the story of Cinderella

THE TRUE STORY OF CINDERELLA

Once upon a time there was a rich gentleman at a Court somewhere in Europe, who was married to a beautiful lady. She bore him a daughter, but while the daughter was still quite a little girl a fever took her mother, and her father was left to bring up his daughter alone. He was worried about doing this, and felt she should have a mother; so a couple of years later he married again, to a rich and fashionable widow, the Grafin Eisenmieder, who had two daughters of her own.

Now this second wife wasn’t altogether a wicked woman, but she spoiled her daughters terribly and let them have their own way in everything. When they found out that their new stepfather already had a little girl of his own, they didn’t like the idea one bit, and complained to their mother. She listened, said "Of course, my darlings!" and went to tell her husband that there was no way she was going to let his first wife’s brat be brought up with her own children. So the rich gentleman went to his own daughter and sadly told her that she would have to go away. She wept and begged him to let her stay in the house, and eventually by means of compromise it was decided that if she became a servant she wouldn’t have to leave. So Cinderella, which was her name, went down the back stairs into the kitchen and—

You at the back there, shut your noise. Who’s telling this story?

All right, I admit it, you’ve probably heard something like it before, but you haven’t heard this story. Jakob Grimm was a fine fellow in his way, but he should have stuck to proto-Indo-European phonology. He did have a stab at telling this story, but he felt it wasn’t proper to explain what really happened, and so he changed a few things round to make it decent for little folk. Whoever heard of a glass slipper? How could you possibly walk in glass slippers? For one thing, you’d slip and fall over, and for another you’d break them as soon as you tried to come down stairs. No, there never was a glass slipper, and if you shut up and let me get on with the story you’ll find out what it really was that Cinderella left behind at the Ball. All right?

Ahem. As I was saying:

Well, Cinderella went down the back stairs to the kitchen and sat down on a stool, and there she cried. Nobody came to visit her, though, except for an old tabby cat and some insolent mice who proved the cat wasn’t doing much good, so in the end she dried her eyes and went to work sweeping out the flagstones and cleaning the pots. She gradually got to know the people who worked below-stairs, and most of them were very sorry for her: they remembered the Old Mistress, and they didn’t care for her replacement, who was demanding and let her foolish daughters order them about in the most arbitrary way. She made friends in particular with an old cobbler who lived down the road, and who came to the house regularly to deliver shoes for the three ladies upstairs who never seemed to have enough. He had been a friend of her parents, once, before her father married again and her stepmother said it wouldn’t do for him to keep company with the working classes; and he and his wife, who had left him some years before, had been Cinderella’s godparents. He used to tell her that her godmother had promised to look out for her, and that one day she would come back and bring Cinderella back to the life she should have. That didn’t seem very hopeful to Cinderella, but it was something to dream about when she was dozing by the fire at the end of a hard day’s work.

Meanwhile, what was going on upstairs?

Jakob Grimm will have told you that Cinderella’s stepsisters were ugly. This isn’t really fair. Their mother was a fine-looking woman, and her daughters took after her well enough: ugliness wasn’t their problem. The problem was that they were spoilt. This made them a pair of selfish, unappealing children right from the start, and their stepfather kept out of their way as much as possible after they somehow managed to prop a Chinese lacquered cabinet weighing about twenty pounds on the top of a door which he had to go through. When he came round he heard them laughing, and complained to their mother, who said "They didn’t mean any harm! It’s only a joke!" and refused to see them punished. After that, though he tried to avoid any contact with them, he couldn’t help finding out that they were growing up decidedly unpleasant. They always insisted on the finest and most expensive clothes, but they didn’t take care of them, so that things were always having to be cleaned or repaired or replaced altogether; and they were silly about eating, refusing all the good things and then stuffing themselves with dessert. By the time they were into their teens they ate almost nothing but sweets: jellies, cakes, crystallised fruit, pastries oozing with cream, sugary pies, and all in quantities enough to make a Viennese pastry-chef feel ill. The inevitable result was that they got fat and spotty, and that made them more disagreeable, for their mother had encouraged them to be as vain as she was. They wanted to be beautiful like her, but somehow when it came down to it they wanted sweet things to eat more. Their mother had tried to train them to corseting, as she had been at the same age, and they both had many sets of strong and beautifully-made stays; but if they felt uncomfortable they protested, and she could never refuse them, however much she felt it mattered. She had tried explaining that if they would only lace tight they wouldn’t feel so hungry and would be able to eat less, and that had interested them; but at the table habit took over, and one daughter ate until she made herself sick, whereupon the other demanded that her stays be loosened so that she could enjoy another helping of apple strudel. It worried their mother very much, as she had a magnificent waist and feared that if her daughters went out into the world stout they would never find decent husbands however rich and fashionably dressed they might be. She finally got them to the point where, with much persuasion, they could for appearance before guests be corseted tightly enough to look fairly slim; but it was a terrible business, the lacing-up requiring two of the strongest footmen per daughter, and the desired result could be achieved only at a dreadful cost in dead faints and snapped staylaces. Naturally the girls were extremely uncomfortable like this, and would only tolerate it for half an hour at a time, at most an hour; and the experience did more than ever to put them off corsets. Their mother despaired of ever getting them to look presentable; but despite knowing that they were in the wrong, she was still too soft with her babies to consider using any kind of coercion. If they wanted to be stout, then stout was what they should be.
Downstairs things went rather differently for Cinderella. At first she wore the same rough clothes as the rest of the servants, and if she yearned for the finery her stepsisters were given she was careful to say nothing about it. She got little enough to eat, mainly vegetables and lean cuts of meat, and she was often hungry. The other servants made sure she had a fair helping of milk and other things necessary to a growing girl, so she grew straight and strong; but she was usually hungry, and never had a chance to accumulate any fat. As she passed ten and eleven she began to change and to look like her mother; which was a great advantage to any girl, as her mother had been one of the Court’s finest beauties. Her hips remained slim and her stomach flat, but she began to develop signs of that magnificent bust with which her mother had driven grown men to distraction. Her hair grew out straight and soft, very dark, and her eyes were enchanting. The old cobbler watched her growing up, and smiled; and on her twelfth birthday he brought her a present, a bundle wrapped in cloth.

"What is it, Godfather?"

"Open it and see."

Cinderella unwrapped the package. Inside was a strange thing: a garment made of soft brown leather, almost conical in shape, heavily stiffened in one direction with bones ingeniously sewn into a smooth cotton lining. There were two straps, evidently designed to pass over the shoulders, and fastened with ribbon bows so that they could be adjusted. It was slit open up the back, and on either side of the gap holes had been punched into the leather: a sturdy lace zig-zagged back and forth among them, with a knot near the bottom. She turned it over carefully, admiring it, enjoying the way it was stiff in one direction but flexible in the other, its combination of elegant lines and obvious yet subtle strength…

"Godfather, it’s lovely! What’s it for?"

"This, child, is your very own corset. All ladies wear corsets to give themselves the figures they need. You’ve seen your stepmother’s, surely?"

"Yes…I never really knew what it was. But that’s different—it’s not made of leather."

"Corsets have to be very strong, Cinderella. Your stepmother can afford the finest work and the highest quality of material. I’m not so fortunate, and the strongest fabric I can get hold of is leather. Besides, that’s what I work for a living. If I’d tried to build it out of something else, you might not be able to trust it. With leather, I know how to make things that are strong enough to stand up to anything and tough enough to last for years. This corset will be standing by you for a long time to come."

Cinderella looked at the corset again. It was beautiful, certainly, but…"Godfather, why have you given me a corset?"

The old cobbler gave a sigh, and sat down on one of the rough kitchen chairs, looking at her grimly. "Cinderella, you’ve been robbed of the childhood of a lady, which you deserve, by your stepmother’s venom and your father’s foolishness. I can’t give that back to you, but I can give you part of your birthright. A young lady is always corseted from the moment she leaves childhood, night and day if possible, to make sure that her figure develops into the lines that fashion requires. Your two stepsisters are a very good example of how a young lady can grow up if her figure is left to run wild. You may not have fine gowns to wear, but if you put this corset on, lace it tight, and keep it tight all the time except when you have to wash, then your figure will develop in just the way that it should, and you’ll look like a lady for the rest of your life. ‘Manners makyth Man,’ some old philosopher said, but in my opinion Lacing makyth Lady, and as long as your stays are tight you will have the graceful figure and elegant poise of a lady of the court. One day you’ll be as beautiful as your mother, perhaps even more so, and if you’ve kept your figure in mind too, then nobody will compare to you."

Cinderella looked back at him in silence for some time, thinking about this. Finally she said "That’s very kind. Thank you."

It was a different voice: not the voice of an enthusiastic girl, but the voice of a young lady who had considered the issue and knew it was important. Already she was coming to understand. The old cobbler smiled, wiping his eyes a little, and said "Don’t thank me yet, child—you haven’t even tried it on. Come on, let’s get you laced up."

He pulled out the laces down the back of the corset and untied the ribbons that secured the straps; then, after checking that nobody was about, Cinderella took off her outer clothes and slipped into it. She clasped it to her chest and smiled avidly, feeling the rigidity of the bones and busk beneath the leather.

Putting on a corset in those days was a very complicated business. Even now, of course, it takes time to do it right, but the design of corsets has changed—for the better, in my opinion. If you ever see Mummy taking her stays off at the end of the day you’ll see that there is a series of hooks down the front of her busk, which she can unfasten once the laces have been slackened to release herself quickly; and in the same way when she dresses in the morning she passes the corset round herself and hooks up the busk again, and then Daddy or the maid tightens her laces. In Cinderella’s time, though, nobody had found a way of fastening a corset which could be opened and closed quickly but was strong enough not to burst open when the laces were pulled really tight; so the laces were the only fastening her new leather corset had. Before Cinderella could get the corset on the cobbler had to loosen the laces a terribly long way, and then of course once she was in it he had a very long way to pull them back in before they began to have any effect. For a long time she just stood there, proud to be a young lady, but wondering what all the fuss was about.

Then the corset came close to the size of her own figure, and things started to happen. She became aware of the sturdy fabric surrounding her on all sides, the tough bones that held it stiff pressing into her body. It was a strange sensation, like nothing she’d ever experienced before, slightly frightening, but the more exciting for it. She gasped and gently rubbed her hands down her sides.

The cobbler stopped pulling. "Starting to pinch, are they?" he asked. "You want me to give up?"

"What? No, no! Tighten me in more, tighten me in more!"

He laughed. "That’s what your mother was like—her maid told me about it. Well, now. Breathe in, and we’ll see what we can do for you here."

Cinderella did as she was told, taking a deep breath and holding it. The cobbler pulled hard; the new leather of the corset creaked quietly as it grew tighter. From inside there was now no doubt as to what was going on: the corset was determined to keep her under control, to impose its will on her. She had a sudden image of a prison with walls of leather and bars of whalebone, and laughed.

"Don’t do that!" the cobbler grunted. "You breathe, you’ll put me off."

"I’m sorry." Cinderella took a deep breath again—or as deep a breath as she could manage, for the corset was now beginning to cut into the space she normally used for breathing down at her waist. She held her breath as long as she could while the stays grew tighter, then let it out with a gasp and panted heavily. "How are you doing?" she asked breathlessly.

"I think that’s tight enough for now," the cobbler said, and began tying off the laces.

"No, no! I can stand it tighter than this! Please!"

"Now, don’t be silly. If you lace too tight first time you’ll only get uncomfortable and put yourself off. You take my advice." He finished tying the laces—"There. That won’t slip!"—and then turned Cinderella around to face him. Her budding bosom was heaving steadily above the low neckline of the leather corset; her face was flushed but happy.

"Oh, thank you, Godfather! It’s lovely!"

"It does suit you," the cobbler said, trying not to look proud. "Now, are you comfortable? Tell the truth, mind," he added, as he saw Cinderella’s mouth open.

