by Celia Rees
“What have you done to him?”
Rogue sighed and shrugged. “An overzealous underling. No real harm done.”
“Could have been.” Tom rubbed his jaw. Before Johnny had turned up, harm had looked certain—and permanent.
“Best be careful where you venture. If such… misunderstandings… are to be avoided.” Rogue’s answer was more threat than apology. “Now I must go.”
“Me, too,” Lord Charles announced. “Time to join the throng.”
“Just a minute.” Johnny Lockhart held Wellesley’s arm. “I have questions: how did Rogue’s henchmen know about Tom? And how would they know he’d be at Bravey’s?”
“I have no clue…” Lord Charles shook his head in denial but his ready colour gave him away.
“I think you do.” Johnny’s grip tightened.
“Well, I might have said something. To provoke a comment. Get a reaction. It makes a good story. For the Young Men’s Magazine, you know. I like to steal a march on my competitors.”
“Is that all you care about? Getting a story? And if there isn’t one, you’ll make it happen? Is that the way of it? It’s not good enough, Charles.” He looked around and dropped his voice. “There’s something going on. Something big. Rogue’s rare lads are here, in the Palace, disguised as footmen outside every door. Go and look if you don’t believe me. And they are armed. Who goes to a ball armed with pistol and sword? Everyone here is his prisoner. Rogue is poised to take Glass Town as his own. You can’t stand on the sidelines, notebook in hand. If he wins, there will be no Young Men’s Magazine by morning, no Intelligencer. The presses will have gone up in smoke, along with half Glass Town. Printers’ Row will be the first to go.”
Lord Charles blew out his cheeks, his bright hazel eyes weighing up the options. “Put like that…”
“I do put it like that. These are dangerous times. You have to choose a side. Which is it to be? Us, or Rogue?”
“You, of course. And Augusta. You have my pledge.” Lord Charles put out a hand to both of them.
“Good man!” Johnny Lockhart took the proffered hand. He turned to Augusta. “You must leave the city. Once Rogue is in control, he will want you as his consort.”
“He knows I hate him.”
“All the more reason.”
Augusta thought about how they’d danced, how he’d held her, how untroubled he’d been at her betrothal. She could hear the truth in what Johnny said.
“Augusta knows the secret ways of the palace. We used them enough as children.” Lord Charles led them to the back of the dining room, to where servants were coming and going through concealed baize doors. “Remember the corridor to the Game Room, the one with the sporting prints?” Augusta nodded. “Stag Hunt, as I recall. You two go, and good luck. We’ll find another way out.”
Augusta took Tom’s hand and they slipped out between hurrying servants too intent on fetching and carrying to notice them. They turned into a little-used corridor decorated with dusty hunting scenes. Augusta stopped at the third one on the right and pressed a hidden lever. The panel swung back, revealing a flight of steps.
“Careful. It’s dark.”
They felt their way down a circular stone staircase set into the walls of the palace. For a heart-stopping moment, the door at the base refused to open. Tom put his shoulder to it and they were out in the street.
From somewhere close came music and laughter.
“It’s Fiesta!” Augusta squeezed Tom’s hand, her dark eyes bright with hope and excitement. “We’ll hide in plain sight. Join the Moorishco. I know them. They’ll get us out of the city.”
* * *
The streets and squares were full of people. An orange moon hung in the sky like a lantern; fireworks added great bursts of colour to the stars. The fountains were running with wine and the crowd was noisy and hectic. No one looked twice at them as they threaded their way through the throng towards the Moorishco musicians perched on their wagon at the centre of the square. The musicians wore brightly coloured turbans and long, flowing robes in red, saffron, indigo. A line of girls circled, holding hands, their blouses shimmering with coins, their wide, brilliantly patterned Turkish trousers glittering with glass and sequins.
When they finished one dance and before they began another, Augusta went up to their leader and whispered something to her. She listened, collected something from under the wagon and the two of them disappeared.
