Jay Lake - Green

Though Endurance had first taught me patience, Mistress Tirelle made that lesson my way of life. The slap of her sandals on the wooden floors took the place of the bell of Papa’s white ox. Her coarse, labored breathing was Endurance’s snorting to call me back, though now the danger was greatest at the center of my life.

The courtyard outside grew ever colder as my first northern winter arrived. Grim rains would set in that lasted for days. I was miserable with the chill. Mistress Tirelle swaddled herself in more wool than ever, but did not bother to offer me anything to put over my shift. I cured my pomegranate seeds in the small warming pot allowed me for the nights, and stole wisps of thread for my silk.

Soon, I would steal the whole cloth. I had only to find a way to distract Mistress Leonie.

She had brought a flat chest that opened from the top into a series of drawers like wooden wings spread ever wider. Cloth lay folded within-muslins, cottons, poplins, silks, woolens, and other fabrics-all of it heavy with the smell of camphor and the scent of the cedar wood from which the chest had been made. Some lengths were in colors that might have shamed a butterfly. Others were simple and somber.

“Each of these is as fine as you will discover in any market,” Mistress Leonie said.

I had never been in any market, but she was not interested in the tale of my short years.

“I have shown you how to tell the thread count. With practice, your eye will gauge the quality even from a distance. That is not everything there is to cloth, but it stands for much.” She turned a yard-long run of fine wool over in her hands. “I will bring a loom, for you should see how this is made.” That dangerous leer crept across her face, which spoke of a beating soon to come. “Tell me, Girl, what is the wool I hold?”

That question was a trick, for we had not yet discussed the kinds of wool. But I had overheard her talking to Mistress Tirelle of the materials, and so took a guess from the words I’d heard. “It is cashmere, Mistress.”

Her face fell. “You are clever. Mind how you use that knife between your ears.” Her pique already passed, Mistress Leonie called me close to feel the tight weave of the wool and discourse a short time on the husbanding of certain goats to be found in the Blue Mountains, whose very fur was as fine as all but the most costly thread.

With one hand behind me and out of her sight, I eased a length of silk from the box and let it fall to the floor. Mistress Leonie was with her goats in that moment, running her fingers up and down the length of cashmere, and she did not see.

I was content with that. She would surely see it, but without me trying to push the cloth beneath a chair or hide it somehow, its fall would be an accident of the cloth case and nothing more.

Her eyes were better than I had credited, though. When Mistress Leonie folded up the cashmere, she bade me stand beside the chest and went to call for Mistress Tirelle and the sand-filled tube.

An hour later, I was in the courtyard, shivering away the last of the day’s gray light beneath the pomegranate tree. The cold let me pretend I was not still shaking from the sobs. These people were wicked monsters. I would slay them all like a god before demons, then march home across the waters.

I knew better, though. Federo had taken me from my father with words, not a dandy’s dueling blade. I would take myself from these maggot women with words, not weapons.

The gate banged open, startling me. A mounted man swept in to ride at a trot across the Pomegranate Court. Federo, of course, appearing as if summoned by my thought of him.

He caught sight of me before reaching the building, and slid from his horse in a single motion.

“Girl.” A genuine warmth filled Federo’s voice, the first warmth I had found since coming to this place of stone and suffering. “How do you like it here?”

“Oh…” I was ready to spill my woe and fear. Then I glanced at the house. Mistress Tirelle stood in the shadows of the balcony. “The rain is cold, and the sun is too small in the sky.” That also was too much of a complaint, most likely.

“Silly thing.” He bent down and stroked my hair away from my cheek. “Wear a wrap, and you will be warm. This city is not so blessed by the sun.”

I had not been given a wrap, but I knew I could not say this where Mistress Tirelle might overhear.

He took my chin in his hands, tilted my head back and forth. He then looked at my bare arms and shoulder. My skin was still flushed and stinging from the beating, but there were no bruises. I realized in that moment the purpose of the sand-filled tube was precisely that: to discipline me without marring me.

“What have you learned?” he asked.

“I can cook spinach. And sew eleven different stitches.” I smiled; I could not help myself. “I know when to use the juice of lemons and when to use palm oil on a scratched table.”

“We will make a lady of you yet.” His grin was large, as if this imprisonment of mine were the best thing for everyone.

“What do you mean by ‘make a lady’?” I asked him. No one had yet told me my purpose here.

“In time, Girl, in time.” He ruffled my hair again. “I would speak to Mistress Tirelle once more. Mind my horse, if you please.”

I knew nothing of horses except that they were as tall as Endurance but with the mad eyes of birds in their long, slack faces. I decided to mind his horse from behind the pomegranate tree, in case the beast took a fit. A chill rain began to fall as I waited.

After a while Federo came back out with a troubled look. “You are more difficult than you should be, Girl,” he told me. “Your intelligence and your pride perhaps serve you too well. This is a game for the patient.”

“You are wrong, sir. This is no game.”

“No,” he said. “Perhaps it is not. Nonetheless we play.” He leaned close. “I will be back to check. You will tell me if things go awry.”

Things were all awry, had been since the day this man had dragged me away from Papa’s ox and my belled silk. That was not what he intended, and not what he wished to hear. “Yes,” I told him in the words of my birth.

He smiled and climbed back into his saddle. Mistress Tirelle waddled out and with very poor grace offered me a shabby wool cloak. “Here, Girl,” she said. “You might be cold.”

I stood in the growing icy rain and watched her march back into the shadows of the house. I wondered what words I might ever summon to break her down.

Mistress Leonie and I continued to sew clothes, but they did not seem to be for me to wear. Or for anyone else.

“You will never in your life lift a needle once you leave this place, Girl,” she told me as we pieced together the shoulder yoke of a blouson.

I nodded. That was sometimes safe. Of course, I was forbidden to answer, or question further. They were training me in all the arts of a lady, but I would be permitted to practice none of them.

There was little point to this that I could see. I had already resolved to be the best of them at everything they did. In service of that determination, I pushed my anger down.

Her next remark echoed my thoughts. “Do you know why this would be so?”

“Am… am I to answer that, Mistress Leonie?” My back itched in anticipation of the blows of the sand-filled tube.

“Yes. You may speak.”

“I am to understand these arts, without practicing them.”

“You are a little snip.” Despite her words, her voice was without rancor. “You will be called upon time and again to judge the worth of a thing, a deed, a place, or a person. Is this woman’s dress what a great lady of Copper Downs would wear, or an imitation crafted by mountebanks in pursuit of a daring theft? Is that room cleaned so well that a god might be received within and accorded due honors, or have the maids been lazy? What of that soup whose bay leaves were picked too green-will it poison your noble guests?”