The Tea Machine (20 page)

Jana snorted. “Most of the vendors are freedmen; who are they to give harsh looks?” She glanced over playfully. “You talk quaint. Is that the way they speak in Britannia?”

“Then why were they so upset with me? They looked nasty. It was the same in the spice market, too.”

“Because of the tea tax. Tea maidens go out to collect it. You look sort of like a tea maid with that flouncy tunic you had on. Is it what they’re wearing in Britannia these days? Because it looks awful. It’s a shockingly bad imitation of the real thing. Matron will not be happy. Can’t have counterfeits out there; she’ll go daft if people are copying the temple style.”

The taffeta had cost Millicent quite a penny from Swanson and George of Mayfair, and it amused her for it to be seen as inferior quality to the Roman version.

“So, the tea maidens collect taxes?” she asked, as Jana ushered her into another smaller room, this one was lit naturally through large windows that opened out into a quiet, bright courtyard. Jana pushed Millicent down on to a low wooden stool.

“And the urns sell produce in the square out front?” Millicent returned to her questioning.

“Yes,” Jana answered. “You start out as an urn, and then, one day you’re allowed to wear the bustle and handle money. We’ll see to your hair next. You like it up, don’t you?”

She sat still while Jana fussed over her locks, piling and pinning her curls into some semblance of order. “Are you an urn, too?” Millicent asked.

“No. I haven’t the face or figure for it,” Jana answered. “Too thin. Not like you.” She gave Millicent a little pinch. “You’ve got the kind of curves all the tea sippers like. Bet you dance like a dream.”

Millicent was mortified. Dance? “I’ll be damned if I’m going to dance for tea sippers.” Oh! Her hand flew to her mouth. How easy it was to slip into Sangfroid’s profanity.

“You’ll make a fortune and earn your bustle in no time. Then you can get out of here.” There was no malice in Jana’s voice, just resignation.

“How do I do that?” Millicent asked, though she had no intention of staying at all.

It was a careless question, and Jana showed considerable surprise. “Why, as a tea maid you get to keep a cut of whatever you collect. That’s how you buy your way out. That’s why the tea is so popular a career path with the poorer girls. You can make a fortune and start a new life, hopefully with some rich old fool in tow. Some girls have gone on to be career mistresses.” She seemed impressed, while Millicent suppressed a shiver. What a horrid place this was.

The outer halls began to echo with voices and footsteps, while outside, in the leafy courtyard, girlish laughter rang out.

“Siesta is over,” Jana said resignedly. “We’d better go to afternoon prayers.”

“Is she here?” Millicent asked anxiously.

“Who?”

“Looselea.” Sophia might actually be lodged in the same building, feted as a goddess. Wouldn’t that be wonderful, in a strange way? And, if so, would Millicent be able to pry her away? Sophia must be terrified by this world; at least Millicent hoped she was. Otherwise it would be impossible to get her to leave all the adoration behind and return home.

“Britannia really is the ass-end of nowhere.” Jana shook her head sadly at the question and led Millicent away. Millicent took this response to mean that the goddess was not present at her own temple. She followed Jana dejectedly. More fool her for thinking there might be an easy way out.

Young women were converging in the corridors. Together, she and Jana flowed with the throng into a massive chamber.

“Where are we now?” she asked, looking around with awe.

“The Hall of the Seven Kettles. This is where it all happens,” Jana told her in hushed tones. “Kneel down here.”

Around them women knelt in rows facing to the front where a pulpit, of sorts, stood to the side of a large statue. Millicent gazed dumbstruck at the icon. Not because of the exquisite workmanship or pleasing aesthetics, for there were many to appreciate in this piece of classical art, but for its countenance. Before her stood a twenty-foot marble statue of Sophia. She sat decorously on a rock, her stern features rendered smooth and creamy by the beautiful stone. Her dress was of Millicent’s era, and she held a large silver teaspoon in one hand and a kettle in the other. The kettle was tipped forward and poised under the ceiling oculus, so that when filled with rainwater it poured from out of the spout into a giant marble cup and a saucer by the statue’s feet. The teacup was large enough to bathe in, and Millicent suspected its purpose was that of a baptismal font. As if reading her mind Jana pointed to the cup.

