Just Like Magic (8 page)

And when Gerta came storming down the stairs, demanding breakfast, I reacted slowly.

“Ella! Where are my eggs?”

“Eggs?”

“Yes! You know, breakfast?”

“Oh, breakfast.” The idea seemed overwhelming. “I’ll fix it in a little while.”

“While we starve!”

From upstairs Lucy shrieked, “Gerta!”

“I’m down here!” Gerta hollered.

Lucy descended halfway down the stairs. “Listen to what Her Royal Highness says—she just sent me a note—”

“Really?” Gerta flew up to Lucy’s side. “Let’s see!”

“We’ll speak of it upstairs.” Lucy looked down at me with a sneer. “This doesn’t concern Ella!”

I shrugged my shoulders. “It never does. But what do I care?”

Lucy turned back up the stairway with a swirl. “Of course, you wouldn’t care about a ball for the prince! For his twenty-first birthday, with simply everyone there! But since you haven’t debuted—not that they’d invite someone like you anyway—”

“Then you needn’t tell me about it! Just go away, Lucy!” My voice was a bit choked. Even as battered as I felt that morning, I still felt the sting. A ball for the prince had been the height of my ambition for the past decade. And I had no chance of going. None. I didn’t want to hear a word about it.

But the echoes of rapture were sounding all over town, and I couldn’t escape it. As the weeks went by, even Henry had his say about it. He was weeding in the garden one bright early September morning. “Do you know, miss,” he said, panting slightly as he attacked some bindweed, “they say this’ll be the biggest party ever held at the palace? More footmen, more food—”

I made an I-don’t-care face. I was talking to Henry again. Why not? Ignoring him hadn’t gotten me anywhere. “All I know is, the date hasn’t even been announced, and Gerta and Lucy are already arguing about who will get their invitation first.”

“I heard about that, too,” Henry volunteered. “The invitations’ll be writ in gold and delivered by messengers on horseback.”

I looked at him askance. “What’s wrong with the post?”

“Not special enough, miss! Why, this here ball is very important!”

“So everyone says.”

“But it’s true!” He lowered his voice. “They say the king has told the prince, it’s time.”

“Time? What do you mean?”

“Time to find a proper princess to marry.” He pulled up some onions with a grunt.

“A princess? Why a princess?”

“That’s what they all say, miss.”

Well! If that was what the servants were saying, it might be true. Still, what did it matter? I’d never even met the prince, and I suspected his sister was a snob. A snob! Ha! Who was I to talk?

“That’s what the
king
wants,” I pointed out. “What do they say the
prince
wants?”

Henry shook his head sturdily. “Stands to reason a prince marries a princess, miss. Or someone high and noble. The queen, now, she wasn’t a princess, but her dad was an earl and a King’s Counselor and—”

“Henry!”

“Miss?”

“Henry, I don’t want to hear about who the prince marries, or who’s carrying the invitations, or, or anything!” I stood up. “I need to go back inside and make some more tea.”

I pushed open the door into the cool dark of the kitchen and pulled up a chair at the table. For a few minutes I just sat, tea forgotten. What did Henry know, anyway? Why couldn’t I—why couldn’t— Somehow, the thoughts died in my head. Henry knew a lot. With one ear in the palace and the other on the streets, he knew almost everything that happened in town. If anyone knew who the prince was supposed to marry, it was Henry.

Why had I always thought I had a chance? Just because my father had called me “Princess?” Princess Ella of Queen’s Way Kitchen. My cheeks turned dull pink in the shadowy room. I tried to turn my thoughts elsewhere, but they kept coming back around to myself. My childhood ambitions? Nothing but fantasies. My present life? A self-deluded waiting for doors to open that forever would stay closed to me. I waited for tears to come, but I was past tears.

“Miss!” Henry was peering in at the door.

“Yes?”

“There’s slugs in the chard! Got any ashes?”

Ashes? I winced and glanced in the mirror. “They’re usually in the fireplace! Why ashes?”

