Page 24 of A Sorceress Comes to Call
But what would I do? Cordelia wondered hopelessly. I’m not a sorcerer, but they’d burn me, too. Assuming anybody burns witches anymore, which I don’t think they do? She couldn’t remember hearing of such a thing, but Little Haw was not exactly known for getting news of the wider world.
Oh well. At least if I’m going to be burned at the stake, I’ll be well-dressed…
The dressmaker was named Mrs. Tan, and she had skin the color of old ivory and thick, shining black hair. She surveyed Cordelia, then turned to her mother. “You said she is seventeen?”
“She is,” said her mother.
Mrs. Tan made a noncommittal sound. “She looks young for it.”
Cordelia kept her face absolutely still. Her mother shrugged.
“Mmm.” Mrs. Tan walked around her, arms folded, tapping her finger on her forearm. At one point she reached out and tipped Cordelia’s chin up, but did not meet her gaze. She seemed to be studying the line of her neck.
“Walk,” she ordered finally. “To the far wall and back.” Cordelia obeyed, trying not to stumble. She wasn’t used to thinking about how she walked, and suddenly the whole concept of walking seemed completely absurd. You fell forward and put out a foot to catch yourself before you sprawled on the ground. And then you did it again? And this was normal?
It’s like thinking about blinking. The moment you think about it, you start to worry that you aren’t blinking often enough, or too often and now I’m thinking about blinking, oh dear…
Still, her feet took care of themselves while she was worried about blinking too much, so that was a small mercy.
An assistant appeared from somewhere, carrying a measuring tape, and circled behind her. Cordelia’s gown was in a puddle around her feet before she realized that the girl had undone the buttons. She stepped out of it awkwardly, standing in her worn shift, and the girl whisked the gown away and began applying the tape to various portions of her anatomy.
“So young looking,” said Mrs. Tan again, making clear that it was not precisely a compliment. “They will wonder, the people, why she is not in the schoolroom.”
“I thought that perhaps you could cut the dress to make her look older,” said Evangeline, with a diffidence that astounded Cordelia. She was not used to her mother being diffident to anyone. “Lower the bodice, maybe, so she looks less like a schoolroom miss.”
Mrs. Tan was already shaking her head. “No. She will look as a child playing dress-up, or a worse thing. I will not say it, but you know the tongues they have in their heads, these people.”
“I know,” said Evangeline fervently.
“She must be dressed as modestly as any young girl might be,” said Mrs. Tan firmly. “But we shall do so in the boldest colors. These pale pinks, these yellows that the misses wear, they only wash her out. Emerald and sapphire, now, these are the colors for such skin as she has.” She gestured, apparently to thin air, and another assistant materialized. Mrs. Tan snapped out the names of colors and fabrics and distant ports, and the assistant nodded, vanishing.
“You know best,” murmured Evangeline. Cordelia tried not to stare, but she could not shake the feeling that she had fallen into a different world, where a dressmaker wielded more power than a sorceress.
Mrs. Tan’s assistant reappeared a few minutes later carrying an armful of vivid fabrics. Then it was Cordelia’s job to stand and stand and stand some more, while cloth was draped over her shoulders, rejected, removed, and then re-draped again. This must be how a mannequin feels.
It took hours. Cordelia was never asked her opinion, which was fine, because she had no idea what she would say. All she could remember from The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette was the line “A lady is never so well dressed as when you cannot remember what she wears” and somehow, she did not think that Mrs. Tan would agree.
Eventually the fabrics were selected, and then it was time for a plain muslin fabric to mock up the patterns and pins to hold it in place. Cordelia gazed at the wall, wearing the vacant, amiable expression that she had cultivated, while the assistants clipped and pinned and fitted. Her stomach growled embarrassingly. I should have eaten something at breakfast.
It should not have been so tiring to stand in one place. She wasn’t cooking or cleaning or scrubbing or even riding a horse. Nevertheless, by the time Mrs. Tan and her assistants were done, Cordelia felt as limp as boiled spinach. Her muscles ached from immobility and her feet throbbed.
Even then she was not done. Then there were hats and gloves and stockings to be procured. A man traced the shape of her feet on a sheet of paper and told her mother that it would be five days. Cordelia was surprised that her feet still looked normal. They felt as if they should be glowing angry red, and perhaps snarling audibly at strangers.
“Shoes one must have made,” said her mother, “but pre-made gloves are as good as any, I think. Cordelia, are you paying attention?”
“Yes, Mother,” lied Cordelia, as she tried on glove after glove, and eventually said that they were comfortable because she no longer had any idea how anything felt. Everything went into packages tied with string—hats, gloves, stockings, a set of undergarments from Mrs. Tan’s which had required only a few stitches to fit. “No one will see them,” said the dressmaker airily, “until such time as you are married. And if one does see them before then, that there is no lace will be the least part of the scandal.”
Alice will see them, Cordelia thought. I’ll see them. Perhaps neither she nor Alice counted. That seemed unfair. She had never counted for much, but it seemed as if Alice ought to. Anyone who could stand up to Evangeline, even so politely, counted for a great deal.
She was too tired to question why there was a coach waiting outside when they were finished, with the crest of Chatham on the door. The footman was wearing the Squire’s livery. He helped her up into the coach and took possession of the packages that Evangeline directed toward him.
Cordelia fell asleep on the coach ride home and woke only as the wheels crunched on the gravel of the stableyard. She climbed out, her knees shaky when she hit the ground, and clutched embarrassingly at the footman for balance. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Not at all, miss,” he said. He smiled at her. “Quite a long day, I would imagine.”
She nodded gratefully and picked her way inside, up the stairs to her room, hoping that she could collapse for a bit and beg Alice to bring her something to eat at last.
Hester’s knee was particularly unhappy this evening, and she decided to go up to her room by the second staircase, which had broader, flatter steps. It took her out of her way and past two extra parlors and a sitting room, but at least she could get up the stairs without puffing and gasping like a horse with its wind broken.
