A blanket was draped over her shoulders. She did not pause in her reading, finished that page and most of the next before coming to a suitable point to stop. With a slip of embroidered silk to keep her place, she closed the book, put it down, and only then turned.

  Still, neither spoke. She raised her arm, creating an opening at her side beneath the blanket, patted the seat there. After a long few seconds, her maid walked around the bench and sat beside her. As gently as her maid had placed the blanket over her shoulders, she now draped that side of the blanket over her maid’s shoulders, then brought her hand back to her lap.

  The rain drummed on the roof. Loud. Part of the roof only glass, the rest of the roof nothing more than roof—only a thin layer to keep out water, no attic nor crawlspace nor any insulation beyond that afforded by the waterproofing. A remarkable thing, really, that her two architects had sought out a solution for a shallower roof, which brought them to a certain pitch used to treat boats in a part of Sicily, superior to any resin or tar from a tree.

  The wind howled, whined, a fierce gale. Yet, in this place, it felt tamed, that there were no rattles nor drafts. This room stood as the first proof for the library and everyone involved knew it well. From how the foundation was made in the Roman manner with layers of different-sized stones, to the consistent consistency of the concrete floor, to how neatly the walls were packed with bricks, to how the glass and roofing tiles were secured in place.

  In this moment, the rain and wind simply sounded beautiful, lacking any threat or power.

  For a long while, she was content to share that beauty with her maid. However, as with so many beautiful things in life, the storm was fleeting, its winds reduced to whines and the rain to tinkling. Still beautiful, yet different.

  “I hope Gianna has not been lonely.”

  Those words, although quietly said, seemed precisely loud enough to be heard by her maid. “How can I be lonely?” It wasn’t a question, almost a laugh to her tone.

  She smiled to herself. “A woman must be seen as a good wife to be a good woman, so I was necessarily close with my husband until his departure. While he is aware you are important to me, seemingly mistakenly so, I have refrained from establishing exactly how.”

  Her maid let out a silent sigh, as if shrinking in her seat. “Is there a need for madam to tell me this?”

  “I have said before that, if only this world a kinder place, I would have taken you in as my sister. That is still true. This year, while pleasant enough, has felt emptier in his company than yours. How I must always be the me he thinks I am, whereas you alone know me as I am. You alone are my family.”

  There was no reply to be given to that, both knew, so only silence could follow, at least for a while. In a quieter voice, a touch rough, her maid said, “What can I say to that?”

  “What can’t you say to me?”

  That finally pushed her maid over the edge, that what came next was laughter, gentle, sweet, exasperated. “Madam is too good to me.”

  She gave no answer to that, let those words settle, then spoke. “It is a shame we missed the last bazaar. Next year, I shall have to come up with something incredible to make up for it.”

  Rain fell, wind whistled, a warm silence made warmer with the blanket around her shoulder.

  “Does Gianna wish to attend the academy?” she softly asked.

  A second, then her maid said, “Is madam asking me to go there?”

  “No.”

  That answer which said so little, it said so much. Too much, in a way, her maid’s lips unable to settle as they thinned and trembled and pulled wide, until finally she let out half a breath, leaving behind a blank expression. “My place is at my mistress’s side.”

  She smiled hearing that, an empty smile. “Pray indulge me, what does Gianna think is natural when hurt: to curl up or to reach out?”

  It was a question her maid didn’t even have to consider before she gave an answer. “We all try to hide our weaknesses, don’t we?”

  “Yet babes cry the loudest.”

  In that moment, her maid imperceptibly broke. A reminder that she had once been such a babe until her mother had taught her not to cry. Not because to cry was unnatural, but because her father was unnatural. She hid her weaknesses, not because it was natural, but because her world had not been a kind place.

  Not like this place.

  “I cherish your company greatly, I truly do. Yet I cherish you more. This loneliness I speak of is not simply a lack of company, it is the loneliness of someone who feels that their worth consists of what service they may provide others. I would call it the mother’s paradox, that a person would be so defined by a role that they become as if furniture, both intensely surrounded by the mutual love of family and yet that love feels predicated on providing those expected services. That if a beloved chair breaks, it is burned in the fireplace all the same as common wood.”

  She spoke with her usual tone, neither hurried nor lax, every word clear. However, her maid felt an intense sadness behind those words. The kind of feeling that came from being privy to so many conversations with such an otherwise guarded person.

  With that in mind, her maid whispered, “A mother, or maybe a ruler.”

  She did not give a reply, could not acknowledge her maid’s words at all, and yet her silence was all the answer needed. Once she had given that silent reply, she continued. “Has Gianna any desire for a family of her own?”

  Her maid gave a thin smile, albeit one that went unseen with how they sat. “After my father, I can’t trust any man,” she said simply.

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  “Your mother could.”

  It was not said with any malice, but that did not make it any less absurd. Did not make it any less true. As urgent as her maid felt in the need to reply, she was tempered by the grander conversation. Her mistress rarely brought up such topics lightly.

  As if to give her maid time to think, she continued on with a tangent. “I think, too, of my peers who would punish farmers for a poor harvest. If they have ever thought about it at all, they reason that starving people are better motivated because death is the alternative. They do not consider that a poor harvest is rarely the farmers’ fault, nor that the farmers and their wives still need that food to work, so it is the children who are instead starved, children who either die or grow up to be too weak to farm well.

  “It is incredible how deep this irrational belief in punishment runs, especially considering that God has explicitly told us to be forgiving and generous. That, while there is evil in the hearts of man, there is good too, and this world would not be shaped in this manner if that good did not triumph so often over evil.”

  While she took a breath in and let it out, she tilted back her head. An oil lamp mounted to the wall gave a still flame, warm and gentle, the wick surrounded by glass and with little movement of the air here otherwise.

