“Milord,” the clerk said, “here you have the left wing. It includes the balcony overlooking the market square and has a view of the roman cathedral.”

I took a peek out of the balcony. It was made of stone, and the balustrade was carved into miniature pillars. It was a nice view of a busy town. The rooms were spacious but dirty. Most crystal windows were broken.

Even as he talked, I pushed some loose gravel from a wall by the touch of a boot. The clerk smiled embarrassingly. “Yes, unfortunately, the previous owner did not place great importance on maintenance.” That man had died two years ago, after holding on to this for some four decades. His heiress had been trying to sell the manor since, but the price was too steep, especially considered the state of the place.

“I’ll take it,” I smiled.

The man’s relief and joy came at me like a flood. I almost reeled before I closed my mind off. He went into an excited stream of practicalities, which I waved dismissively at. We agreed on a payment on the next week, same day. In truth, I needed only to grab the gold from my carriage but there was no rush, was there? Maybe everything would fall apart, and I would simply leave before then. Maybe, by some great mischance or the whims of fate, I would run into the archbishop and his guard of battle-hardened priests before then. He was probably still churning up the whole of France to search for me and Raymond – if that madman had escaped the terrible battle also.

Maybe I would simply change my mind. Also a possibility.

But until then, my plan was simple. I immediately went to Robert’s manor. The evening was early, and I expected her to still be working.

She was doing laundry in that small courtyard, along with some of her fellow girls. And a group of young men were there already, of which one especially had eyes for Carmele. My Mind’s Eye confirmed, but I needn’t have checked, for it was as obvious as day. I almost sighed. Of course, a woman like that would have suitors. And this one was nothing like the shy, bookish Robert. He was taller than me, and more muscled, and his face was all angles, with a chiselled jaw and sparkling light blue eyes. He was making her laugh, and his friends, and the other laundresses. Everyone’s eyes were on him, anticipating with enthusiasm for what he might do or say next.

I felt almost intimidated. He was very charming. More than me, assuredly. But his mind told me the simplicity of his pride, his desires. It removed the mystery and revealed him only a simple mortal with a bubbling, brave character. He would be so easily dealt with and humiliated. He was prideful. But I couldn’t. She wouldn’t like it. Instead, I strode straight into the courtyard, gathering everyone’s attention. That man, whose name was Pierre, a mason’s son, I gleaned from his mind, eyed me like a bull did another bull, lowering his imaginary horns but without losing the easy, charming smile.

“Do I know you?” He asked, clawing a hand through his hair and cracking his head. I was full of fresh, warm blood, of course, and my flesh was almost human-looking.

I smiled courteously, “I think not,” I said as I passed them and approached Carmele, who eyed me curiously.

“Archibald,” she greeted, standing and straightening herself, her hips and her arms.

“In the flesh,” I said, attempting to be witty, and then I claimed: “I need your expertise.”

“Is that so?” She looked down at her chore, and smiled ironically, “regarding laundry?”

“Well, at least partly,” and was rewarded with an amused huff. “You see, I just bought this mansion, and now I need work for it. I need some helpful hands with it, I wondered if you knew someone.”

“Oh? You bought a man mansion?” She repeated, astonished, and laughed. “Well, what sort do you need?”

I shrugged, “whoever is needed in a household,” then I perked up like an idea had occurred to me, “perhaps… perhaps I could steal you away from the household? I can offer twice what they do…” I said nonchalantly, throwing my hand vaguely.

She actually laughed me off. “I am quite happy with where I am, thank you, but I shall help you.”

“Really?” I eyed her gauging, her grey eyes were twinkling with mirth, “what about thrice the pay? No? Ten times the pay?” I asked, tilting my head, crooking a smile in wryness. A servant’s pay times ten was still nothing. “Head of the household?”

She laughed and waved her hand to decline, I found the gesture feminine and very elegant, “knock it off, you’re being silly, I wouldn’t dream of taking advantage of you like that,” she uttered, hands on hips as she shook her head at a friend, who was staring at her astonishingly, mouthing ten times?

“Truly?” I said, unable to help myself. Did coin have no influence on her at all? How was that possible?

She arched a brow. “You doubt my word? I am really quite happy with where I am, Archibald.”

“Call me Archie,” I said impatiently, “but –” what servant would refuse ten times the pay? I almost offered twenty times, just for to hammer the point in, but she cut me off before, tapping my shoulder like one would a child’s head, to show recognition.

“Yes, yes, you’re very wealthy, Archie,” she said mirthfully and laughed.

