“Er, yes, it is. ” I straightened my skirt to display more of the hem, now rather dusty, that I had also embroidered. “And these. ” I pulled open my bundle and showed her the woven sashes and embroidered kerchiefs. She grunted and nodded.
“Think you can help her find some work?” The prince smiled cheerfully at her. “I would hate to have her carted off by the guards for breaking curfew again. ” He winked at me cheekily and I pulled a face, forgetting for the moment that he was a prince, and treating him as I would my brother, Hagen. Then I remembered my place and looked away, cheeks hot.
“There are places,” the woman said, nodding her head. “I will take her tomorrow. ” Her tone was neither encouraging nor discouraging, merely neutral.
“Excellent!” The prince put down his mug with a bang, then looked sheepish when his former nanny frowned at him. “Well, Tobin and I need to get back to the palace, or Father will be sending out the army to find us. ”
I wondered what it would be like to call a man “Father” when everyone else called him “Your Majesty”. And to know that if you went missing, he would and could send an army to look for you.
“Yes, Luka, it is late,” his nanny said in a voice that was almost fond. “You need more sleep. ”
I heard his given name with a start. I hadn’t even known the name of a prince of my own land! Carlieff Town really was far out in the country. I knew that King Caxel and Queen Temia had had two sons and a daughter, and that the queen and the young princess had died during an outbreak of blue fever ten years ago. But beyond that I knew only that the crown prince was named Milun and would one day be Milun the Fourth. And here I was, being rescued from breaking the curfew and given food and lodging by a kind prince whose name I had never bothered to learn! I shook my head, trying to clear it of all this strangeness.
“Is something wrong?” Luka got to his feet and stretched, smiling down at me.
“Not at all, Your Highness. ” I hopped to my feet as well, and curtsied. “I still don’t know why you’re doing this for me, but I want you to know that I am truly, truly grateful. ”
Now Luka blushed. “It was my pleasure, maidy. Ulfrid would have my hide if she found out that I had seen a fair maiden in need of aid and failed to render it. ” He shot a playful look at his former nanny. “Or even an ugly maiden,” he added.
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Ulfrid, with long, skilled fingers, twirled a bar cloth into a rope with one quick snap and then whipped the prince’s shoulder with it.
“Ouch!” He rubbed his upper arm. “That hurt!”
“Begone with you, begone with you both,” she said, threatening her mute brother with the towel as well. “The girl needs rest, and so do I. ”
Prince Luka and his bodyguard fled, laughing, while I sank back on to a stool, exhausted. When she had barred the door behind them, Ulfrid returned and surveyed me with bright blue eyes like her brother’s.
“You can have a room at the top of the house, on the left. ” And she turned away to gather up the teapot and cups.
I trudged upstairs and collapsed on to the bed. Just before I fell asleep I thought to wriggle out of my gown and lay it across the room’s one chair, to prevent it from being too crumpled in the morning. Then I laid myself down again and was instantly deeply asleep.
Scarlet Ribbons
The next morning I was too nervous to eat breakfast, even though all I’d had the day before was a couple of peaches I’d brought with me from Shardas’s cave and a sausage roll. Instead I washed as thoroughly as possible in the basin in my room, combed and recombed my yellow hair and braided it neatly. Ulfrid loaned me a clothes brush, which I used to make my gown as presentable as I could. It was countrified, and not new, but it had been laundered just two days ago in Shardas’s bathing pool, and the embroidery showed off my neat stitches.
By mid-morning I was as ready as I thought I would ever be, and Ulfrid agreed in her laconic way. She gave curt orders to the staff, took off her apron, straightened her own gown, and off we went.
Two streets over we encountered a booth selling some badly dyed wool. A girl peddling ribbons from a tray was strolling up and down in front of the booth, as were a number of women with shopping baskets on their arms or overburdened servants trailing behind. It wasn’t far from Ulfrid’s inn, but from where I had met the prince last night it was a confusing walk through a tangle of side streets. For the tenth time, I sent up a prayer of thanksgiving to the Triunity for sending Prince Luka to take me under his wing.
