Calia's Needle, page 5
“Use silver thread.”
Calia bowed her head. “If you think that's best.”
Ana moved behind Calia, watching her as she went back to work. She had a bronze sewing needle tucked into her hand that she controlled deftly, using it almost like an extra finger to tease out wool from spools, scratch notes into a wax tablet, and pin short lengths of thread together as a means of organising them. A tailor's quirk, Ana surmised.
Before long, her thoughts returned to their original purpose. Whether Calia had an eye for detail or not, her youth was a mark against her, and Ana doubted she would be a worthwhile addition to the project. Her insistence on silk thread instead of silver was already proof that she was going to be difficult. She needed to find some weakness in the girl, some flaw she could present to the queen if she decided to get rid of her. The sewing needle was a strange preference. Perhaps she was more tailor than weaver? But the queen probably knew that already based on Calia's surname, so Ana dismissed it for now. A far better tactic would be to suggest that she was impious; that she shunned churchgoing and favoured heathen beliefs. Perhaps if Calia was observed not to attend church as often as others, if she depicted the tapestry's angels and saints in a manner that could be construed as disrespectful, or if she visited the town's wise women instead of praying for relief from her ailments, those dalliances could be composed like brushstrokes into an unflattering picture.
There were things Ana could do to ease such a narrative along: set chores that kept Calia busy on church days, send her to fetch remedies from the wise women every month, make up rumours about how the thread she used was dyed using the urine of whores and the blood of pigs...
This was how Ana usually got what she wanted. All her life, she'd been frustrated that people failed to recognise her talent. Even the queen thought she knew better than her which weavers to commission despite being blind as a bat when it came to artistic appraisal. Relying on one's own skill was not enough; you had to stand out from the crowd. Women and foreigners faced natural hurdles in that regard. Ana had lost count of the times she'd presented her work to the royal court only for the king to commission a less gifted male painter to design his frescoes and beautify his chapels. It wasn't enough to be the best when everyone else stood taller than you. You had to push them down so that you could rise up. Sometimes it was as simple as bribing a cook to slip something into a rival's food so they would miss an important appointment. Other times you had to work harder, collecting unsavoury rumours about them over the course of months until their reputation became tarnished.
Ana was already concocting a handful of such schemes for the weavers, hoarding their dirty secrets like jewels. There was a page called Sigrad who would gladly repeat anything he overheard in the servants' wing for a few pennies. He said one of the weavers had been seen kissing a married silver merchant in a public house. Another was purported to be sneaking wine out of the storeroom. Some had made comments that were derogatory to the queen and Lord Oswin, while others slipped away from work early and started late. Ana had a dozen such gems tucked away in the back of her mind. None of them were substantial enough to do anything with–not yet, at least–but later, in conjunction with other tidbits, they could be worth something. Not even the senior weavers were immune from Ana's schemes, for she would not have any of them upstaging her when the tapestry was done. She'd been the one who created the design. It was hers to take the glory for.
She would have liked to watch Calia for longer, but supper was being served downstairs, and soon the weavers stopped work for the day. Ana waited for them to leave, lingering at the rear as they filed downstairs into the servants' hall. Rather than following, she headed across the landing to Lucy Tailor's workroom. Though Lucy wasn't directly involved with the tapestry, Ana consulted her regularly. As the resident tailor, she knew more about the local dyeing and thread-making business than anyone, and she helped the weavers source many of their materials.
Ana stopped at Lucy's door and knocked. No one answered. She checked behind her to make sure no one was watching, then slipped inside. The tailoring workshop was a haphazard nest of spools and stands, snips and shears, pins and fabrics, and a dozen articles of half-mended clothing. Some of the servants' stockings were laid out on a work table, while one of Lord Oswin's fine black surcoats hung on a stand near a window filled with a lattice of expensive translucent glass.
Ana ignored the usual tailoring clutter. She'd been in here before and determined that there was nothing noteworthy to be found in Lucy's belongings. It was the straw mattress beneath the work table that she was interested in. Lucy seemed to have taken a shine to Calia, and she often let her friends sleep in her room. Just as Ana had suspected, there was a travelling cloak bundled up on the mattress next to a saddlebag. She bent down and opened the bag. Inside was a sewing box containing needles, thimbles, pins, and thread. An insignia had been burned into the lid, probably the mark of a regional tailoring guild, but Ana wasn't familiar enough with the guilds in this part of the kingdom to recognise it. Finding nothing of interest in the box, she closed it and set it aside.
Besides clothes and some leftover travelling food, there was nothing else in the saddlebag except a small hand loom. It had been bundled up in cloth to protect the design. When Ana unwrapped it, she was momentarily taken aback by what she saw. The little tapestry was only half finished, but already she could tell that it depicted a man kneeling before a crowd in some sort of ceremony. The picture itself was unremarkable, but the way it had been composed struck Ana as nothing short of inspired. She'd never seen a weaver convey such a vivid image on such a small warp before. The effect had been accomplished not by portraying every figure realistically, but by making them distinctly abstract. At a close glance, the horizontal lines of thread were just streaks of green, yellow, blue and cream, but like an image reflected in the ripples of a pond, there was a pattern to them that made it obvious they were figures in a crowd when you took in the picture from afar.
