by Jay Lake
All of that was great fun, and took energy from me almost as fast as it gave back more. But one night she came with a leather satchel over her shoulder.
“Here,” she said as we stood behind the tree, away from the sight of the Pomegranate Court itself.
I opened the satchel. Inside were several bundles of dark cloth.
“Climb the tree and place these within the branches. Hide them so no one looking from the ground or the balcony will easily spy them.”
“From Mistress Tirelle?” I hid nothing, not even my bowel movements, from the duck woman. Only my thoughts were my own. Sometimes I doubted even that.
“Hide them from no one at all,” said the Dancing Mistress. “No one and everyone.”
I climbed. I hid them, for by now I knew this tree as well as I knew my own bedclothes. I paused and thought, then climbed down. “Whatever it is you intend, it cannot be for the evening when Mistress Tirelle looks out and awaits my return.”
“No.” Her teeth gleamed with a small smile.
“When, then?”
“You will know.”
Then we ran awhile, with me tumbling through a roll just after I took every corner of the courtyard.
We ran every night that week, pushing me hard until my feet faltered and my breath burned. I fell into bed every evening wondering how I would know when to meet the Dancing Mistress and her mysterious dark cloths. I was smart enough not to fetch her bundles down during the day, when climbing the tree would earn me a beating. Our evening work outside was watched often enough that I did not even try to bring up the sense of the thing then.
When the riddle answered itself, I wondered at how slow I had been. As I was brewing a blackbark tea for Mistress Tirelle, I realized that I knew when to meet the Dancing Mistress. I crumbled some of the passionflower leaves into the infusion, to encourage the duck woman to sleep more heavily—we had once more been discussing the difference between savor, flavor, medicine, and poison. Then I drank a great quantity of spring water, so that the needs of my bladder would force me awake an hour or two after we retired.
That evening I received neither a beating nor a lecture. I lay in my bed until I could hear Mistress Tirelle’s snoring—her breathing was loudest when she slept soundly. Too much danced in my head for sleep, and as planned, my need for the chamber pot caught up with me before my elusive dreams ever did.
Getting up, I did what was needed. I then slipped out onto the balcony and padded very quietly past Mistress Tirelle’s door. She had set a line of bells at the head of the stairs, but I slipped over the rail and slid down the outside with my palms upon the banister.
Once on the porch below, I walked to the pomegranate tree and climbed. The bundles were where I had left them, of course. No one here besides me possessed the will or the means to climb the tree except for the Dancing Mistress herself. I gathered the cloth and slid back down to stand on the side of the trunk away from the Pomegranate Court.
Unfolding the bundles, I found leggings, a jacket, and a small bag that after a brief time I realized was a hood. They were cotton dyed black.
I pulled on the leggings, tucked my tunic in, and tugged the jacket on. The hood felt odd, but I pulled it over my head. I half expected the Dancing Mistress to step out of the shadows, but she did not. I waited a moment, feeling foolish, then began to run the circuit of the courtyard. Silence was my goal, and I moved quietly as I could. At each cornering, I took my tumble. I ran and ran under the starlight, for the moon was a dark coin already spent, though my legs and back ached.
When I rolled out of the tumble at the third corner, between the gate and the tackle box, the Dancing Mistress fell into step next to me. Her fur was dark in the starlight, and her face was deadly serious.
“Mistress,” I said, speaking within my breaths. “You were right. I knew when to meet you.”
The Dancing Mistress nodded. “Let me show you something new.”
I followed her as she climbed the post at the west end of the porch. We gained the copper roof, then swarmed the bluestone wall beyond to the wide, flat rampart I’d seen from the top of the pomegranate tree.
The street was open below us. Very quiet even during the daylight, at this time of night, it was empty. A row of buildings stared back at me, windows like vacant eyes beneath the irregular peaks of their roofs, though a few glowed with the light of reason within. The great structures of the city lifted beyond, some gleaming copper, some dull tiles, some with turrets and other features I could not name, for I had not yet had a Mistress who would discuss with me architecture and the life of cities.
