Chapter 2 – A Trial of Steel #2
He was not at all what Ophele had expected of a tailor.
Seated in his shop, which was still so new that everything smelled of plaster and sawdust, he moved with a strange, rolling gait from his design table to the high racks of cloth stored in the back, arguing with Lady Verr over brocade versus velvet.
His gray hair sprang up in vigorous tufts everywhere but on the top of his head, and every time Lady Verr built up a really good head of steam, he developed a twitch in his left eye.
“—wider skirts, much wider,” Lady Verr was saying. “I have heard they are still wearing fur this winter in Segoile, and you need wider skirts to bear the weight of fur—”
“You’re going to weigh the lady down like an anchor with that much fabric.” The tailor jabbed a finger in Ophele’s direction. “And fur on top of it? Do you mean to have her guards ferry her about and stow her wherever she’s needed for the day?”
“Please mind your tongue, sir,” said Leonin evenly, while Davi cast his eyes up at the ceiling. There was a dangerous quivering in his sides.
“No, you needn’t pleat the skirt, that would be far too heavy,” Lady Verr replied with infinite patience. “The fabric will be tight to the waist and then widen, almost a bell shape. It would complement the sleeves.”
“You’re talking about a farthingale,” Master Tiffen accused. He crossed his arms, left eye a-twitch. “I don’t hold with farthingales.”
“It is not for you to hold with anything,” Lady Verr retorted. “We are employing your skills, not asking your opinion, Master Tiffen.”
“Beg your pardon, my lady, but His Grace invited me here to make sensible clothes,” Master Tiffen shot back. “No nonsense, he told me. Don’t copy the Empire, make something of our own, he said. And the lady will need to be able to do more than putter up and down the hallway!”
As a spectator, all of this was high entertainment.
Ophele hadn’t understood more than half of what they were saying; she didn’t know a farthingale from a farthing and houppelande made her think of the huge sheer netting bags Bhumi women wore to keep out the midges. It was fun to say, though. Houppelande.
"My lady?” Lady Verr prompted, and Ophele started. The two hostile powers were now staring at her.
“Well…I do like the silver fur with the blue brocade,” she offered. She felt fairly safe in this opinion, but was prepared to capitulate at once if she met the least resistance.
“About the fashion, my lady,” said Master Tiffen, as if it were a dirty word.
“Oh. I do need to get used to walking with a train and skirts and heels,” she admitted. “I must be accustomed to them, when I go to the capital.”
Lady Verr gave the tailor an I told you so look.
“But His Grace did say that we should all wear what we like.” He had also sternly instructed Ophele to order enough gowns to fill her closet, or he would come down to the tailor’s shop himself, and she would not like it if that happened.
“But,” she said in sudden inspiration, “Ought we not make both? Segoile clothes and the new style for the Andelin? What’s a farthingale? ”
“It is an underframe to support a wide skirt—” began Lady Verr, at the same time that Master Tiffen said,
“It’s a bunch of reeds stuck up under your dress. If Lady Verr insists, I saw a likely bit of bog on the way here.”
That did not sound comfortable.
“I want something…simpler, first,” she admitted. “And warm, it has been so cold. Might we not begin with a Segoile dress and…simplify it?”
She indicated the sketch they had already begun, much altered and hotly disputed.
“Agreed,” Master Tiffen said, sitting back at his worktable.
“You are dressing the daughter of the Emperor,” Lady Verr admonished. “Even if you insist on such plain lines, there ought to be embroidery, beads, silk, jewels—”
“I’ve all the silk and linen you want, embroider away,” said Master Tiffen, sketching with a bit of charcoal.
Lady Verr’s lip curled.
“I do want it to be…beautiful, too,” Ophele said, oppressed by Master Tiffen’s squinty left eye. “Not every dress must be jeweled, but I do want everyone to be…pleased. When they see their duchess, I mean.”
And she wanted very much to be beautiful in Remin’s eyes, but she wasn’t about to say that.
“We can do better than stripping Segoile fashion for parts.” Master Tiffen looked thoughtful. “Happens I’ve seen those double sleeves in Ispichov. Outers for warmth, and then they pin them back to work. Warm as toast, too.”
“You’ve been to Ispichov?” Ophele asked, curiosity instantly winning over shyness.
