Magic Below Stairs Read Online Free PDF

flowers, he told himself, and laughed.
    After polishing furniture, Frederick’s favorite task was cleaning knives. Sometimes he was even permitted to sharpen a few of the knives Mr. Grant the cook used. Mr. Grant was as different from Vardle as the food he prepared was different from orphanage food. At the orphanage, what little they were given to eat was usually cold and often tasted bad. At Schofield House, even in the servants’ hall, the food was so good that sometimes Frederick wanted to sing.
    Jolly round Vardle had taken pride in everything he cooked. Even if it could scarcely be scraped out of the pot, he was pleased with his work. “Fit for the Royal Navy,” he would say. Skinny Mr. Grant, on the other hand, was as stern as a judge about what came out of his kitchen. Often grumpy over flaws no one else could find in the food he prepared, Mr. Grant made sure everything he cooked was the best he could make it. When he praised Frederick for the way he sharpened the knives, Frederick was proud. He knew he must have done his work perfectly.
    The only tasks Frederick truly disliked were emptying chamber pots and blacking boots. Even though he disliked blacking boots, he did it beautifully, for Frederick knew the first rule of polishing. It worked for boots just as it did for anything else. Before one could even begin, the boots must be clean. Handling the blacking was a dirty job, and it always took a long time to buff the leather to the proper perfect shine.
    One wet night, Frederick sat by the laundry room fire, cleaning mud off a pair of Lord Schofield’s leather boots. Lord Schofield must have visited a very low part of town, for the filth caked on the leather smelled dreadful. Frederick knew that the best way to deal with mud was to wait for it to dry, but this mud would not be dry by morning, when the boots would be called for. No, it was scrub and oil for him.
    First Frederick used saddle soap to clean the boots and then neat’s-foot oil to keep the leather from cracking after it had dried. By the time he was finished, his fingers stung, and the boots, although clean, still needed to be polished before they were returned to Lord Schofield’s valet, Piers. Frederick set the clean boots beside the fire to dry a bit more before he started with the blacking and buffing, but the long day caught up with him. His task only half done, Frederick dozed off.
    Somewhere far into the night, Frederick woke confused. It took him a moment to remember why he was sleeping beside the hearth instead of in his own straw bed. When at last the memory of his unfinished task came back to him, Frederick looked around for the boots. To his surprise, Lord Schofield’s boots were right beside him, ready and waiting. Close examination showed Frederick that the boots were not only perfectly clean and perfectly dry, inside and out, but they had been polished with such care that the gloss of the leather rivaled a looking glass.
    For a moment, as he inspected the boots, a soft rustle that was almost, but not quite, the sound of a breeze moving dry leaves, filled the room. Frederick dropped the boots and gazed wildly around. The rustling stopped. Nothing was there to account for the sound.
    Nowhere did Frederick find a hint to tell him who had done his work for him. Even his buffing rags and boot brushes were dry, untouched by any signs of recent use.
    Frederick put more coal on the fire and sat between the hearth and the boots for the rest of the night, but he could not reason out what had happened.
    First thing in the morning he delivered the boots to Lord Schofield’s valet, Piers, and spent the rest of his time scrubbing the laundry floor. He asked Fan, Bess, Clarence, and everyone else he encountered, about the polished boots. No one knew a thing about it.
    â€œYou did it in your sleep,” said Bess. “Clarence used to walk in his sleep something chronic.”
    Clarence just shook his head and went on