She thought a bit, came up with an answer, looked him in the eye, revised it, and finally said "Not quite."

"Not quite. That’s good. You’re trying to develop your figure, Cinderella, and that means you have to keep demanding more of yourself. If you ever find you’re comfortable in your stays that means they’re too loose and you should lace them tighter."

She nodded. "I can remember that."

"Mind you, this pair won’t go much tighter—I didn’t realise quite how tight you’d be able to lace when I made them. You’ve obviously quite a talent for this. Just like your mother, again…" he trailed off, and gave a heavy sigh. "Well, I hope you’re pleased with it, anyway."

"Oh, I am, Godfather! I did tell you!"

"Good. Well, you take care of those stays now. Here’s a spare lace," and he passed her a neatly rolled length of leather cord, many feet long. "Remember to keep working at it—any time you no longer feel your stays are putting pressure on you, that means it’s time to lace them tighter. And today you must lace them tighter still after a couple of hours, because they stretch."

"I will. Oh, Godfather, they’re just so lovely!" She pirouetted into the middle of the kitchen, and for all the drabness of her clothes with her full skirt spinning out below her tiny waist she looked almost like a noble young beauty at a ball—like her mother, in fact. The cobbler shook his head at the cruelty of what had happened and rubbed at a tear which was threatening to come out.

"They suit you. Now come to me if you need another lace, and of course I’ll alter the corset for you if it ever gets too loose. Good luck, and be beautiful."

"I will be, Godfather. I’m going to be the tightest-laced maid in the house!"

And so Cinderella’s figure-training began. All over the kingdom girls of her age were doing the same thing: no fashionable beauty could hope to impress in Society unless she was laced within an inch of her life, and those lower down the social scale hoped to imitate the wealthy as much as possible. Some girls did it willingly, some did it only to spite their so-called friend Miss So-and-so and show that they could get their waists even smaller than hers, and some did it only because their families forced them into it. Some knew they would never take to tight-lacing, as did Cinderella’s stepsisters upstairs; some could do it but lacked inspiration; a few were determined and constantly pushed for smaller and smaller waists. At the parties and weekend visits which these girls attended there was much surreptitious questioning of maids and guesswork based on the outline of a bodice silhouetted against a window: they were trying to work out who had the smallest waist, and how far she had got. When Cinderella’s stepsisters were "at home" to a party of their contemporaries, red-faced and gasping in impossible new stays, the slimmer girls all giggled about them and agreed that they would never be competition. None of them guessed the secret below stairs: that there was a mere maid with a figure the equal of any of them, and with her heart set on doing better still.

There were problems, of course. In those days there was an even greater gap between the rich and the poor than there is now. The nobility were born superior to the rest of us, so most people thought, and to imitate them by making yourself beautiful was disrespectful—even sinful. Some of the staff in the kitchen objected to Cinderella, a mere maid, tight-lacing herself like a noblewoman, and few of them were willing to help her with her stays. Even those that were sympathetic didn’t have time to do it: Cinderella’s stepmother believed in saving every penny she could to impress other people with clothes and interior decoration and fancy dishes, and one of the best ways she had of saving money was to cut down on the staff and overwork those that were left. Nobody could spare the few minutes it needed every day to tighten Cinderella’s laces. Fortunately she found a pot-hook on the kitchen wall, and by knotting her laces and walking forward she found that she could get her stays very tight indeed. It was rather satisfying, in fact: she had a good way of judging how far she had laced down by how far across the kitchen she managed to get, and she was always trying to make her way on to the next flagstone, another few inches of lace pulled out. The other kitchen staff looked sideways at her, but they generally didn’t interfere as long as she did it early enough not to get in their way.

One day the knife-grinder was expected. He was, as they said in those days, a bit of a rogue—a good-looking fellow with a ready wit and a smooth tongue, the sort of man that women like to be around, though not the sort they find they enjoy marrying. He had his eye on Cinderella, who was very pretty and had a figure like the daughter of a duchess, and though she still had some old fashioned ideas about Virtue he was sure he could persuade her if he took enough care. Certainly he had her excited about him. That morning when she came downstairs with her stays half-laced she was determined to do better than ever before. She had a particular flagstone in mind, the furthest she had ever gone: she was going to walk further than that, this time.

She scampered downstairs to the kitchen, holding up her long skirts, and found a couple of the other maids already at work relighting the fire and cleaning up some of the pots. She would have to get on with it if she was going to get her stays tight before she had to go to work. She quickly hooked herself up and began straining forward against the pull of her laces.

As she struggled forward against the tension she saw out of the corner of her eye that Liese, one of the junior cooks, had come in. This was a woman who had come from her stepmother’s household and resented her; she felt Cinderella was putting on airs, pretending to be something she wasn’t, and besides that her corset stopped her working as hard as everyone else.

"There she goes," Liese jeered. "Trying to be like her betters. She can’t just can’t accept she’s only a kitchen maid!"

Cinderella did her best to pretend it wasn’t happening. "You be quiet," one of the other under cooks said. "She’s only making herself pretty for the knife-grinder."

"She’s always making herself pretty," Liese said with a disgusted snort as Cinderella struggled past another half-flagstone. "She ought to worry more about making herself useful."

"She does her job. She doesn’t waste any time talking, not like some people. She doesn’t let her stays get in the way of what she has to do."

Cinderella was trying very hard not to hear them. Breathing was becoming impossibly difficult: as young girls will, she had gone too far and was refusing to admit it. She hadn’t quite reached her target and she desperately wanted to do it: but if she wasn’t to faint she had to keep calm, and that meant not letting the others get to her. There was a brief, tense silence, and Cinderella was just getting her concentration back when Liese spoke to her. "Well? Are you going to do your best today or are you just going to stand around fluttering your eyelashes and fainting?"

Cinderella said nothing, but she braced herself and pulled harder against her laces.

"Cat got your tongue?"

Cinderella stared fixedly at the opposite wall, willing herself to hear nothing. Her waist was the only thing that mattered. She remembered her mother’s hard, conical figure before she died so tragically—that was how she wanted to look. Even if she couldn’t have the elaborate gowns, she could still have the waist…

"You think I’m not good enough to be favoured with your voice?" Liese said. "Or is it your stays are too tight for you to talk to me?"

Cinderella remained aloof, trying to remember the way her mother had treated impecunious relatives come to beg their way out of gambling debts. This was all beneath her notice. She must keep her mind on what she was doing, or she might faint…

"Well, if that’s what’s the matter," she couldn’t help hearing Liese say, "then I can deal with it."

Feet hurried across the kitchen flagstones. Someone yelped "Liese, no!" Then Cinderella heard a twang! twang! like someone loosing two shots from two bows, and at the same time the tension of the laces pulling her back towards that pothook on the other side of the kitchen was gone. She fell forward on her face and began to cry.

She heard feet walk up beside her and someone kicked her in the ribs, not gently; fortunately her corset was so stiff with leather and so rigidly boned she hardly felt it. "Get up, you creature," Liese said. "You’ve got work to do."

"For heaven’s sake," said another voice, "leave her alone!"

"She’s just being lazy. Look at her lounging about there on the floor grizzling—"

More feet hurried up beside her. "The only reason she’s on her face," the other voice said, "is because you cut her laces. Now go away and leave her alone. I mean it. Now."

Grumbling, Liese retreated. Cinderella felt someone take her round the shoulders and the voice said kindly "Now, dear, you come with me and I’ll lace your stays up properly. You’re bound to have an accident if you do it like that.

"But—" Cinderella sobbed, "I can’t do it any other way!"

"You can now. I’ll help you. Come on, let’s go down to the wine cellar. Nobody’ll disturb us there."

She helped Cinderella up, and with the girl clutching her unlaced corset to her small bosom and weeping bitterly they made their way through the stunned kitchen staff and over to the door to the cellars.
"Now," the other woman said when they reached the bottom of the steps, "you just sit there a moment till I light the lamps." Cinderella, still crying quietly, did as she was told, sitting down on the bottom step—cold even through her mass of skirts and petticoats—while the other woman hurried across the cellar lighting the oil-lamps from the candle she was carrying. Even with all the lamps lit the cellar was a dingy place, but at least it was less ominous when you could see it properly.

"There now," she said, when she had finished. "Now I don’t think we’d better try and lace your stays up till you’ve stopped crying. You calm down and everything’ll be all right."

"Who—" Cinderella gulped tearfully, "who are you?"

"I work in the kitchen, the same as you do."

That wasn’t an answer. "Yes, but why—why did you want to help me?"

A laugh. "Oh, very well, girl, if you must know. My name is Edel, and I was your mother’s maid when she was your age. I came with her from her home when she married and I knew her almost all her life. Then when, well, you know, I was sent below stairs like you, and warned to keep a low profile. That I’ve done: this is the first time I’ve admitted to you that I knew your mother. I don’t care if they dismiss me, I couldn’t let that go on."

"It was—" Cinderella swallowed again, "it was—very kind of you!" Then she sobbed deeply for some time.

Edel put an arm round her shoulders and comforted her. "There, now, just you let it out, and you’ll feel better…"

"Oh, I’m sorry," Cinderella sobbed, "it’s just that sometimes I feel I haven’t any friends at all!"

"Well, that’s what your noble lady stepmother wants, you know. No, don’t start crying, because she hasn’t succeeded—-plenty of the other staff like you, and anyway you’ve got me. But they’re not supposed to like you—anyone Her Ladyship finds is making friends with you is liable to get trouble made for her."

"But what about you?" Cinderella gasped

"I’ll take that risk. Now, do you think you’re ready to lace up again? You must get your breathing calm before you try it!"

"I’ll—I’ll try." Cinderella stood, clutching her corset again to stop it falling off, and walked out into the middle of the room. Edel came up behind her and looked at the laces, tutting. "Good thing she cut them near the hook, dear. Otherwise they might be too short. As it is it’s going to be a near thing—I don’t think you could have laced them again with so little slack. Now then, deep breath, stomach in, bust up, shoulders back, stand tall. There we go!" And for a little while there was silence.

Presently Cinderella, gasping now for quite a different reason, panted "Make sure you—lace me really tight!"

"I shall, dear, don’t you worry. You take after your mother. That’s what she always used to say to me. There! Now, how about that?"

Cinderella moved away as Edel tied off the laces and tried to get an idea of how she was doing. She was used to judging the size of her waist by how far she got across the kitchen flagstones; now she tried to work it out by feeling her rigidly boned bodice, appreciating the sharp inward nip of the stays on her waist. It was hard for her to see, because flesh displaced from below upward by the pressure on her waist had pushed her previously bust up and out until she could hardly see over it. "It feels good. I mean, I can hardly breathe, but that’s right…I wish I had a mirror."

"I’m sure you do, but we don’t. Here, just a minute." Edel bustled off and unlocked a cupboard at the far end of the room. She drew out a large silver tray. "Tch! The butler hasn’t polished this for a while. Well, it’ll have to do. Come on, see if you can see yourself in this."

"Thank you." The tray was rather tarnished and not very smooth, but Cinderella could just about make out her reflection in it. There were no details, but she could get a good idea of how her figure was going, and the answer was very well indeed. "I’m really quite small, aren’t I?"

"You are. You’re interested in training your figure, getting steadily smaller, am I right?"

"Oh, yes! I always say to myself, I can’t dress like a great lady, but there’s nothing to stop me lacing tight…"

"Indeed. Well, I might be able to help you there. Your mother was very demanding, she was always wanting to know the latest cunning trick to get her stays that little bit tighter. That was twenty years ago now, but I think I can say that there is nobody in the kingdom who knows more about forming a girl’s figure with tight corsets than I do. And my knowledge, Miss Cinderella, is entirely at your disposal." She curtsied with all the grace of a Court lady despite her drab kitchen gown.

