Eschiva nervously double checked to make sure the roll of thread in her hands was linen and not some other type of fabric. It was a stupid thing she knew. It was hard to mistake the fabric in her hands for anything else when even the liveries she was wearing were woven from it, but she had seen an older girl come in the storeroom a few days ago doing the exact job she had now to deliver supplies where it was needed. Somehow she had confused the silk for linen when taking it to an alleged friend of hers that was supposed to be used in the making of a few new liveries.
Well, she hoped it was just that she had confused it for the linen and that her friend hadn’t realized until it was too late. She couldn’t imagine someone being dumb enough to try and purposefully use silk instead of linen for the making of their liveries.
Either way though, it had ended in the head chambermaid, Miss Camille, making a public example out of the both of them.
She shuddered while she remembered the moment. Their punishment had not been pretty, nor had she seen either of the two since then. Miss Camille had told everyone they had decided to quit after that. She was quite certain that they had died and gone to Hell like her mother had told her happened to those who Sinned.
The last thing she wanted was to go to Hell like those girls did or get her mother in trouble like that girl had gotten her friend in trouble.
So it was only after she had triple checked that what she was carrying was indeed linen that she let the Seneschal know she was making the delivery for said fabric. The man in question had taken to working within the storeroom since the incident and after checking over what she had taken from it, signaled for her to take it to the great hall where it had been requested.
She was a little confused on why exactly whoever had requested it needed her to go and deliver it to someone else entirely and why they couldn’t do it themselves, but that sort of question wasn’t the type she’d get the answer to by asking it.
With the linen roll in hand, she left the storeroom for the great hall. Soon enough, she had reached its doors where a castle guard with only a slight slouch stood against a wall. He was wearing the guards usual and strange many parted metal armor underneath a tabard with a symbol she recognized as the one of the house they both served, three green circles with white insides over a backdrop of yellow. The man eyed her before simply nodding and opening the door to let her pass through.
Eschiva nodded in thanks and swiftly entered the great hall where the linen was apparently needed. She looked around for a moment finding a few other servants moving through the room to get to their own respective tasks before nearly flinching when she caught sight of Miss Camille looking directly at her, sitting at one of the many tables within the great hall. The head chambermaid simply gestured at her to come over and she ran over as fast as she could without breaching decorum, unwilling to risk the woman’s displeasure.
She had nearly reached her when she caught sight of the reason the head chambermaid was in the great hall. The queen was here.
Eschiva hadn’t seen much of the girl who was the Queen of Jerusalem as until recently, she hadn’t been entrusted with anything more than extremely simple tasks or shadowing her mother. However, the soft red of her silken dress was more than enough to signal who it was by itself. Only royalty and nobility wore silk after all and there were no other girls descended from either of them but her within the castle.
Even without that though, she could tell she was the queen by the sheer elegance she moved with while deftly dipping her needle in and out of whatever it was she was working on. She even managed to do it well enough with only a glance downwards every so often, her head tilted slightly as she watched her.
Why was she watching-
Cold realization struck Eschiva while her breath hitched in her throat. An instant later she had her head bowed in deference to the queen, doing her best to perform a curtsey at the same time. How had she managed to forget the basic courtesies her mother had near ingrained in her towards nobility and especially royalty!
She desperately hoped she hadn’t been too late in her realization.
A moment passed before she heard the head chambermaid clear her throat. “Ahem, the linen Eschiva? Before the queen manages to exhaust the last of what we have here.”
Never before had Eschiva been so relieved to hear the annoyance within Miss Camille’s voice. Doubly so when it was an annoyance directed towards her. But she knew if she had truly messed up with her reaction to the queen, simple annoyance wouldn’t have been the only tone within the woman's voice.
She raised her head up and once again met the regal gaze of the queen and she felt the rest of her worries she had messed up fall away. The young queen had stopped her work for a moment and was giving her a small yet graceful smile. Truly the girl just a little younger than her would make a wonderful queen once she came of age.
Eschiva gently laid the rolls of linen thread she held within her hand right beside where Miss Camille was sitting on the table. The older woman gave her an evaluating look before giving a slight nod. “Back to your duties now Eschiva. And young queen, what have I said about getting distracted and stopping your sewing?”
