The Hidden Princess
Read The Hidden Princess Online
Authors: Katy Moran
This book is for Denise Johnstone-Burt, who made me a real writer
Nicolas de Mercadier
Fontevrault Abbey, Duchy of Anjou, 1152
I run for the tower, tearing through a tangle of lavender bushes. I need cover. I need to hide. Dried blood and tears dry on my face, on my neck, bitter salt on my lips. It hurts to move. My right-hand eye is swollen shut and my back is on fire. I’m gasping for breath, sweat pouring down my face as I look up. There’s a window. It’s cut deep into the tower wall high above me, the ledge in shadow. If only I could reach it I could hide up there, blending into that small patch of darkness.
I scramble up the mimosa tree, shaking loose great clouds of yellow blossom like flakes of sunlight; I climb the wall like a frantic spider, digging my fingers and my bare toes into whatever cracks in the stone face of the tower that I can find; higher, higher.
Don’t look down
.
I haul myself onto the window ledge; I can’t breathe. I’m spent.
Oh, God, what if Anjou finds me?
I glance down into the chamber below, chest heaving. It’s empty except for one long table set out down the middle, a bench on either side. The table is already laid with silver vessels and jugs, but there are no servants. The far wall is hung with tapestries. It’s a long way down to the floor. I can’t get down that way without breaking my neck.
And the nail-studded wooden door swings open.
It’ll just be servants. Won’t it?
It’s not; it’s Anjou himself, heir to the throne of England and my devil of a stepfather, still red and sweaty with the effort of blacking my eye and scourging the skin from my back – filthy, disgusting, sweating pig. My mother’s at his side, her arm resting in the crook of his elbow. A surge of hatred boils through me when I see his face, him touching her.
Oh, God in heaven, don’t look up
. Mama does: her eyes flicker towards the window ledge I’m sitting on, then away. She’s seen me but this time she’s chosen to preserve what’s left of my hide.
Traitor
.
Still standing, Mama and Anjou wait in silence as a number of men step quietly into the room. The most corpse-like of them all is clad in the red habit of a cardinal. There is an abundance of golden chains, glossy bear hides, costly purple robes and ermine trimming – and yet not a single lackey. There’s only one reason men cut of this cloth are prepared to pour their own wine and that’s subterfuge.
Well done, Nicolas. You’re hiding in a secret meeting crammed full of what looks very like the most rich and powerful collection of criminals in Christendom
.
Anjou will definitely kill me now. It began when I looked at him the wrong way as I served my mother at fast-break, blew up like fire in the wind when my apology was “insolent”, and now with a bloodied back and a fat black eye I have stumbled on his treachery. If I’m caught, he’ll kill me this day – if I don’t crack open my head like a hen’s egg falling from this windowsill before he gets the chance.
“How long must we wait?” The cardinal speaks in Latin, his voice thin and tired. He sounds a little afraid, and sweat trickles down between my shoulder blades. “Have you summoned us here as some kind of game, my lord Anjou, or do we really expect the guests you promised us?”
“Believe me, I’m serious.” Anjou sounds as if he is on the edge of losing his temper – again. Mama is sitting very still and straight – this is no intimate gathering of friends.
And before anyone else can speak the air is full of white feathers, twisting and tumbling as if a goose-down bolster has burst open. The sweat chills on my back. Feathers: everywhere. All I can hear is the thin-voiced cardinal muttering a string of prayers and blood pounding in my ears.
Feathers
. They fly up past my face, whirling and soft, tickling my bare feet – so thick do they fall I can’t see below me at all. What witchcraft is this? At last, the white cloud sinks to the floor, and now I see that this
is
no witchcraft. It’s the Hidden, and I’ve never seen one of the Hidden in the flesh before. I’ve only ever heard the stories, the songs, and the breath freezes in my chest at the wonder of it.
There are four of them, tall and cloaked and more beautiful than any mortal, two girls and two boys, one much younger with wild red hair – a child, a Hidden child? I was always told the Hidden hatched full-grown from seething hot spawn spewed from the mouth of Hell. But here is a child who looks no older than me: thirteen. The other taller boy is wrapped in a cloak of swan’s feathers that tangle in his black curls and pool around his feet. One of the girls is red-headed like the child, and the other’s hair is silver-white like a pewter jug – I can’t help noticing their hair, great swathes of it, shining and wild, not mortal, seeming to move and shimmer as if it is alive. Not one of the Hidden looks any more than three or four years older than I am – seventeen, maybe, but they could be much older than that. I drank these stories with my wet-nurse’s milk: the Hidden don’t age. They don’t die unless you strike them with iron – they’re cursed never to enter the kingdom of heaven. And they’re
here
.