Cinderella gasped and her heart raced as if about to jump out of the top of her tight leather bodice. "You don’t mean it? Not really?"

"I do mean it. I’ve had just about enough of her up there," and she jabbed a thumb at the ceiling making a sour face as she did so. "You’ve been very badly treated. This isn’t a hundredth of what you’ve been denied, but it’s something I can do."

"Well," Cinderella said with a breathless smile, "what shall I do now?"

"Treat that knife-grinder with some care—he’s not a trustworthy man, and if you’re pretty enough and hard enough to get he’ll think more of you. Don’t you give in to him, you deserve better than that…"

"No, I don’t mean this afternoon, I mean about corseting! You know all these things, so what do you suggest I do next?"

"Well, wear your corset in bed. Tight, twenty-four hours. It makes a lot of difference if you never have to unlace. That’s the first thing. Unlace only when you have to. And the other thing is, don’t ever let anyone from above stairs know."

Cinderella gave a shallow but satisfied sigh. "I see," she said. "Well, can I ask you one more favour before we go back up to work?"

"Certainly. What is it?"

Cinderella turned her back and put her hands on either side of her tightly constricted waist. "Lace me even tighter!"
And Cinderella was laced tighter; and tighter and tighter, as the morning went on, until the other kitchen staff were all sure she was going to faint. She had the last laugh, though, because when the handsome knife-grinder was presented with an unexpected living hourglass he was the one who fainted. That made all the staff smile, and got them to thinking more positively of Cinderella again. She appreciated it, as a compliment of a kind, but her mind was elsewhere. Now she had someone to help her lace, someone to give her advice on strategy, nothing need hold her back. She was determined to corset herself into a figure worthy of her late mother.

She had very mixed feelings about what was going on upstairs while she was busy with the servants. While she wished she could take back her place with her father, she knew that her stepmother would never allow it, and to go among the family was just frustrating. She knew the Grafin had a grudge against her, so she kept out of the way as much as she could.

Unfortunately she wasn’t really the sort of person who could avoid notice. As she progressed through her teens, so her face got prettier and prettier and her corset got tighter and tighter. She was undoubtedly the belle of below-stairs, and though she didn’t want to be in competition with her stepsisters, that wasn’t the way everyone saw it:

"Phew," said Karin the lady’s-maid as she sat down at the kitchen table with a mug of beer pinched from the butler’s barrel, "it’s hard work tightening those girls’ stays! You get one of them laced in, then the other one faints or her laces go pop, and by the time you’ve brought her round or relaced her stays the other one’s fainted or busted her laces too. Took me a quarter of an hour to get them both laced up and stable."

"It’s ironic, isn’t it?" Liese asked from the far end of the table. "Some as ought to wear corsets don’t get on with them, and some as oughtn’t to take it much too far."

"Your stays were tight enough last time the knife-grinder came, weren’t they?"

"Not like hers," Liese said, and Cinderella groaned inwardly; outwardly she remained impassive. Ignoring bullying wasn’t exactly a cure for it, but at least it was less satisfying to the bully than arguing back. "Takes that fool Edel half an hour a day to lace her up, and her stays are so tight she can’t do her work properly—"

Cinderella leapt to her feet, knocking over the bench she was sitting on at the big table and spilling two kitchen-maids and an under-footman onto the floor on their backs. "That’s not true!"

"Yes it is! If you weren’t—"

"Quiet, you two!" It was the butler, a person of great majesty in the servants’ hall, coming solemnly down the stairs. "If there’s anything to be resolved I’ll deal with it. Only you’ll talk to me and not shout at each other. You understand? Good. Liese?"

Liese wasn’t a lawyer: she wasn’t paid by the hour and had no reason to be prolix in stating her case. "Her stays are too tight," she said bluntly, and sat down again.

"Cinderella?"

"They are not too tight! I do my fair share of work, maybe more than that, nobody makes allowances for me! Just because I want to look pretty—not like some people I could mention—"

"Here, here, here, you! It’s not your place to criticise our mistresses, you’re only a kitchen-maid!"

Cinderella began "I’m not o—" and then remembered she was only a kitchen-maid. She sat down, gracefully, keeping her back straight because the corset obliged her to do that.

"That’s just it," Liese said from across the room. "Thinks she’s better than us, because of an accident of birth." She spat the last words out as if they tasted nasty. "The mistress wouldn’t like it if she knew one of the maids was putting on such airs. I think we ought to tell her."

"Well," said the butler, with an approving glance at Cinderella’s tight and slender leather bodice, "I’m satisfied with her work, and as long as she does that properly I don’t think we need tell anyone."

"I don’t agree—"

"Do you intend to cross me?" Liese relapsed into sulky silence. "Well then."

Shortly after that the mistress’s own bell rang: all the upstairs maids on duty, getting her dressed was a major task. Karin walked past Cinderella on her way out, took her hand, and gave it a quick squeeze. "Never mind what they say," she whispered. "I think you look wonderful. Much better than those two fat cows up there." And with her head up and her shoulders back, trying to look as ladylike as possible, she swept out of the room.

Liese also stopped on her way past; for rather longer. "I still don’t think you’ve got any business lacing so tight," she said.

"I still don’t think it’s any business of yours," Cinderella said, "and you heard what the butler told you."

"Who’s in charge here? Him or the mistress?" This was a good point and Cinderella didn’t know how to refute it. "I shall tell her what you’ve been up to. She’ll be horrified. She’ll take away your stays."

Cinderella whirled round. "You wouldn’t!"

"I would. Of course, I might be open to persuasion…" she let her gaze slip down from Cinderella’s face to her right wrist.

"What?"

"That’s pretty. What is it?"

Cinderella slipped the bracelet off. "It’s the one thing I have from my father. Real silver. You don’t often see a bracelet as wide as this one—it’s nearly two inches across—gives plenty of room for decoration. No jewels, of course, but the engraving and chasing are beautiful. What about it?"

"Give it to me," Liese said, reaching for it, "and I won’t tell the mistress about your tight-lacing."

Cinderella snatched the bracelet back and clutched it to her bosom. "You couldn’t get it over your hand!" she shouted.

"I could. See? It’s got a slit down the back, it’s not solid. I could wear it."

"You shan’t!"

"Very well then," said Liese, standing upright, "then I have no alternative. I shall have to talk to the mistress about you, and she’ll have your stays taken off you."

"You can’t!"

"I can. Now, please don’t keep me any longer. I’m already late and you know what a temper the mistress has got." And with a smug smile on her face she strode off and hurried up the stairs.



THE CHAPTER KNOWN AS THE SIXTH

Cinderella was washing crockery—not the beautiful dishes that the master and mistress used, a junior kitchen-maid would never have been trusted with that, but the plain china from which the more important servants ate—when she heard running footsteps on the kitchen stairs. She looked round: it was Karin, the little ladies’-maid. "You’ve to stop doing that, and come upstairs at once," she said breathlessly. "She wants to talk to you."

There was no need to ask who She was. Cinderella knew there was no point in protesting or trying to delay: she carefully dried her hands in case soapsuds could be a mark against her and followed Karin up the stairs again.

She hadn’t been in this part of the house for years, but she still knew it like the back of her hand: after all, she had grown up here. She knew at once that Karin was taking her to the Private Salon, a good place for small, not too formal gatherings. Her heart was pounding as if to burst her stays and she had to work hard to keep calm: she knew that her stepsisters got away with fainting here, there and everywhere, but if she were to do it in the corridor she would never be forgiven.

Karin reached the door of the salon, gave Cinderella a frightened look, then knocked. The first time she did it too gently to make a noise, and had to try again. A stern voice within said, "Who is that?"

"Karin, ma’am. I’ve brought her."

"Show her in, then go," the voice commanded. Karin opened the door and gestured: you’re to go in now. Cinderella took the deepest breath her very tightly laced bodice permitted, drew herself up tall, and strode in. The moment she was over the threshold the door slammed behind her and she heard Karin leaving at a dead run.

A heavy chair had been set up in the salon with its back to the windows, facing the door, like the throne of a queen—or the seat of a judge. One stepsister stood on either side of it. Both were wearing ludicrously elaborate gowns bedecked with ribbons and bows and lace and every ornament known to dressmakers; but their waists were unpleasantly thick, the bodices were so tight the seams looked ready to rip, and in the low necklines large and soggy breasts bulged up heaving with the effort to gather enough air. On her own terms, Cinderella had already won the argument, but then she wasn’t being allowed to argue on her own terms.

The Grafin their mother, in between them, was far more impressive. Her dress was also ornate, but the decoration was applied much more carefully: there was no need to smother everything in detail to detract from the unfortunate whole. Her face was handsome, if a touch severe, and caked in make-up heavy enough to eliminate any lines that might have built up on it. Her bodice was also very tight, but not so painfully strained as those of her daughters, and though her waist was rigidly slim she seemed as much at home as anyone could be in such tight stays. She was definitely in charge of her clothes; and she had the air of being in charge of everything else.

"One of the staff tells me you’ve been taking up tight-lacing," she said without preliminaries. "Do you dare deny it?"

"No, ma’am," Cinderella said.

"Curtsy when you answer me!"

"Yes, ma’am," Cinderella said, curtsying.

"Hmph. Why are you wearing a corset?"

"Because it’s pretty, ma’am, and I like the way it feels," Cinderella said, remembering to curtsy this time.

"It’s not your place to lace yourself up, girl. Take off your stays, it’s not right."

Silence and inaction.

"Well? What are you waiting for?"

"Please, ma’am, I’d rather not take my stays off."

"Don’t be impertinent, and do what I tell you!"

"With respect, ma’am—why can’t I wear stays?"

"Because I say you can’t!"

"My stays may be tight, ma’am," Cinderella said doggedly, "but they don’t stop me doing my day of work. That’s a wicked lie, ma’am, put about by certain of the servants who don’t like me."

"For the last time," the Grafin said dangerously, "unlace yourself!"

"No, ma’am," Cinderella said, curtseying but surprised at her own audacity, "I shan’t."

The two daughters exchanged a look, eyes wide, but neither said anything. "Very well, then," the Grafin said, tight-lipped. She stood up with the same rigid grace that Cinderella had, the care of posture and movement that comes naturally to any woman who corsets because there is no other way to move. She walked over to the tasselled bell-pull and tugged it angrily, then stood staring at Cinderella as if trying to burn her up with her gaze. Cinderella kept her eyes downcast, as per etiquette when dealing with criticism from a person of importance, but she kept her hands by her sides and away from her laces. She would have cut off her own hand as soon as cut open her stays.

There was a knock on the door. "You rang, ma’am?" said a male voice.

"Yes, come in and be quick about it." The door opened and a handsome footman who Cinderella knew slightly came in. They exchanged a quick glance, his look saying Whatever does she want me to do? and hers replying I don’t know but she’s being vindictive; then he bowed low and stood again to attention.

"What can I do for you, ma’am?"

"Hold her still, facing you," the Grafin ordered. Cinderella and the footman looked at each other again: this time her look said You can’t do this to me! and his I’m sorry, but I have to do what she says. He moved over and held her to him as if dancing: not an experience either of them would have minded, but Cinderella was too worried about what was coming next to appreciate it.

She heard the Grafin moving about: feet and swishing skirts crossing the salon, a door opening, steps into the room beyond it, a brief rummaging in a box with a faint clink of metal, then brisk steps and rustling fabric returning at the nearest a lady could come to running while maintaining her dignity. Cinderella shivered slightly and tried not to be frightened. The Grafin came up behind her, and Cinderella felt a hand placed flat in the back of her neck, just at the top of her tight leather bodice; then suddenly with a series of sharp popping sounds a sharp edge was swept right down through the laces, cutting them from top to bottom.

