Midnight's Song (62 page)

“Lady Elissa speaks
the truth,” Emily stood up. “Beeti
does
want Elissa dead, and she was
willing to use witchcraft to do it! I saw her conspiring before my
very eyes!”

“What on earth?” Beeti denied once
more, turning to the crowd before resuming her slow attempt to back
away. “You’re all insane! There is absolutely no proof of this – so
why take either of their word for it? Emily’s a servant, and
Elissa’s clearly not in her right mind! Why would I carry out such
an elaborate scheme, anyway?”

“Because you wanted Lady Elissa’s
fortune,” a servant suddenly shouted up from the crowd. Several
others came forward after that, all making similar statements and
telling their own accounts of Beeti’s apparent coveting. Though,
after a few moments of the chaos Grandmamma had enough of
it.

“Everyone, quiet!” She shouted from
her wheelchair, immediately beginning to shoo some of the servants
away. “This room is too crowded. Unless you have something
meaningful to say pertaining to this, I want all of the servants
back in the hallway and the door shut!”

Half of the inhabitants of the room
left at her command. They had no choice. Emily stayed, along with a
few attendants. Whether Beeti was guilty or not was still in
question, but if there was one thing that was certain it was that I
was speaking again. I wasn’t going to stop now. Once the door
closed, I spoke up again.

“Grandmamma, it’s true! Beeti wants us
dead!” I cried. “I’m speaking out of my right mind this time! She
intended to poison Winston…then she was going to kill
me!”

“Hush, child,” Grandmamma remarked.
“Murder? Why should you think that Beeti has been planning such a
thing? Usually, I would side with you. But, as it is you are very
sick and there is no proof of this at all!”

I fell momentarily
silent. No one believed me – how could I expose this before our
safety came into question? I shuddered, realizing that if I
couldn’t prove my case soon that Beeti might actually use this as a
reason to
succeed
in framing me. Now I seemed insane. Perhaps it seemed like a
rather usable situation to Beeti; to use my embarrassment at being
unable to prove Beeti’s guiltiness as a means to snap and kill
Winston anyway.

I had to find
something that I could use to prove this…and I had to find it soon.
Suddenly, there was a memory that jumped into my view. I remembered
a few distant words that Aurelian had spoken to me before my
journey back to earth. They were words that held the key to my
innocence: “
Know that the poison is in her
pocket.”

“I can prove it!” I suddenly yelped.
“The poison – the poison that she’s going to use – is in her
pocket. She’s probably been carrying it around and waiting to use
it ever since Winston arrived here!”

Beeti’s expression became completely
dumbfounded. Realizing that she had been caught, she slowly began
backing away. Perhaps she could still slip out of the room and
dispose of it discreetly, she thought. In the end, there was no way
for her to dodge it anymore. Even though my sanity was in question,
the potential evidence of her intentions couldn’t be
ignored.

“Beeti, show us your pockets,”
Grandmamma demanded in angst. “Take out all of their contents so
that we might be done with this.”

“Why should I?” Beeti asked
defensively. Something about her demeanor became so defensive and
reckless that it actually caused Grandmamma to begin suspecting
that there might be something more to this after all.

“Come now; just show us what’s inside!
You act as though you have something to hide,” Grandmamma barked
again.

Beeti still refused. After a few
negotiating words, Grandmamma and Wren became extremely suspicious
of Beeti’s childishly hesitant behavior. Eventually, one of the
stronger male attendants had to come and empty her pockets by
force. The very moment that the man reached in, Beeti’s ill-hidden
weapon topped into view. The attendant wrapped his hands around the
unmarked vial and held it up to the light in shock.

The bottle contained
a liquid that was colorful, bubbling and
hot.
The bottle was so hot that the
man nearly burned himself – a sure sign that this wasn’t an
innocent bottle of oil or a misplaced medication. Everyone in the
room knew that it must have been poison. Still not desiring to
accuse her daughter too quickly; my wise grandmother demanded that
she be given the bottle to investigate.

“Beeti…what is this?” Grandmamma and
Wren asked at once. Beeti remained completely
belligerent.

“It’s not what you think it is! This
little urchin only desires to slander me!” Beeti barked. Suddenly
remembering the potent abilities of the potion, Beeti quickly
devised the darkest of plans. She smirked before calmly speaking up
again. “It’s an iceberry tonic for my…joint pain. The tonic is
entirely harmless. You can even try it if you want. Go ahead
–

take a
sip
! I have nothing to
hide.”

“I wouldn’t be so
sure about that, Beeti! I love you…dear sister…but what should
happen to us if this
is
poison? You insist we not simply take Elissa’s
word for it, so why should we take yours?” Wren exclaimed in
reply.

“Well…if there’s no way to test it,
you can only assume my innocence,” Beeti announced somewhat
proudly. It was short lived.

“Actually, there is a way that you
could test it,” Emily explained. She eyed the white lily on my bed
stand. “Every servant knows that the way to test something’s
potency – at least with most kinds of chemicals – is to see what it
withers.”

“Ah – yes!” Winston suddenly chimed
up. “Our servants do this with every new shipment of medicine or
kitchen supplies that comes to our estate. It’s been a requirement
for the staff in every governor’s estate since the assassination of
Julius XIV.”

A bulb lit over each of our heads at
the mention. It was a sparsely mentioned happening in the history
of our empire, as it proved that even the Magistrate was mortal.
Julius Mallard XIV was our fourteenth Magistrate. He met a
premature end by the sword of a poisoned bowl of plumb stew. The
family’s of the wealthy and powerful had tested every ingredient
and chemical that went in and out of their estates ever
since.

