The Hatmakers Read online

  When she began to walk, she staggered across the Trimming Room with feathers for hats held carefully aloft. She toddled through plumes of steam from her aunt’s hat blocks and tottered around eddies of crystal light swirling in the Alchemy Parlor.

  The first words she learned were written in spiky runes, from the whispering books in the Library. She made friends with the lush plants that burst from the greenhouse perched on the roof, became acquainted with the stars through her great-aunt’s stargazing telescope, and gave all the Quest Pigeons names.

  She wrapped the Moon Cactus in a woolly scarf when there was snow on the ground and cooled the Vesuvian Stone with a fan in summer, to stop it oozing lava onto her great-aunt’s table. She knew the brushes that were brusque unless you talked to them politely, and she was the only one who could coax the Timor Fern to unfurl a new frond, by whispering kind things to it.

  Hatmakers had lived in this house for more generations than anyone could quite remember. Magic from the ingredients, brought home from adventures all around the world, had seeped into the grain of the wood and into the time-worn stones. The wrinkled glass of the old windows, the walls, and even the chimney pots bristled and shivered with their own eccentric magic.

  Some of the magic was rather exasperating. For example, if you trod on the workshop hearthrug in the wrong place, it would deliberately trip you up. One of the floorboards was very ticklish and tended to wriggle if you walked over it. Uncle Tiberius often got impatient with the cupboard where invisible things were kept. The door of the cupboard had slowly faded—from being inconspicuous, it had become obscure, then completely invisible. But when her uncle could not find it, Cordelia knew just how to squint at the wall to glimpse the handle.

  For as long as Cordelia could remember, she had been helping her family with their craft.

  Useful around the house as Cordelia was, she was not actually allowed to Make any hats herself.

  “Ingredients are unpredictable,” her aunt often warned her. “They can be exceedingly harmful if used in the wrong way. And some ingredients should never be used at all.”

  These forbidden ingredients were locked away in the Menacing Cabinet, an iron cupboard in the workshop. Cordelia was always sent out of the room when it was opened. She was very curious about the treacherous treasures it contained, but had never managed to glimpse any of them. Anything gathered during a hat-hunting expedition that was deemed too perilous to use was locked away behind its iron walls, and the key to the Menacing Cabinet was always on Aunt Ariadne’s belt.

  The Hatmakers’ motto was inscribed in Latin across the doors of the cabinet:

  NOLI NOCERE

  It meant “Do no harm,” which was the most important principle in Hatmaking.

  Cordelia once heard Prospero and Uncle Tiberius weighing a single whisker from a Sabre Tiger. She’d had her ear pressed to the keyhole of the Hat-weighing Room when she heard her uncle sigh: “It’s far heavier than my strongest measure of Menace, Prospero! It will have to go in the Menacing Cabinet.”

  So the Menacing Cabinet had been opened and the whisker locked away.

  Cordelia had even heard whispers that the cabinet contained a Croakstone, but she didn’t dare ask about that.

  She had, however, tried to bargain with her aunt on several occasions about Hatmaking in general.

  “I wouldn’t Make a bad hat!” she reasoned, making her eyes as big and sincere as she could. “I’d Make a really nice hat. A very safe one.”

  “You’re not old enough, Cordelia,” her aunt always answered. “You still have a lot to learn before you can even think about Making your first hat.”

  But Cordelia did think about Making her first hat. She longed to wrap a bright skein of felt around a hat block, cover it with ribbons and feathers and gems and twisting twigs, lace it with pearls and stud it with buttons and shells and flowers and—

  “It’s absolutely out of the question” was always her aunt’s final word on the matter.

  That was never an exciting thing to hear.

  Aunt Ariadne had a gold hatpin, decorated with an emerald as big as a gooseberry. She would stick it in her hair with a purposeful jab before rolling up her sleeves to start on a new hat. The hatpin contained the power to make her aunt a brilliant and enchanting Hatmaker.

  Uncle Tiberius had a sleek silver hatpin that he kept tucked into his breast pocket. Great-aunt Petronella’s was always stuck through her bun, its red stone gleaming. Prospero’s hatpin was whittled from the branch of a Fleetwood tree and he wore it in his captain’s hat.