Gudrun or Irma wouldn’t have minded: they were always fainting and having to have their laces cut. Though she laced much tighter Cinderella hardly ever fainted, and when she did it was a point of pride to come round without unlacing. She had never felt anything like it before. When the immense pressure of the corset was released all at once, a wave of pain shot through her much-compressed ribcage from top to bottom, and she screamed. The footman, taken aback by her reaction, let go of her: she staggered slightly and fell down.

"Get up!" the Grafin snapped.

"I don’t know if I can, ma’am!" Cinderella said in a rather shaky voice.

"It won’t do at all! Making such a scene in public—in front of my own girls—and all because I unlaced that hideous corset which you shouldn’t be—"

The door opened again. "What was that cry I heard?" said a voice Cinderella knew well. She also knew better than to call him "Papa": that would get her into worse trouble.

"This little chit here," said her stepmother. "I caught her wearing stays, and when she refused to take them off I cut them open and she squealed like a pig."

Forgetting about the downcast gaze of the obedient servant, Cinderella looked soulfully up at him with melting eyes. He looked back at her for a moment and winced, then faced his wife again. "This is really going too far!" he said. "Her mother was a great corseter, it’s bound to be in the blood. Let her have her stays."

"I told her, it’s not right for a mere servant to lace herself up like that!" the Grafin protested.

"Most of the other women servants wear corsets, after all."

His wife looked at the shivering Cinderella with disgust. "Yes, but they don’t tight-lace."

"My dearest, there is no rule in this land which says no-one below a certain income may tight-lace." He sighed and rubbed his hands together as if looking forward to sorting it all out. "Now, you, whatever your name is—"

"Me, sir?" the footman asked.

"Yes, you. Go and find that little lady’s maid, what’s her name, Karin. Oh, you’d better take Cinderella with you. Help her up. That’s right." Cinderella was got to her feet, not without difficulty, and she looked balefully at her stepmother and accusingly at her father. He refused to meet her gaze. She slipped and nearly fell again as the footman was guiding her away past him, possibly by accident. Involuntarily he reached out and caught her by the arm. The Grafin hissed like a snake. Cinderella looked up at her father, but he again avoided looking her in the eye. He glanced at the silver bracelet, though, and ran his fingers over it, then sighed and said "And when you find Karin, get her to fetch a new lace for Cinderella’s stays."

"Yes, sir," the footman said, and they went out.

When they got out Cinderella said tearfully, "You’d never know I’m his own daughter from the way he treats me!"

"Come on, now, don’t start crying. You’re all right now. He does a good job if you think what herself is like—she’d have had you thrown on the compost heap if she’d had her way. Anyway, at least you’ll get a new staylace out of it. A good one too."

That piqued Cinderella’s interest and stopped her thinking about crying: anything to do with corsetry was always a good way of getting her attention. "What do you mean?"

The footman laughed. "Karin’s told me about it. You saw those two awful girls, didn’t you? They have to have the strongest staylaces in the kingdom to keep them in shape. Put one of those in your bodice, I think you’ll get it down an extra inch. Come on, let’s find Karin."
Cinderella hurried up the stairs, clutching her bucket and mop in one hand, holding up her long skirts with the other, panting inside the restriction of the tight leather bodice. When she was little she had merely thought the marble floors beneath the rugs in her father’s house beautiful, like so much else there; now as a maid she appreciated them as things that had to be kept clean. It was a dreary and a hard job, especially when you were tightly laced and had to bend over to turn back the rugs—but she wasn’t going to let her corset stop her doing anything she wanted to. She knew that many of the other kitchen staff resented her "aping the gentry" by tight-lacing and wanted to show that it stopped her working hard; to get the same treatment as the others, she had to work harder, and at the worst jobs too. Her stepmother saw to that.

She went into the gold drawing-room and sighed: someone had dropped a chocolate éclair on the carpet and trodden it in. Well, it wasn’t her chocolate, and she wasn’t being made responsible for carpets today: someone else could deal with it. Bracing herself, but taking things careful to avoid breaking the laces of her stays, she began pushing furniture aside.

The door to the next room was half open, but with the noise of moving furniture and mopping she didn’t realise that there was anyone in there until she fell to working in front of it. It was the rest of her family—well, the family that wasn’t hers any more, because three-quarters of it didn’t want anything to do with her. Her father was sitting at the head of the dining-room table holding a large sheet of thick creamy paper and studying it with a deep frown. Her stepmother in one of her usual elaborate and tightly-laced gowns was standing behind him, gazing at the paper with the besotted expression most women reserve for very small babies. Her stepsisters sat on either side of the table, both obviously fidgety with tension, but not daring to interfere.

"Imagine!" cooed the Grafin Eisenmieder. "Your first ball, darlings! You shall have the finest gowns and the tightest stays in the kingdom!"

"Mama, must we wear corsets?" Gudrun asked uncomfortably. She was wearing one of her usual shapeless dresses, as was her sister, and it was obviously that underneath it there was nothing more than a chemise and a lot of fat.

"Darling, sweetie, you must, I’m afraid. If you really want the Prince to fall in love with you, then you must be beautiful, and there is nothing a lady can do to make herself beautiful that is more effective than a really tight corset."

"It’s very gratifying to have this, I’m sure," Cinderella’s father said. "I haven’t been much in favour at court these last few years, I thought they’d forgotten me—but here it is, an invitation to me ‘and his wife and children.’"

Cinderella gasped at the door and her heart pounded at the busk of her tight leather bodice. Her father and his wife and children. He had only one surviving child…

"How hospitable of the King!" the Grafin said, putting her arms round her husband’s shoulders and squatting down with a mighty rustling of skirts and creaking of stays to kiss the back of his head. "New gowns for me and for the girls, and we’ll all four go together."

A faint spasm of doubt crossed Cinderella’s father’s face. She knew what he was thinking: her heart came into her mouth, her corset cut off all her remaining ability to breathe. "All ‘four’?" he said. "Don’t you think…"

"Who else did you think might go?" the Grafin said severely.

Cinderella’s father sighed. "No-one, I suppose."

Cinderella fainted. As she was leaning forward to listen round the door, she awoke to find that she had fallen into the dining room, and had tipped over her bucket while she was about it so that she was now lying in a puddle of soapy water. Nobody had offered her smelling salts or loosened her laces. As her vision came back into focus she realised that her stepmother was looming over her, staring down, a fierce look on her shadowed face. "Really!" she said.

Irma’s voice added "Mama, look at that! What can you do with a housemaid who faints?"

"Stop it out of her wages."

Gudrun interrupted, "But you don’t pay her anything, Mama!"

"Quiet, child!" The Grafin swished away and tugged on the bell. A servant was there in a moment, a footman: he must have been waiting outside. Cinderella heard her stepmother tell him to "take that out of here quickly!"

The footman came over and lifted her up: she still felt too weak to stand. "Courage," he whispered in her ear. As he helped her through the room she looked at her father and whimpered "Pappa?" but he looked the other way. A tear started down her cheek; and in her last glance before she was taken from the room she was sure she saw one on his cheek as well. With that she had to be content.



THE CHAPTER KNOWN AS THE EIGHTH

All the afternoon and evening the house had been in a state of festive chaos: even Cinderella’s father had a barber and two valets to help him dress, and the Grafin and her two daughters had enough maids running after them to fill half a cathedral. In between shifts the maids rested in the kitchen and chatted: about the beauty of the gems the Grafin was wearing and the jewels she had lent to her daughters, about the splendour of their gowns, and about all the trouble Gudrun and Irma were giving with their stays. There were endless tricks and dodges an experienced tight-lacer got to know, and now all of them were in use, trying to keep those daughters down somewhere below twenty-four inches without either of them fainting or bursting her laces. It was all very contemptible, Cinderella thought, trying to make herself angry to stop herself from crying again. She was below twenty inches by now even without her stays; she could lace to sixteen inches fairly easily and stayed that way most of the time. With a good corset—not that the cobbler hadn’t done his best over the years with his leather bodices, but they weren’t the same thing—with a good corset, she was sure she could reach fifteen inches. The Grafin was proud of her eighteen-inch waist; Cinderella could beat her easily. The trouble was that in her dust-stained skirt and rough leather bodice, hardly anybody cared.

Knowing her background, the other staff were careful to keep her from having to do any work towards the Ball preparations; they set her to go through the wine cellar looking at the dates on the bottles, finding out which were on their way to their best, which had reached it, and which were on the way downhill and had to be drunk when there was nobody visiting. It wasn’t work at which she was particularly good, and it was boring, but at least down there she didn’t notice much of what was going on upstairs. Though she tried to squash it, a tiny hope that wouldn’t be silenced just above her heart kept insisting that her father would appear and demand she come with him, if only to show that not all his daughters were too fat for a ballgown. She knew it was irrational, but she couldn’t help it. Finally, though, a time came when she could hear nothing going on in the kitchen at all. She scampered back up the stone steps out of the cellar: there was nobody about, the fire had been banked, the dishes washed, everyone had gone. The servants were having a rest, because the family had gone out for the evening and wouldn’t be back for hours: gone to the Ball. Without her.

Cinderella sat down on a stool, put her face in her hands, and began to cry.

A squeaky little voice said, "Who’s that crying?"

"It’s me, Cinderella."

"It’s I, dear," said the little voice.

Cinderella looked round, but could see nobody. "Where are you?"

"Here, on the table!"

Cinderella looked again. Standing on the table was a very tiny person, about four inches high, with wings. "Who are you?"

"I, my dear child, am your Fairy Godmother!"

"My godmother was the old cobbler’s wife."

"Just so. I was married to him, for a time, so that I could be on the spot at the right time to protect you when you were little. I was called away after that, but now I’m back and I am ready to help you if you’re in trouble."

There was a lot she could have done to help, but Cinderella didn’t think of that. She asked curiously "Were you really married to him?"

"Well, I wasn’t as small as this, obviously. Being a fairy has its disadvantages. I had to be continually casting spells to keep myself up to human size. It was a great relief to be able to stop that, I can tell you! And I’ve been your mother’s old maid Edel, who’s been looking after you and keeping your stays tight."

This was such a strange idea that Cinderella quite stopped crying. "If you were with my mother being Edel, how could you be with the cobbler being his wife too? Surely you would have had to be in two places at once!"

"Only a fairy could understand," the fairly said smugly. "Still, that’s not the point. Why were you crying?"

Cinderella explained. It took some time, and the fairy nodded wisely while she was talking. At the end she said "That’s a very sad story, but I think I can help you. You’ll need a coach and horses, a footman, and of course a dress."

Cinderella laughed bitterly. "The coach has gone to the Palace with my stepfamily, the footman went with them, and this is the only dress I have."

"Then we shall have to improvise. Fortunately I’m good at this sort of thing. Is that a cat over there?"

"Yes, but I don’t think it’s safe for you to go near him."

"I don’t need to go near him." She waved her wand, and suddenly there was a tall and remarkably handsome footman in beautiful livery standing where the cat had been. He looked at Cinderella meaningfully, smiled, and bowed low. Cinderella’s heart began to thump inside her tight leather bodice.

"That’s very impressive," she said, trying to sound calm.

"That, my dear, is only a start. We need horses. Are there any mice?"

"Yes, that’s why we’ve got the cat. He dropped one over there. I don’t think it’s quite dead."

The fairy godmother nodded and waved her wand. A beautiful white stallion with no legs appeared in the kitchen. The fairy clicked her tongue in disgust and the horse turned back into a mouse. "You might have warned me about that," she said reproachfully.

"I’m sorry," Cinderella said. "He always bites the legs off mice. I don’t think that’s any good to pull a coach."

"Well, anything with four legs would do. Or six legs. Any number of legs, really, as long as there are at least four. Are there woodlice in this kitchen?"

"Yes, lots. Do you want me to catch you some?"

"That’s a good girl." Cinderella went over to the fireplace and started turning over logs. When she had found one that was nicely infested with nasty creatures she brought it back to the table and put it down in front of the fairy, who looked at it in distaste and backed off. "Yes, yes, my dear, but they aren’t pleasant things. Find a pumpkin and put that and the log outside the back door."

