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Blood dripped down onto the carpeted entrance.
Sybbie, who was currently sobbing, clutched onto her father’s coat as he carried her from the gravelled drive, through the entrance, then the Great Hall, and to the door that led downstairs. Her knee hurt badly–all bloody and scratched up–and she knew that her father was taking her to see Mister Barrow.
True, the pair visited the butler often, for a variety of reasons, but today’s meeting would not end in a picnic or tea party. Instead, her father said they were going to see Mister Barrow about her knee.
It had happened suddenly. Her father had let her ride around with him earlier, and once back, she asked if he wouldn’t help lift her out, that she could get out on her own.
She had tripped, however, and fallen onto the gravel, scraping her knee in the process. As she began to wail, her father rushed to her aide, scooping her up into his arms as he whispered to her, “Everything is going to be alright, darling.”
Although Sybbie was six, and very much a big girl now ( don’t even start, George! ), she stuck her thumb in her mouth. With her free hand, she gripped her father’s coat tight, wanting him close. Her father stroked her hair, which felt nice and comforting, but the scrape on her knee stung, distracting her.
“Daddy it hurts!” she wailed.
“I know, darling, I know,” her father said, wiping away the tears that streamed down her face with his thumb. “Thomas will know what to do.”
“Mister Barrow?”
“He used to be a medic like Mummy, my love,” her father explained. “He’ll fix you up, right as rain, and make it all better again.”
Sybbie nodded. She trusted Mister Barrow, who had always been nice to her. And both him and her father always regaled her with brilliant stories about her mother, which meant if Mister Barrow was like her, then he must really be good.
Often, Mister Barrow would let Sybbie brush his hair in the evenings as he sat on the floor in her father’s bedchamber, her father busy at his desk. He said she did hair better than him and it made her blush.
Sometimes, when the nanny had a particularly hard time with George, who liked to bite, Sybbie would go hang out in Mister Barrow’s pantry downstairs. He allowed her to scribble out drawings with his favorite (his words exactly) pen.
She bragged to George about it and said Mister Barrow liked her best. George had pouted an entire week long and then cried to Mister Barrow until he let George ride on his back for an hour straight.
When her father pushed open the door to Mister Barrow’s pantry, the butler was seated at the desk pouring over a calendar listed with what seemed over a hundred dates. He looked up at the visitors and sprang out of his chair.
“What the hell happened?” he asked, dread set deep in his voice.
“Mind your language,” her father replied and Sybbie, who had decided she needed to be brave, said, “I fell getting out of daddy’s car.”
Mister Barrow’s eyes widened and he glared at her father. “ What .”
“I’m a big girl,” Sybbie said as she tried to hold back tears. They relented and kept coming, though her sobs had lessened some since her initial fall. “I wanted to get out without daddy’s help.”
“Next time let your father help you,” Mister Barrow said. “I don’t think you’re ready for jumping out of cars yet.”
Sybbie gaped at the thought of leaping out of a car, both mesmerised and terrified by it. She wondered if her father and Mister Barrow jumped out of cars, though she’d never seen them do it.
Her father set her down on the extra chair in the pantry, crouching down on his haunches beside her. Sybbie watched as Mister Barrow rooted around for his medical kit, biting down on her lip. The blood from her wound was dripping down her leg, she could feel it, but the thought of looking at it made her ill.
“Will it hurt more?” Sybbie asked.
“It might sting when I clean it,” Mister Barrow said. “You should hold your fathers hand. Then the two of you will share the sting and it won’t hurt so much.”
Sybbie frowned. “Won’t that hurt you, too, daddy?”
“I’m tough,” he said. “I can handle it and so can you.”
Mister Barrow had found his medical kit and brought it over, sitting on his knees in front of Sybbie. He lifted up her injured leg and propped it against his thigh and said, “Hold on tight, young lady.”
Closing her eyes, Sybbie grabbed her father’s hand and held on tight. She gasped and whined when a wet cloth ran across her wound, stinging just like Mister Barrow had said it would.
“It’s alright, my love,” her father whispered into her hair. His thumb stroked across the knuckles on her hand, and she felt a tear trickle down her cheek.
“It hurts,” she moaned.
