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.”
“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?