Ulfrid marched past the booth and the ribbon seller, and even past the first few shops. I didn’t know what she had in mind for me, but her stride was so long and purposeful, it was all I could do to keep up.
“But what about that one?” I finally gasped, touching her elbow as she marched past yet another shop displaying a rack of finely woven sashes in the window.
“Common,” grunted Ulfrid, and strode on.
At last, nearly a mile from the inn, she stopped. We were standing in front of a tall and very imposing dress shop. It had a large bay window, but there was nothing displayed in it, unless you counted the beautifully made curtains drawn across the gleaming panes of glass.
The women going in and out were testimony enough to the type of shop this was: they had bodyguards walking before and footmen scurrying after. Maids carried small dogs on cushions, and young boys in livery held sun-canopies over their mistresses’ heads the moment they stepped into the open air.
My jaw dropped. Was Ulfrid mad? Did her foreign upbringing differ so much from mine that she actually thought a shop like this would hire a nobody from the country? It would be much easier to convince a smaller shop that I was a master, but a place like this? Impossible! I slumped in despair. Ulfrid threw her shoulders back and glared at me until I straightened. Then she took my bundle of handkerchiefs and sashes from my arms and stepped into the shop without looking back to make sure that I followed.
Startled, I followed.
The room was furnished with cushioned chairs and little tables laid with snowy cloths. Pretty maids in embroidered aprons rushed to and fro, supplying the customers with refreshments, while other girls in pink dresses with scarlet sashes hurried about with armloads of silks and satins. Ulfrid walked through the maze of delicate chairs and gossiping customers without looking right or left. My face flamed as all conversation stopped and the finely dressed ladies and their daughters paused to stare at us. Nevertheless, I put my chin up and strolled behind Ulfrid as though I did this every day.
At the back of the shop there was a long counter of highly polished wood. Beyond it was a pair of doors that must have led into the backroom and the kitchens. Maids went into one with empty trays and came back laden with delicate cakes and pots of steaming tea or chilled bottles of wine, and the pink-gowned shopgirls went through the other to re-emerge weighed down by bolts of cloth or large wooden spools of thread.
Presiding over it all from a position behind the counter was a stout woman in deep blue silk with a wide pink sash. When we reached the counter I saw that, like the princess the day before and most of the women in the shop today, she wore layers of skirts that had been kilted up to display the fine embroidery along the hem of each garment. With a critical eye I inspected the work, and had to admit that it was quite fine. I also thought that the style and technique bore a strong resemblance to that decorating Princess Amalia’s gown, and wondered with trepidation if she had her dresses made here.
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“Ah, dear Mistress Ulfrid, what have you brought me?” The proprietress had bright black eyes and fat little hands that she clapped in delight at seeing Ulfrid. “More samples of that foreign embroidery?”
Without saying a word, Ulfrid laid my bundle on the counter and spread out its contents. She lined up the sashes and smoothed out the handkerchiefs and the two squares of linen I had used as samplers. The customers wai
ting at the counter leaned in closer to have a look.
The proprietress eyed my stitches beadily. She fingered the sashes, and lifted the two samplers up to study the stitches more carefully.
“It’s amateur work,” she declared with a sniff, casting down the handkerchief she had inspected last. “Crude cloth, crude threads, old-fashioned techniques. But the pattern is certainly unusual, and she has a good eye for colour and form. ”
I bristled at this dismissal of my work. “I have embroidered for the Lady of Carlieff Town,” I said in a tight voice. “My stitches were skilled enough for her. ” That was not entirely true: my mother had had me copy exactly the work she had done for the lady, but had not let me work on the actual gown. Still, how would this woman ever find out the truth?
“Of course they were,” the stout woman fired back. “She’s the Lady of Carlieff Town. Things are different in the King’s Seat!” She raked me up and down with her fierce eyes. “And mind your tongue, girl. ”
“It was for the patterns that I brought her,” Ulfrid said placidly, as though my outburst had never happened. “I’ve never seen this style of embroidery before. And this knotwork is exceptional. ” She lifted one of the sashes and showed the proprietress.
