Calia's Needle, page 15
“Oh, you know. He must be close to forty and not married. Wedding an alderman, you could do worse for yourself.”
“I don't think he's like that. I mean,” Calia chuckled, “I think he might be more interested if I were a man.”
“Well, yes, everyone with any sense knows that about him, but he probably still wants children someday. A wife of good standing, too. Someone like you or Ana would be perfect for him.”
Calia smiled and shook her head, knowing that Lucy was mostly teasing. “No, I don't think so. I'm much happier here with you.”
“Oh, it's like that, is it?” Lucy gave her a suggestive wiggle of her eyebrows.
“Stop it, you silly hen. You should talk to my sister. She'll fall in love with anyone who catches her eye, man or woman.”
“Well, I wouldn't mention that in front of the queen. She's a pious woman, and the church doesn't approve of that kind of scandal.”
“No, I suppose not.” Calia picked out a misplaced stitch with the tip of her needle. “That's what makes me nervous about Queen Meredith. Her piety. You don't see it often, but the moment she catches a whiff of anything that goes against the church's teachings, she puffs up like a pigeon. I'm always worried she'll ask me something about the saints or the scriptures and I won't have an answer.”
“Just be humble. That's what Huw says. You don't need to understand God's will to defer to His sacred precepts.”
“I wonder if I should be more bold, though. My mother said I could learn a lot in my time here. Shouldn't I be trying to impress everyone? I can't do that if I'm acting like a serf who's never left her village.”
“Do you want to impress everyone?”
Calia shrugged. “It isn't that I want to, it's just that when you're at the high table it feels like it's what you're supposed to do.”
Lucy scoffed. “That's how people like Anastasia think. They have to put on an act every time there's an audience.”
“Perhaps I'm getting a bit above my station.”
“Oh, to hell with all of that. It's just nonsense made up by lords and ladies so they can look down their noses at people like us. If working here's taught me anything, it's that nobles fart and fornicate like everyone else. Do you want to be like them, or do you want to be like you?”
Calia smiled. She liked Lucy's blunt, no-nonsense way of thinking. It was like having an older sister who was always looking out for her.
“I suppose you're right. But you did say I have a lot in common with Ana. I'm not sure how I can become a respected master like her if I don't impress anyone.”
“Proper respect invites itself. It's not a show you put on. The only attention that'll attract is from people whose respect isn't worth much in the first place. Huw, he's a respectable man. Pete, too. But Ana?” Lucy scoffed again. “I respect the sheep my wool comes from more than her.”
“You're so wise about these things, Lucy.” Calia put her sewing down and went over to give her a hug. “I'm going to bed. Would you brush my hair?”
“Only if you do mine first. I'm going to see a dressmaker from Tannersfield tomorrow. You'll have to wake me up early.”
“I will.”
Despite progress on the tapestry slowing down with the recent excitement, Calia still finished her second square before the summer's end. Queen Meredith didn't check on their progress regularly, for she said that seeing the pieces half-finished was like eating an undercooked meal, but every time a new square was ready she ordered them hung downstairs in the great hall alongside Ana's cartoons.
“Beautiful, beautiful,” the queen mused, gazing up at Calia's second piece. “When I next visit in the spring I want to see the whole thing finished.”
A viewing party had been arranged that afternoon, though only a few prominent locals were in attendance. They milled about in the great hall conversing quietly as they admired the half-finished tapestry. Vesna was deep in conversation with the bishop of Farrenwold, who was here on another of his flying visits, while Leander recounted anecdotes to a bored-looking Lord Oswin.
“We may need more weavers if the tapestry is to be finished before the end of winter, Your Majesty,” Ana said.
“I'll find some for you.”
“If I could be allowed to hire them myself–”
“No,” Meredith interrupted her. “I want to select them. You've been very dour lately, Anastasia, and I want weavers full of vigour.”
Ana fell silent, but Calia saw the flash of resentment that crossed her face. Perhaps this was the moment to suggest an idea that had been on her mind since they discovered the old tapestry? She'd been reluctant to bring it up to the queen, for she was certain Ana would object, but if the painter was feeling humbled then this might be her chance.
Proper respect invites itself, she thought. If her ideas were good, they should stand on their own merits.
Calia cleared her throat. “Your Majesty, might I make a suggestion?”
The queen raised her eyebrows. “You may.”
“Forgive me if it isn't my place, but I can't help thinking of the old design whenever I look at the tapestry these days; the branches at the top, that wonderful natural framing. I know it's too late to change the whole thing, but we still have two squares from the top row that haven't been started. I was wondering if it might be possible to incorporate a hint of that of that old design into the new? A framing of tree branches at the top right corner, perhaps.”
The queen looked at Ana. “Could that be done?”
The painter shook her head. “Out of the question. The design has already been finalised. Changing one part of it would throw the rest out of harmony. The colours have been selected and the thread purchased. One can't simply change a painting halfway through.”
Calia disagreed with that. She didn't want to escalate things into an argument with Ana, but in her heart she longed to weave those gentle branches into the tapestry. She wanted to create a piece that was natural and calm, full of earthy colours like the ones she'd learned to weave with, not flashy silk and silver thread.
