Fingersmith by Sarah Waters Page B

tiptoe, and stoop to the lock, I saw a dim light, a shadow—nothing clearer than that, no sign of any kind of sleeping or wakeful or fretful girl, or anything.
    I wondered, though, if I might hear her breathing. I straightened up, and held my breath, and put my ear flat to the door. I heard my heart-beat, and the roaring of my blood. I heard a small, tight sound, that must have been the creeping of a worm or a beetle in the wood.
    Beyond that, there was nothing—though I listened for a minute, maybe two. Then I gave it up. I took off my shoes and my garters and got into bed: the sheets were cold and felt damp, like sheets of pastry. I put my cloak over the bed-clothes—for extra warmth; and also so that I might quickly seize it, if someone came at me in the night and I wanted to run. You never knew. The candle I left burning. If Mr Way was to complain that that was one stub less, too bad. Even a thief has her weak points. The shadows still danced about. The pastry sheets stayed cold. The great clock sounded half-past ten—eleven— half-past eleven—twelve. I lay and shivered, and longed with all my heart for Mrs Sucksby, Lant Street, home.

    T hey woke me at six in the morning. It seemed still the middle of the night to me, for my candle of course had burned to nothing, and the window-curtains were heavy and kept the thin light out. When the maid, Margaret, came knocking at my door, I thought I was in my old room at Lant Street. I was sure she was a thief, broke out from gaol and needing her fetters filed free by Mr Ibbs. That happened, sometimes; and sometimes the thieves were kind men, who knew us, and sometimes they were desperate villains. Once a man put a knife to Mr Ibbs's throat, because he said the file went too slow. So, hearing Margaret's knock now, I started from the bed, crying out, 'Oh! Hold!'—though what I meant to be held, and who ought to have done it, I could not tell you; and neither, I suppose, could Margaret. She put her face about the door, whispering, 'Did you call, miss?' She had a jug of warm water for me, and she came and set my fire; then she reached beneath the bed and took the chamber-pot, and emptied it into her bucket of slops, and wiped it clean with a damp cloth that hung against her apron.
    I had used to wash the chamber-pots, at home. Now, seeing Margaret tip my piddle into her bucket, I was not sure I liked it. But I said, Thank you, Margaret'—then wished I hadn't; for she heard it and tossed her head, as if to say, Who did I think I was, thanking her?
    Servants. She said I should take my breakfast in Mrs Stiles's pantry. Then she turned and left me—getting a quick look, I thought, at my frock and my shoes and my open trunk, on the way.
    I waited for the fire to take, then rose and dressed. It was too cold to wash. My gown felt clammy. When I drew the window-curtain back and let the daylight in, I saw—what I had not been able to see the night before, by the candle—that the ceiling was streaked brown with damp, and the wood at the walls stained white.
    From the next-door room there came the murmur of voices. I heard Margaret saying, 'Yes, miss.' Then there was the shutting of a door.
    Then there was silence. I went down to my breakfast—first losing my way among the dark passages at the bottom of the servants' stairs, and finding myself in the yard with the privy in it. The privy, I saw now, was surrounded by nettles, and the bricks in the yard broken up with weeds. The walls of the house had ivy on them, and some of the windows wanted panes. Gentleman was right, after all, about the place being hardly worth cracking. He was right, too, about the servants. When I found Mrs Stiles's pantry at last there was a man there, dressed in breeches and silk stockings, and with a wig on his head with powder on it. That was Mr Way. He had been steward to Mr Lilly for forty-five years, he said; and he looked it. When a girl brought the breakfasts, he was served first. We had gammon and an