The Grass King’s Concubine

by Kari Sperring

  A few stragglers still made their way up the steps. Aude waited until the last one passed her and set her foot on the first—the last—step. They were shallow and worn, bowed at their center by patient feet. Under her thin soles, they were slippery; she put out a hand to the rope rail, found it damp and ragged. Two steps down; five; ten. She hesitated, gazing into the murk below. What if she could not find the officer, or he would not listen? She took another step, another, down and down until the yellow haze closed over her. It tasted foul, dirt and coal and metal. Under her veil, her eyes stung. Again she hesitated. No one would criticize if she chose to turn back now. Her chin went up, and her hand closed more firmly on the rope. She did not halt again. There was no one to speak up for the girl apart from her.

  The stairway ended in a funnel-shaped yard. High brick walls rose to either side, chipped and smoky. The cobbles underfoot were uneven and dirty. At the end of the funnel stood high iron gates, bolted to the walls with huge hinges and hung with four mighty locks. They stood open onto a further expanse of grime and cobbles. Beside them stood a small guardhouse; a single man leaned against it, his hands thrust deep into his pockets. As Aude approached, he glanced up, and for an instant, puzzlement lifted his face from its lines of boredom. For an instant, it seemed he might speak.

  She did not want to stop. If she stopped, her courage might flee. But she had to find her way. She bit her lip and said, “I’m looking for someone. A Lieutenant Favre.” Easy to remember, that surname. It was one of the commonest in the cities and the lands about them. The subaltern who had written to her years ago had shared it, along with many others. She added, “He’s with the City Guard, I think. He’s youngish.”

  The sentry looked her up and down. Then he shrugged. “City Guard headquarters are on Stone Quay. Ask there.”

  She had no idea where that was. She stared at him in silence. After a few moments, he sighed heavily and jerked a thumb at the gate. “Right at the top of the lane, then across the Buttermarket and head for the river. It’s on the near bank, by the Black Bridge.” And he turned his back.

  She could ask again if she had to. Straightening her shoulders, she slipped through the gates. She found herself at the end of a short alley, hemmed in by vast brick warehouses. Many wheels and many feet had polished the cobbles to a treacherous shine. The sky was hidden behind the yellow haze and the long shadows of the countless tall chimneystacks. The air tasted bitter, gritty. All around was the dull thudding of machinery, the rattling of carts, and the cries of human voices. Aude inhaled slowly and made herself walk to the mouth of the alley. She should have brought a map, if such a thing existed. She had never seen a map of the Brass City. In the fine maps and plans that adorned library walls in the Silver City, all that was shown at the foot of the cliff was an indistinct clumping of buildings and, running through it to the southwest, the river. Which meant…Reaching the end of the alley, she turned right into a wider street and jumped back as a cart whipped past her and disappeared into the gaping maw of one of the warehouses, flinging up sour slime from between the cobbles. Clutching her coat to her, she proceeded more carefully, picking her way through the muck.

  The Buttermarket proved to be a huge square, filled with stalls and carts and hawkers. Children darted between the wooden frameworks or dodged the rolling wheels. Women in ragged finery loitered in doorways or clustered in small groups, rolling their eyes at passersby. People jostled her from every side—workmen in leather aprons; women with baskets; filthy, ragged urchins. A reek of sour milk and rotting vegetation hung over everything. Aude choked behind her veil and put her head down, hurrying as best she could. If the river was indeed southwest of here, she needed to cross one corner of the space, then take the most likely route out of it. She passed two alleys crowded with household waste. Dogs nosed through it, and rats, too, from the glimpses she got. The third exit was a bigger street, cobbled and lined with booths selling grubby-looking pies and pastries. She hurried down it, hoping it would lead her in the general direction of the river. Asking for help no longer seemed so easy.

