The Grass King’s Concubine (9 page)

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.”

“I’ll think about it.” But that evening over supper he told her with a smile that from the next month the servants would receive an extra thirty percent. She wrote to Lieutenant Favre again with the news. Writing to him had become almost like talking to the governess. To a friend.

The next morning, when she exited the stairway, she found him waiting for her by the gate. She looked at him warily. “I’m not going back up the stairs. I’ve learned how to behave, since the last time I was down here.” He said nothing, watching her. She asked, “How did you know?”

He nodded toward the guardhouse. “The officer in charge is a friend of mine. He told me. You’re becoming something of a problem. He can’t go on sending men to follow you.”

She thought she had done so well. She thought she had
learned to fit in. She bit her lip and looked down. She said, “But I want to know.”

“The Silver City is safer for you.” But he did not sound angry. He offered her his arm. “Where did you want to go today, Mademoiselle?”

He was there again the next day and the one after that. But on the third morning she found something changed. The last part of the stairs echoed to a tumult of shouting, and at their foot, the gates were locked shut, the yard and alley empty. She laid a hand on the gate, peering through its bars, listening to the voices. Men, mostly, yelling things she did not understand, about bread and money and freedom. She started at the sudden crack of a gun, held the gate tighter. At the opposite end of the alley, a line of soldiers appeared, walking backward elbow to elbow. Tension rode their shoulders. Beyond them, pressing forward, came a seethe of arms and feet and angry mouths. Hands gray with dirt clutched at the guards’ uniforms; thin faces peered through the gaps, eyes screwed tight, yelling, shrieking, showing black teeth. She could smell their heat, their sweat, the grime that coated them. She could smell the soldiers’ fear. She clutched at the gate. Several of the men had pale scarves knotted about their necks; one waved his above his head. It was gray, patterned with birds, like the scarf the mill girl had worn. These were Eschappés, rebels. Aude stared. Most of the soldiers stood taller and broader than the shouting men, yet step by step they retreated. She could see Lieutenant Favre at one end of the line, his back to her.

A door opened. Aude jumped, looked round. A man exited the guardhouse, keys in hand. He said, “Not today, Mademoiselle. It’s not suitable.” He must be the friend her lieutenant had spoken of, the one who had told him of her visits.

She opened her mouth, found her voice wanting.

He said, a little more gently, “Go back upstairs, Mademoiselle.” And he turned away from her to unlock a small
wicket at the center of the left-hand gate. She watched him. As he stepped out into the alley, she found her voice at last. “Wait!” But he merely shook his head, before closing the wicket and locking it.

She said, “Is Lieutenant Favre…?” He ignored her. “Please.” But, walking away, he gave no sign of having heard her.

By then, the pamphlets had begun to arrive. She closed herself into the library whenever she could to study them. The first one seemed to her to make perfect sense, but then so did the second, which utterly contradicted the first. The third offered yet a new contention, which the fourth expanded, but the fifth and sixth both refuted it and somehow returned her to the first. The seventh bore no relation to any of the others. The eighth made no sense at all. It appeared that there might or might not be gods—or perhaps demons—who might or might not move among men or seek to influence their actions. The rich should remain rich and the poor, poor, for such was the natural order of things. But wealth was a perversion and poverty a public shame. And as to the views on religion…Marcellan’s teachings were lies, designed to mislead and distract; they were Immortal Truths, whose abandonment by men had led to all their ills. His words justified the wealth of the rich and the state of the poor; or they cried out against inequity and were, instead, a clarion call to rebellion. It seemed to her that there was not one common belief among all the pamphleteers, unless it was that all their fellows were wrong. “And what that’s supposed to tell me, I don’t know,” she said to Lieutenant Favre. It was the day after the riot. The Silver City newspapers had said nothing of that, this morning. Those of the Brass City had not arrived at all.

He was a long time replying, staring down at the cobbles. They had reached the end of the street and turned right before he said, “That happens.”

She shot him a sharp, sidelong glance. Here, in the warehouse
district, there were few people to witness their unconventional friendship. She said, “It isn’t helpful.”

“Then you’ll have to make up your own mind.”

He sounded tired. Another glance confirmed that his eyes were dark-shadowed and his linen creased. That could mean anything. It was hardly her business. She said, “You told me to read them.”

“Yes.”

“Do the people here read them?”

“Most of them can’t read.”

The men who had crowded the gate had called for light and money and bread. None of the pamphlets had made a convincing case that these should be denied to them. One man had called for the sky. That had been the title of the seventh pamphlet,
Open the Sky
. She said,”Some of them must.”

“One or two. It isn’t encouraged.”

“Why?”

“Perhaps because they might read unsuitable pamphlets.” There was an edge to that. She looked at him again, and came to a halt in the middle of the street.

She said, “Something’s wrong with you.”

“I’m rather tired. I apologize.”
I do not
, said his tone. He was tired, yes, but there was something more.

She said, “Something’s troubling you.” And then, “Other than me.” His eyes widened. She added, “Something to do with all this political stuff.”

“I do my duty, that’s all.”

His duty…He patrolled the city and discouraged the unruly. Beyond that, she had not asked. Duty was not always pleasant or desirable. No one had asked her if she wished to be brought to the Silver City, to go to tedious parties and wait for a boring young man to make time to marry her. It was unlikely that soldiers were consulted about their duty, either. She said, “What…?” and faltered as his eyes met hers.

“Last night, we arrested the men who can read and ask questions. They were shot this morning.”

She knew better than to ask who had carried out the shooting.