She sat a long while, staring down the image stalking the green glass. The late morning sun flooded the floor around her and glared against the beveled mirrors of the dressing table, dark with age. She herself resisted the light, draped in unpolished gray lawn, sitting stiffly against the slight padding of the low vanity chair. Somewhere in the room the other woman was rustling and snapping bedclothes into order, humming softly. Below, in the street, the songs of the town rose in wisps, tickling her ears with unsatisfying fragments.
Her hair is the color she remembers, jet black, but of nature instead of dyes, and curls where it falls at the middle of her back. That much she's dreamed about before. What is more disconcerting is the eyes, and finding a deep blue, dark and inky, where she was used to finding a sort of yellow-green, like the prairie in winter. More uncomfortable than any of the other details, though, her vision is clear. All of her life leading up to this moment, she had fought with myopia, dreaming and waking. What to think of it?
A clatter of china approached in the corridor, and she turned from the mirrors. Strange and real though it all seems, dream it must be, she decided. She would learn from it what she could.
*
"Felicity, I think I would like to go into town this morning," she announced suddenly, taking up her coffee carefully, and testing its strength.
"Why of course, Miss. I hear the milliner has got some fine ribbons this week." Felicity shifted in her chair, uncomfortable sitting in the presence of her mistress.
"Perhaps we will visit. Really though, I was hoping I could beg both your company and your assistance for the day. Do you want any coffee, Felicity?"
"Oh no Miss, I don't take coffee. You sure you wouldn't want to be going with your mum then? I am sure you'd have a better time of it accompanied by a lady, not little me."
"Tea then? Really, it's amazing, this tray, the cook must have sent one of everything. I'd like to meet with her before we go out today, but no, I'd rather your company, if you don't mind. I have more questions for you anyway." She poured tea carefully, barely resting her fingers on the lid, finding a balance between dumping the thing and burning herself on the heated porcelain.
"As you wish, Miss. What are you wanting to know, if I may be so bold?" Felicity held the china delicately, observing her young mistress through the steam.
"Oh, everything really. I don't really remember anything, so pretend maybe I am new here, and tell me everything that comes to mind. I was thinking a visit to town would prompt questions and answers both, and teach me the way around at the same time." She was learning very quickly to be gentle with things, having bent the pewter fork twice, and tipped her coffee enough to spill nearly every time she reached for it. It was awkward, this not having handles. Might be reason enough to swear off hot drinks forever.
"Why sure, Miss. It is so encouraging, your enthusiasm today – I can't wait to tell Mary about it all. Who would have known the Laudanum would have done such things?"
"Indeed." She contemplated the eggs on her plate, and reached for a few slices of bread. "Perhaps we should call on her, on our way out. Do you think she'd mind at all?"
"Oh no, Miss. She'd be glad to see you, I'm sure. Ann wouldn't be awake yet, so she'll be having nothing to be doing this early – likely she'll be down in the kitchen helping cook out." She eyed the plate of local fruit.
"Sounds fun." She sliced cheese from the wedge and piled it on the mound of bread and egg, licking her fingers indecorously as she assembled the thing. "Have anything you want – even I can't eat all this. Everything's fabulous. We must stop by the kitchen on our way out and pay our respects."
Felicity traded her celadon teacup for a mango. "Any shops in particular you'd like to visit, Miss?"
She took a thoughtful bite of her sandwich, leaning over the plate so the runny yolk wouldn't soil the front of her dress. "The blacksmith."
*
The streets of Port Royal were beginning to fill, tradesmen and messengers weaving among carts and sailors. The two women ducked under the swinging sign, and through the flung open door of Kings tavern. It was clean, and far enough from the wharf to boast milky glazing in some of its windows, most already propped open, despite the early hour. A few officers and merchants were dining in the main hall, for the most part speaking quietly and having the look of bachelors about them. The women spoke with the keeper briefly, and he showed them cheerfully to a room partly partitioned off from the main hall. Lunch was ordered and hats untied, conversation flowing more easily as they stretched into the chairs and shook their skirts free of wrinkles and the dust of the streets, encouraging new, cooler air between legs and petticoats.
Felicity moved uncertainly in the blue lawn, cut fashionably low and trimmed in wide stripes of polished charcoal cloth. The lines of the dress were clean and unfussy, imitating high style with less ornamentation. Overall, the outfit was striking, and, she thought, far above her station. Mistress' orders or not, if Master Michaels caught her in his daughter's dress she'd be whipped for certain.
That is not to say she wasn't enjoying herself, though she preferred some kind of pattern in her own frocks. The shopping had gone well all morning – looking into everything and buying next to nothing, except at the haberdasher, where her mistress had insisted on a black felted hat, and the milliner's, where they'd found finer feathers than the haberdasher had to offer.
Felicity cooled her tongue on the watered wine the serving maid brought. All morning, the questions were incessant. Her mistress was like a child, wanting to know everything about every person they saw in the street, every building they passed, even about ships in the harbor – how Felicity was supposed to know anything about them, she hadn't the first idea. She was relieved she'd persuaded her mistress into a bit of lunch before making the trip out to the blacksmith – it was six streets over, and this was the first rest they'd taken. Felicity kicked her shoes off beneath her skirts, rubbing stocking-shod feet on the wide legs of her chair.
The maid set the last tray on the table and retreated. Felicity buttered a slice of brown bread, watching her mistress chase a devilled egg with a wrought iron fork. She was eccentric, now she'd surfaced from whatever fog had taken her these last few years, and headstrong as she had been in childhood. Early in the morning, she'd found herself talked into addressing her by her Christian name, and then her middle name, and lately had decided she didn't like any of her names, and was in the process of coming up with a better one. Felicity, having always had her name and it never occurring to her to have anything else, settled further into believing her mistress highly peculiar. But, she decided, watching her mistress give up on forks and assemble a sandwich as she had in the morning, peculiar was definitely preferable to the morbid vegetable she'd been a fortnight ago.
*
The scent of the foundry carried through the street, biting through the sea air that lay heavy over the town. The sun was high, tipped slightly to the west in the advancing afternoon, the hour carrying with it all the attendant heat Caribbean afternoons were known for. The two women trod carefully, their hiked hemlines revealing shapely feet in brocade heels, deftly avoiding mud and horse droppings.
A servant in the governor's livery appeared from a low doorway, and sneered at the pair. The taller one watched him more closely, squinting with concentration. The servant adjusted his waistcoat and strode past, chin lifted higher than his station should have allowed, knocking into a passing native without apology. The door, or more properly, a wicket set into the door proper, which was wide enough to admit a heavy cart without trouble, was cracked with age and shrunken away from its frame, though it swung open easily and silently on fine barrel hinges.
The women stepped within, the shorter one pulling close the wicket as they adjusted to the low light. The smell of hay and iron, charcoal and spirits stood heavy and thick within, and the light filtering through the shuttered windows in the unfinished loft caught motes of dust and smoke as it tilted into the shop. Rectangles of yellow light marched an unsteady path forward, illuminating twenty paces distant the figure of a youth, bent over a square of shockingly bright stationary.
William Turner, apprentice.