10
We spent the early afternoon at the Natural History Museum, bickering happily over the quality and position of the specimens, before presenting ourselves back at the Sudbury, where the baroness whisked me immediately into the princess’s private rooms. The next few hours were deeply instructive. As the semi-legitimate daughter of the Prince of Wales, I might have had my own claim to a throne—at least in Ireland, where my father’s marriage to my mother according to Catholic rites might have been recognized. But if this was what it meant to wear the purple, I had no inclination for the life. The baroness set to work as if she were planning a military operation and I was her objective. She hurried me into the bedchamber, where a young woman dressed in a simple blue gown with an enormous lawn apron waited at attention.
“This is Yelena, the princess’s personal maid,” the baroness told me. “She is Russian. Her Alpenwalder German is passable but the accent grates upon the ear and her English is nonexistent. You might try a little French if you must speak with her but I do not encourage it.”
I said a polite hello but the girl merely looked at me with enormous, slightly blank eyes. Her face had the broad, high-boned look ofthe Slav, and her blond hair was neatly plaited and coiled at the nape of her neck. I recalled what J. J. had said about Captain Durand’s interest in the girl and I was not surprised. She was quietly pretty with the watchful look of all good servants. The baroness rattled off a series of instructions at her in the peculiar Alpenwalder dialect, and the girl bobbed a curtsy to show she understood.
I glanced about the room, taking in my surroundings. Furnished in the same quiet luxury as the rest of the suite, the bedchamber was a study in tastefulness. Yelena might not have been the most articulate of servants, but she kept the room neat as a pin. No stray articles of clothing, no traces of face powder or trimmed threads, were to be seen. The books on the bedside table had been stacked in order of size, squared off at a precise angle. The pillows on the bed were plumped to an exact sameness, and the chairs tucked in the embrasure of the French windows were as rigidly correct as the sentry outside. Even the recamier of dark raspberry velvet had been positioned exactly in the center of afaux boisscreen stretched across one corner of the room. The only unexpected note came from the plump Persian cat sitting majestically upon the dressing table. It regarded me with a long, unblinking stare.
“How do you do,” I said politely, for I have always believed that while one may be familiar immediately upon making a dog’s acquaintance, a cat will stand for no such informality.
The cat gave me a slow blink of its jeweled eyes.
“That is Guimauve,” the baroness told me. “He is spoilt beyond redemption.”
“Guimauve,” I repeated. “What an apt name!” It was the French word for the marshmallow flower,Althaea officinalis, a most useful herb with a broad white bloom that bore a striking resemblance to the creature before me.
The baroness issued another order to Yelena, who immediatelycollected the animal from the top of the dressing table and placed it on an azure silken cushion. It meowed by way of complaint, but it seemed to be a token protest only, for it instantly fell to grooming its snowy fur and ignoring us entirely.
As the cat attended to his ablutions, I was stripped of my own clothing down to the bare skin, my nakedness swiftly covered with a silk chemise of such delicacy it felt like a fall of rose petals whispering over my flesh. I would rather enjoy playing at being a princess if all the garments were going to be so lavish, I decided.
But no sooner had the chemise settled on my skin than I was trussed within an inch of my life into a strangulating corset of merciless dimensions. Unlike my own lightweight athletic corset, which permitted great ease of movement with only modest support, this monstrosity was clearly fashioned of steel with stays that might uphold a battleship if necessity demanded.
“I... cannot... breathe,” I protested through gasps.
“Her Serene Highness has a very small waist,” the baroness replied pitilessly. “You will not fit into her clothes if yours is not as narrow.” She and Yelena together bore down with ruthless purpose on the laces again, drawing them tighter still until the stays creaked in protest and the baroness pronounced herself satisfied.
Once I was trussed like a pheasant fit for roasting, she sat me down—with difficulty—at a dressing table, where she gave Yelena detailed instructions about my hair. I watched the girl’s reflection in the looking glass as she worked, pins held in her lips, hands moving quickly, deftly, as she first tonged my hair into long, smooth ringlets, then plaited the loose curls into a series of coils at the base of my neck and around my ears. Once this was done, a box of false hair was opened, and the baroness and the maid took a long time selecting the appropriate pieces, the baroness peering through her monocle as she chose.
