Undermajordomo Minor

I. LUCY THE LIAR

Lucien Minor’s mother had not wept, had not come close to weeping at their parting. All that day he’d felt a catch in his throat and his every movement was achieved in chary degrees, as though swift activity would cause a breach of emotion. They had eaten breakfast and lunch together but neither had spoken a word, and now it was time for him to go but he couldn’t step away from his bed, upon which he lay fully dressed, in coat and boots, sheepskin cap pulled low, to his brow. Lucy was seventeen years old, and this had been his room since birth; all that he could see and put his hand to was permeated with the bewildering memories of childhood. When he heard his mother positing unknowable questions to herself from the scullery downstairs he was nearly overcome with sorrow. A valise stood alertly on the floor beside him.

Hefting himself from the mattress, he rose, stomping his feet three times: stomp stomp stomp! Gripping the valise by its swivelled leather handle, he walked downstairs and out the door, calling to his mother from the base of the steps before their homely cottage. She appeared in the doorway, lumpily squinting and clapping flour dust from her knuckles and palms.

“Is it time?” she asked. When he nodded she said, “Well, come here, then.”

He climbed the five groaning stairs to meet her. She kissed his cheek before peering out over the meadow, scrutinizing the bank of storm clouds roiling up behind the mountain range which walled in their village. When she looked back at him, her expression was blank. “Good luck, Lucy. I hope you do right by this Baron. Will you let me know how it turns out for you?”

“I will.”

“All right. Goodbye.”

She re-entered the cottage, her eyes fixed to the ground as she closed the door — a blue door. Lucy could recall the day his father had painted it, ten years earlier. He’d been sitting in the shade of the anaemic plum tree marking the inscrutable industries of an anthill when his father had called to him, pointing with the paint brush, its bristles formed to a horn: “A blue door for a blue boy.” Thinking of this, and then hearing his mother singing an airy tune from within the cottage, Lucy experienced a dipping melancholy. He dissected the purposelessness of this feeling, for it was true he had never been particularly close with his parents; or rather, they had never cared for him in the way he had wished them to, and so they’d never had an opportunity to achieve any stable partnership. He was mourning the fact that there was nothing much to mourn at all, he decided.

He elected to linger, a favoured pastime. Sitting upon his upended valise, legs intertwined fashionably, he removed his new pipe from his coat pocket, handling it with care, much in the way one holds a chick. He had purchased the pipe only the day prior; having never used one before, he took a particular interest as he filled it with the chocolate-and-chestnut-smelling tobacco. He lit a match and puffed, puffed. His head was enshrouded in fragrant smoke, and he felt very dramatic, and wished someone was watching him to witness and perhaps comment on this. Lucy was spindly and pale, bordering on sickly, and yet there was something pretty about him, too — his mouth was full, his black lashes long, his eyes large and blue. Privately he considered himself comely in an obscure but undeniable way.

He adopted the carriage of one sitting in fathomless reflection, though there was in fact no motion in his mind whatsoever. Holding the pipe head in the basin of his palm, he rotated the mouthpiece outward so that it rested between his middle and ring fingers. Now he pointed with it, here and there, for this was what the pipe-smoking men in the tavern did when giving directions or recalling a location-specific incident. A large part of the pipe’s appeal to Lucy was the way it became an extension of the body of the user, a functional appendage of his person. Lucy was looking forward to pointing with his pipe in a social setting; all he needed was an audience for whom to point, as well as something to point at. He took another draw, but being a fledgling he became dizzy and tingly; tapping the pipe against the heel of his palm, the furry clump clomped to the ground like a charred field mouse, and he watched the blurred tendrils of smoke bleeding out through the shredded tobacco.

Staring up at the cottage, Lucy catalogued his life there. It had been lonely, largely, though not particularly unhappy. Six months earlier he had fallen ill with pneumonia and nearly died in his bedroom. He thought of the kindly face of the village priest, Father Raymond, reading him his last rites. Lucy’s father, a man without God, came home from working the fields to find the priest in his home; he led the man out by the arm, this accomplished in a business-like fashion, the way one shepherds a cat from the room. Father Raymond was startled to find himself treated in such a way; he watched Lucy’s father’s hand on his bicep, scarcely believing it.

“But your son is dying,” Father Raymond said (Lucy heard this clearly).

“And what is that to do with you? I trust you can see yourself out, now. Be a good chap and shut the door when you go.” Lucy listened to the priest’s hesitant, shuffling steps. After the latch caught his father called out: “Who let him in?”

