The first time she put this forward, I grew angry. I held my emotion in check, but the Mistress must have seen it in my face.
“What do you think the lot of women is in this world, Girl?”
I spoke without thinking. “T-to choose, if nothing else.”
“You were not born here. You came from somewhere, yes?”
I nodded.
“A small village, or a farm?”
“Yes.”
“When you grew, what would your choices have been? A farmer, no doubt. A boy from some neighbor’s land who would know nothing more of love than what he’d learned from his father’s bullock. Here, at least, you know what can be, and how to achieve it if you get the chance. There, your choices would have been narrow as a thread, and brought you little joy at all.”
They still would have been my choices, I thought. That was my oldest argument with myself, and one I somehow always seemed to lose.
She showed me much, undressing her own body with casualness so I could see how a nipple perked with chill or damp or a gentle touch, how the curve of a breast felt beneath the fingers. Likewise her sweetpocket below. We discussed shaving and hair, how the blood coursed in the monthly rhythm, and the different fluids that came with sex. Mistress Cherlise gave me certain exercises to perform deep within my body.
“These will not defend you from a beating, nor save you from a fall, but they will help you manage your choices and keep your body safe,” she said.
We both lay naked on the bed in my sleeping chamber. “When will I need the exercises?”
“Soon. Always be ready.”
She sat up, and I helped her into her smallclothes.
Soon? I was not quite twelve years of age. How soon could it be?
When I had first come here, I had barely been as tall as Mistress Tirelle’s waist. Now I could see the wart at the top of her head. Almost nine years I had spent in the Pomegranate Court. Growing, learning, being remade time and time again. If not for the stolen freedom of the night lessons by the Dancing Mistress, I would have had nothing but the company of women within these bluestone walls that whole time.
My education was frighteningly detailed, but it was also incomplete. I could prepare ducklings Smagadine over cream and rice, and find a flaw in a polished silver service for forty-eight at a glance, but I had no idea how to buy a cabbage in the market, or where one might hire a cart. A great lady did not need to know everything. She needed to know only those things worthy of her attention.
There were other holes, as well. None of Mistress Danae’s books had discussed anything of the recent history of Copper Downs. If not for meeting Septio in the underground, I would have had no idea of the city’s gods, let alone that they had fallen silent for centuries. No one ever discussed the Duke within the walls of the Pomegranate Court, either. He was another thing I learned of only in my stolen moments outside.
Government, trade, the true state of affairs in the city: Why would these be hidden from a great lady in training? The Factor’s house was wrapped in mysteries enclosed in a circle of questions spiraling in on itself until the truth was swallowed like a shadow under the noonday sun.
I had added more than three thousand bells to the silk I carried in my mind. The tally of the wrongs done to me had grown so lengthy that I’d long since set it aside in favor of my original resolve to rule these people through their words. My own words I kept more carefully since I’d realized how many of them I had lost.
I lay in my bed very early in a morning of my ninth autumn in the Pomegranate Court and wished perversely that my arms were long enough to massage my ankles while leaving my legs straight. Mistress Tirelle swept into my room in a flurry of huffing breath. Her rounded face was flushed dark and miserable, like one of our tree’s fruits gone to rot, and she was sheened with sweat.
My first thought was for what I might have done to wrong her. My second was a nasty pleasure in her discomfort.
“Up, up, you lazy girl!” The duck woman slapped the covers away from me.
“I am-”
Her murderous glare cut my words short. “The Factor will be here within minutes. You must present yourself.”
It was not even daylight outside. He could not be so early. No one of importance rose before the dawn. Not in any book or story or hallway gossip that I had ever heard.
I remained calm in the face of her fear. Sitting up, I stretched. “Then I will wear the green silk shift. And take the time to brush my hair with a few drops of oil.”
The dress was the color of Federo’s eyes. It also set off my dark brown skin to great advantage. As for my hair, though I kept it coiled and pinned most often, when it was down, it flowed to my thighs and drew admiring glances from many of the women who came to work with me. Mistress Cherlise was especially taken with it. She’d advised me not to let my hair grow ragged with neglect, and never forget the effect it would have on men.
“I’ll not have you play the slut with him,” Mistress Tirelle breathed, her fat face close to mine, though she now had to tilt her head back to meet my eye at such range.
“This will not be so different from Federo’s visits.” My voice held more confidence than my heart did. The Factor was no friend nor ally. Rather, he was the man who owned me in every part and piece. I was his more abjectly than any horse in his stables.
Old rage stirred.
Mistress Tirelle pinched my cheek hard. “You listen, Girl. The Factor is very different from that idiotic fop. We would none of us have food on our tables or beds at night if not for him. His word is your life. Federo…” She snorted, close as she ever came to laughing. “That man is a wastrel peacock who flies the world bargaining for future beauty.”
He’d bargained for my beauty once. Every scrap I’d eaten since then had come from the Factor by courtesy of that idiotic fop. Once again, as she always did, Mistress Tirelle saw me as receiving great favor in this house. Such charity, to raise the little farmer girl to high estate.
The small rebellions of my thoughts were no matter. We launched into a flurry of activity. First I must be washed clean, though I always kept myself fair. Especially after the Dancing Mistress’ night runs, though it had been nine days since my last such. Mistress Tirelle used cotton cloths pressed into a bowl of rose water to lave my back, then set me to wiping my arms and chest and lower body while she piled my hair.
“You do not know,” she whispered fiercely. “I have tried every minute of these years to make you ready. You do not know, Girl.”
You could have told me what I do not know, I thought, but I said nothing. She would not beat me immediately before the Factor arrived, but there were always later days. Mistress Tirelle never forgot an infraction. She also cultivated a perfect recall of any perceived slight to her dignity.
So we worked quickly at the efforts of beauty. My hair was let loose, oiled, and brushed as swiftly as we could. I had not yet been judged ready for the scented waters and alcohols used by women full grown, but Mistress Tirelle outlined my eyes in dark kohl and touched my face very lightly with brushes from the paint pots. She traced my lips with dyes, and checked my teeth for untoward stains or flecks of last night’s dinner. Then we folded me into the shift I’d tailored from a bolt of green lawn cloth. Under the instruction of Mistress Leonie, I had sewn it with a hint of bodice to signal the change that was already on its way. My painted face and the cut of my clothing would lead where my body had yet to go.