Ansel of Pryor House Read online

  As per Mr. Farnham’s orders, he wasn’t expected to do much for the next two days beyond clean himself and appear before Miss Peveler if she demanded his presence.

  “You’re free to explore the house, though you really shouldn’t expect to find much,” Mrs. Finn had said as she turned to march toward the door, her plump figure straight and stiff like a soldier, her steps measured and almost theatrical. She opened the door and stepped across the threshold, turning to face Ansel with her hand on the knob. “Mind that you don’t get lost, though. Most of the rooms aren’t used, but none of them are locked.”

  Ansel thought he noted an air of melancholy regret in the housekeeper’s tone and expression. Perhaps in the distant past, Pryor House was a hive of activity, sound, and light. He could imagine it, anyway, as despite the great house’s somber, simple elegance, there was still that curious atmosphere of whimsy he’d felt upon entering the house earlier.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I’ll keep to the main rooms downstairs.”

  Mrs. Finn nodded, a shadow of a smile briefly lighting her face before her usual stern mask returned. Once he was finally alone, Ansel’s brain went blank, and he sank onto his bed, gazing helplessly around the room—his room. It was a small one, but it was very cozy and a far, far cry from what he’d long been used to, living with his father. Even the furniture for servants was well made yet functional and worked beautifully with the house’s color scheme. Ansel almost felt filthy and was convinced he reeked of the gutter when his gaze swept down to rest on his soiled and threadbare rags. His shoes were a disgrace, even for someone as poor as he.

  He noticed his sack of clothes on the floor near the foot of the bed, and so many reminders, so many memories, and so many feelings associated with them surged to the forefront of his mind, and with a shaky breath, Ansel stood up and walked to one of the windows flanking his bed. Fumbling with the latches, he managed to open the window, pushing the two narrow casements outward and inviting a blast of chill air inside. He tried to breathe it in, hoping the fresh air and the cold would purge the wild swirl of emotions that now wrapped around him like a bitter shroud. But as it turned out, confusion, shame, terror, and, yes, loneliness all coalesced into one awful, dark cloud that swallowed him. Ansel had no choice but to give in to grief he’d been suppressing for a few days now while in Mr. Farnham’s company.

  For several minutes he stood by the open window, crying, using his faded shirt as a handkerchief, barely noticing the winter scenery stretching out before him. For the briefest moment, he wished he were back home, enduring his father’s abuses, because that offered him familiarity and predictability despite the terrible pain. At least he knew what to expect day in and day out, and he was surrounded by things and people—neighbors, that is—he’d always known. He almost convinced himself that curling up on the floor, begging for his father to stop hitting him with a stick or a belt, was worth it as a price for the sight and the feel of his old bed and pillow, even if both were practically rotting to pieces under him.

  Now? He’d “changed hands” over cards—like property, livestock, or chattel—and had no idea what his future held for him. There’d been kindness and generosity, to be sure, and a great deal of pity. He needed to give himself and everyone else more time to get to know each other, but it didn’t change how he was now alone in so many ways, much more than before. He felt so helpless, so powerless.

  The tears ran out in time, and after calming himself down till his hiccoughs had been reduced to shuddering gasps, Ansel pulled the casements and turned the latches. His room now felt too cold, but he didn’t care. Sniffling, he shuffled over to his bed, where he undid his shoelaces, kicked off his shoes, and crawled under the covers. He turned to his side, burrowing further under the thick, comfortable blankets, but not before muttering an apology to the nice, clean sheets and pillows for being subjected to his filth. He fell asleep before long.

  * * * *

  “You look like something a consumptive troll just spat out.”

  Ansel’s brain took a moment to comprehend the observation, and he blinked rapidly in a vain attempt at ridding himself of the remnants of sleep. It was extremely difficult, though, because not only was he dragged out of bed while in deep sleep to meet his benefactress, but he’d also exhausted himself from crying hard. Yes, he was well aware that he looked like hell—all rumpled, pale, his eyes still swollen, his balance completely off as he struggled to stand still before Miss Peveler. He didn’t even have time to change his clothes or even wash his face before presenting himself, but Mrs. Finn was insistent and impatient.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he stammered, coloring. The room swayed a bit, and he had to take a step to the side to keep himself from toppling over.

