Princess of the Midnight Ball (19 page)

“Oh, darling!” Rose put her arms around Violet, and the younger girl sobbed onto her shoulder.

“He’s a nightmare,” Poppy said, taking the pillow off her face. “Horrible, odious man! And he’s Analousian, too, just like the bishop.” A calculating look crossed her face. “You don’t think Angier is just trying to humiliate us because they lost the war, do you?”

Hyacinth drew herself up, shocked. “The archbishop would
not have sent someone capable of such pettiness, Poppy,” she declared. “We have been charged with witchcraft; this has nothing to do with politics!”

“I don’t care if it’s politics or not,” Violet wailed. “I can’t be cut off from my music!”

Rose gave her an extra squeeze.

“Don’t worry,” Petunia said cheerfully. “Galen will fix everything.”

“Oh, he will, will he?” Rose gave a brittle laugh at Petunia’s firm statement.

At the same time, though, she hoped in her heart that Petunia was right. She and Lily had searched for years for a way to escape the King Under Stone, reading their mother’s diaries over and over for clues, looking up any reference to Under Stone and his banishment that they could find. But the only books they could find about him were legends, and several of their mother’s diaries were missing. Rose suspected that the missing diaries were the ones that would have been the most useful, and she wondered if her mother had destroyed them or if Under Stone had found some way to confiscate them.

The sisters had tested all the physical boundaries of his realm, even asking the dark princes to carry them through the forest when they were tired, to see how close to the gate they could get. They had asked as many questions of the courtiers and the dark princes as they dared, and they had found not a single weak spot. They had tried to tell their father, their governess, anyone who would listen, about the curse, but always their lips
snapped shut, or they even found themselves spouting nonsense when they tried to talk about it.

For a time they had given up, hoping that they would be able to simply serve out their term below. But soon after the war ended, the King Under Stone had begun to refer to them as his sons’ brides, filling the girls with new horror. He was going to find a way to keep them there forever. Now Rose and her sisters needed help more than they ever had before, and Galen was so strong and sure that it seemed almost possible for him to “fix everything.” Rose hitched her white shawl a little higher on her shoulders and led Violet over to her dressing table. “Come now, dry your eyes. Let’s get ready for dinner.”

But Bishop Angier had other plans. When the twelve sisters presented themselves in the dining room, modestly clad in high-waisted, high-necked frocks of somber hues, they found their father and Galen already seated at a table that bore a white cloth, a Bible, and nothing else.

“Sit down,” Bishop Angier said.

The princesses sat.

For some two hours the bishop held forth with great animation on the subject of witchcraft and its evils. He also veered into the evil natures of all women, witches or not, and how their fathers and husbands should keep them under firm control. It was vastly different from one of Bishop Schelker’s sermons. The most disconcerting part was that Angier would fix his eyes firmly on the face of each sister in turn, and focus on her for minutes at a time. As he locked gazes with Rose for
the second time, she found herself unable to look anywhere else, even unable to blink, until her eyes began to water and she was furious lest the bishop think he had moved her to tears. When he turned his attention to Lily again, she wiped surreptitiously at her eyes and dared to glance at Galen.

Appearing completely unperturbed by the bishop, who was ignoring him in turn, Galen was knitting. Rose dropped her handkerchief to her lap and watched in fascination. He was using not two, but four knitting needles, all quite short and with points at both ends. She had glimpsed him knitting a sock once out in the garden with similar needles, but those needles had been wood and much narrower. These were thicker, of softly gleaming silver that reminded her of something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Even more fascinating was
what
he was knitting: he was making a chain out of black wool. She counted eight links so far, all neatly interlocked.

He saw her looking and smiled, and she raised her eyebrows, trying to ask what on earth a wool chain was for. He just smiled even broader and cast on the stitches for a new link. Nine.

“Are you listening to me, girl!”
Angier roared.

Whipping around to focus on the bishop again, Rose saw some spittle fly from the bishop’s mouth and land on the back of Iris’s hand. Her younger sister quickly scrubbed at it with a handkerchief, a disgusted look on her face.

“Thank you, Bishop Angier, for that rousing sermon,” King Gregor said, rising to his feet. Rose could see a vein in her father’s temple pulsing, as though he were on the verge of
shouting back at the bishop. “I’m sure we all feel invigorated by your words.” He reached over and grabbed the bellpull, giving it a firm yank. “Let us ponder your message while we eat.” He sat back down and patted Rose’s hand.

The meal was a silent one, but Rose didn’t know if her sisters were pondering the bishop’s words any more than she was. Violet, at least, was simmering with resentment, a fact that was clear for all to see. But Hyacinth was the one who worried Rose the most. She neither spoke nor ate, and her eyes looked glassy.

Barely tasting her dinner, Rose wondered what would happen if she confessed to being a witch. Would they set Anne free, or would she still be accused of teaching Rose magic? If nothing else, it would lift the Interdict and clear the rest of her family, as long as she could convince them that she had acted alone. She would be excommunicated by the church, and likely imprisoned for life, but her father and her sisters would be free.

The only flaw was that the other girls’ shoes would continue to wear out after she was gone. That, and what
he
might do if she was lost to the Midnight Ball and his eldest son.

Rose shivered. She hoped that her mother, despite her foolish bargains, had been permitted into Heaven and was too busy singing, or whatever one did there, to see the mess she had made of things. The King Under Stone had manipulated Maude from the very beginning, using her to bear twelve brides for his stern, handsome sons and then dancing her into an early grave so that her daughters would be forced to take over the contract.

