by Tanith Lee
She has a pointy face, rouged all rosy, and now her hair was powdered a kind of cabbage colour.
Her mouth sneered over her sharp little teeth.
‘You deserve a slap,’ she said to me.
I lifted my head, and looked at her. She doesn’t like that. But then she hates me anyway, even if she would never admit to hating something as low as a maid.
‘Don’t you stare at me,’ she rasped. But I’d already bowed my head again. ‘I’m so tired of you, Claidi. I can’t even beat any sense into you. I’ve asked mummy, and she says she’ll have you properly whipped, if you won’t pull yourself together.’
Then her little eyes went over me and fixed on Daisy.
In all her green, Jade Leaf went the colour of an exploding raspberry. ‘Why you ghastly little beast—’ she shrieked, ‘that gown – you’ve ruined it—’
Heads turned.
Princess Shimra spoke coolly nearby, in the cluster of ladies, ‘Calmly, Jade Leaf. You’ll give yourself another headache.’
Several princesses murmured soothingly, slinking and swaying like one more bed of lushly tinted plants.
JL lowered her voice and leaned towards us like a snake.
‘Expect something,’ she said. ‘And you too, Pattoo. You’ll have done something, even if I can’t see it.’
I was already frightened. She’d never threatened me with a proper professional whipping from her mother’s steward before. Now I went cold. Daisy was breathing fast, and Pattoo had crumpled. It was so unfair. She’d done nothing at all.
But now the Gardeners were pompously bringing the Two Thousandth Rose, in a gilded basket, and the royal ones were bending over it and exclaiming.
It reached Lady J, and she too peered down.
What a nasty sight. This green and puce monster craning in over the new rose, which was itself extremely hideous.
It was exactly the colour Daisy’s sick had been. And it was a funny squirty shape. And it had a perfume which, even through all the other perfumes, was so sweet it could make you gag.
‘Ah, how lovely,’ swooned LJL, gentle and melting.
She undoubtedly thought it was.
Oh, I could have killed her. I truly would have liked to, right then and there.
We were all for it anyway. And why? I’d merely glanced up. Daisy had spilled the rotten oil because she had to wear a stupid fashion. Pattoo had simply been there.
My eyes burnt. No one was more surprised than me to see a huge burning tear-drop, heavy as a hard-boiled egg, thump, from each of my eyes. They plunged into the lawn.
As I was gawping at this extraordinary thing, everyone else began to shout and howl, and a hot and frantic sensation filled the rose-thick walk.
Like a fool, I thought they were angry at me for spilling tears.
Then I looked up again, and it wasn’t me at all.
You can’t always see the moon. At night, sometimes the clouds are thick as wool. And in the daylight, if the moon is there, it’s transparent as a soap bubble.
Now I could see the moon clearly by day, and it was quite beautiful, and odd. It was a silver globe, shining bright, and slimly striped with soft red.
Something seemed to hang under it, an anchor perhaps, to moor it to the ground when it set?
Which was fanciful and silly, because the moon wasn’t like that at all. And this was decidedly not the moon.
Princess Flara yowled, ‘An invasion! An enemy! Help! Save us all!’
Panic.
I had seen this happen years ago, also in the Garden, when a swarm of bees suddenly erupted from a tree. Princes and princesses, ladies and gentlemen, and all their flounced and spangled kids, wailing and honking and running for their lives.
I’d been a kid myself, about six, and I just sat down on the grass and waited for the bees to go by. Usually if you leave them alone they don’t sting you.
However, this was not a bee. What was it?
Someone supplied the answer, which also made no sense.
‘A hot-air balloon – a balloon—!’
They were off anyway. Galloping up the lawn and on to the paths of the Rose Walk. I noted lots of tube dresses had already been split, some up to the waist! – and lots of sticky oil was being spilled.
I looked at Daisy and Pattoo. A few of the other maids, and a handful of slaves were lingering too, scared but undecided.
The ‘balloon’ passed over the upper air, and was hidden behind a stand of large trees.
