I will pass quickly over the ache and fear, the tumult of my homecoming that night. I shed tears for my mother, for my best friend Jane, for my little sisters, Marigold and Lily, for the only home I'd ever known.
It is enough to say that after he received the news, Master Whitby roared, cursed and hurled about the house shouting. Finally, he struck my mother. It seemed that he'd made an even better deal than she knew in his agreement with Thornton. Two kindled blue-faced ewes were to have been traded for me. The loss of those fine creatures piqued him beyond measure.
* * *
The next day, the proud lady who had tended the Countess appeared at our door, took my hand from my mother’s and led me away. I was too exhausted from the alarms of the night to be frightened when a great burly man-at-arms all suited in mail and with the face of a battle-scarred bear picked me up. He lifted me into one of the high-sided lumbering carts that carried the baggage.
There I sat, beside bolts of fine cloth, furs, fine trunks of tooled leather and a hooded hawk in a cage. We were baubles picked up along the way, gifts from suppliants and subjects. Miserably, I found a place to sit, upon a hay bale thrust between two stacks of rugs. At least, I reasoned, if these fell, they would not crush me.
Behind I could see knights in armor mounted on horses taller and broader than the most enormous oxen I'd ever seen. The horses, too, were armed, their heads and necks protected with jointed plate. Like scales on a fish, these accommodated their bravely curved necks. The armor between their eyes was decorated with twisting silver horns. The men rode without their helms, and, unlike other soldiers I'd seen, they wore their hair long. Pinioned lances sat easily in a single hand, the butt thrust securely against a stirrup.
Exhausted by the terrible night, I lay down in the swaying, jolting wagon, but there was no way I could sleep. Hollow-eyed, I sat up again and watched as a gray jennet carrying two riders came pelting beside the marching line. One of the knights turned his head, and after a shout to his mate, they both laughed.
The jennet wasn’t pleased to be hurried. Her long ears were laid back, but she obeyed the feet thumping her ribs. As she paced beside the wagon, I saw a slender young man, a servant in soft boots and red livery, his fair hair very long. Behind him, clutching his waist and smiling even more widely than the joking knights, sat a barefoot woman. She was astride, so the wind blew her skirt up to her plump thighs.
"Where've you been, Pretty Lucy?" One of the knights greeted her.
"A poor riddle!"
The couple on the jennet ignored them. Much to my surprise, as they closed alongside the wagon, the girl turned to grasp the upturned bars that held the side slats, and swung free of her mount. The jennet, reined sharply away from the wagon, gave a honk of protest and then was left behind.
"Rosalba?" She was beside me now, as uncaring and limber as a boy. I admired her strength.
"Yes, Mistress."
"I'm no mistress, as you must certainly see, goose. Just Lucy, a servant like you."
I stared at her dumbly.
"You are to be the Lady Anne’s new poppet?"
I nodded, although I felt sure my duties would be more important than that.
"Good! I’d rather scrub pots than take care of babies. I was afraid the Countess would make me serve her."
"Lady Anne isn't a baby, is she?" I had a flare of real fear. Babies were messy and difficult to care for. Noble babies died as easily as ordinary ones, often a dangerous happenstance for the luckless caretaker.
Lucy was amused. She flopped onto her belly and waved bare legs carelessly in the air.
"Thank your lucky stars! Lady Anne's five-years-old, and hasn't shit herself in ages, if that's what you're worried about." Just as I began to feel some relief, she added, "She's a weakly little thing, fair as an angel—which, mark my words—she will soon be. Don't you worry, though. She's easy enough to care for, except when she's got the croup. Then she cries all night."
I wanted to say that I had had the croup myself, and that I thought anyone might cry from it, but Lucy was already rushing on.
"Did you see that fine fellow who rode me here?"
I nodded. How I could have missed her arrival?
"Well, he's one of the Earl's ushers, and we were just married! Isn't he handsome? Aren't I lucky?"
It was clearly expected, so I nodded agreement. It was easy to take her measure. She was one of those who must talk. Let them run on, my mother always said, for with this kind there's nothing else to be done. Soon, you will know all—and more—than you ever wished to.
"And you are almost as lucky as I am. Yes, indeed! Aren’t you from that shabby little village?"