“I didn’t see the harm,” his mother called back.

“But who summoned him?”

“I don’t know who, dear. He just came around.”

“He sniffed out the carrion, like a vulture,” said Lucy’s father, and he laughed.

In the night, alone in his room, Lucy became acquainted with the sensations of death. Much in the way one shudders in and out of sleep, he could feel his spirit slipping between the two worlds, and this was terrifying but also lovely in some tickling way. The clock tower struck two when a man Lucy had never met entered the room. He was wearing a shapeless sack of what looked to be burlap, his beard trimmed and neat, brown-to-black in colouring; his longish hair was parted at the temple as though it had just been set with a brush and water; his feet were bare and he sported caked, ancient dirt running to the shin-bone. He padded past Lucy’s bed to sit in the rocking chair in the corner. Lucy tracked him through gummy, slitted eyes. He was not afraid of the stranger particularly, but then he wasn’t put at ease by his presence, either.

After a time the man said, “Hello, Lucien.”

“Hello, sir,” Lucy croaked.

“How are you?”

“Dying.”

The man raised a finger. “That’s not for you to say.” Now he fell silent and rocked awhile. He looked happy to be rocking, as though he’d never done it before and found it fulfilling. But then, as one troubled by a thought or recollection, his rocking ceased, his face became sombre, and he asked, “What do you want from your life, Lucy?”

“Not to die.”

“Beyond that. If you were to live, what would you hope might come to pass?”

Lucy’s thoughts were slothful, and the man’s query was a restless puzzle to him. And yet an answer arrived and spilled from his mouth, as though he had no control over the sentiment: “Something to happen,” he said.

The man in burlap found this interesting. “You are not satisfied?”

“I’m bored.” Lucy began to cry a little after he said this, for it seemed to him a pathetic statement indeed, and he was ashamed of himself, his paltry life. But he was too weak to cry for long, and when his tears dried up he stared at the candlelight and shadows stuttering and lapping against the pale white seam where the wall met the ceiling. His soul was coming loosed when the man crossed over, knelt at the bedside, put his mouth to Lucy’s ear, and inhaled. And as he did this Lucy felt all the heat and discomfort leaving his body. The man exited holding his breath and walked down the hall to Lucy’s parents’ room. A moment later, Lucy’s father suffered a coughing fit.

By dawn the colour had returned to Lucy’s face, whereas his father’s was paler, his eyes rimmed red where the lids sprouted lash. At dusk his father was bedridden, while Lucy took heedful steps around his room. When the sun rose the next morning, Lucy felt perfectly well other than a tenderness in his joints and muscles, and his father was dead in bed, his mouth a gory sneer, hands stiffened to claws. The undertakers came to remove the corpse and one of them slipped going down the steps, knocking Lucy’s father’s head against the corner of the tread. The violence of the blow was such that it punched a triangulated divot in the skull at the forehead, and yet the wound did not bleed, an oddity which the undertakers discussed and commented on in Lucy’s presence. Lucy followed the trio out the door and watched as his frozen father was loaded into an unclean cart. The cart departed and the corpse rocked to and fro, as if under its own impulse. A spinning wind swooped under Lucy’s nightshirt and the frost from the earth breathed coolly up his ankles. Dancing back and forth on the balls of his feet he waited for a feeling of remorse or reverence which did not arrive, not on that day or any other day, either.

In the months that followed, Lucy’s mother’s attitude towards him soured further. Eventually she admitted that, though she knew Lucy was not explicitly at fault, she felt him part-way responsible for his father’s death, as he had unwittingly transferred his illness to an otherwise healthy man, and so had struck him down before his time. Lucy wanted to speak to his mother of the visitor in the burlap sack, but he had a sense that this was something he mustn’t discuss, at least not with her. The episode proved a nagging burden, however, and at night he found himself starting in his bed every time the house settled. When he could no longer bear this feeling, he sought out Father Raymond.

Lucy had no strong opinion of the Church. “I don’t know Adam from Adam,” he was fond of saying, one of many self-authored quips he felt deserved a superior audience to the lard-armed women who loitered about the fountain in the square. But there was something in Father Raymond he had responded to — a sincerity, an unpolluted empathy. Father Raymond was a moral and humane man. He followed the word of God to the letter and at night, alone in his chambers, felt the Holy Spirit coursing through his body like bird flocks. He was relieved to see Lucy in good health. In fact he was relieved to see anyone. The village was largely non-religious, and he passed full days without so much as a knock on the door. He ushered his visitor into the sitting room, setting out a tray of ancient cookies which crumbled to sand before Lucy could deliver them to his mouth. A pot of pale tea offered no palatable diversion and at last he gave up on the idea of refreshment altogether to tell the story of the stranger’s visit. At the conclusion of the tale Lucy asked who the man was, and Father Raymond made an overtaxed expression.