  The street ended at a Y-shaped junction. Aude hesitated, then chose the wider of the two options. It took a wide curving turn west, then dead-ended in a high wall topped with iron railings. The bricks were filthy, black with soot and other, less respectable things. She hesitated, looking right and left for any clue. Two women, barefoot and clad in threadbare gowns, eyed her coldly. She swallowed, suddenly aware of how little she knew of this place. She ducked her head, avoiding their gaze, and walked as briskly as she dared back the way she had come. Their voices called after her, raucous and mocking. Reaching the junction, she took the other street, eyes fixed on the ground before her. A man crouched in the gutter spat at her as the hem of her coat brushed him. She swallowed and hurried on. She had to do this. The girl from the mill had no one else to speak up for her. A gaggle of children, skinny as lathes and smeared in dirt, gathered about her. The eyes in their thin faces were old and knowing as they snatched at her sleeves. She flinched away, and the tallest of them sneered. “Too fine for muck, lady? Not too fine for my da’s pennies, I’ll bet.”

  Another child caught at her, tugging on the back of her coat. Aude twisted, but he—or she, it was impossible to tell under the grime—would not let go. From under the awnings of shops, women watched with blank faces. She pushed at the child with her gloved hands, but he would not let go.

  “Have you no common sense at all, Mademoiselle?” The voice was familiar. Aude turned to find the very man she sought—Lieutenant Favre—standing before her, arms folded. The children eyed his uniform, then, as his hand drifted toward his sword, let go, scattering to all sides. Aude staggered, caught off balance, and he put out the same hand to steady her. He shook his head. “What in five hells do you think you’re doing? This is no place for you.”

  “I’m looking for you.” Stepping away from him, she put her chin up. “I want you to let that girl go.”

  His eyes widened. Almost, it seemed he was about to laugh. He said, “That’s not up to me.”

  “Then take me to the person in charge.”

  “No, Mademoiselle.”

  She said, “But…” And then, “Why not?”

  “Because it’s not up to you what happens to her.” He took hold of her arm again and turned her. “Let me escort you back to your home.”

  It was not meant to go like this. He was supposed to listen to her. He was supposed to agree. In her head, she had seen herself helping the girl from a cell, and taking her to someplace—she had not really worked out where—where she would be looked after and helped. Instead…She asked, “What will happen?”

  “That isn’t your business.”

  “I don’t want her to suffer. She didn’t want to hurt me. That man at the factory was bullying her. She was frightened.”

  “She’s a member of a proscribed group. A troublemaker.”

  The route he took her was not the one by which she had come. It led down a back street, bordered on both sides by small workshops. Through their open doors, she could see men, women, and children laboring over benches and worktables. She said, “I don’t understand.”

  “No.” He was not looking at her. She had to jog to keep up with his long stride. He was angry, perhaps even more so than the day before. She did not understand at all. She had wanted to help.

  He did not speak to her again until they reached the foot of the stairs. Outside the gate, he halted, looked at her. He said, “Now, go home.”

  She said, “What do you mean, a proscribed group?”

  He shook his head. “A workers’ movement. They call themselves the Eschappés. They break machinery and burn goods. They want higher wages and better conditions in the workshops. The mill owners and factory owners don’t like that.”

  Aude was a mill owner. She did not see a problem. She said, “Why?”

  Lieutenant Favre just looked at her. Then he said, “Read, Mademoiselle. Read the newspapers.” He opened the gate and
indicated that she should pass through. “And don’t wander where you don’t belong.”

  Back in the house on the top of the cliff, Aude had a maid bring the newspapers to her from her uncle’s study. Economic and political events were tidied away into dense columns of small print, unleavened by lithograph or sketch. They told her of the fluctuating values of cloth and iron, of the interests of landholders and mill owners. They invoked the spirits of the Trade Balance and the Excise. They laid out, word by tidy word, the hungers of the rich; but of the poor they narrated only tales of ingratitude and lack of reason. Perhaps the young woman at the mill had had enough of gratitude. It was not, Aude reflected, uniformly comfortable, having always to be grateful. The girl and her fellow mill workers had not looked as though they had much to be grateful for, nor did the broadsheets of the Silver City explain the grounds for the hypothesis.

