Story for the Day: Rauleigh's Reflections on the Royal Wedding

Royal weddings, obligations aside, are best enjoyed from afar, with paper lounging in lap and tea in hand. For Sir Pastaddams, Frewyn's royal tailor, Marridon's choice of fashions are a sport, one to be critiqued and curtailed at any cost, for though Frewyn is never considered the height of fashion on the continents, their tailors know the line between the radiant and ridiculous.

A few flowers were to be sent off to the library, where a few books would be chosen to house the first blooms of the year and be conveyed the Balleigh’s by way of a spring greeting, and a copy of Damson’s Distress was the chosen recipient, plucked from its home on the high shelf despite Brigid’s gurns, bringing it first to the tailory, to achieve a piece of lace for the stems, where they were sure to have a fine piece of fabric cut evenly it into strips. They approached the open door and found the queen and the master tailor within, Carrigh sitting at her work table, sewing her feylilies into collars, and Pastaddams standing with his hands on his head, staring up at the solar, all agony and consternation.

                “Why did she need to polish it?” the tailor lamented, slumping against the wall, sinking under a raised hand. “It isn’t as though it’s made of silver. It is solid steel, and it is our kettle and we are the only ones who look at it, so never mind whether it is presentable. I think she might leave it alone for one day. Gods—now I shall have to go and fetch it. I love Aghatha dearly, Majesty, as you well know, and treat her as I would my own sister, but if she ever removes my kettle from our workplace ever again-- I suppose it’s in the servant’s quarters. No, I am not going to call her for the tea. I will make it myself, once I have done flumping over it—well!” seeing the children at the door and rousing himself. “Good morning, children, and what may we do for you?”

                They told him their errand, and feeling that there would be tea at the end of it, Pastaddams sat down and immediately fell to work.

                “Well, now, my darlings,” said Pastaddams, trying for blithesomeness under the tyranny of no morning tea. “What lace shall you have? We have Marridon cut, Farriage print, and Hallanys white—Marridon cut will work best with the lining, if you mean to put your flowers into your book. I will just make a few bows for your bouquets and then you may bother Brigid about them as well as you like. This will take a few minutes. Do be the very best darlings and fetch the kettle from the Servants’ Hall, will you? And bring the trey with the milk and sugar if you can.”

                They went very readily, and Pastaddams sighed as he watched them go.

                 “How I love seeing them all grow up,” said the tailor, pining after them. “They are all becoming such fine young men and women. His Highness especially is turning into quite the sharp young man.”

                “When he isn’t ruining his Gods’ Day clothes by tousling with his cousins,” said Carrigh, looking up from her work. “I am delighted he has so many cousins to play with, but I think all mothers could do without games that involve dirt.”

                “I believe that would be most games, Majesty, which is why I never played any as a child. Games are dangerous things that hurt new clothes. Staying within doors with a book was much preferable to doing anything that promotes injury and insalutary habits. I have not changed much over the years, as anyone may observe. Good behavior learned as a child ought to remain into adulthood, and knowing when to be inside and be quiet is something that should be a part of everyone’s elementary education. Hermitages have their benefits: they lend themselves to important pursuits, craftsmanship improved by good tea and better company. Do not judge me here, Majesty. I am doing slipshod work until I have had my tea. Why they asked me to do this now and could not wait until the afternoon—but I will not spoil their lesson, and let it never be said that Uncle Rauleigh does not do everything his many nephews and nieces ask of him --even with the early morning headache I am still sporting.”

                Carrigh simpered and pressed the sewn feylilies into her collar. “I’m sure your many sacrifices are duly felt.”

                “Yes, well. There. Finished. What do you think, Majesty?” holding up his work. “Good enough for the present, if I may say. I know I should have given them the Hallanys print your mother sent down, but I loathe to cut it up for a trifle. Balleigh’s is a sacred place to us all, of course, and the books the children bring thither treasured objects, but I would sooner cut up Ms Colcannon’s famous stitch than portion a Marridon pattern. Those are made to be folded and used in decoration. Frewyn lace is all for fashion, as you well know—speaking of which, Majesty, did you see that absolute travesty in the Marridon Post?”

                Carrigh stifled her mirth with the back of her hand. “I was wondering when you were going to comment on it.”

                “I was saving it for tea, as all scandals should be done, but considering what a shocking outrage it was—did you see the absolute rag that bride wore! One would think they never knew fashion in Marridon. A shameful want of lace. I saw the likeness in the post just as I was coming in this morning and almost fainted completely away. Did you ever hear of it, Majesty? A royal wedding—lord someone-or-other marrying lady such-and-such—and hardly a commendable outfit in the whole party. What are the Marridon tailors about these days? I am sure I don’t know, but whatever they mean by it, they plunge a hat pin in my heat. Today’s edition of the Post was meant to exhibit some of the new fashions, put out expressly for the wedding, but they hardly come from high boughs, if a plain satin dress and a short train is to be the thing of the season. That gossamer frock that pretended to be a veil made me almost too ill for work. Lace is out of fashion in Marridon now, I suppose, though it was all the rage last royal wedding—and the bride’s mother wore the same compost heap and matching tent that she wore the last wedding—that hat with that suit, who can wonder her husband died early—The whole wedding party was fright, but the bridal gown was a il-fitting carriage wreck. She doesn’t deserve so dashing a husband, if she can wear a dress that hasn’t been tailored properly. The train was exquisite, but it completely overtook the headpiece—I’m sure I don’t know what the point of her even wearing one was.”