The path to freedom lay before me.
“May I go now?” I asked.
“You are too young,” she said quietly. “Though your mind is sharp as any I’ve ever seen, and your beauty unmarred, you cannot make your way alone. Bide here, learn at our expense, but know that someday you will have a road if you need it. There may be different choices you will come to make.”
“No, I do not think so. I will never choose to be grasped within the hand of another.”
“Even birds build their nests together.” She gathered me close for a long time; then we went below to put away the tools of my newfound stealth.
As the spring warmed, the exercises grew more strenuous. All of them. Mistress Leonie’s textile arts were showing me things of which I’d never considered the possibility, such as the weaving of secret messages into the warp and weft of a courtier’s cloak. Likewise Mistress Tirelle in the kitchen. Sometime during a month spent with the making of sauces, we reached a nearly amicable truce around the rhythms of the cooking—she still raged and threatened and beat me away from the fires, but we found a calm before them.
I was permitted to mount a horse, and taught the ways ladies rode, and something of the styles of men that I might judge the quality and training of a horseman. A new woman, Mistress Roxanne, brought boxes of rocks and gems and colored cards to begin my lessons in jewelry. She was thin, sly, and chattering.
As my reading improved, the selection of my books broadened. At the time, it seemed to me that the whole subject of books was haphazard, though later I understood the pattern Mistress Danae was applying to my reading. No recent history, nothing of the city of Copper Downs, and nothing whatsoever concerning the Duke, of whose name and very existence I had then heard only bare rumor.
The greatest effort was expended with the Dancing Mistress. She did not slack with me during the day—we walked through movements, poise, and balance. She brought a clockwork box on a little stand that marked the measures of a rhythm and trained me to its timing. Padded benches and hanging bars arrived for the practice room. We talked about the way my muscles and bones would grow over the next few years, and how making them strong now would help keep them strong later.
After that first period of evening runs, she never again came back early when Mistress Tirelle would know of her visit. Rather, on days before we were to make a late-night run, the Dancing Mistress would leave a scrap of dark cloth on the plain bench in the practice hall. Once Mistress Tirelle was sleeping soundly, I would slip outside in my gray wool wrap and climb the pomegranate tree to dress in my blacks. Without fail, when I descended she awaited me at the bottom. I handed the Dancing Mistress the scrap of cloth, and we would begin our work against the stones.
There was a great deal of running. I climbed, tumbled, fell, spun, leapt. We used the walkway capping the outer wall, measuring distances for me to cross without touching the stone. Before long, I became accustomed to my view of the city beyond, and wondered when and how I would see more.
“Why do we run atop the wall?” I asked her one night in the late spring, as the northern summer was beginning to unfold. The air even at that hour still remembered the warm hand of the sun. “Does the Factor not have guards?”
We spoke as we climbed, practicing finding the cracks in the sheathing stone of the courtyard walls.
“No one would dare breach the Factor’s walls. Not even
the most desperate, drunken petty thief.”
“Still, we are visible from the street.”
“No one without looks within. Even if they see us there, who are we? Who would they tell?”
“The Mistresses come and go.”
“Have you ever seen a Mistress come or go at night? Besides me?”
I thought about that. “No—no, I have not.”
“Consider that there might be great and terrible wards on these gates.”
“So they cannot be passed, even by the Factor’s friends?”
The Dancing Mistress laughed. “To be sure. Such a thing makes the guards lazy. As they are not permitted to gaze within the courts on pain of blindness followed by death, they do not watch what we do.”
As Federo had said, except for him, I would know only women.
One night our run was different.
I dropped out of the tree freshly clad. My thighs ached from time spent on a strange horse that day. I was still too small to sit properly astride with any comfort. The Dancing Mistress stood there, her tail twitching as it emerged from a slit in her own blacks.
