Even in Eisande a woman occasionally dies in childbed; and so Catherine Valais, half-orphaned from the second day of her life, was brought up at Châteauredon a charge upon her late mother’s wealthier relations and an unregarded victim of their benign neglect.
Her father, once a courtesan of the Glycine in Marsilikos, wasn’t interested in taking on the burden of parenthood. His flying visits were so unsettling to the child — late nights, ridiculous presents far too grown up for her years, excessive quantities of sweets, grand plans for taking her away with him into his own glamorous life, which of course he never did, but maybe next time — that eventually he was discouraged and became less frequent a caller, leaving the young Catherine less and less certain as she grew that he had any affection for her at all. Meanwhile, she had less to do with the overburdened staff of the Valais nurseries, or with her lofty relations, than with the estate craftsmen: her clever tiny hands, her nascent eye for symmetry and shape, her precise and conscientious nature, made her a welcome little helper to them. Perhaps more advantage was taken than ought to have been of her assistance, and slightly more class barriers were crossed than the comte and comtesse ever knew about, but the seeds were sown of a passion for beautiful craftsmanship which later on came to sustain her.
At sixteen she was shunted off to the family’s townhouse in Marsilikos to make an entrance into adult society, albeit without the extravagant natality celebrations and the traditional first visit to the Night Court enjoyed by her main line cousins of similar ages. There wasn’t anybody in her life who’d go to that much trouble to honour or to delight her — and nobody, more to the point, who understood her well enough to realise what a burden and an inconvenience such a fuss would have been to her anyway. Those pleasures would come a little later and more quietly to Catherine, in her own time and with the decorous discretion she prefers.
She did have a small inheritance from her mother, and once in a while her father would even come across with the allowance he was meant to provide to any children of their consortship — it wasn’t out of the question that someone might want to marry her, at some point. But she never made much of an effort in that direction, that anybody saw, spending the greater part of her time closeted in her own chamber. That is, as far as most people knew. Her habit of popping down the servants’ stairs and out the back door to consort with unsuitable friends in a street of artisans down near the port, remained happily a private arrangement. Of course a lady couldn’t take up a formal apprenticeship. That sort of thing is not done. But a master marqueter who recalled that very serious little girl of Châteauredon, was glad to put her increasingly skilled hands to work whenever she could get away — which was often! — and to reward her with the laconic praise for a job well done and the steady and undemonstrative affection she’d never come upon elsewhere, and which she found so congenial.
WIth the passage of time Catherine hid her hobby less and less. It showed itself at first in the trinkets which appeared in her chamber, and which occasionally she gave as gifts: however could she afford such fine work? Well, actually, she explained, she’d made them herself. This was found unexpected and oddly charming. Who knew the quiet cousin in the little room at the back on the third floor had such hidden depths? Piece by piece, literally, her work began to seem normal. And as the years went by and no suitable husband or consort entered the picture, it was thought to be for the best that she had some other string to her bow…
At the same time her penchant for fine work and fine detail was leading her into a thousand temptations in the shopping streets of Marsilikos. She couldn’t resist a fine piece of lace, a dainty pair of embroidered slippers, anything that was superb of its kind. Her little room was growing into a magpie’s nest — she was labouring for coin in her master’s workshop — she was selling what she made on her own time, and scrounging where she could, to try to pay for enthusiasms. Somehow the sums never quite worked out, though, and every year or two there was a minor reckoning with the comte de Valais of the day. Bills paid, for the sake of the family name; promises made, also superb of their kind; then the cycle began anew.
Perhaps the memories that were her chief inheritance from her father, the jaundiced ideas he’d left her of what a courtesan was and how a courtesan behaved towards those he “loved”, were what disinclined her for so long to visit the Night Court. Then, one night in 1290 at the Golden Harbour, where Catherine was indulging in a solitary meal high above her purse, a party of a dozen young aristocrats and courtesans of the city arrived in jubilant spirits and were seated nearby. At least, most of them were seated: a cushion was provided for a lovely redhead in a gown far too skimpy for the autumn, so that she might kneel by the chair of the extraordinary apparition in black leather and dark purple silk who was holding the end of her leash. Throughout the meal she was treated as a pet, but a beloved one: collared, yes, but fed with tidbits, and encouraged to rest her head in her mistress’s lap to be caressed.
Previous passions — for her mentor in marquetry, and then a certain lady florist in the Grand Plaza — shriveled and died within the secret chambers of Catherine’s heart, during the course of that evening. Strategic eavesdropping during an unnecessary number of visits to the privy revealed that the the apparition’s name was Emmanuelle Shahrizai nó Rose Sauvage — and that she was a courtesan. Thus one might, by the simple payment of coin, secure an evening in her exclusive company. So did Catherine bid permanent farewell to financial security, for it is in the nature of Thorns to be far more costly than the most luscious out-of-season bouquets.
What price a cast-iron sense of structure and security? Even if it lasts only for a handful of hours… The next several years saw the vanishment of what was left of Catherine’s inheritance from her mother, the ruination of her credit, and the imperilment of House Valais’s own, until one day in 1294 she presented herself at the Rose Sauvage only to be invited into the Dowayne’s office and gently informed that the salon no longer found it possible to receive her as a patron.
The shame of it cut far deeper than anything the comte de Valais said to her the next day, though to be sure he waxed lyrical on the theme of this being the last and final settlement of his young cousin’s debts. From now on she would be obliged to take responsibility for herself.
Weeks later Emmanuelle Shahrizai left the city, rendering the Night Court pointless anyway.
Catherine occupied herself with a flurry of work on fancy little boxes and so on, in a bid to cover the costs of a shopping habit that from being merely reckless became dangerously self-destructive. Simultaneously she locked gazes with a Kusheline lord who was visiting the city on business, and who over the next handful of months came to seem very interested in consortship with a young noblewoman trained at the hands of so redoubtable a Mandrake. He himself was, alas, only a cut-rate Emmanuelle. But he had his own attractions — at least, until he returned alone to Kusheth, to a marriage with a well-dowered second cousin. The consortship contract which was re-drawn so often, so painstakingly, was never signed.
What was left but work, and the primal satisfaction of making something beautiful, and making it well—? Around the year 1300, a journeyman in truth, Catherine was offered steady employment working on the interiors and the furnishings of a sprawling inner-city palace being hollowed out and patched together by House Shahrizai — by, in fact, Emmanuelle’s own father. The regular stipend, paid monthly rather than quarterly and administered by the Valais family lawyer whose unenviable duty it is to aid her in keeping her affairs in order, quickly proved invaluable; and by working under gifted and meticulous masters from Terre d’Ange and abroad, she developed year by year a true mastery of her own in the art of marquetry. And exciting whispers suggested that Edouard Shahrizia’s redoubtable daughter was a silent partner in the Maison Sanglante, even before she conducted brisk and cold-eyed inspection tours of the work in progress during her all-too-brief visits to Marsilikos. Twice in ten years, Catherine saw her idol again and heard words addressed to her in that low, drawling voice. Meanwhile she enjoyed the daily pleasure of placing one of her passionate obsessions, in the service of the other.
Then, in the late summer of 1310, Emmanuelle Shahrizai left Mont Nuit and came home to the Maison Sanglante, and the new chapter Catherine had dreamt of for so long, began.
