Chapter Fifteen
We spent our days in the orchards, picking apples.
Rosamund stitched and stitched. I repeated the etiquette lessons that had been instilled since their earliest days.
We picked more apples. Moussa gave dance lessons in the hall, walking through minuets, quadrilles, and cotillions.
We reviewed posture and deportment: how to stand, how to walk, how to exist in a room.
We picked more apples. We discussed titles and calling cards and accepting dances.
We practiced the art of polite conversation.
Still, we picked more apples. Moussa tapped out the beat of music on the floor of the hall.
We sorted the apples. We resized our corsets, and panniers, and petticoats.
Elin sewed a sleeve to the hem of her dress.
We sat through rounds and rounds of fittings and alterations, pinching and pinning, and stitching, and hemming, until even Rosamund wanted to sew no more.
For a girl’s royal introduction, her dress needed a train exactly three yards long, and she had to wear a feather on the back of her head high enough that it would be visible to Her Majesty when she entered the room. Despite the season, necks and shoulders were to remain bare.
The girls had little experience with such outfits. Country dances and small dinner parties were trifling by comparison. Channeling Agatha to the best of my ability, I explained to them, step-by-step, what they must expect:
“Leave your wraps in the carriage. Do not bring them into the ball. As you enter, walk with your train folded carefully over your left arm.” I stood in the middle of their small sewing circle and demonstrated with an imaginary dress.
“You will await your summons in an antechamber and then, when called, make your way to Her Majesty. Let down your train, which will be spread out immediately by an attending lady- or lord-in-waiting. Before you enter the room, hand the card bearing your name to the attendant, who will announce you.”
“What will you wear?” Rosamund asked.
“Neither feathers nor a train.”
“Will you dance?”
I laughed at the question. “Now, when you see the queen, you must curtsy until you are very nearly on the floor.” I demonstrated this as well, bowing to Mathilde, who sat up, happy to play the part of the queen.
I took her hand in my own and kissed the back of it, close to her knuckles. “Kiss the queen’s hand. Just so.”
I turned now to Elin. “You are a lord’s daughter, so she may instead kiss your forehead. You will need to watch her carefully and follow Her Majesty’s lead.”
Addressing all of them once more, I continued: “Rise, and then do not forget to curtsy again. Do not talk unless she asks you a direct question. Back out of the room. Do not turn your back to her, or any other royal person in the room. Only then”—I twirled my wrist, indicating an imaginary party ahead of me—“do you enter the ball.”
“If our necklines are bare, then we must have lace trimming,” Rosamund announced.
“And we do not yet have hair feathers,” Elin worried.
“I have used all my fabric for the train,” Mathilde said, “and have none left for a matching petticoat.”
I looked at the concern on their faces and did my best not to mirror it.
I had already sat down and charted the expenses.
Even with a wagonload of apples going to market, there would not be enough to cover what was needed.
When I had tallied my columns, the numbers gave me a kick in the gut.
I had already cut so many corners, I was holding a circle. I did not know where else to trim.
“Mama,” Mathilde continued, “I know we have not the resources, but I do believe we need these items.”
“Elin,” I snapped. “I still have not seen those pennies from the ashes. You’ll pay me after market tomorrow and you’ll get what you need.” I turned to Rosie and Mathilde. “And you, too. Keep picking the apples, as many as you can.”
If it took ten wagonloads of fruit and the ashes of a thousand fires, I was resolved: Our household would not show so much as a hairline crack in our facade.
The next day, Moussa emptied his coach of its wares. As Alice and Wenthelen loaded the carriage with bushels of apples, I carried Lucy to the outside mews.
“You’re going to have to stay here for a little while,” I told her. “We have to be proper ladies now and I can’t have you in the house muting all over the place.”
She didn’t so much as blink at me.
“I will find time to take you hunting soon,” I promised. We had skipped our hunt that morning—and a few others—in service to our preparations for the ball. “But I did prepare you a bath. See?” We neared her block, which sat on a circle of gravel. I had set out a basin of water.
She stepped freely into it, taking time to first gnaw at her talons and then, more extravagantly, use her wings and tail to throw water on her back. When she was finished, she began to preen, sliding her beak through each feather and letting out small noises of content.