Cinderella did as she was told, leaving the strange assortment of objects outside in the crisp night air, and when she turned round found that the fairy had flown up behind her and was waiting expectantly. "Now," she said, "watch!"

She waved her wand, and the pumpkin turned into a beautiful golden coach, the harness trailing empty across the ground. The cat-footman went and climbed up into the driver’s box. She waved her wand again, and the woodlice exploded off the dirty log and swelled into eight beautiful glossy grey horses, each conveniently appearing inside its own harness. They stood there, stamping and champing, and waiting for someone to tell them it was time to go.

"There you are," the fairy said proudly, "there’s your transport."

"But I can’t go like this!"

"Nor you can. I was coming to that. May I congratulate you, by the way, on your well-trained figure? I don’t know if you’ve seen your two stepsisters, but they’re as fat as pigs now. No corset ever made is going to make them look like anything else. You, on the other hand, have eaten frugally and laced tight, and you are about to reap the reward. Unlace your bodice."

"Why?"

"Child, I can do a certain amount of magic, but a corset needs to be strong. If I try to hold you together purely with magic you’ll meet with a dreadful fate. I can change one thing into another, but though my ex-husband has done some fine work there considering he’s not a staymaker ,I don’t think it’s sufficient for a ballgown. Take it off and then put your bracelet on the ground."

Cinderella obeyed, unlacing her bodice and then slipping it off. "Are you going to make me another corset? I’d like you to hurry if you are, because I can’t stand without one for long."

"I shall be quick. Put your bracelet down. That’s right. Tom!" The footman slung himself over the side of the coach with insolent ease and came over to them. "Just stand there a minute," the fairy told him, "that’s right. Now then!"

She waved her wand and pointed it at the bracelet. To Cinderella’s utter astonishment it began to grow, turning and changing shape as it did so, but growing far more at top and bottom than in the middle. In a moment it was a foot high, the delicate chasing which decorated it now enlarged into whorls and chains as large as Cinderella’s hand. It was beautiful, brightly polished as always, a tiny work of art now writ large, almost as big as a cavalryman’s breastplate, but shaped more like a…

…corset?

The fairy saw Cinderella staring doubtfully and laughed. "Yes, these are your stays for tonight," she said. "This isn’t ordinary silver—I’ve enchanted it to make it flexible so we can lace it up as usual. And of course I had to put lacing holes down the back. Do you have a staylace on you?"

Cinderella dug in a pocket in her skirts. "Yes," she said. "I always keep one handy. You never know if your lace is going to break when your stays are as tight as mine."

"Sensible girl. Just put it down there, that’s right. Now then, go and hang onto the back of the carriage for a bit of support, and let Tom help you. Tom, loosen her stays and take them off." The cat-footman swaggered up behind Cinderella where she stood stretching up to keep herself from falling while she was unlaced, and she felt his hands moving over her body before passing the silver corset around her. Even without lacing it was a snug fit, but a beautiful one: it was almost as if the corset had been cast around her body. As the footman got to work passing the laces through the innumerable holes down the back of the silver stays, excitement shivered through her. She had been underrated all her life: now she would have a chance, at least a chance, to impress people as she deserved. Even if she had nothing else, this corset and her tiny waist would get attention! At the very least, she could make her father ashamed of himself…she dismissed that thought as unworthy, shaking her head. Now she was nearly ready…yes, she felt the familiar sensation of a corset being tightened around her body. She let herself flow into it, determined to enjoy it however tight she was laced. She had the most fabulous corset in the kingdom, probably the finest corset anyone had ever worn in history, and she swore to be worthy of it.

"Shall I stop now, miss?" the footman said presently.

His voice was a low purr, rich and thrilling, and it sent a spark of pleasure jolting through her. He admired her, and the real men at the ball would admire her too. "No, no!" she panted. "Lace me tighter!"

"How much tighter, miss?" the footman asked, as he applied himself to the laces again.

"Much tighter!"

The footman worked away in silence for a time, then asked again "Is that tight enough now, miss?"

"No!" gasped Cinderella. "Tighter!"

And he pulled again. Cinderella was feeling dizzy, she was hardly aware of any part of her body below her fiercely constricted waist, she wasn’t sure if she could stand unaided, her breathing was becoming as laboured as a fish in the bottom of a boat, but she was determined not to give up. This was her night, this was the vindication of her years of hard work insisting that her stays were tight whatever she was doing. Tonight, she told herself, nothing could make her faint. "Tighter!" she whispered. "Tighter!"

And the footman pulled again, until the voice of the fairy, far-off through the roaring in her ears, intervened. "Really, Cinderella, you must stop now," she said. "You’ll only make yourself faint."

"I—am—not—going—to—faint!" Cinderella forced out, using one tiny breath for each word.

"You are, you know. Your stays are far too tight."

"Only—too—tight—is—tight—enough!"

"Don’t be silly. Tom, stop lacing her up."

Cinderella felt the laces stop grinding out of the small of her back and again panted "Tighter!"

"No, darling, not tighter," the fairy’s voice said patronisingly. "You’ve done amazingly well so far, but I really must call a halt. You won’t get much out of the ball if you faint before you get there."

"I—won’t—faint!"

"Yes you will. I can’t imagine why you haven’t already. Anyway, surely even you can see that you can’t charm your way through the ballroom when you’re laced so tight you can hardly speak!" Cinderella considered this, and realised that the fairy had a point. She nodded, stiffly, twice. The fairly said "Tom, loosen her stays by one quarter inch and no more. Thank you."

When the laces had been slackened just a little and Cinderella could talk more or less normally, she said, "But surely fainting at the right time is very romantic!"

"Yes, but fainting at the wrong time is an embarrassing nuisance. If you faint in the first five minutes and have to be carried out and everyone will laugh at you. It does happen—there’s always some fool girl at the ball who thinks she can lace tighter than she’s really able to. Don’t you be that fool this time, Cinderella, please."

"All right." Cinderella rubbed her hands lovingly over the surface of the beautiful silver corset, so smooth it seemed almost soft to the touch, yet worked all over with fine engravings. "It’s a wonderful corset," she said with feeling, "but don’t I need a ballgown as well?"

"You do indeed, and I am so forgetful. Stand still a moment, please." Cinderella did as she was told. The fairy closed one eye like a man sighting a long rifle, raised her wand into the air quivering with anticipated power, then brought it down. Cinderella’s knees sagged as her weight suddenly doubled. "There!" the fairy said with great satisfaction. "One of my better efforts, I think."

Cinderella looked down at herself in delight. Her ragged old kitchen dress had turned into a fabulous ballgown, indigo satin worked all over with a pattern of moons and stars and comets that echoed the stellar brilliance of her polished corset. The magnificent fabric of the dress was spread out in two great swags over hoops nearly nine feet wide; at the front, the two sides of the skirt were drawn back to show a widening angle of contrasting gold fabric studded with tiny gems—the sun rising in the night. "I wish I had a mirror!" she said, with a heavy sigh.

"Well, we’ll have to improvise. Come over here." The fairy fluttered round the corner of the house and Cinderella followed her to one of the long windows of the downstairs salon. The curtains were drawn behind it, and Cinderella could see her reflection dimly in the glass. It was dark out there, but even in the dark she could tell how the brightness of the silver corset would shine like the sun in the ballroom, the gold panel of her underskirt like the reflection of sunlight in the eastern sea, the wide wings of her skirt the night which the sun thrust aside. And at the peak of it all, representing the disc of the sun itself, was her own delicate face—now covered in the thick white make-up that society occasions required and nearly as bright as her stays. The fairy had not given her one of the tall powdered wigs which most society ladies wore, leaving her own back hair to tumble about her almost bare shoulders in attractive disarray. At first Cinderella was disappointed, but then she realised it was a cunning point: it brought the eye back to her face again. No trouble had been spared to make her the centre of attention. She could not conceive of a more beautiful gown. Those that had been made for her stepmother and stepsisters—even allowing for the deficiencies of their figures—could not compare.

"Well?" the fairy asked. "Are you satisfied?"

"Oh, Godmother, it’s beautiful! I wish you were bigger so I could give you a hug! I haven’t been so happy since—well, since Godfather gave me my first corset!"

The fairy smiled. "Which shows you know where you are with beauty, not like those two awful creatures you have to look after. Well, come on now, let’s get you into the coach."

The cat-footman helped Cinderella into the coach a little more attentively than was really decent in polite society, but Cinderella was too overcome to notice. As he clambered to his box and started the horses, the fairy fluttered up again and knocked on the window. Cinderella pulled it down and the fairy came in and sat down on the sill.

"Phew! It does tire me out flying after a coach these days…I should have said this before, dear, but it’s not quite too late. Do be very careful about the time. Apart from the corset—I had to use a different approach for that because it has to be strong—all the enchantments will wear off at midnight. Tom up there will become a cat again, the coach and horses will turn into the rubbish I made them from, and you’ll lose your gown and get your rags back. Now, don’t look like that. Being there till midnight is better than not being there at all. Just don’t get too involved, keep an eye on the time. Promise me that."

"I promise," Cinderella said like the dutiful girl she was. The fairy dipped her a pretty curtsy, bent to kiss her hand, straightened up again in a hurry—"Ooh! Oh dear! My stays are so tight I shouldn’t have tried that one!" and with a cheerful wave flew out of the window again and vanished. Cinderella never saw her again.

As the coach clattered down the road towards the Palace, Cinderella thought about what she had been told. It was magic, it was wonderful, but she felt she had been robbed. All the other girls would dance till dawn, and she would have to leave when the ball was hardly getting started. Well, she had to be grateful for the chance she had, even if it was short. The moment she got into the ballroom, she said, she’d find a clock and keep half an eye on it all evening.

The Prince was miserable. He shouldn’t have been: he was young, handsome, heir to a splendid castle and a happy kingdom, and as the most eligible bachelor in seven nations at this his first ball he was surrounded by the cream of society's beauties all of them trying to catch his eye. Few men ever get such flattering attention.

That wasn’t enough for him. For one thing, his father was trying to manipulate him. The King had some ambitious plans which needed extra finance, and there was a certain nobleman married for the second time to a wealthy lady with two single daughters: either one of those would bring a nice fat dowry with her and the King could do as he pleased. That the daughters were bad-tempered and dull conversationalists, rather plain and as fat as their dowries didn’t worry him. It needn’t: he wasn’t the one who was going to have to walk down the palace chapel’s aisle with one of them. Every time he looked at them they made him think about taking a mistress—and he wasn’t even married yet.

In any case, he had his heart set on something quite different. Years ago, the sister’s stepfather had been married to another lady, perhaps the most beautiful in the court. She had had a daughter with whom the Prince had played when he was small; but then her mother had died, and the girl had vanished. What had happened to her? He’d have liked to know: if she was anything like her mother, by now she ought to be something quite special. The lady in question had had not only extraordinary beauty and the taste to use her vast wealth to adorn herself elegantly; she had also had the finest figure in the kingdom, or any other kingdom for that matter. The Prince was fascinated by the stays court ladies used to shape themselves into fashion: every aspect of it thrilled him, from start to finish. There was the delicious ritual of lacing up in the morning, with a maid or perhaps a lucky husband or lover recruited to pull in the lady’s laces. There were the outer symptoms of tight-lacing, the bosom pushed up and heaving, the breathlessness after exertion, the little gasps and urgent fanning and laughing requests for "just a moment to rest, please, I feel somewhat faint!"; the Prince had never realised that some of the Palace ladies knew about his interests and were playing up to get his attention. And most of all, there was the direct result: the bodices and laces pulled so tight they seemed about to snap, perfectly rigid and rigidly perfect, their serried lines of bones commanding the figure within to follow their lead down into the tiny waist that was for him the central theme of womanhood.

