Chapter Text
You wake with a start to the slamming of a door and the remnants of a headache throbbing at the back of your skull. Twenty four hours ago if someone had told you that you would not only be travelling in luxury in the personal motor car of your new employer but have even had the nerve to fall asleep on the backseat of it, you would have never believed them. But that was before the long journey out to Reddington and by the time the car had pulled up to whisk you away to your new residence and vocation up at the Mount Holly Estate you had been so exhausted that your eyes had shut before the car door had even closed. It’s a shame, you think as you blink the sleep from your eyes, that you had missed the sights of the winding drive out of the shadow of the mountain but you suppose there will always be time to take them in on your days off.
You stumble out of the car and try not to gawp too blatantly at what you see as you step onto the driveway in front of the house. No, not house. House is far too small and normal a word to describe the building in front of you — to call it even a manor would be an understatement. A patchwork quilt made of brick, wood, and tile stretches out before your eyes, room after room that seems to have been stitched together at random. Towers stand above greenhouses which lie next to patios under balconies. You wonder if it will look the same tomorrow, or if the exterior will change to match the shifting inner rooms. At least, that’s what you’ve read — that the interior’s layout is shockingly impermanent. This will be your first time experiencing a ‘drafted’ house.
You walk up the steps to find that the entrance hall at least is exactly where you expect it to be. There’s no one to greet you and all the other doors are shut; the only sign that your arrival is in any way expected is an envelope laying on the table in the centre of the room bearing your name in a neat cursive. You glance back out of the front door only to find that the car and driver have disappeared into the sprawling estate grounds. Left almost directionless and entirely alone there is little else for you to do but open the envelope and read the letter within.
Sorry to throw you in at the deep end, but I’ve found the best way to get the hang of drafting is to go in blind and experience it firsthand.
So the first task of your new job is:
Come find me.
Attached is a small collection of floor plans that are available for you to draft today. They are as follows:
- Security
- Maid’s Chamber
- Coat Check
- Master Bedroom
- Drawing Room
- Rumpus Room
- Garage
- Terrace
- Secret Passage
- Library
- Her Ladyship’s Chamber
- West Wing Hall
- Observatory
- Servant’s Quarters
- Boudoir
- Casino
- Den
- Secret Garden
Don’t worry too much about how exactly drafting a room works, if you’re really interested I’m sure Mrs Babbage would be happy to give you a technical overview of the process tomorrow. For now just try one of the doors and see where it takes you — it can be a surprisingly intuitive process!
- Simon Jones
P.S. I’ve been experimenting with altering some of the plans for the rooms in the house. They no longer require any keys or gems and every room should now have just the one entrance and exit, which will be perfect for you to begin to get the hang of moving through Mount Holly without having to backtrack halfway across the manor. These changes are quite new so if something has gone wrong and you find yourself in a dead end please just stay put and someone will come get you!
The letter raises more questions than it answers. A locked door requiring a key seems a reasonable enough concept but the reference to gems is more confusing. Will you be expected to carry a bunch of emeralds with you as you sweep the floorboards? How exactly do you even open a door with a ruby? Does that requirement have anything to do with drafting or is it just an unrelated idiosyncrasy of the manor?
Intriguing though those questions may be they can wait for another day; for now, you have your assignment. You take the handful of tiny architectural plans that came with the letter and flick through them — they are a mix of the mundane and absurd — then step up to the central door of the foyer.
As you touch the door handle your mind floods with possibilities as to what could be on the other side: bedrooms, hallways, offices, and more. Some are easy to discount, they simply feel wrong, and you move the corresponding plan to the back of the pile. Your thoughts swim and you try to focus on the room at the top of Simon’s list — the security room — but the harder you struggle to hold it in your mind and materialise it on the other side of the door the more it slips away, like loose grains of sand though a tightening fist. In the end the only thing you can concentrate on is your job, the thing that brought you here. With that fixed firmly in your mind’s eye you grip the handle and open the door into the: