by Celia Rees
When she finally looked back, the square had emptied, except for the soldiers and the dead.
THE NEXT DAY, all that was left to show was a faint staining on the marble of the piazza, pink on grey. Soldiers had been out there all night, according to Annie, scrubbing away the bloodstains, putting all to rights. The city was quiet, under strict curfew. Anyone venturing out was subject to instant arrest. Meanwhile, the whole garrison was sanding the streets, putting down sawdust to soak up the blood.
“They’re even putting out flowers, potted trees and that, to make it all look pretty,” Annie went on. “Pretending nowt happened. But it did. Untold dead. God knows how many injured, jails full to bursting. It were worse in the Lower Town. Used cannon down there, they did. Not up here. Might damage the buildings. Buildings matter more than people. They was marching for justice and all they got was grapeshot. Duke’s declared a Fiesta, is what I’m hearing. Fountains to run with wine. There’s going to be tables set out all over the city, food from the Duke’s own kitchens. A reward for his loyal citizens, he’s calling it. I got another name for it. Bribery, pure and simple.”
Riots one night, Fiesta the next. How very Glass Town.
“Now, come on,” Annie chivvied. “Frame yourself before them snooty cows get ’ere. Put yer mitts in this.”
“What is it?”
“Lemon juice. I got more for yer face. It’s sovereign for skin lightening.”
A pale complexion was prized at court. The ladies all shaded their faces with hats or parasols and wore long white gloves.
“My skin is fine as it is.”
“Not according to Lady Zenobia. She’s sent salts for yer bath, an’ all. Special ingredients from the desert brought in by Arab traders. I’ve been instructed to give you a good scrubbing. I’ve drawn yer bath. You can soak yer fingers while you’re in it.”
The bathroom was marble floored. The bathtub was fed with hot and cold water running from a great brass tap. Augusta stepped into the tub and wondered if this was one of Zenobia’s jokes. Her “special ingredients” stung the skin, smelt repulsive and turned the water black. Annie emptied that and ran more water, adding lemon and bags of lavender. Augusta settled down to a good soak while Annie busied herself with lotions, also sent by Zenobia. More special ingredients with whitening properties, also from the desert, but these were soothing on the skin and didn’t smell so bad. A bath meant a door locked against Zenobia’s ladies.
She and Zenobia should have been friends, but they were not. Too alike, in some ways; in others, polar opposites. They were never destined to be close. They had always been wary of each other, even at school.
Zenobia was no silly miss like the other girls who had spent their time in ladylike pursuits, such as drawing and embroidery and perfecting their French, when they weren’t perfecting the arts of flirtation: smiling at the young lords, simpering at the masters, giggling in corners about one beau or another. Zenobia was clever and she took her studies seriously. Augusta had found the classroom restricting, airless and stuffy; she had longed to be out of doors and had wanted to learn what the boys were learning: the art of war, tactics and weaponry, how to be a ruler one day. She’d begged and pleaded to be allowed to join them on the firing range and the fencing floor. She was an excellent shot and fencing was not so very different from dancing. She was tall for her age, with a long reach, slight, lithe and quick on her feet. Of course, such masculine pursuits were forbidden to her.
Whenever she could, she would slip away to watch the boys at their practice. Fencing fascinated her and she was determined to learn. Rogue offered to give her lessons. Not to please her but because it amused him. He would do anything to challenge the rules and he had an excuse to beat her—and beat her he did. They practised with wooden sticks at first, and he hit her black and blue. They advanced to rebated swords, the kind the boys used in practice. Then one day, they did not. She still had the scar. So had he.
Not long after that, she was sent away from Scholars’ Island for good, although the reason was nothing to do with Rogue.