"It is not shabby." Shabby was a place like Oxnop Ghyll, where the people and their sheep dwelt together in turf huts. Aysgarth was a big village. We had stone houses and wooden houses and the privilege of a fish weir. We had gentry close by at Nappa Manor and people of all ranks filled our stone church of a Sunday. Besides, the cattle only entered our houses during the worst part of the winter.
"I myself was born at Middleham. If you work hard and always do as the Countess and the Lady Agnes say, you shall never have to go back to that wretched sty! If you are clever, you will have fine clothes like me and eat meat. Not the same food the Lady Anne eats, of course, but plenty of beef and bread from the best kitchen in the North. Have you ever been to Middleham?" Her thoughts seemed blown here and there by some inner wind.
"No." I'd lived in Aysgarth, walked around the falls and watched the men fish the rapids and the weir. I'd gone for lonely rambles across the dales, looking for lost sheep or making secret pilgrimages to the oak. I'd been to Nappa Manor, and several times to Bolton Castle, but, of course, never nearer than to help unload a cart at the kitchen door.
"I have seen Bolton." I spoke proudly. To me, that was a large and fair abode.
"Bolton? Bolton? Why, Bolton is nothing! Hardly worth the name castle, that poor little heap of stones!" The words did not quite fit in her mouth. I wondered whose she echoed. "Ah, just you wait! The Great Keep at Middleham will start the eyes from your head! It is the biggest castle in the north. A whole village, far bigger than yours, sits at its feet. All of it, and all that do dwell there, do naught but serve the great Earl of Warwick, his noble lady and his daughters."
* * *
As Lucy foretold, the castle took my breath away. It was enormous, appearing before my simplicity like a many-headed beast reclining upon the grassy rising dale. It was massive, gray, and very old, having been built, as I would learn, in the time of William Rufus, son of the Conqueror. The actual size was not apparent until we came close enough for me to recognize the houses against the outer walls. They appeared as small knots of rubble clustered at the sides of a giant. There was a guard tower spiking the sky, a drawbridge, and a green, slimy moat.
Plumes of smoke rose from many fires. Some were black. Some were pale, trailing in the wind. I would learn that these fires belonged to smiths, to the armories, to the kitchens, as well as to the cottages of retainers. At first sight, however, watching the smoke circling the stone towers and swirling about the battlements, it seemed I was about to enter the yawning mouth of the underworld.
The first few hours at Middleham were indeed a kind of hell. After we’d crossed the muddy bailey, I was lifted down from the cart by a great man-at-arms and delivered like a sack of meal through the kitchen door. No sooner had my feet hit the slates, than a hard-faced woman grasped me by the hand and marched me across the room.
In one shadowy corner, as unceremoniously as if I were an aged, moldy ham delivered from the smokehouse, I was stripped naked, and ordered into a tub of very hot water, where I was scrubbed by a strong-armed, red-faced woman who, after a curt "this is her, then?" spoke not a word.
Scalding water and embarrassment turned me scarlet, but staying seated in the tub seemed the best way to keep what little I had hidden. Not that anybody seemed to have a moment to look. They were all far too busy, rushing to and fro, in the throes of preparing a welcoming meal for the Countess. Vegetables were chopped; mallets pounded meat; fires were raked; bread was kneaded.
I was too terrified to utter a word, even after the woman poured a pitcher of water over my head and scrubbed my scalp mercilessly with her stumpy fingers, each as tough as a tree root. I had seen my family naked for the bath and on hot summer nights, but I'd never been the only one stripped, or in front of so many strangers. I can't explain why—shock, perhaps—but, for the first time in my life, I was quite unable to protest.
"Them freckles don't wash off, do they?" My tormentor laughed as she sloshed more hot water over me. The end came when a startlingly cold rinse of stale beer was poured over my head. Then, I was jerked from the tub and roughly toweled. Stunned, I simply stood, shuddering all over, dazed as a calf dropped from his mother's warm belly into the icy mud of February.
"Here!"
A linen shift was thrust at me. Fast as ever I could, I yanked it over my head.
"Put these on."
I was pushed to a stool and handed a thick pair of knit stockings and a pair of clogs.
"My shoes…." These were the first words I'd dared since entering the nightmare of the kitchen. They were the most valuable things I owned.
"Off to be cleaned. Your foot will be traced for new ones. You can't wear those nasty things in the upper chambers."
