With five girls, even the biggest bedchamber can get crowded. As Tati fastened the hooks on my gown, I watched Iulia twirling in front of the mirror. She was thirteen now, and developing the kind of curvaceous figure our mother had had.
Her gown was of cobalt silk and she had swept her dark curls up into a circlet of ribbon butterflies. We had become clever, over the years, in our use of the leftovers from Father’s ship-ments. He was good at what he did, but buying Piscul Dracului had eaten up a lot of his funds and, even in partnership with his wealthy cousin, he was still making up for lost ground. I saw the books every day—he had been unable to conceal from 6
me that finances remained very tight. We sisters had to impro-vise. We made one new dancing gown anytime a cargo contained a little more of a certain fabric than the buyer had requested. I wore Tati’s hand-me-downs; Paula wore mine.
Iulia, with her fuller figure, did rather better, because she could not fit into either Tati’s clothes or mine. All the same, she complained; she would have liked a whole wardrobe of finery.
Tati was clever with her needle, and adjusted old things of Mother’s to fit her. Mother was gone. We had lost her when our youngest sister was born. Stela was only five—easy to dress.
Paula had finished lighting the lamps. Now she crouched to bank up the fire in our little stove and ensure its door was safely shut. One year Iulia’s junior, Paula was our scholar. While I was good at figures, she shone in all branches of learning. Our village priest, Father Sandu, came up to Piscul Dracului once a month to provide Paula with private tutoring—I shared in the mathematical part of these lessons—and went home with a bottle of Petru’s finest ¸ tuica˘ in his coat pocket. Most folk believed education of that kind was wasted on girls. But Father had never cared what people thought. Follow your heart was one of his favorite sayings.