Had I retained enough blood to do so, then I would assuredly have blushed. This woman! She knew where to pull the thread to have the whole picture come undone! She knew what buttons to press, and I could retort nothing.

“Archie, ten times the pay and head of the household, it sounds like you’re looking for a wife, not a servant,” she added, with a wide, amused smile. The boys and the servants laughed, and I could do nothing but smile and shake my head.

She flicked hair over her shoulder in an assertive gesture that showed she was done teasing me. “But I have work to do. You can help me, if you want. That would be nice,” she said, as she returned to her knees to rub clothes into a large casket of water retrieved from the well, along with the other laundresses.

I stared. I would not. I felt it was beneath me, that I had risen further in the world than that, but I could not say that, not when I held nobles in such contempt for doing exactly that. “It is a woman’s work, isn’t it?” I replied hopelessly.

She shrugged, “okay, then you may return to your man’s work. Reading, was it?” she frowned. “But I do that too, don’t I? a woman doing a man’s work, how shameful…” Her eyes went to the sky, looking chagrined. And then she broke the spectacle with a hearty laugh. Her voice was neither light nor grave, it was perfectly in between, hitting the tones like a vocational singer.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

I felt the men chuckle behind me, that bastard Pierre, who no doubt could match her wit better than me. I felt an anger swell in my chest, an anger that wanted out, and I almost turned to him to pinch his pride. Then her voice sounded again, mild yet assertive, and it paused me.

“But Archie? If you come by tomorrow, around noon, then I shall have some names for you, perhaps even some candidates,” she said, smiling obligingly.

“Thank you,” I said, distracted, between her and my anger to Pierre, but then I remembered myself, “at noon? I cannot. Perhaps at this time? I have to travel in the day,” I quickly explained, seeing her questioning look, and that of everyone around us.

“Travel? But to where?”

“I have a couple of books to sell, to a collector up in Troyes,” I was lying through my teeth now, and with an amiable smile.

“Oh, okay. In the evening, then. Safe travels, Archie,” she said, I lifted a hand and strolled out. Pierre and his friends ignored me, they stood in a circle around two sweaty wrestling boys. Pierre stood like the king in his court, legs planted firmly wider than his broad shoulder-width and with his arms crossed.

No doubt I had made an enemy of the young lord too, after attempting to steal his flame away, for he would assuredly learn of this very quickly. And Pierre, that simpleton, and his gang, who were hostile too. What did I care? I cared only for one person’s opinion.

I smiled. I was positively obsessed, now. I would have that house most definitely.

The old manor was where I had left it, a tall building without garden, or even a wall. Its structure occupied the entirety of its land, tightly packed amongst the rest of the houses in the city-centre. Its upper floors were wider, built on wooden beams with supporting timber.

The first floor had a front for reception, while the back seemed reserved for chores and such. I was not sure. The second floor held a kitchen in the rear and a solar near the façade, a long room with an imposing hearth. The third floor was the private chambers, composed of a study and a bedroom. They was no furniture, the rooms were empty and dusty and cold. The walls needed maintaining. The bedroom had an attached privy with a chute to a cesspit, which I found quite fancy, but I no longer had need of such practicalities. Then there was an attic, and a wine cellar. This one would quickly be converted into a nice, secure crypt, and I put a note in the back of my mind to dig an escape tunnel. One could never be too careful.

And all windows were simply holes with shutters. I would have glass installed, I mused. So, I needed… a mason, for renovation, and servants. A laundress, most definitely, and… well, what else? A guard, perhaps? No, that would be superfluous. Perhaps a chambermaid? To make the bed.

Damn, I was without imagination. What did my mother do in the house? What could lords possibly require?

I slept in my carriage, which I still found safer than the house. In the next evening, I hurriedly took a victim, but spared enough time to find a really bad one, of course, and to conceal the telling wounds. In that regard, I had read of the healing properties of my blood. Even in death, a few drops healed up their flesh, though it was far from enough to constitute the Gift. But it left a neat, clean corpse, who seemed to have simply died on the spot, as if struck by God himself.

The evening was dark, for the sky had been overcast for the whole day, and this saw no sign of changing. The wind howled coldly, and a small, dusty rain was falling. Carmele waited for me with two friends. They weren’t working, this time around, they were simply chatting. She was delicately leaning against the doorway’s thick, vertical oak beam, and compared to it, she appeared very lithe and fragile, soft even, though she was used to tough, menial work.

She acknowledged my presence with a smile, and I greeted her two friends politely, mostly to impress on her that I was a good man. I immediately learned their names and committed them to memory: Aude and Eulalie.