“How would I know?”

“I was wondering if it wasn’t God,” said Lucy.

Father Raymond looked doubtful. “God doesn’t travel through the night volleying disease.”

“Death, then.”

“Perhaps.” Father Raymond scratched his nose. “Or perhaps he was a marauder. Is anything missing from the house, that you noticed?”

“Only my father.”

“Hmm,” said the priest. He picked up a cookie, which perished. He brushed the crumbs from his hands.

“The man will come again, I think,” said Lucy.

“He told you this?”

“No. But I feel it.”

“Well, there you are. Next time you see the fellow, be sure and ask his name.”

In this manner, Father Raymond did little to put Lucy’s mind at ease regarding the stranger in the burlap sack; and yet he proved to be of assistance in another, unexpected way. When Lucy admitted to having no plans for his future the priest took the trouble to write letters of introduction to every castle within a hundred kilometres, the idea being that Lucy might excel as some manner of servant. These letters went unanswered save for one, penned by a man named Myron Olderglough, the major-domo of one Baron Von Aux’s estate in the remote wilderness of the eastern mountain range. Mr Olderglough had been won over by Father Raymond’s romantic description of Lucy as an “unmoored soul in search of nestled safe-harbour”. (It was rumoured Father Raymond spent his friendless nights reading adventure novels, which coloured his dreams and waking life as well. Whether this was true or not is unknown; that the priest was partial to poetic turns of phrase is inarguable.) An offer of employment and terms of payment rounded out the missive. The position (Mr Olderglough assigned it the name of undermajordomo, which Lucy and Father Raymond decided was not a word at all) was lowly and the pay mirrored this but Lucy, having nothing better to do, and nowhere in the world to be, and feeling vulnerable at the thought of the man in burlap’s return, embraced his fate and wrote back to Mr. Olderglough, formally accepting the offer, a decision which led to many things, including but not limited to true love, bitterest heartbreak, bright-white terror of the spirit, and an acute homicidal impulse.

Lucy regarded the village of Bury, resting — or collected, he thought, like leavings, debris — in the crease of the valley. It was such a scenic locality, and yet when he looked over the clustered hamlet he felt a sense of loss, a vague loathsomeness. Had he ever been anything other than an outsider here? No, is the answer. In a place famous for its propensity to beget brutish giants, Lucy by comparison was so much the inferior specimen. He couldn’t dance, couldn’t hold his drink, had no ambitions as a farmer or landowner, had had no close friendships growing up, and none of the local women found him worthy of comment, much less affection, save for Marina, and this had been the all too brief exception. He’d always known an apartness from his fellow citizens, a suspicion that he was not at all where he should be. When he took the position with Baron Von Aux he made the rounds to share the news and was greeted with benign matter-of-factness, rote well-wishing. His life in the village had been uneventful to the degree that his departure didn’t warrant the humble energy required to birth an opinion.

Now Lucy’s window was opened and his mother appeared, unspooling his bedside rug with a muscular snap of her wrists. The concentrated explosion of dust was backlit by the sun; it hung on the air awhile, and he stepped closer to witness its dreamy descent to earth. As the detritus — his own — coated his hair and shoulders, his mother noticed him and asked, “You’re still here? Won’t you be late for your train?”

“There’s time yet, Mother.”

She gave a quizzical look and stepped out of sight, leaving the rug to hang like a calf’s tongue from the sill. Lucy considered the vacant window for a moment, then took up his valise and wrenched himself away, following the path through the trees and down the valley, towards the station.

He met a man walking in the opposite direction, a shabby satchel in one hand, makeshift walking staff in the other. The man had a field worker’s complexion but wore his Sunday suit; when he saw Lucy he ceased walking, staring at Lucy’s valise as though it posed some problem for him.

“Did you take the room at the Minor house?” he asked.

Lucy didn’t understand at first. “Take it? No, I’m just leaving there.”

The man relaxed. “So the room’s still available, then?”

Lucy’s head banked to the side, the way a dog’s does when it hears a faraway whistle. “Who told you there was a room there?”

“The woman herself. She was putting up a notice at the tavern last night, and I happened to be stepping past.”