Zenobia was most often to be found in the Masters’ Library, translating works from Greek or Latin. Augusta had no interest in dead languages and thought her reading dry. She preferred stories, histories, books about the world and the birds and animals to be found in the different regions of the earth. She liked to study the maps of the explorers, to turn the great globe that stood in its frame of shining brass and polished mahogany, tracing the black broken lines that spread like a spider’s web over the oceans to show the voyages of the Founding Twelve. She would dream of her own voyages, standing on tiptoe, following the sea road to the Northern oceans, the whale road that led through the fields of ice where the Esquimaux lived and great white bears roamed, where seals and walrus floated on ice islands and whales, as big as ships, blew rainbow plumes into the frozen air from holes on top of their great bowed heads…
One day, she made the mistake of telling Zenobia what she dreamt about. Zenobia had come over in apparent innocence and asked her what she was doing, what was she thinking as she turned the globe. So Augusta told her about the journey she meant to take to see the great white bears on their ice floes, the Esquimaux in their skin canoes.
“How do you know about all this?” Zenobia asked.
“Ross and Parry. They’ve been there.”
“Oh, have they? And I suppose they are going to take you with them?”
“One day.” Augusta’s fingers spanned the Arctic seas. “One day they will.” They would go in the ships, Hecla and Griper. Ships with thick oaken hulls, re-enforcing cross-beams and iron-plated bows to withstand the ice’s crushing embrace. They would find the secret passage that would take them through the ice-bound seas and out into the ocean beyond. She’d been about to tell Zenobia of the wonders they would see on their journey: whales with a single horn, like the fabled unicorn; great leviathans rising up from the deep, all glistening black and walking on their tails.
“Isn’t it time you said farewell to such ridiculous ideas?” Zenobia had set the globe spinning away from her. “You will never get away from here. Isn’t it time you grew up?”
When they grew older, things got worse, not better. Zenobia had always been in love with Douro but he took no notice of her. When Douro started noticing Augusta, that was when the trouble really started. The Masters’ Library was a well-known place for trysts and Zenobia had found them there, on the upper gallery, looking at a book of birds together. Perfectly innocent, Augusta had thought, except it wasn’t—on his side anyway. His interest in the birds was feigned and he was standing a little too close, leaning over her shoulder to turn the big heavy pages, their fingers touching; she could feel his breath on her cheek, smell his cologne, the pomade in his hair. Zenobia flew at her. Knocking the book out of her hands, pinning her against the shelves, pulling at her hair, scratching at her face. Augusta fought back but Zenobia was bigger than her and much stronger. Douro disappeared. It was Rogue who pulled them apart, laughing. He’d seen the whole thing.
Augusta had been expelled, blamed for everything. Zenobia stayed, still hankering after Douro. She’d been hankering ever since. He was her only weakness. Douro had always rejected her, preferring his adoring mistresses, like poor, unfortunate Sofala or long-suffering Mina Laury, too low-born to be taken as wives, or the hopelessly besotted Rosamund Wellesley. What do women see in him? He treated them all appallingly. Zenobia was intelligent enough to know better…
Augusta’s reverie was interrupted by a violent banging on the door.
Annie looked up in alarm.
Not Zenobia’s ladies, surely?
A rough male voice said, “Open this door, or we’ll break it down!”
“Just a minute!” Augusta stood up quickly, stepping into the towel Annie was holding for her. “What is the meaning of this—this intrusion?” she shouted through the door.
“We’ve got orders to keep you under close guard.”
There was the rap
of rifle butts on the floor.
Augusta pulled the towel round her. Zenobia’s ladies were one thing, armed guards quite another. Zenobia must have betrayed her at the first chance. Gone straight to the Duke, in the forlorn hope that he would change his mind and favour her, no doubt. Why does she not see? The Duke would never allow the marriage. The Duke and his son were in need of money. The building of Great Glass Town had proved expensive—ruinously so, some said. Coffers needed replenishing. For all her blue blood and breeding, Zenobia was lacking in fortune and land, while Augusta’s fortune was great and her estates went back to the Founding Twelve. Once they had their hands on her wealth, they would squander it all and bleed her lands and her people dry…
The banging started again.
“Right!” Annie headed for the door. “They’re getting a piece of my mind!”
The soldiers retreated under Annie’s blistering tongue, but only as far as the outer chamber.
