Just when the beating was over, it was announced the guests would depart at the end of the week. Anger subsided, tempers cooled and Alice crawled off to her pots and pans, white-faced and trembling, feeling so hurt in body and soul that she wondered if she would live and, at the same time, praying she might die.

Further good news was announced. His Grace and his guests were driving out that evening to visit a neighbor and would not be expected back until late the next day. The servants would be able to go early to bed.

Alice bent over her work, dimly hearing the joyful cries in the kitchen and hating every single servant in the Hall, and hating the Duke with all her little heart. It was new for Alice to hate. So far she had accepted the drudgery of her life as part of her place in the divine plan. But that beating had been the final straw. She hated the Duke because he was completely indifferent to the plight of any lesser being in the social order. She hated the Groom of the Chambers—she hated them all.

For the first time in her life, she wanted to escape. For the first time in her life, she thought rebelliously that she was meant for better than this.

But as usual she said nothing, working steadily, working late until the “goodnights” sounded from the kitchen, working over the pots by the light of one smelly tallow candle until she heard all the voices die away.

Her bed now waited for her—if you could call it a bed. It was nothing more than an evil-smelling straw pallet which was kept rolled up in a corner of the scullery. She was expected to sleep neatly and quietly in the corner of the scullery and to awaken, as if by magic, at four in the morning no matter how tired she was.

Alice had never seen any other part of the house but the kitchen. She had never been further away from the house than to the pump in the backyard. She was not even allowed to go to church with the other servants because she was expected to stay behind with two other drudges and prepare their Sunday dinner.

She was so tired and sore and angry that she felt quite light-headed, and perhaps that is what gave her the courage to creep across the blackness of the kitchen and slowly mount the stairs to the upper region.