Palace of Lies (9 page)

Janelia gasped. I opened my eyes and looked down. The nightgown I'd been thinking of as snowy-white perfection was smeared with blood. Some of the blood had dried to a brownish color, but other spots were fresh and bright red.

It looked like the gown of a murder victim.

“Oh, you poor, dear child!” Janelia cried. “Did they stab
you when you were escaping?” She looked frantically up at Herk and Tog. “Were either of you injured? Are you sure nobody followed—”

“
Nobody
could have followed us, the way we went,” Herk bragged.

Janelia turned her frantic gaze back to me.

“I had to break a window to escape,” I said. Just saying those words made me dizzy. “I didn't have shoes. I stepped on some glass. Oh, and slid down a pillar.”

It already seemed impossible that I had done those things.

Janelia nodded, a troubled bobbing up and down of her head.

“It could be worse, it could be worse,” she muttered. She scooted back and peered more directly at my bloody feet. “Tog, put on the kettle so we'll have hot water to clean the blood away.”

I remembered how much it had hurt when Herk touched my foot.

“I think there might still be some glass left inside,” I said hesitantly.

Janelia kept nodding.

“We'll get it out,” she said. She lifted the bottom of my nightgown slightly, looking at my scraped legs. “Boys, while I'm helping Desmia, I'll need you to go to the market to purchase—”

“Mam, there's no money left to buy anything,” Tog said,
backing away from a fireplace where he'd just hung a kettle. “If you want us to leave so we don't see a girl's leg—the leg of a girl we just
rescued
, remember?—just tell us to leave.”

Herk scrambled up.

“Bye, bye,” he said.

And then both boys walked back out the door.

I missed them.

Maybe I was dizzy from losing so much blood. Maybe it was just too strange to have lost my palace, lost the girls I thought of as sisters, endured so much to get away from danger—and now have this strange woman claiming a relationship I was supposed to remember. Or, was the strange part that I almost did remember?

While Janelia busied herself pulling out cloths and watching the kettle, I made myself focus on looking around the small room.

Dirt floor
, I thought.
Bedding over in the corner—do all three of them actually
sleep
on the floor? Table that looks like it would fall apart if someone put his elbows down on it, three rickety stools . . .

I had never seen such a poor-looking space. Of course, I'd never seen inside any home except the palace and the “prison house” where Madame Bisset had kept me, so for all I knew, maybe most of my royal subjects lived like this. Or maybe, by the standards of ordinary Sualans, this was actually a fine home, an upper-class living space.

I doubted that. I couldn't imagine anyone living in a
worse place than this. Not if they intended to survive.

Janelia brought a steaming bucket of water and a pile of rags over beside me. I was relieved to see that she piled the rags on one of the rickety stools, not the dirt floor.

“It's not your fault you don't remember me from when you were little,” Janelia said, though I could tell from the way she bit her lip that it still bothered her. “And—from the other things I tried, trying to get a message to you. I shouldn't have expected so much. I just wanted so much to believe . . .”

“
Why
did I know you when I was four?” I asked. “How—”

I stopped myself before I could ask,
How is it that Lord Throckmorton didn't have you killed?
even though that was one of the things I wanted to know. Maybe what I wanted to know most. I was working out an odd sort of equation in my head:
If poor servant-girl Janelia managed to survive in spite of Lord Throckmorton's murderous ways, doesn't that make it more likely that Cecilia and Harper and all my other sister-princesses managed to survive the fire and whoever might have been trying to kill them?

Janelia dabbed at my right foot with a dampened rag.

“Oh good, a lot of this is just dried blood on unbroken skin,” Janelia said. “It looks worse than it is—you don't have wounds
everywhere
.”

I winced anyway.

“But, oooh, here's a cut and there's still glass in it and it's deep . . . Brace yourself,” Janelia said. She seemed to be
speaking through gritted teeth. A moment later, she looked up. “How is it that you aren't screaming?”

