The Last Princess (15 page)

But then, in a flash of light, I saw a hole under the shadowy edge of the drawbridge. I stretched my hands toward it, but I slipped. The drawbridge began to
lift upward—in a moment they would see me. Gathering the last of my strength, I reached up and pulled myself into the tunnel just as the drawbridge rose.

“Find her! I want her alive!” Hollister’s distinctly sinister voice commanded his guards. “Lower the boats, now!”

The searchlights flashed across the water as the guards jumped into rowboats. Where did the tunnel lead? Could I make it to the
other side without being discovered?

“She’s not here, sir,” one of the guards called up. “She must have drowned.”

“Set the moat on fire!” Hollister screamed. “That will drive her out!”

The guards began pouring gasoline onto the water, where it floated in slick pools, its noxious smell reaching me in the tunnel. Someone, probably Hollister, dropped a blazing torch from above. The gasoline ignited
in a burst of flame like a flower, red tongues racing across the water in all directions.

The tunnel was so narrow that I was forced to inch along on my stomach. The air was thick with smoke. I pulled my
shirt up to cover my nose and mouth so I could breathe. I crawled, as fast as I could, away from the smoke and the flames and into the depths of the pitch-black tunnel.

Finally, the darkness
in the tunnel began to lift, and I inched the last few feet to its end. I fell onto the street, scraping my hands on the pavement. The air smelled of smoke and I could still hear the voices of the soldiers cheering. I rested my head against the pavement and lay there, too exhausted to move. My cold, wet clothes clung to my body. A burning sensation spread across the wound in my back, but nothing
felt as painful as the fact that I was here without my brother and sister.

From my left came the clank of a chain and what sounded like a low growl. I jumped, looking around in the darkness. Two large, shining eyes stared back.

“Caligula?” I asked, unable to believe that she had found me. She nudged me with her nose, hooves pawing the pavement, urging me to get up.

Slowly, my head throbbing,
I rose to my feet. I winced as I climbed onto her unsaddled back. To my surprise, she stayed still underneath me. “Please, Caligula, take me home,” I said in a broken voice. “Take me to Scotland.”

The sound of her hooves beginning to canter across the
pavement comforted me. When I thought we were a safe distance, I looked back over my shoulder. Behind me loomed the Tower, still surrounded by
red flames. The screaming crowd of soldiers seemed to glow from the fire rising up from the moat.

I laid a kiss on my tattered fingertips and blew it to Mary and Jamie. “I’ll be back for you,” I promised, near tears.

22

MY WET CLOTHES FROZE AGAINST MY SKIN AND I SHIVERED. MY
back throbbed with pain. The street faded in and out of focus. I tried to picture the road map of Scotland that had hung in my father’s study. It had been there my whole life, but all I could remember were winding lines and the ornate brown frame.

I looked up in the sky for the North Star. There it was, right where it had always been.
It was comforting to think that even though the world had changed so much, the stars were still the same. If I used the sky as my guide, hopefully I would find my way to the old motorway and then on to Scotland. “It’s going to be a long ride,” I said to Caligula, patting her neck.

As we moved through the streets, the wind blew bits of trash toward us—a broken umbrella spiraling dangerously, dirty
scraps of paper. Ash stung my eyes. Caligula charged out of the city on the crumbling, cracking motorways, past the freestanding homes in the London suburbs, the desolate gray shopping malls and parking lots like graveyards filled with rusting cars and their long-dead owners.

A faded highway sign read
SCOTLAND: 380 MILES
. Streams of warm tears fell from my eyes and the stars streaked overhead
in a blur. I kept replaying the events of the night over and over. I couldn’t believe I had found Mary and Jamie, only to fail them. I couldn’t believe that the man I’d been fantasizing about killing was Wesley’s father. My head swam thinking about it, and I blinked into the cold night as the wind whipped around me.

The cold set into my bones and I began shaking so violently that I couldn’t keep
myself upright. I nudged Caligula toward the forest on the side of the road. I needed to rest.

