by Jay Lake
My unintended criticism is returned fivefold. I never seemed to be in good standing with any of my Mistresses, for all that some were civil enough. Only the Dancing Mistress had treated me fairly. Then she cast me off as well, I thought.
I stepped away a moment to tend the sugar kettle, which served to hide the tears in my eyes.
“Girl.”
Turning around, I looked at Mistress Tirelle, not even trying to swallow the misery that must have been naked on my face. To my good fortune, she seemed to believe her slight had cut me to the quick.
“We will be sending a fine bread out tomorrow.” Her voice dropped. “To be judged.” A strange, false smile drew her lips upward like dead men plucked reluctantly from the soil. “Think on what you will make that will reflect best on the Pomegranate Court.”
I clasped my hands again. She frowned, but tipped her chin that I might speak.
“Judged by whom, Mistress?” I asked. “Against what?”
“What happens outside the walls of the Pomegranate Court is no concern of yours, Girl. We’ll send your work out, and it will be judged.”
The answer seemed clear enough to me. There was to be a competition among the courts of the Factor’s house!
I swallowed my own answering smile. Several years in this place, and finally I could show my worth. I could only thank the sun there was not to be a riding competition. It might have been better for me if we were playing at tree climbing, those invisible girls and I, but this would do. This would do.
Early the next morning, I sifted through grades of flour and sugar in my thoughts. Duck eggs, for their richness, or quail’s, for their delicacy? I was still considering inclusions in the bread, but a wash for the top seemed apropos. Coarse sugar and cardamom could be sprinkled to accent the loaf.
My washing went quickly, and my cotton shifts were ever my cotton shifts. We were approaching autumn, but I did not need a wrap yet, not even early in the morning. Heat and cold were almost the same to me now, except when my breath stung or I was required to protect my feet.
Out on the balcony I saw a mist swaddling our little courtyard. The pomegranate tree bulked strange in the poor light, its branches splayed like broken fingers. The air smelled of cold stone and the not-so-distant sea. My eyes strayed to the branches where my night running blacks should be. They were stored away now, and the Dancing Mistress’ little scrap with them.
Baking was so much . . . less . . . than pushing myself in darkness. Would I rather be a girl who could make a pretty loaf to please a lord, or a girl who could gain a rooftop on a fifteen count unseen by those within the house?
Neither choice held a purpose, I realized. Mistress Tirelle had told me time and again I would not be expected to ply my arts. Only to know them very, very well.
A frightening question occurred to me: Were the Mistresses failed candidates? Perhaps Mistress Danae’s knowledge of letters or Mistress Leonie’s mastery of sewing and weaving were the result of a dozen years behind these bluestone walls before some defect or small rebellion had cast them out.
I wanted to go home. More than anything, I wanted my life back. But if somehow that never happened, I did not want to spend my years here teaching other girls lessons I’d learned under the blows of the sand-filled tube.
That brought to mind what I missed most about my night runs with the Dancing Mistress. Not the work, but having someone who would allow me to speak, and without reservation heed the words I spoke.
Then it’s too bad for her that she used me ill!
The anger buoyed me. That emotion I put away to sustain me through the day, and headed downstairs to the great kitchen. I would not break my fast until Mistress Tirelle gave me permission to prepare the morning meal, but I could look over my spices and flours and bring my earlier thoughts closer to the oven.
This was the best day yet with Mistress Tirelle. We had a project, and my skills had grown strong enough to lead.
The Pomegranate Court had recently taken a delivery of a batch of exotic fruits, which I was told had been grown in a glass house that brought a little sliver of the southern sun to the Stone Coast. I chilled plantains on ice, then sliced the fruits thin and fried them with sesame seeds. The smell of that cooking was heavenly, for sesame improves almost everything. At the same time, I reduced guavas to a jelled paste into which I folded crushed almonds. That sweet-and-bitter combination made my mouth water as well.
For the crust, Mistress Tirelle and I made a very buttery dough, which I stretched and folded and stretched and folded, layering coarse sugar and thin-sliced almonds in at the last. The dough I cut into a dozen squares. I spread the guava paste within these, arranged the crisped plantains, then folded the dough over again. I topped each with a wash of quail’s egg, more coarse sugar, a few grains of rock salt, and a scattering of sesame seeds. I placed a whole nut in the top of each so that they would bake up with a dent, into which I planned to place a slice of chilled plantain when the pastries were out and cool.
When completed, these little creations looked each as beautiful as anything Mistress Tirelle had ever made as a demonstration for me. She studied my work, sniffing and touching the pastries very lightly with a long spoon made of wood.
“Girl,” she finally said. One of those elusive smiles crossed her face. “These might do. You reflect well on the Pomegranate Court.”
I am the Pomegranate Court. I knew better than to speak, especially in the face of the only real praise she had ever offered me. Instead I nodded and answered with a smile of my own.