  She had a footman bring her the newspapers of the Brass City. Her uncle raised his eyebrows at that, and she told him that she meant to understand the workings of her businesses. He, who had taught her to read accounts and balance books, could only nod. “Lot of radical nonsense in them, mind you. But you’re a sensible girl. You’ll see.” The rest of the staff clearly wanted to know what she was about, but convention prevented them from asking. The footman returned with a handful of news sheets, printed on rough grayish paper. Fingertips blackening, page by page, she read how the council and the king damaged mercantile interests with importunate taxes and restrictive laws. She learned that towns must grow but wages must fall and that old enmities between nations must give way before the whims of trade. She discovered that the poor were lazy and inflexible and incontinent in their lifestyles.

  Nowhere did any paper tell her what those rebels, the Eschappés, wanted. She quickly realized, however, that whatever it was, both the council in the Silver City and the tradesmen who owned the Brass City found it inconvenient.

  Well, she had been taught that it was inconvenient to be poor. She had taken that to mean that it damaged the pauper personally; she had not previously considered that poverty in others might discommode those who beheld it. She asked her uncle, and he frowned at her and suggested she should give up reading certain papers.

  Once she would have asked her governess, but the latter was no longer there to be asked. Ketty, when applied to, only shook her head and said, “That’s beyond me, Mademoiselle. The gods know, perhaps.”

  If they did, they gave no sign of it. The priests in the Silver City were sleek and elegant in their fine marble temples. Those in the Brass City wore coarser clothes and spoke with rougher accents. But neither group seemed to care overmuch for the poor. The memory of the shining place rose before Aude’s eyes and vanished. What good was a glimpse of such beauty to a world like this, where so many seemed to be in need?

  She took to sneaking off to the Brass City whenever she could, abetted by Ketty, pleading tiredness or headaches to her uncle. She had learned from her first expedition to be more circumspect, to walk more slowly and dress less well. Now she wore an old dress that Ketty had found in a ragbag and wrapped herself in a shawl, not a coat and hat. Bit by bit, she learned the narrow streets. She found mean small markets, redolent of old cabbage and cheap beer. She wandered under the shadows of the chimneys, flinching from the thunder of machines. Farther from the gate she found the bones of older houses, their once-fine walls mended with rags and driftwood, shutters cracked, reeking of overcrowded poverty. A once-grand old theater was now a gambling house; the great coaching inns were brothels or flophouses. Even the bridges had lost their fine carvings. Nowhere was beautiful or restful or clean. She passed tight-packed knots of lean-to huts, each wall supporting another, each space sheltering clutches of hot-eyed, skinny men, women, and children. Children! They were clad in rags; their bodies stank, and in their thin faces their eyes were those of adults. She choked behind her shawl, groped in her pocket for coins and found nothing. The adults glared at her as she passed, though none spoke or approached. The smallest children cringed from her, clinging to their mothers; the older ones snarled or spat. These were not the children she had known in her own childhood, but something else, some warped mockery. And she could do nothing. Even if she had money, how far would a few coins go? She turned away, ashamed.

  Everywhere men crouched in gutters, drinking, spitting at her feet. Uncountable stone-faced children labored in the open maws of workshops or ran wild, dodging wheels and curses. All the women seemed old, even those who gathered outside taverns in threadbare finery. Everywhere tasted and smelled sour, everywhere drowned in shrill voices, everywhere seemed to be sinking under the burden of dirt. The river ran sluggish, heavy with rotten food and rags, fragments of wood and broken glass, dead animals, discarded machine parts, oil and sewage. It wound through the factories and tenements, licking up their misery.

