This Rough Magic

'Kyria? What does that mean?' she asked, tilting her head to one side.

The shopkeeper smiled at her curious and friendly tone. 'You are new to Corfu. It is a polite greeting. It means 'milady.' How do you like our town? Are you just here with the fleet or do you stay on in Corfu?'

A woman bustled in, wearing an elegant walking dress, with her hair dressed up on combs in the height of last year's Venetian fashion. She paused briefly beside Maria, waiting for her to cede her place. Then, when Maria didn't move, shoved her aside. 'Make way for your betters, woman!' she snapped.

Maria had never taken very kindly to being pushed around, and this woman had bumped Alessia into wakefulness. Maria had broad shoulders and strong arms from sculling a gondola.

'I'll have three dozen of those—'

The woman found her orders cut off abruptly by a strong arm, pulling her backwards.

'I was here first. You can wait your turn.'

The woman's jaw dropped. She caught it; pinched her lips, took a deep breath, and emitted a screeching: 'Do you know who I am? You—you—' She looked at Maria's fairly plain, unfashionable garb. 'You Corfiote puttana!'

Maria put Alessia down, carefully. 'I don't care who you are. But if you like I can throw you into the harbor to cool off. With luck, your head will go underwater and spare me from having to stare anymore at what the elderly maiden aunts of the Case Vecchie were wearing last year.'

The last part of the statement made the woman's eyes bulge. She looked uncommonly like one of those fancy poodles that had become the latest fashion among the Case Vecchie of Venice. Her eye-bulge was more fashionable than her hairstyle. 'You—you— How dare you? I'll tell my husband of your insolence!'

'Do. Then I can toss him into the harbor, too,' said Maria, advancing on the woman. 'He's clearly not doing his duty in beating you often enough to curb that tongue of yours.'

The woman retreated, tripping over her petticoats in her haste. 'You haven't heard the last of this, you Corfiote cow!'

Maria turned back and retrieved Alessia, who was going into full wail. It took her a short while to soothe her down.

The little woman shook her head incredulously. 'Kyria, do you know who that was?'

Maria shook her head, her temper cooling. 'No. Who?'

'That is the wife of the captain-general! Sophia Tomaselli!'

Maria said something very indelicate.

The little woman just about fell apart laughing and trying to restrain herself. 'They say that's what she was before the marriage.'

Maria gritted her teeth. She'd better tell Umberto about this. It was not a very promising start to their stay in Corfu. She bought some fresh bread and headed back to the house.

Umberto's gloomy expression got deeper when she told him about it. 'More troubles. I'm getting somewhere with the senior journeymen. I am not winning with the Corfiotes or the other masters. Oh, well. We must expect things to take time. There is a reception and dinner tonight for the new people sent out by the Senate. We will have to attend.'

* * *

Maria had done certain small adaptations to the dress she had worn for Kat's wedding. She only had five dresses—though that was more than she would have ever dreamed of owning once, more than most ordinary women would ever own. This one, however, was special. Francesca with her impeccable eye had picked out the fabric from among all of the gowns that had once graced Kat's mother. Francesca's dressmaker had remade it, knowing it would adorn one of the ladies who would get an enormous amount of attention at the wedding.

The dressmaker had wanted to be absolutely certain of two things: First, that the dress would fill every aspirant of fashion in the Case Vecchie with a desire to own it. And, second, that the owner would love the dress so much that she would send all those who asked about it to Madame Therase.

And, indeed, the dressmaker had succeeded beyond her expectations, even among the haut monde of Venice. By the standards that prevailed in little out-of-the-way Corfu . . .

The wine-red gown would excite envy to a fever pitch. The red velvet, with a pattern woven into it of high and low pile, was the sort of stuff that would never go out of style and was appallingly expensive. The low, square neckline and the flattened bosom were of the very latest style, as was the natural waistline, rather than the line that came just under the bosom. As was proper in a married woman, the undergown, of the finest linen, covered most of her exposed chest, right up to the collarbone, and it was pulled through the myriad small slashings in the sleeves, which were faced with scarlet silk.

The sleeves themselves were enormous, like a couple of hams. Maria often thought that she could probably smuggle most of what her old pole-boat used to carry in those sleeves. They ended in tight cuffs, though, which would make getting anything into them rather impractical. The beautiful pillow-lace that finished the sleeves of the undergown showed at the cuffs, and trimmed the edge of the undergown's neckline. The bodice of the overgown was sewn with tiny seed pearls in a latticework pattern, a pattern that was repeated on the sleeves.

The captain-general's wife had worn a gown with a high waist, and no slashings in the sleeves at all. And while her gown for this festivity would probably be of more opulent materials, Maria doubted that it would be of more recent date.

Jewelry . . . well, she only had two pieces. They'd not pass a jeweler's eye. But the three ropes of 'pearls' of glass and fish-scale would stand up to any lesser scrutiny. Francesca had seen to that, and if anyone knew jewelry, it was a courtesan. And there were earrings to match.

Maria felt some pride when she looked at herself in the mirror. She gave a vixenish grin at the elegant woman with her dark, lustrous hair done up 'a la didon' as Francesca had showed her. She was sorry that Caesare