Feet sliding in large new shoes, I was led out into the bright, cold bailey and ordered to sit on a step. At first, after the shadowy, smoky world of the kitchen, I could barely see. I shivered hugely as the woman who had bathed me continued with her task, searching my hair for lice.
Beyond I saw gardeners lugging manure in leaking wheelbarrows to a garden where others dug it in. By the door, pale as a corpse, a scalded pig hung by the back feet, guts trailing into a tub, while bloody-handed women worked at butchering. Across the bailey, boys in red and white jacks were fiercely pounding each other with wooden swords. A line of archers, similarly attired, practiced at the butts, arrows singing as they flew. Wagons from our journey still stood in the yard, but the horses were unhitched and gone.
Bright pennons cracked on the battlements. There were glass windows in the upper stories, fine as those of our church, blazing back at the sun. The lower levels of the castle were punctuated by gaping mouths that spewed smoke, noise, and more people than I'd ever seen in my entire life. I sat still, enduring the woman's tugging and tweaking while she braided my hair. My brain buzzed and my ears rang, just like the last time Master Whitby had struck me on the back of the head.
* * *
"Anne, dear, here is your new servant. Her name is Rosalba."
In a stone chamber, treading upon sweet smelling herbs and rushes, the Countess pushed me toward a small girl child, who looked up with what I decided were eyes of fairy blue. Her skin was white, so fair I could see the veins. The braid that fell down her back was a pale copper, like metal buffed to sheen. It was neither blonde nor red, but some color perfectly in between.
Her dress was of a brilliant blue, not cut down from the old clothes of grownups, but made in miniature, just for her. I'd never seen a child so richly attired. A steady, slightly perplexed stare cast back and forth between her elders and me.
"Marta will come no more?"
"She has other tasks now."
"Good." The fairy child declared with crisp decision. Her mother smiled.
"How old are you, Rosalba?" Anne’s next question came straight to me.
"I am ten, Mistress Anne," I said. It seemed odd to be addressing someone so small so politely. I had not, however, been sufficiently respectful.
"My Lady Anne!" A harpy I would learn to know as Lady Agnes corrected me. "Always address her as My Lady Anne!"
"She will learn." The Countess patted my shoulder, which made me at once feel better.
"She has spots," Anne said, anxiously glancing at her mother. "Is she well?"
I was momentarily at a loss. Freckles were not unusual in Aysgarth.
The Countess laughed. "Those are freckles, Anne. Like Tib's."
"Tib's spots are gold." Anne knitted her fair brows and studied me.
"Rosalba's are brown, but what isn't freckled is as fair as fresh milk. She's like Roan William."
"Oh!" Anne’s eyes brightened with understanding. The explanation had reassured her, and she took a step closer. I would later learn I'd been compared to the Earl of Warwick's favorite destrier—a war horse.
"Curtsy!" Lady Agnes prompted, administering a poke to that particularly vulnerable spot between my shoulder blades. I obeyed awkwardly and then extended my arms so Anne could see them.
"Do you have any dolls?" Anne took a step closer, experimentally tracing the flesh of my arm with one finger. I saw that for all her splendor, she was, after all, simply a little girl.
"No, My-Lady-Anne. I left them at home for my sisters, Lily and Marigold."
Delicate white fingers, moving with a mixture of shyness and command, caught mine.
"Come, then," Anne invited, with a sweet smile. "You may play with mine."
The Countess nodded when I glanced anxiously up, so I followed Anne to the corner. Here was an open chest, full to the brim with dolls. Some were finer than I’d ever seen, the kind with painted wooden faces and silken clothes. Others were rag, much like those I’d left at home.
It was one of these Anne chose. "This is Lady Katherine," she said, holding the doll up for my inspection. "I have had her since I was a little, little baby."
Lady Katherine was grubby and faded. She had yellow hair of worsted yarn, a crumpled green dress and kirtle, rouged cheeks, and painted lips and eyes. Her features, skillfully rendered, separated her from the rag dolls I'd had at home, whose eyes and mouths were rough embroidered.
"Say how do you do."
"How do you do, Lady Katherine." I dropped another awkward curtsy.
"How do you do, Rosalba," Anne spoke in a squeaky voice which I understood to be Katherine's. She plumped down in all that finery onto the sweet rushes and Our Lady's bedstraw. Anxious about my own new clothes, I slowly got down beside her. The flooring in the private chambers of nobility were changed monthly, the rushes mingled with all kinds of fragrant herbs, lavender, rosemary, and that deliciously scented bedstraw. A pleasant, dusty bouquet arose as we settled in to play.
