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Servant Work

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by Chirmaya Nashaar

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Tayna huffed and pushed her hair back behind her fox's ear, though it constantly seemed to be slipping out of place. The usual strip of old cloth that she used to tie her hair back while she was working on the estate, the long hallway looking out over the grounds, a balcony of sorts were nobles could stroll and muse and take in the day. The gardens were beyond the windows clad in the blooms of summer and she would have stopped to look at them too if she had had anything in the time of day to slow down.

The vixen licked her lips, her back aching, a broom clasped in her hands and a feather duster made of the softer and smaller ostrich feathers that no one wanted to wear. It was good quality and that much she could be grateful for, at least, for it made shorter work of an already long and arduous task. The window ledges had to be clean where they were framed and paned in glass, though she didn't quite see why it was something that had to be done so often. It was not as if Lord Barreth entertained all that much anymore. Times were changing, although Tayna did not understand what was going on out there, not after leaving in such a hurry.

For, at the estate of a lord who had not said two words to her since she had arrived, she was alone there. As alone as a teenage vixen without any sense of her family around her, that was, could ever have been.

Tayna took a deep, steadying breath, her lungs tight, though the emotion could not be held there for so long when there was work to do. She didn't have the time to spend considering it. Her mother had said that it would be a better life for her there. She only hoped that she was right, though the back-breaking labour was, day in and day out, leaving her little time to either sleep or eat or rest.

Lord Barreth, Lord Runer Barreth, kept her busy, though she rarely saw him about enjoying his estate, except for a distance. Lords of his status in the world most often did not do much of the work that she was used to or any of the work that she was not used to, their power gleaned from power and the influences of partners that were far beyond Tayna's world.

Would she ever want to be that powerful in the world, she wondered, as she swept the hallway? Was that a life that she would want for herself? Being a lady of a house, an estate, the grounds stretching so far that there was a herd of deer kept there?

"Oh, my good sir, how do you do?"

Giggling, she flounced, grabbing at the skirt of her patched dress and curtseying, although the only one that a noble would curtsey to, as she'd seen, was those higher up. In the case of Lord Barreth, there were few higher powers that he would bow to, although he bent the knee to the Church and the king sitting about them all. The Church was all power and the Church was all-encompassing, something that infiltrated every last corner of society, even where Tayna had lived before so very far out.

The countryside held more appeal to her, although a part of her longed to know just what the cities were like, how they towered, how many others were there. There had to be more than where they were, though she rarely even was asked to go into town as it was simply not a part of her job. Thus, she had not seen all that much of the world even before being sent to be a servant on Lord Barreth's estate, although she still diligently wrote her mother letters every Sunday. There were no days off for her, although she was not entitled to them, really, anyway.

"Are you daydreaming again?"

Tayna glanced up, on her hands and knees to sweep out the fireplace, though it was merely there to show, lit sometimes on a winter's night to impress whoever was staying in the guest quarters. One of her few friends there, if any of them could be called friends rather than people she worked with as a servant, stood over her, a wolf with her hands on her hips and a smirk on her lips. Tayna winced. Trust Reline to catch her when, perhaps, she did not have her mind on the task as much as she should have.

The wolf chuckled and shook her head, a fall of brown hair swept back in a tight servant's bun, something serious and workmanlike. She needed to have it out of her face, her muzzle elegant and pretty even though she was just a servant and, indeed, a servant who had been there longer than Tayna had been. Some estates had a lot of turnover between servants and others did not move all that much, though Lord Barreth's was maybe one of the better ones, at least as far as Tayna had seen so far. She only didn't like dealing with his son, Jorro to his friends and those in his circle, though he was just the Young Lord Barreth to her and those under him. According to Jorro, everyone in the world was beneath him.

Tayna sighed and shook her head, allowing Reline to help her back to her feet, already aching from the work she'd done. Was there ever a time where she wasn't aching?

"How much have you got left?" The wolf smiled, tail picking up as it wagged faintly. "I could help."

The vixen shook her head.

"Oh, no, Reline, I couldn't ask for that. You've got too much to do yourself. We should get back to it too, you know how Lord Barreth is when things are out of place. And then you know it's your mother that we have to face if things are not up to his standards."

Reline rolled her eyes and leaned back against the wall. Only then did Tayna realise that her hands were covered with soot up to her mid-forearm, sleeves rolled back to her elbows.

