Princess of the Midnight Ball (20 page)

“I see.” Galen paused. A forest of silver that grew from a cross? No wonder the twigs he had taken felt powerful. His hands still tingled faintly from knitting with them. “Can the princes come through the gate any time they want? How do they get to the surface? Surely not by your golden staircase?”

Pansy’s brow wrinkled. “No, the princes can only come at night. I don’t know how, though. They came to the garden one night, when Papa locked us in our rooms. But the next night, they could barely dance. They
hate
the forest. When Rose was sick she fainted, and Prince Illiken carried her to the gate. He looked ill, too, by the time we got to the stairs. Petunia threw up that night, and Lily had to carry her all the way from the boats. Petunia’s partner, Prince Kestilan, didn’t want to do it because she smelled nasty.” Pansy giggled.

Galen laughed with her, choking it off when Rose and Lily and their suitors came over to the chairs. They all smiled vaguely at Pansy.

“What’s so funny, Pan?” Rose smoothed Pansy’s tousled curls. “Who have you been talking to?”

Galen leaned close to Pansy’s ear and whispered; “Sssh-hhh,” as quietly as he could.

“No one,” Pansy said, slipping off her chair. “I know; I have to keep dancing.” And she went off to find her suitor in better spirits than Galen had ever seen her.

“What’s gotten into her?” Lily mused.

“I don’t know,” Rose said, thoughtful.

She looked right at the spot where Galen was sitting, and he felt a chill run up his arms. Even though she was looking through him, he sensed that she knew he was there. He reached out a tentative finger and touched the back of her hand. Her fingers twitched, but she did not jump or cry out; instead a small smile curved her mouth.

“We must dance,” Prince Illiken said, and he led her away.

“One more night,” Galen whispered when they had gone away. “One more night, and then I will get you out of this place. And your sisters, too.”

Galen watched the rest of the ball without speaking, although several times both Rose and Pansy tried to linger near the chairs where he sat. He rode in Lily’s boat as they went back across the lake, Galen’s added weight confusing her suitor and giving Rose’s Illiken an undeserved respite.

Again, Galen slipped up the stairs before the princesses without making a sound. When Rose checked to see if he was sleeping, he was snoring peacefully, inhaling the scent of her perfume as she leaned over the back of the sofa.

Galen awoke feeling confident, but that began to fade soon after breakfast. He had made a chain out of the crone’s black wool that was long enough to wrap around the handles of the gate, but would it do the job? The crone’s cloak really did render him invisible, and he had knitted the black wool chain with the twigs of the silver trees, his hands tingling with dormant power. But was this the answer? Would it really stop the King Under Stone from getting what he wanted?

Galen had made Rose’s shawl out of the crone’s white wool, thinking that it would somehow protect and comfort her, but it had no effect on Illiken when he danced with Rose. Now he worried that his instincts weren’t correct.

Galen went out to the gardens that afternoon, looking for Walter, but he couldn’t find the old man. He was in need of advice but didn’t know where to go.

Galen stood at the entrance of the hedge maze and stared up at the palace. The pink stucco was cheery, despite the lowering
clouds and threat of snow. Galen shook his head over all the nights wasted patrolling the garden, when all along the princesses were using a secret passage in their own sitting room. He frowned. Who had set up the secret passage? The King Under Stone or Queen Maude? If the princesses knew, they couldn’t say.

But there was someone else in the palace who might know.

The Bretoner governess was being kept in one of garret rooms where the lowliest scullery maids slept. She had both a priest and a palace guard watching her door, and no one was allowed to speak to her without Bishop Angier present. Galen thought about using his letter from King Gregor to see her, but it gave him the freedom of the grounds only, not the palace, and certainly not the right to speak to a prisoner under Bishop Angier’s care.

So he fastened on the cloak and went around to the back of the palace. The building was modern and square, and there were copper drainpipes at all the corners. Galen shimmied up the one at the western corner, closest to Anne’s room. When he was level with the garret windows, he reached across, catching a window frame with one foot and his hand. Heart thumping, afraid to look down, he let go of the drainpipe and half leaped onto the narrow window ledge.

He strained at the window, which was latched from the inside, and saw a white face peering out, looking for the source of the small scraping noises he had made. The governess’s eyes were puffy from crying, and her graying hair was tangled.

Galen unhooked the chain of the cloak, and the governess
let out a small scream as he appeared right in front of her. He held a finger to his lips and smiled to show that he was friendly.

“I want to help,” he mouthed broadly.

She didn’t look entirely convinced, but she unlatched the window and opened it a crack. “Who are you?”

“I’m Galen Werner, a gardener,” he told her. “Please let me in. I need to ask you some questions.”

“I’ve been asked enough questions,” she said, and made as if to close the window again.

“Please,” Galen begged. “I’m only trying to help.”

She hesitated, then opened the window a little more. Galen grabbed the edge and slid it all the way open, tumbling forward into the room.

The tiny chamber contained only a cot, a table, and a chair. There were no books or sewing to occupy the governess’s empty hours; there wasn’t even a basin to wash her face.

“How did you— You just appeared—Who sent you?” Anne backed away from Galen, looking wary. But she kept her voice down, all the same, so that her guards would not hear them.