* * *
That night, I lay by myself for the first time in my life, in a narrow pallet pulled from beneath the great curtained bed which Anne and her older sister, Isabel, occupied. Beside this was another high bed in which slept Nurse Cole and her daughter, Elaine. A mighty wind full of rain sobbed about the castle walls. I joined with it, crying softly as I could.
I'd never lain by myself, and although this bed was clean and marvelously soft, it was also cold and lonely. I missed my mother, missed Lily and Marigold. All my life we'd slept together, snuggled close as puppies, warm and safe when the North Wind howled down from the moors. Tonight that same wind moaned, hunting around the stone pile of Middleham. The room was like a cavern. Fire flickered in the hearth, casting monstrous shadows. I desperately wished I had something to hug, even if it was only a doll.
"Are you crying?"
I started, peered into the darkness. From the enormous four-poster, I saw my pale charge looking through the curtains, her fair plaits dangling. I tried to answer, but all that came was another sob. She surprised me, slipping through the curtains, and climbing down into my bed. Quickly, I pulled the covers close around her narrow shoulders. Even in tears that first night, I remembered my duty.
"Do you miss your Mam?" Anne cuddled against me. Quickly, we scrunched into the warm bed together.
"Yes."
"I would miss mine and Nurse Cole, too, and I would miss Middleham. I pray never to leave, not even after I am married." She hugged me, utterly trusting, convinced of her ability to give comfort. I hugged her back. After a time, my tears stopped.
She is good, I thought. Then sleep came to claim me.
* * *
"This one will do very well."
The Countess of Warwick stood above us, candle in hand, gazing down with approval at the bed where her daughter and I lay, curled together. Beyond, a rainy dawn seeped through the amazing glass windows.
* * *
My days were more regimented than at home. Mornings were spent dressing Anne, hearing Mass, serving breakfast to her, and then sewing, a tedium I loathed. After dinner, I sat with the Countess, her daughters, and her ladies. They embroidered while the rest of us spun, all gathered into a large, chilly room with two great windows.
A huge tapestry loom was erected there and weaving was always in progress. I had never seen such an immense device and my curiosity eventually brought me work there, where I learned the craft from the clever weaver women the Countess employed.
* * *
"Father!" Anne ran toward him, scampering like a puppy across the dense carpet of reeds that lay beneath the banners of the hall. Still a little uncertain about being among all these great personages, I hesitated before realizing I was supposed to go after her.
The Earl of Warwick was a magnificent figure of a man, very fair and muscular, with a neatly trimmed beard and broad shoulders. In his gray eyes I saw a cheerful sparkle that echoed the delight of his child.
As she approached, the knights drew aside. Suddenly, Anne tripped on something hidden in the reeds. To my horror, she pitched headlong, fell, and began to cry. I was close by this time, but not close enough to catch her.
My precious charge!
One of the pages, a thin, sallow boy, got there an instant before I did. I'd noticed him before, because in this castle world of the well-fed and strong, he alone appeared to be thin and small for his age. Not only that, Nature had not formed him well, for he carried one shoulder high. This young fellow now knelt beside Anne, then most tenderly lifted her up and comforted her, even kissing her cheek. Feeling useless and afraid, I was torn between concern for her and apprehension of the expected chastisement.
"Do not cry, Lady Anne." The page helped her up.
"Thank-you, Dickon." Immediately, she’d begun to master her distress. Lifting her blue skirt, she solemnly examined her childish knee. "I think I broke it," she said, gazing at him with those astonishing sapphire eyes.
"No, Milady." A smile graced the boy's features. "You have not, Praise God, for it bears your weight."
A red bump was forming. Holy Mother protect me! A bruise on that fine white skin!
Agnes had promised me two bruises for any one upon Lady Anne….
"You must kiss it and make it better." Anne held her skirt tightly back on either side of the injury.
The Page kissed a long, elegant finger and then ceremoniously touched her knee. I was impressed both by his gentleness and by his adult discretion.
"'Tis this big bone." I dragged what appeared to be the front leg of a cow from beneath the dusty reeds. Not knowing what else to do, I had searched for what had tripped her.