"Yes, I was on fireplace duty today," Reline said, screwing up her muzzle. "But mother doesn't look up the chimneys anymore, just what they can see. No one will see that they have not been cleaned out perfectly until the last clean before the fall comes, when they start lighting them again."

Tayna scoffed, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth. It seemed to be an overly common thing to find her shaking her head around Reline, though the wolf's smile was soft and fixed at the same time.

"And what are you going to do when they find that you have not been doing the work to those standards?" Tayna pressed her lips together. "Sometimes I think you need the help, not me."

The wolf only smiled. As proud as she was with her work and how much she liked to lose herself in a task, well... In short, Reline was not a wolfess who seemed at all cut out to remain a servant for life. That was strange enough in itself considering that her father and her mother were also servants - indeed, her mother was the head of the servants and one to be feared, for her repercussions could be severe, even to her own daughter. Some even whispered that she was harsher with Reline than any of the other servants, though that was perhaps to avoid favouritism.

Tayna could not weigh in either way on that one, though she had squeezed Reline's shoulder tightly for hours after one time her mother had managed to smack her hard enough with the handle of a broom to leave a welt. Reline had not been able to sit properly for days, even though her mother had apologised afterwards. It was no way to make a lesson stick but tempers often frayed in a household with so much work for those on the lowest rung of the ladder.

"I always clean them before they are needed," Reline assured her. "But being here longer than you has made it so that I know how to work around things. Work cleverer, Tayna, not harder. This is not a world to get devoted to."

Tayna wrinkled her nose.

"Did you hear that from Jorro?"

Reline let out a bark of laughter that echoed down the hallway.

"What? No! He wouldn't know a day's work if it leapt up and smacked him in the muzzle!"

Tayna giggled, though covered her lips with her hand, checking left and right to make sure they were alone there. One never knew who could be lurking around the corner and being alone was a luxury, quite often, reserved for the rich. She'd thought she was alone when Reline, after all, had popped up, as she was often so want to do.

"We will do the fireplaces together when the time comes," Tayna said. "But if you really want to help me finish my work more quickly - here!"

She finished with a tossed scrap of cloth, though it was large enough to clean the floors, the polished stone smooth and shiny already, as much as Reline sighed.

"This again? Didn't we do this last week?"

Tayna shrugged.

"You can ask your mother about it if you don't think it needs to be done."

That was not something that Reline was about to do, grumbling good-naturedly as she doused her arms in the bucket standing soapy and foaming to the side of the corridor, though at least they had the lure of birdsong from the garden for company. It was soothing on their ears, tails flicking and twitching to the tenor of music that they could enjoy. It was no orchestra and it was no performance in front of the nobles over dinner but it was all that they had and, sometimes, that was all that they needed to.

Cleaning the floors too as one, final task that took an entire afternoon to do a wing of the estate together was back-breaking and they grunted and groaned, twisting and rocking their backs to ease out the knots building there. It was stiffening work but the company of a good friend, whether they were engaged in chatter or not, at least allowed it to pass as swiftly as it could. Reline was a chatterbox, in particular, something that Tayna had taken a while to tease out of her, the new servant on her own that no one understood the meaning of. She'd appeared out of the blue, to them, and there had not been a need for a new servant until Cassandra had been forced to leave the following winter due to her mother's illness. Tayna still felt guilty about, in effect taking her position. The coin would have been useful to Cassandra but she could not look after her sick mother and earn money. Thus the cycle of poverty of the lowest of classes continued...

"Did you hear that Lord Barreth is going to the city to meet with the heads of the Church?"

Reline broke the quiet, as she always did. Tayna licked her lips, though kept working.

"Why's that?"

"I don't know."

"Then why did you say."

"Because I can't stand the sound of your bones creaking and clicking anymore like an old, creaky spinster!"

Tayna yelled but there was a grin on the wolf's lips as she dodged the dirty cloth thrown at her, though only barely. There was no time for such a childish chase without risking tipping murky water over the freshly cleaned floors so playful insults had to be exchanged verbally, laughing and lighter-hearted as they returned to their work, though Tayna's mind was apt to wander as it always did.

And wonder she did as she worked, straightening as the sun faded beyond the horizon, the servants walking the hallways to light the lanterns of well-trodden routes that Lord Barreth wanted lit up at all times. For she did not know the basest of things, the things that would come to be in time, and, still, she wondered on Reline's words.

Would the Church ever affect her life too?