Pattoo said, ‘We ought to follow Lady Jade.’
‘Bees to Lady Jade,’ I muttered, nostalgically.
Daisy blinked. ‘But if it’s an invasion—’
Invasion, by the Waste. Where else could it come from?
Another of the maids, dressed in tasteful parchment silk, said uneasily, ‘Once a madman from the Waste flew over in a – balloon – and poured burning coals on the Garden!’
‘When was that?’ Daisy, wide-eyed.
‘Oh … once.’
The slaves were trotting off into the trees. A slave hasn’t ever much time for him-or-herself, so even the moments before we were invaded or had burning coals slung at us, were valuable.
Pattoo though turned resolutely and began to pad heavily up the path after LJL, who had promised us all ‘something’ bad.
Daisy reluctantly said, ‘We’d better.’
The others were also drifting off, upset and dutiful together.
If I stayed here, unless the invasion was total and nothing mattered any more, then I’d be blamed, and I was in trouble already.
Just then we heard the alarm trumpets and bells sounding from the House.
We ran.
Earlier, I think I said I wondered what you might find interesting, but I didn’t tell you much, did I? I apologize.
I didn’t, for instance, tell you about the House Guards.
Didn’t want to, probably.
As we came up on the higher lawns, with our ridiculous tube skirts clutched up to our knees (most unruly) to stop them tearing, the Guards were swarming through the Garden.
Sometimes you don’t see them for days. Unless your lady sends you into a part of the House, on an errand, where they are. LJ seldom did.
When I was little, I was horribly frightened of the Guards. I believe some really nice clever person had told me I’d better behave, or the House Guards would ‘get me’.
They’re there to defend us. Royalty first, naturally. But also the lowest of the low like servants, maids and slaves. They guard places in the House, too, the Debating Hall, for example, and the upper storeys where the royalty sleep. But they are mostly in their own guard tower, which is one of the highest towers of the House, even taller than the ones I spoke of with hundreds of steps.
The Guards wear blackest black, crossed with belts of silver, and slashed with epaulets of gold. They have high boots shiny as black mirror, with spikes sticking from the heel and the toe. They have knives in fancy scabbards, rifles decorated with silver, and embroidered pouches to carry shot. Medals cover them like armour.
Now they had on their copper helmets too, which have vizors, and more spikes pointing up from the top.
They looked like deadly beetles.
We cowered back among a fringe of rhododendrons, but one of the Guards turned and bellowed at us in a sort of hating voice:
‘Get inside, you damned rubbish!’
Daisy caught her breath, and I heard another maid start to cry. But everyone was scared already. And we bolted on for the House up the terraces and steps.
The Guards were dragging black cannon on black gun-carriages.
I saw a maid – Flamingo, I think – accidentally get in their way, and one of the Guards thrust her aside, so viciously, she sprawled.
In order to protect us properly, they were quite prepared to do us harm. In fact they seemed eager to hurt us, perhaps a sort of practice.
I ducked under a buckled, black-clad arm. Pattoo was dragging. I caught at her and hauled her w
ith me.
And there was the House, sugary and cute in sunlight.
The balloon seemed to have vanished.
Had we all dreamed it?
No, for the Guards were angling every cannon one way. I could smell gun-powder.
I’d heard of events like this, but never seen – smelled – one.
Just then, over a crest of poplar trees, the balloon drifted back again into sight, like a charming toy.
The Guards roared. They appeared to have forgotten us.
It seemed crazy to be out in the open, but somehow we stood and gaped up at the silvery bubble I’d mistaken for the moon.
And in the crystal windows of the House, there was face upon face, (like piled vegetables) pink, tawny, black, all the royal ones, glaring up into the sky, having pushed such unimportant beings as maids out of the way.
I grabbed Pattoo again. ‘Look.’
‘I don’t want to,’ she said, and she hid her eyes. Daisy was too scared to look away.
And I – I couldn’t either.
Then there was a sizzling sound, and the cannons blasted, one, two, three, four of them. The noise – there were clouds of stinking smoke and bits of fire splashed all around.
