Undermajordomo Minor

The Inveigling of Klara by the Strange Eastern Stranger, Godless Corrupter

It was the way the stranger had looked at Klara, as though she were something to be consumed — something that would be. No one had ever looked at her like that before, and it was troubling in several ways, the foremost being that she liked it, or some part of her did. He entered the village in his tottering cart in the early afternoon; his arrival represented diversion at a slack hour and the villagers assembled to gawk and wonder, asking every question which came into their minds: Where had he come from? Why had he left? Where was he going? What was awaiting him there? They were after the news of the world, and the road-weary vagabond fielded these and other queries patiently but without enthusiasm. A lull revealed itself and he removed his hat, asking if he might stay overnight in the village, to rest and replenish his supplies; when his wish was granted, he returned his hat to his head, grinning a grin that Klara identified as devoutly impure. As if intuiting her recognition, he jerked his head to locate her in the crowd, staring levelly and with something more than boldness; and as he was handsome in that dark and brooding way which certain impressionable young women find irresistible, she discovered she couldn’t look away from him, and she became afraid in a manner she couldn’t pinpoint or define.

Climbing down from his cart, the stranger moved through the crowd, and to Klara. He wore a dirty jerkin with nothing underneath; his bare arms were wiry and hairless and deeply tanned. He had a gold tooth and was missing the lower half of his left ear, and when he took up her hand she began shivering, tremors rippling up her back and to the shoulder. He kissed her across her knuckles. She looked down at the cool spot where his lips had met her skin, and this was the end for Klara. It was as good as done.

She spent the rest of the afternoon in perpetual movement, running non-pressing errands and paying visits to people she did not much care to see, just so long as she wasn’t alone with her thoughts, or with the stranger himself. Fearful he would come to her in bed, she made Mewe sleep beside her. When the stranger didn’t come, she couldn’t understand why this bothered her so, as though they’d had a plan to meet and he’d broken it. In the morning she awoke early and made her way to the well to wash her face. In passing the stranger’s covered cart, she cleared her throat. Laying out her soap and towel on the well wall, she washed, and waited. After a time she heard a rustle of grass behind her, and she smiled, but didn’t turn around; when something bristly pressed against her leg she drew back, gasping — but it was only Memel’s dog arching against her, and she laughed at herself. When she was finished rinsing the soap from her face, she reached for the towel but it was no longer there.

“Why do you hide away from me?” asked the stranger. He was standing at her back, and very close to her. She gazed at the marble-black sphere of the water’s surface at the bottom of the telescoping well. Her heart was thumping so violently she felt it might unravel. “I don’t trust you,” she said. “You make me feel strangely.”

He put his hands on her hips and turned her around to face him. The towel was resting over his shoulder. “Isn’t it somewhat pleasant, though?” he asked.

“I don’t know if it is or not,” she said. “It’s something like a fever, actually.”

Water was dripping from her hair and nose and chin, and the stranger took up the towel and began drying her. He did this gently and thoroughly, and when he’d finished he wrapped the towel around her throat and breastbone. She was shivering again, and she asked, in a quavering voice,

“When will you go away from here?”

“Soon. But I’m not ready to go yet.”

“When will you be ready to go?”

He laid his hand on her face. “I will be ready to go after.”

She nearly gasped when he said it. He turned and walked back through the grass and to the village, the dog following in his wake.

In the afternoon she tried another tack, which was to attempt to make friends with the stranger. He was leaving the marketplace and she fell in step with him; in a convivial voice she pointed to his ear and asked, “How did you come to be wounded, sir?”

He looked at her amusedly, as though he was aware of what she was playing at. Tugging at what remained of the ear, he said, “That is a question I can’t answer. One morning I woke awash in blood, and it was away.”

“It was severed in your sleep?”

“Yes.”

“By whom?”

“Some enemy or another. No one came forth to claim responsibility.”

How matter of fact he was, she thought, as though the incident hadn’t been a bother beyond the mess it had made. “What sort of man would do that to you?” she asked.

“Why do you assume it was a man?”

“Oh, but a woman could never do such a thing.”

The stranger became remote, his thoughts gone back in time. Soberly, he said, “I’ve known them to do worse.”

Klara blushed at this. It made her inexplicably but unmistakably jealous, and she was frustrated by the feeling. When she gathered herself, she asked politely, “Do you have many enemies?”