“Yes, my lady. I was a sailor. There now,” he said, sitting back with a refreshed expression. “See if this doesn’t suit. And Lady Verr, I expect you can tack on some Segoile foolishness.”
“Lower the neck,” Lady Verr said with a glance. “And widen the skirt a little. The sleeves are cunning, I must say.”
This amicable spirit only lasted until they got into the details of the bodice, and for the next twenty minutes they seemed to forget that anyone else was in the room and veered wildly from applauding their shared genius to Master Tiffen’s resounding condemnation of the Empire, its aesthetics, its fashion, and the fools that offended the eyes of all rational people by wearing it.
And while Lady Verr did not ever utter the words peasant or clod or uncultured swine, she could communicate a great deal with her eyebrows.
But the final design was that rare flight of inspiration that satisfied everyone.
The dark blue brocade overdress was trimmed at the ends with the smoky silver fox fur and lined with satin to keep out the wind, warm and soft and utterly delightful to wear.
The wide bells of the sleeves could be folded back and buttoned out of the way with large silver buttons, and these simple ornaments were echoed along the square neckline, where moonstones and sapphires glittered against a length of silver-white ribbon. It was truly lovely.
“I do believe these sleeves would be quite the rage, in Segoile,” Lady Verr said thoughtfully. “They would be attaching bows and knots and all manner of cunning laces.”
“I like the lacing on the back,” Ophele said, admiring the twists of silver ribbon that would tighten the bodice to her torso, with the knot low enough that she could untie it herself.
There was a certain helplessness that came with knowing she could not escape her gown if she wanted to. “Would that be the…the rage, too?”
“The lacings would be,” Lady Verr agreed with a small smile, and after a few more minutes of mutual admiration, they set this design aside and began the next.
It was fun, at first. They put together a half-dozen ravishing costumes, as Lady Verr said, in green velvet and violet silk and a beautiful russet and gold that looked like someone had made silk from autumn leaves.
But there was such a quantity of clothing to be ordered, nightclothes and morning dresses, robes to be worn to the bath, indoor gowns and gowns for audiences, and riding gowns that would not be crumpled or stretched by riding sidesaddle.
Ophele’s interest began to waver around the eighth dress and even Leonin was beginning to look glassy-eyed. Davi had long since lapsed into a coma.
And so, for the first time in her life, Ophele delegated.
“I think you both…know what I like,” she said, rising from her stool in the corner. Other than examining her periodically to discuss her coloring or proportions, she wasn’t of much use to them anyway. “I will leave you to it.”
“Of course, my lady,” said Lady Verr without lifting her eyes from Master Tiffen’s rapidly moving charcoal. “If you would like, I will bring the designs to you for your approval tonight. Lady Carolen often entrusted such things to me.”
“Yes, please,” Ophele agreed, and escaped with Leonin and Davi.
The visit to Master Tiffen’s shop had replaced her lessons with Lady Verr, and the sun was just beginning to slant over the roofs of the town as she stepped out into the brisk morning air.
Though she quickly pulled up her hood and burrowed into her thin cloak, Ophele always felt the urge to linger when she came to the market.
It was beginning to look like a real marketplace, a huge plaza three times the size of Granholme’s, and two and a half sides were already lined with shops and houses.
The fountain at the center was nearly completed, too; the smashing sword and its scattering of stars now rolled in sculpted stone waves to four large statues of a farmer, a builder, a soldier, and a mother.
All that stonework had been given to Remin by the masons on his birthday, though Master Misler confessed they’d had to employ actual sculptors for the statues.
For a little while, she indulged herself, walking down the line of shops to examine the shoes in the window of the cobbler’s shop and smell the scents of beeswax and tallow wafting from the chandler’s.
Through the closed door of the weaver’s shop, she could hear the clatter and bang of the loom.
Mistress Roscout had bought the long-hoarded wool from Remin’s sheep and once she was done with it, it would go to the dyer, and then she would sell it back to Remin at five times the price he had charged for the wool.
That thick, soft cloth was destined to become blankets, and Ophele would have all the sewing practice she wanted on their endless seams.
Remin was very pleased with this arrangement.
At every stage, he was propping up the fledgling economy of his town, which was understandably wobbly in its first year.
But while he counted every coin with his army, and didn’t hesitate to point out shoddy work wherever he found it, he was unfailingly generous to everyone else.