He had been looking forward to the ball, in a way: he knew that a ball was the highest of high occasions and that every lady with any pretence to fashion and beauty would be in her tightest of tight corsets, hauled in until she was on the verge of fainting. Indeed, they had made a good showing; but that noblewoman dead eight years back had spoiled him, and after dancing with every young woman he could find and quite a few of their mothers, he could find no-one who stood comparison with her. Could he be remembering her figure wrong? No, he was sure not. He had seen her husband joyfully clasp his fingers around his wife’s waist; there was nobody here who was close to that. Gloomily he reflected that perhaps tight-lacing was a dying art. It had been going on for hundreds of years, it had to end some time; he just wished he hadn’t had to live to see it.

Then—something caught his eye. At first it was a light, a flash of silver in the distance, that made him look up: like a firework, or a looking-glass suddenly reflecting sunlight into his eyes. He squinted and looked across the room. Someone had just come in; someone…bright? He peered across the crowded ballroom, trying to make it out. Suddenly he gasped and his heart jumped into his throat. Muttering "Pardon me…excuse me…do forgive me…sorry!" he slipped quickly through the crowd to meet her.

For it was a she; and quite a she at that. She had dark curly hair, not strained back and up into a high wig like most of the ladies, but hanging over her shoulders in natural disarray. It gave her an air of girlish innocence belied by the almost indecently low neckline of her gown, and the fullness of the bosom that billowed within it. She was pretty, with a rare combination of freshness and poise that entranced him at once: she was looking round the ballroom with a thrilled smile, as if she had never seen anything like it before. There was none of the assumption that so many of the fashionable beauties had, of being the centre of attention; here was someone who was excited just to be present, not totting up points for and against everyone else of her own age.

If she had been keeping score, though, she would have realised that she was well ahead of all the competition. Not only was she much the prettiest girl in the room—or so it seemed to the stunned Prince—but her gown was extraordinary. The neckline was cut so low and so wide that it concealed hardly any of the enticing secrets within; the sleeves gripped her slim arms tightly and ended above the elbow with a fantasia of ruffles, lace and bows. The skirt was encrusted with layers of costly fabrics, elaborate trimmings and even real gems: obviously this was someone from a family wealthy enough to satisfy his father! You could keep a princely family for a year on what it must have cost to decorate that skirt. It was held out by the widest pair of hoops in the room, which was saying something; even coming in through the ballroom’s mighty double doors she had had to turn a little sideways. And the bodice between was unique: no taut satin or embroidered silk seized his gaze, but a sheath of immaculate silver moulded to the form of the figure every fashionable girl dreamed could be hers if she could only get her stays tight enough. This was what everyone wanted and so few achieved: tears, faints, snapped laces, lost digestion, they all came between mortal girls and the ideal they sought after. Now here it was before him, in flesh and blood; and silver-plated like the living work of art she was. She was even smaller than that noble lady he had so admired in his childhood.

He could delay no longer. Already a young man had come up to her and begun to chat; that couldn’t be permitted. "Excuse me!" the Prince said, barging up, and gave the young lord a very dirty look. The interloper slunk away with his tail between his legs, and that was the last the Prince saw of him. It was the last he saw of anyone else, too. For the rest of the evening he was blind to everyone else except for the girl on his arm.

"Good evening, miss!" the Prince said, and bowed.

The girl gave him her hand, and curtsied with just a little awkwardness, as if she were not quite used to her hoops and stays. "Good evening, sir," she said, with a candid smile. "Must we wait for someone to introduce us?"

The Prince glanced around. "Where are your parents?"

"They aren’t…aren’t with me." A shadow briefly crossed her face. "Where are yours?"

"Over there, on the dais." He pointed without looking; he didn’t want to look away from her.

She looked, though. "There’s nobody over there but the King and Queen."

"They are the King and Queen."

"Your Highness!" And suddenly she dropped into another curtsey.

"Stand up, please. There’s no need for that. If you don’t mind I won’t introduce you to them, and then we can pretend we’re just an ordinary boy and girl at an ordinary ball."

A sly smile crept across her face. "If you like. And I won’t introduce myself either. You must just take me as I am."

"How you are," the Prince said honestly, "is perfect. Now, shall we go on?"

Enchanting was the only word for her. Too many of the young ladies were both cynical and submissive: they made a point of having seen it all before, and they were too tied up in the intrigues of the court to risk being anything but polite to the son of the King. It was difficult to have a light conversation with someone who was determined not to be impressed by anything and at the same time just agreed vacantly with everything you said, even if you could see she was thinking something different. The girl in the silver bodice was quite different. She was delighted by the simplest things—the band, the great chandeliers, the surging ocean of jewels and silks that the dance-floor became when viewed from the dais—and whenever she looked at him her eyes were shining as if this were the greatest evening of her life. She seemed above the Court scandals he found so tiresome, and hadn’t a bad word to say about even the bitchiest of noblewomen; though the one time he ended up heading towards one of his stout brides-to-be, he found himself being led briskly off the other way by his delectable partner. Most of the time, though, they danced. The Prince never noticed the way the other dancers moved gracefully aside, so that he and the girl in the silver bodice were always left in peace with each other; nor did he notice the way his father was giving him blacker and blacker looks. He didn’t care if he was upsetting the Royal marriage plans; he was convinced he’d never need to look at another woman again.

And late in the evening, when the girl in the silver bodice pleaded smiling and panting that she was too out of breath to dance more, they walked quietly on the edge of the ballroom.

"You don’t seem to know the ballroom," the Prince said. "Have you never visited the castle before?"

"I visited the palace," the girl said, with a pretty gasp that strained her corset and the Prince’s self-control to the limits, "quite often, when I was little. Not for ever so long, though. I don’t remember ever coming in here."

They walked on a little in silence. "You surprised me," the Prince said presently. "I thought I knew all the young ladies attached to the court, but I wasn’t expecting you. Who are you with?"

The girl looked away, as if slightly embarrassed. The Prince stifled an urge to kneel at her feet and beg her forgiveness for asking an awkward question. "To tell the truth," she said, "I’m not exactly ‘with’ anyone. I suppose you could say I’m here because of my father, but I don’t think he knows I’m at the ball at all."

The Prince’s mind ran on this rapidly. She must be the illegitimate daughter of some straying nobleman. His father wouldn’t like that—but perhaps he could be persuaded it was all right. Whoever she was, she must be phenomenally rich, arrayed in a pure silver corset! Yes, he could probably square it with the King…"Tell me," he said, "have you ever been engaged?"

"Not as such."

"Not as such?"

"Well, I’ve, I’ve had young men who took a liking to me but none was really a match, if you know what I mean."

"I do," the Prince said, thinking of stout and wealthy girls and not realising his partner was thinking more of sweeps and knife-grinders. "My father has two lined up for me—he just wants me to pick one of them, and that’s all the choice I get."

"That’s—" she swallowed her words, not wanting to say anything disloyal to her King. Visibly thinking twice, she said carefully "Who are the two girls?"

"Well, now, let’s see…" The Prince surveyed the ballroom. "There’s one of them over there, in pink, and—er—yes, there’s the other, in pea-green."

"Oh." The pretty smile had gone, replaced by a petulant expression.

"Do you know them, then?"

"Very well. I don’t want to interfere in Royal business, but shall we say, if I were a King I wouldn’t want my son to marry them."

The Prince laughed. "If you were a King you’d surprise a lot of people showing a figure like that! No, that’s too complicated. You know them well, do you?"

"Almost like sisters," the girl said sourly.

"What are they like as sisters, then?"

"Now, really, Your Highness, it’s the height of bad manners for me to criticise other people to you! I’m not that sort of girl!"

She opened her fan and began striding away fanning herself violently. The Prince hurried after her and caught her bare shoulder. "Please!" he said. "Just pretend you are that sort of girl, just for a moment. What do you think about them?"

She gave a shallow sigh and looked him penetratingly in the eye. There was a lot of intelligence in that look, and he welcomed it: another of the faults of his father’s chosen brides was that they were about as bright as a candle that was put out two hours ago. "Well," she said, "I don’t want to say anything regrettable, but they never seem to have much conversation—"

"That’s true enough!"

"Do you need me to tell you these things?"

"I’d like you to. Please go on. I won’t interrupt."

"And they eat too much…"

"It shows!" the Prince exclaimed, forgetting his promise; then as the girl looked at him with one well-plucked eyebrow prettily raised he added "I’m sorry. Please forgive me."

"You’re forgiven, Your Highness, but please let me finish. They’re selfish, and unkind to those who aren’t so well off as they are. Of course, you wouldn’t have noticed that, being their superior, but I’m—er—much more concerned about how nobles treat servants and such like. I have my reasons."

"Beautiful, clever and good!" the Prince muttered.

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing. Do go on, please."

"Where was I? Oh, yes. Well, the one other thing is that their mother is rather indulgent, and she has never trained them properly to their stays. Oh, their bodices are nice and tight and their dresses are very elaborate, but inside it’s real torture for them just to reach twenty-four inches. You mark my words, during this evening both of them will either faint or pop their laces. Possibly both."

The Prince gazed at a large-bosomed figure in pea-green moving awkwardly across the dancefloor. It was suddenly obvious: there was no elegance about her, no grace. She could hardly move: she was laced most excruciating tight, but even then her figure was nothing to write about in your journal. And her sister was the same… "You’re so right," he breathed. "You’re so right!"

The girl shifted, uncomfortable again. "Well, Your Highness, you mustn’t let me influence you against them. I’m sure your father knows what he’s doing, and after all his will is what matters. A son or daughter must always obey his or her father, even if—even if some of the things he wants seem—well, unfair."

"Oh, no," the Prince said in a hushed voice. He took her gloved hands, his eyes shining. "I know what I want. I’m not going to settle for them. If only I could find your father and ask—"

A loud whirring noise behind them made them both look round. "What’s that?" the girl in the silver corset said.

"Oh, you haven’t been in here, you wouldn’t know. It’s our clock. Quiet now and watch. It’s delightful."

The ballroom clock occupied much of one wall, and was most elaborate. In front of it a semicircular track jutted out from the stones, with a little door at either side where it met the wall. Now the doors were working themselves open. Two figures came out, each perhaps eighteen inches high: painted wood, a gentleman in Court dress and a lady in a hooped skirt and fragile-waisted bodice, inlaid with gold. They moved jerkily around the track until they met; then the gentleman put out a stiff arm, the lady put one out to meet him, and they danced a little erratically back and forth in front of the audience, while the clock played a tune on a carillon hidden somewhere deep inside itself. The Prince and his partner watched enthralled: she had never seen anything like this before, and he could feel her joy and wonder as if it were her own.

Then the dance was over. The lady raised her other arm, holding a bell; the gentleman raised his other hand, holding a hammer. He reached out and began to strike the bell: once…twice…three times…

The girl in the silver corset stiffened against the Prince suddenly. Her eyes and mouth widened to circles, and she gave a horrified squeak; then picking up her skirts she turned and ran. The Prince was too stunned to follow for a moment; then he ran after her shouting "Wait! Wait! What’s wrong?" Behind him the clock continued to strike: four times…five times…six times…

The girl in the silver corset was not dressed for running. She got as far as the French windows onto the terrace before she fainted. The Prince bounded up to her and drawing the ceremonial sword he had never imagined having to use—duels were not at all his style—in one deft stroke cut the laces that held the back of the silver bodice together. It sprang open, revealing a figure that astounded him: clearly this was a young woman who had spent years on selfless and dedicated waist-training. He gently lifted off the silver corset, and as he did so she began to move again.

"What’s wrong?" he asked urgently.

The clock was still striking: ten times…eleven times…"Oh! Oh!" she cried, which wasn’t an answer, and wriggling free of him in a flurry of hooped skirts she vanished through the curtains as the clock struck twelve.

