Five minutes or so to get up to my bedroom under the drafty tiles of the roof, change my clothes, and dash downstairs into the kitchen to begin my chores. Sticks for the fire, water from the well, pump away with the bellows till the fire blazed good and hot, take a shovelful of red embers into Frau Muller’s parlor and light her fire with them, do the same for the fire in the great hall, put a pan of water on the kitchen fire to boil for Frau Muller’s coffee (which she had before all the rest of the household), prepare a tray for the count’s coffee, set out the cutlery for the servants’ breakfast (not much needed; it was porridge all round, and thin stuff too, since Frau Muller had her breakfast with us and kept a miser’s eye on the cream and sugar), and finally lay the table for the family’s breakfast.

By this time, the other servants were up and about. Frau Wenzel was stirring the porridge in the kitchen; Frau Muller was sipping her coffee and studying the day’s menus and the list of jobs to be done around the place. And now I had to learn to be an actress; for the next thing I had to do, on a normal morning, was to go and wake the girls.

I shook the empty beds, and drew back the curtains. “Miss Lucy! Miss Charlotte!” I called, but not too loudly, yet.

No reply, of course. I waited a moment, then called again, louder; looked under the beds, in the wardrobe, in the bathroom, in the corridor, in the empty rooms that stood dustily nearby; called again, and let (with great artistry) a note of fright into my voice.

“Miss Lucy! Miss Charlotte! Where are you?”

Now for the audience, I thought; and ran downstairs.

“Frau Muller! Miss Lucy and Miss Charlotte—they’re not there!”

“Where? What do you mean, girl?”

“They’re not upstairs, in their beds—I can’t find them anywhere—”

And so on. Within ten minutes, every servant in the castle had been pressed into the search, and Herr Snivelwurst scuttled up to tell the count. I didn’t relish the idea of what he’d have to say. Together with all the other servants, I bustled through the rooms upstairs, the attics, the cellars, the stables—calling their names down every corridor and up every staircase, and acting furiously all the time. The longer we spent on this, of course, the safer they’d be; it was when the search spread out beyond the grounds that they’d be in danger. But I might still distract it a little.