Hello! I started this fanfiction in 2009, 10 years ago- having stopped writing for 8 or 9 of those years. I set out to finish it in time for its 10 year anniversary on May 15, 2019.

In the process of trying to finish it, I made the story a lot better, and had a really good time writing. Then I realized how out of date my writing is from 2009. So I'm redoing the prologue and the first two chapters to fit with the rest of the story. If you've been following this for awhile, maybe you'll get an update? If you're new here then you will have no idea how actually bad these chapters were originally.

Either way enjoy ;-)

It's hard to point to the beginning of my story, as it is one that has had many different beginnings to many different paths. Most have been short- roads that emerged from thick woods filled with dense brush only to drop off into darkness, or fields of dried earth. Thinking back, the closest day I can trace to the start of it all was a cold and dark morning in late autumn.

The home of Jacques Desmarias, a clerk for the Royal Prévot, lay on the left bank of the river. It was a long walk from the room which I shared with several other young women who also worked for households in Paris. As a servant to the clergy and not nobility, we were not afforded lodging, and instead I was to arrive before the first bell of the great cathedral of Notre-Dame-de-Paris rang in the morning. It was early enough that the normally crowded streets of the right bank- where the densely packed wood and mud homes of all who worked, their lives trapped within the city walls day after day, met the merchants who sold their wares in the market that surrounded the river- were almost peaceful. It was also long enough that the heavy rains of the autumn day had already soaked through my clothing as I crossed over the stone bridge towards the rows of town homes where the clergy lived. Pulling my hood up further, I tried to save what I could of the front of my dress.

I approached the large, intricately carved wooden door and pressed my palms against it, smacking it hard. Following the deep thudding sound, the street was again quiet save for the sound of the heavy raindrops as they fell to the cobble stone. I glanced back to the street, the overhang from the entrance way just barely shielding my face from the pouring rain. My breath left my lips and joined the rain, floating between the wet lines. After a moment the door slowly opened and a servant carefully peered out at me with tired, fearful eyes before stepping aside so I could enter.

The home was warm, and peaceful. The smell of wood filled the hall by the doorway and lofted up to the tall ceilings of the town house. It was unlike peasants homes, dirt and hay did not cover their floors, straw and mud did not sit above them, packed together and often leaking between the wooden beams held as ceilings. I shivered in the doorway, the chills touching my wet clothing before I followed the woman through the kitchen. Here, there was more movement. Cooks prepared food while servants had begun to sleepily arrive, were assigned tasks and then quietly began their days. I removed my cloak and placed it on a row of iron spikes with the others, removing a linen apron and tying it around my back.

My sleeve dripped down my arm and onto the spotless stone floor beneath me. The cold had sunk into my bones now, a chill that would be impossible to be rid of, and I had just begun the day.

After hours of scrubbing at the stone floors, I crossed back through the hallway towards the kitchen once again. Feeling an intense gaze upon me, I glanced to the stairs of the household to see Jacques Desmarias himself standing near the top, staring down at me. I had come to the home of the royal clerk to fill the spot of another girl who had been there before me. This had been the first time I think he had seen me, though I had been there for several months at that point. When I had first arrived in the residence, I had overheard the other servants speaking of the girl whose place I had taken. She had been young- younger than me, and had been forced to leave when her pregnancy began to show. Amongst the servants it was known that the child had been of the Desmarias clerk, but as it had come to be evident, she was cast out of the home. Like so many before here, I assumed.

Desmarias' beady eyes squinted at me and the chill from my clothes returned as he leaned over to the man who attended him and spoke quietly to him. I was almost in the kitchen when the man called out to me, and asked that I present myself at the bottom of the stairs.

Slowly I obliged, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. I kept my eyes cast down, as he towered above me on the steps.
"Monsieur Desmarias demande si vous pourriez être plus à l'aise dans des vêtements secs." The servant asking on Desmarias' behalf if I would have been more comfortable in drier clothes caused my lips to tighten. I shook my head slightly and responded.
"Non, merci mon seigneur." I responded and lifted my skirt to a curtsy to him before turning to leave.
"Mademoiselle!" Desmarias himself called out to me. I turned back and looked up to him. Bemusement had crossed long and daunting features. He descended from the top step, slowly, until he stood on the one just in front of me. A well trimmed beard clung to his top lip, his light hair slickly pulled back behind his ears. Most frightening were his eyes- they shifted between striking blue and pale, lifeless grey. "From where is your accent?" His English was polished and rolled off his tongue, but stood behind a thick French accent. His directness caused me to look to the far corner of the stairs, heat gracing my cheeks. I knew that this was part of it for him, the embarrassment it caused us. I hesitated for a moment before responding.

