Ary was going insane. She thought it might happen as she got older, but older for her felt like around thirty or so…NOT twenty-one. She paced around like a cat, circling the women that dusted and swept the front hallway. She had complimented their work once or twice, only to receive bemused smiles and murmurs of “thank you m’lady” from the gathered group. There was noise from the dining room as the wall and roof were being fixed, the owls not being particularly happy as they were tossed from their perches. Aryith did feel bad about that but determined quickly that they simply couldn’t keep living there. It was them or her and frankly she had resisted the urge to practice her aim the first night she and Da had been in the house and suggested instead that the birds be removed rather than killed…(really it was a tough decision for her). She shuffled along the floor, the hem of her skirt already quite dirty from dragging along the floor but she really couldn’t feel the justice of holding it daintily whilst all this leaning was going on….until the woman sweeping the floor politely told her she was now dirtying her own front hall. Aryith quickly fled outside and shook out her skirt, dust billowing around her feet. It wasn’t a very nice dress, after first arriving in court she’d sought out Lainey for some…less fine clothes and her friend had delivered with two suitable dresses for mucking around in. Well…mucking the way only the lady of a very dirty house could do.
The dark green velvet skirt and bodice bespoke status as did the chemise beneath it even though Aryith had pushed the sleeves up over her elbows to keep them away from the dirt. As she examined her slippers to make sure they were wiped clean she remembered that Lainey had sewn ties to the skirt allowing Aryith to tie the heavier fabric up and away from the ground, but still protecting her modesty with the long chemise. After doing this Aryith felt ready once more to tackle her house. She came back in to the now cleaner front entrance but still felt her fingers itching to do something. Maybe if she took up that abandoned cloth right there she could do a little dusting herself…without Da seeing as he was overseeing the dinging room area. She grabbed the cloth and surreptitiously hid it behind her back (unaware that she’d been spotted by the new cook who was now chuckling behind his hand) as she inched sideways past the dining room, blowing a kiss to her husband as he turned towards her before fleeing further down the hallway where there were plenty of things to be dusted. Finally! She could feel productive and needed! Aryith never thought she’d wanted to clean so badly in her life…ever…considering she’d HATED her stints as a maid. As she reached up to dust off a table a very stern voice (Aislinn’s…of course) demanded that she drop the cloth. There was a flair of stubbornness of course. But, sadly, Aryith dropped the cloth on the table and turned towards her friend pretending she wasn’t guilty. “Aislinn! There you are! I was just um…I lost my handkerchief…” she lied.
Group: Member of the Court/Servant
Posts: 62
Member No.: 45
Joined: 17-June 08
Ary was running the front of the house while Aislinn worked on her own off in another room. As she continued to stir up the dust in the room she was working on Aislinn began to wish that she had remained at the palace. Would they ever get this awful mess cleaned up? Between the mess in just about every single room and the pounding echoing from the diningroom where the roof and walls were being fixed to the Owls that had taken up residence this place was a nightmare. Aislinn rinsed her cloth off again and proceeded to scrub a table that had about ten layers of dust on it. She could see a lot of the previous palace staff going ‘ha ha serves you right for sticking up for Aryith like that’ considering she was up to her elbows in dust, dirt and debris. “Never ever will this house get this dirty again! This is ridiculous!” Although she refrained as much as possible from cursing, she felt like one was deserved here.
She noticed that the bucket of water she was using was as dirty as the room. There would be no point in using it to clean anymore. Aislinn needed to dump out the water and start again. She dropped the cloth into the bucket and headed towards a door along one wall that opened to the outside. As she stepped through the door, she came face to face with glorious sunshine. “Oh this is wonderful…” She removed the cloth and tipped the water out of the bucket. Once the bucket was emptied, she proceeded back into the room and then headed off through the Manor to go fill up the bucket with more water.
On her way through the house, she passed the room where Aryith was and saw the new Lady of the Manor with the sleeves up her gown pushed up over her elbows and the skirt held up so that only her long chemise was brushing the ground. As if this look wasn’t servant-ish enough, she also held a dusting cloth in her hands. “Drop the cloth Milady” Aislinn had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing as Aryith turned to face her with a look of pure innocence- if that was even possible on Ary… “Aislinn! There you are! I was just um…I lost my handkerchief…” She raised an eye in Aryith’s direction. “Ah I see. Well Milady, it looks like you have now found it although it is too dusty to use. I shall fetch you a clean one… …” She then couldn’t help but laugh. “Forgive me for laughing...I should technically be scolding you for not being a lady, but honestly, I think we need all the help we can get.”