“As a matter of fact I do.”

“And why is that?”

“I can’t think of why. But, they seem to gather wherever I go.” Now that same impure grin as before grew upon his face. Klara gathered her hands together and rested them atop her hip.

“Why do you smile like that?”

“Like what?”

“That way, there.” She pointed. “It’s a smile that hides something.”

“I have nothing to hide from you.”

“Don’t you?”

“Well, perhaps I do after all. And good luck finding out what it is!”

The stranger laughed at this, laughed at her, and Klara left him alone once more. She busied herself cleaning the shanty and making dinner preparations, but she couldn’t free herself from her thoughts of the man. Mewe came to sleep beside her that night but she sent him away. No matter; the stranger did not appear. In the morning, after breakfast, she sought him out. He was sunning himself in a field of lupine between the village and castle. He smiled at her as she came near. “I don’t know how you stand it, living here,” he said. “It’s so terribly dull.”

“It is not dull.”

“It’s consummately dull. It’s immaculately dull.”

“I love it,” she said, and she did.

In a humouring tone, he asked, “Tell me, what do you love about it?”

“My father, and my friends. The animals, the rivers. I love the seasons; I think they are just the right length of time, don’t you?”

The stranger didn’t answer.

Klara said, “I love the fields, there —” she nodded towards the sloping green expanse beyond the castle. The stranger sat up to look.

“What’s over the rise?” he asked.

“More of the same.”

“Do you ever go there?”

“Sometimes.”

He looked at her directly. “Will you take me there?”

“But why?”

“Don’t you think it’s about time we were alone?”

“We’re alone now.”

“Alone, but not alone-alone. I want to be alone-alone.”

He stood up and looked over her. He was quite a bit taller than she.

“Will you be alone-alone with me,” he said.

He led Klara away, over the crest of the hill. His hand was calloused and gripped hers tightly. She could smell his body, and the fluttering in her stomach was violent to the edge of nausea. She wore no shoes, and watched her feet swivelling up and back through the grass and flowers. She wasn’t precisely sure what she was walking towards but she wouldn’t have turned around for the world. Once they were over the rise she tucked her hair behind her ears, looking about for a piece of level ground. Finding one, she pointed. “There.” They walked towards the place.

Lucy was disturbed by the pride with which Klara told this story; she was pleased with herself for having an adventuresome spirit, and this hurt him. He knew he was being small about it, but there was no other way he could feel. He was putting his clothes back on when he noticed a wasp struggling to free itself from a spider web, this attached to the low branch of a nearby tree. The webbing bounced and vibrated and Lucy moved closer to watch, with Klara following after. The wasp’s manic buzzing filled her with dread, and she said, “Set it loose, Lucy.”

“No,” he said. “Look.” Over top of the branch came the spider, its legs, its head, its plump bobbing bottom. It was very large, and its weight stilled the web, and the wasp for a moment ceased struggling. But then, as if knowing what was to come, and with the spider stepping ever closer, it redoubled its efforts to free itself, its buzzing jumping an octave.

The spider circled the wasp, searching out the prime point of attack. It had looped the web two full times before it lunged; as the insects met, then did the wasp plunge its stinger into the spider’s face, the reaction to which was instantaneous death: the spider dropped, yet remained attached to the web by a single silver thread strung out from its abdomen. It hung in space, lifeless, rotating in the breeze.

Something about this occurrence displeased, even offended Lucy, and he watched the spider with an angry expression. He held his boots one in each hand. He lifted them to either side of the spider.

“What are you doing?” Klara asked.

Lucy didn’t answer, but clapped the soles of his boots together, popping the spider like a grape. Klara was disgusted by this.

“Why would you do such a thing?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Lucy admitted. He was surprised at himself.

“Well, I think that was terrible, your doing that.”

Lucy didn’t know what to say. He turned away from the web and sat to put his boots on. Klara stood by, quietly fuming. She felt she deserved an apology, though she didn’t quite know why. She walked away, towards the village, and Lucy watched her go but didn’t call after her or to try to win her back. Returning to her shanty, she wept on her bed for near an hour. The next day Lucy apologized, and all was as it had been before. Neither one of them understood this argument, and they agreed not to speak of the spider or the strange Eastern stranger again.

