When the musicians stopped, I was breathing a little faster than usual.
“You shouldn’t let that spoil things,” she said. “You’re good-looking. Rogaris says your work is good enough that before all that long you’ll be a master artist with your own studio.”
“At least three more years, and he’s being kind.”
“Rogaris?” Seliora laughed.
She had a point, but I shook my head. “It’s not just that. I’m just beginning to get commissions, and they’re still not all that frequent. How could I support a wife or a family?”
“Some women do make more than a few coins in honest work.” She smiled warmly.
“I’m most certain you do.”
“And being married doesn’t mean you have to have a family right away.”
“That’s true.” I grinned at her. “Are you asking me to propose to you?”
Seliora actually lowered her eyes, if only for a moment. “I am part Pharsi, if that helps. My grandmother was one. She came to L’Excelsis as a servant.”
“If you take after her, I doubt she stayed one very long.”
“No, she didn’t. She was the one who started the business.”
“You . . . your family . . .?” I hadn’t realized that.
“Papa and Aunt Aegina are the master crafters. They make the chairs and the settees. Mama and I choose the fabrics and do the additional embroidery designs.”
I had wondered about the fact that Seliora was usually better dressed than the other young women, but I’d learned that some women spent every last copper on clothes.
I inclined my head. “I’m-”
“Please don’t tell anyone, especially Dolemis. He’s a terrible gossip.”
The music resumed, another waltz, a slower one, and I turned to her. “I still would have asked for another dance.”
She smiled. “I know. I do foretell more than I say.”
We spent most of the evening dancing, and I did walk her and two of her friends home, even if it meant an even longer and colder walk back out the Boulevard D’Este to Master Caliostrus’s establishment. The entire way, I wondered what she had foretold that she hadn’t said.
12
755 A.L.
Flattery is almost always perceived as either accurate
or justified.
On Jeudi afternoon, I was in the work shed powdering red ochre, using the ancient mortar and pestle that looked as though they had been in Master Caliostrus’s family for generations. Despite the sunlight outside, a chill breeze seeped through the bare plank walls. Powdering hard red ochre was sweaty work. The chill made it even less pleasant, especially if I crushed it and twisted the pestle too hard, because then some of the powder seeped into the air and then stuck to my sweat. Later, it got cold and itchy, and scratching just made it worse.
I consoled myself that the situation was only temporary because Stanus had finally run off, after throwing a bucket of hot ivory-black scraps at Ostrius. The scraps had burned holes in Ostrius’s shirt and given him several welts on his neck, but it would have been worse had not Ostrius been wearing a leather working vest. If the civic patrollers caught poor Stanus, he’d spend at least a year in the mines, but, in the interim, assuming that Master Caliostrus could find and accept another apprentice, everyone expected me to do all the apprentice chores as well as my own, not to mention painting whatever commissions might come my way, not that I had any at the moment.
Still . . . the Scheorzyl portrait had turned out well, and I’d even gotten a half-gold bonus. I had to wonder how much extra the Scheorzyls had paid Caliostrus. But my name was getting around-at least to families with daughters who liked cats.
Everyone in the household was edgy that morning. As I’d left the table after breakfast, Madame Caliostrus had murmured something to her husband that had sounded like “your worthless brother skulking around here again.” I’d known Caliostrus had a brother, and I’d even seen him a few times over the years-and smelled him, reeking of plonk so cheap that not even the poorest apprentice would have drunk it. That morning, Caliostrus had snapped back, but I hadn’t heard what he’d said. I’d just wanted to get away before Ostrius made another comment about my lack of foresight, especially since it was really his shortsightedness, not that he’d ever admit it.
I checked the powder. Still too coarse, but getting closer to what was necessary to mix with the oil and wax that were melting over the small iron mixing stove in the corner. I went back to grinding, wishing that Stanus were still around, or that Caliostrus would get another apprentice so that I didn’t have to do everything.
The shed door opened, and a gust of wind swirled ochre powder up around me, and I began to sneeze.
Ostrius stood there, glowering at me. “How long will it be before you can mix up the pigment?”
After I could stop sneezing, I just looked at him, noticing that he’d replaced the dressing covering the burn on his neck.
“Answer me. When will we have red ochre pigment?”
“Not until tomorrow. I won’t have enough powder until later today, and then it will have to be blended and cooled . . .”
“You should have gotten to this earlier.” He glared at me. “We’re both waiting for the pigment.”
“No one told me until this morning.” I didn’t point out that talking to him slowed me down-or that he’d been the one to use all the red ochre pigment for his portrait of High Chorister Thalyt and that he hadn’t bothered to tell anyone that there hadn’t been more than a palette knife’s worth of it remaining.
“You should have known.”
What could I say that wouldn’t make him even angrier? Especially since Ostrius had never been the type to listen to reason or consider himself the cause of anything. He’d been the cause of the problem with his attitude and his mistreatment of Stanus, not that he’d ever been pleasant to me, either, but I had the advantage of having parents who had some position, unlike poor Stanus, whose father was dead and whose mother was a seamstress.
With a last glare at me, he stalked off, leaving the work shed door open. Of course, the wind gusted again and blew some of the finer powder I’d just ground right out of the pestle and up around me. I began to sneeze more, and by the time I got the door closed, I’d probably lost half a cup’s worth of ground ochre powder. At that moment, I would have liked to strap Ostrius to a worktable and then slowly pour fine ochre powder down his throat and nostrils until he choked to death.
I recovered some of the powder from the bench top beside the mortar, and then went back to work. But I kept having to stop and sneeze. There was no help for it. I needed to brush the fine grit and powder off me and wash my hands and face, or I’d never get much done.
After carefully and quickly opening and closing the shed door behind me, I walked toward the service pump house in the corner, past the low wall that separated the garden from the more mundane and less attractive working areas of Master Caliostrus’s establishment.
Despite the chill and the wind, Shienna was pruning the bare-branched grape vines-even the leaves were used, mainly for the dolmades her mother made and which one enjoyed the first several times they were served, but which became less than entrancing by the onset of spring. Some of the less perfect leaves were used with copper plates for making verdigris, but that green pigment was used only for quick treatments, because it was so