Lucy looked in the direction of the cottage, though he could no longer see it through the trees. When he had asked his mother where she was going the night before, she’d said she wanted to take the air.

“She seemed an honourable woman,” said the man.

“She is not dishonourable,” Lucy answered, still looking uphill.

“And you’re only leaving there today, you say?”

“Just now, yes.”

In a covert voice, the man said, “I hope you didn’t find the accommodation lacking in some way.”

Lucy faced the field worker. “No.”

“Sometimes you don’t uncover the lack until it’s too late. That’s how it was with the last house. It was slave’s rations by the end of my stay there.”

“You’ll be happy at the Minors’.”

“She seemed an honourable woman,” the man repeated. “I pray she doesn’t mind my being early, but I’ve found it best to get a jump on these things.” He gestured at the incline. “It’s just this way, is it?”

“The path will take you there,” said Lucy.

“Well, thank you, boy. And good luck to you.” He bowed and walked on. He was disappearing around a bend when Lucy called to him:

“Will you tell her you met me, sir? The woman of the house?”

“If that’s what you want.” The man paused. “But who shall I say I met?”

“Tell her you met Lucy. And tell her about our conversation.”

The field worker seemed to think it an odd request, but he tipped his hat. “Consider it done.”

As the man disappeared into the trees, Lucy was visited by an evil thought; and at the same moment the thought became whole, a rush of wind swarmed him, a column of air focused on his chest and face. It was true that at times a gust of wind was like a soundless voice commenting on some private notion or realization. Whether the wind agreed or disagreed with him, who could say. Certainly not Lucy; and neither was he much concerned about it. He continued down the hill. His mind was like a drum, a fist, a sail overflowing, pregnant with push and momentum.

At any rate, he was no longer bored.

Lucy thought he might pay a farewell visit to Marina, and headed to her house to see if she was in. There was no sign of Tor’s gargantuan boots on her porch and he knocked, propping himself in the doorway as one merely happening past. But when she answered, she looked so naturally beautiful that his eyes must have betrayed his true emotions, a cleaved combination of adoration and acrimony. For her part, Marina evidently had no feeling for his being there. Pointing to his valise, she asked,

“Are you going somewhere?”

So, she wasn’t even aware of his leaving. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve been summoned to the Castle Von Aux. Likely you’ve heard of it?”

“I haven’t.”

“Are you certain? It’s in the east, the high mountains — a very picturesque location, they say.”

“I’ve never heard of it, Lucy.” She gazed disinterestedly over his shoulder, hopeful for some diversion or another. “What will you be doing in this very famous and picturesque castle?”

“I’m to be undermajordomo.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s akin to the majordomo, more or less.”

“It sounds to be less.”

“I will be working in concert with him.”

“Beneath him, that’s what it sounds like.” She untied and re-tied her apron, fitting it snugly around her dainty waist. “What’s the wage?”

“It’s a healthy wage.”

“But what is the figure?”

“Assuredly healthy. And they sent me a first-class ticket, as well. A nice touch, I thought. They mean to keep me happy, that much is clear.” In actuality, they had sent a paltry advance which had not quite covered a third-class ticket; he had had to take a loan from his mother for the remainder.

Marina asked him, “How did you get this position?”

“I was assisted by the good Father Raymond.”

Smirking, she said, “That old rag doll. He’s all powdery, like a biscuit.” She laughed at this — laughed loudly, and for a long time. Lucy didn’t understand how her laughter could be so blithe and enchanting when she herself was so covetous and ungenerous. Furthermore he couldn’t comprehend why he felt such an overwhelming desire for someone who, it was plain enough to see, was patently rotten from the inside out.

He said, “You can laugh at the man if you want, but he alone took it upon himself to help me. This is more than I can say for anyone else in these parts.”

Marina couldn’t be bothered to take offence. She peered back into the house and seemed to be thinking of taking her leave, but Lucy wasn’t ready to say goodbye just yet. Feinting, he removed his pipe and pointed its stem at the storm clouds, now tabled across the valley. “Rain’s coming,” he said. She did not look skyward but stared at the pipe.

“Since when do you smoke a pipe?” she asked.

“Somewhat recently.”

“How recently?”

“Very recently.”

A drugged mien came over her, and in a silky voice she said, “Tor smokes cigarettes. He rolls them in one hand, like this.” She see-sawed her fingers against her thumb, her face affecting Tor’s self-satisfaction and confidence. “Did you hear he’s working out the terms to Schultz’s farm?”