                “I’m sure I have no idea,” said Carrigh, smiling to herself.

                “The bride’s father had the good sense to stay home. What ever illness he claimed to be nursing, he knew the fashion was hardly worth going out for, though he is a poor dressing man in general. His lordship, I hear from my circles, is a shameless potato fadge and would rather pageant himself in unflattering linens than dress for his title. A man wears his rank as much as he does the raiment belonging to it—And did you see what a fright the Lady of Honour wore on her head? How the bride could allow it I have no idea. It looked as though she had plucked a raven’s nest from a tree and arranged it on her head. She was the one who wore the replica of the wasp nest last time. Do be good, Majesty, and remind me of her name again?”   

                “It was Lady Beatriss, I believe.”

                “The very criminal indeed. She will ask her milliner to make her next eyesore out of a burrow, I’m sure. What a ramshackle dilapidation of a wedding party-- I don’t know whether I feel worse for the artist who had to draw their likeness for the post or the tailor who had to make the fashions to begin with. I was astonished to see Lady Midleton of the party. The reports from last week’s Post said she only just issued her fourth child. And she was pressed to dress and step out for the wedding, the celebration that even the Gods themselves did not attend. Poor woman. I’m sure she would have liked to stay at home in bed for all her efforts—well, she ought to stop bedding her dreadfully charming husband if she is going to be gravid every time she leaves it. He is an absolutely exquisite piece, from what my gossip-patch tells me, but she is the same age as you, Majesty, and she is looking quite haggard already. I am sad for her naturally. We none of us deserve to be fatigued and wretched before our time. Well,” exhaling and laying the lace aside, “at least the groom of this bridal mishap had the good sense to wear his regimentals. Uniform always answers at a wedding, and he is a bit of tea and toast to please the eyes of many. Not as handsome as mine is in his formal uniform—no one can equal Gaumhin when he is in his full breacan-- but a good effort, I applaud him.”

                “I wonder that you should care so much about royal weddings belonging to men of little fortune ladies of no consequence,” said Carrigh, her lips wreathed in a restrained grin.

                 “You know me, Majesty,” Pastaddams languished, with a confederacy on her smiles, “I am rather a dupe for these sorts of thing, especially when there is any new fashion in involved. Lords and ladies be what they may, but tiaras and veils do nothing where poor dresses reign. Bad dresses like bad hems tell many tales, tales of wrong choices and worse tailors. You cannot blame me, Majesty, really: a tailor speaks through his thimble and thread, and I can be communicative when there galliards to scold. Were the new bride and groom so presumptuous as to ask the King and Queen of Frewyn to attend their fracas?”     

                Carrigh shook her head. “Not that I know of.”

                “You should not have gone anyway, Majesty—not without me, of course. We would have had an immense time, with tea service in a box seat beside the bridal party, all opera glasses and fans.”

                “If that would have been allowable, we would have attended without an invitation,” Carrigh laughed.

                “How I do miss Duchess Jaina at these times. She would have attended only to humiliate them, wearing her largest hat and finest redingote in the true ducal style. I am sure she heard word of this marital fright, far away on the islands as she is, and flew down with the doves just to witness it. I do adore Her Grace Ephiny, but there was a charm in her excellent mother, a derision and a sharpness of the tongue, that can never be replaced.” A sigh of sentiment here. “Oh, I have made myself sad now, thinking about her. And where are the children with my kettle. I have panicked over lace and dresses and done it all with no tea. Surely nothing good will come of it.”

                And just as Pastaddams was about to declare himself feeling faint and ill at ease without the trey being dressed and his cup by his side, the children returned, with smiles and kettle in hand, proclaiming that Aunt Aghatha had only just taken it for a few minutes, to give it a thorough cleaning, “one wot Uncle Rauleigh couldn’t do if he tryd, if the steel were a pattern teh be sown.” Candour was hardly appreciated here, but his kettle was returned and with it came a return of happiness, and with a hurried gesture, Pastaddams gave the children their laces bows for their bouquets and sent them off, avowing that no further work at all should get done until Uncle Rauleigh had gone to the kitchen, boiled the water, and wet the tea, to inhale the sweet succour of Marridon black and Glaoustre cream and allow the brew inhabit his mind, inviting him to regale in the majesty of Marridon’s culture without reflections on their questionable habilatory tastes.