Woman in profile wearing a feathered headdress

The crate came up from the docks on Tuesday with the feathers still smelling of the ship, and I have spent three evenings sorting them on the cutting table by length, the way you taught me. Mr Ashdown wants the headdress finished before the company goes north, so I am sewing the bands myself, row by row, with the glass beads you sent from Birmingham. Forty-one rows of them. I counted twice because I was afraid of getting it wrong and having to pick out the whole front.

The difficulty is the weight. Fifty-odd quills and not one of them wants to lie flat. Pinned, they sag; bound too tight, they snap at the base. Last night I gave up on the pins and stitched them into a leather band that Tomasz cut from an old saddle, and suddenly they stood up like a field of wheat after rain. I stood there in the workroom with the lamp out and just watched them for a minute. Foolish, I know.

Then the ledger turned up. Mr Ashdown's clerk had filed the original order under the wrong name, so I found a note tucked inside, in pencil, from the costumier who first made the thing in 1889. It says only: keep the eyes of the beadwork facing the light, and the band will hold. I have no idea what it means, but I did as it said, and the pattern sits right now.

I will post this with the last of the beads. Tell Mother the mountain road is open and I am not to go walking on it alone.

Your loving sister, Edie