“That’s where the initiates are dunked once they become urns. You’ll be in there soon.”

Not on your nelly!

The hush was broken by rustling, as if a flock of starched birds was taking roost at the back of the room. Millicent looked over her shoulder. The last few tiers were filling up with men in snow-white, formal togas. Jana looked back too, and rolled her eyes.

“The sippers are in. Leery old goat-eyes.”

“Who are they?” Millicent whispered.

“Sponsors and wannabes. Some, the richest, keep girls at the temple for their own exclusive use. They’re your future clients. Do you see Cassian in the back row? He has his eye on you. The man with him will be coming here later tonight,” Jana muttered disdainfully. “He’s called Belarus, and he’s a chronic gambler. He’d bet on how high a dog lifts it leg to piss. A couple of absolute losers. Stay away from them if you can.”

Cassian caught Millicent staring and gave her a cheery finger waggle. She turned away with a shudder. She had to get away from here. Her attention was drawn to the front of the room as Cybele, the tea matron, mounted the pulpit and gazed down on the assembled. She raised her arms and began a long dirge that Millicent could only take to be a prayer.

“Oh, Looselea, look upon the dredges and despair. See the splash in the saucer. See the drips upon the tablecloth. How can we give you tea time cheer?” Cybele intoned in an annoying nasal twang. Millicent wondered if the prayer came with the franchise. It was awful.

“One lump or two.” The congregation intoned back as one. Millicent was startled. She hadn’t expected that.

“Lift up thy spoon and stir,” Cybele droned on. “Lift up thine cup. Hear thy kettle boil. Hear thy china call, oh great Looselea.”

“No more goats,” the crowd answered. “No. No. Really. No more goats.”

And that seemed to be that. How curious, Millicent thought. What had goats to do with anything?

“We have among us new acolytes who wish to dedicate themselves to the goddess and the indulgences of the tea. Come daughters and bathe in the waters of the perfect brew.”

Several girls moved shyly to the front and queued to be immersed in the giant tea cup. Millicent saw it was filled with an ugly brown liquid. Jana nudged her.

“That means you, too,” she said, unenthusiastically nodding at the queue. “You’ll never get that gunk out of your clothes,” she sighed. “That’s why we all run around in ugly yellow tunics. The tannin ruins the linen,” she complained. “Pity you couldn’t have stayed white for a little longer, but I guess Cassian has already booked you anyway.”

“What’s in that cup?” Millicent hissed back. “And why do I have to get in it?”

“Goat urine and rainwater.” Jana shoved her, more roughly this time. “Don’t be a ninny. Just go do it. It’s an initiation. We can wash you down again after.”

Millicent rose unsteadily to her feet and shuffled after the new maidens crowding down the aisle.

“And don’t swallow any.” Jana whispered after her.

Cybele glowered at her. It was obvious she was dragging her feet while the other young women as good as skipped towards the teacup. Did they know they were queuing to sit in goat urine? Millicent’s steps grew slower and slower.

A few feet away, to her left, a door to the courtyard lay ajar. It let the light breeze waft away the heavy odour from the teacup. Outside, she could make out the curved edge of a fountain; the shadow of palm fronds played across the stonework. Millicent fancied she could hear the splash of water and trill of birdsong. She imagined blue skies and the warmth of the sun on her shoulders. She imagined a low and easily scalable courtyard wall.

She lifted the hem of her tunic and legged it.

