Chapter One

I placed a hand on my master’s shoulder and shook him lightly to pull him from his sleep. He rolled over in his bed ruffling the red silken sheets around himself like a comfortable pyre. His deep venom green eyes fluttered open and he smiled up at me with a youth filled smile. “Good Morning Philip,” he said pleasantly eying up the tray I had placed at his bedside. A simple breakfast, eggs and bacon with a few mushrooms gathered from the yard to accompany them. My master was fond of mushrooms, and whenever the chance arose for him to have them I would take it as my liberty to serve them to him.

“Afternoon, master Eldridge,” I corrected. I fluffed his cushions giving him a better posture as he poked at his meal with a silver fork. 

“Oh dear have I slept in once more? I say these damned late nights shall be the death of me.” He gave a hearty chuckle and brushed a raven lock from his eyes. In the days before his turn for the worse my master was a handsome boy, only two years my junior at eighteen. His charms and wit had bought him good stature with the young women of the town and great envy from the young men. To me he was nothing unlike a large child, his boyishness had yet to fade into the severity of adulthood, the vulgar world of business and necessity had yet to mark his soul. It had perhaps marred mine too young.

“No, sir. Your meeting with Amelia is not until quarter past three. It has yet to pass one.” I smiled at him and prepared to leave him in peace, with a bow I made towards the door. “Oh Philip do stay, I wish to hear one of your stories.” I had first come to The Rowans as a boy of ten working in the kitchen. Claude and I had met on occasion and became friends of a sort, our relationship was business first even from that early age. He was fond of me as I was of him and we were on intimate levels with one another. There was not a thing I did not know of my Master and the story was the same on his half. He elected me to become his butler when his mother died when I was the age he is now.

The Lady Eldridge was an eerie woman who’s soul and kindness died and rotted before her body. Wicked to all including her son I could not see a single reason why Claude cared for her the way he did. Her hair was the same as his, black as jet and it cascaded over her right shoulder like Death’s hand resting on some forlorn mannequin. Her face was white like ice and her features, ever her eyes, were pointed like the thin ends of needles. Unlike her husband she wandered the halls like a sinister reflection of herself, dishing out punishments for any disappointment she had suffered the day before. Olive, the chambermaid, a pretty mouse of a girl, was apparently thrashed for folding the linen incorrectly. But eventually Death overcame his fear of Lady Eldridge and took her as his own.

Claude cried that evening as I recall, like a child with a grazed knee. I went to his room and comforted him, my left arm around his shoulder and the other patting his knee. It was the following morning, when he sprang out of bed with his usual jovial grin into his mourning clothes that he informed me of my new position that I took on with glee.

“Forgive me Master Eldridge, but your bath is ready and you are also scheduled for a carriage ride around the country side this afternoon. I have laid out your finest threads in the washroom and will have Olive deliver them to you once you are prepared. Is there anything else my lord would require?” 

He sighed and groaned as he slipped out of bed and stretched with face like thunder. His tempers were often equal in passion as his jests. His frame was thin, the way most boys his age are after stretching to alarming heights yet he carried more weight than I probably due to his height. He lurched at around six foot at my last measure.

“I hate Olive and you know that. The boring crow annoys me no end, she treats me as if I were still a child.” I said nothing, but bowed and departed the room.

“Oh Philip!” my master cried through the doorway “Do come with me on my ride will you? I smiled back at him and replied with a bow “Of course, sir.”