“What do you want, mortals of Fontevrault?” He of the feathered cloak speaks directly to Anjou, but his eyes are lingering on Mama, and a faint smile crosses his lips. I can’t take my eyes away from them. There’s something so familiar about the way they hold themselves: I’ve seen that strange, cat-like poise before—
Anjou doesn’t reply, and I swallow the urge to laugh. He’s scared of them.
Coward
.
“We want to strike a covenant with you.” Mama stands, placing both hands palm-down on the table before her, and one of her rings glints in a shaft of light shining in through the window behind me. “Would any here dispute that our kind consorting with yours has its dangers?” Her voice is dry and calm, as if she is discussing the storage of winter linen.
The three full-grown Hidden share a swift glance but it’s the cloaked one who speaks again, the swan-feathered boy, smiling as if these gathered noblemen and princes are nothing but foolish children. “Our longing for mortal children, you mean?” he asks, very gently. “Or
your
longing for a drop of our immortal blood in your clans to make sure your rule is never shaken?” He sounds amused, as if on the verge of laughter.
“Both.” Mama’s voice rings out, and I know that tone. I wouldn’t argue. I half want to laugh because this chamber is full of men – rulers – and they are all too afraid to speak to the Hidden. Even Anjou. The task is left to my mother.
The dark-haired Hidden boy shrugs, and the white feathers billow around his shoulders. “Very well, my lady. If we cannot live together, we shall live apart. If you do not come near us, the Hidden will grant you the same favour.”
Just at that moment, the red-headed boy looks up. Right at me. For a thousand years, our eyes lock together, and I know that he’s been where I am now – just a boy in boiling water up to his neck. He understands: if he’s really the Devil’s spawn then I am too, for we’re the same. The Hidden boy looks away, back down at his white hands clasped together on the table, and my mouth is drier than the time Anjou stuffed it full of sand because I swore at him.
“Agreed,” Mama says, her voice hard. “We will expunge the Hidden from all that is written: it shall be as if you were nothing but a tale to frighten children. My lords?”
But before they have a chance to speak, the white-haired girl smiles, and as one, every man in the room turns to look at her, as if somebody has just lit an oil lamp in a dark room.
“Are you quite sure,” she says softly, “that there is not something you haven’t told us, mortals? A detail you may have neglected to mention?”
And as I watch, Mama freezes, holding her hands utterly still and flat down on the table as if she is fighting the urge to hurl the nearest wine vessel at the girl and smash her beautiful face.
“Rose?” The boy in the feathered cloak throws his white-haired companion a glance I can’t read the meaning of, and just as he does she makes a great show of looking up, right at the window where I am curled up into a ball, frozen with terror, on a narrow stone window ledge. The red-headed boy and girl glance at each other – she reaches out and places one hand over his, as if in protection. An older sister, perhaps?
All I can hear is the drumming of my heart.
One by one, the noblemen and the cardinal all follow the white-haired girl’s gaze, some turning in their places on the bench to fix their eyes on me. Mama remains seated. She doesn’t move. She doesn’t even flinch. My legs burn with cramp, but I daren’t move. If I fall from this ledge, I’ll die – a bloody mess on the flagstones far below.
And then, last of all, Anjou turns. He stands, leaning back against the table, squinting against the sunlight streaming in through the window behind me, and I see new heights of rage in his eyes as some kind of understanding dawns. The chamber is silent. No one knows what to say. They all just watch me, and I’m sure that time has frozen and I will be trapped in this moment for ever, and softly – so softly – I swing one leg over the window ledge, ready to climb down the wall and run for my life.
And my stepfather says, “
Nicolas
.” The hatred in his voice hangs in the air like the stench of something rotting.
I’m not staying to finish this conversation.
And I slip. I can’t hold on. Frantic, I scrabble for a grip on the windowsill but the stone is like oiled silk beneath my sweating hands and I really,
really
can’t hold on—
I fall, I fall, and the ground rushes up to meet me so fast, and I crash through the mimosa tree, the lavender bushes, and the tearing agony of it becomes everything, and all is black.
A GIRL LOST IN TIME
