Free Figures in Silk by Vanora Bennett

dusty shafts of light, pulling at one bale, holding up another. Lost in the moment. Astonished.
    She only remembered Alice Claver was there when she became aware of the older woman looking at her, with a slow half- smile on her lips, as if she understood Isabel’s enchantment.
    She must feel it herself. In this shadow world, lit up by one of the sideways rays of light from on high, with the ground around her a tumbling mass of scarlets and purples and silvers, Alice Claver had stopped looking as barrel- like and brutally commonsensical as she did elsewhere; she seemed suddenly taller and more mysterious, like an angel in a halo of gold, or a rustic wise woman summoning spirits from the woods.
    Now Alice Claver was sweeping Isabel around, poking into corners, pulling things out, energetically talking. The silkwoman poured out information at a speed Isabel could hardly keep up with, giving her stern looks if she felt Isabel’s attention flagging.
    Isabel nodded, and tried to absorb as much of the flood of knowledge as she could. She was learning more in her first hour in this storeroom than she had in a lifetime as John Lambert’s daughter.
    It was exhausting. But it was exhilarating too; so absorbing it kept her returning thud of anxiety—“Where is Thomas?”—at bay.
    Alice started with reels and skeins and loops of silk threads: dyed, twined, thrown, boiled, raw; all glowing with the sun and scents of faraway places Isabel could hardly imagine. She learned that Persian silk came from the mysterious regions near the Caspian Sea: Ghilan, Shilan, Azerbaijan; that since Constantinople had fallen to the Turks, Venetian merchants hadn’t been able to buy in their old Black Sea markets, but that the Persians were sending more and more silk—both cloth and threads—by caravan to Syria, outside the control of the Turks, and that the Venetians were now getting their Persian silk supplies in from the markets of Damascus and Aleppo. She saw Persian silk threads called ablaca , ardassa, and rasbar . She saw Syrian silk threads called castrovana , decara , and safetina . She saw Romanian silk threads called belgrado , belladonna , and fior di morea . (“Most of my supplies come from Venice,” Alice Claver said by way of explanation of the Lombard- sounding names; “it’s still the greatest center in the world, where East meets West . . . and the quickest way for you to pick up some Italian, which you’ll need to do—and Flemish, of course, that’s vital too—is going to be by learning these Venetian names.”) She rolled the names on her tongue as though they were poems; Isabel imitated her as best she could. Spanish silk threads: spagnola , cattalana . Threads from southern Italy: napoletana , abru-zzese , pugliese , calabrese , messinese . The homegrown silks from the forests of mulberry trees cultivated by old ladies in black in Tuscany: nostrale . The homegrown silks from the forests of mulberry trees cultivated by old ladies in black in Venice’s own hinterland: nostrane .
    They were both so absorbed that they jumped when Anne Pratte’s round face came into view at the door. She was illuminated by the sunlight, too, but she had none of the skittish cheerfulness of yesterday. She looked gray, stricken. “Alice,” she said quietly to her friend. She didn’t even seem to notice Isabel. “Alice. I’m sorry. They’ve found Thomas.”
    Isabel didn’t understand the look, but she felt faint with fore-boding. She stole a timid glance at Alice, looking for guidance.
    Alice was clutching very hard at the skein of stuff she’d been showing her daughter- in- law. It was indigo- colored, Isabel remembered afterward, the darkness of widow’s weeds, and now it had tightened painfully against Alice’s blotchy hands. Alice wasn’t one to waste words, and she could see that Anne’s face made it pointless to ask whether Thomas was alive.
    “Where?” Alice asked.
    He hadn’t gone far. He’d been trapped under what must