Ash & Bramble (17 page)

P
RECIOUS HAS KNOTTED THE LACES OF THE CORSET SO
tightly that I can't breathe. They are tied at my back and I can't unknot them and I can't get any air into my lungs.

Tears run down my face, stinging where my stepmother hit me. I gasp for a breath, and then another, and scrabble at the corset laces.
It will not come off
.

“Stop it,” I gasp and try to take a deep breath to calm myself. The corset cuts into my ribs. “
Stop. It
,” I grind out, and with an effort of will I push all the air out of my lungs. It's enough to loosen the laces in the back, and I get my fingers under the knot and with a vicious jerk I break it, and the corset loosens, an enormous relief. I take a deep, shuddering breath. With shaking fingers I unlace the corset and fling it away from me, into the corner of my tiny prison room.

I sit on the bed against the wall and draw up my knees and wrap the shreds of my silk dress around me. I use the snowy white petticoat to wipe the tears off my face. With my fingers I feel the place where Stepmama hit me. A bruise is rising on my cheek; it feels sore and swollen. My head is pounding from the blows, and from the crying.

“What now, Pen?” I whisper to myself. I thought myself so clever, pitting myself against Lady Faye, but I am not winning this contest. She was right, and she is still right—the more I struggle, the worse it gets.

I rest my head on my knees and contemplate the wall of my prison. The plaster is cracked. Black mold is crusted where the walls meet the floor. I haven't eaten anything since the scrap of bread and cheese I had last night. The wind hisses through the broken window. It's going to be a cold, hungry night.

I am so alone.

Tears start leaking from my eyes again, running down my cheeks and soaking into the petticoat. For a while I let myself cry.

At last I run out of tears, and I wipe my face again with my damp petticoat and lift my head. I have to get out of here.

All right. I have a shredded silk dress. That's something. Silk is a strong material, and if I could squeeze myself out the attic window, I might be able to use it as a rope to lower myself to the roof. From there I could climb to the ground.
Or fall to my death on the cobblestoned street.

I am wearing only a petticoat.

If I manage to get out the window and down to the street without falling, I will be practically naked, and I can't go running through the streets without any clothes on. If things get desperate enough, though, I might consider it.

I also have two silk stockings. I'd have to use them as part of the rope.

And, one of my shoes fell off as I was being dragged by my stepmother to the attic.

So that is all I have. One shoe.

It is a good shoe. Well made, and it fits me perfectly.

But a single shoe can't save me.

I
N THE MORNING
there is the sound of the key at the lock, and the door swings open. I sit on the bed and pull my legs up so the petticoat I'm wearing will hide my naked front.

It is Anna with my ragged black dress over her arm and my toe-pinching shoes in her hands. Her sympathetic gaze lingers on my face. During the night, the bruise from my stepmother's blow moved to my left eye, which is swollen shut. “Am I—” I have to stop and cough to clear my throat. “Am I being let out?”

“We're not supposed to speak to you. I'm only to tell you to put your clothes on and go to the kitchen.” Anna hands me the dress and the shoes and then hurries from the doorway.

Stiffly I get to my feet. I button my ragged black mourning dress, then lace my ill-fitting shoes. I keep the one shoe, putting it in my pocket.

I make my way to the kitchen; the shoe in my pocket bumps against my leg as I walk, as a reminder. The cook gives me some leftover eggs and toast from breakfast, and when I finish gulping them down like the starving thing that I am, she puts me to work scrubbing out pots. The cooks and servants look carefully away from me, and they speak in hushed voices. They seem frightened, as if something terrible is about to happen.

Or maybe it already has.

Lady Meister
, I hear a maid whisper.
Yes, it's true. She
— The maid glances aside at me and then falls silent.

I feel a chill in my stomach. What? What is true?

In the afternoon, I am lugging cans of bathwater up to Dulcet's room—she doesn't speak to me, either, just pretends I am not there—when I meet the ratcatcher. It seems like such a long time ago that I saw him before, but it was only yesterday.

He is poking his long nose into a hole in a dark corner of the hallway; he pulls it out as I pass. “Greetings, Lady Penelope,” he says, with his gap-toothed grin.

