“Elodie!” Duchess Andelin exclaimed at the impertinent embrace, brightening instantly. “I am so glad to see you, did you bring your sewing things? It has been so long! Have you grown?”
“Like a weed,” Mistress Amise Conbour said, moving rapidly to peel the child off the duchess. “Elodie, you mustn’t hug the lady unless you are invited, some ladies will think it very rude. Never do so again. Please forgive her, Your Grace.”
“Not at all, I have missed my pagegirl,” the duchess replied, straightening with a brighter face. “Have you been practicing your samplers, Elodie?”
“Yes, my lady, I even made a pair of trousers all by myself,” Elodie boasted. “So I can help today.”
“Perhaps you will teach me, then,” Duchess Andelin said, a little wistfully. “Mistress Conbour, is this everyone?”
“I believe so, my lady,” answered Mistress Conbour, scanning the room. There were nearly twenty women present, and Mionet could just imagine what might happen if all that attention was fixed on the duchess at once. “Would you—”
“Perhaps you might explain what we’re about to everyone,” Mionet suggested, with a sharp, glittering smile to impress upon her the excellence of this idea. “I have never attended a gathering like this myself.”
“Of…course, my lady,” she said, her eyebrows lifting. Mistress Conbour was a perfect specimen of a farmwife, a sturdy woman in her middle thirties, round and dimpled, with wheat brown hair caught on the back of her head in a coiled plait. “Your Grace, first we will mark out patterns, if you like.”
“Yes, please,” Duchess Andelin agreed, following Mistress Conbour to one of the nearby tables. All conversation ceased as the other women crowded around, far more attentive to the duchess than the patterning.
Mionet’s sharp eye noted all these volunteers: a good number of the promised farmwives, as well as Mistress Roscout, the weaver, and Mistress Tregue from the tavern. It was interesting to see that Madam Sanai had not come, and had sent another of the Benkki Desan women in her place. Was she truly still recovering from the fever, or was there some disaffection between her and the duchess?
“We can begin cutting these out, if someone else would like to make the next pattern,” Mistress Conbour suggested, stepping aside and taking up a pair of shears.
“I will,” another woman replied, one of the hollow-cheeked refugees from Meinhem. “We make ours a little differently, if that’s all right?”
“No, please. That—that is, please show us,” said Duchess Andelin, and subsided with embarrassment.
It was interesting to see the regional variations in something so simple as children’s clothing. It was even more interesting to feel the change in the air when Bilaki stepped forward to take her turn, tall and foreign in appearance, with her long, loose hair and mannish attire.
“In Benkki Desa, it is not so cold as here,” she began, the words thickly accented. “Only in mountains. We make different shirts for little ones, they tie closed…”
“Perhaps it would be better to give children the sort of clothing they’re used to,” said Mistress Tregue, just this side of patronizing.
“Yes…you say so,” Bilaki agreed, setting her chalk down and moving aside.
There had already been complaints around town about foreign women. The Benkki Desans occupied an awkward niche in the feminine hierarchy, and in the Empire, bathhouse attendants might be anything from skilled healers to beauticians to prostitutes. There had been much speculation as to where the Benkki Desans fell on that spectrum, as well as grumbling in certain quarters about workers of magic, profaning the blessing of the stars. There were some people in Tresingale who disdained the baths.
But as everyone took their seats to begin sewing, it became clear that Madam Sanai had not sent Bilaki out of disaffection. The woman’s stitches were exquisite, so tiny and perfect that one could hardly be discerned from the next.
“Oh, can you show me how to do that, Bilaki?” Duchess Andelin asked, leaning over to watch as Bilaki willingly repeated a neat double backstitch, sturdy enough to endure the impatient tugs of children. “You must have practiced so much.”
“Since I have five years, noble lady,” Bilaki agreed. “In Benkki Desa, girls make sewing bags when they have five years.”
“That is when girls in the Empire begin their samplers,” Mistress Tregue remarked from a few chairs down. “I imagine you are not used to such plain work, Your Grace.”
On the contrary, Mionet knew that when the duchess had time to sew, it was only on the humblest projects, endless blankets and samplers of her own. Duchess Andelin demurred.
“I haven’t sewed much at all,” she said truthfully. “That’s why I was happy when Mistress Conbour suggested this. I do want to help with the blankets and clothes, but I was also hoping to watch and learn a little…”
She could hardly have said anything that would have pleased them more. And it would have worked a treat on the great ladies of the capital, too.
“Perhaps we might take it in turns, my lady,” offered Mistress Roscout, scenting an opportunity. “Then you might have a chance to observe everyone.”
It was not an entirely innocent suggestion; everyone was eager for their moment with the duchess. But it wasn’t only for her benefit. Needlework was an essential part of life for all women, and everyone had their own small secrets, decorative stitches and family traditions passed from mother to daughter. Mionet was so absorbed, she was caught by surprise when Duchess Andelin turned her attention to her.
“Could you show us one?” she asked. “I like those little flowers you embroider, the ones with the hollow circle in the center of the petals?”
“Of course,” Mionet replied. She had been working on a smock and wondering what peasant child was going to be so fortunate as to be clothed by a noblewoman of Segoile, and turned it over promptly to demonstrate on the single large pocket. “It’s a little snip of the shears, first, and then looping stitches to pull it back and make a round opening…”
Heads leaned forward all around to watch as her needle flashed, making a raised border around the center of the flower, and then petals. In ten minutes, she had inscribed a small, cheerful buttercup on the pocket, with green leaves on either side.
