Chapter 1: New Life -
Elena Bratescu was terrified. Despite this, excitement bubbled up in her like an
underground spring. The anxiety and elation churned her stomach as she
contemplated her new position in life. She was going to work at Castel Sleampa!
As the pony and trap jolted over a rough mud track partially overgrown with
weeds, her mind was whirling with a jumble of emotions. It was a great honour to
be accepted for service, and not many peasant girls were favoured in this way.
But the castle was so far away from her village, which they were even now
leaving as night fell, and she would rarely be allowed home. She would miss her
father and sister terribly, but this was her opportunity, her means to a new
life.
***
The hiring fair had been a way of life in her home village of Gaura for
generations. It was one of the larger villages in the county, and the fair was
visited by tradesmen throughout the area looking for an apprentice, providing
the boys of the villages with the route to an honest trade, and a better life,
once their indentures were completed. Local girls also attended these events,
but usually not for the purposes of seeking employment. Girls were expected to
find a good husband, settle down and bear children, and where better to earmark
a husband than from the ranks of a group of fine young men who were about to
secure a trade?
Elena had not attended a fair before; at twenty-one, she was her father's
despair. She should have been married off by now, perhaps with a child. Her
beloved mamica had passed on in the evening of Ziua Crucii - Cross Day - a year
ago. She well remembered rushing home, breathless, after a day spent in the
forest with her sister Juana gathering the last of the remedying plants before
autumn set in. Mamica had been unwell for weeks past, since being caught in an
unseasonable torrential downpour in July, and had been growing steadily weaker
ever since. There was a doctor in nearby Focsani, but no one in the village
could possibly afford his services, and Bunica Vremeceara, the old woman who
lived in the forest outside the village, had been called to tend to her. She was
well known in the district, as one who delivered babies and tended to injuries
and was widely respected for her knowledge of herb lore. Even she had been
unable to do anything than make Mamica more comfortable.
On what should have been a day of celebration, as Mamica had finally slipped
away, with Elena clasping her thin hand tightly, all her certainties had ebbed
away with her. She had wept bitterly, but Bunica had been brisk - death was a
crucial time, and the best way to aid the departed was to ensure that the
customs were strictly observed. Elena had sat through the death-watch that
night, the tears drying on her face as she endeavoured to come to terms with her
loss, not only of her mother, but of a basic foundation of her life. As the sun
rose the next morning, so did Elena. She walked in the forests, her skirts
dampened by the early dew be-dappling the ground, and resolved not become like
her mother - tired, worn out by the daily toil of home and family, existing on
little money, with only the prospect of growing old before her time and her
daughter attending to her death-watch.
***
Elena had dressed in her Sunday best for today. Her normal attire of black skirt
and shirt, were here replaced by a richly adorned shirt, embroidered around the
neck with coloured wool and cotton. The chest and the sleeves were decorated
with float embroideries; the sleeves finished with the cuffs embroidered in
black. Her ankle length skirt was woven of plain black wool, as was the belt.
Her long auburn hair was swept up behind her headscarf.
Her father, Petru, was beside her in the village square, his shoulders, bent
from years of labour in the fields were even more hunched today, and his face
was a mask of stone, but she could feel disapproval radiating from him in waves.
They had argued about this, time and time again. He felt it was right that she
marry locally and settle down. She argued that this life was no longer for her,
and that in any case, Juana was still there for him. She was now seventeen, and
could attend to the house and to his keeping. As further weight to her argument,
Elena held up the contingency that her entry into service would allow her to
send money home for them both.
Elena had had to think long and hard about this. It had been all very well to
talk grandly of having a different destiny, but in practice, there were few ways
out of the village, service in a fine casa being one of them. She was a hard
worker, a necessity after the death of her mother, and she was aware that a
competent maid could progress to a higher status, perhaps even to that of
Housekeeper, a position of great respectability indeed. Housekeepers from
Focsani infrequently attended the fairs, looking for well-presented peasant
girls, and word had arrived that a lady from Sleampa would be in the village
today. Elena stood up straight, and folded her hands demurely in front of her.
Sleampa, so the men said, was about twenty kilometres away in the foothills of
the Muntii Vrancei. The villagers knew little of it, twenty kilometres being at
least a journey of four hours by cart on the rutted tracks that passed for roads
away from the large towns. The more curious of them were puzzled why anyone
would venture this far for a hiring fair, when there were many villages that
were much closer.
***
By late morning, the tiny square had filled up with various blacksmiths,
butchers, coopers and the like from the local villages, some to select lads,
others just to talk and drink and laugh in the only tavern, a low red-brick
cottage with two barrels of ale in the corner of the front room. It was in the
way of being a small holiday for them, as well as business. Petru had stumped
back to the house to get something to eat, but Elena did not dare move for fear
of missing the lady.
