I looked at Wendy as though she had suddenly grown two heads upon her shoulders.
What, precisely, did she expect me to contribute? I was a complete novice who had not even learned how to tend properly to an ordinary noblewoman without accidentally offending her and having my head removed from my shoulders.
So how in Heaven's name was I supposed to tend to a noblewoman known for her violent temper and disturbed mind?
Lady Arcenna might very well chop my head off before I had even managed to touch her sleeve, and Wendy was standing there speaking as though I had some hidden talent for calming mad aristocrats that I had simply forgotten to mention.
"What would that lowlife contribute?" Anneliese said, rolling her eyes with such open disdain.
"Wendy, I am telling you, perhaps you ought to have your head examined. You are becoming crazier by the day."
To my own shame, I found myself nodding along repeatedly, my expression becoming one of solemn agreement.
Yes, precisely. What could a small and insignificant creature such as myself possibly know about tending to a mad noblewoman?
Wendy must truly have lost her senses if even Anneliese, the resident witch, thought the same.
I was so thoroughly absorbed in my vigorous nodding that I quite forgot who stood before me, and by the time I remembered, Anneliese had already noticed my enthusiastic agreement.
"And you!" she snapped, turning her attention upon me. "Why are you nodding? Was there anything I said that concerned you?"
My head stopped moving at once. I looked at her with a twitching smile and quickly shook my head without uttering a single word, pressing my lips together so tightly that they nearly disappeared.
Wendy, who had been watching the entire exchange from the side, suddenly began to laugh.
"Hahaha..."
I slowly turned toward her in horror.
Truly, what difference was there between this woman and Lady Arcenna?
One laughed at the most peculiar moments, while the other stood upon beds attempting to murder servants.
Speaking of Lady Arcenna, I turned my gaze toward the bed where she had supposedly been standing only moments earlier. Only there was one small problem. She was no longer there.
Wonderful.
The mad noblewoman was loose.
"Um..." I began, pointing rather shakily toward the bed. "Where is Lady Arcenna?"
I stared at the empty space where she had been standing and wondered whether perhaps I had suffered some sudden decline in my senses.
How could she have disappeared without my noticing? My perception was not so poor that a grown woman could simply vanish before my eyes like a wandering spirit.
"Do not worry," Dorothea said calmly. "She is beneath the bed. She does that whenever one of her ambushes fails."
She said this with such tranquillity that I almost admired her.
Almost.
Dorothea walked toward the bed and calmly crouched down, as though she were merely checking whether a cat had hidden beneath it. I stared after her in disbelief.
Oh. So that was where Lady Arcenna had gone.
Wonderful. Everything was perfectly reasonable now.
Now, however, came the question that mattered.
How in the world did one pull a mad noblewoman out from beneath a bed?
"Oh no." Wendy suddenly sighed.
The lightness disappeared from her voice, and she glanced toward Anneliese.
"Anneliese, brace yourself."
Anneliese rolled her eyes, yet she immediately straightened her body and assumed a guarded stance.
That alone made every hair upon my body feel as though it had stood upright.
And what, precisely, was I supposed to do?
What was even happening? Was there truly something terrifying about to occur?
Even Manor and Clara began moving about nervously where they stood, glancing from Wendy to Anneliese and then toward Dorothea, who was still crouched beside the bed as though she had all the time in the world.
Wonderful.
If we were going to die, then at least we might as well embrace ourselves for it.
We all stood ready, waiting for Heaven alone knew what. The silence beneath the bed seemed to stretch longer and longer until suddenly, without the slightest warning, a pale hand shot from the darkness and seized Dorothea by the ankle.
I nearly leapt backward like a startled cat.
The movement was so sudden that my heart seemed to jump straight into my throat.
Manor and Clara recoiled as well, but senior maidens remained perfectly calm, which I found especially offensive on Dorothea's behalf because she was the one whose leg had just been seized by a mad noblewoman.
How could she even remain so composed?
Thankfully the hand slowly withdrew beneath the bed.
I released the breath I had been holding and felt my shoulders sag with relief.
For one dreadful moment, I had imagined that I was about to witness a genuine murder and spend the remainder of my life haunted by the memory of it
Surely this was the reason everyone had taken their stance, was it not? Perhaps—
I had barely finished thinking that when something began to crawl from beneath the bed.
