I, Coriander Read Online Free PDF

both standing there outside the haberdasher’s and the next she was gone. When I found her, the child looked as if she had seen a ghost. And the state of her! It seems impossible for it all to have happened so quickly.’
    ‘I think, good sir, you make too much of it,’ said Danes. ‘To me she was lost for quite long enough.’
    ‘Nay, mistress, that is the odd thing. It was not that long, I do assure you. My apprentice, Gabriel Appleby, witnessed it too and will say the same as I do,’ said the tailor, quite distressed.
    ‘Surely all that matters,’ said Danes firmly, ‘is that you found her, for which we are eternally grateful. The rest is of no importance.’
    ‘Forgive me for saying it,’ said Master Thankless, ‘but there is a lot of talk, and not all of it favourable.’
    ‘So I have heard,’ said Danes. ‘One would have thought that people had better ways to spend their time than in idle gossip. ’
    My keen ears heard every word that was said, and every word worried me greatly. I had long wanted to ask what had happened to the shoes and could not, because I felt that in some way I was to blame for what had befallen me: that if I had done as I was bidden, I would never have got lost, never have become ill, never have had the nightmares.
    ‘Quite so,’ said the tailor. He continued in almost a whisper, ‘But they are saying it was -’
    ‘Well, Master Thankless,’ said Danes, ‘it is for the Good Lord to know the answer.’
    I was not sure if I had heard him right. It was only when Danes stood up quickly that I realised what he had said.
    Danes sighed. ‘We should be used to it by now. Nevertheless, it rubs me up the wrong way.’
    The word that he had used was sorcery. I did not know what it meant, but as I repeated it to myself I had a feeling of foreboding.
     
    T hat summer was the beginning of my love of words and stitches. My mother taught me my letters with great kindness and patience, under the crabapple tree.
    There is an art to using a quill and it took me many sheets of paper and much spillage of ink before I could write my letters. I hated it when the pen splattered, which it often did, stubbornly ruining my hard work. Though when it went well, the words gathered on the paper like flowers in a meadow on a sunny day.
    I got through so much ink in the learning that the inkseller took to knocking at least once a week on the garden door. He had a grey solemn face that looked as if it was chiselled out of stone; he was stooped down like the letter C, as if he were Atlas carrying the weight of the world in his wooden barrel of ink. Maybe he did. I have learnt that there is great power in words, no matter how long or short they be.
    ‘Is this for you then, young mistress?’ asked the inkseller, as he carefully poured his ink through a funnel into a stone jar.
    ‘Yes, of course,’ I said with pride.
    ‘Well, there’s a thing going to waste, all that learning on a girl,’ said the inkseller.
    My father thought it was good that I was being taught to read and write, and said that I had a quick wit which would serve me well in life. He taught me the countries of the world on his globe, and showed me maps that had Neptune sitting on a rock looking out over his vast watery kingdom of mermaids and sea monsters.
    My dear Danes could neither read nor write, and had no wish to learn. Instead she could sew with the fingertips of fairies, her stitches so small and delicate that her needle could embroider whole stories. I would sit for hours with her trying to do the same, but without much success.
    When at last I was strong enough there were plans to send me out of London to Highgate with Danes, for the good country air. I was to stay with the sister of my father’s long-dead cousin Master Stoop, who had married a rich man, a Master Gearing. In truth Beth and I were not looking forward to it. I had never been away from home and Highgate was quite a distance.
    On the eve of my departure, Mistress