The day drove on in hard work with a brace of hounds, careful threading of a rug loom, exercises in the lettering and usages of the writ of the Saffron Tower far to the east, and all the sorts of things that fell to my lot. I did not have an hour with the Dancing Mistress, which I found odd. Much later, I realized she was never present when the Factor was in the house, but I missed her, then was irritated with myself for the missing.
We heard nothing that day. We heard nothing the next, either, though the Dancing Mistress was back. She had a new form to show me, a kicking dance from some islands in the Sunward Sea that involved two partners leaping past each other in a flowing lunge that crossed through the line where their eyes had met. I, of course, fell to the straw-padded floor a dozen times, bruising myself worse than I had on any night run. Just another round of small injuries for Mistress Tirelle to ignore, as if she had inflicted them herself.
Vengeance? A message? I wondered what it was she intended to tell me, then dismissed it. She would not get satisfaction from me. There were other proofs of my independence. Challenging the girls of the various courts at their games would be my triumph.
The day after, I stepped out of the sleeping room to a hard blow from the flat of Mistress Tirelle’s hand. “Strip your shift,” she demanded, slapping the sand-filled silk tube against her forearm.
Whatever had passed between us in the kitchen two days before was long gone, vanished within the bullying hatred that always intruded. She finally stopped the beating, breathing so heavily, it might have been a sob. “Your little baking experiment nearly got your tongue slit and you sold away,” Mistress Tirelle growled in my ear. I smelled wine on her breath, and the stink of fear. “Only that idiot fop Federo spoke for you, and saved you.”
I understood then that in saving me, Federo had saved her.
There was nothing to say, nothing to ask. I gripped the rail tight and let my legs shiver. Silence was my only armor as she resumed.
When she was finished, she slumped away, before leaning close again. Her hand gripped my shoulder so tightly that I knew I would have fingertip bruises there later. “One of the Factor’s household became very sick from your almonds. Her lips burned and she could not breathe. They called it poisoning at first, until a maid spoke up that the woman had always taken ill from certain nuts. Federo said you could not have known, and calmed the Factor’s anger. You are a very lucky girl, Girl.”
After Mistress Tirelle left, I g
athered my shift and slowly pulled it back over my head. The greatest, strangest marvel of these people in the Factor’s employ was how they seemed to believe it was my luck to be beaten and abased by them. As if they had longed to be stolen away and treated without mercy all the days of their childhood.
Later that day, enduring my silent passes with the Dancing Mistress, I gave her back her dark strip of cloth. She said nothing, made no sign she took my meaning, but I knew. My muscles ached, and my legs shook. Still, I resolved to stand firm.
That night I waited for Mistress Tirelle to go to sleep, thinking on how I might strangle her in her bed, or smother her with a bolt of belled silk so that her death cries chipped her teeth against the metal. A good thought, but the Dancing Mistress had held the right of it when she told me to abide and gather what power might come to me.
Eventually I rose and plucked the seams from my pillow. The blacks were as I had left them, smelling of tree bark and my old sweat. I shook them out and slid into them there in my sleeping room, heedless of whether I might be caught. As I stepped onto the balcony, Mistress Tirelle groaned and stirred.
Freezing a moment, I stood silent as the mist that had once more risen outside. I heard a creaking, then the unmistakable ring of water being passed into the night pot. Even my breath was noiseless, held close and shallow.
She groaned again, then fell heavily back into her bed. With one last, regretful thought for the blanket I could wrap around her face, I took hold of the balcony rail and dropped to the stones below. No sense in risking the stairs.
I had miscalculated the effect of the muscle pains from the morning beating. The fall went bad, and I wound up flat on the cobbles, breathing heavily. A moment later, the Dancing Mistress stood close above me, her small rounded ears outlined against the sullen silver glow of the night sky.
She extended a hand. I brushed it away, still angry at her, at Mistress Tirelle, at everyone. Most angry at myself, truly, but I did not want to examine that thought too closely.
I found my feet and stood swaying. We eyed each other in the dark.
“First,” I whispered, “you will show me how you threw me down on our last night run. Then, when you are satisfied that I know how to see to my own safety, we will cross the wall and you will take me out into the world.”
“I do not accept orders from you.” Her voice was quiet and calm, but I could see her tail standing out almost straight.
“I, too, am done accepting orders.” Even as I said the words, they surprised me. “I will stay because I choose to. I will beat these Mistresses at their own game, better them and all the girls of the other courts, and eventually best the Factor himself. When I choose to, I will walk free of this place.”
Her silence answered me, though her tail flicked now instead of standing brush-straight.
“And you . . .”Even in the dark, I could feel myself blush. Surely my face was a beacon. “Will you teach me what I need to know to choose my path?” I stared down a moment. “P-please?”
“Hmm.” Her tail curled. Then she extended her hand again. I took it in mine, clasping my other across it as if I were asking permission to hold her close. “Let us talk of throws and falls.” She led me across the courtyard, over by the horse box, where we began to work on my center of mass.
Things were different after that. Mistress Tirelle remained angry, but also nervous in a strange way. Some edge had shifted with the little competition of foods. It was as if I had won a point, even while passing perilously close to a forfeit of the entire game.
