Mary shook the handle, but her bedroom door was locked. She pulled at it with all of her strength, but the heavy wooden door only rattled slightly in the frame and the strong, iron lock did not shift at all. She was a prisoner, alone in the darkness.
She felt her way over to the window and crept behind the curtain to look out into the garden. She had no idea what time it was, but the light was starting to creep into the sky, a haze of pale grey beyond the hills. Dawn couldn’t be far away, and with the dawn perhaps someone would come to let her out again. There was ice around the bottom of each window, feathery, ferny tendrils of frost which had crept up the glass during the night, like a kind of magic, stealing in from the wild moors beyond the garden walls. She badly wanted to be outside, to feel the earth beneath her feet and the wind in her hair, and instead she was trapped indoors.
Pulling the curtain aside to give more light in the room, she was heading back to the door to see if she could find a way out, just as a key turned in the lock on the other side of the door, and Martha came in, lugging a great bucket of coal to make up Mary’s fire.
‘You’re not going to lock me in again, are you?’ Mary said, even before Martha had a chance to say her usual cheery good morning. But Martha didn’t look cheerful today, she looked worried.
‘I don’t like it no more’n you do, Miss,’ she said, setting down the bucket on the fireplace with a bump. ‘Doesn’t seem right to me, keeping you and Master Colin locked up like prisoners. But it’s Crichton’s orders and if we don’t obey then she’s made it clear what’ll happen – we’ll be out of our posts without references.’ She knelt on the hearthrug and began to poke the fire, stirring the embers of last night’s fire into new life.
‘My uncle would never allow that!’ Mary said.
‘Your uncle isn’t here,’ Martha muttered as she leaned forward to blow on the coals.
‘But he will be soon. He’s coming back for Christmas, he promised he’d try. How is Colin? Have you seen him?’ Mary crossed the room to stand beside Martha and warm her hands on the fire.
‘Ay, I’ve made up his fire already. Mrs. Medlock was there with him, and he’s makin’ a right fuss. Declares if he’s going to be locked up then he’s not going to his lessons.’ She had been adding new coal to the flames, and paused to look up at Mary. ‘Says he’s goin’ on strike, like them mill workers over at Hebden Bridge! I don’t know where he gets such strange ideas.’ She shook her head and turned back to her task.
‘Very well, I shall do the same. If we both go on strike then she’ll have to tell Uncle and he’ll come back home before Christmas.’
‘You won’t let on that I told you, though? I shouldn’t’ve said nowt.’
‘Don’t worry, I won’t breathe a word of it,’ Mary assured her.
‘It was that Martha Sowerby, encouraging your bad behaviour. A strike! Don’t look at me like that, young lady, I can put two and two together as well as the next man.’ Mary hadn’t said anything, but Miss Crichton had still known. ‘Martha has helped the two of you.’
‘It wasn’t! I came up with the idea all by myself,’ Mary protested to Miss Crichton, who stood at her bedroom door like a gaoler, a bunch of keys hanging from her waist.
‘You are asking me to believe that you and Master Colin both independently came up with the idea of a strike at the same time? Do you think I’m a fool?’ She waited for Mary to reply, the silence growing heavier and heavier as Mary kept her tongue. ‘Do you?’ she demanded again.
‘No, Miss Crichton,’ Mary said, looking meekly down.
‘Well, perhaps its for the best that your new maid will be arriving soon and Martha can be relieved of her duties as your servant.’
‘New maid?’ She looked up at Miss Crichton.
‘A proper ladies’ maid, that’s what you need. Not an ill-bred country girl.’
‘Just because she’s from the country doesn’t mean that Martha’s ill-bred. Why, Martha is one of the best people I know! I don’t want a ladies’ maid, I want Martha. She’s my friend!’
‘Your friend?’ Miss Crichton looked down at her, not shocked as Mary had expected, but puzzled. ‘She’s a servant!’
‘I like her. I want Martha to wait on me and nobody else,’ Mary demanded, putting all her force of purpose into her words, clenching her fists into balls.
Miss Crichton looked at her for a moment, before a cold smile crossed her face. ‘I see. I see, that’s how it is. Well then, you can thank your lucky stars that I haven’t dismissed your friend for gossiping and telling tales. And if there is any more nonsense from you then I shall see to it that she’s dismissed. So, unless you can learn to behave, I shall hold Martha’s influence to be at fault, and she will lose her position. Do I make myself clear?’
The Mary who had arrived at Misselthwaite Manor would have stamped her foot and refused to give in until she had got her own way. This Mary didn’t want to Miss Crichton to dismiss Martha, for Martha’s sake more than her own.
‘Yes, Miss Crichton,’ she said, looking down at her feet.
‘I will see you in the schoolroom in fifteen minutes. Don’t be tardy.’
The slam of the door as Miss Crichton left seemed to shake the whole room.
Liz Taylorson 