Chapter Text
She woke up with a frightened gasp, cold sweat causing her hair to stick to the curve of her cheeks and brow. Her room was still bathing in darkness but by the lighter tint of grey streaming from her window it would seem dawn was but an hour away.
Slowly, she sat up straight emerging from the mountain of pillows and blankets that usually adorned her bed. With her eyes closed and a few controlled breaths she slowly calmed the roar of blood rushing through her ears, her heart setting itself at a calmer pace.
The hustle and bustle of the waking city of Paris reached her ears, slightly muffled by the walls of her rooms heavily adorned by colorful cloths.
Desperately she tried to grasp at the last figments of her dream but, like smoke vanishing into thin air, she came up with nothing. It was not the first, nor will it be the last time that such dreams plagued her. It was, unfortunately, occurring more and more in the recent months, disturbing her sleep and leaving her in a foul mood for the rest of the day.
With a sigh she slipped out of the warmth of her bed to start her day. A whiff of the rancid smell of her own sweat guided her feet to a small basin filled with clear water, a washcloth and thin bar of soap at a corner of her room. Swiftly, her cloths ended up in a pile at her feet.
As she washed away the sticky feeling and the smell from her skin, she glanced at the small tarnished mirror hanging on the wall. Dark and tired eyes looked back at her with even darker circle under them. Trying to look a bit more alive she slapped her cheeks a few times to try and bring out a bit of colour in them. She wasn’t very successful.
Deeming herself clean enough she slipped on a clean shift, tunic and skirt. One side of the skirt felt heavy. She slipped her hand through her right pocket and found the second set of keys to her inn. Guilt and shame quickly overcame her. She has spent the last two days ransacking the inn to find them and had been in an execrable mood, roughening up her staff at every opportune moment.
It seemed she had a few apologies to give today. Poor Bastien, Agnès and Colette. She would be able to say sorry to the timid Agnès this morning as she will be here to help her with breakfast however the rest of her staff will come in later on for the late afternoon and night shift.
Bastien had been a recent addition to her establishment, being employed only two years ago. It seemed that a successful business held by a woman raised quite a few eyebrows and there were more then a few unsavory rumors circulating around their little part of Paris. To shut them all up she hired the son of a good family friend that was a tall as he was wide, with an unfortunate frown constantly on display on his wide features.
As the fourth son of the family, he could not take on the family business nor participate in it as he seemed to have no talent for shoemaking. He had quite a bit of difficulty at finding employment as his gruff exterior and loud temper meant that not many people would like to hire him. He was perfect for her. She had a man’s face that customers would assume to be the owner – or maybe her husband- and muscles to care for her more unruly customers when late at night her inn became more of a bar with ale flowing freely from her many barrels.
Locking her room behind her she slowly made her way down the old creaky stairs before ending up at the back of the inn kitchens. She was lucky as her room had a different set of stairs then the one customer used to get to their rented rooms. The only inconvenience was that she had to take two flights of stairs to reach the attic turned cozy room she called hers. After a long day of work on her feet she would silently curse at the seemingly endless stairs, but otherwise she was very satisfied. She had a window that opened up to the street where she could spy on the rambunctious youth early in the morning and a smaller skylight that she would let open during the night for the stray cat that started visiting her a few months ago. It was such a sweet thing with wide green eyes and pink nose. She named it Milly when she discovered that it was a female.
The kitchen was eerily quiet for a place that was usually bustling with energy. It seemed that Agnès still hasn’t came in. She did wake up at an ungodly hour after all.
With a yawn she shuffled towards the earth. There were still some embers glowing faintly within their beds of ash. She added a few logs and slowly coaxed out a lively flame from the dried wood. Satisfied with the soft yellow heat she stood up, knees creaking painfully.
Imagine that; bad knees at her age. She supposed that she was considered an old girl, unwed as she was at 28 of age. Or more precisely widowed as she. She was quite an unusual case she supposed, widowed on her own wedding day and remaining unmarried afterwards. It had been quite tragic accident that took the life of many… Better not brood to much over events years past.
The next thing on her morning routine is to grab the trash can dedicated to all the kitchen scraps from yesterday. Trash can in hand she made her way to a hidden wooden door besides the stairs leading to her room. It opened to a small, enclosed courtyard where she kept her flock of chicken. They were very useful to dispose of all organic scraps and in return provided her with fresh eggs and occasional meat.
A dozen of beady eyes turned towards her the moment she cracked open the door before running at her feet demanding their feed for the day. One chicken even took flight and tried to get into the garbage can before she swats it away with a startled laugh. Finally, she emptied the can on the floor, and they all flocked to their food in a flurry of wings and exited caws.
As they happily pecked at cabbage leaves and carotte peels, she did a rapid count down of her flock and found one of her more pleasant hens missing. A frown marred a face at the realisation. It was the third time this month that someone got to her chicken. She never had a problem before, as 3 walls of the enclosure were the solid walls of other buildings and the fourth was a tall stone wall that separated the back yard from the sinuous alley following the side of her inn. The thieves seemed to have gotten nimbler as time passed and they had successfully nabbed quite a few members of her flock in the last few months. It seemed that her latest addition of spikes to the top of her wall was not enough to deter them.
She swore that if she caught any of those vile poultry thieves that she would make them regret being born with copious use of her sturdy rolling pin. She would make sure that no descendant of theirs would be born.
Somewhere someone suddenly felt the sudden need to protect their family jewels at the silent threat.