“We've made alterations before,” Calia said. “And not all the thread has been purchased–nothing we can't repurpose for other parts of the tapestry, at least.”
“You don't understand how these things are managed,” Ana retorted. “And you certainly don't understand fine art.”
“Don't behave like children,” Meredith said, flashing both of them a glare. “This isn't the first time I've noticed the pair of you at odds. Do you know how tiresome I find it when people vie for my favour?”
An uncomfortable silence followed in which Calia became very aware of Vesna staring at her from across the room. She never knew where she stood with Meredith. The day Goldie had been dismissed, the queen seemed to have been revelling in her subjects' bickering. Today, she would have none of it.
“Forgive me, Your Majesty.”
“I enjoy your work immensely, both of you, but I don't want any of this squabbling.”
Leander sidled into view, apparently having been hovering on the edge of the conversation.
“Your Majesty, if I may?”
Meredith still looked annoyed, but she motioned for him to continue.
“Calia and Anastasia are passionate women, both possessed of strong artistic convictions. It is only natural that they find themselves butting heads when forced to work together. I've seen it a dozen times. You can't have two chickens hatching the same egg. But I believe there might be an answer to Calia's suggestion that doesn't impinge on Anastasia's vision of the tapestry.”
Calia listened with curiosity. She'd told Leander about her desire to weave the original design several times over supper. While he was far warmer to her these days than he'd used to be, it was unlike him to go out of his way to do her a favour. What was he up to?
“Are you going to suggest we weave two separate tapestries?” the queen asked drily.
“As a matter of fact, I am. Not another full-sized Farren Vale, of course, but perhaps a smaller piece, say, a couple of yards across. A miniature recreation of the original so that we might revive its spirit.”
“That would mean taking Calia away from my project,” Ana said.
“Precisely. She would no longer be getting under your feet. She would still be working on the Farren Vale, albeit in a different capacity.”
“Well?” the queen said. “What do you think, Calia?”
She could hardly contain her excitement. “If it would please you, Your Majesty, then it would be my honour.”
An amused smile twitched Meredith's lips. “I quite like the idea. I did say, didn't I, that I would like to see a full tapestry rendered in Calia's style? It could hang in my solar opposite the hearth. Yes, what an elegant solution! Calia will have her tapestry, and Anastasia will have hers.”
Leander bowed. “I would be happy to organise the commission through the guild.”
So that was his plan. The queen had sidelined him by bringing in her own weavers the first time around, but if Calia was commissioned directly, the formal process would have to go through the Ashmount weavers' guild. They would take a fee, and, more importantly, they would share in the prestige.
Well, they could have their prestige and their fee. If it allowed Calia to work on her own, free from Ana's overbearing presence, then Leander could take all the credit he wanted. She was already envisioning picking out the colours she would use, studying the faded browns and greens of the original and working out how to translate them into a smaller design. Small tapestries had always been her speciality. She could experiment on her hand loom, testing out new patterns and combinations of colour before committing them to her final design.
“There is no cartoon for her to work from,” Ana said.
“I can work from the existing cartoon and use the pieces of the old tapestry as references for the top parts.”
“They're far too big.”
“I can scale them down into something smaller. It won't be an exact copy, of course, but it'll have to be different to convey the same design on a smaller warp anyway.”
“Well then,” the queen said, “that's settled. With Calia gone, we shall have to find new weavers for Ana sooner than later, I think. Perhaps we can organise a craft fair of some sort. I want to be impressed by weavers I've never heard of.”
Calia felt like a warm ray of sunlight was shining on her back. The cloud that had been following her since Goldie's dismissal had finally lifted.
Chapter 14
“I thought you'd be happy,” Anastasia said as her mother paced the length of the room. She had a headache, and Vesna's irritable footsteps were only making it worse. She couldn't concentrate on her painting like this.
“Why should we be happy? Now you have a rival making her own tapestry, a direct copy of yours! What if people look at the two side by side and decide hers is better, hm? You'll be second to a half-trained tailor. Is that what you want?”
Ana pinched the bridge of her nose with a thumb and forefinger. “No one is going to make that comparison, Mother. Hers will be a fraction of the size. She's copying a weary old nature design. Mine is far more dynamic. She doesn't even like using silver and gold thread. Our styles are a world apart.”
Vesna pinched her arm. Ana swatted her hand away in annoyance, then gasped as her mother slapped her across the face.
“You're slipping, Nastya. You couldn't get the queen to dismiss her. You couldn't stop them from digging up the old tapestry. Now you're not even going to fight back when the girl is poised to become the queen's new favourite! I'm ashamed of you.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Ana said angrily. Her cheek stung from the slap, but the warmth spreading across her skin was nothing compared to the blaze of her mother's scorn.
“Think. Use Sigrad. Use Oswin. Find a way to put a stop to this and force Calia out of favour. If you can't do it, I will. I won't let my daughter disgrace her legacy.”
“My legacy, or yours?”
“They're one and the same and you know it. I lifted us up to where we are now. It's your duty to keep us here.”
