The Last Princess (16 page)

My hand fell from her neck and I turned away from her to walk slowly toward the castle. The muddy trail turned into a slate path, which ended in the wide steps leading to the double wooden doors of the front entrance. The doors were closed.

Looking back one last time, I saw that Caligula had followed
and was watching me from the path.

“Go!” I was surprised to feel that my face was wet with
tears. I waved my hand in the air, but she just stood there, staring at me.

The air inside the stone hallway was freezing cold. Shards of broken glass covered the floor, sparkling like ice in the dim light that filtered in through the windows. The grand chandelier that had hung in the castle entranceway
for centuries lay on the marble floor, shattered into a million pieces. The royal portraits on the walls had been slashed at the throat, my ancestors beheaded. The vases, the art, the mirrors, the paintings—all shattered and destroyed. At least the beautiful old staircase was still standing, though it, too, was scarred with burn marks.

I wanted to check the whole house to see if anything remained,
but I was shaking and feverish. A wave of heat would blaze through me, only to leave me feeling ice cold. My limbs felt heavy as I gripped the banister, pulling myself painfully up the stairs. It felt like someone was raking a weapon down my back, and I thought of what the girls had done to Vashti.

I gripped the charred railing to steady myself. All I wanted was to lie down in my room, on my
bed. That was the single thought occupying my fevered brain. And so I kept going,
step by step. The floor seemed to be rising and falling, disorienting me. I felt like a ship on rough seas.

By the time I made it to my doorway, I was on all fours. The wardrobe had been pushed over, the dark wood splintered on the carpet, and the bedsheets had been flung to the floor. But Bella’s round dog bed
was in the corner, still indented with her shape, and my own four-poster bed was mostly intact. Even after everything that had happened, this room felt like home. Unlike my mother and father, who were nothing but memories now, this space, this house, would go on, outliving all of us. Maybe someday another girl would wear my dresses and open the jewelry box I’d had since I was six and see the ballerina
inside turn.

My head suddenly felt too heavy to hold up. I leaned back and let it hit the wooden floor as I lay there, staring at my bed, wishing I had the energy to walk to it. In the light from the upper windows, I could see the wounds along my arm more clearly. Streaks of red bubbled like a blister, spreading in a line. Infection. I closed my eyes as I drifted into a fitful sleep, full of
fiery nightmares.

I woke up, and in my delirious state, I thought I heard voices in the hallway, the sound of footsteps. The door of the room creaked open. I didn’t know how Cornelius Hollister
had found me already, but in that moment I welcomed death. I lay there, unable to move, my eyes closed.

“Eliza, is that you?”

My eyes opened and took in the face of the person standing over me. The long
straight hair, the smattering of freckles, the round, green eyes wide with surprise.

“Polly,” I breathed.

24

I FLOATED IN AND OUT OF CONSCIOUSNESS, HOT WITH FEVER
. Someone had carried me to my bed and was feeding me spoonfuls of water. At first I thought Polly and I were dancing in the rain, sticking out our tongues to catch the fat droplets. Then I saw her face hovering above me, frowning with concern, and I remembered.

There was a woman, too, with a soft voice and gentle hands. She held my head
on her lap, trying to feed me broth, but I was unable to swallow. A man came, dressed in a dark coat and carrying a small case of medicines. He sat down on the bed beside me and took my temperature under my arm, the way my mother had when I was a girl.

“One hundred and six.” His voice was grave. “We need an antibiotic to fight the infection.”

“Should we move her?” Polly asked, her voice full
of worry.

“She’s too ill to move,” the doctor said.

A group gathered around him talking in low, solemn voices. With the New Guard taking over the pharmacies and hospitals, the doctor was unable to get the medicine he needed for my condition. I saw Polly run from the room, and then I blacked out.

The delirium was a welcome escape. My mind flooded with my happiest memories, so vivid I could actually
hear my mother’s voice and smell the scent of her rose oil. I felt Bella’s soft fur, the cold wet touch of her nose. But when the trembling came back, so did the nightmares: Mary, a skeleton behind bars, Jamie dying alone on a prison cot, the stillness in my father’s eyes as he bled to death on the ballroom floor.

