It was a while before their paths crossed again. Another week of duties passed, and though the storms of tears seemed to die away a little, she still could not help them coming once every few days. It was as though there was so much sadness left inside her that it was having to spill out, like a barrel of water which was overflowing. She tried her hardest to put it behind her, though it was not easy; even when she did not think of Griffin there were new things to cry about now, like the weeping blisters on her feet from the ill-fitting shoes or the sore and dry skin on her hands from washing the clothes so often, and the fact that she had missed two balls already that she had been looking forward to attending with her mother and sister.

She tried her best, but she did not really know what she was supposed to be doing, and though Swallow was patient with her and tried to explain, it was difficult to change her thinking to a whole new way of life. She had never had to think about how to get clothes clean before; they just appeared like that in her room, and she would wear them and get them dirty again, and that was that. She had never had to think about how things showed up in different rooms of the house, or how they got water from the wells in the yard up to her bathtub, or any of the hundreds of things that she now found listed amongst those that she had to take care of. It was all so strange to think about, and she even felt something like a sense of shame that she had not known how to do these things from the very beginning. How could it be that almost every part of life that had to be prepared was something alien to her, when she had been living with all of it for seventeen years?

Finally, she was waiting as usual just inside the corridor while Molly was handing out duties for the day, when Swallow emerged with a smile and grabbed her hand to lead her quickly back towards the room where they customarily went every morning now to start washing. “I’ve good news for you,” she said. “You’re to start with washing some of the family’s clothes. It’s bigger responsibility, but it means Molly’s warming to you a little, so if you can get this right you’ll soon find she goes a little easier on you.”

It was good news, she supposed, but Ilona found it difficult to get as excited about it as Swallow was. All she could see was another opportunity to mess things up, and she was not even yet confident that she was really doing a good enough job with the servants’ clothes when she washed them.

They headed down to the cold laundry room and Ilona went towards the large tubs that they normally used to wash the clothes in, but Swallow shook her head. “We’ll treat these clothes more specially, because they’re so fine and expensive. The undergarments can be done as normal, but we’ve a couple of gowns to deal with today. They were worn out at the ball last night, so it’s important to get them fresh again.”

Swallow took down a tub of the same kind of size from where it hung on a peg on the wall, and set it down next to a dip in the floor in the centre of the room. Next she gathered up a couple of small logs from a pile at the side of the room, motioning to Ilona to pick up a handful of kindling from next to it, and set it all down in the dip, pulling out a box of matches from her pocket and lighting it all quickly. When a nice blaze was going, she set the tub on top, and then started to use a small bucket to transfer water from the cold tub to the empty one. Ilona helped as best she could until the tub was full, and then they allowed the fire to burn as it would while heating the water for a while.

“We don’t need to stoke it or keep feeding it,” Swallow instructed her, though Ilona did not want to interrupt to say that she did not know how to do either of those two things no matter what. “If we do, the water will boil and then carry on boiling, and we’ll end up burning ourselves. We want it to get hot and then the fire to die down.”

Ilona watched as she gathered the clothes from where they had been arranged neatly in a basket, and carefully laid them one by one into the water while it boiled. Soon the fire had dwindled and the water stopped bubbling; Swallow held her hand over the tub, judging by the steam what the temperature was, and instructed Ilona to do the same so that she could see what it felt like. Soon she took the decision that it was cool enough, and put her hands into the hot water to start scrubbing a few mud marks from the hem of one of the gowns.

“Now take this one carefully for me, and hang it up from that line above your head. After it has drained some of the water, we will beat it to keep it from getting too creased or drying in a strange way,” she said, handing the cleaned garment over. They worked like that for the rest of the morning, cleaning gowns and dress shirts and trousers, all the finery of the Breckenridges. Finally, Ilona took her younger sister’s stockings out of Swallow’s hands, and it felt like too much. The storm came over her again, and her eyes clouded with tears; she covered her eyes with one of her hands, and the other dropped with the stockings in it as she felt the sobs starting to wrack through her body again.