Maude hadn’t suspected this, or at least, there was no indication of it in her journals. The only mention they could find of Under Stone at all was a single entry, after Orchid’s birth. Maude had wondered if the potion “he” had given her had gone bad, or if she hadn’t drunk it at the right time, when she bore daughter after daughter with no sign of a longed-for heir.

Rose wished that there was some way she could help Galen. If only she could leave the door in the carpet open … but he was asleep and could not follow them even if it were possible. She thought of bringing him back some token from the underworld, but how would she make him understand what it was?

Rose drew in a breath. A token. The sound of a branch snapping. The strange silver knitting needles that Galen had been using to make, of all things, a chain…. She stared across the table at him, flicking her eyes down to the chain where it lay on the table beside his plate and back up again. He caught her gaze and held it.

After dinner, Lily asked Galen to play chess with her, but he began yawning as soon as they sat down to their game. A few minutes later he forfeited, begged Lily’s pardon, and stretched out on a sofa to “take a little rest.” Rose watched him carefully, but he seemed to be fast asleep.

“Do you think he’s faking?” she asked Lily as they prepared for the Midnight Ball.

“Impossible,” Lily said. “How could he be? The enchantment is too strong for anyone to resist.”

Again Rose let Lily take the lamp and go first down the
golden stairs, chivvying the other girls ahead of her into the darkness and waiting as long as possible to follow. The sofa Galen slept on faced the windows, though, so she couldn’t actually see him from her position in the middle of the floor. Her ears pricked up, a strange sensation, when she thought she heard a rustling noise. She took a step back from the stairs, craning to see over the back of the sofa.

“What are you doing?” Iris reached up out of the darkness and grabbed the hem of Rose’s gown just as Rose started toward the sofa. “Come along, or we’ll be late!”

Annoyed, Rose went down the stairs, looking over her shoulder all the way. She tripped twice and snagged her hem on the edge of a step as she went, but she didn’t care. She could have sworn that she heard booted feet crossing the room. But when the golden stair ascended behind them, there was no sign of Galen.

Galen laughed silently to himself all the way down the golden steps. Clever Rose! She clearly suspected something. He had seen the look on her face at dinner, as though a light were dawning, and was disappointed when she didn’t pull him aside to question him. Still, it was better this way. He didn’t want to raise her hopes when he still had no idea how much help he could be.

Galen paused to study the silver gate after the princesses had passed through. He noticed that, although there was no fence connected to the gate, there was still a definite boundary running as far as he could see in either direction. On the staircase side of the gate, the ground did not feel like dirt or pavement, it simply felt … like nothing. It was neither hard nor soft, neither rough nor smooth. It was simply nothing, and then, as sharply as though someone had drawn a line with a knife, the forest began, with its sparkling black dirt and silver trees.

Nodding to himself, Galen stepped through the gate and
let it swing shut behind him. Rose whirled around and squinted, but again Iris tugged at her and she had to follow.

Through the silver forest they went, to the shore of the black lake. Again Galen hopped aboard the golden boat with Rose and her suitor, and again her suitor struggled to keep up. He kept shooting glances at Rose’s figure in the bow, however, and Galen wondered if he were trying to determine if she had gained weight or not.

Galen thought Rose had never looked lovelier. Of course, he had seen her only once before her illness, and that time she had been dripping wet. But she was fully recovered now: her cheeks glowed with health rather than fever, and she no longer looked as gaunt as she had. She was wearing her red velvet gown, and over her elbows she had draped the white shawl he had made her. He thought it set off her gown and her golden-brown hair admirably.

As soon as the bottom of the boat grated on the beach, Galen jumped out, and Rose’s dark escort nearly fell as he hauled it up the sand. He had overcompensated, clearly expecting the boat to be heavier. Galen, a little disappointed that his rival hadn’t fallen into the wet sand, sighed. Rose looked around, and he held his breath. Then her suitor captured her attention, and her arm, and they led the way toward the dark palace.

Galen had to admit that they made a fine pair. Stately, attractive, beautifully dressed. Lily and Jonquil followed, then the rest in order of age. The haughty expressions and fine clothes of the suitors toward the end of the line seemed ridiculous to Galen, considering that they were squiring girls at least half their ages.

Still, even Petunia wore a ballgown, though suitably high necked, and her hair was in loose curls rather than pinned up like her older sisters’. As Galen followed Petunia and her escort into the palace he shuddered, thinking about the king’s intent to marry the princesses to his hard-faced sons. Petunia would be perhaps fourteen or fifteen when she married her prince, and that was only if the king waited until their years of servitude were finished.

The cold-eyed courtiers clapped, the princesses curtsied, and the ball began in earnest. Galen watched the dancing for a while, but then he felt thirsty. As a servant whisked by, Galen snatched a silver goblet from the man’s tray and quickly concealed it within his cape. Galen carried it over to one corner where he was partially hidden by a drape and drank thirstily. Then he put the goblet, which was of strange workmanship, into the pouch at his belt. Another souvenir for King Gregor, he thought.

When Pansy begged to sit out a dance, Galen sat beside her once more. As though sensing his presence, she began looking around, even lifting her pink skirts to stare under her chair.

“Are you there, spirit?” she asked finally.

“I am here,” Galen said in a hollow voice.

“Why?”

“I want to help you.”

“Oh.”

“Tell me, Princess, how did your mother find the King Under Stone?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did he come to her, or did she come here, to make their
bargain?” Trying to talk in a ghostly voice strained Galen’s throat, and he wished for something more to drink.

“She came here,” Pansy answered readily. “Rose says that’s how the silver forest got made. The first time Mother came, she dropped her brooch. It was a silver cross with laurel leaves around it that her godfather gave her. The next night it grew into a forest.” She grimaced. “I tried to grow a tree out of my garnet ring once, but it didn’t work,” she added.