Stepsister(49)

Isabelle had startled awake their first night of sleeping in the hayloft certain that a mouse had run across her cheek, but it was Maman. She’d been sitting in the hay beside her, smoothing the hair off her face.

“What will become of you?” she whispered. “My poor, poor daughters. Your lives are over before they’ve even begun. You are farmhands with dirty faces and ragged dresses. Who will have you now?”

“Go to sleep, Maman,” Isabelle had said, frightened.

Her fearsome mother was fading before her very eyes. It had often been hard living with Maman. Hard coming up against her constant disapproval. Her anger. Her rigid rules. But no matter what, Maman had seen to it that the bills were paid. Widowed twice, she’d still managed to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. Now, for the first time, Isabelle had to do it. Sometimes with Tavi’s help, often without it. That was hard, too.

They had arrived at the LeBenêts’ a week ago, after salvaging what they could from the barn—horse blankets, two wooden chairs, two saddles and bridles. Miraculously, their wooden cart had not burned, but it had taken them hours to extricate it because part of the barn’s roof had fallen on it. After loading it with their things, they hitched up Martin and rode to the LeBenêts’. By the time they arrived, Madame and Tantine had returned from the market. Madame had put them straight to work.

They’d learned how to cut cabbages, dig potatoes and carrots, slop pigs, and milk cows.

Tavi had proven herself even less capable around animals than she was around cabbages, so Madame had given her the cheesemaking tasks. It was her responsibility to tend the milk in the wooden vats in the dairy house as it soured and curdled, stirring the curds gently with a long wooden paddle, then setting them in molds to ripen into cheese. It was the one job Tavi did with enthusiasm, as the transformation milk underwent to become cheese fascinated her.

Their days were long and hard. Meals were meager, comforts nonexistent. Beds were horse blankets spread over hay. Baths were taken once a week.

With a wry smile, Isabelle remembered asking Madame if she could bathe at the end of her first day on the farm.

“Certainly,” Madame said. “The duck pond’s all yours.”

Isabelle had thought she was joking. “The duck pond?” she’d repeated.

“You were expecting a copper tub and a Turkish towel?” Madame had said with a smirk.

Isabelle had walked to the pond. Her hands were blistered. Dirt had worked itself under her nails. Her muscles were aching. She stank of smoke, sweat, and sour milk. Her dress was so filthy it was stiff.

The banks of the pond afforded no privacy and Isabelle was too modest to strip off her clothing in plain view of others, so she’d simply removed her boots and stockings, placed the bone, nutshell, and seed-pod in one of her boots, then waded in fully dressed. She would take off her dress in the hayloft and let it dry overnight. Her chemise would dry as she slept in it. The one dress was all she had. The gowns in her wardrobe, the silks and satins Maman had carefully chosen to impress suitors, were nothing but ash now.

The pond was spring-fed, and the water was so cold it had made Isabelle catch her breath, but it also numbed her torn hands and sore body. She’d undone the dirty ribbon that cinched her braid, ducked her head under the water, and scrubbed her scalp. When she’d surfaced, Madame had been walking by.

“The tables have turned, haven’t they?” she mocked, looking a sodden Isabelle up and down. “If only your stepsister could see you now. How she would laugh.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Isabelle had said, wringing the water out of her hair.

“Of course she would!”

Isabelle shook her head. “I would have. But Ella? Never. That was her strength. And my weakness.”

She ducked under again. When she came back up, Madame was gone.

She’d watched swallows swoop through the air for a bit, and listened to the frogs and crickets. She thought about Tanaquill and the possibility of help she’d offered, and it seemed as far away as the stars. How could she find the pieces of her heart when all she did, day after day, was cut cabbages? She thought about the people who had burned down her house, who would never let her forget that she was nothing but an ugly stepsister.

Maybe there is no help for me, she’d thought. Maybe I have to find a way to live with that.

That’s certainly what Tantine counseled. Ah, child, she’d said the night after the fire. Our fates are often hard, but we must learn to accept them. We have no choice.

Maybe the old woman was right. A feeling of hopelessness had descended on Isabelle ever since she’d arrived at the LeBenêts’ farm. Her life was cows and cabbages now and it seemed like that was all it would ever be.

“It’s noon already and you don’t even have half the wagon filled,” said a voice a few rows over, pulling Isabelle out of her thoughts.

Isabelle’s spirits, already heavy, sank even lower. Here was someone who made Tantine look like a devil-may-care optimist.

It was Hugo, Madame LeBenêt’s son.





Fifty-Four


Isabelle’s shoulders rose up around her ears. “I know we haven't filled the wagon, Hugo. Thank you,” she said tartly.

Hugo blinked at her through his thick eyeglasses. “I’m just saying.”

“Yes, you are.”