Wizard of Jatte by Rowan Erlking (librera reader txt) 📕

“Ah! Fresh meat! How’d you like your first day?”

“Buff one, he is. Look at his hands!”

Theissen glanced at his hands, seeing nothing extraordinary, though he wondered if the man had noticed the cut marks across his palms at all. He closed his hand on the spoon and kept the other one turned down.

“Look at his shoulders,” a maid said from behind him, and she promptly rested her hands upon them, massaging them with her fingers.

Theissen jerked up and turned around. “What are you doing?”

The maid leaned in, giving him ample view of her cleavage, her blouse ribbons loosened up. She ran fingers through his hair, pulling even closer against him as he held up his hands and dropped his spoon. “Just helping you relax.”

He found use of his hands and shoved her back, nearly sitting on his porridge as he tried to push away against the table. The chorus of laugher around him and the pouting look on the maid’s face stirred more than a number of emotions in his chest than he could cope with. “Relax? I’m not relaxed! Can I just have breakfast?”

The cook slapped her fat hand on his back and then gave him a shove forward. Theissen tumbled into the arms of yet another maid who suddenly pulled his face right to her chest, cradling his head with stroking fingers. He pushed away almost immediately, though he had quite fight to actually get out of her arms. Another girl plucked at him, reaching out to draw him close. He almost drew up a wind to send them all flying, but inside he knew that working magic in a manor house might not be the best move. So he drew out his weapon of last resort.

“Get off me! I’m not that kind of man! I’m engaged to be married for pity’s sake!” Sorry, Milrina, he thought as he felt all the arms pull off of him. He had to do it.

“Well, that solves that problem,” the head maid said, trotting into the room.

Theissen straightened his shirt out, buttoning back up the buttons that somehow had gotten loose.

The head maid bowed to Theissen with firm yet pleased gaze. “Pardon us. But we had to be sure what kind of man you were.”

“Blasted, unfair,” one of the maids said, tying back up the front of her blouse.

He gave her a severe look, shaking his head. Some of those girls did truly look disappointed.

“You must understand,” the head maid said to him, leading him back to his porridge, which had spilled some on the table but was now being mopped up by the cook though she smirked as if she had enjoyed teasing him. “We have to safeguard our mistress from young strangers, especially when the master is away.”

“The mistress?” Theissen turned with a look of distaste. “You mean that pompous—uh, I mean that stately woman that I spoke to yesterday?”

The housemaid smiled more at him, her eyes shining. “Yes. But I see now you are a man of character, not to be swayed by a little flesh.”

“A little flesh?” He looked over at the housemaids who were still giving him sulky looks. “That was not a little flesh.”

Laughing, the head housemaid nodded. “Indeed. I apologize.”

“Why don’t they apologize? They’re the ones that thew themselves at me like a lord baron’s mistress.” He dusted his shirt off once more with a huffy swipe.

“Well, I never!” One stomped away.

“You just did!” He snapped back, watching all of them turn with growing indignation. “I’m all flustered now.”

But the men only laughed more. The cook joined in as if they were a chorus of singers. Only one of the girls remained, and that was the one that had woken him up. She winked at him.

“You can’t blame a girl for trying,” she said. “You are a handsome one.”

Theissen only grew redder, staring as she too walked away. Shaking his head, Theissen just grabbed his spoon and started to eat his porridge. By now it was cold, making the morning a poor start already.

The kitchen cleared, and it was soon apparent why. He had slept in, and they had already eaten. That little game of theirs was perhaps a green worker’s orientation. When he had finished eating, even washing up his own dish though the cook stared at him with shock when he did, Theissen walked straight away to the bath and scrubbed off all the road dirt as quickly as he could. He wouldn’t put it past the maids to sneak in to the room just as he had undressed. There was that hormonal smell about them, a swirling odor in the flow he at last understood after his budding ceremony. Milrina occasionally smelled like that, and it made him nervous.

But bathed and clean, he was able to change clothes and wash his travel suit, cloak and all. They were drying by a rope across his room when he went down to the carpentry shop to continue his project.

Most of the day he spent planing the wood and sanding. When edges were flat and measured, he started to glue strips together, pressing them tight with a vise. The back, shelves, top and bottom would be ready to piece after they had dried and squared. The parts that would hold the panes of glass would take more careful carving and a bit more precision. Already he was working on the legs.

“You there. How is it going?”

Theissen peered over the rough wooden railing that divided his shop from the barn’s ground floor. The lady stood below in a less full gown, a little riding hat similar to one his older sister wore at his adulthood ceremony, and a riding crop in her hand. Her face was painted with extra red lips.

He nodded with a polite smile. “I am working on the molding as we speak. I should be completely finished by the end of the week.

She stared. “That fast?”