“My name is Galen; I work in the garden. I’m trying to help the girls … the princesses,” Galen amended. “I followed them last night, using this.” He refastened the cloak and disappeared.

Anne gasped and put her hands to her mouth, and Galen quickly took off the cloak.

“A kindly old woman gave it to me,” he told her. “Along
with the wool I used for this.” He pulled the black chain out of the pouch at his belt. “I want to seal the entrance to the underground realm where they dance at night. There is a gate the princesses must pass through….” His voice trailed off. The idea seemed so foolish now. “Do you know anything that would help?”

Fingering the chain, Anne shook her head, and Galen’s heart sank. It was true: she was completely innocent of her charges’ midnight activities.

But her next words turned Galen’s pity for her imprisonment to anger.

“This feels so flimsy. I don’t know that it will be enough to hold Under Stone,” she said.

“You know about the King Under Stone?” Galen barely kept his voice under control. “Why didn’t you tell someone? Why didn’t you help them?”

“I only just discovered what Maude had done,” Anne told him hastily. She sat on her narrow cot and pulled the boiled wool blanket around her plump shoulders. “And I wasn’t about to tell that awful Bishop Angier.

“I was Maude’s friend, her only confidant, for many years,” she continued, “yet she did not confide this in me. I knew that she’d done
something
, but I thought that she’d merely found some witch to provide her with a fertility charm. She visited them all, you know. Every midwife, wisewoman, white witch, fortuneteller … She drank horrible concoctions, ate nothing but boiled eggs one week, grapes another; had the maids wash her clothing in rainwater and dry it under the full moon….”
Anne shook her head. “None of it worked. And then Maude stopped talking to me, stopped sharing her secrets with me, and Rose was born. Rose, and the rest of the girls. Twelve children in eleven years would wear anyone out, but I always felt in my heart that something more was weighing on poor Maude. And when she died, and the girls began to look exhausted all the time, when they wore out their shoes every third night, I knew that whatever Maude had done to have her daughters was still being paid for.

“I searched the entire palace over and over again, even the rooms up here.” She gestured around at the bare cell. “I only just found the books, hours before Angier came. He caught me with them. I never had a chance to do more than glance at them.”

“Which books?” Galen had to clear his throat before he could ask. He had been leaning forward, listening to her tumbled words, and had forgotten to swallow.

“A history, moldy with age, that told the story of Under Stone and how he was cast down. And a diary of Maude’s, detailing her dealings with him. They were hidden in the library. I only found them because I dropped a pencil, and it rolled behind one of the bookcases. The books were wedged there.”

“What were you able to read?”

“Only that Maude made two bargains with him: one for her children, and one to end the war with Analousia. And something in the history, about the magicians who survived the imprisoning spell. They’re not dead.” She shook her head. “I didn’t have enough time to make sense of it,” she said, frustrated.

“Where are the books now?”

“In Angier’s chambers, as far as I know,” Anne said. “But how will you get to them?”

“Easily.” Galen refastened his cloak and turned invisible. He felt a smile spreading across his face. The answers were waiting; all he had to do was snatch them. “Easily.”

He went to the window and swung himself out and down the drainpipe. “Good luck to you,” he called softly back to Anne.

“And to you,” she answered, but there was still great doubt in her voice.

Hurrying through the palace corridors, still invisible, Galen knew what the crone had been cackling about when she said that the cloak was dangerous. Dodging the maids was bad enough, but one of the footmen pulled a rug right out from under his feet, taking it up to be aired. A door was nearly slammed on his hand, and he had to pause and compose himself outside Angier’s door.

Galen listened at the keyhole but didn’t hear anything, so he picked the lock with a penknife and entered the rooms. A quick search showed that the sitting room and adjoining bedchamber were indeed empty, and Galen turned his attention to finding the books Anne had described.

It didn’t take long to locate them.

Bishop Angier, confident that no one would dare to rifle through his things, had simply left them on a table. There were other books: a notebook in Analousian that Galen guessed was
the bishop’s, a book on the history of witchcraft, and a beautifully illustrated Bible.

Galen pushed these other books aside, picking up the tattered history book and the small blue diary that also littered the table. He started to put them in his satchel, but then realized that when their absence was discovered, it might raise a hue and cry.

Galen set them back on the table and began hastily leafing through the history, to see what he could find before Angier returned. Halfway through the book, he found a pansy pressed between two pages. Maude had used the flower to mark the chapter on Under Stone.

Galen sank onto the edge of the table and read about the King Under Stone, whose name had once been Wolfram von Aue, when he was an adviser to King Ranulf of Westfalin in the fifth century. When he killed Ranulf and made himself king, Under Stone had decreed that his name must never be spoken again, lest it be used against him as part of a spell. Every record, every piece of paper that contained his name had been destroyed, and the very memory of it had been wiped from the minds of his subjects. The magicians who imprisoned him had spent years trying to recover that name, which was the key to their spell of entrapment. It had also involved silver, blessed by a bishop, and wool from a lamb that had never before been sheared.

Galen reached into his satchel and stroked the woolen chain. He felt sure that this wool had come from a similar source. Who had that old woman been?