Ana knew she was right. Vesna had brought them across the sea from a war-torn kingdom, worked tirelessly for their wealth, and ingratiated them with the royal court. Without her, Ana and Kara would have nothing. For as much as she hated her mother in that moment, she knew she could never disobey her.
“I'll think of something,” she said miserably.
But she couldn't. As the days passed and she watched Calia setting up her new loom, she struggled to think of anything that might force the woman out of favour. She couldn't muster the passion for it, because, in truth, part of her was glad. She was tired of being at odds with Calia. Every time they butted heads, there was always an undercurrent of doubt. Ana wondered whether she deserved to be outdone. When she looked at Calia's work, she saw the unique talent that went into it, the eye for colour and contrast that, while different from her own, still held an equally powerful sense of character. The day they'd gone into the castle cellar, Ana had been enraptured by the old Farren Vale. It had brought her back to those days she'd spent staring up at ancient frescoes as a child, full of admiration for the wonders of the past. If she'd succeeded in thwarting the dig, she would've deprived herself of that moment.
The problem was, Calia had no obvious weaknesses to take advantage of–none that were relevant, anyway. She seemed to be of relatively humble birth, but the queen was one of those people who saw virtue in humility. Cloth weaved by the poor and books scribed by nuns held a special kind of charm to her. Calia's biggest weakness of character was that she was shy. At first, Ana had thought that would make her easy to bully, but she'd since learned otherwise. Calia's timid disposition wasn't born of cowardice or stupidity, but a painful lack of ego. Such people were always difficult to deal with, like pious monks who put their vows first and their personal interests second. That was probably why the queen liked her.
In the end, Ana reached the same conclusion she had before: if there was any way to push Calia out of favour, it would have to be via the people she associated with. First and foremost among those was Leander. He had styled himself as Calia's patron, and people who didn't know them often took her to be his apprentice. Ana and Vesna had spent a long time learning about Leander when they first came to Ashmount. He'd been their first major rival, constantly insisting that he, as the foremost weaver in town, should head up the project with a team of his choosing. Fortunately, the queen hadn't taken much convincing to cut him out of the picture. His persistence had been his undoing, and in the end he'd proven himself to be a man who was more talk than action.
Still, there were things they'd learned in those early days that might yet prove useful. Leander did not get on well with the local clergy. The root of this animosity, it seemed, was a short-lived stint as a novice monk the alderman had undertaken in his youth. Leander had left his monastery in unusual circumstances. There didn't seem to have been any formal expulsion, nor had any charges been brought against him, yet everyone said he'd been forced out against his will.
It hadn't taken long for Ana to come up with a theory as to why. There were rumours abound that Leander had an intimate preference for male company. At first she'd assumed the talk was just a by-product of his slightly effete manner, but his abrupt ejection from the church was too conspicuous to ignore. An illicit love affair was exactly the sort of thing the clergy would want to keep quiet. It was also the sort of thing that would brand a man with a lifelong resentment of the church. In Ana's experience, men with Leander's preferences were quietly overlooked most of the time. She suspected there were numerous affairs going on behind monastery walls that no one ever talked about, but the formal line of the church was that such relationships were sinful, and they ran the risk of prosecution in ecclesiastical court. Perhaps Leander had found love with a fellow monk and been forced out when he was exposed? Taking the matter to court would have been far messier, and no one would have come out of it looking good, least of all the monastery.
Ana sat in the shade of a tree outside the manor pondering her problem. The queen had insisted on a picnic in one of the meadows to take advantage of the last of the summer weather. She and her guests sat at a long line of tables while the servants stood around sweating in the sun. Vesna had complained about the heat and gone back inside, and Karaline had been scared of the wasps that kept landing on her goblet, so Ana took her into the shade where they could finish their meal in peace. Kara had a small square of leather in her lap that she was embroidering with a pattern resembling the queen's crown. The bronze needle she was using looked familiar to Ana, but she couldn't remember where she'd seen it before. She watched her sister for a moment, reflecting that the design was surprisingly good, before reluctantly returning to her plotting. Vesna had told her what she needed to do, and the more days that passed without any progress, the heavier the weight of her mother's disappointment became.
The queen took a low view of anyone who flouted the church's teachings. Fortunately for Leander, she seemed quite oblivious to the rumours people spun about him, but that could easily be changed. A rumour was not enough on its own, however. He would need official condemnation, something that brought him before the ecclesiastical court. Perhaps Calia could be drawn in as a witness to speak on his behalf. Surely she'd want to defend him, then if the ruling found him guilty...
Ana sighed and shut her eyes, leaning her head back against the tree trunk. It was all so insubstantial. Just hopeful ideas, none of them guaranteed to get her what she wanted. With enough time and plotting, those ideas might coalesce into a plan, but without the drive to see it through, it seemed a herculean task. This should have been a pleasant time, one of her few precious moments alone with Karaline, yet she was so preoccupied with appeasing her mother that she couldn't relax. Perhaps she should just give it all up; accept a future of mediocrity and Vesna's disappointment. But even contemplating that thought made her skin itch and her throat tighten with indignation. She wouldn't be a failure.