The girl sighed before her needle began to move once more through the fabric in front of her, her attention and gaze back on it instead of Eschiva. “That during the lesson I shouldn’t stop for any reason whatsoever.”
It was a bit strange to Eschiva that even the young queen had to listen to the stern woman, if a reassuring sort of strange. She didn’t dally long though after being told to go back to her duties and had soon left the way she came in before she could even catch wind of the lingering gaze upon her back.
----------------------------------------
In all honesty, the sewing lesson hadn’t actually been that bad. Isabella’s memories had all but assured that I could actually understand how to sew without having done it before, managing it with the same ease that she could when she actually wanted to. Judging from her memories, it was rare indeed she actually wanted to sew and as such, she was usually unfocused in any lesson on it despite her talent.
Not that I was much better. The urge to be doing literally anything else burnt so strongly within me that it was semi-frightening, and I knew it wouldn’t have been so intense if I weren’t in Isabella’s body. I was, however, able to keep it at bay through the use of a few interesting tactics. Which was enough to have me stay far more focused on the lesson compared to Isabella. All resulting in getting the stern servant woman to raise her eyebrows at me more than a couple of times throughout the lesson.
It was still incredibly boring though and any attempts to make it funner had been shot down nearly instantly by Camille.
It probably would’ve been a lot easier if taking a break during the lesson was something I had been allowed. Even when asking a question. It wasn't an excuse for me to stop. If I ever did stop for too long except when she told me to or was teaching me about something, a chiding was all that awaited me.
I found myself glancing upwards to find the stern woman who’d been tutoring me silently judging the handkerchief I had sewn.
It had only been a little bit ago that I had found out she wasn’t just any servant, but the head chambermaid who was teaching me in lieu of there being anybody else qualified, willing, or obligated to. Though it’d taken multiple questions to gleam that much and not in those words.
The constant stream of questions I directed towards her about the workings of the staff within the castle and any of the servants who passed through the main hall had most assuredly been the most effective of the tactics I had made use of to stay focused. Isabella herself had only rarely succeeded in getting her own questions answered in these lessons if they weren’t about sewing itself due to her questions' more frivolous nature, so it was a pleasant surprise when she kept on responding to mine.
And with those questions, it was mostly possible for me to keep myself on task throughout the lesson.
It was something which Isabella had never thought to do herself due to her upbringing, having grown so used to the servants around the castle they had practically become faceless to her. The few who weren’t were either Camille or the personal attendants of her family that had left not long after her stepmother and half-brother had worryingly disappeared a little more than a month ago.
Their disappearances were something that neither my knowledge on Isabella’s life had covered, nor her own memories other than that she had gotten astonishingly sick just before their disappearance and only fully recovered a few days before I came into the picture.
When that facet of her life was combined with everything else, one thing was clear to me about how it left Isabella in the aftermath. It left her as an exceedingly lonely girl.
Her father had been off in crusading for the holy lands since she was five and her only interactions with him since then had been letters someone else read out to her. The kingdom as a whole was severely lacking nobility, much less any children that might find their way to Acre Castle, the place where she lived. And her only source of interaction that wasn’t the other servants were with her stepmother and half-brother and their personal attendants who she had always struggled to get along with.
Who were now gone.
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From there, it had left her with only a few things to do outside of her lessons since. Mess with the Castle Seneschal and Steward, asking them tons of different questions until they inevitably found a way to distract her, or play with her wooden dolls and small armada of toy utensils made of clay from which she made grand pretend banquets and feasts for her ‘courtiers’ to partake in.
Her life was just kinda depressing. Which meant that my life would be kinda depressing if I didn’t shift things around. Because while I wasn’t the most social of people before this, I think I’d begin to lose it if that’s all I could do until I figured out a new strategy to learn how to read.
All of which led to the first question I directed towards Camille. “Camille?” I began. “Do you think a tutor could be found to teach me how to read?”
The woman didn’t even look up from her inspection. “I will mention it to the Castle Steward when I have a chance, young lady.”
I blinked, that had been easy. Kind of confusingly easy really considering how the bishop had reacted, but I wasn’t about to think twice about it. And she had only said she’d mention it, nothing more. This led towards my second question I asked, this one with a bit more trepidation.
“Do you remember that girl who delivered us some linen before I ran out? Her name was… Eschiva right?”