The leader of the Moorishco nodded to his musicians and they began to play on instruments strange to Tom. He had never heard music like it. He stood, entranced. The tune began softly, a single strand of sound thrummed on something that looked like a lute; this was picked up by another lute, held upright and bowed like a cello, and carried on by flutes and pipes, two boys beating time on small goblet-shaped drums. The girls tiptoed out on bare feet, unwinding into the heart of the square, slowly turning and turning, their wide, brightly striped trousers flaring, their blouses a-shimmer. They moved faster and faster as the music became more insistent and then subsided back to the slower pace with the lilt and tilt of the music. The pattern was repeated again and again. The effect was hypnotic. More and more couples joined them, whirling into the square, winding and twining around in intricate patterns, spinning off in each other’s arms. Tom wasn’t that great at dancing but he ached to join them. His feet would not keep still.
“Come!” One of the girls broke away and took his hand. “Dance!”
It was Augusta, dressed in the robes of the Moorishco. Tom laughed. He’d failed to recognize her. He found himself spun into the square, his arms round her. His feet seemed to know what to do, even if he didn’t. They danced round in each other’s arms, her hair silky against his cheek; he breathed her scent, of lemon and lavender, while the rest of the world receded, passing in a multicoloured blur, with the Moorishco girls laughing, clapping, shouting, “Bravo!”
Gradually, the music faded. The cart was on the move, the girls dancing alongside it, the musicians still playing, leaving their music to haunt the square.
Breathless, Tom and Augusta broke away from each other.
“Quick. We must follow them!”
Augusta took Tom’s hand and they ran after the fading music, then she stumbled. Tom caught her and they were in each other’s arms again. Tom kissed her and she kissed him back. Her hands went to his face, her fingers in his hair. Her mouth was warm; she tasted of cinnamon and summer. Somewhere, Tom could hear that tune playing over and over, weaving a pattern in his head that he knew would always be there.
A tocsin bell sounded and the music stopped. The steady beat of marching feet filled the space left by it.
“That’s too early for curfew!” Augusta broke away.
She looked past Tom, her eyes widening. This wasn’t the Watch. These weren’t the Duke’s soldiers. They wore blue jackets and tall bicorne hats pinned with tricolours. These were the Revolutionary Guard. Her hold on Tom tightened, but she was no match for the arms that tore him away from her, or for the circle of fixed bayonets.
Pigtail strolled up and seized Tom by the shoulder. “We bin looking for you, my lad.”
From all over the city, called by the
muffled tocsin bell, came the furtive
scuff of leather on stone, the swish of
sword, the click and snick of a gun
being cocked. Whispered orders…
“’AST THA FINISHED YON SHIRT YET? Stop tha pitter-pottering. There’s potatoes need peeling. Dinner won’t mak itself.”
The voice from the kitchen pulled her out of one world into quite another. Emily shook her head, as if to be rid of an annoying fly. Writing, reading, any activity that wasn’t pegging out washing, mangling said washing, or ironing, or sewing and mending, or cleaning, or kneading bread and making puddings, or, yes, potato peeling, was “pitter-pottering” and thus wasting time. But she needed to get this down before it all vanished, the bubbles bursting and disappearing.
The last strains of the
Moorishco’s haunting tune
faded as the band wound their way out of the city, tiny
figures pulling a tiny cart, like fleas in a circus…
She was high up, standing on top of the Tower of All Nations. Higher than any other building, the darkened towers, domes and pinnacles of Glass Town spreading out and away like buildings in a toy town. There was no rail in front of her, no balustrade. She was standing on the very edge.
“Look down! Down!” The voice was close to her ear, full of glee and gloating. “Tell me what you see.”
Augusta shifted her gaze to the Great Piazza. The shadows of buildings falling sharp across the moonlit square. Men with torches standing around a wooden platform. A cart coming slowly across the wide expanse of the square. Pulled by two big horses, its cargo too big for the bed of it. The cart was turning, the horses reversing. Men leapt up to lift; others stood braced to take the weight of the load. The great blade, set at an angle, caught the torchlight as it slid from the cart, flashing red as if already drenched in blood. The thin, tall structure was manhandled into the slots made for it. A man dressed in black busied himself with ropes and pulleys. He hauled the blade up inside its frame and then let it fall with a thud to the empty block at its base. He did this several times, adjusting the ropes and pulleys slightly, standing back, hands on hips as the blade rushed down at varying speeds.