“Sometimes when you know things are going to hurt, you just make yourself stop thinking about them,” I said.

And once again I had the sensation that Janelia might be familiar, that I might remember her . . . but then it slipped away again.

Would there have been any reason that I might have made myself forget?
I wondered.

Janelia was watching my face too carefully. I felt the same kind of squeamishness I'd felt listening to Tog breathe. Janelia was too close. It was like she actually knew me, knew me so well she didn't even see me as a princess anymore.

Nobody knew me that well.

“Go on taking the glass out,” I said, and without meaning to I sounded imperious, with a tone of,
Do as I command, servant!

“I'll tell you the story I've always wanted you to know,” Janelia said. “While I work. It might . . . distract you.”

“As you wish,” I said stiffly.

Why did I feel like hearing the story might be as painful as having my wounds cleaned?

“ ‘Twas odd that I was
given over to serve the queen,” Janelia began.

“Odd?” I murmured, holding back a wince. Just when I had bragged about how good I was at not thinking about pain, the tactic failed me. Maybe it didn't work as well on physical pain as on other types. It was starting to feel like Janelia was rooting around under the skin of my feet with razors and knives and swords.

“Before that I'd only ever been a scullery maid,” Janelia said. “Plucking feathers from chicken and geese, scrubbing dirt from potatoes . . .”

“The lowest work a servant girl could have in the palace,” I agreed.

“Oh, no,” Janelia corrected me. She paused to brush away a curl of hair from her forehead. “Cleaning out chamber pots is
much
worse.”

“But a royal person's own maid or butler does that,” I protested.

“Right, and so in the
palace
, everyone acts like it's a better job,” Janelia said. “Because you're close to the royalty, see? If they like you, they give you treats and favors, they tell you secrets. . . . You've got
prestige
.”

I tried to remember if I'd ever given servants any treats or favors. I was certain I'd never told them any secrets.

Secrets shared had a way of escaping, of spreading further than the secret-teller wished.

“So you agreed to be the queen's servant girl for the prestige?” I asked.

“No,” Janelia said. She reached back for a rag that wasn't covered in blood. “I was chosen to be the queen's servant girl because everyone else was afraid. And . . . I was too stupid to know that I should be afraid too.”

I flinched, and I couldn't have said if it was because of what Janelia had said or because of the way Janelia was digging into my wounds.

“But the queen—everybody loved the queen,” I protested.

This had always been treated as gospel truth around the palace. The queen's universal appeal had played a huge part in the lies I'd originally believed about myself, as well as the fuller story that emerged once all of us “true princesses” got together and began comparing stories.

“The queen was dangerous,” Janelia said, dropping a large sliver of bloody glass onto a bloody rag.

That was in my foot?
I thought, suddenly so queasy that I thought I might vomit or faint.

Janelia evidently misunderstood the expression of dismay on my face.

“Oh, of course, Queen Charlotte Aurora was also beautiful and gracious and kind, and all the servants loved her,” Janelia hastened to say. “I can't speak for the likes of Lord Throckmorton.”

I kept silent. If I tried to speak I would surely scream or wail or maybe even curse.

“But the queen was . . . reckless,” Janelia said. “She was so good herself, she didn't understand that other people could be evil through and through. She just thought they were misunderstood.”

“Like Lord Throckmorton,” I muttered. Saying his name was almost like cursing. “The queen didn't know he was evil.”

Janelia nodded. She paused, looking off toward the door.

“Servants hear things,” she said. “They may not understand it all, but . . . everybody knew the king and queen were in danger. The queen was pushing for the end of the war, and she couldn't see why it wasn't easy. She didn't see that . . . that some men would kill to keep the war going. Because
they
were profiting.”

