Cinderella Six Feet Under(12)

A queasy half hour passed. When Ophelia saw the looming side of what she guessed was the Louvre, she piled off the omnibus with a bunch of other folks, snapped open her umbrella, and set off on foot.

The opera house, called Salle le Peletier (however you pronounced that one) was built of white stone, with rows of pillars and arches and a shining-wet paved square out front.

Ophelia soon discovered that all of the doors at the front of the opera house were locked. Well, they would be. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet. Even a matinee performance wouldn’t start for hours.

She paused to look at a big, colorful placard behind glass. The placard said Cendrillon—not that she could read French—decorated with ornate scrolls and spirals, interlaced with rats, mice, and lizards. Pretty.

She set off again. Perhaps the stage door was unlocked. She hustled around the corner.

*

Blubbering over Hansel had worked up a hunger and thirst in Prue. She stuffed the letter down her bodice, tied on her boots, and repaired her hair. Downstairs, the breakfast salon was empty.

Crackers.

She poked around until she found the kitchen stairs. She tiptoed down.

The housekeeper, Beatrice, was bent at the waist, ramming a broom—bang-bang-bang!—under a china cupboard and muttering in a scalding whisper.

Prue coughed.

Beatrice spun around. Her jowls were flushed and wisps of gray hair sprouted from her bun. She was shaped like a church bell and she wore a soot-colored gown. A hefty ring of keys hung where her waist would’ve been. The mansion had only four servants: Beatrice, Baldewyn, the coachman, and the stepsisters’ plump, spotty maid, Lulu. It turned out that Ma had fired all the other servants on account of they didn’t speak English and they cost too much.

“Oh! Mademoiselle Prudence. You frighten me.” Beatrice’s accent was juicy. “These mice make me jump! How I hate them.”

“Me, too.” Prue scratched her suddenly itchy arms. “Is there mice under that cupboard?”

Beatrice curled her lip. “Oui.”

A mouse sprinted out from under the cupboard and across the flagstones, and disappeared into a hole in the chimney corner. A portly cat, balancing on a stool at the hearth, watched the mouse’s progress with idle interest.

“What is the matter with these cats?” Beatrice said. “I cannot think how it happens that the mice are never caught! I lay traps with the nicest, most fragrant fromage every day, and every day the fromage is gone, but the mice are not caught. I bring home cats said to be the fiercest hunters, from the fish market, from alleyways, and what do the cats do? Why, they grow fatter and fatter. C’est répugnant.” Beatrice glared at the cat. Then she glared at Prue. “Ladies must not be in kitchen! Go—go!” She shook the broom. Dust and cat hairs billowed up.

“I ain’t a lady, ma’am. Look at me.”

Beatrice looked at Prue’s calico dress that was losing its dye at the elbows, the shiny-worn toes of her boots. “I have housework to do.”

That was a snicker. By the looks of the kitchen, Beatrice didn’t bother herself much with housework. A dead chicken, still in its spotted feathers, was draped over a chair back. Dirty dishes and pots filled a stone sink on the far wall. The floor didn’t bear close scrutiny, what with all the cat fuzz, curls of potato peel, and tiny brown dots that Prue didn’t fancy thinking too hard on.

“I wished to ask for a morsel to eat,” Prue said.

“You did not eat breakfast?”

“Slept late.” Prue’s eyes fell on an apron, dangling from one of the wall hooks at the bottom of the stairs.

Hold it. Instead of idling away the days waiting for Ma to turn up, well, maybe Prue could learn how to keep a gracious and meticulous household, just like Hansel wished for. She could amaze Hansel—supposing she ever saw him again—with lavender-scented linens or a crispy-brown roast duck with those fancy fruits ringed around.

Beatrice had gone back to mashing her broom under the china cupboard.

“Would you teach me housekeeping, ma’am?” Prue asked. “How to cook up a nice roast fowl, say, or one of them soo-flay things? How to press linens?”

Beatrice screwed her neck around. Her mouth pooched. Skeptical. Yet her eyes gleamed, for some reason, with cunning. “Do you know how to cook?”

“No—but I might learn, and real fast, too. Matter of fact, ma’am, I was, up till just a couple days ago, a scullery maid.”