Two roses and scissors line design

The cutler in Vell has sent the scissors back with a new pin and a bill I will not repeat in polite company. He has also, without asking, added two roses to the arms, one above the hinge and one below, and worked the handles into curls like frost on a pane. Mother would have called it vanity. I call it the only honest thing he has made since the flood.

The Queen's order came up the Sallow Road on Tuesday: a bridal gown of grey silk for Princess Ilse, cut to a pattern that bends from the left hip round to the hem like a river finding the sea. The pattern-maker had pricked the line with a wheel, so the chalk ran in dots. Every apprentice in the workshop has been told to follow it and not to think. I followed it, and then I did not.

Where the dots bent tightest I stopped, opened the blades, and cut the other way, a finger's width inside the mark. The gown will sit a little narrower at the waist. The Princess is said to be slight. Nobody in Carrow will ever know there was a second line, and the offcuts I kept are the finest silk we have handled in years.

I am sending you a square of it with a rose pressed into the weave, the one the cutler drew. Keep it in the sewing box beside Mother's thimble. If the Chancellor asks, tell him the scissors slipped.