Lucy had not, and his mind flooded with insults and epithets, for Shultz’s property was the finest in Bury. And yet he held his tongue, wanting his farewell with Marina to be peaceable, not out of any magnanimity, but so that after Tor ruined her — he felt confident Tor would ruin her — and she was once more alone, she would think of Lucy’s graciousness and feel the long-lingering sting of bitter regret. In a sober tone, he told her, “Good for Tor, then. That is, good for the both of you. I hope you’ll be very happy together.”

Marina was moved by the words, and she crossed over to hold Lucy. “Thank you, Lucy,” she said. “Thank you.” Her hair brushed his face and he could feel her breath against his neck. This unanticipated contact was like a bell struck in the pit of his stomach, and he was reminded of the time of their love affair, which took place during the previous spring.

At the start it had consisted of much forest-walking, hand-holding, and eye-gazing. After a period of a month Marina realized Lucy was not going to make love to her without encouragement, and she encouraged him, and Lucy was scandalized, but not for very long at all. They fell into a routine of daily fornication in the lush, sloping fields below the village. Lucy was greatly relieved to be courting, at long last, and he knew he had the makings of a faithful wife in Marina. As they lay naked in the grass, the clouds moving bovinely over the mountaintops, he pondered their future. How many children would they have? They would have two children, one boy and one girl. They would live modestly, and Lucy would become a schoolteacher or cobbler or poet — some post which did not involve strenuous activity. Each evening he would return to their humble home and his family would swarm him, easing him into his chair by the fireplace. Would he like a cup of tea? Why yes he would, and thank you so very much. What of a scone? Well, why not? These daydreams caused in Lucy a physical reaction, a pleasing tension which ran from his shoulders to the undersides of his feet, toes curling in the sunshine.

His visions of this contented life were bolstered by the field relations themselves, which he had thought were going markedly well. But when, one afternoon, he said as much to Marina, her face darkened. He asked her what was the matter and she told him, “It’s just that … you don’t have to handle me so gently, Lucy.” Soon afterwards she sent him away, and Lucy spent heartsick months studying the curious words with such fervour that they all but lost their meaning — and he never did deduce just what it was she wanted. What he was keenly aware of now was that Tor’s hands were matted in curly brown hair gone blond from sun exposure, and that when he gripped a glass of ale it looked as though he were holding a thimble. Lucy hated Tor, and presently decided to tell a sizeable lie about him. Marina was saying her goodbyes when he said, “But before I go I have something I need to tell you about this Tor.”

“Oh? Is that so?”

“Unfortunately it is. Most unfortunately, actually.”

She crossed her arms. “What is it?”

He thought for a moment. When the lie came to him he clasped his hands solemnly. “I happen to know for a fact that he is engaged to another woman in Horning.”

She laughed. “Who told you this? It isn’t true!”

“Oh, but I’m afraid that it is. Here is my reason for visiting. I’m quitting Bury forever but couldn’t bear the thought of you being made a fool of.”

“Who is a fool?”

“You may do with this information what you will.”

She said, “I think you’re jealous of Tor, Lucy.”

“That is a fact, Marina. I am jealous of Tor. But more than that I am in contempt of him. For if you were mine I would never be seen gallivanting around Horning with another woman on my arm, and introducing her to all I passed as my bride-to-be. She is, I understand, several years younger than you.”

When Lucy set his mind to it, he was a most accomplished liar, that rare stripe who could convincingly relay information running contrary to reality with the utmost sincerity. He could see that Marina was beginning to take him seriously, and he pushed on, telling her, “The dowry is said to be no trifling sum, either. In a way, you can’t really blame Tor.”

“Enough, Lucy,” she said. “Tell me it’s a lie, now. Will you say that it is?”

“I wish that I could. But that’s not possible, because what I’m saying is factual, and I once made a pact with you. Do you recall it?”

Her eyes fluttered and cast about; she was only half listening to Lucy. “A pact,” she said softly.

“You asked me to always be true to you, and I swore that I would be. Oh, but you must remember, Marina. For you made the same pact yourself.”

Her eyes were hollow and doleful and she believed him completely, now. “Lucy,” she said.

“Goodbye!” he said, and he turned to take his leave of her.

Walking away on the springy legs of a foal, he thought, How remarkable a thing a lie is. He wondered if it wasn’t man’s finest achievement, and after some consideration, decided that it was. He experienced a sterling enthusiasm for his future, and his would have been a triumphant getaway were it not for the fact that the assistant train engineer, two hundred kilometres away in Ravensburg, had insisted upon eating a second helping of cheese for his dessert on the night prior.