And I mean crawl.
Not the ordinary crawling of a normal person but the sort of crawling that belonged to a chapel where priests ought never to have been born.
Lady Arcenna emerged upon her hands and knees, her hair hanging wildly over her face as she slowly dragged herself from beneath the bed, remaining bent low beside it while she inspected each of us one by one.
I watched in horror.
Manor suddenly screamed.
"Ah!"
She trembled beside me, and I could hardly blame her. What sort of task was this?
Was this truly what Madame Avia had decided to hand over to a group of young girls? We were servants, not exorcists!
This was no longer mere madness.
Lady Arcenna was possessed. We needed a priest, preferably several.
"Be watchful, she gets violent," Wendy called.
Why was she shouting?
But at once, my imagination ran wild.
The chamber disappeared before my mind's eye and became an enormous battlefield.
The floor stretched into a vast plain beneath a storm-darkened sky, banners flew violently in the wind, and all six of us stood in armour with weapons clutched in our hands.
Before us towered a gigantic Lady Arcenna, her hair streaming behind her like black flames as she prepared to descend upon our little company.
Six soldiers and one enormous monster. A truly unfortunate arrangement.
How were we supposed to defeat something of that size?
"Watch out, fool!"
Anneliese suddenly shouted.
My imagery of the battlefield shattered at once cracked apart like a dream struck of light. I blinked, and the chamber returned before me.
Only Lady Arcenna was no longer across the room.
She was flying straight toward me.
For one brief and profoundly unfortunate moment, I simply stared and did not even attempt to flee.
I merely closed my eyes and braced myself for whatever fate Heaven had prepared.
The next instant, I was toppled violently onto the hard floor.
"Argh!"
Pain shot through my body as Lady Arcenna landed upon me, and I realized that her head was resting against my chest.
That was when it struck.
I refused to die young!
"Help me... argh!"
Before I could finish the cry, I felt a hand suddenly clasp around my neck.
My eyes flew open.
No.
She was strangling me.
The realization struck with such force that every foolish thought vanished from my mind. I immediately began wiggling beneath her like a cockroach, trying to pry her fingers away as I fought for my life with my mouth gasped open.
Then something warm struck my nose. I slowly paused my movements.
And when another warm drop landed upon my cheek, I looked upward and saw—
—Lady Arcenna was crying?
Tears streamed continuously down her face, falling upon mine in a steady trail.
Her expression was almost unbearably sorrowful, even as her hand remained tightly clasped around my throat.
I simply stared at her, bewildered by the contradiction before me. She looked as though her heart were breaking, yet she was simultaneously attempting to crush the life from my body.
But the moment I began to think she might not actually hate me, her fingers suddenly tightened around my throat.
I immediately began fighting again.
"Hel... argh!"
Air refused to enter my lungs properly, and panic rushed through me as I struggled against her grip.
I could hear Wendy and Dorothea trying to pull Lady Arcenna backward, yet the woman refused to release me.
Was this the frail Lady Arcenna everyone had spoken about?
This was not frail!
This woman possessed the strength of three grown men and the determination of a soldier defending a fortress.
Why was she using her entire strength simply to kill me?
What offense had I committed?
I had barely arrived! Didn't touch her breakfast! And certainly didn't even open the curtains!
I had done absolutely nothing!
Perhaps this was it. Just when I was reconciling with my fate.
Then, at last, the pressure around my neck vanished.
I sucked in a desperate breath. Then another. And another.
Coughing violently in-between as I greedily dragged as much air into my lungs as I could.
I had never appreciated the simple privilege of breathing quite so deeply in all my lives.
When I finally managed to lift my head, my eyes were slightly teary from the struggle.
Wendy and Dorothea had managed to pull Lady Arcenna back onto the bed, where she now sat clutching a pillow tightly against her chest.
Her wild hair had fallen around her face, and she looked considerably smaller now that she was no longer attempting to murder me.
Yet her eyes remained fixed upon me. Eyes wide without any attempts to blink.
I stared back at her, still rubbing my aching throat.
There was something deeply unsettling about the way she watched me, she definitely did not like me.