"Ludlow, England, my lord." I had lied. I felt his eyes fill with a passive suspicion, overtaken with the amusement he found, like a barn cat with its paw over a mouse drawing out its slow death.
"Enchanté." The greeting poured out of his mouth like smoke. His eyes swallowed my face and moved down to my bodice, which hung damply to my skin. I forced a pleasant smile onto my face and curtsied once again.

"Avec ta journée." His attendant had ordered on his behalf, and I obliged, trying to walk as though my heart wasn't beating strongly in frustrated defiance.

There had been no doubt in my mind that Desmarias had fathered the child of the girl who came before me. She, like so many others, had come to Paris from the country. Her family, if she had one, had been unable to secure a dowery for her, and therefore she could not find a man to marry her. I knew the story very well, as each of the several girls with whom I lived with in a room on the right bank of the city had shared this same fate. The cities offered prospects for work that the country did not, though, it had been quite a long time since I had lived outside of a city. Work had been more available. Protection, however, was never afforded to us. Being seduced by the wealthy clerk which you served would have been an all too promising proposition for a young girl. Where she was now- pregnant, or with a child, and unmarried, caused me to shudder. To them, we were a symptom of the densely packed city- vermin for which they could do what they wished.

I clenched my jaw as I walked through the kitchen, now walking to the back of the room where the laundry had been hung up to dry, inside from the rain. Several other servants worked the linens for the household with potash, slapping the fabric onto thick slabs of stone. I rolled up my damp sleeves and assisted them, the cold water of the laundry seeping further into my bones.

Later, I helped in changing the linens of the chambers upstairs. After helping the girl with me pull the bed covering up over the bed of the lord and lady of the home, I lingered in the room, watching as the other servant girl left quickly. I glanced at some of the belongings of the lady of the house, noticing an accumulation of dust on a hand mirror that lay delicately on a table in the large room. Impulsively, I took it from the ledge and slid it in between my apron and my under dress- where I collected valuables from within the large townhouse throughout the day. Not always did I have an opportunity to take something from the chambers of the lords and ladies themselves, but usually there was silverware, or candle sticks, or other small, forgettable valuables I would be left alone with for so long. My hands had grown quick from my additional profession over the years, and it was difficult for the belonging's owners to recall most of their possessions.

The weekly two pence we made as servants- or two livres, in France, had barely paid for the room I shared with several other girls in Paris. Work was twice as hard to find as a singlewoman, even in a city. The additional pay I received didn't pale in comparison to the risks of being caught. Branding, hanging, the stocks. If I had been caught, I'm sure I would regret the permanent mark of a voleur onto my hand for earnings that afforded me one additional meal a week, if I was lucky. But... I hadn't been caught. And there was a small satisfaction in taking from men like Jacques Desmarias in order to survive.

At the end of the long day, my clothing had been mostly dry from the long day, now only slightly damp from the morning's rain. Stepping out into the early evening, it had already fallen dark. I had lasted another day, somehow. Returning to my lodgings, the other girls were completing their chores and preparing for bed. As I took off my damp clothing, I tucked the stolen hand mirror from the home of the clerk Desmarias into a space between my straw-stuffed mattress and the wooden platform that it lay on, where I would store stolen objects. I stopped as I caught my reflection in the underside of the ornate hand mirror as I had turned it over.

It had been a time since I had seen my own face beyond it peering back at me in dark, murky puddles in the street. The dim light of the rush in the room caused light shadows across my face. My own green eyes stared back at me, tired, and strange. I touched the bottom of my light hair- frowning as my hand approached my face. Something about it felt disconnected, that it was not myself who stared back at me... but someone completely different. I had been living as a servant, an orphan, and a thief, for so long sometimes it took me by surprise to realize there was truly a face to my person, and not just the titles that I held in this life.

The sound of one of the young women who shared the room with me returning caused me to clumsily shove the mirror into its place with the small collection of other valuables, rearranging the outer sack to conceal the slit in the side of the mattress. I climbed onto it and pulled the rough woolen blanket over me. I took one last, deep breath that evening before falling quickly into a deep sleep.