The mud had dried on Charlotte's face.
It had begun to crack and itch. She tried to scratch the itch by rubbing her head against her shoulder, but she was not able to quite satisfy it. She adjusted the position of her arms, feeling the pressure of the rope around her wrists. It was a hot summer day. The sun shone in her eyes. She cast them downward to avoid squinting. A fly landed on her leg, and she jerked her leg to the side to push it off of her.
Tom looked out at Charlotte through the window of her upstairs bedroom. She sat on the garden bench, looking small and subdued. Helpless. It made his blood pump fast in his veins just to see it. What good do your money and your fancy things do for you now, Mrs. Edgcombe? He thought to himself. What difference is there between us now? Even from his view through the window, he could sense her discomfort. She must be hot in the sun; he could see her squinting in the bright light. She kept adjusting her posture as if she could not find a comfortable position to sit. He did not wish real pain on her, but a little discomfort was good. Anything he wanted today--that had been the arrangement. He wanted to impress on her that he could make her as uncomfortable as he chose.
He turned away from the window. He had never been in Charlotte's house on his own before. He felt an impulse to touch everything. He wanted to linger in the wealth of this room: to run his hands over the trinkets on the mantel and up and down her velvet bedcurtains. And why not? Anything he wanted, after all. He walked to her washroom. It gleamed with dazzling modernity. The new bathtub in the middle of the room was pristine and milky white. He walked up to it and ran his finger across the edge of it. He turned on the hot water tap, then the cold water tap, and he observed with fascination as the waters mingled together in the showerhead; he could make it warmer by turning down the cold tap, and he could make it hotter by turning it up again. He began to remove his dirty clothes and piled them on the floor. When he had adjusted the temperature of the spray to his satisfaction, he stepped in.
He let out an audible sigh of pleasure. The warm water tickled his skin, washing all the grime away in a deluge of mist. It warmed him through to his core. He splashed water over his face and through his hair. No wonder Charlotte kept herself so clean, he thought. If cleaning himself were this pleasurable, he thought, he would do it all the time. She had a lavender scented bar of soap on the ledge next to the bathtub, and he rubbed it all over his body, taking in its perfume.
Tom let himself linger in the shower for a long while, so long that the hot water in the boiler began to deplete and the water turned cold. When at last he turned off the water taps, his skin practically gleamed. He dried himself off on Charlotte's towel and changed into a fresh set of clothes.
He returned to the window of Charlotte's bedroom and checked that she was still there. She had not moved from the spot. Her head was bent down, and her hair hung tangled around her shoulders. He rapped on the window. She looked up to see him, and he waved at her good-naturedly.
Tom took his time returning to the garden. First, he meandered around Charlotte's room, opening drawers and touching all of her possessions. He ran his fingers over the fine fabrics of her clothing and the elegant luxury of her jewelry. Then he made his way through the hallway and into the dining room, tracing his fingers along the borders of the inlaid wood of her table and the delicate bone china of the breakfast dishes the maidservant had set there the night before.
He looked around the room. The walls had recently been redone with wallpaper in a dark red pattern, and there were paintings hung around its perimeter in gold frames. One painting in particular caught his eye. It depicted a field of wheat, dappled in golden sunlight. An old mill with crumbling walls stood off to the side, next to a babbling stream. In the foreground two peasant women stooped down over the field. Tom recognized the labor--"gleaning," they used to call it, when peasants would gather the excess grains of wheat that had fallen to the ground after a field had been harvested. It must have been grueling, tedious work. How much would these peasant women's backs have ached after a day of constant contortion? None of their toil was visible in the painting, though: they were simply part of the landscape. Instead of their work or their pain, the painter had seen only the dappled sky and the rolling hills. What a luxury, he thought, not to have to see work as work, to see only beauty.
He picked up one of the dishes, along with a fork and a knife, and brought it with him to the kitchen. Then he placed the lamb pie that the cook had set out on the counter for Charlotte onto the plate, filled a ceramic cup with water, and took it all out into the garden with him.
"How are you?" He asked Charlotte, sitting down next to her on the bench. He began to cut into the pie with the fork and knife. The silver cutlery felt so dainty in his hands, smooth and well-balanced.
Charlotte breathed in and out and collected her thoughts. She was sore and hot and tired--that was the most immediate answer to Tom's query. She was hungry and thirsty. Her skin felt raw from the sunlight and irritated from the mud and dirt that clung to it. And yet, even in the midst of the barrage of discomforts, she felt utterly calm. Serene, even. She was undone. In this moment, her will was thoroughly dissolved into Tom's. There was a tangible relief in it, in the midst of a life so carefully arranged, to let go of all agency, all responsibility, for a few tantalizing hours. "I'm alright," she said at last.
"Are you thirsty?"
"Yes!"
"Tilt your head back." She did so. Tom picked up the cup from the ground. "Open your mouth."
He poured a trickle of water into her mouth. She swallowed gratefully. He set the cup down and cut off a bite of pie, which he held out on the fork in front of her face. She opened her mouth, but he did not bring the fork to her.
"Come and get it." She leaned forward, but he moved the morsel away from her before she could reach it. "What, you don't want it?" He teased. He wiggled the fork just out of her reach. She strained against the restraints that bound her to the bench, leaning toward the fork. It quickly became apparent that the exercise was futile. Tom popped the bite into his mouth. She returned his action with an expression of exasperation. He cut off another bite and held it over her head. On cue, she strained upward, trying to catch the fork's contents in her mouth as he waggled it above her. The morsel dropped from the fork and fell onto Charlotte's dirt-spattered lap. She leaned down and lapped it up, seeing that he clearly meant for her to do so.
"May I please have some more?"
"Not just yet," Tom grinned. "I'm going to make you work for your dinner." He reached behind Charlotte and untied her hands. "The garden needs watering," he informed her. "There's a watering can in the shed."
Charlotte rubbed her wrists where the cord had bound them and got to her feet, somewhat shakily. "Yes, sir." She took a deep breath, resolving herself to the task ahead.
Tom leaned back in his seat on the bench, crossed one leg over the other, and continued to eat the pie. As he watched Charlotte fetch the watering can and fill it up, he luxuriated in the idleness of his position. He cut the pie into neat bites with the silver fork and knife. He took note of the lightness of the dish he was eating off of, with a gold rim and a pattern of poppies in the center. This must be what it was like to be Charlotte all of the time, he mused--to inhabit her garden as if it were solely a place of pleasure, to willfully disregard the toil that went into making it what it was. There she was, his own picturesque peasant girl, just like the ones in the painting in the dining room. Stripped of all her clothing, she may as well have been a peasant girl. There was a hardiness about her body that was easy to miss beneath her fine tailored dresses and gloves. She made her rounds to each flower patch, watering them with deliberate care.
When she had finished watering the flowers, Tom made her rake the leaves that had accumulated underneath the apple and pear trees. He had a leather strap that he had used before to hit her, and he followed her around, slapping her rear end when she did not work fast enough.
Slap! "You missed that leaf over there!" He chided.
"I'm sorry sir," she answered. He struck her again. She winced and cried out, and hurried to collect the forgotten leaf. A red mark shone on her back where he had hit her. Tom smiled to himself, then hit her again, just for good measure.
"Now the gravel," he instructed. "I want you to rake it into straight lines, horizontally across the path."
