The door at the opposite end of the room opened, admitting a lovely young woman with sleek black hair coiled at the back of her head and shining ringlets hanging down the sides of her face. Alison resisted the urge to touch her own hair, which felt even frizzier now by comparison and was almost certainly free of her hairband on one side. The woman was dressed in an elegant day gown and her feet made no noise on the white carpet as she approached. “Good afternoon,” she said, her voice surprisingly deep. “I am Elisabeth Vandenhout.” She paused as if expecting Alison to react to this. Alison had never heard of the Vandenhouts, so she merely smiled and nodded. “Milady has asked me to see you settled in before joining her and her ladies. You have no luggage?”
“They’re bringing it in,” Alison said.
“I see,” Elisabeth said, in a tone of voice that suggested she thought Alison low-class enough to have arrived only in the clothes she was standing up in. “Well, your maid can help you freshen up a little. I’m sure Milady will understand your…condition. Where is your maid?”
Alison mentally kicked herself. How had she expected to get into a corset by herself? “I, ah, had to let my last maid go before I left Kingsport,” she said. “I intend to hire someone here.”
“I see,” Elisabeth said again. “Well, that’s unfortunate. I suppose you’ll just have to do your best.” She indicated a door and added, “That will be your suite while you’re with us. Feel free to…well, refresh yourself.” There was a sneer lurking somewhere behind her words. Alison smiled again and reminded herself, Polite. Demure. But wouldn’t it be nice to smack her across the face?
There was a tiny sitting room just inside the door, less ornate than the antechamber, but drenched in the scent of fresh flowers on the table on the far side of the room. Another door led to a dressing room with two wardrobes stained dark walnut and a matching marble-topped vanity table. Alison looked in the mirror and shuddered. Her hair was falling down on one side, and somehow she’d acquired a smudge high on her left cheek. She scrubbed at it with her sleeve and quickly turned away. Beyond the windowless dressing room was a small bedroom, its four-poster bed dominating the space with its white and gold quilt and pillows. Two tall, narrow windows flanked a fireplace with a mantel of ivory marble, on which was another display of fresh flowers. Under each of the windows were brass boxes about the size of a shoebox that contained some complicated Devices, gears and wires that hummed with energy and, with the push of a button, would generate heat. The fireplace was either an artifact of an earlier time, or for added comfort when the snows fell. Alison felt her resentment turn into guilt. The Dowager had clearly made an effort to welcome her, and she could at least add “gracious” to “polite and demure.”
The bathing chamber was completely modern and had a very large tub of white porcelain, whiter even than the carpet, with shining brass fittings. She took a few minutes to admire the self-cleaning toilet—some of the facilities at Waxwold Manor still had chamber pots—and to wash her hands and face. Her skin was still clear and unblemished despite the journey—she’d never needed cosmetics, not like Elisabeth, whose careful use of them hadn’t entirely been able to hide a few blotches on her nose and forehead. Alison patted her face dry and went back to the dressing room, which thankfully had been furnished with a full set of brushes and combs. Alison tidied her hair, tied it back again at the nape of her neck, and pinched her cheeks to give herself some color, then returned to the antechamber, where Elisabeth wasn’t bothering to conceal her impatience. “Don’t you look nicer,” she said. “Considering what you had to work with, that is.”
“Why, thank you, Elisabeth,” Alison said with her brightest smile. “I would like to meet…Milady…now, if you don’t mind?”
Elisabeth smiled that almost-sneer again. “This way,” she said.
The room beyond that farthest door was a smaller, rounder version of the antechamber. Seven or eight chairs, gilded and upholstered in white, stood in a loose circle around the room, their cushions heavily embroidered with fanciful floral wreaths in dark purples and golds. The afternoon light filtering through gauzy curtains cast a soft glow over the furnishings, and Alison had a sudden powerful memory of herself as a child reading at her mother’s feet, leaning against the rich velvet of her skirt and rubbing it against her cheek while the light from her mother’s study window flowed over them both.