  Every birthday Cordelia hoped to be given one of her own: a hatpin that would make her a Hatmaker. Having a hatpin would finally allow her to begin the work her fingers itched to do. But she knew that, like all Hatmakers before her, she would only be allowed to Make her first hat on her sixteenth birthday.

  It felt like several lifetimes away.

  As a very special treat, on her eleventh birthday, she had been allowed to brush the freshly blocked hats with a stiff badger-hair brush to make them shine.

  “On your twelfth, littlest Hatmaker, you will begin learning about the powerful ingredients we use to trim hats. We’ll begin with feathers,” Prospero had promised. “Feathers have so much magic and personality in them.”

  Today, with a few months still to wait before her twelfth birthday, Cordelia ran into the workshop to find her uncle bending over the sage-green hat on the hat block, sewing a garland of rosemary onto the wide velvet brim.

  “Rosemary for remembrance,” he murmured.

  Her aunt and uncle had laid aside their black Mourning Hats while they worked. Both of them now had frilly bonnets on, tied with big canary-yellow bows under their chins.

  “I know we look rather silly,” Aunt Ariadne said when she saw Cordelia’s eyes widen, “but we cannot allow our own sadness to creep into the king’s hat. It would ruin all our hard work. So we’re wearing Blithe Bonnets while we finish it, to keep our spirits up.”

  She offered Cordelia a bonnet, but Cordelia did not take it.

  “I don’t need it, thank you, Aunt,” Cordelia said.

  Aunt Ariadne turned away, her face hidden by the blowsy frills of the bonnet.

  Cordelia knew that her aunt was trying very hard to be positive. A Hatmaker’s state of mind was vitally important while Making a hat. Aunt Ariadne had told her more than once: “It is most important to keep good intentions flowing from your mind to your hands to the hat.”

  If a Hatmaker was sad or angry or careless or fidgety, for example, their state of mind would be transferred to the hat, and then to the wearer of the hat once it was on their head. Uncle Tiberius once told her about a Hatmaker who had been moonishly in love with his sweetheart while Making a Gravitas Hat for a politician. The Hatmaker’s love suffused the Gravitas Hat with a blossoming adoration, which, when the politician put it on, gave him an overwhelming sense of love for the Leader of the Opposition. (Cordelia suspected that Uncle Tiberius himself was the Maker of that particular hat, though he had never admitted it.)

  “Spider silk,” Aunt Ariadne pronounced, turning back to Cordelia and holding up a silver skein of delicate web. “Spun by a Brown Study Spider and collected yesterday before moonrise. Come, Cordelia, I need your help with it. Remember to concentrate.”

  Cordelia held her hands out wide while Aunt Ariadne carefully wound the fine spider silk around them. Soon a shining bridge of silver was swagged between her hands.

  “Now twist it around,” Aunt Ariadne instructed.

  Cordelia turned her hands, making the threads twist together to form a slender silken rope. Aunt Ariadne snipped it and knotted it neatly at both ends.

  “Next, we shall sew this to the hat starting here, just above the left eye …” Aunt Ariadne pinned the spider-silk rope onto the hat. “And twist it clockwise around the crown to the very tip …”

  Cordelia watched in admiration as her aunt skillfully wound the gleaming rope around the hat.

  “And it s
hould help to encourage the king’s concentration, which is what this hat has been commissioned for.”

  Cordelia nodded. Her aunt turned to her.

  “Can you tell me why I chose silk from a Brown Study Spider?”

  Cordelia thought for a moment before answering. “You chose spider silk because spiders work hard to make their webs, and this hat is to help the king to work hard … and a Brown Study Spider likes paper and silence, and the king needs paper and silence to concentrate.”

  “Excellent.” Aunt Ariadne smiled. “We should finish it off with a fresh flower from the St. Aegis Vine. Will you fetch one?”

  Cordelia ducked under the drying lines, which were hung with freshly dyed silks, and dashed up the stairs to the greenhouse. As she passed the Alchemy Parlor, a cloud of sky-blue smoke billowed out of the door.

  “Splendid!” she heard Great-aunt Petronella crow. “The Fathom Glass droplet is nearly ready!”

