The Treatment of the Lower Orders

The Treatment of the Lower Orders 2

The heat of the summer's day and the cold damp of winter did not reach the linen store. In the summer, it was Elias's favourite place to work. Only the lack of good light made the mending more difficult, and this she solved by always bringing a candle and flint. As seamstress's, they were allowed one good bee's wax candle a month. Such candles burned almost clean, unlike tallow with its evil stink and greasy smoke that would stain the good cloth.  

It was a seamstress job to keep the cloth clean while it was worked, so she kept herself clean. Her mother always said you could tell a good needlewoman by the cleanness of her person.

She tried not to think of her parents. The pain of their deaths was still fresh. Only she and her brother survived the Plague that summer four years past. Everything had changed then, she and he were left as friendless orphans.

From the well-loved children of the respectable and well-to-do apothecary, they had become outcast brats.

The Church took its share of her father's money and property, then the Sheriff took the rest for taxes.

No one had spoken up for them, not even her betrothed's father, who should have taken her part. He renounced the proposed wedding and affianced his son to the daughter of the miller instead.

Elias did not mourn the loss of her marriage prospect. Edward was dull-witted and like to run to fat as his father had.

But they had been lucky in some respects, her brother had been tutored by monks in Latin and Greek. At only ten, he was useful to the Church, so they took him.

She, though able to letter and calculate, was useful only as a serving wench. She found work in the kitchen of The Trip to Jerusalem Inn. A disreputable place, but it was shelter and food she needed, not a good reputation.

Soon, she did have a good reputation, as a mender of clothes. The whores always wanted their skirts repaired, a bodice tightened or let out, and she was good. Her stitches tidy and straight.

Sometimes they even paid her.

Elias kept herself small, slipping unnoticed about her work. Occasionally a drunken lout might accost her, but the other women would divert him, and she escaped. The landlord, too, was almost kind to her. He could have put her to work at serving or, worse, as a whore, but he kept her in the kitchen, and she would check the calculations in his ledger for him.

On her fifteenth birthday, she was sent for by the chatelaine of the castle. She was curious and a little afraid, but the women fussed and brushed her hair out of its usual thick unobtrusive plait and groaned at her too-childish kirtle and downcast eyes.

The chatelaine tutted at her loose-flowing hair, but she did seem pleased by the work she saw. The first seamstress was old and nearly blind, her gnarled hands unable to sew a good seam any more; younger eyes and hands were now needed.

She left to collect her few belongings from the Inn.

That was the moment she first saw him, and tried never to see him again.

That had been three years since.

Only there, in the linen store, did she feel safe now. There she could forget the life that had become hers. She could set about her work in the knowledge that, there at least, he would not pass and catch her unawares. Only maids, and seamstresses' came there.

It was a good place to hide.

The tension caused by the failure of Sir Guy's wedding was palpable. His rage sizzled and spat. The Sheriff teased and dug at the monstrous wound of his Master at Arms humiliation. Those with sense stayed out of reach. She had seen him vault from his horse as he returned from his efforts to find the Lady Marian. His face, rigid, the muscles clenched tight. She knew he would hurt whoever he could to assuage his pain and outrage. Hiding was her only protection.