Chapter
Forty-Six

“You told Lady Katherine what?” Fanny asked Agnes, loading items onto the large tray Agnes was holding. Once she was done, Agnes would need to bring it up the back stairs so that Will Harvey and the farmers and villagers could have something to eat. Those people must be starving by now, Fanny thought, but this was the first chance she’d had to do anything about it. They’d need more than just the one tray, however large and full, to feed them all. But at least it was a start.

The items Fanny was loading it with, ignoring the cries from the three cats standing before the door as she hurried to finish before Mrs. Owen returned, were leftovers from Upstairs’s breakfast, now thankfully finished.

No matter what else was going on in the world, Upstairs would still have their nice breakfast.

And no matter what else was going on in the world, Fanny would still be expected to do her regular work. There was always the work.

Already this morning Fanny had risen before anyone else, lit some fires, did some dusting, read a little, helped Mrs. Owen prepare breakfast, did everything else that was normally required of her on a Monday, all the while ignoring the entreaties of the three cats whenever she came across them.

She knew what they wanted: to go out. But Fanny couldn’t, wouldn’t let them.

Before Agnes could answer Fanny’s question, and before Fanny could finish what she’d been doing, Mrs. Owen’s voice came at her from behind.

“Fanny, what are you doing with all that food?”

Fanny groaned inside. This was what she’d been hoping to avoid.

Usually, once breakfast service was finished, Mrs. Owen took a little break to do, well, what a person needed to do from time to time, the same thing the cats wanted to do right now, had wanted to do for hours. And whenever Mrs. Owen did it, she always took her time.

Fanny knew she couldn’t keep the presence of twenty extra people upstairs, all with mouths to feed, a secret forever. But she’d hoped to get a little further than just one meal. Twenty extra mouths to feed was normally no problem at all for a house such as this. Why, on any given weekend, Upstairs might have that many guests! There was always plenty of food. There had never been any lack here. But Fanny knew Mrs. Owen wouldn’t take kindly to it being these particular mouths.

Mrs. Owen didn’t know yet about them being up there. With the exception of Mr. Wright, none of the senior staff did. All the senior staff—Mr. Wright; Mrs. Murphy; Albert Cox, the earl’s valet; Myrtle Morgan, Lady Clarke’s maid; and Mrs. Owen—all had their bedrooms on this basement floor of the house, not on the attic floor with the rest of them. Fanny’d always supposed things were arranged thusly because they were all so old and it would mean fewer stairs for them. So none of them had reason yet to know about the extra twenty. But now Fanny saw, if she was ever going to pull this off at all, she’d need to enlist Mrs. Owen’s help.

So Fanny told her.

“Are you insane, Fanny?” Mrs. Owen said.

“I suppose it’s possible that I am,” Fanny replied. “But not because of this.”

“You’re taking food out of the family’s mouths!”

“But I’m not. These are things they were done with.”

“Then you’re taking things out of our mouths!”

“Only a little bit. And we have so much in the house.”

“Well, we won’t have for long, if you keep up at this rate.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“We have a lot, for the time being, but it won’t last forever. What if we’re trapped here? What if none of us ever get out of here again for more supplies?”

Fanny hadn’t thought about that.

Was it possible? Would they never get out of here again?

It was scary to think of, but after a moment, Fanny pushed the thought away as she tightened her resolve.

“That doesn’t matter,” Fanny said.

“Doesn’t matter?” Mrs. Owen’s pudgy hands went to her ample hips. “How can you say it doesn’t matter?”

“Because it doesn’t. Those farmers up there, they’ve worked this land all their lives. Don’t they have a right to the fruits of it? Don’t they have as much right as anyone else in this house does, to eat, to survive?”

“What about Mr. Powell, then? You said he’s here, too. Well, he’s not a farmer. What’s Mr. Powell ever done for anybody?”