Nodding only in reply, Theissen smiled more to himself.

But then she climbed up the wood steps into the shop. He sat up, resting the wood the tool he was carving on his knee.

“You can keep working,” she said, “Don’t mind me, unless of course you hate a woman in a man’s shop.”

She cast him a mocking look when she said that.

Turning his gaze, Theissen went back to his carving. “It is your home, Madam. It is not my place to dictate where you belong.”

A small snort answered him.

Working in silence, Theissen continued to carve the cabinet leg. He could hear her skirts swish as she walked about the room, the heels of her shoes clicking on the wood. She paused here and there, silent in her way, but there was something uproarious about the smell in her that made it hard for Theissen to think. Unlike the maids, whose odors were flirtatious, this woman gave off full drawing smell of a woman desperately seeking a man. It made no sense to Theissen since she was a married woman, but since the moment he left the highway nothing had made sense.

He felt her stoop over his shoulder to look at his work. Theissen stopped and glanced up.

“Oh,” she gave a small feminine gasp. “Does this bother you?”

Tilting his head with a what-the-hey motion he replied, “Yes, actually, it does.”

She stood up. “Oh, pooh. You don’t like to play at all, do you?”

He blinked at her. “Play?”

Her expression changed from passionately sweet woman of the home to a smug look of superiority. “You really are a simple country man, aren’t you?”

Theissen just stared.

Running her fingers along the back of his neck, sending spikes of chills all along his arms and skin in conjunction with other sensations, she said, “You know, everyone does what I say here. And I haven’t seen such a manly man in quite a long time.”

“Excuse me?” Theissen tried to stand up, but her touch now stroked over his shoulder to his chest, and she pushed him down into his seat. “Wait! Hold on a—”

She rested one knee on the edge of his chair between his legs, pinning him into his seat so that he could not move without falling backwards and her falling right on top of him. “What part of you do you want me to hold on to?”

His heart pounded in his ears, the smell of the hormonal flow stirring up strange sensations inside of him. With panic as he felt her press her hand against his chest, her fingers moving down the front in the direction of his carpentry belt, he looked towards the glowing light of the open stable door. At once a gust blew in, throwing up straw, dirt and small clods of smelly stuff.

The woman screamed, flinging up her hands to protect her face. Theissen hopped off the chair, staggering back to the smithy’s door. The wind still blew tossing up sparks as Theissen rushed past the bent old man to the other end of the shop where it opened out into the rest of the barn.

He ducked under a pile of hay.

“Carpenter?” The lady’s voice echoed in the stables. “Carpenter, where did you go?”

The woman’s boots stomped into the smith’s shop, his door slamming wide open.

“Is he hiding in here?”

“No, Mistress,” the smith said, his voice wheezing out perhaps from inhaling so much smoke and ash. “I think he retreated into the manor, Mistress.”

She growled. “Sneaky man. He sees an opportunity and he takes it. No one rejects me.”

Theissen cringed, keeping still under the hay.

“Fine. I’ll still get what I want! I’ll just play my hand. That’s all.” She turned, almost with a stomp.

“Pardon my saying, Mistress. But rumor has it he is already betrothed,” the smith said.

Waiting for her response, Theissen held his breath.

The woman merely gave one of her nasal huffs. “Not for long.”

She was gone, but Theissen didn’t dare move from the hay. No one said a word to him, even those that passed by noticing him hiding there. A couple of them smiled as if they were enjoying a very good joke.

“Are you going to finish your work today then?” He heard the smith at last say to him.

Turning his head upward, he saw the man peer down at him with less hostility and more sympathy.

Tossing off the straw from his back, Theissen reached up to the landing to heave himself up. “It takes a bit longer than that for the glue and then the varnish to dry.”

“Considering sneaking off then, I gather?”

Scratching his head, Theissen pulled out more pieces of straw. “Thought about it.”

“But no?” The smith sounded disappointed.

Giving him another look, Theissen then rose to his feet. “I always finish a job.”

“She’ll come back after you, you know,” the smith said, following him back to the door that divided their shops.

Theissen stepped through. “Yeah, I could smell it. But I still keep a promise.”

The smith sighed. “You’re a fool, boy.”

Turning around, a sparkle came to the eyes of the Carpenterson. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

Deciding not to ask what he was up to, the smith shuffled his feet back towards his bellows and fire.

The mistress was seen going into Theissen’s room late that night. She did not come out until dawn. However, when it was discovered that Theissen had not even entered his chambers for sleep, a search had gone out to see where he had slept, or if he was on the property at all. They found him working in his shop, though someone detected a slight horsy smell around him. Straw stuck out of his hair. The cook made him a hearty lunch that afternoon.

Of course, the actions of the journeyman carpenter only stirred on the lady of the house to seek him out