A village woman had taken ill and left her infant child with Klara for some days; she and Lucy set up to play house in a manner which was at first light of spirit, but which took on a certain seriousness, then an absolute seriousness. This is how it would be, was Lucy’s thought, and it worried him because he had never been so satisfied before.

The child’s name was Anna, and she had purple eyes and was fat as a piglet. Her mood was typically jolly, her laughter quick to come and difficult to arrest, but on the third night something upset her so that she wouldn’t cease crying, and if she was enthusiastic in her laughter, then she was doubly so with her weeping. She sat in a quaking crimson heap in the centre of Klara’s bed, fists trembling, gulping for air. They thought she was ill, or that a sliver had pierced her flesh, but she had no fever and there was nothing on her person like a blemish, and they were at a loss as to what they should do.

Klara was looking at the baby out of the side of her eye. A thought came to her, and she left the room; thus abandoned, Lucy made a sequence of grotesque faces at Anna. When this summoned no reaction, he made his sounds: the knock-on-wood sound, the horse-trotting sound, and finally, the bullfrog-on-a-lily-pad sound. But Anna only raged on, and Lucy gave it up. “I’ve made all my sounds,” he announced.

“Wait,” said Klara. She returned shielding a candle, and lay on her stomach before Anna. Drawing the candle laterally back and forth, Anna’s eye was drawn to the shivering slip of flame, and she followed Klara’s movements, and was distracted or charmed by them so that her upset was halved. Klara held the candle still and expelled a steady stream of air, not enough to extinguish the flame, but merely to bend it; it flickered raggedly, recalling the faraway sound of a canvas sail in the wind. Anna had ceased crying now. Klara blew harder, and the flame struggled to cling to the wick; she exhaled sharply and the flame was rent, which produced a click. As though it were the punchline to a famous stunt, Anna laughed wildly, as before, her mysterious misery vanishing with the candlelight. Klara smiled at her success, the smoke whorling upwards. Lucy had watched all of it. He was astonished.

It was a feeling which stayed in his blood as he slept that night, and then into the morning, so that when he returned to the castle he knew that he was hopelessly mired in love. He brought Mr Olderglough his breakfast and they shared their comfortable greetings. Peter was scratching in his cage in the corner; crossing over to him, Lucy was struck by a startling truth. He took up Mr Olderglough’s hand mirror from the vanity and held this before the bird.

“What are you doing, boy?” Mr Olderglough asked.

“Wait,” Lucy told him.

Peter was rapt. He tilted his head to better study the stranger before him, and presently issued a hesitant, hoarse croak in the minor key. There followed a dense silence where neither Lucy nor Mr Olderglough drew a breath, and then, finally, Peter sang his long-lost tune. It came out in purling currents, as though his keeping it in had been an agony. Peter sang to his reflection, sang a love song to himself, for he was no longer alone, and the world was filled with unmapped possibilities. Mr Olderglough threw his tray through the air, a great clatter and crash, and he leapt from the bed, running about the room in his nightshirt and cap, howling his pleasures.

Still, there were imperfections. There was a sadness about Klara, and Lucy was more than a little intimidated by it. The sadness was buried but existed in her every movement: the way she folded her hands; the way she pulled a lock of hair away from her face and hooked it over her ear; the way her eyes were drawn to the open spaces, as though in search of something familiar, or possibly something new, unknown. It existed in her silences. Lucy was surprised to discover how badly he wished to combat her sadness, to better it, to eliminate it. And if he accomplished this, what would there be to take its place?

Increasingly Klara withdrew, taking walks in the woods for an hour, two hours. Lucy felt an instinctive mistrust of these solitary outings. He asked her,

“Where do you go, when you go into the forest alone?”

“I go into the forest alone.”

“Why do you?”

“To be alone in the forest.”

“But why?”

“Because I want to be.” She looked at Lucy. “You don’t.”

“I don’t want to be any more alone than I already am,” Lucy admitted. He was not proud to say this, and neither was she proud for him.

One day he was buying vegetables at the marketplace when he saw Klara stepping through the crowd and away from the village. She wore a lonesome look on her face, and Lucy followed her. She moved towards the tree line, walking slowly but unhesitatingly; it seemed she had some destination in mind. Lucy might have called to her, but didn’t. When she slipped into the forest, he hurried after.

