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?”
“So I am to understand the arts in order to assess the work of others.”
“Precisely.” She smiled, her delight in me as her pupil overcoming the power she preferred to hold above me. “If you know a Ramsport stitch from a pennythreaded seam at a glance, you can tell much about the person who stands before you.”
“I might know if they had a good tailor, or only a swiftly made copy.”
“Again, you have the right of it. Now turn this sleeve over and show me what we have missewn. There is an error, I assure you.”
In the course of that work, which was one of the most pleasant days I had passed with Mistress Leonie, I was able to free some silk for my purposes.
It took me many nights of effort to find the best way to thread a pomegranate seed. Little meshes such as I had used aboard Fortune’s Flight with the metal scraps were no good. Instead I employed a stolen needle for a drill and cut my way through each pip. I then sewed it to my silk.
The cloth was nothing like a proper swath of bells from home. It made no noise except when I folded it on itself. Then the beads clattered with a wooden whisper. Still, they were there, nubbins beneath my fingers that resumed the twice-broken count of my days.
I found a place in the ceiling of my sleeping room where beams met the wall. There I stored my silk, my seeds, and my little sewing kit. Nothing else here at the Pomegranate Court belonged to me, not even my own body. This was mine.
While I was plotting at my past, winter settled in outside with a blanket of frozen misery covering the stones and the ghostly branches of the pomegranate tree. I spent the cold nights abed as I clutched my silk close and ran my fingers over the pomegranate seeds. I hoarded enough of them to account for every day of my life, or as close as I could reckon. They were not bells, but their shapes beneath my fingertips reminded me of who I truly was, beyond the arts required of a lady of Copper Downs.