The Red Cotillion

Chapitre Un

(*flashback to several months ago*)

"Maman, why does Prince Ocean have to be my date for the cotillion?" Calpurnia mewed in protest one sunny afternoon.

Queen Katarìna looked up from the chair in the corner where she sat sewing and supervising her daughter's dress fitting.

"Don't be silly, Calpurnia. The two of you will link Ginelan and Felineva for decades to come," she replied. "Have you been learning nothing from your tutors?" Calpurnia was unable to reply as several seamstresses forced a pink dress over her head. The queen went on, resuming her sewing. "Anyway, it's a good thing you're friends with him, unlike those terrible princes of Santa Adelita- so puffed up with hubris! What a tragedy it'd be if you were arranged to one of them!" Just then she looked up. Seeing the pink dress, she let out a yelp of disgust. "Take that off right away!" she barked at the seamstresses. "Don't you know that pink looks affreux on redheads?" The seamstresses followed her orders meekly, long desensitized to Katarìna's nagging. It was a nice-looking dress, though- it had a billowy full skirt, with flower embellishments on the waist and bust.

"But Mum," Calpurnia protested. "Ocean and I are just friends." And they were, despite the betrothal that had bound them together since Calpurnia's birth (she was two and a half years younger than Ocean).

The two had done rather well as friends- Katarìna and Ocean's mother, Queen Calista, great friends themselves, had made a habit of bringing their children with them when they met up for tea every few weeks, and that was how Calpurnia and Ocean had become best friends- tumbling around together on the floor of a palace drawing room as their mothers cooed and took pictures. Ocean had helped Calpurnia pull out her first tooth (the process had involved a long piece of red string and Calpurnia's father's prized racehorse). The times they had baked together in Felineva's vast kitchen each stood out in their own ways. They had regularly met up to do their homework assignments together- Ocean would help Calpurnia with her scream-inducingly difficult math problems, and Calpurnia would help Ocean dissect his scream-inducingly difficult assigned reading. And that wasn't the only thing they had helped each other with. Calpurnia had once spent five hours on the phone with an inconsolable Ocean after a pretty dark-haired Felinevan palace guard had told him they were better off as friends. Additionally, he had held Calpurnia's hair back when she had thrown up what seemed like everything she'd ever eaten after tossing down a wine cooler the previous year as a dare from Prince Edvard of Epriousia. They trusted each other with their deepest, innermost secrets and whenever something new and exciting happened to one of them, the other would be the first to know.

"Don't 'Mum" me," Katarìna clucked, as the seamstresses took the pink dress off of Calpurnia.

Calpurnia sighed, and conceded that Ocean would be a better match than Nicolás or Martìn, twin Princes of Santa Adelita. The last time they had met, Nicolás had been unable to stop boasting about the latest fencing match he had won. And when she and Martìn had crossed paths at Santa Adelita's Christmas ball the year they were twelve, he had been unable to stop eyeing her chest. Yuck. 

She shivered as the seamstresses removed the pink dress from her body, leaving her standing there in her underwear.

"Calpurnia, don't fold in on yourself like that," the Queen admonished. "Your posture does not show me that you are a future queen. Stand up straight and tall! Lift your chin! Put your shoulders back! I need to schedule a locution class for you before the cotillion- Annie!" She called for her lady-in-waiting, who was of course sitting in a chair next to her. "Have Bertram slot in locution classes for Calpurnia every Tuesday at, how does four sound, dear?" She glanced up at Calpurnia, who opened her mouth to answer.

"Tuesday at four it is!" Katarìna chirped to Annie, cutting her daughter off.

Calpurnia groaned at the thought of being forced to walk back and forth and back and forth and back and forth across a drawing room again and again and again with a copy of War and Peace on her head, while Bertram, a skinny homosexual man with a chirpy high-pitched voice, prodded her back with a walking stick and said things like, "Look proud, Calpurnia!" or "I thought I was teaching a future queen, not a hunchback!" Or she would have to sit in a fancy chair with her ankles crossed, her back never touching the back of the chair, hands folded neatly in her lap, all with a demure smile on her face.

The seamstresses shoved another dress over her head. "Mmpfh!" Calpurnia complained, her protests muffled by the yards of fabric. As her head cleared the hole at the top of the dress, she shook her head and gazed down at it.

This one was more sleek, made of tulle that flared out delicately at her ankles. The bodice was intricately sewn with silver beads on and below the bust. As Calpurnia took in the details, one of the seamstresses swiftly pulled her hair into an elaborate sort of twist.

"Hmm," said Katarìna.

Calpurnia, Annie, and the seamstresses sat/stoof mutely, hanging onto what the Queen's next words could be.

"It is very becoming of you, Calpurnia, and suits your figure just fine. However, it doesn't exactly slap me in the face with how beautiful it is. I like it, but I believe our seamstresses can truly wow the populace with another dress."

The atmosphere in the room relaxed, and the other women in the room showered praise upon Calpurnia now that they felt it safe to do so.

"I love it, Callie, your hair really pops," Annie said, smiling sweetly at her.

"You look like that mermaid from the film," one of the seamstresses told her, smiling as she tucked a few wisps of fabric.

However, there were seven more dresses to go. Not all of the responses earned as much praise as the sea green one, and as always the Queen had the final say in everything.

A floaty green chiffon frock- "I thought I gave birth to a girl, not spinach. En fait."

A navy blue off-the-shoulder maxidress with a high leg slit- "Mon Dieu! Calpurnia Agathe, you are too young to wear anything with a leg slit, do not even think of wearing that to the cotillion."

A dove-grey dress with a high-low hem- "You look like a widow, Calpurnia, shall I ring up Calista to see if Ocean has, as they say, kicked the bucket?" (Calpurnia ignored that jab.)

Oh, dear, Calpurnia thought, glancing for the thousandth time at the grandfather clock in the corner. After this, she had her World Civilizations class, and then at four she and Ocean were planning to go horseback riding in the plains near the Felinevan palace.

It was 1:38. Pouah! 4:00 couldn't come fast enough.