“There’s only one way to know if this
is poison,” Emily informed once again, delicately taking the vial
into her own hands and uncapping it. She nearly gagged at the hot,
toxic smell. “We test it on the lily. I’ll put a drop of it in the
vase. If it’s toxic, the polluted water will cause the lily to
rot.”

“I still don’t see how this will prove
anything. Even if that hideous flower rots, how would you know if
it was because of your fly-by-night testing? It might not even be
because of the tonic at all!” Beeti continued her defiant
protesting, nearly spitting on Emily with her
belligerence.

“No,” Emily glared.
“This test is absolutely
certain.
One drop of this in the water – and if it’s
poison – the lily rots immediately.”

Unable to argue anymore, Beeti fell
silent. Emily glared at her, standing up for herself and everyone
else that Beeti had ever trampled over as she held the noxious vial
in her hands. Without another question, Emily stepped over to my
bedside table and gently brushed the lily aside with her hand so
that she could get a clear sight of how the liquid would hit the
water.

Then, she took the
toxic vial and tilted it toward the vase. A single drop of liquid
slid from the vial and dripped from its lid. The drop was dark and
fizzy, hitting the surface of the water inside of the vase in no
more than a few milliseconds. As soon as it hit the water, it was
as if a bucket of dye had been thrown in with it. The water became
a putrid shade of yellowish-green, then purple, then
black.
Next, everyone in
the room became utterly speechless.

One-by-one, the
leaves of the lily suddenly became as putrid yellow as the water
had been at first. The leaves turned yellow, then crinkled and
withered before falling off of the rotting stem as shriveled
remnants on the ground. It all happened just as Emily had suspected
it would. The single dab of poison had blanketed the water with
darkness before causing the lily to suck it in and
wither
before everyone’s
eyes.

“It’s true…” Grandmamma muttered in
shock. “It’s…poison.”

There’s not much more that needs to be
said about Beeti after that. She tried to leave the room and make a
run for it, but burly attendants came in and pinned her against the
wall from all sides. They took her and locked her in the closet
just as I had been until the royal guard arrived to make her
arrest. Of course, the Magistrate was still on Beeti’s side in all
of this. The lily alone wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute her
this time (although it had been much easier to prosecute me for a
crime I never committed). Though, the public quickly caught onto
the scandal and prosecuted her with the guillotine of public
opinion.

Suddenly, the fate that Beeti had
intended for me became her own. Word got out and caused the public
to side with me in waves. As figureheads and news reporters caught
on to my story, they dug deeper to uncover the truth about my poor,
tragic past. My entire life became a famed piece of media history,
sensationalized as the ultimate “Cinderella story.” The media dug
and dug to find out all that my past had to offer and made it into
an ordeal of epic proportions.

The attention wasn’t all bad. All of
the hype caused the public to shield with their favor in a way that
kept the Magistrate at bay for quite a while. The world loved me
for the time being, rendering the Magistrate unable to truly
interfere with my life without scrutiny. It all happened just as
Aurelian claimed that it would – the world was mine now, and the
ones who had tried to hurt me were unable to touch me any
longer.

Grandmamma died a year after my
ordeal. She died painlessly and at rest. This time, the loss didn’t
burn quite as much. Before she left this world, she made her final
request to me as a gentle whisper in my ear:

“Elissa, you must carry on my legacy.
Become the heir. Use your strength to carry the fortune and use it
for greater things,” Grandmamma weakly whispered to me on her last
day.

This time, I knew what I had to do. I
kissed her hands tenderly and nodded my head, tears trailing. This
was what she wanted for me, and this was also what I wanted myself.
There was nothing to stand in my way now. Once she passed, I did as
I was instructed and took it. I took it because of my love for
Grandmamma, but also because of something else. My mind was made up
with a kind of certainty that it hadn’t been able to grasp while I
was still a child. This destiny was mine. If I wanted to move on in
my life, I couldn’t deny it anymore.

I had finally made
the choice, and it was
mine.

In less than a day the paperwork had
been filled out, the oaths recited and the celebrations commenced.
My assumption as the new matriarch was celebrated by the public as
if it were a coronation of sorts. I was now – and would be until
the day that I died – the head of the wealthiest family of
non-royals in the country. Those who had followed my story
celebrated as they watched me ascend to new heights as a newly
vindicated young woman.

However, this new identity
of mine wasn’t accepted without a looming bittersweetness over what
I still couldn’t leave behind. Even though the world was seemingly
mine, I could never forget my adventure. There wasn’t a day that
went by that I didn’t think of Aurelian. There wasn’t a moment that
I let go of my hopes that somehow there was a chance we could meet
again. Even after being seemingly shunned by him, I would never
stop hoping or looking for a way back. I had seen too much to be
blind ever again.

By now, you must have realized that
this story is nearing its end. Though, I still have one last thing
to tell you…alright, maybe a few. Of course, you must be wondering
about Winston and I. What happened to our engagement? Well, I asked
myself that question many times over the next year myself. After I
accepted the money, Winston came on to me even more insistently
than before.

With my newfound fame came a newfound
adoration for it in Winston. I won’t call Winston wholly shallow;
but even though he did care for me quite a bit, I could see that
Winston wanted a relationship in the limelight. He pulled me in
even closer in public, insisted on showing his affection for the
cameras and in front of large crowds. For a few months, I played
along with the façade. But, in the end I couldn’t bear it
anymore.

Even though I knew that he was out of
my reach, my heart still belonged to Aurelian.

About a year later, I decided that I
had enough. It was a cool morning in the middle of April. I was 18
now. That year I continually wrestled, remaining with Winston
sometimes and pulling away from him during others because I ineptly
believed his companionship might help me to move on with my life.
You’re probably not very surprised to hear that it
didn’t.