My legs were so shaky that when I slid off the tall horse, I collapsed into a heap on the cold ground. Spots danced before my eyes. I couldn’t tell how far we were from the interstate, but said a silent prayer that it was far enough. I curled up in a pile of twigs and mulch, fumbling to pull the frozen
New Guard jacket off me. It was so wet that it would do more
harm than good. I tried to warm my frozen fingers with my breath. Caligula lowered her front legs and lay down next to me. I nestled into her, grateful for her body heat. Finally, mercifully, I drifted off to sleep.

My eyes shot open. Something was moving through the branches.

I listened carefully, suddenly wide awake. I wasn’t sure
how long I had slept, but the sky was still black overhead.

I lay motionless, waiting for whatever it was to take another step. I had spent enough time in the Scottish woods to recognize the sounds of certain creatures. A mouse or squirrel moved quickly, darting from hiding place to hiding place. Once I sat below a tree with Bella and watched a brown bear make its lazy way across the forest floor,
its footsteps slow and booming. But these footsteps were not delicate like a fox or lumbering like a bear. They were unmistakably human.

I tucked myself under Caligula, her giant body rising and falling with each breath. The crunching sound of footsteps was only a few yards away.

“I smell a horse,” a man said.

“I smell human.” The second man’s voice was ragged, deeper than the first.

I lay
still, barely breathing. If I was quiet enough, maybe they would move on.

The footsteps drew closer. I felt Caligula’s heartbeat begin to race, but she remained still, sensing my fear.

I heard them move farther away and risked looking up from behind Caligula, trying to determine where they were. Without making a sound, I rolled onto my side.

There was silence in the woods. I let out a breath
of relief.

“This is my kill!” the gravelly voice suddenly shouted above me. I looked up to see a man standing over me, holding up an axe. I screamed, frozen with fear, unable to take my eyes from the gleaming blade.

Just as he began to lower the axe, Caligula jumped up, letting out a giant roar, so loud it could have come from a pride of lions.

“What the hell?” The man stumbled back in fear,
dropping the axe to the ground. Caligula charged at him, throwing him forcefully back against a tree with her head. His neck jerked at an unnatural angle and his limp body fell to the ground. I watched, stunned. I had never seen a warhorse in full attack mode before.

From out of the darkness, the second man lunged at me.

His wild eyes flashed as he opened his mouth, revealing a set of metal
nails drilled into his gums instead of teeth. Nails
for chewing human flesh. I reached out for the fallen axe and hurled it into his body without thinking twice.

The blade caught him in his side, and his filthy body slumped heavily against mine. A puddle of warm blood oozed from his chest onto my shoulder. I pushed him off me and stood for a moment in shock, staring at his body.

“Caligula,”
I called, taking an unsteady step forward. There was no sign of her. I slumped back against the tree, lacking the strength even to think of where to go from here.

Then I heard her hooves, racing through the trees in my direction. “Good girl,” I murmured as she approached.

I climbed up onto Caligula’s back, knowing there would be no more sleep for me tonight, and we flew off.

23

WE REACHED A SMALL, QUIET VILLAGE JUST AS THE SKY BEGAN
to turn a lighter shade of gray. I pulled back gently on Caligula’s mane, slowing her to a walk as I took in the row of small shops: a bakery, a tailor, a general store. A white wooden church with its bell tower pointed toward the sky like praying hands. The town was an oasis, seemingly untouched by Cornelius Hollister’s destruction.

The streets were silent, the windows of the thatch-roofed houses dark. With the villagers still asleep, I felt safe leading Caligula up to a well on a hill overlooking the village center. I lowered the bucket and pulled up a pail of fresh water. I was thirsty, but I let Caligula drink first.
She had been running for hours and her coat was damp with sweat.

When she finished, I drew a second bucket
of water for myself, drinking greedily. It tasted so pure. I sank to the ground, my legs shaky from the effort of riding for so many hours. The wounds on my back throbbed and red marks ran up my arms. I twisted around, pulling up my shirt to try to see the source of the pain, and gasped. A deep gash ran the length of my spine. Remembering Wesley’s instructions to clean any wound before it grew
infected, I dipped the pail once more and let the cool water rinse my cuts. It would need more care, but I knew that Polly’s mother would have an ointment if I could just make it to Balmoral.