“Where did you copy these patterns from? Who was your mistress?” The proprietress’s voice lashed at me.
“My mother taught me to embroider and weave,” I said, only just managing to keep the snap out of my own voice. I wasn’t only irritated with her, I was irritated with myself for thinking that it would be easy to find work with my poor samples. “I had no other mistress,” I confessed, not very humbly. “But the patterns are my own. ”
“I see. ” The woman looked me over again, and then looked back at my work. Her brows were drawn together as though to say she didn’t quite believe me. “I’ll take her on,” she told Ulfrid after long consideration. “If she can keep a civil tongue in her head. ”
I opened my mouth to make some biting retort, but then realised that I had just been offered work. “Thank you,” I said meekly.
Neither of the older women looked at me.
“She has only a small bundle of things, other than this,” Ulfrid announced. “I will send the potboy with them this afternoon. ”
“Very well. Would you care for some wine? Cakes?” The proprietress made a gesture at the door to the kitchens. “I wouldn’t mind sitting down for a bit in my private parlour. ”
“Thank you, Derda, but I must go back to my inn. ” Ulfrid grimaced. “That new serving wench spends far too much time making eyes at the soldiers and not enough time scouring mugs. ”
And with that, Ulfrid turned and stalked out, once more ignoring the sneering looks of the patrons. I called a feeble thanks after her, but she didn’t acknowledge it in any way I could detect.
“Come along, girl,” Derda said, gathering up my samples and sashes with a quick movement. “You cannot work in the shop until you’ve made yourself a proper shopgown. ”
“I will begin work on it immediately,” I told her. I didn’t much care for the way she and Ulfrid had ignored me and talked so condescendingly about my skills, but she was my employer, and it wouldn’t do to get myself fired before I’d even earned any pay.
Derda snorted. “There you go again, talking when you’re not wanted to talk. You’ll work in the backroom until closing time; your old gown is good enough for that. Then there’s the cleaning. And then you’ll start sewing yourself a pink gown, like Marta’s here. ” She pointed at a pretty girl with strawberry blonde hair who was whirling by with a bolt of lavender satin. Marta gave me a saucy wink, and I felt a bitter surge of jealousy for her perfect curls and neat city-style gown.
“How much will my wages be?” I dared to ask as I was stepping through the door into the large backroom where the bolts of cloth and spools of thread and ribbon were kept.
Derda gave me a calculating look. “You’ll be paid a silver every two weeks. But it will cost you two silvers for the cloth to make your shopgown. And another silver for the proper underthings and a sash. ”
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My jaw dropped as I quickly did the figures in my head. I would have to work here for six weeks until I was finally paid? And, though two silvers would have been a respectable sum in Carlieff Town, I’d heard hawkers calling out prices for things in the street and knew that, in the King’s Seat, that sum a month would buy precious little.
“Additionally, you will room and board in the dormitory at the top of the shop,” Derda went on. “I charge only a copper a week for that, and expect my girls to keep the shop and their living quarters tidy. There will be no gentlemen callers of any kind. ”
I could only stare at her. How did her girls make any money at all? It was ten coppers to a silver, and she charged them four coppers a month to live above the shop.
“Stop gawking that way, country girl,” Derda said gruffly. “If you don’t like my terms you’re welcome to try to find work elsewhere. I think you’ll find that I’m more than kind to my girls, at least compared to some.
“Now I’ve customers to attend to. Larkin will show you what to do. ” And she pushed back through the doors and into the front room of the shop.
The back room was at least two stories high and the walls were lined with shelves. There were more ranks of shelves to each side of a long table running down the middle, scarred by sewing shears. Here and there a footstool or ladder allowed access to the highest shelves.
“Um, Larkin?” I looked around, but couldn’t see anyone else. I put my bundle on the edge of the table. I raised my voice: “Larkin?”
What appeared to be a moving pile of cloth came lurching towards me, and I took a step backwards. A good half-dozen bolts of fabric tumbled on to the table, revealing a rather plain girl with brown hair in two braids and wide grey eyes.