(Tinder has almost an almond smell, I absurdly thought, like marzipan for a cake …)
The balloon turned over, a wonderful fruit disturbed up on the tree of the sky.
Even like that, it looked effective. But then there was another burst of flame, up where the balloon was. And it reeled sideways. And then it began to fall. It looked so soft, as if there was nothing to it – the stuff you blow off a dandelion.
But when it dropped behind the trees, there came a terrific thud. The ground shook. Smoke bloomed up there like a new plant.
It was only then the House Guards gave a raucous cheer. They were yelling, as if in a game, ‘A hit!’ And ‘Well done, Jovis.’ And ‘Think we killed him?’
HIM
When we got into the House, everyone was going mad. People were running along the corridors, colliding when two or more were coming from different directions. They were running up and down the stairs too, and sometimes tripping and falling. The row was almost as bad as the cannon.
Pattoo, Daisy and I ran up the stairs towards the apartments of our evil mistress.
When we reached the double doors, they were open, and inside everyone also rushed about. JL sat in the middle of it all, screaming and pulling her own hair and thumping her fists on the sofa, and kicking her feet, off which her green silk shoes had flown.
She seemed worse than usual. I thought it was fear of the ‘invasion’, but surely she’d seen the balloon shot down?
Dengwi sidled up to me and hissed, ‘She says insects have got into her dress. Fleas or bees or something.’
This nearly made me laugh. I’d wished bees on Jade Leaf, hadn’t I.
I could see now the others were trying to get her dress undone, so they could sort out the situation, but LJL was in such a state they could hardly get near her. Suddenly she sprang up and ripped the dress in two bits with her own hands. She’s strong. (All those smacks and beatings she’s given have undoubtedly built up her wrists.)
There she stood in her lace-trimmed petticoat, snarling and pulling at herself.
The other maids began wiping and dusting her off. A few poor little ants were being murdered for daring to get into her gown.
I rushed forward too and began, more carefully, dusting the ants off, then carried the rescued ones and tipped them out of the window.
Outside, smoke still billowed over the Garden. Some of the Guards were marching up the Cedar Walk, and there was someone, not a Guard, having to march in the middle of them.
‘Is that – the invader?’ whispered Daisy, letting go more ants to freedom down the wall.
‘Must be.’
We tried to lean over and see more, but JL was screaming again even louder.
Daisy and I helped shake out JL’s petticoat. Jade Leaf thrust us off, managing to poke Daisy in the eye.
‘Oh you filthyword little sluts!’ squawked JL.
Outside, they’d be marching right under the window now.
I leapt away and dashed back to the window, and looked down, calling as I did so, ‘Oh, madam, the Guards have a prisoner.’
‘Of course they have, you extrafilthyword little pest. Leave that, and come here. I’m covered in these filthyword-Claidi-doesn’t-even-know things!’
Under the window, the ghastly Guards swaggering, and this man, sort of swaggering too. He wore a longish grey quite-military-looking coat, and the sun was gold, pure utter gold, all over his long, rough-cut hair. It didn’t look possible, this hair. Powdered, perhaps? Didn’t seem to be. It looked … real, in a way reality seldom manages.
Just then JL threw something at me – it was a paper-weight, I saw later – and it caught me sharp and cold with pain in my back. My breath went in a silly oof, and below, the prisoner, the invader, turned up his head to see, in the midst of capture, what creature it was that made such idiotic noises.
‘Come here you filthy filthyword!’ screeched dear Lady J.
I don’t know what happened. I can’t explain. Perhaps you can, perhaps it may, or something similar, have happened to you sometime.
Spinning round, I pelted straight at Jade Leaf. And as I reached her, I slapped her a huge stinging slap across half her disgusting pointy pink face.
Although the House was bursting with noise, this one room became completely silent. As if we had all been turned to stone.
I gazed at Jade Leaf, and had the thrilling joy of seeing the place I’d slapped turn from pink to boiling magenta.
Her mouth was wide open.
‘You … hit me.’
