The Faintest Ink (Watty Winner 2015)

Chapter Forty-Four

It was laundry day in Dakley, which meant that steam billowed out into the streets as every household boiled huge vats of water up in which to dunk all their dirty linens.

As the oldest, Blossom had been drafted in to help her mother with the agitator, a long wooden stick with what could have passed for a small milking stool stuck on the end. It was as tall as Ochre and almost as heavy as Madder, and so the two of them, mother and daughter, would take turns to stir the mixture of clothes, soap and boiling water.

"Time to switch," said Hope.

Blossom nodded. Her arms felt like they were on fire, and she thought she might faint if she had to stand another moment, leaning over the steaming cauldron.

Her mother held out her hand to her, and Blossom took it as she stepped down from the stool she was balancing on.

Pushing the damp hair off of her forehead, she wriggled her shoulders to loosen them before stepping over to the kitchen table, which was currently weighed down by those garments which needed a little extra attention. Mostly Ochre's britches by the looks of it, the knees coated in green stains and the pockets filled with some brown sticky substance which Blossom didn't want to contemplate the origins of.

She wiped her sweaty palms on her apron and picked up the soap, ready to tackle any stain which threatened to cling on even after the hot bath.

Despite it being the most exhausting task in their endless ritual of house cleaning, Blossom actually didn't mind doing the laundry. There was something magical about seeing the smelly clothes undergo hours worth of backbreaking work, only to emerge as sweet-smelling as a spring rose.

Blossom loved putting away the clean sheets, and burying her nose into them as she tucked them away in the trunk, and breathing in the scent of soap left between the threads.

As she contemplated the mysteries of the laundry room, while making a note of whose undergarments would need to be added to that evening's darning pile, she was startled by a knock on the front door. The wet soap slipped from her fingers and skittered onto the floor.

"Who can that be?" said Hope, resting the agitator against the side of the cauldron and stepping down off the stool.

"Do you want me to get it?"

"No," said her mother, pulling off her apron and checking her face in the tiny mirror she kept on the shelf. "You carry on with your work. And keep an eye on the fire. I won't be long."

Blossom crouched down to retrieve the soap from under the table and got on with working it into the stains, drawing circles around them and turning them into flowers and birds as she strained hard to hear what was happening upstairs.

She could hear her mother's voice, just about. And a man's.

That was odd. No tradesman would dare come round on laundry day. There wasn't a housewife in Dakley who wouldn't box their ears for taking them away from their duties.

Putting the soap down she edged her way to the steps and hopped up a few of them, pressing her ear against the door.

And then she heard it. The drum. The same one that had marched through the capital and woken everyone on her street in the middle of the night. With a cautious hand, she eased open the door and tried to get a good look.

Her mother was standing in the doorway, her hand holding onto the frame as if to block the way. Her woollen skirts were taking up most of the view, but Blossom could just about make out the flash of a military jacket, in the King's colours.

"You're mistaken. My oldest son is far too young to join the regiment. You must be thinking of someone else."

"Are you quite sure?" came the voice from the door.