I did not become reckless, but I became bolder. I was quicker to ask permission to speak. My questions were pointed, challenged my instructresses more. I tried to think several steps beyond what was being shown. Food was for eating, but it was also a weapon, a display, a competition, a threat, and a challenge. Dogs were servants and also in their strange way masters—their shallow, sharp-edged minds seeing the world through the brittle lens of scent and pack loyalty to bring news of old happenings to the ears of their handlers. The language of cloth and fold and pattern was focused tight as any logical discourse of Mennoes the Great or the Saffron Masters.
So I asked, and challenged, and turned, and was turned on in my time. My mind unfolded at this. Strangely, the beatings became more infrequent. I had found my stride and was running the course. As Mistress Balnea would say, the rider had laid free of the whip.
The Dancing Mistress showed me steps and falls a night each week for the entire turn of the moon. “This is the most basic of the work,” she said. “To keep your center and find your feet and not be broken by the throw.” I learned to see and step around the blows she launched, though she demurred from teaching me the strikes. “Another time. Later. We have years yet.”
I had asked to be made safe for the streets. She was making me safe for the streets, no more than that. They would have nothing to fear from me.
Finally, on the turning of the next moon, we met again at the base of the pomegranate tree. Mist was in the air to bring the chill that would banish summer once again. I slid down in my blacks to find the Dancing Mistress waiting as always. We had not regained the comfort of our prior friendship, but reason and compassion had been restored between us. Though I hungered for more, that was enough for now.
She set a hand loosely on my shoulders. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.” I grinned.
“No,” she said with a much smaller smile. “You are not. But you are never ready—you merely go forward when the time comes.”
“Then we should go forward.”
“You have a ten count to top the wall.”
I raced as though my legs were afire.
Later that night, I took out my imaginary silk and set another bell in place. Then I spent a long time telling myself a story in the words of my birth, of a girl who swam in ditches and was watched over by an ox named Endurance. Only he, with his great brown eyes and his endless patience, had not betrayed me by dying or sending me away. That my words were few and difficult pained me. I knew that the poverty of my own language was more to do with my age when Federo took me away than with any lack of the tongue itself, but still this was distressing.
I cried at that. The pillow swallowed my tears and eventually the racing of my mind as well.
A few days later, I was out in the courtyard with Mistress Tirelle, whipping off a blindfold to spot fruits on the moment. What had begun as a simple cruelty was almost a game between us now. As I moved to replace the blind after a good pick, the little man-gate inside our greater gate was opened from the other side.
We both looked to see Federo stepping through.
This day he was dressed as a gentleman-merchant of the city. Mistress Leonie had of late been training me to recognize the meaning of hats, feathers, scarves, and pins—how their array signified rank and station, and also how they changed over time so that no lesson remained true for long.
He had two peacock feathers sweeping crossed on the left from a violet felt snood. His suit was a matching violet cutaway in the same felt, over a cream-colored shirt buttoning on the left and a thin collar with three silver clasps. His trousers were a dark herringbone tweed seamed in the Altamian style with the tapered cuffs over dark purple leather half boots. A scarf so deeply blue that it was almost black had been thrown across his shoulder.
I thought he looked rather silly, for all that his attire spoke of his elevated station in the ranks of society.
“Hello, Girl.” Federo then nodded briskly to Mistress Tirelle. “How fares the candidate?”
“My report will be made when time comes, sir.” She shot me a glare for having the temerity to be present during this conversation.
Bowing my head, I waited to see what he wanted of me.
“I would speak to the girl a little while.” His voice was pointed.
“You may find me in the sitting room.” Mistress Tirelle waddled off with another expression that promised misfortune.
I clasped my hands a
s she clumped into the shadows of the porch. I had long understood that Federo and the Dancing Mistress must in some fashion be in league over me. I could not see what it came to—but then, so little of my life was clear.
He dropped to one knee. “You need to know that I will be gone awhile. Possibly a year or more.”
I nodded.
“Speak, Girl. I am not one of your horrid Mistresses with a mousetrap mind and cheese for brains.”
“Fare well,” I said. Though I had no desire to be rude to him, facing him down, all I could think of was the day he had bought me away from Papa. Was he off to purchase more girls from their cradles?
“I hear you are learning well.”
“The dancing is good.”
His answering smile told me I had struck correctly. “Excellent. I can do little to help you, except to watch over your progress. Others . . . she . . . may do more.”
“I regret my rudeness before.”
His face grew long a moment, shadowed by memory. “Truth may be hard, but I do not call it rude.” His hand touched my chin, as if he wished to tilt it back and examine me once more. “We each pace against the bars that cage us.”
“Your cage is the world,” I said in frustration, though I did not mean to strike for his heart.
“Everyone’s cage is the world. Some worlds are smaller than others.”
With that, he went to speak to Mistress Tirelle. I was left with the fruit picker and the last pomegranates of the season.