“Does the princess wear false hair?” I asked in some astonishment.
The baroness shrugged. “Sometimes. Her own hair is much longer than yours—past her knees, in fact. But even she will augment her coiffure if the occasion demands.”
“But why?” I asked. “Exactly how much hair does an Alpenwalder woman require?”
“Quite a lot,” the baroness told me as she began to weave in the false pieces herself. Mercifully they were a match for my own, as the princess and I had nearly identical coloring.
The baroness explained as she worked. “The Alpenwald played host to a very august visitor some years ago—the Empress Elisabeth of Austria. She was traveling incognita, you understand, but she is very fond of walking and our lakes offer excellent vistas for such sport. She is a distant cousin of the late Hereditary Prince and it was a very great honor to welcome her to the Alpenwald. As a gesture of respect, the court ladies dressed their hair like hers.”
“The Austrian empress has hair like this?” I asked, gesturing towards the lavish construction taking shape upon my head. I had seen photographs of the empress, of course. She had been one of the great beauties of Europe in her youth. But I had not realized the effect was quite so painstakingly won.
The baroness gave a little laugh. “To her ankles! The loveliest hair you have ever seen. Chestnut brown and shining like silk. Of course, now she is an old woman like me and her hair has probably fallen out, but still we keep to the custom at our little court,” she added pragmatically. I darted her a look to see if she was fishing for compliments, but none seemed expected. The baroness was past her youth, but in spite of the monocle and walking stick, she did not seem worn down by her years. Her eyes were still bright with vitality, and her skin was firm and supple.
She deftly wove in another false plait, securing it with a jewel-tipped pin handed her by Yelena.
“Do you always dress the princess’s hair?” I asked. “It seems rather mundane work for a noblewoman.”
She reconsidered the pin, removing it and thrusting it into place at a more becoming angle. “It is my honor. For everyday wear, Yelena’s talents are sufficient, but when Her Serene Highness is making a public appearance, she prefers the traditional hairstyles of the Alpenwald, for which Yelena has not yet been trained.”
Yelena went to the wardrobe and extracted a series of boxes with labels from the most exclusive couturiers in Paris. From the largest, she removed a gown covered in a muslin shroud, laying it as tenderly as she would a babe upon the bed, unwrapping it inch by inch. I stared in awe when it was at last revealed in all its glory. Cut in the most recent fashion, it was narrow of skirt with an elegantly draped train sweeping to the back in elaborate folds like those of a butterfly’s wing. The neckline was low and rounded and the bodice had been fashioned without sleeves, designed to bare a considerable expanse of flesh. Yelena busied herself laying out the various outer garments and accessories, leaving it to the baroness to apply the various layers of cosmetics, which she did with a heavy hand, further enhancing my resemblance to the princess.
“Luckily, Her Serene Highness has thick brows,” the baroness told me, lighting a match. She burned it a moment, then blew it out, waving it for a few seconds to let the glowing end subside to a sooty tip. “Just a bit of embellishment and they will be very similar.” She dotted the soot into my brows, blending it carefully and deepening the black hue. She stepped back to regard her handiwork. “The princess is a little paler than you. She is very mindful of the delicacy of her complexion.” The baroness’s tone carried a light reproof as she pounced my face thickly with rice powder scented with orchid. “That is better.”
She glanced at my hands. “These have the marks of a woman who works.” I was surprised. My hands were scrupulously clean, but pensleaked, specimen pins scratched. I held them out for her and she coated them with cream scented with a fragrance that was almost but not entirely familiar.
“It smells floral, nearly of rose, but something else,” I said, trying to place it. “Something like mint.”
“It is St. Otthild’s wort,” she told me. “It is the only thing that grows above the tree line of the Teufelstreppe. It has medicinal properties as well as being fragrant. It will soften your hands, but it will take many applications. You will not remove your gloves tonight,” she told me sternly.