The Prince picked himself up from where she had pushed him down and opened the curtains. He could see the moonlight on the terrace, his father’s attempt to imitate the gardens of Versailles beyond, and a figure with her hooped skirts held up around her knees flying down the path into the darkness. "Wait! Wait!" he called, running after her. "You left your corset behind!" But she didn’t stop and she didn’t turn; and now she was almost in the shadow of the trees. Remembering that it was the clock striking which seemed to have upset her, the Prince shouted "But darling! That clock’s always five minutes fast!"

No reply. She was gone.



THE CHAPTER KNOWN AS THE TENTH

The town crier rang his bell vigorously, then unrolling the scroll he had in his free hand shouted "Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Citizens, I carry the word of the King himself!

"The King hath declared: ‘At the ball given in the honour of Our only son and Prince, there was present a lady who fainted and had to have the laces of her stays cut. She fled the ballroom soon afterwards, leaving behind her stays, and though from the nobility of her face and the perfection of her figure We were able to be certain she came of the highest birth, none of Our courtiers hath been able to identify her. Therefore We do swear and promise: whosoever shall lace into this silver corset shall have the hand of Our son in marriage and be enthroned as Queen alongside him when his time cometh.’ Such is the word of the King!"

The townspeople gathered in the marketplace huddled together in the cold, looking with awe at the corset two of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting were holding up beside the crier. Nearly all the women wore stays of some kind, usually a boned and laced bodice tightened over the underclothes to organise the figure and keep it firm and neat. They were aware that noble ladies who didn’t have to work were free to lace far tighter than was practical for someone who had to mop the floor and feed the pigs, but this corset was beyond anyone’s imagining. The waist was minute, no wider than a strong man’s thigh; and it glittered in the intermittent sunshine as if it were made of solid silver, which in fact it was. Someone must have melted down a mort of silver coins to make that thing; a peasant family could have lived on it comfortably for years. Or still could; that was why the two ladies-in-waiting had six pikemen to escort them, with their eyes on the crowd.

A voice shouted, "Melt it down and spread it out across the town! It’s been a hard winter."

"This corset," the town crier said, "is not my property. It’s not mine to give away, sir."

"No woman could have laced into that thing and lived to tell about it!" someone else called. "Your Prince is just chasing rainbows!"

"The Prince says, ma’am," the town crier replied sarcastically, "that the girl with whom he danced at the ball last night was wearing this very corset. There are other witnesses to it. We have to identify her. Has anyone anything else to say?" The pikemen moved forward with a faint sound of steel grating on steel, and there were no more witty remarks. "Very well, then. Ladies, I leave it to you."

The two ladies in waiting came forward, holding up the silver corset. When they reached the front of the platform they moved slowly round in a half-circle and back, giving everyone there the chance to see it clearly. "Now then," one of them shouted as loudly as she could, given the tightness of her own Court stays, "did anyone here see, last night, a ‘very pretty young girl with dark hair’ wearing this corset?"

No-one had.

Not much point in asking this of such a flea-bitten mob, but "Is there anyone here who attended the ball last night wearing this corset?"

A raggedy girl at the back of the crowd tentatively put up her hand. The two ladies in waiting looked at each other in exasperation. Of course, with the Prince’s hand at stake there were bound to be time-wasters—and a lot of them. "All right, thank you for your time, everyone! Now, we will be going round the houses of all the nobility with daughters who were invited to the ball, so you’ll be seeing us in the streets as like as not. Please remember that we do have our escort and they will not be pleased with anyone who attempts to steal this corset. Kindly do not obstruct us when we are on Royal business." And without another word the two ladies left the dais, carrying the silver corset between them as if it were heavy—which indeed it was—and escorted by their phalanx of unsmiling soldiers.

Cinderella turned away, her face burning and her heart pounding within her tight leather bodice. She had known it wouldn’t work, but she couldn’t stop herself: it was as if her hand had gone up of its own accord. Ignoring the crude teasing of the mob she trudged back off through the mud to her father’s house, not even bothering to hold her skirts up out of the filth in the streets.

The two ladies-in-waiting stood back grumpily as the sergeant of the pikemen banged on the door of the big house. "This is probably a waste of time," one of them said.

"Do it right and we’ll be paid anyway," her friend told her.

"I’m cold, I’m tired, I’m wet through! I want a nice cup of mulled wine and a bath of warm water to rest my feet in. This isn’t getting us anywhere and I don’t think it ever will."

The sergeant knocked again. "Orders are orders, Silke," the second lady-in-waiting replied. "I’m as sure as you are that this is all some misunderstanding, but we have orders from the King and we have to see them through. When we’ve gone round every noble lady in the kingdom then we can go home and give up, but not before then. Aren’t they ever going to answer that door?"

"No, they can see we’re having too much fun floundering around in the mud," Lady Silke replied bitterly. "Well, if the Prince thinks—"

The door opened smoothly. "Yes?" said the porter.

"Lady Silke Fahrenholz and Lady Rosa Heilen wish to see your mistress Grafin Eisenmieder and her daughters," the sergeant said. "An errand from the King."

"Yes, we’ve heard about it," the porter said. "We’ve been expecting you. Come in!"

They came, with great relief, and there was much stamping of mud from feet inside the hall. The porter looked at the mess in horror—he was the one who was going to clean it up afterwards—but he knew better than to argue with a Lady of the Court, or with a man holding a big spear. "Come this way," was all he said.

As he led them through the tall corridors of the house, Lady Silke said, "Is there any chance of something warming to drink, perhaps?"

"Perhaps, my lady. I couldn’t say. You’ll have to ask my mistress when you meet her."

"Not much chance of it from her," Silke said, not quietly enough. "She’s well known as the biggest bitch in the kingdom." If the porter heard this, he didn’t comment; perhaps he agreed with her.

They came out at last into an ornate salon, obviously veteran of many a refined party. Grafin Eisenmieder was sitting there in a chair suspiciously reminiscent of a throne, with her daughters standing on either side of them. All three were beautifully and elaborately dressed, with wigs tall and fine enough for a Royal Ball, but the court ladies could see immediately that they were wasting their time. The daughters stood painfully upright, heads back, their bulging bosoms quivering in the low necklines of their gowns, their expressions strained beneath layers of paint. It was all too obvious that they were corseted to within a tenth of an inch of their lives—and they were inches bigger than the silver corset. Nothing but a miracle would see either of them lace into it without fainting.

Still, form had to be satisfied, and the King’s errand completed if they were to get back to the palace and claim their expenses. "Good afternoon, Ma’am," Lady Silke said briskly. "From the way you’re assembled here waiting for us I presume you know our errand?"

The enthroned mother inclined her powder-wigged head. "You are searching for a bride for the Prince, nicht wahr?"

"Yes, but that isn’t all, ma’am." She cleared her throat noisily and two of the pikemen clumped forward, heavy boots noisy on the delicate Persian rug that covered the floor, holding the silver corset. "His Highness the Prince has declared that the young lady of his love was laced close into this silver corset at the Ball which I believe you attended five days ago. It’s our duty to find out which of the young ladies of the nobility that was by lacing this corset onto anyone who believes it is hers, and seeing if we can lace it close without fainting."

Unprompted, both daughters turned their heads—stiffly, under the immense weight of their wigs—and looked pleadingly at their mother. She reached out on either side to stroke their hands reassuringly, and said with great confidence "I’m sure that it must have been one of my daughters, your ladyship. No doubt you’ve heard that the King has been interested in arranging a marriage between the Prince and one of them."

"Ahem! That isn’t the issue, I’m afraid, ma’am. The issue is whether the silver corset will go round a particular young lady’s waist, or not. Now, may I assume you are willing for us to try the experiment?"

Both daughters shuddered. "Of course," their mother said with regal calm.

"Good. Sergeant, you may go." The sergeant and his men saluted, crashing their boots destructively onto the Persian rug, and then stamped out of the room to wait outside. They could guard the door and stop anyone from coming in to steal the silver corset, but it would not do for rough common soldiers to watch ladies of the nobility lacing their stays.

With the soldiers gone the atmosphere in the room changed: less formal, more feminine. "Now," Lady Rosa said gently, "you don’t have to go through with this, you know. I can see your daughters are worried about it. This is a fifteen-inch corset—a lot of people have had awful trouble with it and I don’t want to distress anyone else if I can help it."

"There’s no need for you to concern yourself," Grafin Eisenmieder replied, as stiff as the stays of the five women in the room. "My daughters are quite capable of anything you might want to try of them." Lady Rosa and Lady Silke exchanged a look. The girls’ mother tightened her lips, but she didn’t say anything. It wasn’t good practise to contradict the servants of the King, especially not if you hoped to marry one of your daughters to his only son…"Gudrun, Irma, come here. I need to open your bodices and take off your stays."

"Yes, Mama." And like dogs afraid of a beating if they didn’t obey, the two plump girls slunk round in front of their mother’s throne to await her hands on the laces of their bodices.

Gudrun, the elder and taller of the two girls, wore a corset that wouldn’t have inflamed any man’s passions in the bedroom: it was painfully obvious that it had been designed first and last for strength and nothing else. She groaned as her mother loosened the laces, and the corset slackened, allowing her waist to grow wider….and wider, and wider, and wider. The two Court ladies exchanged another look, this time their eyes round and alarmed. There could be no doubt this girl had been laced just as tight as she could bear, and the idea that she could lace down to fifteen inches—well, it would be laughable if it weren’t actually dangerous. The laces of the silver corset might not even stretch out that far…Lady Silke shook her head. That wasn’t her business. She gestured to Lady Rosa to follow her, and together they carried the heavy silver corset over to the unlaced and now somewhat shaky girl and began laboriously girding it around her tubby middle.

A few minutes of silent struggle elapsed. Then Grafin Eisenmieder said with what she hoped was unanswerable confidence "There! That’s tight enough, surely!"

Sweating and breathless, Lady Rosa looked round. "If you don’t mind, ma’am, we were told to lace this corset close. You don’t call that close, do you?" She dared not let go of the laces, but she nodded her head at the seven-inch gap behind Gudrun’s waist.

"Nobody ever gets her stays quite close. It can’t be done—they always slip. I believe that is good enough, and if—"

"Pardon me, ma’am, and I don’t wish to speak out of turn, but this is not what we were told to look for! There are plenty of young women in the kingdom who can get these stays seven inches short of close. I could myself. There are quite a few who can get them tighter than that, but we were told to look for someone who can lace them close, and close that isn’t."

"Insolence! How dare you talk back to me?"

Lady Silke had had enough of this pointless job, and her patience was wearing thin. "Because, ma’am, we are the servants of the King—not your servants. We’re more interested in doing what—"

She was interrupted by a painful groan of "I can’t breathe!"

"Be quiet, Gudrun!"

"Thank you, ma’am. We’re more interested in doing what the King wants of us than what you want. If you argue with us, you argue with the King. You don’t want that, do you?"

That was a good point. "Hum. Did you say nobody in the kingdom has managed to lace these stays close yet?"

"If they had," Lady Rosa panted, still hanging on for dear life to the taut laces, "would we still be doing this?"

"I’ll take that as a ‘no’, shall I? Well, then. I believe we’re the last household you have to visit?"

"Yes, if—"

"Silke," Rosa interrupted, "could you make her get to the point before these laces rip my arms off!"

"Certainly, Rosa dear. If we don’t find what we’re looking for here, then we shall have to go back to the Palace and admit our failure."

"Which," Rosa added through gritted teeth, "isn’t something we relish." Gudrun looked round with panicky eyes but said nothing.

"I see. So if one of my daughters laces tighter than anyone else you’ve met, will you take her as the best you can find?"

Lady Silke frowned, and looked at the gasping Gudrun, imprisoned in the silver corset laced to well above twenty inches, and at the pale face of Irma, who obviously wasn’t looking forward to her turn in it. "Do you really think that’s likely?"