  “Oh, tsk-tsk, young man,” Mrs. Finn said from where she stood, straight and rigid by the door, where Miss Peveler had ordered her to stay. “Put a little more effort in it.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said again, his face all aflame now. How many more apologies did he need to say before the day was over?

  “He needs food,” Miss Peveler said in the same dry monotone he’d grown familiar with. Perhaps it was a family quirk, sounding like underwhelmed cynics. “Give him some tea and biscuits after the interview, Mrs. Finn.”

  “Yes, Miss Peveler.” With a theatrical swishing of skirts and petticoats, Mrs. Finn left the parlor. Ansel didn’t see her go as she’d stood directly behind him, but he could easily picture the manner of her departure.

  The parlor fell silent, and it seemed as though Miss Peveler was simply waiting for the housekeeper’s footfalls to go silent. If that were so, what a strange thing to do, Ansel thought, seeing as how they were quite protected from eavesdroppers with Mrs. Finn and Mr. Blacow elsewhere.

  Miss Peveler was very much Mr. Farnham’s sister. Ansel couldn’t tell how tall she was because she sat on a sofa a bit of a distance from where he stood, but her bearing as well as her physicality echoed Mr. Farnham’s. She was hard-featured, not at all pretty in that classic aristocratic sort of way, she didn’t seem inclined to smile, and she was quite big-boned and robust. But she carried herself like an aristocrat, sitting on the sofa with her shoulders squared, her back straight, and her chin raised, her dark eyes unblinking and fierce. If she were a governess or school mistress, no one would dare test her. Ansel was convinced poor students in her care would be inclined to confess to imaginary sins if she were to stare at them the way she was staring at Ansel at that moment.

  One thing that stood out, however, was how her dress was very colorful, and, in fact, it mirrored the windows all over Pryor House. None of the golds, reds, blues, and other colors were bright; they were just as muted as those in the casements. Ansel’s mind stumbled to a halt at the realization, and he boggled at the next thought that made itself known. That is, Mr. Farnham’s curiously colored suits, now that Ansel really considered it, echoed Pryor House’s stone walls and ivy. Eccentricities in fashion taste was apparently in the siblings’ bloodline.

  “I’m sorry I’m not presentable, ma’am,” he said when the silence grew too heavy for him to breathe. “I was still asleep when Mrs. Finn called for me. I didn’t have time to wash and change.”

  “My brother told me your story,” she said without giving an indication whether or not she’d heard him. “You have my sympathies for the ordeal you went through with the card game, and I hope things will be better for you here.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. I hope to make myself useful and pay you back for your generosity.”

  “Yes, well, you can start by not groveling before your benefactors too much, young man. One ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’ is enough in conversation. Too many of those make me think of someone with little respect for himself or little to no confidence. I sense a terrified little creature hiding behind those desperate expressions of deference, deathly afraid of earning anyone’s displeasure.” She paused, tilted her head a little, and narrowed her eyes. “Is that how you feel about yoursel
f, Ansel Tunnicliffe?”

  Ansel didn’t know how to respond to such a question, and he fidgeted before Miss Peveler for a few moments of awkward silence. “I don’t know, ma’am—oh.” He wasn’t supposed to say “ma’am”, was he? As though to punctuate his misery further, his stomach growled, and it was all he could do to sigh heavily and regard Miss Peveler with what he hoped to be a deeply apologetic gaze.

  For her part, the lady raised a brow. “I’ll take that as a ‘yes’. But I spoke too hastily about your mind without considering your father’s abuses. If you think little of yourself right now, it should come as no small surprise.” Then she made a noncommittal sound, moving her gaze around her while brushing out her thick skirts absent-mindedly. For the briefest moment, Ansel could feel the atmosphere in the parlor lighten, but that change was gone too soon. When she pinned him down with another hard look, anxiety and shame surged again, threatening to choke him as he waited for her to speak. “It’s very fortunate that Byrle found you when he did. I wouldn’t have been able to help you had circumstances been different.”