“It’s just for a little while,” I said.
She ignored me and continued her preening. I waited, looking around at the back of the house, out at the trees, and up at the sky, as if a falcon deserved its privacy.
I had brought along my mother’s cameo, and, as Lucy roused, I took the necklace from my pocket.
The depiction, carved from shell, was strung on a strand of seed pearls.
My mother had had a patrician nose and tapered jaw.
I held her countenance against my lips—readying myself—before sliding it back into my pocket.
I left Lucy, fastened to the iron ring on her block, to weather in the yard.
She did not look at me as I walked away, but instead had her eyes trained somewhere in the distance—toward the forest, the trees, the smaller birds, and the insects.
It reminded me of staring out the window during my lessons with Agatha.
“I’ll take you out for a hunt soon,” I promised.
The market was held once a week on the roads that branched from our village’s central square.
The fruit and vegetable sellers grouped together—vendors yelling over one another, women weaving through the crowds with baskets of soft persimmons and strings of onion—and the grains, oats, barley, and rye were sold on the other end.
Down one narrow lane, shoppers perused crockery and baskets.
On the outskirts, where there was more room, farmers held chickens and pigs and goats in makeshift pens and at the ends of fraying ropes, bartering with slaughtermen.
As a titled lady, I didn’t operate the apple stall or go near it, so when we neared the village, I bid Wenthelen and Moussa adieu and ventured off on my own.
Passing criers delivering news and a woman selling fly-covered meat pies, I skirted tables of textiles and weaver’s goods.
The pawnshop was situated behind the market stalls between an apothecary and a tailor.
I pulled my hat down around my face before stepping inside.
“Lady Bramley!” The pawnbroker rubbed his hands together in delight as I came through the door, its bell tinkling above me.
Leonard, a portly man with the sad eyebrows of a hunting dog, always made an effort to counteract his role as a trader of others’ sorrows with abundant solicitations and cheer.
“I’m sure you’re happy to see me,” I said.
He had benefitted greatly over the years from the steady cycle of goods—furniture and picture frames and candelabras—that had streamed in from Bramley Hall.
Leonard was one of the few people who would have been able to guess the extent of our lack of means; the stripped-bare walls and the empty mantels.
He spread his hands out on the wood counter in front of him. “We have a marvelous samovar—and look, the matching cups, a complete set.”
“Mm-hmm.” I pretended to browse. The room was filled with cabinets and shelves, upon which sat all kinds of objects. Silverware and fine porcelain and musical instruments. Books, old and new, and coins and garments in various states of repair. In the back, there was a harpsichord.
“A set of three fans—imported lace—came in yesterday.”
I bent over the jewelry display case. Both Leonard and I did not acknowledge the string of jet beads that had once graced my neck and now sat, dust-covered, behind the glass.
“Thank you.” I did not want to see the lace fans.
“And silk ribbon, perhaps for Miss Rosamund?” He held up a spool.
“Lovely,” I mused, attempting to be dismissive. We both knew I would not be purchasing any ribbon, but I was appreciative of his tact. “While I am here,” I said, attempting to make it feel like an afterthought, “I have this old piece—I never touch it. What would it fetch?”
With care, I retrieved the necklace from my pocket pouch. I had to turn away while Leonard inspected it through his loupe, listening to the small noises he made in the back of his throat, then the scratch of the quill on his ledger.
I reminded myself: I would be able to get the cameo back. I needed the money to cover the day’s purchases—fabric and trimmings for all three young women—but I’d soon have the apple profits and Elin’s rag-and-bone money in hand. I hoped to return for the piece as soon as the next day.
“The pearls have some minor imperfections,” he said, while I pretended to look at a case of eyeglasses.
“And the cameo exhibits good craftsmanship and has no wear. But the portraits go for much less—it would be better if it were a mythological figure or landscape. Who is the woman? Could we say she is a mythological figure?”
To me, I thought. “No,” I said, out loud.
“Did you know her?”
“No,” I repeated, because that was truthful in its own way.
He named his price, which was less than I had hoped for, and I accepted without argument. “It likely won’t sell for a while,” he said, handing me my coins.