“Bother the sun, and bother my hat,” Una muttered, slipping into the hall. She wanted nothing more than to be left alone and wished for all the world that she could disappear. Yet that was impossible. As she hurried down the hall, she passed innumerable footmen and maids, all of whom bowed or bobbed curtsies as she went by. On her way downstairs she crossed paths with an elderly courtier and his wife, neither of whom she knew, but both of whom bowed and greeted her with, “Good afternoon, Princess Una.”
She remembered once, when she was younger, reading an adventure tale in which the princess heroine had disguised herself and crept out of the palace and into the countryside on a grand and glorious quest. Granted, this had led to rather a lot of unpleasantness for the princess, but Una had been inspired nonetheless.
That very afternoon she had commanded one of her maids to loan her a gown, rubbed ashes from the fireplace all over her hands and face, and taking up the maid’s bucket of dirty water, stepped boldly from her chambers.
The first footman she had encountered had bowed low and asked, “May I help you, princess?”
Una had given up disguises since then.
Out in the gardens, sunlight greeted her, and she tipped her unprotected face up to enjoy its brightness. Let her nose burn! At least it would disguise any blotches.
What she desperately needed, she thought, was half a moment to herself to sort through some of her thoughts. That moment would not happen in her chambers, nor anywhere within Oriana’s walls. Neither were the gardens a suitable place for a girl in need of quiet, for gardeners and their clipping shears abounded, giving her sulky looks as she passed, as though daring her to think she served any useful purpose while they and their ilk labored in the summer sun. She nodded to them and hastened on her way, trying not to call attention to herself.
Clematis and trumpet creeper bloomed bravely against the heat, climbing the southern wall. Una did not want to walk among them today. Flowers, she found, lacked their former romance, ever since a certain serenade in a certain garden. She picked up her skirts and hurried down the path. Blossoms arched with special elegance over Southgate, which was small compared to the main gate on the western side of the palace. Southgate was trafficked only by servants, grocers, and gardeners.
Today as Una approached the gate, she heard shouts, rough and angry. The sounds startled her, and she slipped behind a shrub and wondered if she dared continue her present course. The shouts grew louder.
“Oi! If you don’t let me through, I’ll be certain it gets back to your superior officer, and you’ll wish you’d never – ”
“Right. As though you’ll be on chatting terms with my superior officer. Listen, mister, we don’t let just anyone come trampin’ through here, and anyone who tells you otherwise – ”
Una peered over the shrub and saw two guards at the gate. Guards always stood watch there, but she’d never noticed them until today, for Southgate was such an unobtrusive corner of the palace. But now both guards were growling and struggling, big hands clamped down hard on the arms of the most outlandish character Una could remember ever seeing.
He was dark complexioned, but his outfit dominated any other impression he might give. He was dressed in bright yellow with stripes of red and blue running at all angles throughout the costume. The collar and sleeves were cut in odd triangles and, of all things, had little silver bells tied to the ends of them. Una blinked several times and pulled back behind her shrub.
But the stranger had already seen her.
He lunged forward, almost breaking free of the guards, shouting and holding out a hand. “Lady! Fair lady!” he cried. “You seem of a gentle nature. Tell these blackguards to unhand me – ”
Una ducked away, taking another path before the guards spotted her. She heard several angry shouts and the sound of blows. “And take your hat with you!” one of the guards bellowed.
The iron clang of the gate shutting rang in her ears. Una hurried down the path between snapdragons and lilies, wondering what sort of man could induce the palace’s ever-lenient guards to shut the gates in his face. It felt almost like an invasion or something from a history book. What a terrible thought!
But rather romantic in a way.
Una smiled a little to herself as she made her way deep into the gardens, away from the palace and the gates.
White marble statues of old kings and queens of Parumvir stood at regular intervals down the paths of the seven-tiered garden, with the occasional legendary hero standing bravely between trimmed hedges. On the seventh tier, nearest the edge of Goldstone Wood, was even an old marble statue of the Bane of Corrilond, a long and serpentine dragon. The body was somewhat startling, curling as it did down the side of the path, then arching at the neck so that the jaw could open wide enough for Felix to stick his head inside, as he often did when he and Una walked together. The expression on its face was hardly menacing; it reminded Una of Monster yawning.
It was a quick walk from the top tier to the seventh if one took the cobble stairway cutting directly down and didn’t stop to explore the various levels. Halfway down the hill, the gardens ended abruptly, swallowed up by Goldstone Wood.