‘Lady,’ I cried, very concerned, ‘I had to. There was this awful insect on your cheek – you hadn’t noticed. It might have stung you.’
But Jade Leaf only plumped down on the rug abruptly, like a child, and said, ‘Hit me.’
‘Yes,’ said Pattoo, surprising me by her invention, ‘look, madam.’ And she showed JL a piece of squished fruit Pattoo must have got hold of just that moment to help me. ‘It’s horrible.’
‘A good thing,’ said Dengwi, ‘Claidi acted so quickly.’
Jade Leaf’s mouth opened more and her eyes were screwed away. ‘Mummy!’ she warbled. ‘I want mummy!’
Magically on this cue, through the open doors stepped Princess Shimra in a cloud of attendants.
‘Get up, Jade Leaf. What are you thinking of? The enemy balloonist has been taken to the Debating Hall. Change your clothes at once. Everyone will be there. Even Princess Jizania Tiger,’ added Shimra, with wondering scorn.
To go to the Debating Hall everyone has to wear blue. I don’t know why. It’s yet another rule of the House.
Changing that hurriedly wasn’t easy, although JL was abnormally docile.
We powdered her hair on top of the green and it looked fairly awful. Pattoo powdered the red slap-side of JL’s face with white. Shimra hadn’t even noticed.
We didn’t have time for our own hair so we had to tie it in hasty untidy blue turbans.
My hands were shaking anyway.
The Debating Hall is huge, a high ceiling decorated with silver medallions, upheld by marble pillars, and below, a slippery polished floor. I know about the floor, because when I was nine or ten, I used to be one of the kids who polished it once every five days. And it took all day to do.
The ladies and princesses sat on their blue plush seats on the raised area, and the maids and servants and slaves gathered round to fan them and offer little tobacco pipes and calming drinks.
On the other side were the lords and princes, who, almost alone, make a decision at the end of every debate. However, at the head of the room was a long draped table, and behind that seven gilded chairs under a canopy. These are for the Old Ladies, the most ancient princesses. They too have an important vote.
Only three of the OL chairs were filled. There was
Princess Corris, who’s eighty, and Princess Armingat, who’s eighty-five. They attend every debate, and argue wildly at the end, always disagreeing with each other.
Today a third chair had been filled.
Princess Jizania Tiger is said to be one hundred and thirty years old. She does look it. But she’s absolutely beautiful. She seems made of the thinnest, finest pale paper. And her large hooded eyes are like pale amber pearls. She’s bald, and wore today a headdress that was a net of almost colourless silvery beads, set occasionally with a bud of emerald. (She alone hadn’t bothered with blue. Her grown was ash-coloured.)
I can’t imagine ever being old, let alone old like this. But if I had to be, she would be my model.
She has a fine voice, too. Soft and smoky, musical. She only sounds about sixty.
As a rule though, she never bothers with debates. Only the most unavoidable dinners and Rituals.
It must be nice to get out of so many boring and unimportant things.
Now she sat there, leaning her slender old face on her slender crooked graceful hand, that had one colossal topaz burning on it in a ring.
The big space at the Hall’s centre was fenced on two sides by weapon-bristling Guards, standing three deep.
I’d looked for him – I mean the prisoner, the enemy-invader – the moment we’d arrived. But the Guards are often dramatic. Only now did they march him in.
He seemed quite good-humoured, and certainly not upset. I wondered if he’d been hurt when the balloon fell, and was bravely hiding it.
The Guards left him alone in the middle of the Hall, and we all now glared down at him, and some of the royalty held up magnifying glasses.
Under the lighted lamps which are always lit in the hall, his hair looked like golden flames itself. The dark grey coat was swinging loose. He wore white under it, and boots that were a darker white. But mainly, he was young. Older than me, (did I say I’m about halfway through sixteen?) Eighteen maybe, nineteen. In what some of them call my Age-Group.
Despite that, the thing which is making this so hard to describe is that he had a gleam to him, a polish to him. I used to polish this floor, but life had polished this man. Being alive. Living. And he glowed.
