True to his word, Ballard made certain she and Cinnia were kept busy. The first morning of her stay, Magda had given the two sisters enough time to consume the familiar breakfast of bread sopped in ale before leading them to a store room set off from the larder. Inside, twisted bundles of flax tare shared space with baskets overflowing with tow. Louvaen guessed they had stored enough flax to keep an army of spinners busy for months.
“Unless you’re harvesting a small country’s worth of flax, this is more than a single season.”
Magda pushed baskets out of her way to lift a hanging strick of tare from a hook in the ceiling. “Three seasons and this summer saw a better harvest than most.” She pulled one of the braids from the main bundle and passed it to Louvaen. “We’ve enough to do in the winter with the mending, cooking, making rush lights and candles, along with the usual sennight of laundry. We haven’t the time to spin a decent portion of what we’ve harvested.”
Louvaen untwisted the braid of flax line and held it in the light streaming in from the kitchen. Her fingers sifted the butter-soft hank of flax. “Who hackled this?”
Magda gestured with her chin to the two serving girls hovering in the doorway. “Joan. She has a deft hand with the combing and carding.”
The girl flushed at the praise and turned a brighter red when Louvaen passed the line to Cinnia. “Feel. I’ve thrown silk less soft. It would be a privilege to spin this.”
Magda lifted a basket of tow and dropped it into Cinnia’s arms. “We can use aprons, rope and stockings more than a fine shirt or napkins at the moment, so I need the tow spun. As good as Joan is at the hackling, Clarimond is better on the loom. She can weave as fast as you can spin .” She tried to take the flax line from Louvaen who refused to relinquish it.
“Would you let me spin this as well? You’ll have yarn to use if his lordship or Gavin needs a fancier shirt to wear in the future.”
Magda nodded. “If you think you can give Clarimond the yarn she needs to weave, spin what you want.” She placed a second basket in Louvaen’s arms. “I prefer a good drop spindle myself, but Gavin’s brought home a couple of those spinning wheels. One of the girls will show you where they are.”
Cinnia looped her arm through Louvaen’s as they followed Clarimond up the stairs to the third floor and a door recessed into an alcove at the end of the corridor. The rush light in Clarimond’s hand sent shadows scurrying to the corners as she entered the room and stepped aside to wait while the sisters explored. They gasped in unison at their first peek inside.
The chamber was no larger than a modest buttery and just as crowded as the storeroom they’d left, only this one housed things more interesting than flax. Cinnia made straight way to a harpsichord shrouded in dust. Beside it stood a pendulum clock and a table covered with a variety of storm glasses as well as a vase filled with lead pencils. One corner held two spinning wheels; a great wheel and another that had Louvaen striding across the room.
“A castle wheel,” she whispered. Before his death, Thomas had promised her a castle wheel. He’d died before he could fulfill his promise, and the burden of her father’s debt had prevented her from buying one. She ran her fingers over the frame, caressing the wheel and drive bands. The spinning wheel was as dusty as the harpsichord, but otherwise untouched, as if someone had bought and abandoned it. Magda had stated the wheels were free to use, and she couldn’t wait to bring this one out into the light, clean and oil it and spin her first bit of drafted tare.
“I know what this is!”
She was interrupted in her mental planning by Cinnia’s exclamation. The girl bent and pressed her eye against the narrow tip of a tubular contraption mounted on a tripod. Rush light revealed designs of vines and leaves carved into a brass casing made dull with dirt. Louvaen left the wheels and joined Cinnia. “What is it?”
She straightened and Louvaen grinned at the brown circle of grime decorating the girl’s eye. “They call it a telescope. When you look through this glass, it’s as if the stars hover on your doorstep.” She clapped her hands, delighted by her discovery. “We have to get Gavin to bring this out. Who would leave such a marvelous machine in a dirty room?”
