Ashlyn awoke on a fragrant pile of soft straw with quite the clatter around her. Her eyes opened slowly and she looked around her. She was in the corner of what appeared to be a large kitchen. Servants were hustling about, stirring steaming pots, hauling platters of sliced fresh bread, and chopping raw carrots and turnips. A small girl wearing a blue dress was on her knees only meters from Ashlyn's head scrubbing the stone floor vigorously. The smell of hot food made Ashlyn's stomach give a growl.
The young girl looked up, "Ai, She is awake!" the child cried out in excitement. The kitchen momentarily fell quiet. All of the curious eyes staring at her made Ashlyn feel most uncomfortable, and she tried to scuttle back into the straw. Shortly a tall thin gentleman wearing a blue fine embroidered jerkin approached her.
"Miss, I am Robert, Lord Stephan's personal man servant. I was to await here with you until you woke and then escort you off to the bath room. Please rise and follow me." Robert stood expectantly looking at the dirty slip of a girl crouching in the straw below him.
Ashlyn rose, clinging to the torn pieces of her bodice in an attempt to cover herself with what was left of her dress. She followed after Robert, thinking that anything must be better than the intense stares of the kitchen staff. What must they think about her? A small and dirty peasant girl with matted red hair, scraped and bloody hands and legs, a torn and open bit of a brown corse dress clinging to her frame. Did they know that Lord Stephan had killed her father and burned her home only to use her as his chamber maid? How humiliating to think that while she had been unconscious on that straw bed her most private parts may have been exposed to Stephan's kitchen servants. She briefly wondered what had become of her mother and two youngest sisters but the thought was fleeting. As she followed Robert down the hallway most of her thoughts were on what was to become of her.
Ashlyn was guided into a large room on the first floor. The room was filled with hot steam and lined with flowers. In the center was a marble bath tub like she had never imagined could exist. The tub measured larger than the small loft room that her and her two sisters had shared. Standing in the water in a wet white shift was an older lady with dark brown hair and hard black eyes. Her hair was pulled up into a severe bun and in her hand she held a wooden scrub brush.
"Come here girl, and step out of that filthy rag. Robert, bring her here." The woman demanded in an impatient tone.
Ashlyn clung to her dress and backed away from the terrible woman until she found her back up against Robert. Robert wrapped his arms around her and began to drag her forward toward the bath.
"No! Let me go! I am not supposed to be in here, I just need to go home, PLEASE let me go back to my mother!!" the girl screamed as Robert held her with one hand and tore the remains of her dress from her with his other. The matron strode forward and slapped the struggling girl across the face.