“I’m Larkin,” she said, limping around the table to take my hand in her own. “Are you new? Welcome. ”
“Yes, I’m Creel,” I replied. “I’m supposed to help you back here until I can get my shopgown made. ”
“Of course,” she said simply. “You’re so pretty; I assumed that she would have you work in the front. ”
“Oh, I’m not pretty,” I protested. “You have much better skin; I’m covered in freckles. ”
“No one wants to be waited on by a cripple,” Larkin said in her mild voice.
I realised with a pang that her limp was not from a recent injury. As she moved away from me to sort through the bolts on the table, her skirts swept around her legs, revealing an ankle that was twisted in a way that made her lurch from side to side. I fought the urge to tell her I was sorry; after all, it wasn’t my fault, and an apology would only sound hollow, so instead I put my bundle on a half-empty shelf and wordlessly began helping her lay out the bolts.
Larkin quietly showed me how measuring marks had been burned into the edge of the table on both sides, and told me how much was wanted from each bolt. I took up a pair of heavy shears from the basket dangling from a hook on the wall to cut lengths of cherry-red silk. I hesitated at first, though. I had never seen such fine silk, and it was almost frightening to think about cutting it. What if I cut it the wrong length? What if my hands, calloused from farm work, snagged the fabric?
“Do you need help?” Larkin looked at me with a crease between her brows.
“Oh, no. Sorry. ” Taking a deep breath, I began to cut. The rip-rip sound of the shears biting into the silk was exciting as well as scary, and when I was done I held up the length with a triumphant expression. Perfect!
“Larkin, have you got the cherry and the powder blue done yet?” Marta, the pretty strawberry blonde came bustling through the swinging door. “Oh, hello!” She waved a hand at me. “I’m Marta, are you the new girl?”
“Yes, I’m Creel,” I told her, wary. Pretty girls like her always made me nervous, and Derda’s attention made me suspect that
this one was a favourite of hers.
“I guess you’ll be stuck back here with Larkin until you can make your pink gown,” she burbled. There was a looking glass hanging from one of the shelves, and she turned to it to rearrange her curls. “I couldn’t make mine fast enough. ”
I frowned at her back, thinking that it was extremely rude of her to talk this way, and right in front of Larkin, too! “Well, I am very good with a needle,” I said.
“You would have to be. ” Marta laughed. “Derda only hires the best. Not that she lets any of us do anything interesting. I don’t know why she bothers to inspect our handiwork so closely. I’ve done nothing but hem underskirts since I got here last summer. ” She yawned. “Larkin, are you finished or not?”
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I folded the cherry-red silk loosely, all but throwing it at Marta. “Here! I did the cherry. ”
“Oh, thank you,” Marta said, sounding confused at my unfriendly tone. She refolded the fabric into a neater square. Larkin handed her an equally tidy parcel of powder blue.
“I’m just glad we talked Lady Catta out of having these two silks on the same gown,” Marta said, wrinkling her nose. “When she first came in, she wanted layers of these sewn together … ugh. But now she just wants two skirts to wear separately. ” And she bustled back out again.
I looked at Larkin, wanting to say something kind, something reassuring, but I couldn’t think of anything. Instead, I just helped her put away the bolts we had finished with, and cut more lengths from the others. Marta continued to flash in and out, collecting swatches and bolts and cut lengths, and so did another girl named Alle, who seemed nice, if rather frivolous.
I had been cutting away with Larkin in companionable silence for about an hour when a horribly familiar voice came knifing through the door as Marta swung it open. Two spots of angry colour were burning on her pale cheeks.
“I want scarlet ribbons for this gown!” the voice from the shop shrieked.
“Gah!” Marta shuddered. “I don’t care if she is a princess – gah!”
“What seems to be the problem?” Larkin put down her shears and looked up at Marta in her mild way. “The Princess Amalia is one of our best patronesses,” she chided the other girl. “You are fortunate to be waiting upon royalty. ”