  “Master Haartsen has looked better these months. Rather than to simply rest, their doctor recommended they should spend at least an hour outside, even in poor weather. While they have that chair which their brother so loves to push around, they have quite taken to warm baths where they would swim with what little vigour they have. Despite their poor appetite, they would drink beer like a farmer, eat rich meat like a squire.

  “That is, for some injuries and illnesses, rest is of only some help, instead necessary that we must act as if better to become better, which is a different thing to acting as if not weak. She does not do these things alone, could not do them alone.”

  Her maid had no grand ego nor a petulance for her mistress. However, against this convincing monologue, one which threatened to undermine her very self, she could not simply surrender.

  “Madam has a lot of words to be rid of me. Has she a man she wishes to marry me to?” It was something she regretted saying as soon as she finished speaking and yet, while coarse, it conveyed how she felt better than anything she could have come up with if given time to think.

  The reply did not come as quick as replies often did from her. And when she spoke, her voice had a softness rarely heard, even by her maid. “One thing too natural in life is that we hope to atone for our mistakes and regrets through others. Indeed, I am too forward, afraid that I may take away your chance of motherhood. Do forgive me.”

  Unseen to her, her maid’s eyes grew misty. Who else in her life had offered such an apology? Certainly not either parent, not the priest, none of her neighbours. There was always an excuse that put the blame on her, as if what happened had been her fault.

  “I would not ask you to make amends for my own misfortunes. Nor would I take away this place of yours, either. All I want, now and forever, is to repay the kindness you have shown me.”

  Her maid went to ask what kindness there was in serving her, only for a flicker of memory to still her. There was kindness in this serving. But, she also knew how kindly she served her mistress.

  “If I may prattle on some more, as I know you are fond of my thoughts, pray let me put clearly something for you that I only allude to with others. I live by two simple rules. The first is that I have enough advantages that I should rarely involve myself with matters where I am at a disadvantage.

  “The second is that I should seek out people who enjoy providing services I find useful; if they prove capable, then I gradually provide them greater resources. This is how I stretch my own efforts much further than my peers.”

  What went unsaid, but not unheard, was that her maid was also such a person who provided a useful service. So her maid wondered if this all was her mistress offering her greater resources. A thought that her mistress seemingly heard.

  “Gianna has proven herself capable, trustworthy…. She has helped me through many matters, especially in my earlier years of rulership, and her kindness has soothed the anger lingering in my own past. That kindness is why I would not treat her as I do Mr Mayor or my husband or even Master Haartsen. To them, in pursuit of their usefulness, I would offer such things as kindness and support.

  “With you, that kindness and support is not such a thing. I earnestly wish for you to find some purpose without regard for how useful it may or may not be to me. This is not a reward, nor part of some other secret rule I live by. It is, in essence, love, that feeling which bids one act in ways others find mysterious, yet feel entirely natural to one. Gianna is my sister, and I would give the world to her if she only asked.”

  More than anything else this night, those words felt cruellest to her maid. How could she have purpose without being useful to her mistress? How could she deserve more than this? How could she dare ask for more?

  Her mistress had already given her the world and more. Under this weight, this immense guilt, no breath left her, words held tight in her chest.

  After some moments of silence, she said, “Well, I would not rush you. I am to continue to break my first rule and soon entertain in the capital too. For that, I shall need to make use of my advantages, which naturally includes my precious Gianna.”

  “Yes, madam.” A quiet voice, controlled, mingling with the drumming rain.

  She found nothing amiss with the response, so continued. “Mr Mayor really has brought a trial upon me. That those wealthy commoners are so concerned with repayment, that the nobles are so concerned with prestige, every conversation this intricate puzzle in which I must find the right words to satisfy them. What reason have I given any to doubt me? Yet, doubt is all they have when I dare ask for something.”

  A chuckle slipped through her lips. Her hand rose, head fell, covering her eyes a long second before she then breathed out a deep sigh.

  “What they would think if I made known my true goal…. Still, I am grateful for Sir Matteo. It is always reassuring to have those deeply experienced in a matter approve one’s methods. One million thalers, five million thalers, what matters is that I may convince people to extend this loan without interest. That, with the focus on a great number of smaller loans, there shall naturally be many that go unclaimed, and I intend to grant these bonds a certain prestige that many would rather keep them as a trophy to boast of.”

  At that point, her lips curled into a warm smile.

  “How I would repay a million thalers, how little they think of me,” she said under her breath. “I have five years to expand the county’s taxation to cover the interest rate, a mere fifty thousand total if Sir Matteo proves reliable. In that time, many will flock here for work, bringing with them a demand for food and clothing and all those other little things people like. Among those of this county, who owns the most farms and spinners and weavers? Who built sturdy roads, built brickworks, who now drains swamps and digs canals?”

  There was no anger in her voice, yet it was heard. A kind of petulance only her maid could hear. Still, her maid thought it was a justified frustration. It made clearer her mistress’s first rule and the second. These past weeks, instead of all the important work her mistress usually did, she patiently explained every little thing to people who only wanted to argue over details they demanded in the first place.

  How better everything worked out when her mistress gave orders and everyone dutifully followed them.

  “Never mind the army, which shall dwarf the debt’s interest. Such a cost which shall hardly be offset by those funding my husband’s travels. In the end, it must be paid, so I shall pay it as I have always paid every cost.”

  Although she spoke as she usually did, that final word carried with it a weight as it hung in the air. How many costs she had paid….

  She closed her eyes, surrendered herself to the sound of rain drumming on the glass. If she had to pay such costs, then she would reap such benefits, no one more greedy in their benevolence.