“They’re still there, milady, and now Lady Zenobia’s ladies have arrived.”
Annie looked flustered and thoroughly out of temper.
“Well, we must make them welcome, Annie. Tell them I’m dressing.”
Augusta sat on her bed in her shift and tried to compose herself. It was important to appear cool, not to show the least agitation, even though it was already hot, her rooms were stifling, and she was now doubly a prisoner. Something close to panic was rising, frothing up like yeast inside her. What am I to do?
ALL THESE GLASS TOWN INTRIGUES. No matter how long you’d been absent, how far you’d travelled, once you were back, it was as though you had never been away…
It might have been hot in Glass Town but here it was raining; a heavy, penetrating rain. Not that a bit of weather would keep Emily inside, but there was a mountain of work to do. Keeper was stretched out in front of the fire, his paws twitching as if he, too, dreamt of running free across the moors. There was a good blaze in the grate; they might have lacked for funds but they seldom lacked for peat. She was supposed to be sewing a shirt, the seams long, the stitches small and all of a size. She turned one selvedged seam and started up the other way. She didn’t mind sewing so much, although she was often scolded for slapdash work and carelessness. She could think while she sewed—think and reflect. Thought runs faster than quicksilver, so she pinned, tacked, stitched it down as she worked.
She began on the other sleeve, brooding about Glass Town. They had buried their differences, which were trivial anyway, and had joined forces. They were playing with her, trapping her between them like the cats, Tiger and little black Tom, might play with a mouse. They had evoked the Jinn, the Genii, the terrifying physical manifestation of powers created in childhood, used now to herd and harry, to force her back to Glass Town where they were all powerful, where they dictated everything. Glass Town was their world. Going back was a trap, she could see now. They allowed her to escape, of course they did. They were there waiting for her. Rogue and Lord Charles Wellesley. A deadly combination. Rogue’s brute force and Wellesley’s subtlety. Separately, she could take them; outwit one, overpower the other. But together? She could feel cold doubt seeping into her, behind it the icy swell of fear. The Jinn were not just columns of fire and smoke; they could take other forms, manifesting in the mind…
A miss stitch drew blood. She watched it beading then sucked her thumb. She mustn’t think like that.
What did she have in answer? She matched the sleeve to the cuff. The boy, Tom. Brave, strong—and different. Neither theirs, nor hers. The unknown piece on the board. Like the Fool, Matto, in the Tarocchini, a card with no value, no number, but which could beat any other. He could make a difference but how? She didn’t know yet.
Meanwhile, she must do the unexpected. Yes. That was the key to this.
She worked on, quickly, methodically: each stitch a thought, each thought a stitch. When she finished one seam, she started on the next. At length, she ended with a double stitch and a French knot, biting off the cotton; someone had taken the scissors from her workbox. She put the needle safe in her needle booklet, her silver thimble into its holder. Then she shook out the shirt, examining her work for that day. A tiny spot of blood, already darkening to rust, on the inside of the sleeve, where no one would notice, but she knew it was there. She knew every inch. She smiled to herself, imagining him wearing it, her words running up and over, round and about him, encasing him like an invisible spell.
She put the work aside for the day and removed the tray from her workbox, moving the silks and swatches, ribbons and snippets, and took out a small sheaf of paper. She went to the parlour. It was colder in here, but she was in need of pen and ink. She intended to write.
AUGUSTA WAS STILL in her petticoats, still debating what to do. The clock was chiming the hour. The soldiers might have been banished to the corridor but Zenobia’s ladies were still there, her secondary jailers. She’d tried to persuade them to leave her, that their own mistress would be needing them and she had Annie, but they had no intention of going anywhere. She could hear them chattering through the door, ordering Annie to bring them this and that. They’d even banished Keeper. He made them nervous, so he’d been removed to the servants’ hall.
“He’ll be all right down there—the kitchen boys are making a fuss of him,” Annie had told her. “Giving him bones. He’s quite happy.”
How simple life was for dogs.