  Your soul might have been lost to the world forever. Those words came back to Ansel’s mind in a startling wave, making him shiver under a sudden chill that rippled down his body.

  Miss Peveler pursed her lips as she paused again, and like her brother when he mulled over things with growing impatience, she took to drumming her fingers on her lap. “No matter. As far as your role’s concerned hereabouts, you’re to give Mrs. Finn and Mr. Blacow an extra hand as needed. I don’t consider you a servant, but I’m not fond of idleness in youth. But everything really depends on what I observe. Otherwise, I’ll call for you on occasion—largely for conversation or reading or even music.”

  Ansel’s jaw dropped, and he knew he visibly paled. “But—I don’t know how to read properly or play music, ma’am,” he said.

  “We also need to get some meat on your bones. The sooner, the better. Christmas is less than a month away, and we’ll need a great deal more out of you than what we have now.”

  Oh, lord, Christmas—a festive season eagerly anticipated by so many but him. Ansel’s memories of past Christmases weren’t any different from any other day of the year save for one detail. His father’s rage directed toward his youngest child had at least a hint of the holiday spirit in it. Drunk and miserable as usual, he’d cuff Ansel hard or slap him, slurring, “Merry Goddamned Christmas to you, whelp!”

  Ansel recoiled at the memories, blushing, and when he looked at Miss Peveler, he caught her staring hard at him. She sighed heavily when he murmured yet one more apology and then waved a hand. “Go on. Go to the kitchen and eat there. Hurry along, young man, I don’t have patience for dawdlers. Oh, and when you see Mrs. Finn, tell her I’m waiting for my tea tray.”

  Ansel didn’t need another prompting. Nodding, he spun on his heels and hurried out of the parlor.

  Chapter 5

  Mr. Farnham left the morning following Ansel’s arrival, and he took leave of the boy in a quick and somewhat hurried fashion, saying he’d tarried long enough and needed to “make sure my two brats haven’t burned the house down”. Not that Ansel minded, of course, as he was just about to go about some household work, and his mind was a bit scattered. Admittedly, it wasn’t too scattered as to keep him from noticing the gentleman’s suit, which was, again, in nothing else but gray and green. He would, if he could, step outside to observe how Mr. Farnham looked with Pryor House as his backdrop, but the cold, guilt, and embarrassment prevented him.

  His interview with Miss Peveler left him reeling still, so much so that he’d opted to forego a leisurely exploration of Pryor House in favor of endless housework. She terrified him, to be sure, even more so than Mr. Farnham, and perhaps a day spent cleaning would ease his nerves. It was a comfortable, familiar activity despite the drudgery. He didn’t realize till then just how much he’d learned to depend on it to keep him centered somehow. At least in his former home, drudgery kept him relatively safe from his father’s outbursts.

  “There’s nothing for you to do today,” Mrs. Finn told him after breakfast. “Miss Peveler’s set to call on a friend, and she won’t be back till tea.”

  Ansel regarded the two servants in some confusion. It was then when he realized they’d been taking their time with breakfast, talking and talking, and once they’d declared themselves full, they simply sat back and indulged in coffee, still talking.

  He hesitated for a moment. “What about Christmas, Mrs. Finn?” he asked.

  “It’ll come. Don’t worry.”

  Well, that wasn’t exactly what Ansel wanted to know, and he wasn’t sure if the housekeeper was toying with him. Observing her usual grim expression, Ansel pursued the subject. “I mean—should we be preparing for it, ma’am?”

  “Oh, that. No, that’s not necessary. Miss Peveler doesn’t bother with parties or feasts every year. Come to think of it, we haven’t had much by way of merrymaking, have we, Mr. Blacow?” When Mr. Blacow shook his head and grunted from behind his cup, Mrs. Finn continued. “And don’t get your hopes up on her feeling more generous and sociable this year. As for Mr. Farnham and his family? Well—they’ve got their own way of celebrating Christmas. It’s something you really don’t need to worry about.”