Camille this time looked up from her inspection towards me, a faint note of surprise on her face after I said the girl's name. “I do indeed young queen. Though I had thought you had already exhausted your supply of questions about her. What else do you want to know about her?”
I’m sure most royalty and nobility would be offended by the way she spoke around them. Frankly, I appreciated it since she was one of the only servants here to talk like that around me. Nor did she ever take it to the level of the bishop. Helped that unlike the bishop she was an actual decent if strict teacher.
“Well, I was more wondering if she could be made or trained into becoming my personal attendant.”
I didn’t think I would’ve been so nervous about asking the question, but nervous I was. Camille’s raised eyebrow as a reaction to my question didn’t help. It was kind of a stupid way to tackle the issue of being bored and lonely I knew, but when I had seen another girl around my age, even if she was a servant girl or chambermaid as I’d learned to be their actual profession’s name, I couldn’t help the thoughts on what if I talked to her that bloomed in me afterwards.
I wasn’t actually lonely just yet, but Isabella’s memories made the issue feel so much more pressing than it probably really was. And I knew personal attendants did exist even if I didn’t have any right now.
Eventually after staring at me for a bit, the stern woman responded with a surprising amount of bitterness. “Why? Do you not already have a whole trio of women who attend to you in total privacy? I will admit they could likely do better with your hair, but otherwise I see no reason you should need her as your fourth attendant. And you should know better than to think of becoming friends with those below your station young lady as I think you intend with this ploy. It is unbecoming.”
Right, I was of blue blood and had the ‘blessing of God’ giving me the divine right to rule. How could I forget the totally real blessing I had upon me that wouldn’t actually lead to me ruling but a future husband doing so. Though only a small part of me was concerned with griping over that particular issue I had forgotten about until now.
The other much larger part was wondering what in the world she was talking about when she mentioned I had three other attendants. My head fell into a tilt. “Er, I don’t have three attendants?”
Camille snorted. “Oh, you’re right, you don’t, or at least you didn’t until recently. Technically they were your stepmother's attendants who also happened to serve you and hide away from the rest of us like shadows in the night. And now they actually do serve you now that she’s gone. My mistake your grace.”
Wow, she really didn’t like them, at all. That level of sarcasm had been palpable. But her words left me more horribly confused than anything else. Every look I had into Isabella’s memories told me that those women had stopped attending to her when she was younger, only intervening when she particularly struggled in cleaning herself up. Was Isabella’s memories wrong and I was supposed to have personal attendants? And if so, why had they told her what they did about having to care for herself instead of them?
For a second I thought deeper than I normally did about the contents of her memories. They had told her they needed to focus on caring for her stepmother and half-brother and she was at the age she needed to care for herself which in hindsight seemed awfully strange for royalty. And not long after her stepmother and half-brother had both disappeared the three had suspiciously departed on what I was suspecting wasn’t ‘personal business, telling Isabella to not tell anyone about it. But I wasn’t Isabella, well mentally, and I certainly didn’t care about what they said. “I really don’t Camille. They left a month ago and told me it was for personal business.”
The stern faced woman had opened her mouth to rebuke my words only to pause. Slow like a glacier, her mouth shut as she leveled her gaze with mine. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you right my queen. Did you just say your attendants left an entire month ago on ‘personal business’?”
They had indeed, and had taken advantage of Isabella being as sick as she was back then and not in any state to think deeply on much and convinced her that she couldn’t tell anyone else about them leaving. Slowly but surely the puzzle pieces I hadn’t even known were in my head began to come together while I was giving them to Camille at the same time.
My voice softly grew louder with each piece I began to put together from memories I hadn’t thought enough about. “Yes, they did. And they told me to specifically not tell anyone about this-”
“They told you not to say anything about this?!” Camille all but yelled while her nostrils flared.
I found myself instinctually flinching when she yelled. “They did and I hadn’t thought much about it until now… This is a problem, isn’t it?”
The woman in front of me opened her mouth as if to yell again, though didn’t. Instead, she forced herself to take a deep breath before continuing in an eerily even tone. She was definitely angrier than Isabella had ever seen her before, that was for sure. “Yes. It is. Who has been attending to you while you were ill in the meantime Yolanda?”
