In Service- Part 1

A servants journey from the home she has known, into a wider world

They called us servants.

I traveled for five days on the back of a hired coach, through cold mornings and bumping back roads. Two nights sleeping on a scrap of hay mat with the other "servants", six to a room with two mats between us. And two nights clutching a strap handle in one hand and my possessions in the other, exhausted but awake with the cold wind and the jerk of larger stones under the coach wheels.

Servants choose their masters. I was never given a choice. Not even asked a preference or opinion. Madame Blome had been my mistress ever since I could remember. I grew up in her household, her servants teaching me the ways of stony silence and unquestioned obedience. Master Blome had passed on, years before I was born, and the lady had restyled their estate to reflect the ever present loss of him. The marbles were bleached white, the accents in grey, all severe. Indefinitely in mourning.

We moved about the house as living statues, women in grey habi and over jackets, men in matching vests and charcoal coats. Servants were to blend in to the decor, as an unused lamp or couch. They cut my hair short like a boy until I was old enough to wrap my habi properly on my own. I had no mother to help me in this. Every morning I'd watch the young woman with whom I shared a room, wrap her own habi, before she'd come to wrap mine. It was more to facilitate the smooth running of the household that I learned it on my own. The minutes it took could be better used to serve the household. So though I loved the ease of caring for my boy's hair, and feeling of her hands as they worked the short tufts into the folds of habi, I did for myself and was happy in that. I was a household chair, happiest when in service, though the weight of my burden may break my poor legs. As we all served, we felt the house grow stronger. Every look instead of a word spoken, a badge, an ornament of our beauty. We were silent, we were obedient, and we were, in that grey and white mausoleum, happy.

It was all over their faces, the day I was told I would be going away. When the girl who shared my room had finished dressing that morning she looked me in the face. For seconds we stood looking at one another. And though we had shared a room for many years, she helping me dress for the majority, I had never looked at her this way. Her eyes were brown. And shining, close to tears... She turned sharp then and began the lock step that was our day. No one saw me off. No one said goodbye.

After the first night clinging to the back of the coach, I was glad to have any place that was unmoving and more than a cramped corner bench. Finding sleep was easy, even on hay that poked and scratched. I woke early, as usual, to start the days work and was startled to not see her grey figure at the side table, but instead a mass of unfamiliar bodies. Some lay still in sleep, others shook slightly with quiet sobs, and others lie stony as they tried to hold back any empathy. As if the estates they left could see any act of kindness or comfort that was not given in service to their previous homes. I tried not to remember her face in those quiet moments. Her eyes were brown, and shining and... my corner of mat was damp by the time we were signaled to be ready for the coach. I no longer wished for stillness or quiet.