  And that was the end of that. Mrs. Finn declared herself finished and stood up, while Mr. Blacow declared himself halfway satisfied while pouring himself more coffee. Ansel, for his part, stood up as well, and offered to collect the dirty dishes for washing. Negotiating with Mr. Blacow over dish cleaning duties proved to be an exasperating challenge, seeing as how the older man had no other work to do should Ansel take over his usual chores. It was eventually agreed upon for Ansel to wash dishes at night and allow Mr. Blacow an early bedtime, for the man wasn’t getting any younger, though he was loath to admit it.

  Ansel mulled over his role in Pryor House, dismayed. If this was what he could expect as the newest resident of a lonely old house, he didn’t know what else he could do to fill up his hours. Before he could even start to consider options, Mr. Blacow shooed him away and exiled him from the kitchen. For her part, Mrs. Finn had vanished to do some light “touch-up work” in the different rooms downstairs, though she did order him to come back to her in two hours “for a proper haircut”.

  * * * *

  For two hours, the only reasonable thing Ansel could do was poke around the house, opening doors and peering curiously into the rooms beyond. Nothing physically remarkable or unusual caught his attention throughout his exploration; each room appeared to mirror the next, with its spare, understated, but elegant beauty and the jewel-like colors cast by the windows onto the floor or wall, depending on the sun’s placement. Everything looked to be appropriately functional, and the rest of the servants’ quarters looked no differently from his own room.

  The pervading air of melancholy was quite heavy, though, and Ansel felt it more vividly now than ever, having rested properly and eaten something more substantial. The portraits lining the walls of half of the rooms were fewer than he’d expected a great house to boast. They were quite faded as well, faces and figures barely visible from discoloration and other causes. That they continued to be displayed on the walls despite their near uselessness as works of art baffled and moved Ansel.

  “Maybe Miss Peveler has a special attachment to these pictures,” he murmured, staring long and hard at a portrait of what appeared to be two people together.

  Their forms could barely be seen, and if Ansel were to stretch his imagination further, he could see a couple standing shoulder to shoulder, all four hands clasped in a very protective, possessive sort of way. Ansel also guessed the two subjects to be sisters or mother and daughter, judging from the loving closeness he could sense from nothing more than vague silhouettes and discolored paint.

  One of the rooms he stumbled across was the library. It was an immense room, each wall set with shelves that went all the way to the ceiling, and each shelf was filled with books of every siz
e, color, and thickness. The only pieces of furniture in the library were two chairs and a narrow table that was long enough to accommodate both. Light spilling in through the windows seemed to flood the room with so much color, lending it a quietly cheerful air. Ansel approached one of the walls and examined the books. They were, indeed, old, their spines showing different marks of usage and inexorable decay. Some were bound in leather, some in cloth, but each was proudly titled in gold leaf, though Ansel couldn’t make heads or tails of most of them. Too many sounded foreign, and those in English made use of words he wasn’t familiar with, given his poor education.

  He hesitated before sampling one that had an elegant flower on the spine, alongside the book’s title. It proved to be a book about plants and flowers, several of its pages filled with softly colored illustrations of different specimens, but their names weren’t English, and Ansel could only make out a modest number of words in the main text. He gave a little start when he thought he could hear his father berating him from an indeterminate distance, mocking him for his pretensions to knowledge. He’d never be more than what he was now, that ghostly voice said, ending its taunts with laughter Ansel had long been familiar with.

  He swallowed and quickly re-shelved the book, eyeing the spine ruefully as doubts and shame grew. “I can always look at pictures, I suppose,” he muttered. “If Miss Peveler would let me.”

  As if she would, his father’s thin, hollow, hateful voice rang through that strange, distant tunnel that again. The lady knows better than to indulge the desperate and preposterous ambitions of a semi-literate nobody.

  The books suddenly seemed too intimidating, if not menacing, to Ansel, and he turned around to avoid looking at them. His gaze dropped to the chairs and table, and there it stayed.