"The mastiffs must have dragged it in." The boy shook his head at the size of the thing.
We gazed at each other for a moment and then made an exchange. He took the large, chewed-to-whiteness bone, while I took Lady Anne's little hand into mine.
"Um—thank-you—gracious sir." Ludicrous as it seemed to speak so to this thin, small boy, I'd quickly learned that everyone at Middleham was far more important than I. Agnes had slapped and then lectured at length on the subject of proper address after a first day full of such mistakes.
"Dickon, this is Rosalba, my new nurse," Anne said. "Isn't she pretty colors?"
Hazel eyes, in which I detected a gleam of amusement, calmly looked me over. He was, I thought, near my age.
"And, so you don't get in trouble, Rosalba, he's ‘Lord Richard’ whenever you speak to him. He's the Duke of Gloucester, our King Edward's little brother."
Just as I was absorbing this startling fact, a voice right on top of us boomed.
"How does my girl?"
It was the Earl, that tall, shining deity. In the next instant, he'd swept Anne away, up into the air, high onto his shoulder. She let out a squeal of delight. To have garnered so much of her father's attention sent the rest into oblivion.
"See! It's nothing. Just a little bump! Nothing for my brave daughter to bawl about."
The Earl sauntered away with a beaming Anne perched upon his shoulder. All of us, men-at-arms, knights, pages—and my humble self—trailed after. I caught a final glimpse of "Lord Richard, our King's little brother," headed away toward the kitchen, the offending bone in hand.
I've often thought of that day. In this brief interchange, the Earl's character was plainly figured. He wished his Anne was a boy, and, as that could not be mended, he wished her strong. Now, by simply speaking the words, it was as if he could make it so.
* * *
About two weeks after my arrival, while Anne learned reading at her mother's side, instead of the usual sewing, I was taken into the kitchen and left standing by one of the outer doors.
"Wait here. Mother Ash will come for you."
These servants who bustled on every side were like the people of my village. Their clothes were worn, of lumpy wool and linen, even if their aprons were of better stuff, and recently washed. Their accents, their laughter and their cussing when things did not go well, sounded like home.
A fire in the open hearth blasted the room. The door where I waited had been opened to let out some of the excess heat. Outside, men still cultivated the kale yard, turning a dark soil stippled with straw.
A sly-faced girl with hair like a fox's brush sidled close and whispered, "You are for Mother Ash?"
"Yes." I was keenly aware of the way she had been studying me. It was strange to be cut off from my own kind simply by a bath and a new dress. Before it had happened, I never would have believed such a thing possible
"Mother Ash is mad, you know. She's a mean old witch." The malicious smile let me know that she wanted to scare me. I'd heard such things said of my mother, too, so this didn't alarm me. Before I could reply, the girl turned on her heel, and returned to the big table where mountains of vegetables were being cut.
"The fool brings you here like this?"
I startled and turned back to the door. A woman, heavy, square and white-haired, stood behind me. There was nothing frail about her, nor really so many years in her face. She looked me up and down, arms akimbo. Her accent was strange to me. I would learn she had originally come from the fat region of Oxfordshire, where lay the Countess of Warwick’s Beauchamp dower lands.
"Mother Ash." I curtsied. Something told me that in spite of her plain's dress, this was the proper course.
"Yes, that I am, and you are Rosalba, for yours is the only silly face hereabouts I haven't seen before." She clamped it between one of those work-hard hands. "My Lady of Warwick says your mother has taught you something of healing?"
"A little, Mother Ash." I spoke as well as I could, cheeks pinched in that grip.
"Do you know aught of the cultivation of useful herbs?"
I had to search for the meaning of ‘cultivation’, but finally I managed.
"Gardening? Ah, yes, Mother Ash. Some."
"Some? Some?" She twisted my face this way and that, gazing into my eyes. For a moment I had the sensation of being a mousey dinner caught in an owl’s foot.
"It's a wise child who knows her own father, and a wise child who knows how to make an answer which says nothing! Come along then, Roan Rose." I bristled, although by this time I should have been well used to these Middleham people mocking my freckles like that.
"Come. We shall learn this morning a little about what you don't know."
The kitchen had grown quiet as the cooks and maids paused to watch.
A burly male cook shouted, "Be easy with her, Mother Ash! Don't pop her in the pot and cook her for your supper like the last girl."