Louvaen wondered the same. Several of the items were commonplace in the households she knew—commonplace but also expensive. Some, like Cinnia’s telescope, were very rare while the castle wheel was readily available if one had the funds to upgrade from the bigger wheels that spun bulkier yarns. The de Sauveterres had paid Jimenin and acted as if her father’s exorbitant debt was nothing more than ribbon money. The things tucked away in this chamber, neglected and forgotten, were beyond the means of most but well within the purchasing power of this family, yet Magda and her women prepared meals and cleaned the rooms with basic tools. The conflicting realities made no sense, and so far no one in the de Sauveterre household offered an explanation.
“That’s a question I’d like answered.” She lifted a delicate bottle spun of fragile glass from the table. “These things are too costly, too useful, or both to be left here. No matter how fast Magda is with her beloved drop spindle, she can’t equal the speed of a wheel in turning out yarn. It’s a shame having a storeroom stuffed with flax waiting to be spun when these two wheels would make short work of the excess.”
Cinnia shrugged. “Well, we’ll have something to do in the evenings or when the weather is bad. Besides, I’d rather spin than launder any day.”
Magda had shrugged when Louvaen asked her about the chamber with its many forlorn treasures. “Gavin’s always bringing baubles and oddities from his journeys. Didn’t have the time to play with some or learn how to use the others. If something catches your eye just say so. We’ll take it out, clean it up, and you can put it to use.”
Over the next few days, the spinning wheels found a place in the solar and the telescope in one of the towers. Louvaen offered to teach Clarimond and Joan how to spin on the wheels, and with Magda’s blessing, scheduled lessons before supper. While the housekeeper displayed an obvious deference to both Ballard and Gavin, she treated the sisters in the same manner she dealt with Ambrose, either chasing them out of her kitchen for being underfoot or putting them to work at one of the many endless tasks that made Ketach Tor a comfortable home. Evenings were spent in the solar, with Cinnia spinning alongside Louvaen or beating the lights out of Gavin in one of their numerous games of Nine Men’s Morris.
Sometimes Ballard joined them, sitting quietly near the fire, shrouded in hood and cloak so he wouldn’t disturb Cinnia. Despite their bargain, he had yet to request Louvaen’s company privately and had so far refused her offer to read to him. He seemed content to sit and listen to the quiet clack of the spinning wheel’s treadle and watch as she spun flax into linen yarn.
“Why spinning, Mistress Duenda?” He asked her one evening as she drafted flax tow through her fingers. “A lady usually engages in other pursuits.”
Louvaen smiled. Spinning was a lowly skill, despite the weavers clamoring for every scrap of yarn a spinner could twist and ply as fast as possible. “I’m not a lady, my lord, only a bankrupt merchant’s daughter.” Shed dipped thumb and forefinger in the cup of flax mucilage to coat the line. “I’ve no talent for the harpsichord or the psaltery, and I find needlework dull. Spinning though—spinning is listening to thread sing, and I’ve a good ear for it.”
“Give me your hands.”
His command surprised her, but she ceased spinning and stretched out her hands, palms up. He leaned forward and grasped them, the pointed tips of his nails scoring lightly down the lengths of her fingers. Her skin was golden next to his, her hands elegant. Louvaen glanced at her sister who’d paused in her game with Gavin to watch. Cinnia shuddered and turned back to the board. If Ballard saw her reaction, he ignored it, concentrating instead on sliding his thumbs across the pads of Louvaen’s fingers.
“Not a lady but with the hands of one. Soft.”
Where Cinnia shook in revulsion, Louvaen shivered at the pleasant tingle his touch elicited. She gently withdrew her hands from his grasp and took up her line once more. “When I spin wool, I spin in the grease. Good for the skin.”
Ballard sat back in his chair. “What a fine thing to know the caress of such hands,” he said in a low voice.
The heat in her face warned her she was probably a deeper shade of red than Cinnia’s gown, but she refused to look away from Ballard’s steady gaze, the eye shine yellow and glowing in the deep shadows of his hood. “I’m no longer considering your proposition, Lord de Sauveterre,” she said in equally quiet tones.
“I proposed in jest, mistress, but the offer stands with all sincerity should you ever decide to accept.”
