I did not see him for days even if he roamed the halls of the manor.
At night his pacing I could hear, and I would fall asleep to it. At times his hushed mumbling I thought I would hear but it was my mind tricking me. The walls would laugh at me every time I would sit up wondering if my master was outside of my door. I had asked for a fair distance, and for him, he believed it was fair the distance he had placed.
I was scrubbing the floors in the hall leading to the tea room. It had been a particular cold day that day, and for I was at the top of the manor the heat was not prominent. I shivered every time my hand entered the water that had become ice cold, and I watched my red fingers turn white as I scrubbed as hard as I could. It was the only thing I could do to keep my mind off of things, the more I wanted to clean, the more my mind was concentrated upon it. We women have a special ability to have a mind that is besieged with thoughts that do not let us close our eyes, so we find a passion in somethhing and we learned to make it all become a distant thought. I had learned it from my mother, who every time papa would leave would begin to cook endlessly or clean. She even forbade us to clean our rooms once, it was why we were so free of any charge. We never ached, not as my mama's heart did when papa left.
The doors at the end of the hall had opened, and I looked up to see him standing in front of them looking at me. I quickly got up, and curtsied.
"Master." I said, and he said nothing as he began to walk towards me. I could not return to what I was doing, it was disrespectful, but it was more uncomfortable for me to stand in the hall alone with him.
When he walked passed me as if I were nothing, I felt melancholy seige me entirely. He was treating me like a true maid, but what was he treating me before? The thought made me utterly confused, and I did not enjoy it at all. I was being treated as I asked for, with a fair distance. Something I detested of myself for asking. But he stopped when he opened the door, and my eyes averted up from the ground.
"You are done with this, your hands do not need to fall off of your wrist like ice in a raining winter night. Come to my office, I need it cleaned." I smiled as the door shut behind him. His office was empty when I entered, making me frown and sigh as I walked passed his desk and towards the curtains. When he was not sitting in his desk or reading, I would take time to move each curtain aside and clean the window glass and the white border from it's dust. It had been a difficult fall, the wind had blown dirt and pieces of leaves to every crevice of the house.
Once I cleaned the first window and left its border as white as it could be, I placed the curtain back in place and begun the next window. It was a rather quick, but the dust, the dust was wreaking havoc upon my nose and eyes. When I halted to rub my eyes, I could not have seen what was to occur next. As soon as my cloth touched the window, the most frightening thing occurred. The window I had just cleaned shattered, I screamed as I fell back and saw the black bird struggling in the broken pieces of glass. I could not move, my heart had stopped, I was sure of it. The door opened and the master ran in closing it behind him.
"Are you alright?" He asked as he fell unto his knees and grasped my arms. "Bryony." I nodded but pointed to the bird that no longer moved. It's dark eyes open, and it's beak broken in half. It's wings were in a positions that made me scour, it's blood was dark around it's feathers that scattered around it. He sighed and closed his eyes as he let go of me. "Damned it be." He whispered.
I attempted to get up, and with his help I stood. I was now the one holding his hands to steady myself. My throat felt scratchy, and I had not discerned how deafening my scream was. I had never been frightened in such a way, my sisters jumping out of the crooks was nothing compared to that bird and the shattered window.