I set down the heavy cans of water and rub my tired arms. “Hello,” I say. “More rats?”

He shakes his shaggy head. “No, miss. Message for you.”

I blink my one good eye. “For me?” I don't actually know
anyone else in the city—at least, not that I can remember.

“From Shoe,” the ratcatcher says.

“A shoe?” It doesn't make any sense. I pull the one perfect shoe from my pocket and inspect it. The stitching along the sole is almost invisible; the shoemaker who made this is an expert craftsman. “I have a message from a shoe?” I repeat.

“No, Your Ladyship.” He lowers his voice. “From your young man.”

I shake my head. “I don't have any young man.”

“Shoe,” the ratcatcher insists. “Nice-looking chap, yellow hair?”

“I don't know anybody like that,” I say, putting the shoe back into my pocket.

“Well, he knows you, Your Ladyship,” he says, and taps his nose. He opens his mouth to say something else—to deliver his message, I guess—when a door down the hallway slams open.

Dulcet's head pokes out. “Bring the water at once,” she orders.

The ratcatcher's mouth snaps shut.

“What message?” I whisper, as I heave up the cans of water.

His nose twitches and he blinks quickly.

With a sigh, I start down the hallway toward Dulcet's room.

“
Thimble
,” the ratcatcher hisses after me.

I stumble. Water from the cans sloshes on the floor.
When I look around, the ratcatcher is scurrying around the corner and away.

Thimble? What does this Shoe person know about my missing thimble?

I
DON'T HAVE
time to think about the message, because I am kept hard at work without any break for a midday meal. The cook scolds, the servants pretend they can't see me, and I go wearily from task to task, my face aching, my fingers cold, my stomach empty.

This is all part of Lady Faye's plan for me, I surmise as I slop soapy water over the back doorstep and bend to scrub at it with a bristly brush. I am at my absolute lowest now. There is no escape; I have no choices left.

Late in the afternoon, an undercook sends me to the market for potatoes. I don't remember the market, but my feet find the way. The air is cold, and as twilight falls, it gets colder, and I wrap my arms around myself as I go along the wide, well-lit streets to the grand square at the center of the city where the market is set up. The castle clock is about to strike six, and I have to hurry to find a shopkeeper willing to sell me a burlap sack full of potatoes before all of the shutters are closed and the stalls taken down. It is awkward to carry. I try wrapping my arms around the sack, but then it's hard to walk, so I heave it up over my shoulder and trudge along that way. As the clock is striking six I am rounding a corner when somebody runs into me on my swollen-shut-eye side.
The sack falls to the street, bursts open, and potatoes go rolling away in every direction.

“Oh, curse it,” I say to the person who bumped into me. “Can't you watch where you're going?”

He is a tall man wearing a leather cloak down to his ankles; a wide-brimmed hat hides his face. “I do beg your pardon,” he says politely, and I catch a glimpse of a well-shaped mouth that curves into an easy smile. He has two dogs at his heels, tall black and tan hounds with long ears and wagging tails, and he holds up his hand, keeping them in place.

I am hungry and exhausted and cold and I don't have time for pretty politeness. “I'll give you my pardon,” I say crossly, “if you'll help me pick the dratted things up.” I shove the sack into his hands and go down on my knees, grabbing after the potatoes. Most men would stalk away at being spoken to so sharply by someone who appears to be a servant girl, but he holds the sack while I put the potatoes in. One of his dogs fetches a potato and brings it to me, holding it gently in its mouth.

“Drop it, Blue,” the man orders, and the dog obediently drops the potato into my hand.

I wipe the slobber off it with my sleeve and put the potato into the sack. “That's all of them,” I say.

The man leans down to help me to my feet.

I feel his hand on mine, and then black spots are swimming before my eyes and the ground feels very far away, and I am falling—and his arm, strong and warm, comes around my shoulders to steady me.

“Are you all right?” he asks. His voice is deep and rich, like melted chocolate.

Mmm, chocolate. I am so very hungry. “Obviously I am not,” I snap. “Just give me the sack and I'll be on my way.”

