The Queen's Dollmaker (6 page)

London, October 1781.
Claudette’s stomach was gnawing away irritatingly as she stood at the imposing front door of the Ashby family’s two-story brick residence. Behind her, Béatrice cowered, while her unflappable daughter kept up a steady stream of conversation. “Whose house is this? Why are we visiting? Do you know them, Mama?” Claudette hushed her, then lifted the bronze knocker, a lion’s head with bared teeth and narrowed eyes.

The door was opened by a middle-aged woman, severely dressed in black. Her eyes were tiny pinpoints of gray, devoid of warmth and mostly obscured by a large hook nose. Her hair was pulled so tightly into a bun at the back of her head that the woman’s hairline was white from the pulling. Claudette was certain that stray hairs would not dare to escape without the permission of their owner.

“Yes?” the woman asked.

“I am Claudette Laurent. Reverend Daniels has given me reference to work for Monsieur Ashby and his family.”

The woman held out a great paw of a hand, and Claudette handed over the reference. She glanced down at it, and Claudette thought the woman was unable to read it.

“Seems to be a reference all right. Who are those two?” she asked, pointing her head toward Béatrice and Marguerite.

“This is my friend, Béatrice du Georges. We have recently arrived in England and are seeking employment together.” Claudette nudged Béatrice forward.

“And the brat?”

“This is Béatrice’s daughter, Marguerite. She is a very well-mannered child and can even help with duties. She is no trouble at all and is very quiet.”

“Mrs. Ashby won’t like you bringing a worthless mouth to feed. You’d better be off.” She began to close the door, but Claudette stepped forward and held it open.

“Madame, we are very tired and, quite frankly, very hungry, since we have eaten little beyond pottage and warm ale since arriving here. I was assured that this reference would grant us an interview for work in this home, and I intend to have my interview.”

The servant stood and stared at Claudette for several long seconds, deciding whether to establish her position and dominance in the household over this sassy young woman, or risk the legendary Maude Ashby anger for not admitting two referenced servants into the house. Slowly she stepped back to let the two women and the accompanying energetic child in.

“I am Mrs. Lundy. I am the housekeeper and therefore all other servants are in my charge. You’ll wait here and I’ll see if Mrs. Ashby wants to talk to you.” She held the reference out in front of her with distaste, and left the room.

Béatrice let out a great moan of despair. “Oh, Claudette, that woman does not want us here. It’s Marguerite, isn’t it? She doesn’t like my child. If we don’t find positions here, what will we do?”

“Stop it, Béatrice. We will find employment here. If we don’t, we’ll knock on every door in London until we do.”

Marguerite, who was momentarily cowed into silence by Mrs. Lundy, found her voice again. “Mama, Mama, is this our new house? Who lives here? Are they your friends? Mama, I’m hungry.” Béatrice absentmindedly patted her daughter’s head. “Yes,
chérie,
these are our new friends.”

After a short wait, Mrs. Ashby arrived. She had clearly been an attractive woman in her youth, and still retained that beauty in a cold, statuesque sort of way, with the help of bold hair dyes, subtle cosmetics, and skin softening lotions. She held the reference in her hand.

“So Reverend Daniels sent you to me. Don’t I line the church’s offering box well enough without him sending me charity cases on top of it all? Surely he knows that I cannot afford…that I don’t require any more servants here at Ash House.” She stared at the threesome for several long moments, tapping the document against the front of her fancy, if slightly ill-fitting, dress. Claudette envisioned nipping the waist in just slightly to emphasize Mrs. Ashby’s slender frame a bit, and adding some lace to the bottom of her three-quarter length sleeves. A doll would have never left Papa’s shop in such poor condition as what she saw here on this wealthy lady.

A dramatic sigh emanated from Maude Ashby. “I don’t suppose either of you have ever done domestic work, have you? Let me see your hands. Humph. As I thought, coddled and pampered your whole lives.”

Béatrice shrank at the accurate description, but Claudette took a step forward. “Madame, I am the daughter of one of Paris’s finest dollmakers. I am well-accustomed to serving customers, cleaning a shop, and all aspects of fine dollmaking. It is my father’s death that brings me to reduced circumstances, but, assuredly, I am used to hard work.” She pulled Béatrice in closer. “As is my friend.”