Ana knelt on the floor admiring Calia's work for several minutes. She was no longer afraid the girl would prove a liability. No, if anything she was too good. If she could apply this striking style to the fine details of the Farren Vale, she might become a rising star among the weavers. It was a good thing she was working on one of the brand-new panels. That way, her skill would serve to enhance Ana's original creation rather than making it look dull in comparison to the old tapestry.
The sound of footsteps on the landing made her freeze. Her first thought was to leave immediately and make it look like she'd only ducked in momentarily looking for Lucy. But then she heard voices, Lucy and Calia's, and they were coming her way. If they saw the contents of the saddlebag on the floor, they'd know she'd been rummaging. Without panicking, Ana quickly put everything back where she'd found it, then picked up a spool of thread and held it up to the window, pretending to examine its colour in the fading light.
“I think I should just tell them,” she heard Calia say outside the door.
“Tell them later, once you've settled in,” Lucy replied. “Those old hags are just fishing for a reason to look down their noses at you.”
Ana's curiosity was piqued. She hesitated for a moment, then backed away from the window and stood next to the door. Her slippers were silent on the floorboards. When the door opened, Ana was standing behind it, and the shadow that fell over her plunged her corner of the room into darkness. She held her breath, careful not to make a sound. Someone entered and began rummaging under the table.
“But they keep prying for details,” Calia said. “It's as if they know.”
“Make something up. Or just tell them about your tailoring guild instead. None of them are from Tannersfield, so it's not as if they'll know the difference.”
“I don't like being dishonest.”
“Calia, you little goose, you've no obligation to be honest with people who don't have your best interests at heart.”
“I suppose not.”
“Besides, a year from now you can show off your work to every weavers' guild in the kingdom. They'll all be champing at the bit to accept you.”
Around the edge of the door, Ana saw Calia's hand clutching her little loom with its half-finished tapestry.
“If this persuades everyone downstairs that I'm not a fraud, then I'll believe you.”
Lucy laughed, and the pair departed, closing the door behind them. Ana waited until she could no longer hear their footsteps before slipping out and making her way back to the northern wing. She wore a smile the whole way. She couldn't be certain, but it had sounded like Calia Tailor wasn't a formally recognised member of a weavers' guild.
That was a gem worth hoarding indeed.
Chapter 5
Life in Ashmount Manor slowed down after the royal entourage returned to the capital. The bustling house became a vacant convent, the creaks of its floorboards and the crackling of its fires growing ever more conspicuous as the fog of noise dissipated. It felt almost too big now. With most of the tables in the great hall going unused, the room became chilly without a constant current of bodies warming it. For some, it might have been a dour change of atmosphere, but Calia quite liked it. The spring weather was only growing finer, and she spent most of her days in the comfort of the weaving rooms away from the draughty hall. She'd grown up at her mother's inn, where noise was constant and privacy scarce. To be living in a grand house with private rooms and work areas was a luxury she was unaccustomed to. When her mind wandered, she caught herself daydreaming about the future, imagining a house with a workshop where she could weave and sew all day long, taking commissions from wealthy clients and entertaining a few close friends in a comfortable little hall. With the wage she was earning, she could make it happen if she wanted.
As she began to work on her section of the tapestry in earnest, the first hints of Anastasia's design started to take shape. Calia's loom was of excellent quality. Its large vertical frame bore a line of nails at the top, just like her hand loom. The horizontal warp threads stretched down from those nails to a tensioned bar at the bottom, each one so close to the next that it was difficult to slip a bobbin between them. Such a tight alignment was necessary to produce the detail required in a tapestry like this. That was why the loom had a heddle: a bar hanging over Calia's head that was attached to the upper part of the warp by strings. By pulling on those strings, the weaver could raise individual warp threads as if they were drawing back a bowstring, opening up gaps through which the bobbin could slip with ease. Though not intensely physical work, the constant reaching up left Calia's arms sore by the end of each day.
She had a dozen bobbins on a work table next to her, each wrapped with a different colour of thread, while several more hung from the back of the tapestry waiting to be used again later. Each time Calia wove her thread through the warp, she would tamp it down with the pointed end of her bobbin, making sure it was evenly compacted. There was an art to this that she'd learned through trial and error. Thick, voluminous wool took up more space than fine silk. Even if the difference was almost imperceptible at a glance, hundreds upon hundreds of wefts stacked atop one another would magnify those differences. The finest thread had to be woven tighter, tamped down harder, to avoid exposing the white warp underneath.