I shivered. Had the other girls and I been as reckless as our supposed mother, the queen? We had wanted to end the war too;
we
had actually accomplished a peace treaty. Well, all but the formal signing of the document. I knew
for a fact that Lord Throckmorton had made a fortune from the war, as had some of the other advisers we sent to prison. Were there others we didn't know about who still had reason to want war? Who were willing to kill to get their way?

Someone burned down our palace—is that proof that warmongers are still out there? Someone knocked out at least Fidelia and me in the middle of the fire—was that because of the peace treaty?
I wondered.
If Madame Bisset is to be believed—which she isn't! She isn't!—then someone made sure that all the other princesses besides me are dead. Because . . . because . . .

A great sob rose inside my throat but I didn't let it out. I clamped my lips together and hoped that Janelia thought I was grimacing only because of my wounded feet.

“Fourteen years ago, none of the other servants wanted to serve the queen because of the rumors,” Janelia said. “Some said her enemies would strike in the middle of the night; some said they'd strike by day and they'd probably kill everyone in the room with her, to kill all the witnesses. . . .”

“Lord Throckmorton did kill all the witnesses,” I said. “Even the men who'd worked with him to kill the king.”

Janelia shook her head, ever so slightly.

“Not
all
the witnesses,” she said softly.

My eyes widened, and for a moment I really did forget the searing pain in my feet.

Janelia gave a heavy sigh.

“The queen's last chambermaid quit in hysterics the same day the queen gave birth,” she said. “The rumors . . . I didn't know this at the time, because the girl peeling potatoes is always the last to know anything. But everyone believed that the assassins wouldn't strike until a new prince or princess was born.”

“Until there was an heir,” I said bitterly. “Until there was a tiny royal baby who would be totally dependent on her advisers for years to come. A tiny royal baby who could be molded and shaped and manipulated . . .”

I knew now that I hadn't ever been the
real
true princess—the one with the actual blood of her parents running through her veins. But I had played that role long enough to know how this part of the story went.

“Yes,” Janelia said, She seemed to be concentrating hard on my wounds. “I'm not sure how many girls they asked to attend the queen, but eventually they worked their way down to me. And—I was a foolish child. All I knew was that the queen had just given birth and was seriously ill, and I'd seen my own mother give birth, and I thought . . . I thought the queen needed me.”

“You were brave,” I whispered.

“I didn't know any better,” Janelia said. “And—it gets worse.”

For a moment she was silent, focused on washing away blood. She inched my nightgown up to an indecent level, and even though I'd been used to servant girls washing me
and dressing me all my life, I felt strangely exposed. Was it because I worried about Tog and Herk coming back too soon? Or was it because Janelia seemed to be laying bare her own soul?

Being washed and dressed by servant girls only worked well if the servant girls were anonymous, impersonal, practically unnoticed.

“Oh, this isn't so bad,” Janelia said, dabbing now at the scrapes on my legs from sliding down the pillar. “None of these wounds are deep—they'll be healed before you know it.”

Did that mean that the wounds on my feet would take a lot longer?

I felt better when Janelia pulled the skirt of the nightgown back down and moved to attending to my left foot.

“Pray, go on with your tale,” I said.

“I hauled bathing water for Queen Charlotte Aurora,” Janelia said. “I washed her brow when she turned feverish. I listened to her babble about the king, the baby, the king, the baby . . .”

“Did you see the dead baby?” I asked. “The . . . corpse?”

I felt cruel asking that question. But it'd been a point in the story I'd always stumbled over. Who wouldn't want proof?

Janelia shook her head no.

“I was given to believe that other servants were caring
for the child,” she said. “A wet nurse, a nursemaid, a nanny . . . And the queen was too ill to hold an infant, so it was no surprise to me that the child was never brought to her to admire and coo over and dandle.”

“But didn't
you
want to see the new princess?” I asked.

“I was the queen's only servant girl,” Janelia said. “I didn't have time to do anything but tend her. Day
and
night. I even slept on her stone floor, an hour or two at a time, no more than she herself was able to sleep. . . .”