Drat….she should have known that Aislinn would have found her, that girl had the uncanny knack of knowing what she was up to, but that was why Aryith wanted her as her ladies maid, they were both learning together. She knew Aislinn was funning when she mentioned getting her handkerchief because she was still staring pointedly as the cloth in Aryith’s hand. “Um…so…why don’t we….um….there’s a ledger in the library maybe we can um…use it and uh….start doing invent…inver? Inventory?? Yes, inventory…” she dropped the cloth and hurried to the library where she had found the old ledger and with a great show of coughing and dusting she opened it to discover that several pages had been ripped out. She thought that was odd, ledgers were used to record all sorts of different things and were used to reference certain events like a drought or perhaps a famine, so why…had the pages been ripped out? Rooting around she found a charcoal pencil left behind by Da the last time he was in here (as noted because it wasn’t covered in three inches of dust like everything else) and took it with her. “Okay I found it, we’ll start down here yes? Then work our way up!” she decided as she made her way to the very back of the house where the kitchen and servants quarters were. “Hm…perhaps we should let the cook do his own inventory, Geoffrey! Geoffrey I know you’re busy trying to clean this place up but if you need anything please tell Margaret?”
“Yes Lady Aryith!” called the deep booming voice of the new cook as he waded through the mess left behind by whomever had previously entered the kitchen (meals were being cooked on an open fire in the front yard at the moment). “Could you please send in a few more girls? I think I have a plan but this kitchen won’t get clean with just myself!” he informed her.
“Yes I shall.” Aryith answered before hurrying back to the front hall where her new housekeeper (the great-granddaughter of the old housekeeper) stood supervising the cleaning. “Margaret can you please send three girls to help Geoffrey in the kitchen? Don’t worry about the front rooms at the moment.” she informed the other woman. “Also, I’m borrowing Aislinn we’re going to make notes about what else needs to be done, if you need anything the Baron is still in the dining room.”
“Yes m’Lady!” Margaret chirped, quickly going to find three girls to send to the kitchen. Aryith motioned for Aislinn to follow and together they went once more down the hall to the room closest to the kitchens that seemed to be completely empty. Aryith poked her head in and scribbled in an untidy scrawl: Room one – empty.
“That’s odd, I thought there’d be something here, there’s a fireplace…do you think it was a sitting room?” she questioned curiously. “I have no idea how many rooms there are and the stairs go up three stories! I think there’s an attic too, Margaret said there’s a large wine cellar too, but she said it was empty. Well, let’s go then.” She turned away and walked under the stairs to another room and opened that door. It contained a jumble of furniture and was obviously being used for storage. “Well see now, that’s better, there’s a table and some chairs and…a footstool it looks like…” she looked around at the full room and turned to Aislinn. “So it’s getting better yes? We know what’s in the study and library and there’s a front sitting room and a dining room. The second floor has the master and lady suites and Dameon said there was an office there too, so what’s on the third floor? The nursery you think?” she pondered.
Group: Member of the Court/Servant
Posts: 62
Member No.: 45
Joined: 17-June 08
Of course Aislinn would eventually find Aryith- it was a big house but not that big, plus she had grown up alongside Aryith. It did not take a genius to find her new mistress. Aislinn nodded as Aryith suggested getting the ledger in the library and starting to do an inventory of the house. “Agreed. That would be a good place to start. Go room by room and see what is salvageable in each room.” Together the two women headed to the library where Aryith made a great show of finding the ledger which had obviously not been used for sometime as it was covered in multiple layers of dust. When the dust was blown off both Aryith and Aislinn fell into a fit of coughing. “Oh my Lord the amount of dust in here is awful...” Aislinn nodded then as Aryith said perhaps they should start downstairs and work their way upstairs. “That makes sense.”
“Hm…perhaps we should let the cook do his own inventory, Geoffrey! Geoffrey I know you’re busy trying to clean this place up but if you need anything please tell Margaret? ... Margaret can you please send three girls to help Geoffrey in the kitchen? Don’t worry about the front rooms at the moment. ... Also, I’m borrowing Aislinn we’re going to make notes about what else needs to be done, if you need anything the Baron is still in the dining room.”
For a woman who had never been mistress of a large estate before Aryith seemed to be taking control of the situation well enough. Once all the staff had their marching orders, she followed Aryith as she headed down the hall to a room closest to the kitchens. The room was void of anything
“That’s odd, I thought there’d be something here, there’s a fireplace…do you think it was a sitting room? ... I have no idea how many rooms there are and the stairs go up three stories! I think there’s an attic too, Margaret said there’s a large wine cellar too, but she said it was empty. Well, let’s go then.”
