Chapter Text
Mamma Eudoria had found her two chemises and a petticoat, and, because Maddalena was to be a handmaiden rather than a scullion or stablehand, a sleeveless gown made of cheaply-dyed, cheaply-woven light blue dupioni silk. It was old, streaked both from the poor dyeing and from wear, and it fastened with ribbons tied across the front — a style from some years ago. The chemises were coarser linen, too, but it didn’t matter. Simply being able to cover herself again, even if she had only had sackcloth, would be more than enough.
She was allowed to plait her hair into one long braid, which was a mercy: many of the slaves she saw had their hair cropped short or even shaved off. Still, it was an odd feeling to be dressed without her hair coiled and tied up under a coif, and she pulled it over her shoulder in order to seem less weighted down. Finally she stopped to breathe for a moment, watching the matron fold some rumpled chemises – which is when the full events of the past few hours began to run through her mind. It was as though she had suddenly been plunged into an icy river, and when she climbed out onto the snowy bank, there was nothing around her but the wind.
Since her apartments had been invaded, she had been living on the tension of not knowing what lay ahead; now she had come to rest. But she couldn't rest — she had to focus on something that she could do, that she could affect. What did she have now? No kingdom. No troops, no guards.
“Mamma Eudoria,” she began tentatively, “do you know where the other people I came here with are?” The other woman continued to smooth the linens, but a trace slower. “Before they took me, they said – the others needed to be cleaned before they were ‘presented’, but they weren’t in the room where I washed.”
After a moment, Eudoria turned around, her face set and emotionless. “Most likely, they’ve been stripped and washed in the stableyard, if they were as bad as you.”
It shouldn’t have shocked her, after the way that she had been treated – forced to run through the palace in a towel, and then to display herself to the queen and her ladies and pages – but the thought of the indignity stopped her breath. “They would not,” Maddalena said, more as a prayer than a contradiction.
Eudoria shook her head with eyebrows raised, as though she were surprised at Maddalena's stupidity. “Of course they would.”
Of course they would. These people saw her and her compatriots as no longer human but … commodities. Property, without even the most basic of rights. Certainly no right to privacy.
“Where are they now? I need to – Mamma, please, can you take me to them?”
“It’s always hard for the new ones to learn,” she said, almost to herself. “Listen to me, girl. You’re not a group of Germagni. Each of you is one piece of something, and you’re being split apart to be whatever you need to become here. Look.” She took a shirt from a pile and held it up. “If I cut this up and dye this red for a neckcloth, and I use this as a rag to clean dishes, and I patch the queen’s petticoat with that, is there any use in trying to get them back and sew them into a shirt again? The shirt is gone.”
“I don’t – but the linen doesn’t remember being a shirt. We could …”
“You’d do better to forget where you’re from. You’ll never see it again.”
Maddalena could only stare at the other woman, whose countenance appeared unruffled as she continued with the task of folding cleaned linen. She’d been prepared to envelop herself in the role of a low-born servant, obedient to the queen’s will, but it was a matter more complicated than simply playing a part — particularly since the queen had sent her away, out of her presence. Though it would certainly be safer for her if she were completely forgotten.
Well. She had to tread on the line between keeping her wits about her so she could escape (hopefully, one day) and giving herself over to it to avoid detection, so she went quiet and tried to be as useful as possible to Eudoria for the rest of the day: since the queen's cousin had deemed her intended to wait on Marina, she could not be reassigned, but plainly she could not go back to the queen's chambers. It was also a good opportunity, she told herself, to learn how to do all kinds of chores that she would already understand if she were the serf she was pretending to be, like sweeping and scrubbing. Eudoria didn't seem to believe that entirely, snorting at her assertion that she could darn stockings and making a remark to a male servant about “soft hands” with a significant glance over at her, but as long as she thought Maddalena was a pampered youngest daughter or something of the sort rather than a lost princess, that was fine.
Dinner and supper were presented in the dormitory hall as great bowls of thick gruel and pieces of coarse brown bread that she had to elbow her way to for a portion. It was — not good, but not unbearable, and by the time Maddalena got to the evening meal she was hungry enough to treasure every crumb. It was late, long past the time that the nobles and even bureaucrats of the palace would have had theirs, so there was no time for anything else — and it wasn't until after she'd finished that it occurred to her that there hadn't been any prayers or offerings. Well, everyone else seemed as tired and hungry as herself. Perhaps prayers before meals were luxuries slaves couldn't afford.