“I don’t know. He’s the publican.” Fanny thought about this. “He serves beer to people when they go into the village, which some of the farmers and villagers find essential: that he serves them beer.” She thought about it some more. “And he’s a human being.”

“A hu—” Mrs. Owen stopped herself. “Does anyone else know about this insane scheme of yours?”

“Actually—”

“Fanny, what are you doing!” Was there no end to people asking her that question? This time, it came from Mr. Wright.

“Why haven’t you let those cats out?” Mr. Wright said, not giving her a chance to answer. “They’re making an infernal racket!”

“But they need to be kept safe,” Fanny said, worried now, panicked even. “It’s not safe out there, you know it isn’t.”

Henry Clay had been so brave last night, coming up behind Mr. Young like that, causing him to topple over the marble railing. How could Henry Clay’ve known that a fall from such a height wouldn’t kill him? Or destroy him? Or whatever you called putting an ending to something that had already died once? After doing that, Henry Clay didn’t deserve to be put at risk. And Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. While they might not hold quite the same place in her heart that Henry Clay did, she was fond enough of those two privileged fluff balls. She certainly didn’t want to see them dead.

She tried to explain as much to Mr. Wright.

“And what do you propose?” Mr. Wright said when she’d finished. “That they do their business inside? That they be allowed to piss all over the abbey? No matter what else is happening, standards must be maintained. Anything less is chaos.”

Before she could say anything further, Mr. Wright strode to the back door and turned the knob with his white-gloved hand.

“Well, go on,” he told the cats, who scooted out, but for once, they didn’t go far.

“There,” Mr. Wright said, observing the cats as he stood in the doorway, arms folded. “You see? That’s how you do it. You just let them out and then you stand guard and wait. It’s a lovely day, clear, you can see anything that might come at you.”

The cats finished with their business and, disinclined to scamper about as they would normally, trotted back in.

Mr. Wright shut the door and bolted it. “You see?” he said again. “Now, where is tea? His Lordship and the others are gathered in the drawing room, and they are ready for it now.”

Tea? But they’d just finished breakfast!

“Ah!” Mr. Wright said, spying the tray in Agnes’s outstretched arms. “There it is!” Then: “But those are just leftovers from breakfast. That will never do. Mrs. Owen, please see to getting the tea organized and do be quick about it—His Lordship is waiting. I’ll be back in a trice for it.”

“But Mr.—” Mrs. Owen started to say.

“Whatever you want right now must wait,” Mr. Wright said. “Honestly, I don’t know what’s going on in this house anymore. Did you not hear me? His Lordship is waiting!”

Then the butler was gone.

“He doesn’t know what’s going on in this house anymore?” Mrs. Owen muttered. “Well, that makes two of us. And I don’t want to know any more than what I know already. I’ll just put my head down and do the work, that’s me settled.”

At last, Fanny turned back to Agnes, loading the last few items she’d set aside onto Agnes’s tray. Oh, those poor people up in the attic. So hungry they’d be by now.

“I told her we were scared,” Agnes said.

“What?” Fanny said vaguely, looking it over just one more time to make sure that everything she wanted was there.

“You asked, before, ‘You told Lady Katherine what?’ And now I’m telling you again. I told her we were scared.”

“Why would you do such a thing? She doesn’t need to know that. Especially since it’s not true. I’m not scared.”

“Even if you’re not, Fanny, I am, and the others are, too.”

Fanny did know that. Of course she did. Even though the others were going about their normal business, performing all their daily duties, Fanny knew that fear had taken over most of them. She could see it in Becky’s eyes. She could hear it in Jonathan’s voice, laughing too hard at something that wasn’t all that funny to begin with. And now Agnes, coming right out and saying it.

“But it’s going to be all right,” Agnes said.

“How do you know that?”

“Lady Katherine said. She promised. She said she’d take care of us.”

“And you believed that?”

Agnes nodded.

“Oh no,” Fanny said softly. “We need to take care of ourselves.”