Mrs. Ashby rolled her eyes. “I suppose I don’t have much choice, or else next Sunday we’ll be getting a sermon on ‘Helping the Poor’ or ‘Loving Your Neighbor.’ Worse yet, the good reverend may ask us to give up the Ashby pew at the front of the church, and I have worked entirely too hard and long to get that location to have it taken from me now. How the Harrisons would love to see us lose it so that they could buy it.” Another sigh. “Very well, I’ll take you on,
temporarily,
but any trouble from you and I’ll toss you back to Reverend Daniels and tell him you are unmanageable. And try not to be so
French.
You’re in England, for heaven’s sake, not that godless country of iniquity.”

Mrs. Lundy showed them to their living quarters—narrow rooms in the attic painted pale green, smelling strongly of rancid oil, each with a cot and small washstand—and were immediately put to work. Claudette was placed in the kitchen as a serving maid, and Béatrice requested assignment in the laundry. By serving in the laundry, Béatrice could keep out of sight and have Marguerite close to her. But Béatrice’s work was hot and grimy, and utterly ill-suited to her stamina. Her hands quickly became chapped, then swollen, and even sometimes bled from the breaking of her dry skin. She cried often in private, clenching and rubbing together her painful fingers. How did one family create so much dirty linen?

The Ashby family was comprised of James Ashby, his wife Maude, and two twin children, Nathaniel and Nicholas, age twelve. Mr. Ashby was abnormally pot-bellied, with a receding hairline that seemed to belong to a man much older. Years of iron-fisted rule by his wife had resulted in a small stoop, and with his extended abdomen, gave him the appearance of a wispy-haired, hard-boiled egg.

Maude Ashby had come from a modest family whose star had begun to ascend when one of her aunts became the mistress of George II earlier in the century. Maude’s aunt was one in a series of mistresses the king enjoyed following the death of his stoic wife, Queen Caroline. George had presented his lovely mistress with fine gifts of jewels, wine, and silken fabrics, and she in turn presented him with an illegitimate son. At that moment, the king decided he was through with the lovely Matilda Carter, and settled upon her a Yorkshire estate and £500 a year from the privy purse, considering himself especially generous since he had not yet decided to publicly claim the child as his own.

Maude’s mother had drilled into her repeatedly that it was her duty to learn from her aunt Matilda and reject a mistress situation: marry well, and bring prestige—but more importantly, additional wealth—into the Carter family. James Ashby had seemed a good match: a £20,000 inheritance from a recently deceased distant relative, shares in a new shipping company trading with the American colonies, and a family with a spotless reputation. But the colonists had gone to war against Britain, and the shipping company was dissolved. James had spent most of his inheritance—what was left after the purchase of their large town house in St. Marylebone—trying to keep the company buoyed, but when two ships were captured and stripped of all their goods by the rebellious British subjects in New York harbor, the last of James’s fortune was washed away.

Maude, who now had two boys for whom she also wanted to make advantageous marriages, did not meet his unfortunate run of luck with sympathy.
Who wanted to marry a man whose father had lost his money in a failed business venture?
Maude would periodically snort to herself and wonder how she could have married such a dolt. And now it was up to her to maintain the illusion of a family fortune, while scrimping and saving behind the scenes, going through her own inheritance from her aunt, until one day a suitable investment could be found that would once again raise her to her deserved social status. At least she had her boys—dear Nathaniel!—to comfort her.

Nathaniel Ashby resembled his father in shape, but was his mother in temperament. And as he desired nothing more than the top position in his mother’s affections, his own vitriolic disposition was most frequently turned onto his twin, Nicholas. Nathaniel would devise plots to get Nicholas, a quiet and pensive boy, into trouble and undeserved beatings by his mother and schoolmaster. His latest scheme involved the capture and hiding of a snake and his brother’s schoolbooks in a stack of folded bed linens. That stupid ass of a new maid, Béatrice, found them, and the shrieking and braying that commenced would have been enough to waken the entire block. Nathaniel was able to truthfully report to his mother that the books were clearly Nicholas’s, and Nicholas did obviously spend quite a bit of time wandering down to the laundry. And so once again Nicholas received a beating and was sent to bed without supper, no questions asked. Sometimes Nathaniel felt a twinge of guilt, particularly when Nicholas would turn his large, quiet eyes toward him, unblinking yet knowing in his thin pale face; but he was always able to push the feeling aside as soon as his mother popped a sweetmeat in his mouth.