But there didn't even seem to be an altar in the room, she realized. The walls were all flat and bare, no niche for statues. It was eerie, now that she noticed, and the thought of what it implied was so monstrous that she refused to believe it, even to countenance asking Eudoria about it later. No, she must be mistaken. There must be places for slaves to worship … somewhere other than their dormitories. No doubt she would find it soon.
When she lay down in her shift on a thin, straw-stuffed pallet, Maddalena had to fight against a nausea that was not caused by the gruel or bread until she fell into an uneasy, troubled sleep.
Before the dawn, the rising of the other slaves around Maddalena woke her, and she forced herself to follow suit. Another day of labor, which would be followed by another, and another, and on and on until she was so worn out that she couldn’t rise again. Well, she told herself, she must be optimistic: Eudoria was at least in her forties, and seemed far from wearing out.
After a breakfast much like the dinner the night before, she went to find Eudoria for more instruction on what she should do with herself for the day, since she still seemed to be unassigned to any specific task or location. (The others streamed past her, clear in where they were going even if they — understandably — didn’t move as quickly as possible to get there.) Would she just fade into the background running of the castle, becoming one of the laborers who was never even seen by the courtiers it was all done for? Or would someone see to it that she was given away to another lady of the court, a woman who was high-ranking enough to merit a personal gift from Germagna?
The question turned out to have an answer that was likely coming faster than she’d expected. Just as she found Eudoria preparing to leave, her attention was caught by a tug at her skirts, and both of them turned to look at the very young page with blond curls and pink cheeks.
“Please,” he said, “Lord Montefiume’s asked me to bring you back to his apartments.” Then he realized he was still holding onto her skirt and dropped it.
Maddalena could tell that Eudoria was having the same thought as her about that order: their eyes met for a long moment before slipping away again. That was what her life was now, she reminded herself for the thousandth time. She was someone a lord could tell to come to his rooms for his pleasure and send away again when he was done. Perhaps that was what she was supposed to do as her regular occupation, the way others were assigned to the laundries or the stables. Marina might find that funny. She’d called Maddalena a whore before renaming her, hadn’t she?
She attracted less attention on this page-led journey, at least. People took an interest in a naked woman walking through the halls, but a shabbily dressed one was less intriguing.
The rooms the page took her to were as sumptuous as the queen’s had been. The two were let into an empty anteroom with meticulously painted walls, then passed into another covered with dark red silk damask and furnished with a table, chairs, and highboy carved finely from teakwood. Although Maddalena would have stopped there and waited to be found rather than be accused of sneaking about, the page persisted in taking her through yet another door, into a small, close room lit with a fireplace and several white, perfumed candles. After her eyes adjusted, she could clearly see a man dressed in green and black silks lounging in a chair by the fire, reading a book, despite the early hour.
“Here she is, signore.” The page brightened when the man smiled and shut the book.
“Very well done, Antonio. Here, for your pains.” Lord Montefiume pulled a silver coin seemingly out of the air and presented it to the boy, who bowed deeply and quickly, like a child’s toy, before turning and scampering out again, pushing the door shut behind him.
Despite the dimness of the room, Maddalena recognized him. This was the queen’s cousin, the man who had saved her the previous day, scolding Marina for not treating her as befitted a gift from Germagna — presumably from Pierre. A little of the tightness in her chest eased. A little kindness meant nothing, she reminded herself. He could think it was inappropriate to kick a slave in public but see nothing wrong with ordering her to her knees in front of his chair in private.
But he didn’t. Lord Montefiume leaned back again and regarded her, his head tilted and resting on two fingers. He was certainly handsome, looking very like his cousin, whom he couldn’t be more than a decade older than; his hair was somewhat darker and with a little more curl than hers, and of course she had no trimmed and shaped beard on her chin.
The longer he stared, the bolder she felt. If he had anything untoward in mind, she was sure that he’d have gotten it underway.