“So,” I started, noting a paper in her hand, and the words on it, which made me arc a brow. Had she borrowed paper and ink from Robert? To make a list? Possibly, he had been very eager to help her find servants for me… “Archie, I guessed you would need a pantler, a buttler, a cook, a laundress, a chambermaid, a valet-de-chambre, perhaps?”

My spirit slowly sunk. “What… what do I need all those for?”

She stared at me and started counting on her fingers. “The pantler for the pantry, the buttler for the buttery, the cook for… well, cooking, the laundress for laundry, the –”

“Yes, yes,” I waved impatiently, and she grew decidedly cold as I cut her off, “I understood that, but are they really all necessary? There’s only… well, me.” I said meekly. The sky rumbled. The rain grew heavy and hard. They stood just beneath the roof’s cover, but it poured over me, ice cold.

Carmele frowned, and reached out for my shoulder, pulling on it, “come in, now! You’re getting drenched, tall man,” she admonished, and her friends scrambled inside to make space for us, and we all entered the empty, orderly kitchen. My cloak dripped on the floor.

“You’re not cold?” The one called Aude asked, a falsely bashful redhead, with green eyes and many freckles.

I should be, shouldn’t I? It was cold outside, and I was drenched. The dark hair stuck to my cheeks, the cloak was twice as heavy. It was uncomfortable. But even true cold was nothing more than that to me. I smiled appeasingly to her. “I am fine, thank you… now, regarding the servants, I would think… three are enough. A laundress, a pantler, who could perhaps serve as cook in addition, and… I don’t know, perhaps a valet? One who can read and write.

She stared at me and sighed. “I thought you wanted a whole household. But really, give me that cloak, we can’t have you fall sick,” and she grabbed its edges with her fragile fingers and started to remove it. I could either resist or oblige, and I of course did the last, though I found it slightly awkward. Believe it or not, no one had ever taken my cloak before. I mean, I did that myself, even in the time I had spent as guest of the Viscount.

“There,” she said, spreading it over two chairs’ backrests, right in front of the last embers of the kitchen’s fireplace. “Better than nothing. Now… Do you want to go through my candidates? Oh dear,” she uttered, looking at me, you’re completely wet, aren’t you? How are you not shivering?” Before I had the time to protest, she had sent Aude to fetch a certain Armand, one of the valets in the house. “I think he should be about your size… or close,” she corrected herself upon further examination. “You’re a strong one,” she said, clapping my shoulder with her fingers, “I believe that you are a son of a carpenter. You have worked, haven’t you? Though your hands have lost their callousness.”

Really? I looked at them. It seemed true. The skin was smooth.

I leaned a hand on a chair and read her list. There were some twenty names on it. “If these are all persons you recommend, then I would prefer to meet them properly.”

“Some of them are not relevant your needs,” she protested, “and, in addition, we don’t know what qualities you prefer in your household. Every master is different, and the harmony of the household is very important. It is why I will not leave Lord Robert’s, when I am glad here.”

“I see, it is harmony, hm?” I laid the paper down on the massive, finely made table full of superficial smears and cuts. It was scrubbed very clean, however. “I value discretion most of all,” I said, and her remaining friend, Eulalie, held a hand over her mouth as she snickered.

“Discretion?” Carmele repeated, a shadow of a smile on her face also. “Not skill? Not loyalty? What do you have to hide?”

“I suppose loyalty is a bit of the same,” I pondered, but not exactly, a blabber-head could be very loyal and well-meaning but entirely incapable of holding her tongue. “I am a very private person.” I explained with that same, self-ironic smile. And I felt a flash of understanding from her.

“Privacy is important for some,” she agreed, looking through her list again. “Then I shall send some to your house, yes? For the meeting. I will let them know. Do you have a preferred time? The evening, perhaps?” She guessed drily. I acquiesced wryly. “Give me two days, then, and I shall have them at your door.”

“That is perfect,” I said, grabbing my cloak smoothly, “then I shall keep you up no longer.”

“But –”

I opened the door and turned back to her, cutting her off with a bright smile, “and Carmele? My offer to you stands still. You need only say the word.”

I took immense pleasure in the small hint of fluster I sensed in her mind before I closed the door behind me. By the time I was leaving the courtyard, cloak under my arm as the rain battered down and the thunder rumbled above, Aude came to the kitchen with Armand, and I sensed a great deal of bewilderment and even some worry in there.

Whistling a quiet tune, I strolled out into the night, deciding on picking a book up from the carriage before visiting the tavern. I was in the jolly mood for wine and reading.