I woke up screaming.

“Eliza, it’s all right,” Polly was saying as she held a damp
cloth to my forehead. The room came into focus and I lay back down on the pillow, the sound of my heart pounding in my ears.

“What did the doctor say?” I asked.

When she didn’t answer, I knew they hadn’t found any antibiotics. “We’re doing everything we can. I went to the market this morning.” I could tell by the tone of Polly’s voice that she was beginning to cry. “Mr. Seabrook, the old chemist,
said he might know where to get some. I’ll go back tomorrow morning. Mum’s in the village knocking on doors, asking if anyone has any left over in their medicine cabinets.”

I nodded, but even the slightest movement hurt my head. No one would have any medicine left over. “Hollister’s taken over the hospitals?”

“Yes.” Polly nodded solemnly. “There were even some of his soldiers in the market square
this morning. One of them was following me.”

“We can’t fight them,” I managed, my voice breaking. “They have guns and ammunition….” Then the shivers began again and I lay back down, unable to force a word between my chattering teeth.

Polly looked at me, fighting to conceal her worry, her small nose wrinkling up like it always did before she cried. She pulled the covers to my chin and lay down
next to me, wrapping her arms around me to keep me warm.

The door creaked open and the doctor appeared. “She
needs to rest, Polly,” he gently rebuked her, and she sat up and moved away.

He walked toward me, carrying the amber-colored bottle of medicine that stopped my shivers and made me sleep. I felt his hands holding my jaw open and pouring the astringent syrup down my throat. A heaviness
spread over me like a blanket. I tried desperately to call Polly’s name, but blackness overcame me.

When I woke up, Polly’s parents and the doctor were sitting on chairs at my bedside. Clara held my hand in hers, squeezing softly like my mother used to. She smiled sadly at me, her eyes red from crying.

“How do you feel, Eliza?” the doctor asked.

I tried to answer, but I could barely open my
mouth. I panicked and looked from the doctor to Clara, then to George, who sat with his hands clasped in front of him, staring down at the floor.

“Tetanus causes your jaw to lock,” the doctor explained when I tried again to speak.

“I’m so sorry, Eliza,” Clara said, leaning close to me. “We can’t find any medicine. We’ve looked everywhere and asked everyone. George rode out for days to all the
surrounding towns and villages, but no one has any left.”
Tears welled up in her eyes as she spoke. I knew without her saying another word that they had all come to tell me I was dying.

“The infection has spread,” the doctor said.

I would have laughed if I’d been able to open my jaw. I had leapt from the roof of the Steel Tower, fended off sewer snakes, crawled through a tunnel chased by fire,
and ridden more than three hundred miles bareback. And yet it was a rusty metal trapdoor infected with tetanus that would be the death of me.

“Bury me next to my mum,” I tried to say. I wanted to be wrapped in muslin and placed in the ground next to my mother. I imagined our bones touching in the dirt, as close as we would come to holding hands again.

I closed my eyes, bracing myself for another
round of shivers. The sleeping syrup the doctor had given me eased the pain, but it left me unable to eat, and I could feel my bones against the mattress. A ray of sunlight shone through the eyelet curtains that had been in my room since I was a child.

“Maybe she’s thirsty,” Clara said as she settled behind me on the bed, resting my head in her arms. She spoon-fed me, alternating between water
and chamomile tea. I felt the tea drip down my throat into my empty stomach.

“It’s a beautiful day,” I said as clearly as possible, but my words were garbled and sounded like mumbles. Clara understood me.

“It is a beautiful day,” she agreed.

Clara left the window ajar as they left the room, allowing the cool air to seep in. It almost smelled like the ocean, damp from the dew but crisped by
the sun. I breathed it in slowly through my nose. I had been breathing the air my whole life, but only now did I appreciate how sweet it was. Perhaps it was the delirium, but I could even make out the faint aroma of flowers. It made me think of the pattern of roses on the sofa in Wesley’s cottage, where we had sat and kissed in the dancing firelight. As suddenly as that image flashed in my mind, I
tried to push it away; I did not want to spend my last few hours thinking about him.