Aislinn considered the room and the length away from the kitchen and shrugged her shoulders. “It could be possible although I’m unsure whether you would find a sitting room for the Master’s family this close to the kitchens? Without seeing some original plans I guess it could be a sitting room of some sort though? Although this house it a lot smaller than the palace it is certainly more than you or I are used to calling our own milady, but we shall conquer it together...” She was a little concerned that the house would never be set right, but she assured herself that with the hard work of the staff and both Aryith and Dameon’s organization it would get done.
“Well see now, that’s better, there’s a table and some chairs and…a footstool it looks like… So it’s getting better yes? We know what’s in the study and library and there’s a front sitting room and a dining room. The second floor has the master and lady suites and Dameon said there was an office there too, so what’s on the third floor? The nursery you think?
She followed along beside Aryith making personal notes of things she saw that still needed work- there were a lot of personal notes. They entered what looked to be a storage area. “I agree- this is much better. Now that we know some of the stuff here we can find proper uses for it. I am beginning to believe that in time this house will be righted...” She pondered all of Aryith’s chatter regarding locations. At the mention of the third floor possibly being a nursery she looked at Aryith with a ‘do we have need for one yet’ kind of look. “Again without seeing the intended plans for this house it is hard to say, but it could be possible?”
Aryith suddenly recalled that the nursery was not on the third floor but on the second but she felt a little embarrassed that Aislinn kept mentioning plans for the house as if it were important! It was her house wasn’t it? She could set it up anyway she wanted to! Maybe she would just to flout convention; nothing said that the giant desk in the office (which frankly looked as if it had been gone through as all the drawers had been pulled out and shunted to one side) needed to stay there! She still hated that everything in the house was old and unkempt, nothing said that anything in that room would be useful once they got it out, what if it all fell apart?! She frowned in a discouraged fashion and wanted to just go back to surreptitiously trying to dust the mirror. And what was that look about commenting about a nursery?! Didn’t most houses have one? At least that’s the impression she always got when she hear women talking amongst themselves.
“Well,” she bit out a tad more crossly than she meant to, “lets go upstairs and start looking around.” She snapped the ledger shut, who cared about inventory anyway? It was a stupid, silly endeavor. The charcoal pen was trapped between the yellow pages as she climbed the main stairway up to the second floor. It was here; through the newly removed layers of dust that Aryith noticed something she hadn’t before. There were gouges in the wood floor. She walked over to the overturned carpet and crouched to peer at them. They were very curious and she traced them gently with her finger. Devoid of the many calluses that had once inhabited it she thought they were very fine. She wondered if a piece of furniture had scratched the floor but noticed that they were the only ones here. On a whim she curled her fingers and set her short nails in the grooves. It was possible, but her hands were much smaller than the ones who might have made these marks. She resolved that perhaps it had been furniture after all.
She stood and whipped her hands on her skirt before straightening. “That will need to be fixed, it’s outside the rug.” She murmured more to herself than to Aislinn. Meanwhile a maid was opening the door to her bedchamber (presumably to clean it) when there was a joyful yip before Duke came bounding out. “No!” Aryith shouted as the dog, drawn by some strange scent ran for the third flight of stairs. Dropping the ledger, she picked up her skirts and bolted after her dog, most likely to the surprise of everyone but since Aryith did not yet know what was up there she was afraid of him hurting himself. “Aislinn hurry! I need your help!” she called as she raced up, nearly tripping over her own feet and coming to the topmost floor below the attic. Duke was yipping from a room on her right and as she made to move towards it she was seized with the thought that something very terrible had happened here.
The door to the room was gone, busted into the room off its hinges it looked just as bad, if not worse than the master suite and the office. Because apparently who ever had owned this house before had a lot of business to be done. Yet another desk stood in this room but was little more than firewood as it looked as if it had been hacked to pieces. Paper littered the floor as overturned ink and bottles lay stationary. A large pile of ashes rested int eh fire place as if several things had been burned and along the door frame she noticed that there were more of those mysterious gouges. Duke was yipping through another door, under the bed. This room seemed to be a guest room, it was sparkly furnished and the floorboards creaked ominously as she neared the bed under which Duke was yipping. “DUKE!” she seethed like a very irate mother. “Get out from under there this instant!” But Duke did not come, prompting Ary to kneel.
Under the bed she found a large picture frame. Curious now more than angry she dragged it out and with Aislinns’ help stood it up. It was so dusty the occupant of the picture was invisible and with an uncaring sweep of her hand she brushed the dust away from where she felt the face might be. She found hands instead, She and Aislinn turned the picture over and she tried again. This time a man’s eyes peered out at her from the frame as she brushed the dust and dirt away, her palm black. She stood there staring at it for several long minutes. “I have the feeling…that my house has a lot more secrets to it than we were previously suspecting…” she finally said.
