Chapter 152 White Floss

Light sips, deep draughts — all must end in wine; love deep, dreams shallow — pillow the wind and sleep. Lora taps her bowl and lets her song go out; Leon twangs his sword to the racing strings — rousing the never-dark night. When she woke, from far off came the sounds of a page chasing Chance, Chance chasing a chicken — chickens flying, dogs barking. Lora stretched a long stretch, and her hand touched Faye, still dead asleep beside her; she slipped out of bed on feather feet. "Lucy — I'll wash in the outer room." Lora kept her voice low. "Won't you sleep a little more? Lord Felix and Master Roland went back to the city at first light. Master Roland said not to wake you — sleep your fill first, then go home." "What's he about?" "Which 'he'?" Lucy pressed down a grin. "Lord Leon and Master Osler seemed to have gone out with Steward Coltrain." Here, anyone outside one's own kin was called by style and title, never by bare pronoun — and she had let that slip in one breath. Lora put on a smooth face: "The morning air is fresh. I'll walk the dog presently." "Chance walked himself long ago — rounds and rounds the outside of the compound. Every household at East Manor keeps a dog; he has his playmates here. Back at the General's mansion it's just him, one lone dog, all by himself..." "One lone dog?" Lora thought of Belle at the baronial residence: How could I have forgotten Belle? Going back to the General's mansion today — I'll swing round by the Baron's and fetch her over. Better the two of them raising a ruckus under one roof than each one moping alone in a house of their own. "Yvonne, you're up — why didn't you call me?" Faye came out rubbing her eyes. "Your brother isn't up yet either — no hurry. By the by — how goes that doll shop of yours?" Faye sat herself down at Lora's side and watched Lucy dress Lora's hair up into a high coil: "For this doll shop we've taken on a hairdresser, a seamstress, and a painter. On opening day: buy two outfits, and a doll comes free with them. Our outfits take in the costume of every people there is, and we bring out one new dress every week. Every month besides we'll hold a dress-up contest — the winner takes the newest doll of the line... ah, that was your notion, the contest commemorative edition, money couldn't buy it anywhere. So those young ladies, even a girl with just the one doll, will keep coming back to buy her clothes." Faye was so worked up she was stamping her feet, gripping Lora's hand: "Ahh... I want a set of it myself, this very minute! Yvonne — a doll-and-dress-up shop like this would catch fire even in Yorvik. Wherever did you dig up such a scheme?" Lora: Because I owned exactly two Barbie dolls, and was sweet-talked into buying a hundred outfits; and then the dress-up games — stupid as dirt, and they still conned me into... paying real money! To collect a full figurine set, I blew half a year of savings. How did I come up with it? Don't look back. Looking back, it's all tears. "Young ladies all love their finery, after all — girls from comfortable families especially. They'll never own a hundred dresses themselves, but a thin steady trickle of small change, spent along and along, dressing a doll they dote on? That they'll gladly do." Lora went on, deadpan: "Run up a few dozen doll sets in boxes. Later, when my brothers go up to Augustburg, they can carry them along as presents. Once your name has grown big, the Augustburg shop can open its doors." "Yes, yes! Yvonne, you're the very best of people. The scheme was yours — when the money comes in, I'll split it with you, half and half." "You're my friend, and friends don't keep books like that. Just make me a gift of one complete set." Lora smiled: Aren't you meant to marry my third brother someday? And then won't the doll shop have come home to the Odenheims after all? "Yvonne, you're so good to me... Right! We're the friends who fought the tiger together — friends for always!" Looking at Faye's cheeks flushed red with feeling, Lora sighed inwardly: It's only that you fell in with me. With anyone else, you'd be sold down the river and still standing there counting out the money for them. A doll shop of this kind could find its market only in a city of thriving trade — what it was after was the daughters of high officials and rich merchants, girls with money and leisure both; and when it came to emptying those pockets, Lora never once went soft in the hand. The two of them chattered away in high feather. Faye had Lucy dress her hair in a flowered high coil too, and neither would pin any of those floss blooms or silk blooms — hand in hand they went out to the courtyard to pick mallows. The roses were done; in all the garden the mallow stood first in beauty. The womenfolk were still choosing which bloom was the fairest when Lyle came back for the horses and called Leon's guards away with him. To Lora he said only the one thing: "Last night there was trouble at the mansion of the Minister of Rites... The lord says: if you mean to go home, go easy and unhurried; if not, wait at East Manor till they come back." The Minister of Rites' mansion — wasn't that the Windsor house? What business of ours was their trouble? Before she could ask it out of him, Lyle and his men were off on their horses. So headless a message, and so hot a hurry — Lora could not sit still after it either. She told Shawn to ready the carriage; waiting at home would be the quicker end of it. Only Chance went unwillingly — what fun this place was! Chasing chickens, teasing cats, half the day at loggerheads with a great white goose. Lora laughed: "Shawn — then let's swing round by the Baron's first, and pick up Belle." Leon, the Baron of Charnwood, had never moved in himself, but the mansion had stood ready a long while. The servants Linn had gone out and bought had some months of training on them now — they had looked on the face of their master, but had not yet had the chance to wait on him. Knowing their lord's particular taste, the servants tended the flowers and plants gathered in from every quarter instead, set out at intervals through the back garden by their season of bloom, spring, summer, autumn, winter. It was just the season when the summer flowers were not yet done and the autumn ones were opening their first. Lora gave her name at the gate, and Armand came trotting out, all bustle and glee: "The Young Lady Odenheim is here! Our lord hasn't come back to the house yet." "I'm not here for my sixth cousin — I'm passing by to fetch Belle." Lora smiled. "Oh — Belle. She's out back watching the weeding... There now — out she comes." Before Armand had his say out, Belle had already come trotting through the round-arched garden gate, silent as ever. She had seen Lora once in her life, no more, and yet she seemed to know her, circling her skirts and sniffing without stop. Belle was no jumper-upon people; but the moment Lora crouched down, she pressed and rubbed at her legs with a will. "Well! And bringing me a flower, are you?" No wonder she had never made a sound — there was a white flower clamped in her mouth the whole way. The maid who came chasing out, seeing there was company, stopped short and stood with hands hanging down, not daring to come forward and seize the dog. Lora's eyes went straight to that white flower. Careful as careful, she pinched the stem and drew it out; Belle opened her mouth and let her have it, and took the chance to lick the back of Lora's hand. Just as on the day Lora had set that leg for her. Lora swallowed, and asked, very soft: "Belle — where did you find this flower?" Armand waved the maid forward: "The young lady is asking — where did this flower come from?" "To answer the young lady: out in the back court. We were weeding the flower-beds, and Belle ran over and pulled one up." Lora could not hold down what was thumping in her chest. She stood and pressed on: "What's this flower called? Is it a weed too?" The maid laughed in a hurry: "No, no — the Aurelian Empire doesn't grow weeds like this one. It's called White Floss — a rare flower, carried over from Gallowscap in the old days. Our lord loves his rarities; many a flower in the back court, it took a gardener out of an Augustburg princely house teaching us before we slowly came to know them. If it pleases the young lady, there are a few dozen plants out back besides. This one opened first; the rest will not be long behind it." "White Floss? What a pretty name — I love it to bits! Quick, take me to see them." Lora was near flying out of her skin. Armand, deeply moved: The young lady's very tastes ran one-to-one with our lord's, every last bit...

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