  Cordelia swerved into the dark parlor to see her great-aunt holding a shimmering droplet in a pair of iron tongs. It looked like liquid sunlight. A hot smell peppered the air. Alchemy, to Cordelia, seemed a strange mixture of poetry and science.

  “Ah, child—fetch me the jar from the windowsill,” Great-aunt Petronella croaked. “Careful, it’s full of Thunder Rain.”

  Cordelia pushed open the window and carefully picked up the jar that stood on the sill. It was brimful of storm-gray rainwater, which sloshed a little as she carried it across the room. A rumble of thunder rolled up from the jar and a tiny crack of lightning flashed across the water.

  “It’s good and fresh.” Great-aunt Petronella smiled as Cordelia set it down on the table.

  Her great-aunt plunged the glowing droplet into the water. A huge plume of steam burst like a nimbus cloud into the room. In the air around them, tiny zig-zags of lightning crackled and zapped.

  When Great-aunt Petronella came back into view through the rising cloud of steam, Cordelia saw that the glass droplet she held in the tongs was now crystal-clear and shining.

  “This Fathom Glass will help the king to focus on what matters,” her great-aunt explained.

  “How did it change like that?” Cordelia asked.

  “Storm water is the best strengthener. Sometimes surviving a storm is the making of a person.”

  Cordelia’s breath caught in her throat. Great-aunt Petronella fixed her eyes on Cordelia. They were like two crystals glinting in the ancient folds of her face.

  “What does one need to survive a storm? Good heart and good judgement,” she said steadily. “Prospero has both.”

  “Do you think—” Cordelia began.

  The old lady held up one paper-pale hand for silence.

  “The Glassmakers in Venice know all about storms,” she said. “They have huge casks full of storm water. They collect different waters from different sorts of storms. And the collecting casks are big enough to bathe an elephant. Those Venetians are the masters of glass.”

  “Have you been there and seen them?” Cordelia asked, round-eyed.

  “Ah—a long time ago—” her great-aunt began, but she was interrupted by a shout from below.

  “Cordelia! Where’s that flower?”

  “Coming, Aunt!” Cordelia called back, skidding out of the Alchemy Parlor and dashing up to the greenhouse.

  A few minutes later, the newly made Fathom Glass droplet had been sewn onto the tip of the hat, where it hung like a fat bead of clear water. A pale-yellow blossom from the St. Aegis Vine gleamed on the brim and the hat was taken to the Hat-weighing Room.

  A large set of wooden scales stood in the middle of the room and hundreds of brass weights were ranked on shelves around the walls.

  Uncle Tiberius selected a weight the size of an apple.

  “Concentration,” he said, putting it on the scales. “To the power of ten Engrossments.”

  Aunt Ariadne carefully placed the hat on the other side of the scales. Slowly, the wooden contraption tilted like a see-saw and the hat sank down until it was level with the weight on the scales.

  “Bravo!” Uncle Tiberius boomed. “Concentration aplenty!”

  “Try Sobriety,” Aunt Ariadne suggested.

  “What’s Sobriety?” Cordelia whispered, as Uncle Tiberius reached for a weight the size of a cannonball to test against the hat.

  “It’s an extra-special sort of Sensible,” her aunt whispered back.

  The hat was slightly lighter than the measure of Sobriety so Uncle Tiberius tried a smaller weight. Against this one, the hat sank.

  Aunt Ariadne nodded. “It will do.”

  Finally, Uncle Tiberius placed a tiny weight, no bigger than a ladybird, on the scales.

  The hat and the tiny weight were perfectly balanced.

  “What’s that one?” Cordelia asked.

  “Joy,” Uncle Tiberius murmured. “In a small measure. Just to take the edge off all the work.”

  The Hatmakers surveyed their creation. It was an elegant hat, pale gray-green and twisted about with silver and rosemary. Cordelia imagined the king wanting to spend all day and all night diligently working in his study once he put it on.

  Her uncle sniffed.

  “It would have been better with the ear feather from the Athenian Owl,” he croaked, his voice cracked with sadness.

  “Come now, Tiber,” Aunt Ariadne coaxed.

  Usually after a new hat had been weighed, it was put in the hat hoist and winched down to the Hatmakers’ shop on the ground floor.

  This hat, however, was destined for the king.