CHAPTER 20

Sophia did not like it.
She did not like it at all. The place was dusty, hot, and filthy, even for the outdoors. The lazy, persistent hum of flies merged with the equally persistent drone of old men’s voices. She wasn’t sure where she was. The ground under her feet was hard-packed and cracked open with drought. A crude building made from various tree parts and lumps of mud stood off to her left. Bales of straw were piled inside it, and a broody hen roosted resplendent on the topmost one. A few straggly, windblown trees grew almost horizontally along the ridge behind her. Other than that, the place was a dust bowl. That accounted for the dirt she supposed, brushing down her skirts with vigour. She had no idea how she had gotten here but assumed the machine made people travel whether they wanted to or not. It was most thoughtless.

She became aware of a tense silence fallen over her less than pastoral panorama. Bar an annoying fly droning near her ear, all was quiet; the old men’s voices had dropped away. She looked up to find several dishevelled goat herders—she could think of no other occupation that required such a disarrangement of clothing—staring at her open mouthed.
How rude.
There were five rough looking fellows in all and a boy, maybe in his early teens. They gaped at her in a most alarming and unintelligent way.

“I say, where is this?” she inquired.

They started back as if she’d flung fire at their feet.

“Oh, really.” She was so cross. This nonsense had gone on long enough. “Haven’t you seen a lady before?” She doubted it. She would have very stern words with Hubert when she saw—and then it hit her like a pail of water, freezing her heart in a spasm of pain and erasing all sensibility. Her dearest Hubert was gone! Devoured by a monster before her eyes. And his accursed machine had catapulted her out of London to some distant goat farm. She was alone, lost, and surrounded by a total lack of hygiene.

She sank onto a boulder, her legs no longer capable of holding her. One of the men approached her cautiously in that he was shoved to the foremost by the others. He was older than the rest, more stooped and bedraggled, with mounds of dirty linen heaped around his scraggy frame. Considering the others wore strips of fabric held together by stains alone, it seemed safe to assume he was an elder, and therefore her welcome party.

He mumbled something at her from a safe distance. Sophia thought she could make out…Latin? Where in the world did they speak Latin? Had Hubert’s machine sent her to Latvia! Good gracious. It also made her think of Gallo with his gentle Latin lips—words! Gentle Latin words. Her heart spasmed again. She had lost Hubert and Gallo, and all in one day. The only two people she had ever felt any genuine warmth for. And somehow she’d been careless enough to lose them both. She was an undeserving, stupid, and wretched failure of a human being. Fate had taken away all her happiness as punishment.

A tear rolled down her cheek and splashed on her dusty silk lap. She tried to shake herself out of self-pity. It was not an attractive feature, and she actively forbade it in others. Plus it was an unaffordable luxury at this moment. Perhaps later she could let the floodgates open, as a secret indulgence in her hotel room. The old man muttered again. She thought he said something about an ecstatic welcome. At least someone was happy.

She concentrated on his words, trying to decipher them.

“Welcome, lady visitor of the goatherd,” he was saying. He flapped his hand at the young boy beside him, who went scurrying off towards a tiny village nestled on a distant hillside. She began to take further note of her surroundings. She was at the edge of an olive grove in a small valley. It was pretty, she supposed, in the Biblical sense, meaning there was dust and donkeys, but where was the inn? She needed to wash and indulge in a pot of much needed tea.

The valley floor was vibrant and fecund against the barren hillside where she stood. The gritty dust that seemed to get everywhere blew in hot, swirling breezes. Overhead a cloudless blue sky domed the valley with a stifling stillness broken only by the drifting of far-off honey buzzards cruising the higher air currents. The air was heavy and tranquil with the silver shiver of olive boughs and an occasional clank of a herd bell to break the peace.

The old man spoke again, “Would you like a goat, dearest magical lady?” He was clearly unsure how to address her, but she decided dearest magical lady would do for now.

“No. No goats,” she said, and was pleased he seemed to understand her. Perhaps her Latin was better than she imagined. “Perhaps some tea.”

By dusk the entire village had come out to welcome her and present her with their most favoured goats. In the lean-to, they had put coarse sack matting over the bales, chased out the chicken, and much to her consternation, expected her to recline. She would rather sleep tied upright to a tree than lie on that giant mouse nest.