Five women looked up at Alison’s entrance, one of them lowering a book to her lap. Four of them were young, the oldest possibly in her late twenties. The fifth was an attractive older woman, her graying chestnut hair cut short and framing her face like a cap. She wore a matron’s dark gown, much plainer than what the other women were wearing, and several rings adorned the fingers of her right hand, including her wedding band on her middle finger. “You must be Alison Quinn,” she said in a lovely fluting voice, and stood, shifting her embroidery frame to one side and coming forward to kiss Alison gently on both cheeks. “I am so glad to meet you. Will you join us? I know you have no work to do, but reading time is almost over and perhaps you will enjoy listening.”
Alison took a seat, horribly conscious of her travel-worn state and her probably filthy trousers that would leave a mark on the white velvet. She perched on the edge of the chair, leaned forward so as to bring as little of herself into contact with it as possible, and listened with half her attention to the monotone of the young woman reading a volume of poetry by Shereen Wilson that Alison herself had edited. She felt a little ashamed of the assumptions she’d made about the Dowager, and watched the woman covertly through her downcast lashes.
Rowenna North’s needle flew in and out of the cloth, deftly sketching out shapes Alison could only barely see; she seemed to be monogramming a napkin set, something prosaic Alison would not have expected the widow of a king to be engaged in. The other women pretended to be engaged in their own needlework, but she could feel their eyes on her. Alison was uncomfortable around other women of her social class, most of whom were so conscious of her rank they were stiff and overly formal. She hadn’t had a close friend since she left the Scholia, four years earlier, when her best friend Tessa and her husband Henry Catherton had moved east to Barony Daxtry. Henry had been one of Alison’s professors, not Tessa’s, but he had lost his position at the Scholia anyway when it came out he and Tessa were involved. It had been completely unjust, and the memory made Alison burn a little inside with remembered anger. She didn’t regret her time at that institution, had learned so much there, but Henry’s ouster was just another example of how rotten the Scholia was in far too many ways. Perhaps one or more of these young women might become her friends—well, probably not Elisabeth—but Alison wasn’t here to make friends; she was here to do her service to the Crown and then return to her real life.
“Thank you, ladies, that will be all. Supper will be served in one hour, and then you are free to amuse yourselves as I have no engagements this evening. Alison, dear, if you wouldn’t mind staying?” The Dowager gestured to Alison to take the chair just vacated by the reader, and Alison again perched on its edge while the young women carried their embroidery frames to concealed cabinets in the walls and then left the room, all but Elisabeth Vandenhout casting curious glances in Alison’s direction.
“I hope your journey wasn’t too taxing,” the Dowager said. “It’s two days from here to Kingsport, isn’t it? I should have allowed you to rest immediately on arrival, but I was so eager to meet you I simply couldn’t help myself.”
Alison chewed and swallowed. “Eager, your—I mean, Milady?”
“Because of your work, dear. I do love reading, and I’m eager to hear what it’s like to be an editor.” The Dowager clasped Alison’s left hand in both of hers, her eyes shining. “I am so happy you accepted Zara’s invitation,” she said. “I look forward to hearing your insights into the books we read, particularly if any of them are books you’ve worked on! And you have such a lovely voice, dear, it will be a genuine pleasure to hear you read to us.”
Zara’s invitation? More like a royal command. “I…it’s an honor to serve you, Milady,” Alison stammered. “I hope I’ll be satisfactory.” The Dowager clearly had no idea the Queen was strong-arming the young noblewomen of the country to entertain her mother, and Alison guessed it would break Milady’s heart to learn the truth. From her greeting, Alison felt the Dowager really was as sweet and guileless as she appeared. Telling her how much Alison had had to give up to be her companion would simply hurt her, and Alison had no intention of doing that.