Suddenly a shock of pain hit her hand, as she came into contact with the still hot metal of the tub, and she cried out, reflexively dropping the fine silk stockings as she did so. She cried out again then, diving down as if she could prevent the inevitable from happening by outracing gravity; the stockings fell into the ash and final embers of the fire, and though she snatched them out quickly they were already smouldering. A dark stain had spread across one of the legs even though she dropped them into the water again quickly, the ash and heat doing irreparable damage to the fine material.

Swallow looked at her with wide eyes, and for a moment seemed not sure of what to say. “Oh dear,” was all she managed at last, looking at the ruined stockings with clear dismay.

“I’m so sorry,” Ilona choked out, “I just – I just dropped them... I...”

“Alright,” Swallow said, wiping a hand across her mouth in thought. “It’s simple. We’ll say that I burned them. That makes the most sense. I’ll take the punishment for it and then perhaps it won’t be so severe.”

“I think not, Swallow,” came a stern voice from behind them, and both girls spun around to see Molly standing behind them with her arms folded and a sharp glare on her face. “The girl who made the mistake shall be the one who pays the price.”

Swallow turned quickly, lowering her head and clasping her hands in front of her. “Molly, please, it’s my fault really. I’m the one who is supposed to be instructing her!”

“You are a martyr, Swallow, and if you want punishment I can surely give it,” Molly replied, with steel in her voice. “But she shall carry out her punishment all the same.”

Swallow bowed her head, and said nothing, sensing that it was a bad idea to try to protest any more. Beside her, Ilona waited nervously, looking back and forth between them, almost scared to keep her gaze on Molly for too long. The older woman swept towards them all of a sudden and plucked the damp and ruined stockings from her hands, staring intently at the damage.

“There’s no saving them,” she stated, not a question but a declaration. “This will cost money, so you can lose your board for the night. When you have finished work you will go outside, and you will not come to the kitchen to eat. You will return inside when Swallow fetches you tomorrow morning.”

With that she turned and stepped from the room, quickly and deliberately. Her business there was done, and she had nothing more to say, quite clearly. After a few moments’ pause, Swallow turned and put a hand on Ilona’s arm, clearly upset. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I tried, but she’s so hard to move.”

“It’s alright,” Ilona replied, the strained tone in her voice proving the lie even before she had finished telling it. “I’ll be alright.”

They finished washing the clothes almost in silence. Ilona was shaking whenever she took anything from Swallow’s hands, and she was painstakingly careful to keep away from the tub and the ashes as much as possible, so that at least if she dropped something again it would not be so catastrophic. It took them until the early afternoon, and then she was sent to fetch a few things from the kitchen to the yard and from the yard to certain other servants in various places who needed them. Her afternoon was full enough that she did not have to think too hard about what was going to happen that night, and after the sun had gone down when the work was done for the day she suddenly felt a sense of rising panic over what she would have to do.

Swallow found her in the corridor just near to the door that would take her outside, and thrust the blanket taken from her bed into her arms. “Take this with you,” she said, “And try to get shelter if you can. It’s cold out there tonight.”

Ilona nodded, and then opened the door to go out, knowing that if she delayed or refused to do it at all she would be punished in some other, worse way. It was cold, she immediately realised that there was no denying that, and the night sky was clear of clouds that might have trapped any heat in the air. At least, she thought, it was not likely to rain.

She was hungry already, but tried to put it out of her mind by walking out into the yard to look for a place where she could sleep. She did not know if she would manage it at all, and she pulled the blanket around her shoulders to try and keep some of the heat in that she had left behind in the corridor. It had been cold enough there, but now the night was unforgiving. She wandered closer to the stables, thinking about perhaps huddling next to the building where there might be some shelter, when she heard her name stage-whispered somewhere in the gloom.

She peered towards the stables, as dark and secretive as ever, when a white face at last caught the moonlight out above one of the stall doors. It was Wasp, she realised, and in spite of herself and the fact that she was not sure of whether to trust him, she walked towards him quickly.

“Nowhere to sleep tonight?” he asked quietly, his breath clouding in the air for a moment before it disappeared.

“No,” she replied, not wanting just then to elaborate.

He unhooked the catch on the door that he was leaning over, and swung it open. “Then welcome to the straw hotel. Unless it’s beneath a lady such as yourself?”

“I’m not a lady anymore,” she said, walking past him into the stall.