After cleaning up Mrs. Banks’s footprints, I completed the rest of my morning work. Wald Abbey had had many guests the last few days and that much more work to do as a result.
I changed into my afternoon clothes and ate downstairs in the servants’ quarters. Normally, lunch was partaken in silence under the stern glare of the butler, Mr. Lawrence. But the last few days, that schedule had been upended, as Wald Abbey’s guests had always brought their own servants and maids. When dining with visiting servants, we were allowed to make small talk.
“This place really is like something out of a faerie tale. Is it true you have real faeries here?” asked a young maid in the employ of Mrs. Maven. I thought she was more or less the same age as me, but had no accent, and, while plain, her clothes were quite high quality. If they hadn’t been a decade out of fashion, she may have passed for a nobleman’s daughter.
A footman named Arthur answered Miss Maven (whom we addressed by her employer’s name to minimize confusion.)
“Aye, they do. There’s a faerie on your ankle right now!” he laughed.
Miss Maven shrieked and jumped to her feet.
“They help with our work sometimes,” Anna said. She was a laundry maid and a notorious chatterbox. “There’s lots of them around these parts. Awd Goggie and the like.”
“Awd…”
“They live in the forest and eat bad children.”
Miss Maven turned pale, swallowing every word of this.
“Hardly a problem if you don’t get lost in the woods,” Arthur snorted. “But Diana is the most interesting faerie.”
Arthur had told me this exact same story, with the same evident delight, when I had first come to Wald Abbey. According to him, a faerie named Diana had lived in this house since ancient times.
“Our good neighbor spends her time among us, pretending to be a servant. When she’s in a good mood she helps with our work, but even those of us who meet her don’t know her name or her face.”
“What does that mean?” Miss Maven asked.
“We forget. She helps with the work, but we can’t remember her after. We find we can’t remember the name she’s given, nor can we recall her face. We can’t even remember if she was a man or a woman.”
“How curious.”
“Someone eating with us right now may actually be a faerie. Anyone here you don’t remember seeing before?” he asked.
“Arthur!” Mr. Lawrence cut him off with a fearsome scowl.
Stories of Diana had been around since long before any of us had come here. It was possible such tales dated from hundreds of years before, when this place was still an active abbey.
It wasn’t just the servants either; members of Lord Lowfield’s family also believed the legends to be true. They always referred to faeries as “good neighbors.” In this age of science, I was surprised to find people still believed such things, but, then again, all sorts of people had become obsessed with séances in London. Perhaps ghosts and faeries were the same sort of thing. It seemed the earl’s family, Mrs. Banks, Mr. Lawrence, and the house’s longtime servants all believed in Diana with something akin to religious faith.
“Thank you for suggesting the subject, Miss Maven. Diana is a good neighbor who watches after us all. She’s nothing to be afraid of,” Mr. Lawrence said quietly. “Now, let us resume our meal. We have much to do this afternoon.”
This signaled an end to small talk.
Our afternoon workloads cast a pall over the meal, like a faerie’s spell.