“Slugs don’t like ‘em, miss.”

I found myself wanting to laugh hysterically. What did Miss Ella Merton have in common with slugs? A dislike of ashes. “I bet Hannah Homebody knew that,” I said.

“Who, miss?”

“Someone in a book.” And suddenly, with a glum instinct, I knew what I had to do. Of course I could continue to turn up my nose and shake my fist at life if I wanted, but where did it get me? Did it bring me any closer to life as a lady? What was a lady, anyway? Wasn’t my mother one? And yet hadn’t she started her life in a kitchen?

I stared around my kitchen. Henry was looking at me hopefully. I didn’t have anything to feed him. I didn’t have a clean cup in the house. I needed to do the dishes—and I was sick of tea and toast.

“Henry?”

“Yes, miss?”

I opened my mouth twice before I finally got the words out.

“Do you think—that your sister could show me how to cook?”

7

Cinders for Ella

Henry brought Lottie over on Wednesday afternoon, her half-holiday. She had me face to face with the stove, kindling in my hand, when Lucy sauntered down the stairs.

“Preparing another beauty treatment, Ella?” She looked around and raised an eyebrow. “And who’s that? Making friends with the servants next door?”

“This is Lottie Perkins, Henry’s sister. Now go away!”

“Don’t take that tone with me, Miss Ashes. I came to tell you that Mama would like some tea. Without the leaves.””

“Fine. I’ll get her some tea. Now get out of the kitchen!”

“Temper, temper.” Lucy shook a finger at me and strolled back up the stairs. I wished I had kicked her. Or the stove. Or something.

“Using the stove’s not difficult, miss,” Lottie said patiently. “Only you got to—you
have
to build the fire properly first and give it air and all. Now you try.”

Kindling, logs, and a little straw. A coal from the fireplace set it alight. Had I really done it? In a matter of minutes the kettle was boiling on the stove.

“So much easier to work on than fireplaces, miss, really,” said Lottie, smiling at me like a teacher at a slow pupil who has finally mastered the two times table. “Now about the roast—”

I cringed, but she soon had me sliding a roast into the oven. “Give it about an hour and a half, miss, not too hot or too slow, and we’ll clear up this clutter in the meantime.”

So the first hot water from the kettle went for dishwater, besides Stepmama’s tea, and Lottie washed and I rinsed, then we both dried, and Lottie told me about life in the palace kitchen and how she hoped to be a head cook one day. I listened, and when we were done Lottie scrubbed the kitchen table, helped me turn the oven down and put in the potatoes (well-poked, to keep them from exploding), and straightened the shelves. She even showed me how to wind and set the clock, then picked some flowers from the garden and set them in a glass on the newly scrubbed table.

“There now, doesn’t that look nice, miss?”

“It does. Almost cheerful.”

“Well, why shouldn’t it? You’ve got some good sunlight in here—I’ve seen some kitchens dark as dungeons. Course it does need a little more straightening—” She was glancing over at my bed, which was unmade and had been for the last five months.

“I’ll get that, Lottie.” As I struggled to make my bed, my cheeks were flushed. Lottie was a servant, but I was sure that wherever she lived, her things were spotless. I considered myself a lady, but I lived in a pigpen. Making beds was beneath me, wasn’t it?

Meanwhile Lottie swept the floor, and the oven started producing delicious smells of roast beef and onion.

“Time to put on the vegetable,” Lottie announced. “What’s in the garden, miss?”

I wasn’t sure, so we explored together and found some green beans dangling from vines on a trellis. Together in the late afternoon sunlight we filled a basket, then sat in the shade next to the shed and snapped the beans and pulled off their strings.

“This’ll be a nice simple dinner,” said Lottie as she finally set the pan of beans on the stove, “and I’ll show you how to make the gravy.”

