Maurice balanced the plates along his arm, their lips interlocking in the crook of his elbow. He then began to stack the teacups on the plates, the gravy boat, the butter dish. He took the Duchesses silver in his left hand. He reached down the table with two fingers to take Abdul Walli Wud's silver.
He backed away from the table and walked across the purple carpet, beneath the spinning candelabras, and entered the kitchen.
Wud had not touched his food, Maurice noted with disgust. This heathen. This savage dressed in linen who had no appreciation for the hospitality of the duchess...
Maurice stopped himself from going down that dark mental rabbit hole that descended into bile and anger and invariably ended with bloody knuckles and a rumpled cummerbund.
He set down the dishes and considered speaking to Chef Chuck, but thought better of it. The rotund chef stood over the stove, tasting soups, holding the spoon with his pinky out, and generally acting like a stereotype.
Maurice didn't feel like opening that door.
He sighed, and stood there in the kitchen, stealing a moments contemplation before he returned to the dining room.
Maurice was eternally grateful to the noble family of Downton Abbey for allowing him a place in their household, and allowing him to ascend from lowly assistant chauffeur to footman to valet and finally to butler. It was a huge transformation for the man who spent his adolescence on the wrong side of the law, on the other side of the world.
Maurice spent his youth as the most dangerous and reviled outlaw the Australian outback would ever know. At 9 years old he killed his first man, immediately followed by the man's entire family. There was a savagery to his attacks that set the entire country on edge.
Maurice had been born the son of convicts. His father was a rapist and his mother had been a flim flam artist, robbing rich men blind with her looks and charm.
They were bad parents though. They had no delusions about their abilities however, and as a baby they sold Maurice to an aboriginal tribe. The tribes shaman took the boy in, and locked him in the Cave of Dreams. Maurice spent the next 7 years in the cave, immersed in that mystical transcendent ether the natives called the Dreaming. He communed with gods and monsters before he developed a spark of humanity, and when he emerged as a child of seven years, he had no relation to his fellow man, and no concept of good or evil. He was a force for action, and the shaman quickly sent him out to destroy the white settlers, and restore the natural balance of the sand.
Maurice recalled all of this with a cold hard look. He had set out across the desert where he was taken in by the rancher and his family. He witnessed the slaughter that occurred on the farm, and when the rancher attempted to extract payment for room and board, late at night and through bodily means, Maurice had no qualms about beginning his ten year journey of destruction and bloodshed in the name of natural order.
That all drew to a close in the Red mountains that day long ago, when Elizabeth had sacrificed herself for him, and that black deep nightmare had left her arcane mark on his soul...
Maurice shook his head. Memories of the tramp steamer, the port at Cornwall, and his circuitous route to Downton tumbled through his mind. Everything lost shape after Elizabeth.
Maurice was shaken out of his reverie when he felt a tug at his sleeve. He looked down with fury, ready to snap when he saw the young kitchen boy, Little Tommy Hanks, staring up at him.
"Mister Maurice! They are ready for dessert!"
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