The day stretched out endlessly as she shuffled and waited and eventually
crouched down in order to rest her weary legs and back. Petru had brought her
some wheatbread and onions at midday but she was growing hungry again and her
supply of patience, always a scarce commodity, was running low. None of the
other village girls had stayed after the lads had left and hers had been a
lonely wait. As the sun dropped low in the sky, a chill autumn breeze sprang up
from the direction of the mountains, and she shivered in her thin clothes. Elena
had been about to give up, to be resigned to another season at home, when the
pony and trap trundled up the main -the only- street, passing the tiny dwellings
huddled alongside it as if for comfort.
She looked up expectantly as the vehicle drew to a halt. Sitting on the hard
seat in the back was a tall anonymous figure, wrapped in a hooded cloak. The
driver, a weather-beaten fellow in breeches and a grey cloak, clambered down
from his seat, giving the skinny grey animal a brief pat. He moved over to where
Elena waited, suddenly feeling greatly vulnerable. His sharp blue eyes roved
over her face, taking in the delicate features, the shining green eyes and the
clear skin, his face expressionless, as if he were sizing up a beast at market.
Elena fidgeted uncomfortably under his scrutiny. Finally, with an air of
decision, he turned back to the figure on the trap and nodded.
The figure spoke. "Come, girl." Elena jumped, and her stomach began to flutter,
but she obediently approached the trap, and curtseyed deeply before the
occupant.
The soft, but authoritative voice sounded amused. "So, you have manners? That is
good. I am the menajer of Castel Sleampa, and I am looking for a new scullery
maid. You are seeking to enter service?"
"Yes, doamna, " Elena said politely, but her heart leapt. A scullery maid! A low
beginning, to be sure, but a beginning, especially when she considered that this
was no ordinary townhouse, but a castle! A nagging voice in the back of her mind
asked why anyone from a castle's household would stoop to visiting a village for
servants, when any fully-trained maid could be lured from the towns with the
prospect of working in such a magnificent place. Her practical self admonished
that it was not her place to question regarding such matters. It was the chance
she had been waiting for!
The woman spoke again. "Do you know any housekeeping, do you help your mother?"
Elena lowered her eyes. "My mother is dead, doamna, I run the house now. I wash,
sew, cook and clean. I milk the goats and tend to the vegetable patch. My
younger sister helps of course."
The cowled woman was silent for a time. Elena wondered if she was being sized up
from the depths of that dark hood. She stood up straighter, pulling back her
shoulders, and then the questions began. How many goats, how big a cottage,
describe your daily tasks? Elena had answered all these, and volunteered other
information, such as how she often helped Bunica Vremeceara with herbal
preparations.
Finally the woman said, "Very well, it is becoming late now. I must return to
the Castel tonight, and I believe you have sufficient character and attitude to
be worthy of a trial. You should say goodbye to your family and fetch any
belongings you wish to bring."
"Thank you doamna!" Elena smiled widely, and curtseyed once again. There was no
acknowledgement from the cloaked woman.
Elena ran back to the little cottage she shared with her father and sister. It
was easily in view of the main street, and her father had been watching out the
door for her. His lined, tired face had fallen as he had seen her turn from the
trap wearing a large smile; he was about to lose her, as he'd lost her mother.
But she was of age, and he had never been one to hold her back. She had always
been headstrong, and could wrap him around her little finger, ever since she was
a baby. She had to do what she thought was best. That greater part of him that
was practical also realised that the money would be useful, but he would miss
her enormously.
There was no need for a long goodbye. It was customary for apprentices to leave
immediately with their new masters, and for goodbyes to be said the previous
evening. Elena had accordingly cooked a special meal the night before, a large
stew with pork and cabbage, and they and Juana had sat, and talked and talked
all evening by the crackling fire. It may have been all for nothing, had the
pony and trap not arrived, or had Elena been rejected, but she had been
determined to bid her beloved family farewell in the proper manner. Her
belongings amounted to a few changes of clothes and her mother's rosary, all
bound in a sacking bundle. With tears in her eyes, she tightly hugged her
father, and then her little sister, a smaller version of herself, whose tears
ran freely down her pink cheeks. Who knew when they'd see each other again?
***
Elena had been glad to accept a travelling cloak from the taciturn driver, and
huddled inside the rough woollen garment. Beside her sat her new employer, still
silently shrouded in her own cloak. Elena knew better than to try and start a
conversation, but she secretly wondered what it would be like to work for this
aloof woman. And who was the Master of the castle? The trap rattled onwards,
away from her old life, as the sun started to sink behind the far mountains.
