Atlas and Alice, Issue 16
Joseph Darlington
Ratcatcher When they found the rat, Ula screamed. In fact, she wouldn’t stop screaming until the ratcatcher arrived. The girls giggled behind their hands. Anything that wound up the Puritan made them laugh. They all worked in the house of Pan and Pani Krolig, rich merchants in the port of Gdansk. Ula, the housekeeper, had been hired by Pani Krolig on a trip to Helsinki and, on a normal day, would run the girls beneath her ragged. “Work work work!” she would say, jabbing a finger at piles of dirty laundry or unpolished candlesticks. Nothing fazed Ula. Nothing but rats. “Call for the ratcatcher!” she cried between screams. “Get Alexi! Get Alexi right now!” The girls giggled again. They turned to the second oldest of them, Alicja, who was chipping potatoes for the pizie. Alicja was studiously ignoring them. Her fingers were pink from the cold and the scalding water. Her cheeks were turning a deep red. “Why don’t you go and fetch Alexi, Alicja?” one of the girls said, grinning. “Oh yes!” said another, clapping her hands together and jumping on the spot. “She should! She should!” “I love how their names both begin with ‘A’,” said a smaller girl in the back sorting coals. “Yes,” said her friend, throwing a coal into the scuttle, “just like Adam and Eve!” The first girl rubbed her soot-blackened hand over the second’s cheeks. “Eve begins with an ‘E’ you idiot!” “I’m afraid I’m busy,” Alicja said, quietly. “There are still a lot of potatoes that need peeling and chipping. I don’t have time to fetch… the ratcatcher. Not if Pan and Pani Krolig are to feed their guests tonight.” 73
