“I have been doing some further investigation into your Spirit Elementals,” she continued. “Well, that is making it sound as if I was actually doing research, which I haven’t been. I’ve just been seeing what they will do if I ask them to. The stupid ones are as you said, about as bright as an obedient dog. You have to tell them exactly what you want and sometimes show them how to do it. But the smart ones are my equal. They do things they know I will want without being told to, and do it very well. They tend to me as if I was a beloved master — ” She paused a moment. “Have you ever given thought to what a good partnership is between a master and a servant?”
He looked at her as if he was not entirely certain of her sanity. “Erm…no?” he ventured.
“A servant is not merely someone you give an order to and expect it to be obeyed because you give him wages and board,” she replied, fixing him with a slightly stern gaze. “A bad servant can ruin the household and rob you. A good servant can save you endless time and money, too. But it has to be a proper partnership. The servant must trust that you will not just pay him a fair wage, but be fair to him in other ways — not order him to do more than a reasonable person can, not ask him to do something he finds repugnant, nor something illegal. He trusts you to defend him against outside accusation, and take care of him when he is sick or old. He trusts that you will trust him and not watch over his shoulder at his tasks or send someone to spy on him. In your turn, you must trust him to be competent, honest and capable. He will learn to anticipate your needs, and you will give him praise and respect for doing a fine job. You see? A partnership.”
Sebastian looked startled. “I never thought of it that way.”
She sniffed a little. “Most people never think of their servants at all. They treat them like invisible automata and walk past them without an acknowledgment. It is the Housekeeper and the Butler who generally become the real mistress and master in households like that. They are the ones who incur the loyalty or inspire the disloyalty and sloth. And the one who thinks he is the master is merely a figurehead.” She shrugged. “But then, that is what you want, I expect — everything to go smoothly without the need for intervention or even thought on your part.”
He coughed, embarrassed all over again.
“It’s perfectly all right,” she hastened to add. “In a household the size of yours, you would put your trust primarily in your Steward or Seneschal. He would be the person in charge of everything. And then, beneath him, your trust would be in your Housekeeper, your Butler, your Land Steward for your farms, lands and mines, your Factor for business matters, your Secretary for correspondence and, I suppose, your Coachman and Head Gardener for anything that had to do with the grounds and stables and so forth. Your partnership would be with them, and they would in turn have that partnership with the rest of the servants that were responsible to them. It is really a contract of trust. Everyone knows his job, knows he will be supported and helped if he is asked to do things outside of his job, and knows he will be cared for if things go wrong for him. And your job is to provide the means for all this to happen.” She smiled. “In a way, you are the one working for them.”
He pushed his glasses up on his nose, his forehead creased. “I never thought of any of this…except I vaguely remember my father starting to make a similar speech, then cutting himself off and saying, ‘But we’ll talk about this in a few years.’ Except rather than being about the servants as such, it was about the duty of the lord to his liegemen. I do spend one day a week dealing with the common business of the Duchy, not the magical protections — mostly approving what the Factor and Eric recommend — but since my father or King Edmund chose most of the people who work with me, I never had to think much of it. How did you work all this out, anyway?”
“I didn’t. When Mother died, once Father had recovered a bit and realized I was trying to take over the household though I was only ten, he sat me down and gave me almost this same speech.” She smiled, a little sadly, because both of them had been so grief-stricken still, but the memory was a good one. “Almost, because obviously, we don’t have nearly this many servants, so later when I was older, I found out about how Great Houses like yours are run. This is why and how when we both fell apart, the entire household pulled together to take care of us quietly and invisibly until we could go back to our duties. And it’s why the mirror showed me this morning that things are going much more smoothly than I had ever dreamed they would…”
And suddenly, as she said that aloud, she understood that yes, that was exactly what was happening. Everyone in the Beauchampses’ household — well, barring Genevieve and the twins — knew what needed to be done, and they were doing it, as they had when her mother had died.
And maybe Genevieve will decide that she needs to manage the household in reality rather than pretending to do so… She couldn’t be as incompetent as Bella had always supposed. Her father loved her and had married her, and he really would not fall in love with a stupid woman. And she had once had her own household and had presumably managed it…
Bella felt an unaccustomed guilt. What had she been doing all this time? Treating her stepmother like an idiot; refusing to hand over the household — not overtly, but by manipulation; getting up so early that by the time Genevieve awoke, everything was done. Now, Genevieve was more than a bit lazy, and no doubt on one level she enjoyed the fact that she didn’t have to lift a finger and the house ran smoothly. But on the other hand — who was in charge? The wife, or the daughter? The daughter, obviously, and that had to rankle.
She was so lost in her own thoughts for a moment, that she didn’t notice that Sebastian was lost in his own, as well. It was only when he spoke that she realized that the silence had gone on for quite some time.
“And what about someone who doesn’t really fit into this whole arrangement?” he said, but it was clear that he was speaking his own thoughts aloud, and not talking directly to her.
It was also clear whom he meant. Eric.
“It is the duty of whoever is at the top to find the right place where he fits — or make one,” she said firmly. “That is what my father would say.” He looked at her as if he was surprised to hear her talking, then slowly nodded.
“Your father is a very wise man” was his only reply. There was more silence, then he looked up at her again. “So what has all this to do with the Spirit Elementals?”
“The stupid ones really don’t need that sort of organization. The clever ones…I think they have put it together on their own. You might not have been aware of directing them, but you must have been. At least enough for them to count you as their Master in their own minds, and arrange themselves accordingly.” That was the only thing that made any sense.
“Huh. And how many of the smart ones are my personal servants?” he asked. “I’ve noticed that the colors of the armbands in my workshop and room don’t change.”
“All of them,” she replied.
He fingered the bridge of his nose. “Huh.” Then he smiled wryly. “Well, I hope they don’t resent me for treating them like trained dogs.”
She could only shrug. “I’ve only ‘spoken’ to Verte, Sapphire and Thyme. The rest can’t write.”
“Now I am going to feel awfully self-conscious. You know, I liked it better when I thought they were all stupid.”
“But they admire you and regard you with esteem,” she pointed out to him. “So you must be doing something right.”