“I’m almost done cleaning off the blood, Miss Sybbie,” Mister Barrow said. His voice sounded clinical, concerned. “Then I’ll put on some healing ointment and bandage you up.”
“Like an Egyptian mummy?” Sybbie asked. She had since opened her eyes.
“No,” Mister Barrow said. He had a way of saying things as they were. Sybbie liked that the butler didn’t shield her from things: her father certainly did. “Because you’ll recover. You won’t have to wear the bandages forever.”
A cool, gel-like substance was rubbed onto her knee. It didn’t sting as much, and took much of the pain away almost instantly. Sybbie looked up at her father who smiled down at her gently.
“See,” he said. “Almost done. Your Mr. Barrow is a miracle worker.”
“Just fixing the young lady up since her father neglected his caretaking duties,” Mister Barrow corrected as he began to dress Sybbie’s wound up with the white bandages. The young girl watched in awe as he worked.
When he finished, Mister Barrow clicked his medical kit shut and stood, setting the kit on his desk before turning back to face Sybbie. He patted her on the head gently and said, “If it hurts a lot or starts to look worse, I want you to tell me, Miss Sybbie.”
“Okay,” she agreed. Mister Barrow seemed like magic the way he made her feel better.
The butler turned to her father. “You should keep your eye on her, Tom,” he said. “What were you thinking? Did you forget to turn the car off? Was it still in motion?”
“No, no, she only wanted to show she could get out on her own.”
“She’s too young for that,” Mister Barrow said. “Are you driving her around? You know you can be rather reckless on the road sometimes no matter how much I warn you off it.”
“I kept her safe, I drove slow,” her father replied. “I would never risk that! We stayed on the property.”
Mister Barrow worried at his bottom lip. He looked nervous, Sybbie noted.
“It’s just…” he trailed off.
“I know, but she’s alright,” her father said. “I brought her straight to you without delay. I trust you, she trusts you.”
“Yes, yes,” and Mister Barrow paused for a long second. “I worry. After Sybil and Mr. Crawley and everything… it’s hard not to.”
Her father reached out and placed a hand on Mister Barrow’s shoulder, thumb rubbing up against the skin of his neck that showed just above his collar. They touched a lot, more than Donk and Granny did, and just as much as the nice lady, Anna, and her husband, Mr. Bates.
“Thomas, I wanted to ask you…” her father trailed off.
“Yes?”
“I know that Kieran has been named Sybbie’s god-father, but I’d like her to have another.” She and her father had discussed this recently: whether she wanted to have Mister Barrow in her life as a father figure. He already kind of was, she thought, and so she’d told her father, “Yes.”
“Who?” Mister Barrow asked. “Got Mr. Talbot lined up? A cousin?”
Her father seemed annoyed, but not terribly so–like Mister Barrow had made a joke and it didn’t land. “You, Thomas,” he said.
“What?” Mister Barrow looked gob-smacked.
“You’re closer than Kieran is,” her father continued. “If anything should happen to me, I want her to be safe and in good hands. Like I said: I trust you, she trusts you. You’re already like a second father to her.”
“But this is…”
“This is right .”
Sybbie agreed with her father. She loved Mister Barrow terribly, and she had the inkling that her father did, too. “Please, promise me that you’d take care of her. This is the closest we’ll have to… oh, you know.”
Mister Barrow nodded. Sybbie didn’t know, though, and she frowned. Closest to what ? she thought, and let the question wander: Mister Barrow knew how to be secretive, and her father could keep things close to his chest when he wanted.
“If Miss Sybbie is alright with it?” he asked the young girl. She shot him a toothy grin and exclaimed, “Yes! Daddy and I already talked about it.”
Mister Barrow seemed impressed, which satisfied Sybbie. “Yes, alright,” he said. “I promise to take care of her should anything befall you, but it won’t. You’re not slipping away that easily, you bastard.”
“Language,” her father repeated with a grin.
And when her father carried her back upstairs and to the nursery–he said she could move into a big girl bedroom when she was eight–Sybbie’s wound didn’t hurt as bad as earlier, and her heart was full.
Mister Barrow as her god-father, she thought. George would be awfully jealous.