“I sent for him from Paris.” Rogue was speaking in her ear. “It was designed by a Frenchie, so it makes sense to have one to work it. I had it made especially and shipped over.” His breath quickened. “Now to see what it can do…”
A watermelon had been placed on the block. At a signal from the Frenchman, the blade was hauled up. It fell quickly, splitting the watermelon. A slight squelch behind the chunk of the falling blade. One half tumbled into a basket; the other spilt pink pulp as it hit the platform. The mess was cleared, the blade hauled up and the procedure began again. A pumpkin this time. The blade fell and cut clean through orange flesh and rind. An assistant brought up a swede, about the size of a man’s head; Augusta squinted—at least, it looked like a swede, but it was hard to tell at this distance. She hoped it was a swede; prayed it was. She closed her eyes as the blade fell.
Augusta opened her eyes to see Pigtail sluicing the platform. She turned away with a shudder. Since when did swedes have blood and brains?
“Perfect, perfect!” Rogue clapped his hands. His delight in this vile spectacle exposed the true viciousness of his nature. “The Frenchman is a genius. The balance is just right! No! Don’t turn away!” He forced her head round. “You’ll miss the best part!”
Below her, the man in black was stepping back, dusting his hands. The heavy blade was being hauled up.
“Quite the most efficient form of execution,” Rogue was saying. “Modern and mechanical, and everyone meets death equally. No distinction between the axe and the hangman’s noose. Quick and efficient, it can get through hundreds in a day, but it has to be adjusted correctly: too light, and the neck isn’t severed cleanly; too heavy, and the edge is damaged.” He held her head firmly. “Now we’ll see what it can do to a living man—or a boy.”
Two of Pigtail’s rare lads were dragging a man across the platform, his feet trailing on the ground, hands bound, his shirt torn from his neck. They delivered him to Pigtail, who pushed him down under the hovering blade. Just as the blade was falling, the man moved. The blade sheared through the skull at the jaw.
Rogue shook his head, his lip curling with disgust as the bloody remnants of the man were dragged away; water was thrown to sluice the bubbling blood.
“I told Pigtail that wouldn’t work. I’ve devised a far better system of delivery.” He stared down, entranced by his hideous killing device. “In the morning you’ll see just how efficient my new toy can be. Tomorrow, it will taste blood aplenty. I am merely giving the people what they want. They tire of tyranny.”
“And what would they get under you?”
“Now is not the time for political debate. The Duke is my prisoner, as are you.” Rogue gently swept her hair to the side. “Such a little neck,” he mused, passing a fingernail across her skin, light but sharp.
Augusta raised a hand involuntarily to see if there was blood.
Rogue’s fingers tightened and he forced her head forward. His breath quickened as two men approached the platform carrying a man strapped, face down, to a long board. This whole revolting display had been a kind of dreadful theatre, building towards this maximum horror for, when he turned his head to one side, Augusta saw that it was Tom…
“I’ll do them later!” she shouted back to the kitchen, but it was too late.
She’d lost her grasp on the story. The fabric of the scene was disintegrating, disappearing as fast as silk in a flame. She threw down her pen in frustration. Ink splattered in a line of blots across the page. She joined them up, trying to doodle her way back to the line of her thinking but it was no good. It had gone.
She whistled Keeper to her. Time for a walk.
The rain had stopped, except for a few fine drops carried on the wind. She pulled up the hood of her cloak and set off. She’d changed into stout men’s boots and had taken a strong blackthorn stick from the hallstand. She meant to take a long tramp. Keeper bounded in front of her, leading the way. She often did this if she was stuck somewhere in the story, had a knotty problem to tease out, or the world had to be reconjured, as now. Walls confine. Out here, the mind could go where it will.