With the sunrise rose many of her customers – mainly merchants and travellers – and she had to feed all these hungry mouths. As the bells rang six times and the sky finally lightened up Agnès shuffled through the back door to start on the food preparation. The shy cook took her apology with a graceful smile before making her way towards the rack and pinion where she started adding up to the remaining of yesterday's stew in a large cast iron cauldron.
One time the younger – only fourteen of age- girl confessed to her that she quite like working the cauldron as she felt like a witch making some kind of wicked potion, with the steam rising and making the small hair framing her head fly into the air. Of course, even in the confidence of the loud kitchen she had to whisper her confession lest someone heard her and decided that she kind of look like a witch and that maybe they should try to throw her in a pond with a rock attached to her ankles. If she floated, then she was innocent but if she drowned then the devil had taken her soul. Or some sort of bullshit like that.
Men. Always looking for evil and witchcraft where there were only innocent women. What did most of them do to deserve such a fate, or even worse, the pyre? Their hair color looking a bit too much like flames? They were more knowledgeable in the healing ways of herbes then a man? They refused the advance of a more powerful man? Maybe they could not tolerate that a woman – an inferior being in their eyes- could be better than them in any field of knowledge or even refuse them when they tried to grace them with their holy phallic gift. As if their dicks held more importance then the life of another human being. She would sooner chop them up to bits and feed it back to them.
Despite her dark thought her day was going great! The inn ran smoothly with many of her customers leaving their room throughout the day and a few hard-working people stopping by for a warm piece of bread and a filling bowl of soupe. If her day continued like that everything would be perf-
“Marion!”
She jinxed herself, didn’t she? – she thought as she turned towards the child that suddenly barged into her kitchen by the rear entrance.
“Marion, you have to help Durril, please!”
At the urgency in her small voice and the terrified look on her face, she quickly strode towards her, discarding her apron on the way.
“What happened? Is he hurt?” she did not wait for an answer and turned to face the other woman standing in the kitchen, “Colette could you please be a dear and hold the fort for me? Alert Bastien that I’m going out for the evening.”
A little damp hand grabbed hers and started dragging her out of the building through the back door that flew open but a few seconds ago. The sudden shift of light from the gloomy alley to the bright street bustling with activity temporarily blinded her, but with the little girl still tugging at her arm and her furious blinking she successfully stayed on her feet. Yeah, no painful meeting with the hard unforgiving cobblestone road.
As she followed the little girl through never ending twisting streets she thought about her first meeting and the mistrust hanging around them. Look at them now, looking for her when in need.
She had met the pair of siblings – Durril and Anorah, his little sister – on one a night where sleep evaded her. After turning and huffing in her bed for a few hours in a desperate attempt at falling into the sweet arms of Morpheus she decided to try her hand at a calming cup of tea. Imagine her surprise when she finally made her way into her kitchen to find two small children furiously stuffing their faces with the cold remaining of the day’s stew.
Colorful cloths, dark skin and even darker hair. Gypsies. Her first reflex had been to curse them out of her inn, screaming at them to keep their sticky little fingers to themselves. However, under the shivering light of her candle and in the eerie silent only the night could bring she saw two starving – evident by the hollow of their cheeks and their clothing hanging a bit two loosely on their thin frame - children. And so, instead of chasing them out like one would a stray cat rummaging through their pantry she served them the rest of the stew into bowls and gave them spoons as they had been shoveling their food by big handful of dirtied hands.
To say that the pair was baffled to not only not being reported to the city’s guards as trespassers, but also leaving with their belly painfully full – they will never complain about this sort of pain – and their pockets stuffed with hard old bread she had kept to make some French toast. As Marion bid the gypsy children a safe return to their home – she hoped their parents were not too worried – she thought that it would be the last she would see of them.
How wrong of her.
It started small at first. It was a few flowers dropped off at her door. A couple of dried tea leaves and various herbes. She thought nothing of it as sometimes her employees would bring small bits and bobs, that is until a bar of fragrant soap nearly fell on her head when she was getting ready for bed. In her bedroom. On the second and last floor of the building.
She didn’t even have the time to freak out as a little girl – that she would later learn was named Anorah – also fell from her open skylight with a rather undignified thud. She swirled her head with an audible crack towards the window – yes, it did hurt like a bitch when the adrenaline dwindled down on – at the sound of a muffled chuckle where the other child she fed three weeks ago was suddenly sheepishly smiling at her. <
That night the young woman finally discovered the origine of all the small gifts she received, and she also discovered that anyone nimble and light enough could crawl on her roof and into her room. “We followed the cat”, they proudly declared when she asked them how they found their way to her room. Curse you, Milly! She started closing her window during the day after this interaction.
Soon after, the pair wandering into her kitchen became a familiar sight. She slipped them a small portion of food occasionally and in exchange they left little gifts behind, such as a colorful ribbon she wore into her hair and a small wooden bead bracelet. They quickly came to know each other, and Tuesday’s afternoon soon became their official hang out date, where they caught each other up on how their week went. It was a time mostly filled with silly stories and loud laughter.
Even her staff, learned to tolerate and then appreciate their presence. They were rather open-minded people, but she supposed that she should not be surprised as she usually gravitated toward people made of the same kind of cloth as her.
That was two years ago. Marion never said it out loud but the affection that swelled inside of her each time she saw Durril and Anorah was sometimes too much for her to bear. They grew on her like barnacles did on rocks. They were like the little brother and little sister her parents could never give her.
That was more then likely why the sheer helplessness and fear plastered all over the younger girl’s feature destabilized her so much.
After what felt like never-ending twists and turns – when, in reality, only five minutes had passed – she found herself looking at a child trying to calm … a pair of dirty feet?