I drifted off, half-dreaming, half-praying for Mary and Jamie. I hoped their death at Hollister’s hands would be as painless and swift as possible. I prayed that Polly and her family would never suffer for having helped me. And even now I prayed that someone would kill Hollister, or that a giant sunball would
fall on him and his army, burning them all. I couldn’t die peacefully knowing that he was still alive.

Some time later, I felt Polly’s cool hand on my forehead. “It’s okay, Eliza,” she murmured.

“Polly, you’ve been the best friend in the world.” I forced the words through my locked mouth. “I love you so much.” I closed my eyes, content with my last good-bye.

25

I COULDN’T SLEEP. SHAKEN FROM CHILLS AND FEVER, I LAY IN
bed, my eyes open but unseeing. The streaks of gray light at the bottom of the window meant I had survived to see another day.

A loud pounding resounded through the house.

Polly was lying next to me, her arm draped over my waist. She shot up and looked around the room. Her mother, who had nodded off in an armchair in the corner,
snapped awake in panic.

“Who would be at the door at this time of night?” she said fearfully.

She moved the curtain back from the window, pushing it
open to peer outside. “Hello? Who’s there?” she called out into the night. “Hello?” There was no reply, only the sound of horses’ hooves echoing down the stone path, becoming fainter and fainter.

“I’d better go downstairs and look,” George said.
His voice sounded tired, beaten down.

“I’ll come with you,” Polly offered, but I squeezed her hand in mine. I wanted her to stay. I was afraid to be alone, to die alone. Polly understood and lay back down beside me.

A few minutes later, George burst back in. “Someone’s left this package outside the door,” he said breathlessly, holding it out in front of him.

“What is it?” Clara asked, taking
the candle from my bedside table to examine the package. It was a small bundle, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. I could hear the rustling of paper being unwrapped, then silence as she held the contents up to the flickering candlelight. I opened my eyes, straining to see. In her hands she held what looked like a glass vial.

“What does it say, Mum?” Polly asked eagerly.

“Penicillin…
take three times a day for four weeks.”

“Medicine?” Polly asked excitedly. “It’s medicine! One of the townspeople must have found some.”

“Did they leave a note?” Clara asked.

Polly looked inside the package. “No.”

Clara looked puzzled. “Maybe it was Mr. Seabrook? He was trying to find some this morning.”

“Let’s not worry right now about where it came from,” George said urgently. “We need
to hurry and crush the pills so we can mix them in milk. Otherwise she won’t be able to swallow them.”

Polly sat down beside me, lifting me upright as her dad spoon-fed the bitter-tasting milk into my mouth. After days without eating, even the milk felt hard to swallow. Polly saw me struggling and paused to dribble some water in my mouth, which helped a little.

“Antibiotics have a short shelf
life,” George said as he poured more milk into the spoon. “Let’s just pray it’s not too late for the medicine to work.”

At first, the doctor checked on me three times a day, giving me the pills at dawn, noon, and evening. Every time he took my temperature, a smile formed on his otherwise stern face. The tremors abated and so did the sweats, and eventually the muscles in my mouth loosened so I
could speak again. The red lines of infection spreading to my heart slowly receded until the only evidence left of them were faint scars along my arms and back.

When my fever had been gone for a week straight, the doctor started coming every other day to make sure I was eating. He said I had lost close to a quarter of my body weight. My muscles were still so weak that I wasn’t allowed to walk
alone in case I fell.

Polly was constantly at my side. She brought me trays of food, porridge with honey that her father had gathered from the honeybee hive, and cream from their dairy cow. At lunch she’d make a broth with whatever she could find, a carrot or potato, and serve it with a small dish of blackberries. I still didn’t have much of an appetite but I forced myself to eat for Polly’s
sake. She looked happy every time I returned an empty dish to her. And slowly, in bits and pieces, I began to tell Polly what had happened since I had said good-bye to her last summer. I had yet to tell her about Wesley—those memories were still too painful. I wondered if I ever would.

“It’s the worst feeling in the world, Polly,” I said. I was feeling much better physically, but I couldn’t stop
replaying that night in the Tower. “I was so close to them—our hands touched through the bars of the cell—but then I had to leave them. Sometimes I think I should have just stayed. Then at least we would all have been killed together….”