“I haven’t had a minute,” Annie said as she came in, carrying the dress that had been delivered for Augusta.
She laid it on the bed, smoothing out the pale lilac organza. The high bodice was sewn with seed pearls, the hem embellished with roses. Lilac didn’t suit her, draining the colour from her face. Besides, it was a colour she loathed. Zenobia would have chosen it especially. It was perfectly hideous. Not something she’d wear at all. A stand on the dressing table held the diamond tiara, too like a crown, the necklace of sickly yellow topaz that clashed with the dress and earrings of the kind Zenobia favoured, long and dangling.
Augusta frowned and bit her lip. She couldn’t see herself in any of this. A petty war within the greater. Who knows what is happening outside? Confined within these walls, she’d had no news.
“That shade won’t do owt for you.” Annie looked down critically. “Tack every bit o’ colour.”
“Where’s Tom?” Augusta asked quietly. Zenobia’s ladies’ hearing was acute.
“Don’t know, milady,” Annie whispered back. “Ent seen ’em.”
“Go and find out, would you?”
“What about this?” Annie picked up the dress. “And yer hair, and that? Do you want Lady Zenobia’s ladies to do it?”
“God forbid! It’s not as if I’ve never dressed myself, is it?” Augusta despised the helplessness of court ladies, their dependence on others to do every little thing for them. “You can do my hair when you get back.”
Annie returned, breathless. “Tom went off wi’ Lord Charles. That was this morning. No one’s seen him since.”
That was worrying news. Augusta didn’t trust Lord Charles Wellesley. He might have had more wit than Douro and more charm than Rogue but he was just as dangerous. Even more so. He was subtle and clever and had doubtless set himself the task of finding out as much as he possibly could about this new player. Augusta had deflected his curiosity at Bravey’s Inn, but without her presence, he would be free to question, cozen and wheedle. Cozening and wheedling were his specialities. And if those didn’t work? There were other methods. What Rogue’s rare lads lacked in subtlety they made up for in violence and brutality. Augusta felt a prickle of fear. She could feel a trap closing. What if they were working together and it wasn’t she who was the focus of their attention but Tom?
“Send Isaac and Amos,” she said to Annie. “Tell them to comb the city. Tom must be found. I can do the rest of this myself.”
Augusta finished her toilette and examined herself in the mirror. It wasn’t only the lilac bleaching her of colour.
“HOW AR
E YOU, YOUNG FELLOW? Rooms to your liking? Henry looking after you? Sleep all right?” Lord Charles came in without knocking and paced about Tom’s room. “Good, good. Sorry I had to leave you last night. Had to write up yesterday’s events and get the paper out. Breakfasted? Excellent.” He smiled. “What have you been doing with yourself?”
“I’ve been reading this.” Tom held up a book that he’d found on the shelf next to his bed.
THE HISTORY OF
THE YOUNG MEN
From Their First Settlement to the Present Time
by JOHN BUD, ESQ.
He’d started reading, hoping to find out more about this place and how it had come about, but he’d just become more and more confused.
“What do you make of it?” Lord Charles asked.
“Not a lot, to be honest.” Tom frowned.
“That’s because Bud wrote it. Can’t write for toffee. My own volume will be far better—when it’s finished, that is.” Lord Charles sat down. “What do you want to know? The Founding Story changes depending on who is doing the telling,” he went on before Tom could answer. “But all agree that Glass Town was founded by the Twelve, a group of bold military men who sailed from England to establish a new land. After many adventures, they ended up here. Conquered the natives hereabouts and established the Glass Town Federation. They divided the territory between them into different kingdoms: the Duke, of course, in Wellingtonsland; Sneachie in Sneachiesland; Ross and Parry in Rossland and Parrysland. Together, they built the Great Glass Town where we are now.”
“And where exactly is that?” Tom asked.
“Why, Africa!” Lord Charles exclaimed, as though that was obvious. “We are at the mouth of the Niger River.”
That explained the heat and humidity, the tropical plants and trees. It did not explain why not more than two days’ ride from here you could be in Yorkshire.