The boy, glad to be done with the shape tracing, wandered away and sat on the stool by the door. From here, he could watch the workers digging a ditch by the pond, trying to coax the water away from the house. This, and not shape tracing, as far as he could tell, was all that was required for the management of the land. The estate.

His mother did not use the word estate. She used the word swamp. It was part of being eleventh, this swamp. When he was very small, and still twelfth, he had once seen his mother stamp her foot and beat her delicate fists against his father’s chest and cry about eleventh. A swamp! she’d sobbed. Must we live here? Could we not be granted a home away from the wilderness? Could we not be done with mud and mosquitoes? Could you not somehow be ninth or tenth? Could we not live somewhere more refined? More civilized? Are we animals to live in this way?

There was not much more he remembered about Father after this, for the man had simply nodded and taken Mother away. The boy stayed with Nurse and Cook. For ages, it was just him and Nurse and Cook and the workers digging ditches. Where did they go? he’d asked Nurse a hundred times. They are fine people, Nurse had answered, with finer places to live. When the property is more suitable, then they’ll return. They do not need to be here to watch every ditch dug. Later, when Governor arrived, he had explained more: They are fine people. They don’t need to be here to watch a boy eating his meals.

The boy had liked this, liked to imagine fine Mother and fine Father sitting in fine places while he scooped his cream, liked to imagine he, too, one day might be fine enough to sit with them. But then one day, not too many months ago, Mother had returned all alone. Where is the master? Cook had asked. Mother’s face was gray. He went to see if he might become tenth, she answered shortly, and did not return home. Cook’s eyes were wide. Is he…? she said. She mouthed a word beginning and ending with d. Yes, said Mother, her voice flat as swamp water. And now… She gestured sourly at the gray pond overhung with hornbeams. I’m here.… Her mouth dropped as low as the branches.

And that was how the boy learned he had become eleventh.

He could hear his mother now in the kitchen speaking to Cook. “The dishes, I think… perhaps… yes… so…” Her words were soft and dull. They were always soft and dull. The boy thought if he had to trace her letters, they’d surely be just a flat line. But the sound of her voice reminded him how much he wanted the cooked cream and quinces. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine feeling full of the sweetness.

A distant thudding of hoofbeats, a strident gallop coming down the path, brought the governor running from the house. Opening his eyes, the boy watched Governor pacing back and forth next to the workers and the muddy ditch. Even from here, the boy could see the little worm-tail lip twitching.