Ante: Hexus

One

"Meredith!"

Mrs Farage's voice shook the house like thunder, reverberating through the oaken door that led down to the cellar. The small mound of tattered rags piled in its center sundered and a girl, little over thirteen climbed out of its warm center, her pale face blackened by the soot that covered everything in the cellar in a light dusting of coal. The only source of light in the blackness was the small window in the corner. Meredith ran to it, smudged it clear and looked out. It was already well past noon, Mrs Farage was going to kill her.

She shouldered the door open, ignoring its creaking and fled up the stairs, careening to a halt just before the top one.

Mrs Farage stood at the top, her bustle brushing both ends of the narrow corridor. Her face was pinched in fury, her curls undone. Meredith allowed the fright building in her chest spill onto her face. Mrs Farage seemed to live in a perpetual state of rage.

"My apologies Mrs Farage I must have..."

"You foolish girl!" Mrs Farage thundered, cutting her off. "Like Oaf in his lair, you slept all through the dawn and morning, well aware that Mr Farage and I are expected at Parliament by late evening. If I have to wake you again, it will be with a severe hiding."

Meredith curtseyed, knowing better than to speak when Mrs Farage was this angry. The woman turned, a delicate exercise considering the breadth of her skirt and stalked off into the belly of their town house. Meredith allowed a respectable distance between them and followed. Mrs Farage stopped short of the living room and squinted over her shoulder.

"I hope you do not wish to serve afternoon tea looking like that? For heaven's sake we might have guests."

"Yes Ma'am." Meredith said with another curtsey and left for the wash room to find a pail, soap and some clean clothes.

The Farage's town house was twice as small as the manor in the countryside where the family spent the most of their year, but it was their most prized possession, left to Mr Farage by his mother, who had been 'kept' by a Duke. This was also how Mr Farage had gotten his place in Parliament, serving a signatory to someone, whom she knew not. Mrs Farage never failed to let it slip whenever she was in polite company, lamenting that this, not the speculations that she was barren was why they didn't have children.

"...his half brothers are afraid of Lewish and us having a bastard heir, little do they know, the last thing I want is a child." she'd say.

Mrs Farage didn't want a governess or house staff either, so they took Meredith where ever they went and she worked her fingers to the bone to keep her foster family fed, clean and comfortable.

She went to work as soon as she was clean, leaving a note for the family. The baker was a few streets away and Meredith relished her only time outside of the house. Mr Farage liked his scones fresh and only from Benou the baker. Benou didn't deliver. She rounded parked carriages, their horses breath small plumes of vapor as they waited and walked the cobbled street of London. She kept her eyes down, her hat pulled over head as she passed noble men and pretty beribboned ladies with umbrellas open to hide their pale skin from the sun. She revelled in a London where she was no one, not even a servant.

Benou, a wiry french man in a spotless apron and a hat that covered his bald pate smiled at her as she approached his stand. He took her basket and made a show of surveying its empty belly.

"What happened to all the scones and rolls I filled this with yesterday."

Meredith smiled and rubbed her belly. "A troll ate them."

Benou's eyes widened in mock horror. "A troll? Here in the heart of London? Whatever shall we do?"

Meredith thrust out her hand and placed coins with the face of the Queen stamped on to them. "Feed the trolls monsieur, it is the only way."