Murkmere Read Online Free Page A

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    There was a knock at the door, and the little maid who had served me in the kitchen shuffled in hesitantly at Mr. Silas’s“Enter.” She dipped a bob to the Master’s back and twisted her apron. “Please, Sir, Mistress Crumplin has sent me to take
     Miss Agnes to her room, if your business with her is done, Sir.”
    Silas Seed nodded; the Master of Murkmere appeared lost in his own thoughts. We left the men silent in the empty room and
     set off along the shadowy passages together.
    “What’s your name?” I asked her cheerfully, relieved my interview was over so soon.
    She looked astonished that I should want to know. I saw that her cheeks were smudged with soot and tear stains. “They call
     me Scuff here, Miss,” she whispered. “I don’t know my real name.”
    “You don’t come from the Eastern Edge, do you?”
    “Oh, no, Miss. From the Capital, like all of us at Murkmere.”
    I’d hoped to meet a friendly face from the village some-where in the vastness of the house, and was disappointed. But I wouldn’t
     let my spirits sink.
    “So, how did you come to work here, Scuff?” I asked curiously, for the Capital was several days’ journey south.
    “He came to the Orphans’ Home a while back, Mr. Silas did.” I had to bend down to hear her. “He was lookin’ for likely maidservants.
     I was cheap, bein’ so small, so he bought me. We only had numbers there, no names.” With a sudden burst of confidence she
     pulled up her sleeve and showed me the number branded on her narrow forearm: 102, now a faded scar.

    Pity stirred inside me. “So you’re an orphan like me,” I said. Scuff looked up at me, and a surprised smile brightened her
     pinched face.
    When we found the bedchamber at last, she insisted on lighting the fire in the small grate for me. The room was even colder
     than the passages, and fusty, as if no one had slept in it for a long while. Then she offered to unpack my bundle, which had
     been put on the bed with my cloak.
    I laughed, and she looked almost shocked at the sound. “It’s most kind of you, but I couldn’t possibly sit by while you did
     it. Tell me one thing instead, Scuff.”
    “Yes, Miss Agnes?”
    “Aggie is quite enough, but tell me — why has the Master imprisoned himself in his chair in that way?”
    She looked more pinched still, and her eyes grew frightened. “I don’t know, but we shouldn’t speak of it, Miss Aggie!”
    “Why ever not?”
    But I’d lost her confidence. She looked helplessly at me, hesitated, then almost tripped over her big shoes in her haste to
     leave the room.
    I wandered around after she’d left, gazing at the furniture: the bedside table on which sat a porcelain candleholder, the
     washstand and blue-patterned bowl, the pair of stuffed chairs covered with crimson-striped satin, the walnut dressing table.
     I caught sight of my face in the looking glass and saw my round eyes. There were yellow silk curtains at the windows, and
     matching curtains hanging around the bed, whileunder it sat the grandest chamber pot I’d ever seen, made of flowered china with a copper lid. I thought of the straw pallet
     I shared with my aunt back at the cottage, in the cramped room under the eaves. If only Aunt Jennet could share all this with
     me!
    But I was alone.
    I unpacked my old skirt and bodice, my two shifts, my slippers. I put them at one lonely end of the big mahogany wardrobe.
     I went over to the window and stood looking out without seeing. I wondered what to do next.
    Without thinking, I’d pulled my amulet from my bodice. It had come down to my mother through ancestors who’d lived on the
     coast. As I held the amber stone, I imagined the gray seas that had shaped it before finally throwing it up onto the shingle
     beaches of the Eastern Edge. I’d never seen the sea, though it was only a morning’s walk away. Inlanders didn’t approve of
     the coast people; they weren’t devout nowadays, so I’d heard. But the amber was