  Once she went to a temple. It was not grand, this building, nor historic nor well used. It squatted at one corner of the Grass Market, its frontage dark with soot and mud, its steps worn and unswept. Inside, it was dark and dirty, scented not with incense but mildew and boiled cabbage. The statues of the gods were old: lumpy wooden figures in chipped painted finery and broken crowns, but they were free of dust. A knot of wilting wildflowers lay in front of two of them, stems crushed and petals drooping. Fishing in her pocket, Aude found a small coin to drop in the offertory box. It fell with a thin thud, suggesting it found few mates within. The temples, it seemed, were no better at sharing their wealth across the two cities than men were. This place, built, no doubt, for the use of the men and women who hauled their loads of animal feed into the city, had never been high status. A poor place for poor people, as unkempt and neglected as they were.

  She bowed low to the wooden gods. Did they care if their worshipers were rich or poor? She had no idea. Such things were not discussed. As she turned to the last one, the door creaked open behind her, making her jump. She turned to find an elderly priest entering, carrying a rush basket holding half a loaf of dark bread and some rather grubby vegetables. Reflex had her drop a curtsy. The priest raised his eyebrows. “Mademoiselle? You are, perhaps, lost? You have become separated from your companions?”

  “No.” It was not the question she had been expecting. She fidgeted with her gloves. “I was curious.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Then you have seen. We are not so grand in our devotions here.”

  “No, Monseigneur. But…” Aude drew in a breath. He was here. She might as well ask. He did not know who she was, after all, so it could not get back to her uncle or her fiancé or any of the Silver City gossips. She said, “They don’t believe, people in the Silver City. They don’t believe the gods are real. It’s all show and…and affectation. And I thought…I mean, I wondered…Some of my servants…”

  “You think that the poor are more faithful?” The priest set his basket down on floor beside him and folded his arms. “Does it look like it?” She shook here head. He went on, “Why believe in gods who let your children starve? Who take your livelihood away, or leave you to work fourteen hours a day for less than the price of a crust? No, Mademoiselle, the poor do not believe.”

  He was not like the priests in the Silver City, with their fine robes and hot hands. He was more like the priest she remembered from her childhood. Awkwardly, she said, “I just…Some must believe, surely? I mean, people see things, experience things. Marcellan…”

  “Marcellan was long ago, Mademoiselle, and in a better time.” The priest stooped and gathered up his basket. “The gods don’t care about us, Mademoiselle. Why should they? We don’t care about each other.”

  It was hard to think of anything to say to that. He would think she was crazy if she tried to tell him that the gods might have spoken to her. And perhaps she was crazy; perhaps it had been all nothing more than a childhood fantasy, a dream.

  It would be easier to believe that if she did not still dream, sometimes, of the light and the roses and the dancers. If she did not wake with the scent of
oranges in her nostrils and the wind tugging at her windows. It made no sense. None of it, what she saw, what she was told, fitted together with what she had thought she knew.

  She wrote to Lieutenant Favre, asking more questions about what she saw in the Brass City. She received a curt note, no more than a list, really, of titles of works that she might read, some books, but mainly pamphlets. That proved more challenging than newspapers. They were harder to come by. She had to write to booksellers in the most discreet terms. She could not send a liveried footman to collect the goods. Many pamphlets were banned, for reasons of obscenity or blasphemy or political distaste. Her uncle would be horrified if he caught her. Ketty took the letters, entrusting them to a friend. While she waited for the pamphlets to arrive, Aude sent for the household accounts, and she discovered that they spent more on candles than on the wages of the housemaids. Of course, on top of money, most of the servants received full board and lodging. Yet she was uncomfortably aware that the servants’ rooms were at the rear of the house, cramped into garrets or shrouded in basements, and that they worked long hours for every meal. She remembered the scrawny limbs and dull faces of the shanty dwellers, and she went to her uncle.

  She swallowed and said, “I want to raise the servants’ wages.”

  He said, “Aude…”

  “They work so hard, and we pay them so little. I checked.”

  He leaned back in his chair and studied her. Something in his face suggested that he was not entirely displeased. He said, “We pay what others pay.”

  “I want to be kinder.” Perhaps this was why she had seen the shining place after all, not to find it, but to try to make the life she knew better. The priest in the Brass City might like that, if he believed it. She added, “Please.”