"That’s not what I asked. Will you take them as the, er, ‘next best thing’ if they can lace tighter than everyone else?"

The two ladies of the court looked at each other again. "I suppose so," said Rosa, and "It would certainly be better than coming home empty-handed," Silke agreed.

"Good! Well, then, I may be able to help you. You will never get Gudrun’s stays properly tight like that. You need to put your foot in her back."

"Mama, no—" Gudrun panted.

"Shh, child. You want to be Queen some day, don’t you?"

"Yes, but—"

"But nothing. Now hold still and don’t try to talk. Here, Lady Rosa, let me help you. I’ll hold you steady and lift up your skirt while you put your foot in her back….that’s it. Now pull." She pulled, but Gudrun came with her, and they would both have fallen over had not Grafin Eisenmieder caught them. "Oh dear, that’ll never do! Now, come over here, Gudrun dear, and hold onto this pillar. That’s right…hold on, tight as you can, don’t let go. Now pull."

Lady Rosa, her foot balanced in Gudrun’s back, standing precariously on one leg with her hooped skirt rucked up around her thighs, pulled. The silver corset gnawed at Gudrun’s waist and she moaned; but it did pull tighter.

"Is that the best you can do?" her mother demanded.

"It is," Rosa said. "I need some help."

"Then you shall have it. Here! You, what’s your name—"

"Lady Silke Fahrenholz, and you should treat me with more respect!"

"Never mind that now. Two strong arms needed. Come over here, get your arms round your friend’s waist, and pull. That’s right." Lady Rosa pulled on the laces, and Lady Silke pulled on Lady Rosa, and the silver corset grew tighter again; but there were still inches to go before the gap was closed when the two court ladies again said they couldn’t pull any harder.

"Oh, dear," Grafin Eisenmieder said, "I was afraid this might be necessary. Irma, come here."

"I shan’t!"

"Irma!"

"No. You’ll be doing the same to me in a minute. I’m not going to help you and then perhaps Gudrun won’t when it’s my turn."

"Honestly, girls are impossible sometimes! Well, I suppose I’d better do it myself." Gudrun’s mother took up her position, clasping her arms round Lady Silke’s well-corseted waist, and braced herself. "Now we’re ready. At the count of three—one, two, three, pull!" She lunged backwards, Silke lunged with her, and at the same time Rosa pushed out with her foot braced in Gudrun’s back: the laces creaked and suddenly the silver corset jerked in half an inch tighter. "There we are, we’re making progress! Now another. One, two, thr—"

She never got to finish the word. There was a sharp crack and suddenly the group at the pillar broke up as the laces snapped. Gudrun, hanging onto the pillar as hard as she could to stop the laces pulling her back, was suddenly working against nothing and came forward so hard she hit her head on the stone and nearly knocked herself out. Lady Silke, Lady Rosa, and Gudrun’s mother all fell over backwards and landed in a heap.

"Oh," Rosa groaned, "I think I broke a bone in my stays!"

"I think you broke a bone in my ribs!" Silke scolded her. "Why do you have to be so heavy?"

"Ladies, please!" said a voice beneath them. "Remember you both landed on top of me!"

"Oh, I’m sorry!" The two Court ladies helped each other up, with some difficulty in their tight stays and mountainous skirts, and then together they pulled Gudrun’s mother to her feet. Her elaborate wig had been dislodged and it was beyond the skill of anyone there to fix it back onto her hair; they just left it on the floor and went back to Gudrun, who had started crying. Her mother put an arm around her shoulder.

"Never mind, dearest, you did your best. You come over here and sit down, rest for a bit. It’s Irma’s turn now."

"Oh, no!" Irma wailed.

"Oh, yes. Come over to the pillar."

"I’m afraid, ma’am," Lady Rosa said as she applied the smelling salts to Irma’s nose, "I’ve had about enough of this. We’re not getting anywhere. Either they faint or they snap their laces. Usually both." Irma began to moan and pawed the smelling salts away; with obviously practised ease Rosa snapped the box shut and slipped it back into a pocket amidst the innumerable folds of her skirt.

"Have another go with Gudrun," Grafin Eisenmieder said anxiously.

"Look, ma’am, we’ve been doing this for days. I want to get home and put my feet up, and furthermore I’m running out of staylaces!"

Together they lifted Irma up and set her on the big chair to recover. Gudrun was surreptitiously trying the door. Her mother had locked it earlier, she said to keep servants out; in fact it might just as well have been to keep daughters in.

"Well," she said, "staylaces I can do for you. We have plenty of them in this house. I’ll ring for some." And she tugged on an ornate brocade bell-pull.

Presently feet tapped up the marble floor outside and someone tried the door, without success. "It’s locked," called the Grafin.

"What shall I do, please?" said an attractive voice in the corridor.

"Go to my dressing-room and bring me all the staylaces you can find. The longer and stronger the better. Quickly now!"

"Yes, ma’am," the voice said. There was a pause just long enough for someone to pick up her skirts, and then the feet ran off.

"It would have to be her," the Grafin said. "Lazy little wench! I’ll see she gets a good beating if she doesn’t come fast." She looked up, noticed the two Court ladies staring at her in horror, and realising she had gone slightly too far took up a ladylike pose with her hands folded demurely at her waist, staring into space.

Shortly there was a knock at the door. "Ma’am? I’ve brought your staylaces."

"Good. Just wait there for a moment." The Grafin went over to the door and unlocked it. Waiting outside was a very pretty young girl with a pale face framed by long dark curls, wearing a rough kitchen dress with a leather bodice laced tightly over it. And there was something which…

"You may go, Cinderella," Grafin Eisenmieder said, and began shutting the door.

"Wait!" Lady Silke said. "Bring her in here."

"If you don’t mind, your ladyship, this is the very worst of my kitchen-maids, and I don’t think she should be—"

"Bring her in here." When the Grafin hesitated, Rosa added, "We’re the representatives of the King here, ma’am. Please remember that."

Grafin Eisenmieder paused a little while, thinking things out; then letting out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding she retreated, and the girl came shyly into the room. She looked at the two Court ladies and at Gudrun and Irma, all of them somewhat disarrayed after their struggles with the silver corset, then remembered her manners, cast her gaze down, and curtsied low to the accompaniment of a well-oiled creaking from her bodice.

"Hmm, I see," Silke said. "Do you see what I see, Rosa?"

"Something worth seeing, definitely. Come here, please, girl."

The girl called Cinderella came, and stopped in the middle of the room as the two Court ladies spread out to stand on either side of her. They walked round her, looking at her carefully, concentrating on the waist of her tight leather bodice. Presently Rosa reached out and touched it.

"She might do, don’t you think?" she said.

"She might, in the absence of anyone better. Of course, we’d have to clean her up a bit, and—"

"What are you saying!?" Grafin Eisenmieder broke in. "You surely aren’t thinking of taking her back to the Palace!"

"Well, why not?" Silke said. "We have to have someone who can lace into this corset and she’s actually as good a candidate as anyone. Certainly better than your daughters!"

"I won’t permit it! I’ll call the porter to stop you leaving!"

"Call away. It won’t help you. Sergeant!" There was a clumping of heavy boots on the marble floor and the sergeant-of-pikemen lumbered into the room.

"Your ladyship?"

"Sergeant, this lady here has threatened to stop us from leaving. Make sure that nobody else comes in here and that we can leave when we want to."

He saluted. "My lady." He glared at Grafin Eisenmieder, tightened his grip on his pike briefly, then stamped outside again.

"Our carpet!" Irma wailed, looking at the damage his boots had done to the Persian rug.

"Be quiet, Irma!"

"Both of you be quiet!" Rosa snapped. She walked round to face the maid and looked her sternly in the eyes. "What’s your name, girl?"

"Cinderella, your ladyship."

"Cinderella, eh? Princess Cinderella? It’ll do. What’s your waist size at the moment?"

"Sixteen and a half inches, your ladyship, but I can lace tighter—"

"She’s lying!" the Grafin shouted.

"I’m not interested in your opinion! One more outburst like that and I’ll order the Sergeant to drag you out of here!" Rosa returned her attention to Cinderella. "Now, look at this corset." She walked over to the table where she had put the silver corset down, picked it up with an obvious effort and carried it back to the middle of the room. "It has a fifteen inch waist. Do you think if we asked you, you could lace into this corset?"

"Oh yes," the girl said brightly. "I’m quite sure I could."

"Sure?"

"Well, of course! It’s my corset—I was wearing it at the ball!"

"Don’t listen to her!" the Grafin shouted. "Now you know she’s lying—"

"Sergeant!" The door crashed open and the Sergeant came in. "Please show Grafin Eisenmieder out. Now." The Sergeant thumped forward to take the Grafin by the shoulder, but putting her head back with what remained of her previous haughty pride she swept out, her dignity somewhat marred by the lack of a wig, which showed how badly all the unguents she had been using had affected what remained of her own hair. After some dithering, Irma helped her unlaced and shaky sister up and they followed their mother out. The pikemen closed the door behind them.

"There!" Silke said, allowing herself a smile for the first time that day. "Now we can get on. Now look here, girl. We need someone who can lace into this corset to shut the Prince up, and for my part I don’t care who it is—just so we can get this damn task over with and go home. I’m quite happy to lie to him about it, but I don’t want you to lie to me. Were you really at the ball in that corset?"

"Oh, yes." She looked down at her worn and tattered clothes and laughed. "Not in this outfit, though."

"Where did you get a ballgown from, then?"

"Well, I was wearing these clothes, actually, in a way…look, it’s complicated. I’ll explain on the way back if you like. Shall we try on the silver corset?"

Lady Rosa looked at the tiny waist firmly girdled by the impressively tight leather bodice, and laughed aloud. "Let’s do it. It’s going to be a nice change from straining at those two fat mares."

Cinderella let them unlace her, but asked to hang onto the pillar once she was out of her stays—which the two ladies noted with approval: obviously she found standing difficult without the support of a corset, a sign of a really dedicated long-term tight-lacer. They passed the silver corset about her well-trained figure and then began threading the lace-holes with the beautiful silk lace Cinderella had brought. It was a job they had become experts in over the past few weeks, and they finished fast; but this wasn’t the same as all the other attempts. They pulled on the laces, a good strong firm pull: and Cinderella became breathless, her face flushed a little, her posture became upright, but she didn’t faint and the lace didn’t snap. Shortly the two lines of laceholes met, and with great satisfaction Rosa tied them off. Then the two Court ladies stood back.

"Do a turn for us," Silke said. Cinderella obliged, her tattered skirts swirling out around her impressively, the silver bodice glinting in the sunlight.

"It’s her all right," Rosa said firmly.

"The one we’re looking for?"

"The one who was at the ball. I saw the Prince with her, you know. It’s never a good idea to borrow someone’s stays, you can never be comfortable in them. This is her corset—it’s obviously made to fit her. She’s—at home in it."

Wondering, Silke moved forward and moved her hand up and down the smooth curves of the silver corset. It was true: it was just right, no slack, no uneasy bulges. She laughed with relief and gave Cinderella a kiss. "Well, thank you for turning up! You can’t imagine how much we’ve had to go through to find you!"

"Thank you for coming," Cinderella replied solemnly. "I think it’s time I stopped being a kitchen-maid. I’m the Grafin’s husband’s daughter, you know. I knew the Prince when we were children…"

Silke looked at Rosa, who said "Yes, I remember that. It’s true, he did play with this pretty little dark girl when they were seven or eight. Then her mother died, and the little girl just, well, disappeared, and nobody knew what had happened to her…"

"I’ve been working in the kitchen," Cinderella said. Then she patted her concave silver tummy and added, "And training my figure."

"Very well too. Congratulations. Now you’d better come with us. I know someone at the Palace who’s looking forward to meeting you."

FINISH