At her feet, a filthy blanket held about a hundredweight of figs. If she saw one more fig, she’d have a fit. Olives, figs, goats, even a lopsided loom. They had brought her anything and everything they treasured, but no tea.

A fire pit had been built nearby and now its light and heat were welcoming in the early evening time. One of the goats had been dispatched, thankfully well out of sight, and it was now being roasted on a crude spit. The smell was appalling.

Sophia had been right all along to dislike travel. One did not have to experience it to know it was horrid. Stars were beginning to pulse through the twilight. Every passing second, a new cluster bloomed out of the night sky. Sophia regarded the crystalline majesty above her and sighed at its beauty. For one infinitesimal moment, she moved outside of her present woes and her soul flew towards the wondrous magnitude of the universe and was spellbound.

“My dearest magical lady, please have another fig.” The elder was pressing figs upon her again. He wrung his hands in supplication. “The people wish to know which is your star? We see you look for it. Where do you live, dearest magical lady?”

How sweet. Now, if only it were Gallo asking her to count the stars and chose which one to live upon. She sighed deeply. How long must she wait before Millicent or Gallo came along and took her back home? It was awful; she had no luggage, and her silks were covered in a fine layer of valley dust. As for the stars? She waved her hand in a flamboyant gesture at the Milky Way weaving indolently overhead.

“That river of light,” she said, “it’s all mine.” And smiled dreamily. Her audience gasped, and she was amused at their naivety. Now, if only she had a nice cup of tea, she could bear the absurdity of the moment as well as the infinite beauty of it, too.

By the next morning, the populations of several other villages had arrived with even more figs and goats. Sophia arose from her slumber to find a crowd assembled outside her holy hovel. She had eventually succumbed to the makeshift bed through a mixture of exhaustion and the simple rustic wine that washed down the spit-roasted goat…which tasted much better than she had imagined. She had quickly fallen into a deep and restorative sleep on her prickly pillow, and now awoke to find even more supplicants kneeling unnervingly close to her straw boudoir. The elder approached with some local women in tow.

“We have maidservants for you, lady of the stars. They will take you to the river and adorn you.” He stood taller now and spoke with more authority. Not to her, of course, to her he was as acquiescent as ever, but he was enjoying ordering everyone else around on her behalf. Sophia had to admit, this adorning her at the river idea sounded just the ticket after a long night in a hayrick.

“What is your name?” she asked him. It would probably be a useful thing to know.

He preened with importance. “I am Volos, dearest star lady. Your servant and number one priest. And this is my wife, Despina, who will be your number one house servant and priestess. She will be matron over your handmaidens.” He pointed to an eager cluster of young girls. “My daughters and nieces are at your service.”

Oh, so she had a priest, a priestess,
and
servants now. Sophia warmed to the idea of worship. Foreigners were strange people; she’d have to get used to their little ways. She turned to Despina and smiled. The woman fell to the ground.

“Oh do get up and take me to the river. I need my toilette. I hope you have scented soaps.” To Volos she said, “And you. Get me a cup of tea.” Ignoring his nervous, crestfallen face, she allowed herself to be led away by her handmaidens.

Sophia returned unsure whether to be pleased or disgruntled, eventually deciding her handmaidens had done well by her under the circumstances. She now wore a wonderful flowing toga of the purest white. It was cool and clean and caressed her skin wonderfully after the stuffy layers of her dinner dress, which had been whisked away for laundering while she had been pumiced within an inch of her life with volcanic stone. The experience left her scuffed and bruised but undeniably glowing. Her hair had been massaged with oils until it shone and then elaborately braided and piled up on the crown of her head. She would have felt almost regal if it weren’t for the growling of her empty stomach. She looked forward to her morning tea.

A concoction of lukewarm water and fresh, frothy goat milk awaited her, along with a bowl of some indescribable gruel that had figs bobbing on the surface.

“No. I need tea. Tea. Teeeea,” she said, rather peevishly. But really enough was enough. “Haven’t you people heard of it?” And with horror, looking out at a sea of blank faces, she realized they hadn’t. She was in an Englishwoman’s hell!

