He had thought about it for a moment, unsure of what he should do next. When the heavy footfalls in the corridor had disappeared downstairs somewhere he picked himself up, getting to a kneeling position first of all before attempting to stand and finding that his legs were betraying him too much with their shaking. He sat down again, just for the moment until he could find the right footing, and put his hands on his knees to try and steady himself. Putting a hand to his forehead, he found a few spots of blood there where a sharp shard of the broken vase had cut into his skin, and he stared at the red on his fingertips for a while as if he could not quite comprehend what it was that he was looking at.

He took a breath after a moment, and then began to sweep the shards of the vase together, making a neat pile and gathering up all of the smaller splinters so that the chances of someone else cutting themselves on the pieces were reduced. Part of him wondered why he would do such a thing, the rational part of his mind screaming at him to leave them and retreat so that poetic justice might possibly cause the injury of one of his tormentors. Somehow, however, the rest of him was dutiful to a fault, and wanted to clean up the mess that he had made as well as making sure that Jackdaw – a fellow servant and, he saw now, an unwilling one – was not forced to do it for him.

After gathering the most dangerous pieces of pot together he cast around and then laid them all on a low table nearby made of the same dark wood as pervaded the other rooms he had seen so far, so that at least they were easy to gather now and not in a place where they might cause injury or hassle. Next to them he carefully laid the dried plants, what was left of them – most of them having snapped in half along their brittle spines, with one sharp and errant thorn digging in to his palm as he moved a handful of stalks off the floor. That done, he found himself at a loss as to what he should do, and without any other real options he crept along the now still and silent corridors to his own room.

As he walked through the halls towards his door he passed another, which he realised must be the door to Jackdaw’s own room, no doubt similarly proportioned and decorated; a low, animalistic groan sounded as he approached and then a deep, muttering voice uttered some urgent command. Just precisely as he passed the door he heard Jackdaw’s voice reply quietly, “Yes, Master,” unmistakably, and he suppressed a shiver as he hurried along to the relative sanctuary of his room before he could hear any more. It seemed that his disobedience had already caused Jackdaw to take up his own burden, and he was sorry for that, despite the feeling that he could not shake that Jackdaw had betrayed him somehow. He knew that the other man had no choice, that he was held under the very same bonds that now restrained him, and yet still it rankled that he had smiled with the eyes of friendship only to thrust him into this semblance of hell.

He sat for a long time on the very end of his bed, staring off into the distance while not seeing the wall opposite him at all, thinking about things that he could not hold still in his mind for long enough to properly grasp them. He thought of Ilona most of all, his mind twisting away like an injured nerve every time her face floated into his mind’s eye, unable to bear it for too long. He had already consigned her inwardly to the category of things that would never be in his reach again, cataloguing her alongside the face of his mother – something which already he barely remembered, having missed it for the past twelve years of his life since she had faded away with the spring, like some kind of pale blossom which had not the strength to stand the full heat of the summer sun.

She had been bought by the Breckenridge Estate when he was six years old, and although at that age he was not yet set up to work himself nor forced to wear a full slave’s band, he had come along with her as a package, a deal that the Lord of the manor had not been too pleased to accept. Having a small child around as another mouth to feed was not something that he had bargained for when he bought the woman, and now he considered the price he had paid for her to be too high; he forced her to work for her keep instead, and that of the boy, instructing the head maid to ensure that she worked hard enough for both of them. She had died less than a year after reaching the estate, and at seven years old he had said goodbye to her for the last time, a thin and frail woman who had neither the time nor the constitution to fight off a severe bout of sickness that had come on the past winter and plagued her until she gave in. Officially the children of slaves did not themselves become servants with any need to work until they reached their eighth birthday, but he was tasked with small jobs from the day that she died in order to earn a hard crust of bread to gnaw on every now and then or the scrapings of someone else’s plate if they took pity on a small boy running underfoot.

Though he had grown up with the other slaves, there was always something about him that set him apart from them. Most of them had been torn from their parents to arrive at the estate anyway, with Breckenridge always eager to make a good deal, and almost all of them had come in at an older age, in their early teens when they could learn the work of the fields and start to accustom their growing bodies to the heavy labour. A man who had been there since boyhood was somehow strangely less welcome than these newcomers, and while their shared experiences bound them together he had drifted apart from them, exploring the strange parts of the grounds that were not normally frequented by the farmhands as he learned how to get to places where he could hide from a mean look or an accidental injury in the fields. What he never did was hide from work, even if he was hurt; if you stopped even for an hour then it was everyone else that had to pick up the slack, and that was unfair, no matter what the circumstances were.

He thought of that again now, and of Jackdaw, and although as yet he could not quite bring himself to forgive the other servant he also felt a shame in himself for causing someone else to have to do the job that should have been his, especially if it was an odious one. Jackdaw was older than him, he could see, but not by a huge amount of years; and for all he knew, he had ended up in these circumstances through a far worse turn of fate than his own, so he made up his mind then and there to make an effort to hold none of this against him if he could help it. Jackdaw had been sorry to bring him into this, he could see, and so it was no right of his to complain against the servant for what had been the master’s work. He of all people should be able to understand that.

He must have been sitting there for two hours or more when he heard a gentle knock at his door and the hinges sliding open with the slightest of creaks, and he turned as if waking from a deep sleep to see Jackdaw there in the door frame. There was a hesitant look on his face, as if he was getting ready to deflect a blow – or run from the room altogether.

‘You can come in,’ Griffin said after a moment, realising with a sensation akin to shock that the other servant was waiting for his permission. A space of his own in which others were not automatically allowed to enter was not something that he had ever been used to.

Jackdaw entered the room, then turned and closed the door behind him. The dark jacket he had been wearing since they had first met was absent for the moment, and he had a more serious look about him – a look of apology, which shamed Griffin almost immediately. He gave a slight nod, as if to let Jackdaw know that it was alright, and the other man stepped forward quickly as if to see his face more clearly.

‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘For what it’s worth, anyway.’

‘It is his fault, not yours,’ Griffin replied, sighing, his voice sounding tired even to his own ears.

‘Just bear it for a little while,’ Jackdaw said, almost sounding as if he were telling him to put up with having the sniffles or carrying on cutting hay for an extra hour. Then his voice dropped to barely a whisper, and he cast a look to the door, adding, “And you will not have to bear it for long. Not if my plans come through.’

‘What plans?’ asked Griffin, raising his head at that note in Jackdaw’s voice which told him that something was really afoot, but just at that moment the sound of wheels rattling over stone and hoofbeats came from the courtyard down below the window.

Jackdaw rushed to look out, then made his way back towards the door, a wild look on his face. ‘No time now. An important guest. I need to serve – you’d best stay put for now. You can help me starting tomorrow. As if today did not exist.’

As if today did not exist, Griffin repeated dully in his mind. How could he ever go back to a world before today?