1. The Hothouse Flower


    Date: 9/14/2015, Categories: Historical, Author: FeliciaGreene, Rating: , Source: LushStories

    It's a long time for a lady to hide in a wagon of shit and flowers.' I say nothing, and duck down into the wagon. Even amidst the mud and fertilizer, the flowers - white carnations, their petals bruising with every bump of the cart - smell fresh. I watch the other carts wind out behind my own, a fragrant trail of peonies and lilies and quinces and irises and roses and twittering birds, canaries, lovebirds, cockatiels, chosen to offset the myriad colours of the flowers. Soon we will be riding through the night, through harvested fields left brown and bare. And then, Versailles. Palace of Wonders. I think of those pebble-shaped plants that make their home in desert plains. They hide, camouflaged perfectly against scrub and stone, until conditions are perfect - no rain, no predators, no wind. Then and only then, do they flower. * The palace sprawls, glittering in the early morning light. If London is a rose, Paris a magnolia blossom, Versailles is a forest full of flowers too nameless to count. From the cart I see smooth expanses of creamy stone, fountains gushing, statues arranged in groups of entwined marble. It is vast, and cold, and the glass in the polished windows burns like liquid fire in the light of the sun. My ambitions, my certainties, seem dwarfed by all this stone. I must let it feed me, this concentration of power. Still, as I watch the swarms of carriages, carts and horses carrying butchers, bakers, washerwomen, stonemasons, carpenters, scullery-maids, ...
    dairymaids, footmen, under-footmen, prostitutes and priests, I feel as if I am being delivered into a hungry mouth. 'Where should I leave you, ma'am?' The boy takes in my dirty face and hands again. 'Somewhere with a water pump?' 'Are you going to the ice-houses?' 'Oh yes. Grassonet will deal with the incoming stock.' 'Then take me to him along with the flowers.' The boy looks at the coach at the head of the line; Alain will be sleeping inside. Mandrake is hard to throw off. 'Sure you don't want to follow your... business partner?' He almost said master , I am sure of it. 'No,' I say, short and clipped, and the boy doesn't press me. This Grassonet looks more like a mercenary than a palace organizer; he is short, with a brutishly scarred face and disheveled wig, and he paces up and down the outer wall of the ice house as he barks out orders. He examines my appearance from top to toe, frowning. 'You have a servant's face, and a lady's dress,' he finally says. 'What, then, am I supposed to do with you? Kitchens, or banquet hall?' 'Neither,' I say as coolly as I can muster with a face full of mud. 'I am Jonquil Delacey. My father was chosen to supply the Palace with fruit and flowers for the festivities tonight. I... wished to oversee the safe transport of the most delicate blooms.' 'Commendable,' Grassonet says with a face just a little too deadpan for my liking. 'I have people waiting to unload and arrange the blooms from Paris. I assume you were told that you had access to the gardens?' ...
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