“Pray inquire of him for us,” Ouen requested, and Nolar rose from her chair.
Jonja also stood. “By your leave, I can alert Mistress Bethalie to assemble her most skilled glovemakers.” At Ouen’s gesture of approval, she followed Nolar from the room.
Ouen pushed back his own chair. “Your study of Alizonian should be as undisturbed as possible,” he said. “I shall arrange for food and drink to be brought here, as we did for our work in Morfew’s rooms. We will rejoin you presently, after you have had time to progress. Despite the gravity of the threat from the north, we cannot neglect Lormt’s necessary activities.”
Duratan smiled ruefully. “Master Wessell has been chasing after me through every corridor, waving his provisioning lists. I had hoped to elude him in here, but this would be a good opportunity to confer with him.”
Once they had departed, Morfew gathered together several blank sheets of parchment, and invited me to take the chair beside his. Kasarian retained his place across the table from us.
As the hours passed, I was exceedingly relieved that I could not physically speak the wretched tongue. The more I listened to Morfew and Kasarian growl and snarl at one another, the more they sounded like a brace of quarrelsome hounds. Spoken Alizonian grated upon my ear . . . and my memory. I had thought that I had buried those memories, but jagged shards from the past stabbed my mind, unbidden, no doubt prompted by the hateful speech of our Dales’ bitterest enemies.
I thumped my staff, and gestured toward the flask of ale. Kasarian leaped up to pour me a measure. I shut my eyes for a moment, then forced myself to copy yet again the shapes of the script letters that I had to master. I was gradually achieving some facility, but my hand was again aching from the intensive exercise.
Nolar returned first, bearing a welcome tray of porridge, cheese, bread, and fruit. Jonja arrived soon afterward, noting that Mistress Bethalie herself insisted upon coming to measure my hands for the baronial gloves.
Nolar briskly swept aside our parchments to make room for the food. “I described to Master Pruett our need for some means to match the Alizonder hair color,” she reported. “He regretted that he could not attend to you personally, Mereth, but he is engaged in a most delicate extraction of essences that he cannot abandon. He assured me, however, that this decoction of silver nettles should produce most satisfying results.” She withdrew from her skirt pocket a flask of murky liquid that exuded a sharp scent even though its stopper was tightly wrapped with dried grass.
Jonja eyed it dubiously. “I should not care to apply that to my hair,” she stated firmly. “Common nettles I know well enough, and how they will restore hair color, but these silver nettles from the high mountain meadows are far harsher in their juice and in their stings! Surely such an extract would be too strong to apply to the scalp.”
Nolar nodded. “From my own herbal experience, I raised that very objection, but Master Pruett vows that his regimen for purifying and cooling the decoction quite diminishes the more noxious elements of the plant. Still. . . .” She glanced at me, and smiled. “If Mereth will allow us, I would feel easier if we cut off a lock of hair and tested that first.”
Jonja plucked from her belt scrip a sturdy wooden comb and a small knife. I let down my hair, curious to see whether its already white hue could be bleached by Lormt’s herbs to the singular silver-white shade characteristic for Alizonders.
We duly peered at the lock Jonja placed on a saucer, while Nolar dampened it with water, then added a few drops from Master Pruett’s flask. Jonja stirred the strands with her knife, and rinsed them in a second saucer.
“Master Pruett advises that we apply the nettle extract in a solution with mild soap,” Nolar said. “The lightening process will take somewhat longer, but will be gentler to the skin.”
“I would not have believed it,” Jonja admitted, “but this extract of Pruett’s does produce the desired hue. If you agree,” she added, turning to me, “I can trim your hair to the length and style worn by this Volorian.”
Kasarian had been watching us with great interest. “The last time I saw Volorian,” he remarked, “his hair was trimmed much like mine. He wears his perhaps a trifle shorter at the back of the neck, since he seldom fights in a helmet. I practice frequently with blade and spear,” Kasarian explained, “in order to maintain my speed of thrust. Some fighters must pad their helmets, but since my hair is dense, I require no padding.”
“I welcome your attentions and advice,” I wrote for Nolar to read aloud. “At your convenience, I place my hair at your disposal.”
That afternoon sped past in a blur of activity. Just as we were completing our hasty luncheon, an energetic woman of middle age rapped at the door. Nolar introduced her as Bethalie, Lormt’s mistress for all forms of needlework. She spread a square of thin cloth on the table before me, and with a stick of charcoal, deftly marked around my outstretched fingers. From a capacious pocket in her smock, she produced a well-worn strip of linen barred with evenly spaced lines of stitching, which she stretched around and along every possible dimension of my hands. Having carefully noted each measurement on a corner of the cloth, she bobbed her head, gathered up her materials, and promised to bring me a pair of cloth test-gloves as soon as her seamstresses could cut and stitch them.
Jonja was lighting the candles and Nolar was about to serve our evening meal delivered by one of Morfew’s assistants when Mistress Bethalie bustled through the door. She explained that these relatively flimsy cloth gloves would be unstitched to provide patterns for cutting the leather versions. Humming a quiet tune to herself, Mistress Bethalie tightened a tuck here and loosened a seam there. “It may take two days,” she announced at last. “The final gloves must be appropriate for a baron of Alizon. I have three embroiderers marking out the ornamental designs for the gauntlets.”
True to her word, two days later at midmorning, Mistress Bethalie appeared at Ouen’s study door looking highly gratified. Walking directly to the table, she extended to me a pair of hideous red-purple leather gloves, their gauntlets encrusted with tortuous swirls of silver thread so closely stitched that I expected the surface to be as stiff as a turtle shell. When I thrust in my fingers, however, I discovered that the leather was as soft and supple as fine wool. I had never in all my years possessed finer made—or more garish—gloves. I removed one for Kasarian’s inspection. He examined it with every appearance of genuine approbation.
Bowing gracefully to Mistress Bethalie, Kasarian said, “I have seldom touched a finer prepared piece of leather, or seen more elegant decoration. Baron Volorian himself would wear these gloves with pride.”
He turned away to exclaim to Morfew about the stitching, and I heard Mistress Bethalie murmur to Nolar, “I promised our chief tanner last year that someday I would rid him of that vile mistake he made in dyeing. He wagered with me that no man in Lormt would endure such an appalling shade of leather. I believe that I can now honestly claim my wager, for these gloves have been worn, albeit briefly, at Lormt. It seems that their appearance appeals solely to Alizonders.”
In the past, I had prided myself upon my ability to juggle several tasks, compressing into one stretch of time a number of trading activities that had to be accomplished simultaneously. The next several days at Lormt reminded me most forcefully of the strenuous trials for both mind and body that had assailed us during the time of fighting in the Dales, and to an even greater degree in the awful years following the war. I had been aided then by others who shared my burdens; now I also had supportive assistance, but so much depended upon my personal exertions. I raced through the crowded hours, listening to and writing Alizonian, sitting for my hair to be cut and bleached silver-white, trying on piece after piece of clothing that Kasarian selected from Mistress Bethalie’s stores to outfit me as Baron Volorian.