Everyone began to laugh as the old woman caught me by the back of my neck and pushed me through the door.
"Fools," she muttered.
We went down the steps and along the slate path. On either side shabby kale and pale new turnips ruffled, the only greens in sight. I thought this castle garden was large, but, after we left the bailey and passed beneath the wide, fanged portcullis, I spied another, even larger tilled plot, facing south. Beside the gray presence of the massive outer wall, we trod a narrow path between thatched cottages.
"How does your mother make a soothing bath?" Mother Ash suddenly asked.
"With hops, lavender, and thyme."
"Easy! Now, something harder." She fixed me with her dark, cold eyes. "What is used for colic in infants?"
"Fennel seeds, chamomile flowers, and fragrant valerian." That preparation was often in demand.
"And, then?"
"And, then?" I trembled, wondered what I had missed.
"Well, how is it prepared, girl? And don't mumble!"
"It is steeped in half cup of boiling water, then strained and given in five or six doses a day."
"Always recite the preparation when you make an answer." She paused, thinking again. "How would you treat congestion of the lung?"
"With lance leaf plantain, lungwort, and speedwell. Steep with one cup boiling water and mingle with spring water. Take a cup or more a day sweetened with honey." I thanked my stars I had a good memory.
"That will work, but you may also use milfoil with two parts lungwort, nettle leaves, and the plantain. It is, I think, a more effective mixture. I will show you how to prepare it, as we are not yet out of the season. And catnip is for?"
"Chronic cough."
"There are other uses, but that will do. What about celery?"
"Air in the stomach, Mother Ash."
"What about chickweed?"
"For the bringing on of spitting, and—and—to move— reluctant—stools."
"Reluctant? Is that what they are?" Mother Ash broke a smile for the first time.
Again, I stared. I was beginning to wonder if there was something very excellent in the water of Middleham, that the women hereabouts should be able to keep so many teeth.
"Very nicely put, Rosalba. Not only have you been paying attention to your Mother, but I see the makings of a lady-in-waiting into the bargain."
We reached the cottages. We entered hers, marked by a pestle hanging alongside the door.
Embers glowed on a small hearth, revealing a pair of gray cats lounging beside it. The floor had boards, which made it finer than the house from which I'd come. There was a spinning wheel, a long table by a glass window covered with herbs, scissors, knives and at least five different sizes and styles of mortar and pestle. A bed against the far wall was shielded from drafts by a hanging. Instead of a smoke hole, there was a chimney at the end of the room.
Dried plants hung from the beams, and the room had a fragrance beyond the smoky remains of the fire. I warmed to the place at once, and even dared to imagine that someday I too might have such a house
"We will talk today, and then I shall show you my garden. Return tomorrow in old clothes, please. Rootstock must be moved, seeds planted. You will get your hands dirty with me, Rose."
"I know how to plant and weed—but—I must be clean, under my nails and all, to touch Milady Anne. Lady Agnes says so."
"Lady? Ha!" The old woman snorted. "She was begot on a kitchen slut by a knight not worthy of his badge. We will put gloves on you, girl, or haven't you heard of those?"
"Yes, Mother Ash."
"And you will come to me straight, no dawdling, every morning as soon as Lady Anne goes to her Mother, and race back in bare time to wash those precious freckled hands and that precious freckled face and change your clothes. No idling for you, girl."
"I am not idle, Mother Ash." It came out a bit more tartly than I’d anticipated.
"Time will tell." Her reply was equally sharp. "Now, tell me the name of this." She began again with her quizzing, moving about the room and pointing to the dried herbs that lay here and there upon the table.
I knew most of the answers, and was beginning to feel quite proud of myself until she opened a hinged, red wooden chest. Within, sparkling, was a host of mysterious glass vials, sixteen in all.
Reaching in with a muscular hand, she withdrew one, uncorked it, and then passed it close to my nose. An acrid smell flew up, vicious as a hoard of demons with pitchforks. I sneezed violently.
"What was that?" She corked the bottle and returning it to the box with a clink.
"I do not know, Mistress." I replied when I was able to speak again. My eyes were tearing violently, so I wiped them on my sleeve.
"Always use your handkerchief!" Sternly she pointed at my bosom. Inside the laces that closed the outer dress was tucked this new—and still unfamiliar—accessory.
"Now I know where to begin your instruction."