It was easy to feel overwhelmed when Calia considered the sheer size of her yard-square segment of the tapestry. A mistake early on could throw off the entire piece, and such mistakes were not easily remedied. Each length of thread was precious, every hour valuable. But moment to moment, weave by weave, the work was both engrossing and rewarding. At the end of each day, Calia looked at the small amount of progress she'd made and saw more of Anastasia's design resolving along the stark warp. She enjoyed her work, and the two other weavers sharing her room–Rovena and Goldie–were pleasant company. They were young like her, one local and the other from the capital. Rovena had a studious mind that adored the technical aspect of weaving, while Goldie spent as much time gazing wistfully out the window as she did tending her loom. Her husband was also a weaver and a favourite of the royal court, but he'd been commissioned overseas and she hadn't seen him for almost two years. Their two young children lived at the manor with Goldie, tended by the servants while she worked during the day.
“Do they play with Anastasia's little sister?” Calia asked her.
“No. That Karaline's a quiet girl. She keeps to herself mostly.”
Calia had only seen Karaline a few times. She sometimes came in to watch them work, though she never spoke to anyone. She would find a corner at the back and sit down with her doll, whispering it secrets and pretending not to hear whenever someone tried to address her. Calia felt sorry for the girl. She didn't seem to have any friends, and her mother, Vesna, was always impatient with her. Karaline was warm towards her older sister, though Calia couldn't imagine why. Ana struck her as a bully. The initial respect she'd held for the painter had quickly faded during their subsequent interactions. Ana liked to peer over her shoulder, always admonishing her for what she was doing wrong, never praising her for what she was doing right. She was cold and aloof with the weavers, and there was a tension between them that implied their relationship was competitive rather than collaborative.
Fortunately, Ana didn't interact with the weavers very often. Some evenings she would come in for an hour or two to appraise their looms, but otherwise, she left them alone. Calia mostly saw her elsewhere in the manor, holding quiet conversations in the great hall or talking to visitors out in the courtyard, conducting a dozen private lives in between work hours.
It was a little after noon, and Calia and the others had just come up after their midday meal. She could still hear the distant thrum of conversation in the great hall below as the servants finished eating. Karaline came into the weaving room with two apples in hand–one for her, one for her doll–and sat down by the window behind Calia. In the polished copper mirror, her reflection started to nibble at the fruit, taking small, quick bites like a squirrel. Calia watched her while she wound some leftover thread onto a bobbin, smiling as she remembered the games she'd used to play with Livy and Wolfram when they were little. They'd used to scoop sticky, clay-heavy mud out of the stream behind the inn and build castles with it. Calia's had always been the best.
Once Karaline had finished her apple, she crept over to the stand bearing the cartoon Calia was working from, oblivious to the fact that her reflection was visible in the mirror. Vesna would have scolded her for interfering with the weavers' work, but Calia didn't mind. She watched as Karaline stared up at her sister's painting, picking at a splinter of wood that had come loose from the side of the panel. The girl gasped suddenly, pulling her finger away and sticking it into her mouth.
Calia turned around on her stool. “Did you give yourself a splinter?”
Karaline shook her head vigorously, but there were already tears brimming in her eyes.
“Let me have a look.” Calia motioned for her to come over. The poor girl looked equal parts pained and terrified, as tormented by the thought of getting in trouble as she was by the pain of the splinter. Calia rose from her seat and went to her, tugging on her wrist gently until she took her finger out of her mouth. A sob left Karaline's lips as she saw blood welling up around the long sliver of wood that had gone in beneath her fingernail. Calia winced at the sight of it.
“That must really sting. Here, I think I can get it out for you.” Calia took out her sewing needle. Karaline immediately shied away. “Don't worry, I'm not going to stab you. I just need to pinch that little bit of wood against your fingernail so that I can tug it out.”
“No, don't!”
Calia gave her a patient smile and rubbed the back of her hand. “You need to be brave. It'll stop hurting after we take it out. Do you want to know a special secret my nana told me? She was a wise old lady. Whenever I hurt myself, she always said that looking at it only made it worse. Why don't you look at your doll? I think she's enjoying that apple.”
Karaline was still tugging weakly against Calia's grip, but she did as she was told. Calia felt the girl's resistance slacken. Quickly, she held Karaline's finger beneath the top joint, slid the tip of her needle into the tiny scrap of wood protruding from beneath the nail, and drew it out. Her distracting tactic worked. Karaline only flinched a little as the splinter came free, staring back wide-eyed at the tip of her finger as if amazed that it had been over so quickly.
“There you go,” Calia said. “Why don't you come downstairs with me so we can get that cleaned and wrapped up?”
Karaline stuck her finger back into her mouth and ran to the window. Calia feared she might not return, but she'd only been going to collect her doll. Calia guided her downstairs into the servants' hall, where she found some strips of clean linen to bind the wound. She made Karaline soak her finger in a cup of strong wine beforehand, then gave her a few sips as a reward for being brave. Calia's nana had always sworn by wine as a preventative measure to stop wounds from festering. It wasn't the first time she'd had to bind a cut or draw out a splinter. Parents had often left their children at her mother's inn during the day, and since Calia spent most of her time sitting at a loom or sewing at a work table, she'd been a convenient pair of eyes to deposit youngsters in front of.
“There, all better,” Calia said once she was done. “I'm sure it's already stopped hurting, hasn't it?”
Karaline nodded, but she still looked miserable.
“What's the matter?”
“Mother will be cross.”
