Between Wolves & Doves

Chapter 8 Control

Iris was treading the route of the exhausting, bone wearing labour, of atonement and penitence.

For her effrontery of staying out to pay call to Lord Ren three days previous, it seems her mother was determined to have her redeem herself in her family's good graces. This apparently meant breaking her back, performing chores and labours for the Pembleton residents who were most crucially in need of assistance.

Caroline promised Iris to Mrs Emery. The most miserable woman in all of the British isles. From the very last curling spray of waves on the outer Hebrides to the last crumbling rock of lands end. This woman was the most stern old biddy to ever exist. Possibly even worse than Aunt Lavinia. Aunt Lavinia did not have an austere infatuated obsession with 'our good Christian lord.'

Mrs Emery was a widow of thirty years now. Miserable and strict. And she also happened to be the verger. She lived near the quaint vicarage cottage. And moseying around the church making sure everything was spick and span for Reverend Potter.

Only she's been struck down by a sudden ailment of the chest that leaves her bed bound in the frosty cold. Unable to perform the donkey work so needed around the small chapel, in readiness for Sunday's sermon. Sweeping and scrubbing the floors. Polishing the pews. Dusting off prayer books and sewing up the holes in prayer cushions.

This lot now fell on Iris's already loaded shoulders.

She wondered why her lot in life could be any further reduced to much more misery.

And here she found herself, in a freezing bitter chapel, with the sun barely warmed up to gold outside, on the cold stone floor, on her aching hands and sore knees, scrubbing the tiles with a hand brush.

Her fingers were pink with cold. Her hips and back already piercing sharp, something fierce. Arms weary from labours already and she's barely started. Scratching sizzling bristles of a hard wooden brush to hand, scouring away the mess of the tiles. A clean rag, throughly soaped, swipes over in her other hand to polish what she had cleaned.

She is already clammy in the cold. Hair folded off her face, some dark twirls stick to her pink sweaty forehead. Cheeks pink from exertion. The only noises are the echoing huffs of her own breathing ricocheting off the flying stone buttresses up into the pitched roof.

She manages the floor with some success. Dirtying her gown in the process and ruining her knees. The cream muslin dress she put on this morning is now dusty and unkempt. The white apron Mrs Emery lent her is vastly too big and there are two dirty patches at her knees where she's been on the ground.

She's aching with the cold before too long. Nose running and eyes streaming from the dust. But she manages to scrub the whole chapel floor in under three hours. She curses her life several times over as she works. Not at all caring that she's in a house of religion.

She's livid angry and tired and if God is listening to her projected unsavoury thoughts? She has a good sharp sense and mind to remind him that she's suffering the pains of up-keeping this sanctified place of his worship. Dares him to strike thunder and lightning at the steeple for her blasphemy. Much good it would do for her.

After the scrubbing, she empties the dirty pail of water on the frosty grass outside, and gets to work with the beeswax polish and another rag on the pews.

Kneeling on a prayer cushion - to save her tender knees. Rubbing along the grain of the deep mahogany wood until the light glimmers off it. Shining proud. The air in the church is stale with age. But now she's getting to work the air is spiced instead with beeswax polish, that same honey scent from the candles, all around stood in their votives. The warmed bitter of dust off grey flagstones.