The Last Duchess

Suppose that you are once in a place; it must be a very bad one indeed if you cannot make it good with a little management.

J. Bulcock, The Duties of a Lady’s Maid

Pattern’s second day in Royal Servitude began in much the same way as the first: the red-headed housemaid – Dilys – was just as unfriendly, the breakfast bread just as dry. She was informed the Grand Duchess had returned from visiting her godmama in the early hours of the morning, and was now resting. Pattern had nothing to do but sharpen her sewing needles and rehearse her curtsy.

Grand folding doors swung open before her, under the guidance of two impish page-boys. The sitting room of the Grand Duchess’s suite was an enormous apartment, barren and colourless, except for a tapestry over the fireplace that depicted a hunting scene in faded tones of scarlet and green. There was a chessboard floor of black and white marble, a few severely straight-backed chairs, and a shining oak table. None of this seemed designed for either comfort or ornamentation.

Lounging on an angular daybed before the empty fire, and swinging her feet, was the Grand Duchess.

The silence stretched on. ‘So,’ said the Grand Duchess at last, ‘my godmama says I am to give you a chance. She says you are not a spy, but a poor orphan.’

‘The Baroness von Bliven does not agree. I have powerful enemies – many persons who conspire against me. Yet the Baroness refuses to believe it. She treats me like a nonsensical child. She is a good woman, but a stupid one. Who . . .’ The cold little voice caught for a moment. ‘Well. For all that, she was my last friend in this whole miserable country. And now she is dying, perhaps already dead.’

Pattern finally dared raise her eyes. The Grand Duchess’s were red-rimmed. Her black hair straggled limply about her shoulders. She was dressed in a gown of canary-coloured silk, with the buttons done up crooked. It was not a colour that suited her.

Her face was pointed of chin, and wide of brow. Her muddy green eyes looked too big for it, an effect exaggerated by the shadows around them. She was altogether too pinched and sallow. Yet when she looked at Pattern, her gaze did not waver, and her expression was as haughty as her voice.

The Grand Duchess swung herself off the daybed and went to the windows. They looked across a vast terrace and vast lawn. Distant vistas showed lakes and summer houses at the end of avenues that converged on a woodland. Beyond them rose the misted grey and purple of the mountains.

‘It is an exceedingly grand prison. My courtiers are my gaolers, my servants are spies. I should be pitied, not envied for it.’

Pattern thought of the ten-year-old scullery maid she had passed in the kitchen that morning, whose hands were red and raw, and whose skinny back was curved from sixteen-hour days hunched over crusted pans and dirty floors. She thought of the orphanage in which she had spent her early years: the damp walls and draughty windows, the sour-faced matron with her swishing cane. She thought of the woman by the river yesterday, weeping for her lost child.

In truth, Pattern’s first impressions of the castle proved correct. It was neither properly furnished nor lighted nor kept in order. Perhaps this was hardly surprising, given the scale of the place, with its corridors as wide as streets and rooms the size of churches. It was not so much like a prison, she thought, as a very splendid mausoleum.

By the end of her first week, she had begun to settle into a routine. At seven o’clock she was woken by Dilys with her breakfast and washing water. At eight she woke the Grand Duchess (no easy task, and accompanied by much complaint and hiding under the bedcovers). She brought her mistress her tea, and any correspondence. Then she ran her bath, helped her dress, tidied her room and did her hair.

Prayers were gabbled through in the servants’ hall at a quarter past nine, while her mistress took her breakfast. The Grand Duchess had lessons most mornings, with ‘accomplishments’ – dancing, drawing, music – in the afternoon. Pattern was much more interested in the morning programme. Sitting quietly in a corner, waiting to be useful, she took in as much as she was able. The Grand Duchess’s tutors were all elderly and dry, but Pattern thought – even if the Grand Duchess did not – that nothing in the world could make history dull or geography colourless. Even Latin verse had its charms.

Otherwise, it was a life of unvaried and empty ceremony. Much of it was spent accompanying the Grand Duchess on social calls, in which ladies of the court exchanged meaningless pleasantries in stuffy rooms with too much furniture. In the evening, escorted by the Chamberlain, the Grand Duchess would lead a procession of dusty courtiers to dinner. Afterwards, she would take a cup of cocoa and play solitaire alone in her room. She did not have, nor appeared to want, any friends of her own age. She had a dread of being seen by the populace, and on the rare occasions they left the castle, the State Coach’s windows were always closed. For the Baroness von Bliven’s funeral, the Grand Duchess kept her face entirely veiled.

There was no less intrigue below stairs, and despite the disorder, the hierarchy was just as rigid. Yet although the servants were ill-managed, at least there was liveliness and bustle among them. Apart from morning prayers and her meals – dinner at midday, tea at four, supper at half past nine – Pattern was with the Grand Duchess most of the day.

She did her best to be useful. She was sure to always have fresh flowers in the bedchamber. She re-sewed fallen hems, and re-attached loose buttons. She mixed a rose-water cold cream for the Grand Duchess’s complexion, and a herbal draught to help her sleep. She consulted Parisian fashion plates to keep abreast of the latest modes in hair and dress. Yet despite her best efforts, her mistress showed little interest in her toilette, and her clothes continued to attract all manner of stains and tears. Her nightgowns and slippers suffered the most, and Pattern often wondered what happened to them in the midnight hour after she had departed for her own bed.

However, the Grand Duchess’s carelessness with her dress proved Pattern’s saving grace with Dilys. Pattern made the housemaid a present of an emerald-green fur-trimmed pelisse that had been got at by moths, and which the Grand Duchess had told her to dispose of. It was a lady’s maid’s privilege to make use of cast-offs however she wished, and Pattern reasoned that the emerald was much better suited to Dilys’s colouring. This was something with which Dilys heartily agreed. Thereafter, although the maid was no more friendly, at least the water in Pattern’s wash-jug was warm, and her tea was mostly hot.

Pattern rarely saw Madoc in the servants’ hall. In spite of his height, he had the same facility for disappearing into the background as she. But on the rare occasions when they did encounter each other, he was always sure to smile and bid her good day.

She continued to puzzle over what she witnessed on her first visit into the city, and the valet’s remarks about secrets and burdens. Sometimes she would come upon people whispering in dark corners and stairwells, and when they saw her they would fall silent, their eyes watchful and cold. Pattern knew she was a stranger, and a foreign one at that. She told herself it was most likely the whispers meant nothing at all.

But if these people were exchanging mere tittle-tattle, then why did they look so afraid?