Finally, he spoke. “I must apologize for my cousin's conduct toward you yesterday. You don’t deserve to be humiliated or beaten.” His voice was gentle, so much more gentle than anything Maddalena had heard in days that it brought tears to her eyes that she had to blink back and swallow as best she could.
“My lord is far too kind to one such as me. I am at Her Serenity’s disposal, to do whatever she desires, and if she desires to kick me then I will not complain.”
“Beautifully said, and beautifully spoken.” Lord Montefiume grinned. “Your Delenzian is excellent, I must say.”
It was too late to try to seem that she wasn’t what she was. “I have had an education, my lord.”
“Yes, you’re quite different from the others who came here with you. I can see why your king sent you here as a gift for Marina — you’re very much worthy of a queen.” He stood and came toward her, just a few short steps, and Maddalena couldn’t quite stop herself from taking one of her own backwards, which he was gracious enough to ignore. “What a gem. We’re fortunate to have you here, I think.” With one finger he smoothed a lock of her loose hair behind her shoulder, and she only tensed a little in response.
Then he stepped back and turned away, apparently examining the hunting scene in the tapestry on the wall opposite the door, and she breathed properly again. It was almost unthinkable that he wasn’t about to make use of the power he held over her, but she couldn’t see any way that he seemed about to do so.
“I won’t ask you for the details of how you came to be included with the rest of the treaty gifts,” he went on. “I’m sure you don’t wish to dwell on that. But it’s clear that you should be … shall we say, protected somewhat from la serenissima’s temper. I will do my utmost to keep her from venting her rages on you, out of the spite and jealousy that motivates her. Many women would see a pearl like yourself as an adversary, and your status will make it easy for them to be vicious.”
He walked her back to Marina’s rooms himself, rather than entrusting her to another page. Although he didn’t put his arm out to her, she still felt that she was being escorted rather than meekly brought. When they arrived, he strode past the guards, who nodded to him as he went, and came through the apartments to find the queen just rising from her bed. She was in a plain linen nightgown, cut as high in the chest as could be managed with enough room left in the neckline to allow her head to slip out of it, and when Maddalena and Lord Montefiume entered, she gripped the velvet counterpane. There were a few gasps from some of her ladies at the intrusion, but when he smiled, raised his hand, and said, “My apologies for the intrusion so early, dear ladies,” they smiled back indulgently.
Then he bowed, one leg coming forward and one arm forming a smooth curve; Maddalena quickly settled on a much less florid bow of her own, not even a curtsey. When she looked up again, Marina was staring directly at her, lips pressed into a thin line and her hair still tumbled from sleep.
“What is the meaning of this?” Her voice was icy.
“I apologize, Your Serenity.” Lord Montefiume still held his hat in his hand. “I kept this young handmaiden from attending on you immediately this morning. But I think there must have been some mistake.” She turned her eyes to him, and if anything, they burned hotter, although her expression remained still. “She was being kept with the general staff, rather than at your side. As she should be.”
There was a long moment of silence, in which Marina glared daggers at her cousin while he regarded her with placid neutrality. “Do you think it's your place to tell me what to do with my own slaves?” she finally asked, and a murmur went around the room. He bowed again.
“I only point out, as I did yesterday, that this maiden was given to you personally, and that the Germagni may take offense if you send her away. In order to make it clear that you will honor this alliance, you ought to keep her with you to fetch your embroidery, serve your wine, and see to your needs.” He was patient, yet that made no impression on the impatient queen.
“Thank you for the lesson in statecraft. I suppose I have little choice, then, in who is to have access to my person?”
“Won’t your guards be able to protect you if anyone attempts to assault you, Your Serenity? And besides, this frail girl can hardly be a danger to you, even alone, I'm sure.” He glanced over at Maddalena and then smiled, inviting the room to agree.
The queen plainly did not agree, her hands curling into fists and her shoulders still rigid inside her nightshift. When she turned her gaze, full of loathing, onto Maddalena, it was like standing in the sun at the height of summer: deeply uncomfortable and entirely exposed. But her cousin was right, and she must have known it, for eventually she released her breath in a loud sigh.
“Very well,” she said. “The slut may stay here.”