“Mistress,” I said, bowing my head as I clasped my hands for permission to speak.
“You have the count of twenty to gain the walkway of the outer wall.”
I ran, swift and light as she had trained me. There had been no fog or rainslick tonight, so I could move in safety. I did not bother with the stairs, both for pride and to avoid risk of waking Mistress Tirelle. Instead I scrambled up the wall where the east end of the Pomegranate Court house met the bluestone, then gained the copper roof, then made the last climb to the top.
My count was sixteen.
A moment later, the Dancing Mistress was with me. “Next time you will have the count of fifteen.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
She guided me to the outer wall and pointed that I should look over the edge. The street below was a drop of about forty feet.
“How would you make your way down?”
I thought a moment. “I might descend the outer wall, but I do not know if it is slick or rough, nor how well spaced the mortar joints are. Or I could fall, and try to slide along the stones as I descended. I do not think that would serve me well, as it is too far to let my body land in safety.”
“Hmm.”
I looked around. As I’d seen many times before, the walkway extended around the outer edge of the Factor’s house. We had never left the borders of my own court before, even though nothing on the walkway barred me except the distance between one step and the next. “If I pass beyond the boundary of the Pomegranate Court, there may be another way.”
Her voice dropped even lower, not so much a whisper as the shadow of one. “What will happen if you are found beyond the Pomegranate Court?”
“Mistress Tirelle would cut me, then turn me out for a tavern slave. The Factor has gone to a great deal of trouble to keep me bound here in quiet secrecy.”
She did not answer. I stood awhile, feeling a sudden chill that was not of the night air. What were they making of me here? Except for Federo mentioning that I should be a lady, no one had said. What would the Dancing Mistress make of me? Something Mistress Tirelle, and therefore presumably both Federo and the Factor, did not want of me.
“I am not your tool,” I whispered harshly, then sprinted east along the wall past the boundary of my life.
Federo returned to marvel at my height. “You have been growing while I was away,” he said with an easy laugh.
By then I thought myself sophisticated. Some of the lessons about jewels and clothes had sunk deep within my thoughts. This man was my last connection to my father and Endurance, and the only person alive who could tell me exactly where I was born. He did not dress the part, though. Instead this day he was windblown and carefree, clad in strange belled pantaloons and a muslin shirt that fastened across the shoulder.
Not at all the respect my station was due.
“I grow,” I told him. “And learn.” And count my bells, secret though they are.
“Good.” He bent his head, examining my face from an angle rather than turning my chin as he might once have done. “How much does she beat you?”
“Less so these days,” I admitted. “I have found the lock to my tongue, and fight only when I must.”
“Good. I was afraid your stubborn independence would lead you too deeply into trouble.”
With those words, I remembered once again that Federo was not my friend. A friend would have cared for my fate, not whether my words caught too much trouble.
“How is your hunting and trapping, then?” I let my voice grow nasty, much the way Mistress Leonie did when her talk slipped from gowns to gossip.
Federo looked pained, and turned away. “It is more than you know, Girl.”
I watched him walk away and did not feel sorry for a moment. This man had stolen me away from my life and family. What guilt was it on me that I hurt his heart for a moment? He would ride free, and I would remain here under the watchful eye and the hard hand of Mistress Tirelle.
Instead I closed my eyes and thought of the smell of rice paddies under the morning mist until the duck woman came to punish me for my insolence.
The next time the Dancing Mistress handed me the dark scrap during our daily exercises, I was ready for a night run. I wanted to show everyone how wrong they were, how shallow and evil they had been. Words were still my way out of this place, but if I could strike a few hard blows before I left the Pomegranate Court, my heart would be gladdened.
Dropping from the tree to the cobbles, I saw she was not there. I froze a moment on the fulcrum between panic and fear. Then I spotted her waiting for me at the top of the wall. I scrambled across the courtyard and up so quickly that the count would have been reset for me.