  Nestled in fine silks in a handsome gray hatbox tied with a navy-blue ribbon, the Concentration Hat was conveyed to the Hatmakers’ carriage.

  Jones had the carriage ready at the front door. He sat up in the driver’s seat, holding the reins of two gleaming horses, who tossed their heads and whinnied, eager to set off.

  Aunt Ariadne and Cordelia climbed in. Uncle Tiberius followed, holding the hatbox carefully. Great-aunt Petronella waved them off from her window.

  Jones clicked the horses into a quick trot. The hatbox joggled on Uncle Tiberius’s lap all the way from Wimpole Street to the palace.

  There was silence inside the carriage. Aunt Ariadne sniffed occasionally and held Cordelia’s hand tight in her black gloves. Uncle Tiberius frowned down at the hatbox. Both Aunt and Uncle had removed their frilly Blithe Bonnets and donned their somber Mourning Hats once again. The black hats filled the carriage with shadows. It was a quiet journey.

  The palace, however, was in uproar.

  Frilly red footmen with black velvet berets and skinny white-stockinged legs (they did look rather silly, Cordelia thought) chased around the vast courtyard. They were trying to catch hundreds of letters and papers that were looping and floating in the breeze.

  The Hatmakers’ carriage pulled up in the middle of the mayhem. A dignified footman opened the door and the Hatmakers all climbed out.

  “This way,” the footman said, directing them through the golden palace doors. His noble attempt to ignore the chaos unfolding around him was undermined when he was hit in the face by a flying sheet of paper. Cordelia just had time to read a line of spidery writing that said:

  HIS MAJESTY THE KING DOES HEREBY COMMISSION THE IRONFIRE CANNON FACTORY TO MAKE 10,000 …

  Before she could continue, a panicked young servant, velvet cap half-covering his eyes, lunged for the paper and sent the footman reeling.

  The Hatmakers knew the way to the king’s chambers and they set off through the maze of corridors, Uncle Tiberius carrying the hatbox importantly before him. Grand ladies, maids, and white-wigged courtiers alike turned to stare as the Hatmakers passed. Cordelia glowed with pride, marching along beside the hatbox destined for the king.

  A maid carrying an armful of laundry gasped, “Blimey! The Hatmakers!”

  Cordelia grinned at her and the maid dropped her laundry in surprise.

  When they arrived at the doors to the king’s chambers, there were four soldiers in silver a
nd black uniforms standing guard. They seemed to be doing their best to ignore the strange bleating noises coming from inside the room. Oddly, there was one pale-blue boot lying on its side at their feet.

  “Ah! Hatmakers!” one guard cried. “We have been expecting you!”

  He pushed open the doors and the Hatmakers entered the king’s chamber.

  King George was on his throne. But that was the only normal thing about the scene they saw before them.

  The king was wearing nothing but lacy bloomers, shiny snakeskin shoes, and an unbuttoned scarlet jacket. And he was not sitting on his throne. He was standing on it on one leg, baaing like a lost sheep. He had a velvet glove draped over an ear, a radish up one nostril, and the other blue boot balanced on his head.

  CHAPTER 5

  “YOUR MAJESTY,” AUNT ARIADNE UTTERED, bowing deeply.

  Cordelia and Uncle Tiberius bowed too.

  The king’s chamber was in turmoil. Papers and clothes littered the floor, a peacock flapped on a footstool, and the curtains blew at the open windows. The king’s curly white wig was perched, lopsided, on a statue of a Greek goddess.

  Princess Georgina stood tense beside her father’s throne, dressed in a beautiful gown of pale-pink silk. She was holding a shimmery purple cloak in clenched fists and seemed to be trying not to cry.

  Lord Witloof stood on the king’s other side. He looked even more tired than he had at the Hatmakers’ door last night. But he was there, dutifully prepared to catch His Majesty if he lost his balance and fell.

  “Ah, my hat people!” the king declared. “A spoon is a spoon until it is holey, and then ’tis a fork to eat jam roly-poly.”

  Uncle Tiberius inclined his head gravely. “Indeed, Your Majesty.”

  “Write that down, Perkins,” the king said to the peacock, plucking the radish from his nose and munching it.

  Cordelia giggled and Aunt Ariadne poked her in the ribs.