He doesn't hand over the sack of potatoes. He bends closer to peer into my face, and I get a glimpse of very bright blue eyes in a face of chiseled handsomeness, and a swoop of curly black hair parted on the side. “You're unwell,” he says, and the concern in his eyes is genuine. “I think you'd better come with me.” He takes my arm, and leads me along. It is very unlike me, but I am too limp to resist. We go down the street, turn a corner, and he brings me into a warm, well-lighted, cozy room. A tea shop, I realize.

With great courtesy he leads me to a table and pulls back a chair, and I fall into it. “Tea,” he says to the waiter who hurries up to him. “And a tray of pastries, and perhaps some strawberries.”

“Yes, sir,” the waiter says with a crisp bow, and turns to hurry away.

“And chocolate, if you please,” I call after him.

At that the man turns his charming smile on me, and it's the first time anyone has smiled at me in the longest time—so long that I can't even remember the last time. He sits down at the table opposite me and, strangely, leaves his hat on, as if he doesn't want anyone in the shop to notice him. His face is shadowed, but I can see him well enough. He is young, maybe a few years older than I am. And he is
very well dressed. That, with the impeccable manners, tells me that he's quite at home here in the neighborhood nearest the castle.

He is studying my face. “You speak like a lady,” he says quietly in his velvety voice, “and you carry yourself like one, but you look like a famished, ill-treated scullery maid. Which are you?”

A sharp reply comes to my lips but I bite it back, and instead I shrug wearily.

The man gives a charming smile. “You are a mystery, then.”

I think what he means is that I'm some sort of romantic mystery woman, when there's nothing at all romantic about sleeping in the cinders of the kitchen hearth, or lugging five cans of hot water up four flights of stairs to Dulcet's bedroom and being scolded because her bath is only lukewarm, or scrubbing an entire five-course dinner's worth of pots until the skin of my hands is chapped and red. “I suppose I am,” I say noncommittally. I am a mystery to myself, anyway.

The waiter delivers a pot of tea and a tray of gorgeous pastries, some of them oozing chocolate.

Seeing the food makes me brighten. “Well, I
am
famished,” I add, and I scoop up a strawberry, drag it through a bowl of whipped cream, and pop it into my mouth. It is sweet and tart at the same time, delicious. I follow it up with a bite-size muffin. There's gingerbread, too. My hand hovers, ready to choose it, but for some reason I don't want to, so I
take a little chocolate roll instead. “You may pour me a cup of tea,” I say through my mouthful. He does so, and I take a long drink.

His dogs are lying under the table, their muzzles on the floor with their long ears puddled about them; their brown eyes look up beseechingly. “They're very good dogs,” I say, bending to pat their heads. “Do they go with you everywhere?”

His face softens as he looks down at them, and this time his smile is different, not as practiced. “They do. I breed them. This is Blue,” he says, nudging one with the toe of his boot, “and the other is Bunny.”

I start to make a joke about the names—really, what kind of person calls his dog Bunny?—and for the first time I look him full in the eyes, and something very strange happens.

It is as if a gear has engaged, and I feel completely enmeshed in his gaze. I can't look away. The same thing, evidently, has happened to him. His blue eyes widen.

“Who are you?” he whispers, and his voice is not velvet, but rough.

At the question, a wave of sudden sadness washes over me. I reach into my dress pocket so habitually—to take comfort from my missing thimble—and realize that I've lost my perfect shoe. It must have fallen from my pocket somewhere in the marketplace, maybe when I bent to pick up the spilled potatoes.

Shoe, thimble, all the things I want to remember but
don't—too much has been lost. Who am I? I am nothing. The more I fight, the more tightly I am bound. All my choices are being taken away from me. It is enough to break me, at last. I feel tears welling up, and I blink them back.

His fingers graze my cheek, tender along the bruise where my stepmother struck me. “You burn so brightly,” he says. “You are like a flame, my mystery girl. You must tell me who you are.”

I am no flame. All my fire has burned away, leaving only ash. “I don't know who I am,” I whisper.

He leans closer. “Just tell me your name.”

My name. Trembling, I shake my head.