The sunlight was thinned and the wind dropped away. Klara came in and out of view, disappearing behind trees in the distance, then reappearing. Lucy felt ugly to be spying, and he was made anxious by the fact of it, but he couldn’t stop, and vowed to see it through. Klara entered a clearing, in the centre of which stood a lone tree, a squat and knotty oak, dead and leafless, its branches filled with ravens. As Klara came nearer, certain of the birds rustled, shaking their heads, unfolding and refolding their wings. She stood before the tree; Lucy thought she said some words to the ravens, but couldn’t be sure. When she continued on her way, Lucy resumed trailing her, giving the tree a wide berth, for there was something fearsome about it to him.

Klara walked on and on, and now she was standing before a river, roiling and risen high from snowmelt. When she took up her skirts to sit on the bank, Lucy crept closer, hiding behind a fallen snag, that he might steal a glance at her face and glean just what she was thinking of. The noise of the river was so expansive that it pushed through Lucy, vibrating in his chest. People think of a river as a body of running water, when in truth its physical properties are secondary to its sound.

Klara was watching the sleekly slipping surface of the river, and her face had gone cloudy. Soon she began to weep; she did this openly, frankly, and without shame. In watching this transpire there appeared in Lucy’s mind the knowledge that the life she and he were sharing was finite. Its rareness was its leading attribute, after all, and such a thing as this couldn’t be expected to carry on forever. A feeling of gratitude was born in him; and it was so powerful as to produce a sensation of lift. In a little while Klara dried her face and stood, walking back in the direction she’d come. Lucy ducked as she passed, and afterwards sat alone for long minutes. Something went mute in his mind as he walked away from the river.

He was moving into the clearing when he stepped on a branch; it snapped crisply in the air and the ravens, as a body, burst skyward. This produced a noise so unexpectedly large, and so violently whole, that it seized his spirit in terror. It was as though some centred part of him had come loose, and it ached, and made him fretful.

There was a heaviness to Klara’s movements that night, and she lay with her back to Lucy. His own slumber was troubled and erratic, so that he overslept, awakening late in the morning. Klara was no longer in bed, but in the front room Lucy found she had laid out a pot of tea, a thick slice of bread, a jar of honey, and an apple, peeled and cored. The apple was crisp and tart; the tea had some trace of pine in it. He thought of Klara preparing his breakfast while he slept. A channel of sunlight entered the window, angling sharply to the floor, like a propped beam of milled timber. Dust floated amiably in this, then drew or was drawn into the surrounding darkness, which brought to mind the image of shifting tides. How quiet Lucy’s life was just then. He thought he had never been quite so melancholically happy as at that moment.

Clearing the table, he cleaned, dried, and stacked the dishes. The whistle of the morning train sounded down the valley, which meant he had twenty minutes to fetch the Baron’s letter and deliver it to the platform. He sat and pulled on his boots, and was lacing them when Klara burst in, short of breath, a bright look on her face.

“Didn’t you hear the train?” she asked.

“I heard it.”

“Well, get to work, you lazy man!” She pulled him up by the lapels and kissed him. Her smile was easy, and she gripped Lucy’s waist, pressing in close to him. Whatever it was that had been bothering her had been set aside; she had made some decision, and this was in Lucy’s favour. Pushing him out the door, she told him to return in time for dinner, and he said that he would. As he walked through the village he was so pleased, so relieved, because there was nothing the matter with his Klara, and all was well between them. This feeling of comfort was short-lived, however: passing the marketplace, the wily butcher approached him in the road, and said, “Shame about Adolphus, eh?”

“What about him?”

“You haven’t heard? He’s been taken prisoner.”

“How do you know?”

“I met one of his men on the mountain, and he told me all about it. Said Adolphus was shot in the gut, and so the others caught up to him and pulled him away. He was trailing blood, and never had any hope for escape. If he lives they’ll only hang him, I imagine. Now what do you make of that?”

“I don’t know what.”

“I would think you’re happy about it, eh?”

“No. I don’t know.” Lucy didn’t like the wily butcher for saying such a thing, even if it was true; and he felt a creeping brood coming on, for surely the news of Adolphus’s capture was the reason Klara had been weeping. And even though she appeared to have reconciled herself to its happening, Lucy knew this was not the last he would hear of it. What a violent thing love is, he thought. Violent was the word that had come to him.