“Oh, my dear, I don’t think of it as service,” the Dowager said, releasing Alison’s hand. “I simply enjoy the company of young people. It invigorates me. And I hope it will not be entirely unrewarding for you. Now, let me tell you what I expect of my ladies. We breakfast at eight-thirty every morning, which I realize is early, but I no longer keep court hours with such exactness as I used to. Then three days a week I pay calls from ten until noon, and two of my ladies join me for those; you’ll be told when your turn is. I nap after dinner and then for two hours in the afternoon we do needlework while one of us reads aloud. I trust you do sew?”
“I do, Milady, but I rarely have time for it these days.”
“Well, you won’t be able to say that anymore!” The Dowager trilled a laugh. “You’ll be expected to take your turn as reader, but I suppose that will pose you no challenge. Then most evenings we will attend some sort of public event, dances or concerts or the opera. The rest of the time is yours to fill as you please.”
“That’s very generous of you, Milady.”
“Not at all. This is meant to be an honor, not a constraint. I simply expect you to behave like a lady in public. Your behavior reflects on me, naturally.”
“Of course, Milady,” Alison said. “Thank you for making me feel so welcome.” No, she certainly would not give this woman any indication she resented being there. Polite, demure, gracious, and enthusiastic, she thought. I think I can manage three out of four of those at once.
Chapter Two
The vaulted hallway looked as if it had been carved out of living rock rather than built. Even in her soft-soled shoes, Alison’s footsteps echoed. Dark gray walls absorbed the light from the glass and bronze Devices that hung at ten-foot intervals from the ceiling, some twenty feet above. The dim lighting and the cavernous interior of the passage made Alison feel as if she were creeping along to some secret rendezvous, or traveling through enemy territory to bring critical information to the Queen. It was exactly the sort of hallway she would expect to lead to the Royal Library. She’d been walking for nearly fifteen minutes and hoped she would be able to find her way back to the Dowager’s apartment later. Well, the palace might be a maze, but so far Alison had found it impossible to lose herself in it, because there was always someone around the next corner to tell her how to find her destination, or at least where to go next.
She passed a small door and had to back up because she glimpsed, as she went by, a bronze plaque the size of her two palms spread wide that said ROYAL LIBRARY on it in archaic script. It didn’t look like the door to Tremontane’s oldest repository of written knowledge. It looked like the door to a storage closet. It had a simple latch and no lock, and the bottom quarter of the door looked as if it had been kicked a hundred thousand times before. Alison pressed the latch down and pushed the door open gently without resorting to kicking it. It swung inward silently, which was another disappointment; it ought to groan on ancient hinges and need a hefty push to move it. On the other hand, groaning was probably counter-indicated, in a library, so the silence was just as well.
The room beyond was as cavernous as she’d hoped, and smelled deliciously of old paper and fresh ink, but there were no bookshelves and almost no books anywhere. The ceiling was so high shadows gathered like cobwebs in its furthest corners—at least, Alison hoped they were shadows and not actual cobwebs; she would hate to meet the arachnid that could produce webs of that size. Grimy windows high in the stony walls let very little light into the room; it was mostly illuminated by light Devices attached to the thirty or forty unadorned and very modern-looking desks lined up in three rows in the center of the room. So, not the Library; a scriptorium. At the far end of the chamber, a much longer desk with a modesty panel ran nearly the length of a foot-tall platform, seven or eight feet long. Cabinets painted a dull mustard yellow covered the wall behind the desk. There were two men behind the long desk, dressed in the robes of Scholia Masters, and half a dozen men and women sat at desks in the center of the room and read or took notes on the books spread out in front of them. One woman was standing at a lectern, flipping the pages of a large volume that was chained to it. A couple of young men in apprentices’ tunics wandered between the desks, checking the inkwells. No one paid any attention to her arrival.
To her left was a door, iron-bound and enormous, probably ten feet wide and several more than that tall. It looked as if it had stood there since before Aurilien had been founded, as if it had waited for a city to grow up around it so it could fulfil its purpose as guardian of Tremontane’s greatest literary treasure. It looked exactly the way she’d imagined it. She crossed quickly to it and turned the knob at the center of the right-hand door and pulled. It didn’t open. She pulled once more before realizing the door was locked. Yes, they would need security, but surely they wouldn’t lock the Library during the day, when everyone was here?
