Tanith Lee - Claidi Journals 01 (2 page)

Pattoo and I scrubbed Daisys dress-tube with our decorative gauze scarves. This made things worse.

“Stand behind us,” I said. “She may not see.”

But Jade Leaf almost certainly would.

We teetered on.

The sun was hot, but beautiful fragrances throbbed from the flowers. Sculpted woods and thickets poured down toward the river, which sparkled.

It’s a lovely place, to be honest. I mean, it is to look at. And for royal people I’m sure it’s lovely altogether.

At the bottom of the mossy steps, the lion house runs behind gilded bars. The lion house is large, complicated-looking, and their whole enclosure is enormous. But the lions are normally on view. They seem to put themselves where they can be admired. They play and sleep and sun themselves and are very peaceful. Sometimes they’re even brought out on a jeweled lead, and royal ladies and gentlemen walk about with them and feed them sweets.

The lions seem contented, like the House hippopotami and all the other animals here. They never have to hunt or fight—everything’s given to them. They’re even groomed by slaves. But every year there are less.

They can’t even be bothered to have families.

I used to wonder, when I was a child, if these creatures
missed
something? Of course they do.

Another terrace went down in steps of marble, and there were fountains, and pools with golden fish, and lilies.

Then, the Rose Walk.

The smell is astounding; it makes you dizzy. Roses rise on every side, in arches and tiers and cushiony banks. They’re every shade of red and purple, yellow and white.

Wicked thorns like claws scratched at us as we wended through, and Daisy almost spilled the rest of her oil.

In the center of the Rose Walk is a big oval of grass and a statue of a rose carved out of some shiny stone.

This is where the Two Thousandth Rose was to be viewed before planting.

It was apparently a very startling and special rose. One is always bred by the Gardeners for this Ritual, which takes place every three years.

You may wonder how there was ever room for a new rose in this dense chaos of roses. But obviously other roses die or are weeded out mercilessly when the princes and princesses get irritated with them.

Not that many of the royalty had come to the Ritual (a lesser one). It was a hot day, even though the sun had been up less than an hour.

We went and took our stations behind Lady J. No maids are allowed to arrive until this moment, and others were coming in from all sides of the Rose Walk, but Lady J seemed to think we were late.

“Why are you always dawdling?” she snapped. We bowed our heads, looking properly ashamed. Daisy edged in close behind me to hide the spill-stain. “You’re moronic,” decided LJL.

She has a pointy face, rouged all rosy, and now her hair was powdered a kind of cabbage color.

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 wont pull yourself together.”

Then her little eyes went over me and fixed on Daisy.

In all her green, Jade Leaf went the color 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 toward 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 mothers 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 color Daisys vomit had been. And it was a funny squirty shape. And it had a perfume that, 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 burned. No one was more surprised than me to see a huge burning teardrop, heavy as a hard-boiled egg, thump from each of my eyes. They plunged into the lawn.

As I was gawking 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.”

“The bees can have her,” 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 asked, 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 together, upset and dutiful.

If I stayed here, unless the invasion was total and nothing mattered anymore, 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.

==========

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 on an errand into a part of the House 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 stories 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 armor.

Now they had on their copper helmets too which have visors 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 for the House up the terraces and steps.

The Guards were dragging black cannons 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 that 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 as a sort of practice.

I ducked under a buckled, black-clad arm. Pattoo was dragging. I caught her and hauled her with 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 gunpowder.

I’d heard of events like this but had 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?”

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 toward 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, thumping her fists on the sofa, and kicking her feet, off of 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 gotten 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.