She watched me come, then caught me as I rushed toward her, spinning to throw me down. I rolled and fell, landing well enough, thanks to the training she had been giving me the past two years.
“What is it?” I hissed, regaining my feet.
“Are you too good for your friends?”
For the first time I realized how freely she and Federo must discuss me.
“No.” My breathing was hard, and my rib twinged.
“Much is risked on you. I cannot imagine you should be grateful. I would not be, not in your place. But you could at the least be respectful.”
“Of what? The risks taken by people who walk free each day?” I spat on the stones. “This slave girl does not sorrow for displeasing her owners.”
The Dancing Mistress gave me a long silence in which to consider my own words. They were prideful, but pride was all I had. Everything else had been taken from me, stolen away over and over.
Finally she spoke: “I do not own you. Nor does Federo, or even Mistress Tirelle.”
Taking a deep breath, I tried to find a voice that did not lash out with the sting I harbored in my heart. “No, the Factor owns me. You support his claim.”
“You do not know, Girl.”
“No, I do not.” I glanced at the street below. Surely we had meant to finally climb down the wall tonight? Dreading that I might be giving up my only escape with my next words, I said, “I will not be yours, any more than I will be his.”
The Dancing Mistress folded my hand around the scrap, which I still clutched. “Your choices are your own. When you are ready for me to come again, return this to me.”
“When I am ready?” I repeated stupidly.
“When you are ready.” Her face was lopsided with a mix of loss and anger. “Perhaps I will even come back then. As for now, fold away your blacks and climb into your bed. I will have no more of you for a time.”
I climbed back down, slipping twice, and forgot myself to the extent that I went back to my sleeping room still wearing the Dancing Mistress’ blacks, along with the soft leather shoes and gloves I always stored with them. When I tugged my gear off, I balled everything up, snuck to steal needles from the sitting room, th
en sewed it all into a little pillowcase I had been stitching with the design of pale flowers growing through a broken crown.
My heart was hard for the next weeks. I still had my daily lessons with the Dancing Mistress, but there was no warmth between us. She did not push me away or cause me to be punished, but neither did she embrace me nor spare me good words. A few times I thought I caught her studying me when she believed me too busy to notice, but that was her concern.
At the time, I thought we were done. Pride, like patience, can be taught. But as patience may be unlearned all at once in a hard moment, tenacious pride can be acquired in that same hot rush.
I had not lost my ability to stalk the future, and the villains who ruled my life. I had lost my ability to tell friend from foe.
Mistress Tirelle must have sensed that some break had occurred between me and my favorite teacher. She interrupted a long course of instruction on the mechanics of baking—leavening, flours, inclusions and exclusions to dough—to show me how we might make sweets. These were little crushed preparations of bitter almonds, oil-packed dates, and diced apples, which we rolled in sheets made of pastry and grape leaves. When they were fresh baked, I ladled pine honey over them to set up with the heat and a mixture of scents that made my mouth water unreasonably. We then experimented with sugar reductions, and how fanciful designs could be scribed on the sweetmeats with the appropriate flick of a spoon.
“You must know how someone is honored with the preparation of the final course,” the duck woman told me. “A person can be insulted as well, in the subtleties of preparation. Food is a language.”
I clasped my hands. She nodded.
“What of foreigners?” I asked. “Is their language of food known to us?”
My question earned me a suspicious glare. Mistress Tirelle had always been troubled that I had come from across the Storm Sea, as if the circumstances of my birth were somehow my doing. After a moment, she seemed to decide I was not making a subtle slight against her charter here in the Factor’s house. “Sometimes a cook will trouble to learn a foreign way of eating, to show a bit of respect to a powerful merchant or prince.” Her tiny smile ghost-danced across her face. “Remember, those from far away will never measure up to our standards. At need, we make allowances for them, but it is always a charity they should know enough to refuse.”