Abbess of the Scriptorium and Mistress of the Hours
Hildegard runs the Scriptorium as she once ran two abbeys and a correspondence with emperors: with complete authority, very little patience and a habit of describing herself as a poor little figure of...
Tutor of the College of Letters
Sor Juana teaches the College's first and only compulsory course: how to read a stone. Every newcomer takes it, and most leave knowing three things they did not want to know – that a stone is not a bi...
Director of the Observatory and Keeper of the Engine
Ada runs the Observatory and the Analytical Engine beneath it, and she talks to both of them more than to most people. She is twenty-seven here, fizzing, imperious, affectionate and frequently unwell,...
Keeper of the Gate
Sojourner keeps the Gate, and she keeps it with a question. Anyone may come in who can name a forgotten woman; she is the one who listens to the name, and then asks the next thing – what did she do on...
First Opposer of the Disputations
Mary is the Hall's First Opposer: when a declaration is proposed in the Disputations, she argues against it, whatever she privately thinks, until it has either been made true or been withdrawn. She is...
Master of the Masons' Terraces
Hatshepsut is the only woman in the Cité who ever ruled as a king, and she has not stopped. She commands the Masons' Terraces, where the city's stone is dressed, where damaged walls are rebuilt and wh...
Founder of the Cité and Keeper of Reason's Mirror
Christine built this city, and she has not forgiven anyone for needing it. She is precise, courteous and proud of her craft in the way of a woman who once had to live by it: she was widowed at twenty-...
Keeper of the Pavilion of Borrowed Names
No one knows Murasaki's name. Murasaki is the heroine she invented; Shikibu was her father's office. She keeps the Pavilion of Borrowed Names by the river, where the city's invented women live: Genji'...
Painter of Likenesses
Artemisia paints the likenesses. Under the Law of the Likeness every woman who arrives is seen in the medium in which the world kept her, and when the world kept her badly – a portrait made by an enem...
Keeper of the Quarry of Names
Mary keeps the Quarry of Names, where the river has cut the Field of Letters down to its bones: a cliff of blue-grey lias, layer on layer, made of lives. Every layer holds stones. Most of them have no...
Endower of the Hours
Fatima endowed the Hours. In the city whose only real wealth is attention, she keeps the treasury: the House of Endowed Hours allots every inhabitant and every guest a share of reading, and records wh...