"And what will I wear to the ball?" she asked as innocently as she could manage.
"Wear?" cried Augusta. "You? You won't have time to make yourself a dress; you'll have to wear something of Delilah's!" She turned on her heel and left the hall, Druscilla directly behind her and Delilah behind her. Thursey began to fold the yards and yards of silk and put them in the chests.
"TRY them on," said Delilah, flinging down half a dozen worn gowns before Thursey. Thursey had been fitting the red satin dress to Delilah and the cloth of gold dress to Druscilla. (Sewing for the two of them was like making a sword sheath and a mattress cover, but with more difficulties.)
Thursey tried on the dresses one by one, while Druscilla and Delilah and Augusta sat about on the beds and made comments.
Delilah's clothes were like tents on Thursey, tents equipped with ruffles. The shoulders drooped down to her elbows, and the bodices draped in lumpy layers down her front. "You could take that one in a little and it would be quite charming," said Augusta of a bile green creation. "The color is very good." It was a terrible color. It made the shadows under Thursey's eyes (she had sewn all night) go purple.
Druscilla and Delilah agreed that it was the very dress. "It makes you look quite sophisticated," said Druscilla.
"The men always gazed at me in that dress," Delilah said.
When Thursey looked at herself in the mirror, the reflection made her gag.
"The very thing," said Augusta with finality and sent Thursey off to get on with her sewing.
Thursey flung the bile green dress into the broom cupboard and began to sew the hem of the black silk, jabbing and jabbing her needle as if she were jabbing it into her stepmother. But soon enough her temper cooled, for Anwin came to sit in the kitchen, and she made tea for them and cut a little cake. "The roof's all thatched," said Anwin. "How is the sewing coming?"
"I worked all night," said Thursey bitterly. "It's not much fun to sew for those three."
"Like the silk purse and the sow's ear," observed Anwin. "And have you begun a ball gown for yourself, child?"
"You should see what they gave me to wear!" She opened the broom closet and held the bile green dress up to herself.
"Oh my," said Anwin. He studied it a long time. "Oh, how very dreadful." Then he began to laugh. Soon they were both laughing.
"But what will you wear?" he asked finally, pouring out more tea.
"I don't know, Anwin. Gillie said—he said he would bring magic to make a dress, but I —"
"If he said it," Anwin interrupted, "then surely he will do it, child."
But Thursey didn't know how he could. And the thought of the ball, and of the bile green dress, and Gillie's impossible promise of magic quite saddened her somehow. Late at night when her eyes were red from sewing, she crawled into bed and, instead of falling asleep at once, took out the painted books.
Their colors, and the hope in the stories, lifted her spirit, and she sat reading for a long time by candlelight, until she fell asleep at last with the books scattered on the quilt and the candle burnt to nothing.
IT was a week later, and very early in the morning that she woke to a light tapping on the back door. "Who is it?" Thursey whispered, having come awake at once.
"It's Gillie. May I come in?"
She arose quickly and opened the door to see dawn streaking the dark sky and Gillie carrying a package.
"What is it?" she asked, taking the outthrust bundle.
"Can I come in?"
She backed away to let him in and blushed faintly, because in the dream from which she had just awakened he had been kissing her. "I'll make some tea," she whispered, stirring up the ashes and putting on some wood. "But what is in the package?" She began to slice the bread.
"Come and open it."
The wrapping was of purest linen tied with silver cord. When she had untied the cord and folded the wrapping back, she could not believe what shone up at her.
It was silver cloth embroidered with flowers in shades of blue and red and the petals and stems of gold. It was like a spring day, that cloth, like the sun on a delicate garden.
Thursey held it up, and Gillie looked at her with admiration, then brought the mirror.
"Oh Gillie!"
The bits of turquoise and azure in the flowers caught the color of her eyes and made them bluer. (If they could be any bluer, thought Gillie.) And the flowers of tangerine and rose, the silver and gold, glowed richly. "Oh Gillie! Wherever did you get it? What kind of magic could you have used? You haven't stolen it from the palace?"
"I haven't stolen it," he said. "But do you like it?"
"It's the most beautiful thing I ever saw. I'll be afraid to touch it with the scissors."
"You will make a lovely dress of it. You'll be the sensation of the ball." And then he took her hand and kissed her gently.
Thursey cut the beautiful cloth late at night, laying it out on the kitchen table. She trembled with fear that she would ruin it or that her stepmother would come in. But before she ever laid scissors to it she made herself a model, cut out of the rough cotton from which she made her underclothes and nightgowns, and stitched hastily to see that the fit would be right. Only then did she begin on Gillie's gift. And as she sewed, she paused again and again to hold a bit of the cloth up to herself before the looking glass. She sewed by candlelight each night until dawn began to come, then she would fold the dress carefully and lay it under her mattress.
And in the daytime she worked on the other three dresses. Though, like a canny fox, she took her time over the sisters' gowns, for she knew very well that if she finished too soon, they would find something else to prevent her from working on a dress of her own. (The chests in the hall had been mysteriously locked after the sisters had chosen their fabric.) How they must have snickered at the thought of Thursey trying to alter Delilah's bile green satin.
"I HEARD," Druscilla said, "from a carter who heard it from a page in the palace, that the Sword of Balkskak will lie on display in the great hall the night of the ball."
"What for? Why would they put a sword in the ballroom!" Her stepmother scoffed.
"Because it saved the prince! Because it's a symbol of the prince's safety and return home," she said in a manner that implied she knew more than anyone, including Augusta.
"You'd better watch your tongue—" Augusta began.
"Oh, how romantic," Delilah interrupted. "The very sword, there in the ballroom for all of us to see and touch, just as we'll see the prince. I heard," she whispered conspiratorially, "that maybe they've found the man who wielded it. ..."
At once Augusta's expression turned scheming. "If the prince is too pale and weak to wed one of you, perhaps such a man ..."
"Would make a good husband," Druscilla finished. "Oh yes, I could love such a man as that . . ."
Sickened at the three of them, Thursey turned away to finish laying the tables. She tried to hide a yawn, but sharp-eyed Druscilla saw her. "What are you yawning for? You look quite done for sleep—look at her! What are you doing at night that you don't get your sleep, not praying, surely! Slipping out with that dirty herdboy, likely."
"Sewing!" Thursey said defiantly. Well, she had been sewing, but on her own gown in the wee hours. "Your gowns take a long time, with my other work in the day."
"And with slipping off to the hills to who-knows-what kind of behavior!" Delilah put in. "And that monk . . ."
Thursey turned deliberately and pushed through the door to the kitchen. She was afraid she would lose her temper if she stayed. Dead for sleep, and irritable, she was in no mood for the sisters' haranguing. Alone in the kitchen, she sighed and wondered if she could finish all four gowns in time for the ball.