“Is there something I can help you with?” A skeletal old man put his hand on hers and removed it from the knob. His eyes were a strange green that reflected the light as if they were made of glass and his slight smile had no good humor in it. He smelled strongly of a musky cologne and, more faintly, of the sour reek of an unwashed body. He spoke in a low voice, not quite a whisper.
“I came to see the Library,” Alison replied at the same volume.
“I’m afraid that’s impossible. No one sees the Library.” He said it in the way someone might say the sun rises in the east.
“I wouldn’t disturb anything. I just want to see it. I’ve come from Kingsport—my father is a publisher—”
The smile slipped away. “Being related to a merchant is nothing to recommend you.” He thrust her hand from him as if she were contagious.
“I’ve also had four years at the Scholia, if that matters to you,” Alison said, stung.
“It might, if you’d achieved the robe while you were there.” The man put his hand on her elbow and steered her away from the door. “Feel free to use the catalog to request books,” he added. He indicated the book on the lectern. “The Library is open to all.”
Alison wrenched away from his grasp and went to the lectern, her face burning. Open to all indeed. She’d only wanted to see it. The Masters at the Scholia, most of them anyway, tended toward arrogance and territorialism, but she’d thought the Royal Library would be different, because…what had she expected? That they’d open their doors to her because she really, truly wanted them to? Putting her hand on the catalog’s cover, worn from years of other hands touching it, she had to laugh at herself. Apparently Alison Quinn wasn’t as important as she believed herself to be. Well, she was here, closer to the Library than she ever imagined she’d be, and she would take as much advantage of her six months’ stay as she could.
She lifted the cover of the catalog and paged through the first section, breathing deeply to inhale the scents of paper and old leather, the smells of her childhood. She flipped back a few pages. By heaven, this was a stupid way to keep a catalog. It seemed they only wrote in the entries as they received books and didn’t bother with indexing or grouping by subject. How anyone might find anything in this mess—but then, she knew from her years of study that Scholia-trained librarians developed their own organizational systems they wouldn’t share with others. They claimed it was to teach reasoning and independence of thought, but Alison was certain they did it to make themselves the gatekeepers of knowledge; a library was worthless if you couldn’t find what you needed to know. She turned a few
more pages. They’d cut the spine and wedged in new pages at the back so the book was nearly five inches thick. She turned all the way to the back. They dated the new entries—how strange, the final entry was nearly two years old. Surely the Royal Library hadn’t stopped acquiring books?
“Excuse me,” she said to the skeletal man, who was still hovering near the Library door as if he were afraid she might try to break it down, “I notice it’s been a few years since the Library bought anything new. Why is that?”
He fixed her with his eerie green-glass eyes. “We only accept the highest quality literature,” he said. “Much of what is being printed today is worthless, of no interest to the ages. We see no reason to clutter our shelves with such.”
“But—”
“Your father is a…publisher, yes? You must know better than most the truth of what I say. Now excuse me. I have work to do.” He didn’t move, just stood there and stared her down until, a little unsettled, she turned and left the scriptorium, pretending she wasn’t running away.
In the hallway, she stood for a moment and stared at the door. A dozen cutting remarks suddenly came to mind, now that it was too late to use them. It wouldn’t have made a difference even if she had thought of them in time. She dug in her pocket for her watch Device; it was nearly time for afternoon reading, anyway. She’d come back, and perhaps next time the skeletal man wouldn’t be there, or would be in a better mood, but at any rate she wasn’t going to give up on her dream when she was close enough to touch it.
No gown was worth this amount of pain, but there was no help for it, so Alison braced herself against the footboard of her bed and tried not to breathe. Her maid Belle drew the strings of Alison’s corset tighter another half inch. “Happen that’s enough, milady,” she said in her melodious northeastern accent, like the accompaniment to an invisible orchestra.
Servant of the Crown (The Crown of Tremontane Book 1) Page 2