Luckily, Sophia had recently formed the habit of purloining a little of Hubert’s fabulous Darjeeling whenever she visited Christie Mews. This was not because the Trenchant-Myres couldn’t afford their own Darjeeling.
Au contraire
. They kept fine and expensive teas, but they were locked away in the tea caddy and only Mamma had the key. This left Sophia with a predicament. Whenever she visited the Misses Partridge, which was often, she had to drink the dust from the bottom of their tea caddy. They were not as domestically vigilant as Mrs. Trenchant-Myre, and as a result, the old dears’ servants stole tea from them with the greatest liberty. So, when visiting, Sophia always kept a smattering of decent tea leaves in her reticule to top up her tea cup. She restocked regularly from the Aberly’s equally unfettered caddy, tutting all the time at Millicent’s inattention and unwarranted trust. All Sophia required was a teapot of hot water, and she could manage the rest herself. She had the tea leaves upon her person, surely these people had some sort of pot she could use?

“Have you a teapot?” she asked, loudly as this was important. Again she got the blank look she was becoming used to. She grabbed a twig and scratched the outline of a teapot in the dirt. “This is a teapot,” she said.

Volos stared at her drawing. “You want this, oh lady of the dirt?”

“Yes. Yes, I do,” she said, uncertain of this latest sobriquet. To fall from the stars to dirt so quickly was unsettling. Volos snapped his fingers, and a young man came forward to look enquiringly at the crude sketch.

“You do this,” Volos ordered. The young man bowed, first to Volos and then to Sophia, several times, before running off towards the village.

“Hani, the potter,” Volos explained. “He make this for you, goat lady.”

Sophia sat back and considered a few things. Firstly, she was now the lady of the goats; was that better than dirt? Secondly, the village had a potter. What an interesting development. She lifted her twig and began another sketch. “Call him back,” she said. “I want him to make me this as well.”

Volos bowed deeply. “Of course, lady of pots.”

The first teapot was minuscule, so she introduced scale to her sketches. The second exploded, so she explained it was to be capable of holding hot water and needed to be glazed appropriately. The third needed a tighter lid to stop the contents evaporating. The fourth moved them on to the need for a sturdier handle. Goat curds and lemon juice made a wonderful poultice for burns. The fifth needed the spout modified so as not to scald. Goat curds and lemon juice were again useful. The sixth needed the inside to be less porous as a scummy film formed on top of the water. The seventh had a pretty floral decoration and poured like a dream. Sophia filled it with water and her precious tea leaves and waited anxiously. The set of six cups and saucers she’d also had made were delightfully delicate. She was very pleased with them and favoured Hani and his family with a winsome smile. They were elated and began to manufacture her tea set for the mass market under her divine seal of approval.

The entire geographical region—all of which had come to pay goat-laden tribute—held its breath on bended knee. Sophia smiled indulgently at their childlike curiosity and pagan befuddlement. The reverence they showed her first cup of tea was almost religious.

It’s funny how a nice cup of tea can put a fresh face on an old problem.
For several days Sophia had been stranded in the Valley of the Goats, as it was now known due to the growing herd around her new retreat. The straw filled lean-to was a thing of the past. Instead, a rather nice, if basic, two roomed villa had been hastily erected for her in handmade mud, brick, and stone. Volos assured her marble blocks and stone masons were at this very moment trekking over the mountains to build her a spectacular temple. A temple sounded rather elaborate, but she supposed those were the sort of places people could safely stay in when travelling abroad. She took her trusty scratching stick and drew up a set of plans based on the ground floor of Farrance’s of Belgrave Square to show Volos what, to her mind, best suited sensible traveller accommodation.

During one of these planning sessions, she shared some of her tea with Volos. He was impressed with the smoky flavour, and she explained to him where tea came from. In the dirt, she scratched out a rough map of China and India to the east of Europe. She looked at her little dirt map and wondered where the Urals were. She missed Captain Gallo terribly.