"Remember the accent. You have to sound the part as well as look it," Marionna halted her stride. She turned and held her face close, stern, "And the way they talk, and hold themselves."
Thilde glanced away at the ground, uncertain, "I don't know. I can't do it like you do. The voice."
Marionna huffed, "Or if you can't do it then just keep quiet and let me do the talking. Okay? Or act like you're so stuck up and super bitch rich that even talking is beneath you. Just answer my questions with 'yes' or 'no'."
"Okay," Thilde nodded, "Alright. I guess I can do that."
"But say it like they do," Marionna held her nose high in a disdainful frown and pursed her lips, "Yaaas. Nouhh."
Thilde snorted with laughter. She clapped her hand to her mouth, "Hah. You sound just like Lady Helène."
"Exactly. Act like you're Lady Helène," Marionna scowled, "Only an even bigger mega bitch than her. Like you have to hold your nose to even set foot in the market, and you can't wait to get out of there and back to your palace to bathe in fairy tears or whatever."
Thilde cleared her throat and concentrated, "Yaaaas. Noo-ooo."
Marionna cackled, "You're a rich bitch, not a cow."
Thilde giggled. She coughed and tried again, focusing on the shape of her mouth, "Nooouo. Damn it. Nah it's no good. You do it so much better. I can't do the 'no', only the 'yes'."
"Well then," Marionna looked up at her with a smirk on her face, "You'll just have to agree to everything I say, won't you. Now come on."
Marionna grabbed her by the wrist and they bustled onward along the roadside track towards the crowds and the stalls ahead.
"Is this really going to work?" Thilde called out in a whisper.
"Yes. It is. I've seen them do it at all the markets. If you look like you're loaded with gold, then they won't make you pay any up front. So you can try everything for free," Marionna slowed and then halted once more, "Relax. You want to do this, don't you?"
"I just..." Thilde hesitated, "What if we get caught?"
"We won't," Marionna replied firmly, "Now. Do you want to get your cunny poked or not?"
Thilde sighed wistfully, and nodded, "Yeah."
"Good. It'll be fine. We're at least half a day's ride away from Crudwall. Nobody knows us here. We're just two ultra rich and stuck up archduchesses, or something. We practically own the whole county and we're here to indulge ourselves, and to scatter absolutely disgusting quantities of gold coin like it's bird seed," Marionna hefted a bulging velvet purse tied at her waist, that Thilde recalled was in fact filled with bird seed.
As Thilde followed once more behind her friend, she examined the clothes they were both wearing. She had on a caustically clean white ruff-trimmed blouse, and a sweeping long corset gown in shimmering blue, both freshly pilfered that morning from Lady Helène's dressing room, along with a sack of jewels and pendants that she and Marionna had heaped around their necks and their wrists. Thilde was particularly taken with an egg-shaped emerald on a gold chain, which she had set about her neck so that it nestled in her bust. Lady Helène was about the same height as Thilde, so the clothes were an approximate fit. But Thilde was not as slim. The corset was extremely constricting around her stomach and was digging into her big hips as she hurried to keep up. The gaps between the buttons of the blouse were stretched to wide ovals by the swell of her big chest beneath. And now that the cool of their early morning departure had dissipated and the sun was starting to sear its way through the sky, the thin cotton of the blouse and of her underskirts was starting to cling to her skin with sweat.
Still, she thought she looked the part, more or less. Marionna on the other hand, almost a head shorter than Thilde and very petite, had had a rather harder time finding something in Lady Helène's wardrobes that would fit her. Her voluminous cream silk ball dress had been ineffectually hitched up inside at the waist, only to keep falling free, and the hem had gathered a dusty ochre rim of dirt from the floor.
They approached the first wall of awnings at the fringe of the market, and Thilde peered through the gap between two stalls. On the other side, the thoroughfare was busy with basket-bearing maids, wagon men, boys and girls with pails of water yoked about their shoulders, and the chirping of the tiny birds that always flocked to the markets to peck up the scatterings of breadcrumbs from the victual stalls.
"Okay," Marionna nodded sternly, "Ready?"
Thilde smiled at her, "Yaaas, Your Archduchessness."
Marionna's shoulders shook with sniggering, "Har har. Good. Okay here goes."
With her hand tightly clasped to Thilde's, fingers locked together, Marionna led her along under the awnings, then shouldered her way through a funneling crowd of marketgoers and into the space of the main gangway. She paused for a moment, held her head up, scanning the swaying pennants at the apex of each tent. Then she trotted on. Thilde observed as Marionna wrinkled her nose first at a butchery, then at an eelmonger's stand, each several paces checking the pennants hanging ahead.
Then as they rounded a corner Thilde's heart suddenly raced in panic as a ruffle-clad highborn lady passing in the opposite direction glanced at Thilde's jewelry and then raised one gloved hand and opened her mouth as if to greet them. But Marionna turned her nose up and looked away in a blatant snub, and yanked Thilde quickly onward.
They staggered on past heaps of apples and pastries, past the entrance to the long ale tent, and a jeweler at work over a crucible, until Thilde felt the slats of her corset beginning to jab her sorely in the hip and she had to stop to draw her breath.
"What is it?" Marionna tapped her foot impatiently.
"Just... a moment," Thilde gasped. Then she stopped, and looked around her. Her nostrils flared and she drew in a deep whiff of something rich and sweet and fruity. She sniffed again, "Oh. Wait. Is that... berry basket tarts?"
"Huh?" Marionna looked around and then spied the same stall that Thilde had just seen. She groaned, "I thought I fed and watered you just before we left."
Thilde took another deep breath of the sweet aroma of the tarts and her stomach gurgled with emptiness, "That was hours ago. Come on, can we get one? Please."
Marionna pulled her close and spoke softly. She patted the silk purse at her hip, "What are we gonna pay with, Lady Fatass? Birdseed?"
Thilde cocked her eyebrow, "I thought you said they let you try everything for free."