She had me pull the roast out of the oven, and it wasn’t burned and blackened. It looked crisp and juicy and hot and utterly delicious, and we had to shut Archibald outside because he thought so, too. Then she initiated me into the ways of flour and water and the drippings from the roasting pan. In ten minutes, thick brown gravy was steaming in a pitcher, Lottie was draining the green beans, and I was arranging trays with plates.

“There!” said Lottie, hands on hips, looking at the food spread out on the table. “I’ll just give you a hand with carving, and then I’ll be going along, miss.”

“You won’t stay and have some?”

“Oh, no, miss. Mum’ll have mine ready at home.” She handed me the carving knife, and in a few minutes I had carved some wobbly but halfway respectable slices.

“I can’t thank you enough for giving me your day off,” I said, washing my hands in the washtub as Lottie took off her apron. “Can you come back again?”

“Next week I could. Will you be all right, miss, in the meantime?”

“I suppose, now I have a better idea of how to use the stove. I could always read
Mrs. Homebody’s
, too.”

“You’ve got
Mrs. Homebody’s Household Helper
?” Lottie’s voice took on a new quality of respect. “She’s the best, miss. You can learn a lot from her.”

“I’ve learned a lot more from you in one day.”

Lottie blushed. “Thank you, miss. Some things it’s easier to be shown, the first time. But I’m sure you’ll do fine now. I’ll see you next week, then.”

When I carried the trays upstairs, Lucy said, “Finally a decent meal!” as she looked up from the latest novel she was reading. Gerta squealed, “Not that much potato, Ella!” And Stepmama said, with a googly look at Mon Petit, “Wouldn’t the sweetums little doggy like some nice roast beef? Yes, he would!”

“And that’s all they said!” I complained to Archibald as I came back down the stairs. But as I sat down afterwards and ate my supper, looking around at the lush green garden and feeling the warmth of the late summer air about me, I felt satisfied for the first time in months.

Not that cooking was easy from then on. I forced myself to read from
Mrs. Homebody’s Household Helper
, tried some of her simpler recipes, and wrote down a long list of questions for Lottie. What did sauté mean? How much seasoning was “season to taste”? How hot was a “hot oven”? I burned (and buried) a tray of cookies, and for several meals we had tea and toast for various reasons: one morning I had trouble getting the stove lit again, and one afternoon I forgot a whole chicken roasting while I was picking and arranging flowers from the garden.

But most of the meals were better, and one morning I mixed up cinnamon muffins that came out light and delicious—and I made my bed every day.

That next week Lottie arrived with a basket of apples. I fed her muffins and asked her my questions, and she answered them and showed me how to bake apple pie. “This is going along a bit quick, miss, but you can practice this week, and next week I can bring you some starter and we’ll try bread.”

Bread! What with baking, nursing a starter (I only killed it once, by leaving it on the stove by mistake, and Lottie brought more the next week), and keeping the kitchen more cheery (I swept and dusted every Wednesday, before Lottie came), my life was becoming quite busy.

But it wasn’t all pie and flowers. Some nights I went to bed with eyelids I could barely prop open and slept like Archibald till dawn, but there were other nights, nights when I couldn’t drift off till far past midnight and finally slept with a damp pillow and swollen eyes. For my stepsisters had not failed to notice that I was spending more time in the kitchen.

I had just brought them breakfast in the dining room one morning when Gerta glanced at me. I was wearing a pink-flowered muslin dress and had pinned a daisy at my waist to cheer myself. “My goodness, Ella,” said Gerta. “Wouldn’t a plain gray dress be better for working in the kitchen?”

I nearly dropped my tray. “I beg your pardon!”

“That would look delightful!” said Lucy, considering me over the rim of her teacup. “So—so suitable! Just like Mrs. Trenton back home.”

“And would you two like plain gray dresses for walking Mon Petit and dusting?” I demanded.

“Dresses? Dresses?” said Stepmama, looking up from Mon Petit, who was seated on the chair next to hers as she fed him toast. “Dearest, we must wait on new dresses! The horrid budget, you know!”