Nobody. Absolutely nobody. Oh there the chambermaids who came in to restock the wardrobe and deliver food and drink to her bedroom while she recovered. But nobody had tended to her, almost certainly thinking that those three who had long left and were supposed to attend to her, would be doing it. Like they were running from the consequences of something they’d done like the deaths of her stepmother and half-brother or the sudden illness that had come over Isabella.
I shuddered at both the realization and the chilling way Camille had spoken. “Nobody. It was just me and the occasional servant who came into my room back then.”
Camille just stared at me now, as did a nearby castle guard I’d only just noticed had begun to approach and stopped at some point. Eventually she spoke again. “No Yolanda, you’re supposed to have an attendant to help you with those things, always. Especially when you’re recovering from an illness that left you near bedridden for a week. An entire month where the queen was having to attend to herself in the time where she’d need the care the most? I can’t believe it. How did, no, you already told me they said to not let anyone know and only finally just said something.” She abruptly spun around to face the guard. “We have an issue. I need you to get people moving to gather up our dear Castle Steward, Seneschal, and Castellan to discuss this. Now.”
I didn’t think the woman was supposed to have any authority over the guard, but the armored man certainly acted like she did when he gave her a salute and rushed over towards the other guards within the great hall.
It was a little strange to me that so many people were getting upset over the fact that Isabella had to attend to herself. But that was as someone from the modern age where grooming yourself was the norm for most, including me. I guess things were quite different for royalty in the Middle Ages.
Really the whole probably poisoned Isabella and killed two other members of her family thing that seemed increasingly likely mattered a whole lot more to me.
And I wasn’t even done yet with the revelations.
“Wait,” I began. “Does that mean that even before I fell ill that I wasn’t supposed to be caring for myself?”
Camille whirled back to me. “How. Long?”
“Since I was six?” I think Isabella had been six at least when they told her that. It wasn’t exactly like memories came with neat timestamps that clearly defined when they happened.
For a moment the woman was deathly silent while a scandalized look of horror managed to worm its way past whatever efforts she had been using to keep her face even. She then took an astonishingly deep breath while her face smoothed out again in a staggering display of self-control, standing up straight afterwards.
For a moment I began to grow a little worried. “Camille?”
The obviously fake smile on the usually stern faced woman did not look right in the slightest and I shivered at the feathery soft tone her voice took. “Yolanda. Your work today was passable and your focus has improved by a good deal. And I will take into consideration your desire to have Eschiva as your new personal attendant, better said properly with the term handmaid since your previous attendants have ruined the title of attendant, and bring it up to the Castle Steward so he can make it happen. Now, please excuse me as I need to handle some very urgent matters. In the meantime, head to your bed chambers and wait there while this gets settled. I’ll come and get you once it’s dinnertime, alright?”
I nodded, a little scared despite myself now, the fear acting like an ice cold bucket being poured on me. I think if those women ever found their way back here, they might actually be straight up executed.
It wasn’t like those women didn’t deserve some type of punishment though for what they did to Isabella though, just not death. I didn’t care too much about what they had done, just more that they had deceived her in the first place. Well, at least before they left her to tend to herself while she was sick while convincing her to lie for them and probably being the cause of said sickness in the first place.
Actually, on second thought what they had done was tantamount to attempted murder of a little girl who just so happened to be the queen of a country. I wouldn’t be comfortable if I did find out they’d died, but I’d understand if they were killed since that wasn’t exactly a small deal. I suppose I would just have to get used to death here being a bit more commonplace than I’d like. Better it happens to them than anyone. They were bitches that deserved something closer to it.
At least I’d have some privacy until dinner to figure out more about what was going on with the parts of the game that seemed to have come with me.
Just as I’d gotten up though, the figure of Camille disappeared behind a door and her voice began roaring through the wooden doors with all the fury she’d been holding back. “By the Lord’s Bones, those cumberworld glos pautonnier levereter’s! If I get my hands on those harlots and harpies, they will rue the day they were ever born. And if nobody here ever does, then may their bodies rot and die like the ronyon’s they are!”
I blinked as her voice trailed off with more swears and curses until I could hear her no more. Neither me nor Isabella knew what half those words meant, but they sure sounded like some really unpleasant swears.
What the fuck even was a cumberworld glos pautonnier levereter?