“Madame’s hair is so black, perhaps she is Italian. I trust I have not startled you. His Majesty ordered that your bath be of cold cathode rays. They are very exhilarating if one can stand the shock.”
Although this third offering came in the honey-sweet language of love, a look of hate was on the serving woman’s face.
“Who are you?” Dolores asked in the tongue of first choice.
“You may call me Adeline. I am your maid.”
Somewhat disconcerted by the unservile gesture with which a robe of rainbow lights was held out for her convenience, Dolores put another question.
“How do you come to speak three languages? And doesn’t the name Adeline mean of noble birth?”
“Ah, Madame also is French. She will the better understand.” A smile less pleased than bitter stiffened the patrician lips. “I am of noble birth and on earth was treated according to my rank. But the judgment that consigned me to the Realm of Reversals has changed all that. Here we who were ladies serve our former maids. And hard taskmistresses they are, given thus the power to equalize their past humiliations.”
A thought of the fate awaiting Catherine Cabot made Dolores shudder. “A grim conceit, that—I suppose the King’s own?”
The demoted noblewoman nodded. “Not Lucretia Borgia herself could have conceived so cruel a sentence. It is not the tasks from which I suffer, but the thought of doing them. My first position was to serve the creature whom I had treated with all consideration in my household, she who afterward cost me my husband, my position in society and my life. Madame understands? I killed her. Madame’s shower is turned on.”
She who never had been served sought to refuse the offices of this quondam great lady. On Earth no one had drawn up the morning shades for her, she declared; had brushed the cobwebs of dreams from her lashes with dampened cloths; had proffered the steaming beauty cup, perfumed her bath, placed her mules, held her robe. No need was there for Adeline to suffer while under assignment to her.