Nicholas should have been his mother’s favorite, since he was most likely of the Ashby males to eventually recover the family fortune, but instead he was largely ignored. He realized his brother’s intent toward him, and even at some level understood it, but the continual torment forced him to recede into himself, to walk hallways quietly and unnoticed, to speak only when spoken to directly. Nicholas would spend hours alone with books, or sitting outside under the trees, contemplating leaves and earth and sky. A passerby would say to himself, “Now there’s a fine and serious boy!”

The arrival of Claudette and Béatrice was of interest to Nicholas. Their French accents and mannerisms were unlike anything he had seen before in his quiet existence. They carried themselves in a way that the other servants did not, and they even seemed to take some small notice of him. He took to following them around, quietly of course, sometimes creeping up to doorways without announcing himself and watching them work. He had to be careful, though, that Nathaniel did not catch him.

Of the two servants—or ladies, as Nicholas thought of them—Béatrice was evolving as his favorite. She exuded a fragile nature, and was in such contrast to his mother that he was inescapably drawn to her, like the hummingbird to the flower, beating his wings with a childish desperation. Of Marguerite he paid no mind. She was just a little girl, immaterial and unworthy of his adoration.

Béatrice, instinctively recognizing the boy’s awkwardness, would invite him to talk with her sometimes while she was washing, or folding, or mending.

“What subjects do you learn in school, Monsieur Nicholas?” she asked once in her improving English, on her knees shaking her dripping, reddened hands over the wash bucket.

Blushing furiously he replied, “Oh, just grammar and sums. And history.”

“And just what history did you learn today?”

“We are memorizing the names of all the English kings and queens, the greatest monarchs ever to rule in the world.”

“Ah, yes, I suppose that may be construed to be so. Did you know that your Queen Elizabeth once made sport of France’s Duc d’Anjou, pretending she would marry him, but never doing so? All to maintain friendly relations between England and France.”

“She did? We have not learned that. At least, not yet.”

Béatrice picked up another bundle of clothing and began sorting it. “So I suppose that if the greatest queen of England thought she should be friendly with the French, then we must be friends as well,
oui?”
With a wink, she turned around to find the soap, massaging her raw hands together discreetly out of his sight.

Claudette, meanwhile, was trying to survive the battlefield of the kitchen. In this part of the house, the servants jockeyed for position and recognition under Mrs. Lundy. The staff members were perpetually spying on each other, in order to have an opportunity to report a fellow employee’s bad behavior. In this way, the competitor might be unceremoniously fired, opening up a new position for the spy. Or at the very least one might be rewarded for informing Mrs. Lundy about goings-on in the house, and proving loyalty to the Ashby family.

Quickly Claudette learned to stay out of everyone’s way, associating with no one but Béatrice, and concentrating solely on carrying out her daily orders from Mrs. Lundy, which usually consisted of the worst of kitchen duties, in addition to whatever else the other servants did not want to do. Her long days, which turned into long months, were frequently spent cleaning pots and pans or scurrying up and down the stairs on spiteful missions initiated by the housekeeper. Unfortunately, the other servants decided they did not like the new French interlopers even more than they disliked each other, no matter that these foreigners were taking over the most undesirable tasks in the household. Jealousy of the educated and well-mannered newcomers created an odd sort of alliance among the remaining staff, and Claudette would frequently hear their whisperings and laughter.

The worst of the servants was Jassy Brickford, a thin teenage girl whose parentage was in some doubt, although she insisted proudly that she was distantly related to Charles II. What young woman of suspect heritage couldn’t claim that relationship? Claudette wondered.

Jassy despised Claudette’s French manners, which she recognized as elegant and cultured, and completely unlike her own. She spent many days talking to the other female servants. “Frenchy is very uppity, ain’t she? Why, just th’ other day I heard Mrs. Lundy give her an order to collect up all the dead flowers in the house and replace them with new ones from the garden. Of course, Frenchy doesn’t know anything ’bout proper English flower arranging, and Mrs. Lundy made her do it all over again. Little Frenchy Fifi sassed Mrs. Lundy, told her it was impossible to do any better with what was available. I thought Frenchy’s teeth would come out, Mrs. Lundy slapped her across the mouth so hard.” Jassy giggled at the recollection, and the two maids she was talking to snickered with her. “What airs she gives herself! Why, even though I can claim a certain
distinguished
background, I don’t get impertinent with my betters. And especially not with Mrs. Lundy. Who needs their ears boxed all day by that old horn-nosed tyrant?” The other servants loved hearing Jassy tell a story, and were only too willing to agree with her that the two French servants, Claudette in particular, were filthy laze-abouts.