In Which the Purple Bell Rings …
Before doom descends on Smugwick Manor, let us take a moment to look around the place.
'Twas topped with glittering spires and turrets, true. But 'twas bottomed with dank, moldy basements, cellars, vaults, crypts, plant-pressing rooms, and tunnels.
The areas in between the top turrets and bottom basements were old and worn and well-polished by servants.
Life at Smugwick Manor was very, very, very nice. Nice, that is, if one was a Luggertuck; otherwise it was very, very, very not nice.
Since there were only a few Luggertucks, but scores of footmen, maids, kitchen hands, stable boys, gardeners, polishers, and other attendants, most of the people at Smugwick Manor were living the not-nice part. (Alas, Milly, the new maid, was still blissfully unaware of just how not nice things normally were.)
A few of the older servants remembered what it was like before Sir Luggertuck married M'Lady. His father, kindly Old Lord Emberly Luggertuck, had been generous with his money and stingy only with complaints.
M'Lady Luggertuck was just the opposite.
When she finally drove Old Lord Emberly out of the manor and into the rundown assistant gamekeeper's cottage in the woods, she took over the running of the household. She cut the pay of every servant in half. Then, a year later, in half again. And so on.
Whilst shopping for wigs or frilled garments, M'Lady Luggertuck demanded the best. (See "M'Lady Lugger-tuck and the Unlucky Cobbler.") But when she doled out the money for the servants' food each month, Reader, she demanded the least!
"Which gruel is the cheapest?" she asked the cook, Miss Neversly. "Are you certain you're adding enough water?"
Once, she learned that each garden boy received bread crusts and water.
"Really, does a garden boy need bread crusts, plural?" she said with a sniff. "Shouldn't bread crust, singular, do just as well?"
And Woe—yes, Woe—to any servant caught pinching a bit of food from the kitchen.
Even scraps left over from the Luggertucks' feasts were off-limits. These were the sole property of Sir Luggertuck's Foxhounds and certainly not for any kitchen boy to go a'grabbing.
Miss Neversly had trained her ears to catch the slightest sound of food felony. The chewing of a raisin she could hear. The swallowing of a bit of gristle sounded to her like an alarm bell. The licking of a finger rang in her ears from two rooms away.
Punishment for any of these offenses, and many others, included a sound beating with her wooden spoon and the loss of a week's wages.
Thus it was that servants, hungry and generally angry, waited every week for the ringing of the purple bell.
You see, the lives of servants are not lived by clocks, but by the ringing of their masters' bells.
Throughout Smugwick Manor hung little silver ropes with golden tassels. If a Luggertuck wanted anything at all at any time at all, they had but to tug on the nearest little silver rope. Down in the kitchen one of many color-coded bells would ring, and the servants would know in which room a Luggertuck was waiting impatiently.
Old Crotty and Miss Neversly knew by heart the sound of every bell.
Except one.
They'd never in their lives heard the purple bell. They would not have known what it meant even if they heard it. They didn't even know which room held the little silver rope that made it ring.
And I personally hope they never find out.
You see, each week Old Crotty and Miss Neversly would go into town to buy the succulent foodstuffs that the Luggertucks feasted upon, as well as the single bag of stale gruel that the servants ate. Off they would go in a little donkey cart—the crazed raven-haired cook with the shopping list and the timid gray-haired maid with the money purse.
On this day, the day of the Loosening, the stable boys lined up to watch them go with even more excitement than usual.
As soon as they were out of sight, Bump, the smallest stable boy, ran into the third horse stall on the right, removed a board from the wall, reached into the wall behind it, and tugged with all his might on the little silver cord that was hidden there.
Every servant had spent the morning straining their ears for the bright, tinkling sound of the purple bell. When it came, they did not whoop and shout or even smile. They would not want to make M'Lady Luggertuck suspicious.
But deep, deep inside they rejoiced. The cook and housekeeper were gone. The time had come to eat.
Slowly, sneakily, they made their way to the kitchens, far beneath M'Lady's rooms and—more to the point—well out of earshot.
"Welcome, Bump!" called Loafburton, the burly Hungarian baker. "Welcome, Footman Jennings. Welcome, Slugsalt and Ernestine and Rosehip and Wickleweaver!"
"Well met, Loafburton," they called. "What will we eat today?"
"Only gruel and bread crusts," cried Loafburton with a wink, pulling buns and tarts and pies and cakes from his oven.
The servants didn't waste their time complaining about how bad the Luggertucks were. Instead they laughed and danced and sang and ate like Luggertucks.
Once a week, for one hour, and one hour only, life for the servants was very, very, very nice. Except for one servant.
"Horton, come and have a piece of Sweet Sugar-apple Pie," Loafburton always said. He was a kindly man who often thought of Horton in a fatherly way.
"Hort, come on and have a rhubarb tart," said Bump, the small stable boy who was Horton's best friend.
Two other stable boys, Blight and Blemish, also called to Horton.
"Mr. Halfpott, might I suggest a slice of fudge pudding cake?" asked Blight, a large boy with a lumpy head.
"Perhaps Mr. Halfpott would prefer pudding cake fudge?" suggested Blemish, a lumpy boy with a large head.
(Since Blight and Blemish hoped someday to become butlers, they were always extraordinarily polite and a little bit too wordy.)
But no matter how they tried, they always received the same response:
"No, thank you," Horton said, busy at his sink, washing dishes.