She joined the broad path that led up behind the church and out of the village, head bent, eyes unseeing on the stone slabs beneath her feet, and let her mind range back to Glass Town. Was she in danger of writing herself into a corner? Of letting the excitement of the scene run over the edge of logic? And things did have to make sense—had to be within the range of what was possible—even in Glass Town.
The trick was to go back, to strip down; not to change things unless completely necessary, but to see what had to be put right to justify what was happening now. What was Rogue up to? What did he want?
Her wide, loping stride soon left track and village behind. Keeper had left her, bent on his own business; he was soon just a tail moving in the ferns. She followed her feet, taking the narrow crooked paths that branched between the bilberry bushes and low-growing heather. The rain had turned them into little rills and streams but she didn’t mind that. Her aim was to get high, higher; to leave home, church, village behind; to get to a place where she couldn’t even see them, to get to a place where she could think.
She was making for an outcrop of rock, one side sheer; the other, the more sheltered side, an uneven layering where the rock had split along natural faults and been further split for building stone, millstones, standing stones, like as not. The result was a stair leading to a natural chair, formed of great slabs of the coarse-grained stone. She was not the first to sit here; the stone was traced with faint cups and whorls marking other, older occupation. The place was protected from the weather and out of sight. Below her lay a place where streams met and pooled, spiked with reed and rush, bright with moss and fern. Beyond, the back of the moors spread away, only one distant building in sight, stone roofed and stone built, so huddled into the hills that it looked like part of the landscape. She settled herself, her arms resting, hands on the rough stone.
“No!” Rogue forced her head round, digging into the flesh between her skull and her neck, his fingers as strong as a metal clamp. “You must watch!”
“He’s done nothing! He’s an innocent!” Augusta could hardly get the words out. “Stop this now! Let him go!”
Rogue looked down to where Pigtail stood by the guillotine, the rope in his hands, awaiting his orders.
“On one condition. You have to promise yourself to me, Augusta.”
Augusta stared down at Tom lying helpless. She was frozen with the horror of it. Paralysed with terror for him. Like in a dream or nightmare, her lips and limbs refused to move. Then, from somewhere very far a
way, she heard a voice, that didn’t sound like her voice, saying: “What choice do I have?”
At a nod from Rogue, the rope was secured, and Tom dragged away from the hovering blade, released and hauled to his feet.
He looked up and Augusta knew he saw them far above him, standing together. He was shouting but she was too distant to hear him.
Tom began to struggle, fighting with his captors. Pigtail took something, the lead-weighted blackjack he always kept in his pocket, and dealt him a blow that sent him to his knees.
Rogue ignored the scene below.
“We are made for each other, Augusta,” he was whispering. “You know it. Anyone else would be consumed by us, turned to smouldering ashes.” Rogue looked over Glass Town laid out before them. “All this will be ours, ordered how we want it. We can create a republic, like the French.”
“And that turned out so well,” she whispered.
Rogue chose not to hear her.
“What is your man doing? You promised you’d release him!”
Since when did Rogue keep his promises? She blinked away tears of fear for Tom and fury at her own helplessness.
“I promised no such thing. I promised I wouldn’t guillotine him. The two things are very different. Imagine it, Augusta,” he went on, as if Tom and his fate were of no importance. “No more kings, no more dukes. No more noble families. We would rule together with the people. In a spirit of justice and fairness. Everybody equal. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?”
Did he think that he could persuade her? He was both vicious and deluded. Augusta looked at the space falling away below her. There was no separation, nothing between her feet and the edge…
As if he sensed the slightest impulse, the anticipation, the first tremor of movement, he took her in his arms, his great cloak wrapping around her like black wings. He bent his mouth to hers and his kiss was savage, bruising; she tasted blood. She could feel the heat of him, the deep drum of his heart beating as he held her against him. She made no resistance, frozen by a thought more dreadful than any of the horrors she had been forced to witness. What if the emotion that she’d always taken for hatred had been love all along?