I thought back to the first time I met Polly. Mary and I had been walking down the lane, looking for blackberries, when we saw a thin, grubby-looking girl coming toward us. In her arms were two overflowing
baskets full of the plump berries.

“Where did you get those?” Mary asked, and I could tell she was worried the girl had left nothing behind for us.

“I found them,” Polly replied with an infectious smile, revealing a gap between her two front teeth. She had straight reddish-brown hair, round green eyes, and a splattering of freckles across her nose.

“Well, my father owns all these lands, so
technically they belong to us,” Mary said, using her most clipped upper-class voice.

The girl’s face fell as she stared sadly at the baskets in her arms. “My mum was going to make jam.”

“Don’t worry,” I said quickly, with a sharp look at Mary. “You can keep them, if you just show us where you found them.”

She led us to a secret place. We followed her under the branches of low-growing apple
trees, wading through an ice-cold stream, until Polly pulled back the thorny branches to reveal a grove of perfectly ripe blackberries.

We spent the afternoon picking them, tasting a few here and there. Then we followed her back to her cottage, where her mother showed us how to make the berries into jam. From then on, we spent the rest of our summers together, and during the school year we kept
in touch by sending each other weekly letters and occasionally small packages. Those memories seemed a million years away.

Watery sunlight spilled through a crack in the clouds, illuminating the town below and rousing me from my memory. One by one the windows of the houses lit up with lanterns. Two men pushed a cart of goods toward the market square. As comforting as it felt to be in a village
untouched
by Hollister, I was losing strength, and my scrape needed to be treated. “Ready, Caligula?”

She looked up from the empty bucket and walked toward me. I tried to climb onto her back but couldn’t even pull myself up. I upended the empty water bucket and used it as a step to help me hoist myself up. As I moved, the pain in my back spread to my chest and ribs. I tried to push it from my
mind.

Caligula trotted slowly and steadily up the road leading out of the village and into the hills, past barren fields and skeletal trees. I heard the sounds of birds all around us, but they weren’t the same birds I had grown up with. Mockingbirds, blue jays, and sparrows were long gone. The streets had been littered with their bodies for months after the Seventeen Days. Only the carrion birds
survived: the crows and pigeons and vultures.

We continued on for hours, each bump in the road sending hot pain through my back. Finally, I recognized a bend in the road. We were just a mile or two away. Soon I would see the square stone house with dark green shutters where Polly and her family lived. I pictured their dogs, lounging on the steps in the front yard, where her mother planted roses
and daffodils.

“It’s just up here!” I called out, and Caligula, catching
my enthusiasm, hurried forward. My eyes searched the hillside eagerly, but all that remained in the place where Polly’s house had been was the square foundation, charred black by flames, and the ash-covered brick chimney.

I was too stunned to cry, too stunned to feel anything except a hollowing emptiness. I knew the truth
instantly. The New Guard had come here looking for me and had killed Polly and her family. Three more people, people I had loved dearly, had lost their lives because of me.

Balmoral Castle still stood up ahead, its walls scorched and covered in soot.

Memories flooded my mind: Mary and me as children, rushing outside in our summer dresses to greet our mother and father. Playing a game of tag
in the cavernous hallways. Fishing in the stream with Polly and her father. I closed my eyes, trying to block them out. How could our lives have turned out this way? How could they have changed so suddenly?

I needed to see the stables even though I dreaded what I would find there. I braced myself for the worst but somehow found the strength to urge Caligula forward, walking through the high grass,
past the length of the castle, then down a narrower muddy lane to the stables. I looked through the stable windows as we passed. There were no horses inside,
and the fields were empty too. Were they stolen, or had they been lucky enough to run away?

“Jasper,” I called, trying unsuccessfully to whistle. I took a breath and tried again, looking out into the fields and willing Jasper to appear,
cantering toward my call. I stared until the grass and sky blurred together. There was no Jasper. There was no Polly.

There was nothing left.

I dismounted heavily and let Caligula graze in the field. “You’re free now,” I whispered. She lifted her head, her wide eyes meeting mine, and nudged me lightly with her nose. “No one will ever put a spiked bit in your mouth again. These fields are all
yours. You can run forever.” I pressed my forehead to hers. “I hope you have a better life here.”