The Chronicle of Aurelia Aurelius

Chapter 30 First Day at Palace II

            Lady Clara and Lady Hillaria led me to leave the room, followed by the guard behind me. Outside the room, Flavia was already in front of the room, waiting for me. She walked to me and asked me..

"May I know, where are you going, my lady??"
Clara and Hillaria were surprised. Clara said, "Is she your personal maid, Lady Aurelia?"
I answered them, "No...she is not my personal maid...she is one of the palace's servants, who got ordered to be my maid, while I was here...." I turned my face to Flavia and said, "These ladies are leading me to tea time."

"Tea time, may I prepare that for you??"

"Thanks for that, but I don't know the place; you may ask them.."
Flavia walked toward them, and I saw Clara say something to her...Flavia immediately excused herself and told me that everything would be prepared when we went there. As she walked away from us, Clara said to me,

"You are really a special one, Lady Aurelia..."

I asked, "What do you mean by that?"
"You have special treatment from the palace; they allowed you to have a guard behind you; now they gave you one of their servants to serve you..."

"Are people here allowed to bring their own servant?"
"Yes, we are allowed, but there is a restriction inside this hall; only servants from the palace are allowed to be in this building, so my personal maid can't be here..."

"And now where is she?"

"She is in the garden with the others...usually she will prepare tea time..."

"Our tea time will be in the garden.."
"Yes...It is so spacio—"

Suddenly, I saw Hillaria lightly push Clara's right arm with her elbow..

Clara said, "It seems Lady Hillaria is impatient to have tea time with you, Lady Aurelia...so may we continue to walk there?"

We continued to walk. Arriving at the garden, it was so spacious. There were some pavilions in the garden; under them were a table and some chairs. There were a lot of ladies nobles with their maids in here, some of the pavilions already occupied by them.

Clara said, "Now let's search for our spot..." She was looking around and finally found it: "There it is........" She pointed at it and said, "And my maid is in there too, with Lady Hillaria's maid..."

I looked in the direction she pointed and noticed that everything was more lavish than the other pavilions. We walked toward it. While we were walking there, I felt a lot of staring from the ladies in here, but most of their stares focused on the guard behind me...

Arriving at the place, Flavia prepared my seat, and the other maids prepared their seats. We each took our seats. After we took a seat, for a few seconds, there was silence between us. Lady Clara had a small cough and looked at me...I didn't know what her signal or her meaning was..More seconds of silence passed by, and Lady Clara said to me,

"Apologize, Lady Aurelia... But you need to start the tea time with a small bite or small drink, so we can enjoy it..."

"I am the one who started it? But are Lady Clara and Lady Hillaria the ones who invited me here?"

"Well, there are a number of rules, so Lady Aurelia needs to start them first.."

"Rules???"

"The lower peerage rank will not take a single bite or a single drop of the tea, unless the highest peerage rank in the table takes it first. In this table, Lady Aurelia is the highest one, so Lady Hillaria and I are waiting for you to take it first."