While Beauty Slept by Elizabeth Blackwell Read Free Book Online Page A

of cloth and spools of thread. The sewing room. I froze, trying to conjure up an image of my mother as a young seamstress, bent over a swath of silk. But, to my despair, I could only envision the mother I had known, ruined by years of hard living, and the memory brought on a throbbing ache of pain.
    “May I help you?”
    I turned abruptly, disoriented. A tall, willowy young woman with pale skin and equally pale hair, wearing a pristine white apron, was watching me with an expression somewhere between suspicion and curiosity.
    “I’m looking for Mrs. Tewkes.”
    Pondering me for a moment, she appeared to decide that I posed no danger.
    “This way.”
    She guided me to the opposite end of the hall, toward a door carved with a pattern of vines and flowers. I marveled that a mere housekeeper should live in a place more elegantly embellished than the finest home in my village.
    The door stood ajar, but the girl paused before it and knocked.
    “Come in,” a voice commanded.
    Compared to the shadowy Lower Hall, the room was bright and welcoming. Opposite the door a large window overlooked the courtyard. A table covered with papers and a few books sat against one wall, beneath a tapestry depicting a lion and a unicorn. Along the opposite wall lay a bed and a trunk inlaid with a pattern of multicolored wood. If this was the housekeeper’s room, I could not imagine how fine the queen’s must be.
    Mrs. Tewkes sat at the table, saying nothing as I entered the room. I learned later that she ruled through silence rather than shrillness. In a castle where activity never ceased, her serene presence set her apart; she could draw the attention of an entire room with a few well-chosen words. I could not be certain of her age; her round face bore the creases of middle age, and her hair was more gray than brown, yet her eyes carried none of the weariness so common in the women of my village. She wore a simple black dress, its loose shape enveloping a figure that had widened and softened with time.
    I bent my head, as Aunt Agna had taught me to do in respect of my elders.
    “My name is Elise Dalriss,” I said. “I believe you knew my mother, Mayren.”
    “Mayren.” Mrs. Tewkes slowly whispered the name, as if her voice were unaccustomed to forming the sound. She rose from the table and walked over to examine me more closely. Then she placed a hand on my shoulder and smiled.
    “Yes, I see it now,” she said. “You have the same carriage. Mayren always held herself well.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” I said, remembering my mother hunched beneath the weight of a baby on one side and a pail of water on the other. Mrs. Tewkes might not have recognized the woman who raised me.
    “Where is she living these days? Is she doing well?”
    The words did not come easy. “She died, not a month ago.” I felt the tears ready to well up in my eyes.
    “Oh, what a shame.” The polite words were tinged with genuine sadness.
    “She told me to come to you,” I said, holding my voice steady through force of will. “I hoped there might be a place for me here.”
    “How old are you?” she asked.
    “Fourteen.”
    “If you grew up on a farm, you’re accustomed to hard work.”
    I nodded.
    “Usually I caution girls that chambermaids here do not have an easy time of it,” she said. “But it’s likely an easier living than you’ve seen. At least you won’t reek of cow muck at the end of the day!” Mrs. Tewkes laughed, and I found myself smiling along.
    She reached out and used her fingers to stretch my lips apart, checking my teeth as one would when buying a horse. Her eyes ran up and down my body, pausing at my arms. She took one of my hands and turned it palm upward. My coarse fingertips testified to my life of labor, though I was proud I had avoided the cracked and reddened skin so common in farmers’ families. Mrs. Tewkes nodded approvingly.
    “Your mother, what skills did she teach you? Needlework, I presume?”
    “I learned to embroider