Lucy stood on the platform with the Baron’s daily missive. He was feeling sad-hearted, and his mind wished to wander to its darker corners. As the train approached, the familiar hand emerged, only there was something quite different about the appendage on this morning, which was that it held a letter of its own. The incongruousness of this was such that Lucy failed to lift his own letter, but merely stood by gawking at the flapping pink envelope in the engineer’s fist. As the train passed, the engineer dropped the letter, and Lucy watched it twirling through the air. When it came to rest down the platform, he cast the Baron’s letter to the ground and hurried to scoop up this other, making for the castle at a dead run. As he wended his way up the hill, the engineer sounded his horn, a half-dozen staccato blasts. Of course he had been reading the letters all along, before Lucy was, even.

Lucy found Agnes cutting Mr Olderglough’s hair in the scullery, the latter sitting sheet-wrapped in a low-backed chair, while Agnes stood at his rear, scissors poised. Here was a scenario smacking of the domestic, so that Lucy felt the intruder; and indeed, his superiors wore the look of the intruded-upon, but he offered not so much as a passing apology, as there was no time to linger over societal faux pas. He pressed the letter into Mr Olderglough’s hand. “She’s written, sir,” he said.

Mr Olderglough studied the envelope: front, back, front; he peered up at Agnes, and nodded. He opened and read the letter, sternly, and with the index finger of his right hand pointed upwards. When he finished, he stood away from the chair to pace the room, addressing Lucy and Agnes in an earnest monotone. “The Baroness will arrive here in twenty days’ time,” he said.

Agnes emitted an actual gasp. “She cannot.”

“She is coming, Agnes.”

“She must not. You will write her at once and explain the impossibility of it.”

“She is travelling, and so unreachable. I’m sorry, but it is down to us.” He folded the letter into the envelope. “And I’m afraid that’s not the worst of it.”

Agnes blanched. “Don’t you say it.”

Mr Olderglough nodded. “We will be entertaining.”

Here Agnes hung her head.

“The guests will arrive two days after the Baroness,” said Mr Olderglough.

“Who?”

“The Duke and Duchess, Count and Countess.”

Mr Olderglough and Agnes shared a look of dire understanding.

“And for how long?” she asked.

“Until the end of the month.”

Agnes was quiet as she took this in. “Well,” she said at last, “obviously the Baroness doesn’t understand the state of things here, otherwise she wouldn’t be returning. Certainly not with thoughts of entertaining she wouldn’t.”

“I believe she does understand,” Mr Olderglough replied, and he read a line from the letter: “I ask that the Baron be made to look presentable, so much as is possible in his current state of mind.”

“She’s after ruin, then,” Agnes declared. “Or else she’s gone mad as well.”

“She appears sanguine.” Mr Olderglough glanced at the letter. “Her penmanship is as elegant as ever.” This proved a small comfort, though, and Agnes all but fell into the chair, looking as one succumbing to witless panic.

“It’s beyond me,” she admitted. “Where might we begin, even?”

“I won’t deny it seems a task.”

“A task?” said Agnes wonderingly.

“Task is the word I used.”

She looked to Lucy. “We are living in a graveyard!”

Mr Olderglough moved to stand before her, resting a hand on her shoulder. He spoke firmly, but not without tenderness. “Take hold of yourself, Agnes,” he said. “The castle has been dormant; we must bring it back to life. Why do you act like we haven’t been through it before?”

“Never so bad as this, though.”

“I shan’t disagree with you there. And it may well come to pass that we fail. But we have only two choices: to try, or not to try. And I know that you will try, my dear, just as you know that I will.”

Agnes sighed the sigh of the damned, then trudged from the room. She had much planning to do, she said, but wanted to spend some time alone before starting out, that she might wallow stoutly, and without intrusion or distraction. After she’d gone, Mr Olderglough turned to Lucy; all the kindness had left his face. “Now, boy, let us talk about tomorrow,” he said.

“Tomorrow, sir?”

“Tomorrow, yes.” Mr Olderglough cleared his throat. “Tomorrow is not going to be a day where we will be visited with thoughts of praising God on his throne.”

“No, sir?”

“Tomorrow will not be a day we’ll later cherish or clasp particularly close to our bosom.”

“Will it not, sir?”

“Tomorrow will be a not-pleasing day for us.”

“But why is it so, sir?”

Mr Olderglough tucked the letter away in his breast pocket. “Tomorrow we must locate, apprehend, and restore to normality the Baron.”