13Chapter Two - Inside the House
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Mae Canterbury awoke with a groan as her head throbbed angrily. She was drenched in sweat under her heavy coverlet, most probably the residue of one of her frequent nightmares. She could not remember exactly what had happened in the horrid dream, but it had something to do with an army of spirits. She shuddered.
She threw off the covers and felt the relief of cool air washing over her body. The fire that had roared merrily in her small fireplace had faded to glowing embers smoldering in the hearth.
The entire room was composed of different shades of forest greens. It was dark and moody, just like Mae. When she had first decorated the place, she had decided upon its perfection. It was exactly what she wanted. Her bed was black wrought iron, the type that was supposed to hold heavy bed curtains. Mae's was bare. She wanted to be able to look out the bay window in her room and see the moon, large and beautiful in the sky.
Out of the corner of her eye Mae saw Anne enter the room. She hurriedly pulled herself out of bed and fixed her nightgown that had become askew. Anne Wilson had been Mae's nursemaid, but was now her housekeeper and pretty much ran things around the house at number 34. Mae knew from many days' experience that being pulled out of bed by Anne Wilson was not a pleasant experience.
"Morning, sweetheart," Anne said brightly. Mae's knee creaked sharply, and Anne gave her a look of concern. Mae tried to smile, but in her groggy state failed miserably.
"Are you stiff?" the maid asked her employer. Mae nodded and her other knee made a somewhat disturbing creak.
"I had another nightmare last night," Mae said with an unhappy sigh. The nightmares had been plaguing her sleeping hours for as long as she could clearly remember. She stretched out her achy joints and weak knees, hoping to loosen her muscles and try to relax.
Mae dressed lethargically in another dark colored gown. Looking into her closet was like looking into a forest at night; the entire thing was a mess of deep greens, blues, and blacks. As she looked at herself in the mirror, she grinned. Her face looked a tad contorted with the expression, for she had not been smiling much lately. Her hair was a very light shade of brown, like grass dried out by lack of rain. It was long and soft, but Mae always pulled it back into a tight bun or secured it with a ribbon and let it hang down her back like a horse's tail. Her nose was her harshest feature, slim and pointy. The rest of her face was soft and feminine. Her complexion was smooth and fair, nearly flawless except for a small freckle just beneath her lower lip. Her eyes were the darkest brown, just a step up from midnight black. Her mouth was like an apple: pert, red, and round.
Anne had always said that Mae's beauty was not a surprise. As she told it, her mother had been very lovely as well. Mae supposed that she could remember her mother being beautiful. It was only that in the years after her parents left her, she had tried to force their memory out of her mind. As a child of ten, it had been far too painful.
Thus she began the life she now led. A life of loneliness, hermitage, and shame. People of Boston thought that she didn't know what they said. Oh, she knew all right. Mae might not have gone out much herself, but her servants absolutely did. The young maids would come home from the food shopping, tittering about what others had said about their master. The poor things probably didn't know what to believe. In Mae's household, they carried on a silent agreement. She did not speak to her staff, and nor did the staff directly address their employer. They did all necessary communication through Anne.
This was a custom that had stemmed from Mae's girlhood. In the years following the departure of her parents, Mae had refused to speak to anyone at all, excepting Anne. Mae was older now, and long had the pain of her parents leaving had been gone. But it never occurred to them to change it.
Mae meditatively ate her breakfast at the window seat in the front parlor. Mae had a passion for watching people that she had indulged since she was a small child. It seemed that she would never tire of watching the neighbors walking along side each other, speaking of this and of that.
She loved to watch the soldiers march down the lane, filling her with a deep sense of pride in her country. Mae was of English heritage, her parents having both grown up there. She had extreme faith in the power of the king to do what was just and right, and her certainty never wavered.
Mae even enjoyed watching the young lovers pass, although she had never enjoyed that experience herself. She had no incentive to feel jealous or wistful at seeing them, linking arms and mooning over each other. Mae was not sure that love was all it was cracked up to be. The closest thing Mae had ever had to a lover was the handsome boy on the wait staff who sometimes smiled or even winked at her. That was it.
But for the first time Mae wished that she could be outside in the fresh air, sharing it with other people. She felt extremely uncomfortable with this feeling, for she had never felt it before and would not feel it again in the very near future. Maybe it was a sign of what was to come. Mae looked out the corner of her eye and waited until Anne left the room before she permitted a small tear to slide down her cheek.