No need to ask what that was for either. Keisha took it downwind of the drying laundry, out to the railings of the neighbor’s fence, and laid it over the top rail. She brushed and beat the bit of rug until no more dirt or mud would come out of it and her arms were tired.
She brought both back, and this time her mother accepted them with a smile. She smiled back, relieved. Evidently she’d performed enough penance.
“Here - go sweep up,” Sidonie told her, handing her the broom. “I seem to have all our dishes and most of our neighbors’ as well - ”
And Sidonie would never return so much as a cup if it was still soiled. Keisha ventured an opinion.
“Mum, why aren’t the boys helping you?” she asked, digging the broom into the cracks of the wooden floor to dislodge crumbs that would attract mice. “They make more than their share of mess, and it wouldn’t hurt them to help.” At Sidonie’s quizzical look, she added slyly, “And they’re stronger; they could really do a good job of scrubbing.”
“Oh, they’re such clumsy louts,” Sidonie began, but she sounded doubtful this time, and Keisha took advantage of that doubt to press her point home.
“I wouldn’t trust them to do dishes, or to wash good clothes, but they can’t hurt anything scrubbing floors and walls or washing sheets and their own clothing. Maybe if they had to scrub their own clothes, they wouldn’t be so quick to get stains all over them.”
Her mother laughed. “Isn’t that the pot saying the kettle’s black?” she asked gently.
Keisha snorted. “At least my stains come from work, not drinking wine and beer with my friends - and what’s more, I do scrub my own, I’ve never asked you to do it, not since I started this Healing business.” She warmed to her subject. “What’s more, I never get stains on my good clothes!”
“You never wear your good clothes,” Sidonie pointed out.
“Because I’d get stains on them,” she countered. “And I do wear them, just not every other day to impress some girl! I just think they’d be more careful if they knew they’d be the ones doing the work.”
This time, instead of dismissing the idea, her mother actually looked as if she was thinking about it - and thinking about the fact that half her work force was gone, and the other half - as she’d discovered this morning - was not always reliably available. “You might have a point, dear,” was all she said, but Keisha was encouraged. “Would you go pack up Shandi’s things for me? Ruven of the Fellowship says that there will be a trader for their shawls and trims coming straight from Haven and going straight back after the Faire, and he’ll take Shandi some packages, probably in exchange for her embroidery threads.”
“Then I’ll give him a little more incentive,” Keisha told her. “Shandi and I had gotten some scarlet dye; I’ll go ahead and make up some thread, you know how hard it is to get scarlet, and that should seal the bargain.”
“Oh, now that would be a help,” Sidonie replied, brightening, since as Keisha knew, the trader would probably ask for a coin or two as well, and this would save the Alder household from having to part with those hard-earned coins. “Just - try not to get your hands all red this time, dear.”
Keisha pretended she hadn’t-heard that last as she went to the back of the house to the little cubby-bedroom she shared with Shandi. After all, it had been ages since the incident when she dyed her hands with red ocher, and how was she supposed to know the stuff had to wear off? It had been her first experiment with dye for Shandi!
Shandi was so neat that it didn’t take long to make her things up into a few tightly packed packages. Keisha left her a generous supply of embroidery threads for her own use but kept out the rest to use to bargain with the trader. Shandi’s friends would just have to find another source for their threads from now on - Or they can spin their own and pay me to dye them.
She also kept all of the undyed spun thread; not only was she going to dye as much of it scarlet as she could tonight, but she intended to make that experiment with overdying in indigo and see if that didn’t make a purple.
I’ll have to dry it in the workshop, though - and without afire. In fact, I’d better dye it before dark so I don’t have to use a candle. The fumes could be dangerous.
She was just as glad that she was the one doing this batch of dye and not Shandi. She wasn’t certain she could have impressed on Shandi just how dangerous those fumes could be in close quarters. None of the dyes Shandi had used until now needed anything but water and a solvent followed by a fixative, and none was poisonous unless you were stupid enough to drink it.
But my medicines can be very poisonous. The bruise potion, for instance, or the joint-ache rub; they could both kill you if you weren‘t careful.
She paused for a moment to admire Shandi’s undyed threads, the wool, the linen, and the special baby chirra-wool that she got from the Fellowship. No one in the village could spin a tighter, smoother thread than Shandi, and no one made thread better suited to embroidery. Shandi’s threads were not inclined to knot, break, or catch; that was why everyone liked them.
But Audi is almost as good - and this will just give her incentive to do better.
When Keisha had finished, there was just enough daylight left to do the dyeing that she’d decided on. She took the hanks of undyed thread, left the packages on Shandi’s bed, and headed out the door at a fast walk before Sidonie could recruit her to help with dinner. “I’ve got something I have to do, Mum!” she called as she went out the door. “I’ll be back for dinner!”
She got herself out of shouting distance by breaking into a run as soon as she let the door slam behind her - thus making it possible to claim that she hadn’t heard Sidonie, if a reproach was to come over dinner.
She closed the door of her workshop behind her and leaned against it for a moment, conscious of a profound feeling that she had reached a sanctuary, and guilty for having that feeling.
Then she dismissed both emotions, caught up in the excitement of having something new to experiment with. The pouch with the dye in it waited in a patch of sunlight on the workbench, and she had the rest of the afternoon before her.
She quit only when it was getting darkish and the fumes from the dyeing thread made her feel as if she’d drunk three glasses of wine and then hit herself in the head with the bottle. By then, the last couple of hanks came out noticeably lighter than the others, which meant that the dye was losing strength.
That’s all right, she thought as she hung them to dry with the rest, along the line where she usually hung bunches of herbs to dry. They‘ll either be a nice rose-pink, or I can use them for that overdying experiment. She had more than enough thread to make the trader willing to seal the bargain, and she’d used up three-quarters of the dye to do it. If Shandi’s friends complained, she had enough dye left to dye their spinning, which wasn’t good enough to tempt a trader. Thar’s a reasonable compromise, I think.