own room even though it was opposite the toilet. The other was Silva, the under maid.

         There were a lot of things Jarvit didn’t want to hear, among them was people using the toilet at night. The walls were plaster lath and he could hear too much of that. He could also hear Edwerd snoring in the room next door to him, but that he counted as a blessing as it meant the overbearing bully was not about to make his life miserable at that time.

         Jarvit had longed to be free from Ludhigh and now he longed to be free from Simmon Bury. He rubbed hard to bring a shine to a riding boot he had waxed earlier, trying to think how he could get out unnoticed and why it was he was not allowed outside the manorial grounds anyway.

         ‘Where do you come from lug worm?’ D’Braggatio had demanded more than once during Jarvit’s first week in the house. A sharp pain across his ear as though he had been slapped, though D’Braggatio did not even move, taught Jarvit that ‘Ludhigh’ and ‘Hep’s’ were not the answer sought.

         ‘I don’t know sir, I’ve always been at Hep’s since I can remember,’ had been an answer that was accepted but Jarvit sensed D’Braggatio was not convinced. Each day during that first week Jarvit had been taken to D’Braggatio’s office by Edwerd and been questioned about his past. Why he had been at Magistrate Hep’s, where he was from and did he remember his parents?

            Jarvit was aware of the idea of having parents. He could not recall ever having had any of his own. He wondered why it was so important, why had magistrate Hep sent him to Sudlow’s on his own that day and what was in those scrolls about him?

         ‘Never leave the house boy, except for the rear courtyard. Don’t wander off to the farm, never answer the door or look out into the street. Disobey and – well you know what I can do.’ D’Braggatio had menaced.  Jarvit was then taken back to the servants’ wing, jerked along through the Hall by Edwerd. There he was put back to his menial tasks, washing dishes, cleaning boots, scrubbing the floor. It was the same as being with Hep except that D’Braggatio scared him more and he dared not misbehave. The image of the deaths of Sudlow and his clerk haunted even his dreams.

         Think of Silva.

Silva had become Jarvit’s friend as soon as he was first sent to the kitchen. She was slightly older than Jarvit. He liked the look of her at once with her mousy brown hair that she tried to keep back behind her ears and blue eyes but that would send stray tendrils over her face. Silva made a point of showing him around. She told him where things were and about the other servants in the house.

         ‘Edwerd is a stuck up bullying idiot. His father is one of the town elders, one of D’Braggatio’s pocket politicians.’

         ‘Pocket politician?’ Jarvit queried.