Princess of the Midnight Ball (8 page)

“It may surprise you, Wilhelm, but I do agree,” Schelker said in his mild way. “You’ve known me too long to think I’m going to run straight to the archbishop at the first hint of something … odd. This is something best looked into by those of us who love the princesses.”

“But how? What do I do?” The king’s downcast eyes fell on
a letter on his desk. “Luis of Spania is sending his eldest son here on a state visit,” he murmured. “I’ll have to write to tell him not to come. I’ll say it’s because of the girls’ illness.”

Dr. Kelling squinted at the letter. “Gregor, a moment. Perhaps you
should
seek outside help for this dilemma.”

The king stopped in the act of reaching for a blank sheet of paper. “Whose, then?”

Bishop Schelker raised his eyebrows, intrigued.

The doctor leaned back in his chair. “What if you
didn’t
cancel the Spanian prince’s visit?”

“What are you getting at?”

“Let him come. It’s Rose I’m mostly worried about. Let this prince come, and see if he can’t find out where the princesses go at night. If he does, he can … he can marry one of them.”

King Gregor spluttered, “My daughters are not …
prizes
to be won in some bizarre contest!”

Dr. Kelling raised one shaggy eyebrow. “Come now! You know that the only reason Spania is sending this prince is in the hope that he’ll take a fancy to one of your girls. They’re waiting to see how much dowry you offer; you’re waiting to see what trade agreements they’ll sign. You might as well give the boy something to do while you and his father work things out.”

Schelker gave a small, appreciative laugh, and looked to the king for his reaction.

King Gregor’s face went red. “But, but, but the scandal! What do we do if these strange doings drive him away? I won’t have my girls hurt, rejected by some Spanian fool.”

“Pish-tosh!” Dr. Kelling made a dismissive gesture. “If a bit of mystery doesn’t make the girls all the more alluring, I’ll eat my hat. And we don’t know that the boy’s a fool: by all accounts he’s quite dashing. I’ll send him away myself if it doesn’t work. He won’t want his name linked to any scandal; odds are he won’t breathe a word of what’s going on, just to avoid being implicated. I’ll make sure to reinforce that idea when—
if
—we need to bid him farewell.”

Schelker was nodding. “Think on it, Gregor. Your daughters deserve husbands who can stand up to a little intrigue, face up to these ‘strange doings,’ as you put it. It will be a good indication of a young man’s character, to see how he reacts to this.”

King Gregor sat across from his old friends for a long time, turning over the conversation in his head. “What do we tell him?”

“Tell him the girls sneak out to go dancing every night, as though it were a lark,” Kelling said. “No mention of witchcraft and monsters in the garden. If he can find out where they go, he proves himself to be a resourceful candidate for the throne.”

“The throne!” King Gregor’s face reddened. “Now I’m to give my throne to some foreign prince?”

“Gregor,” Bishop Schelker said patiently. “You have no sons, no nephews. You’ve always said that one of the girls’ husbands would inherit. Make this a condition of that inheritance. It will be a worthy king indeed who can solve this puzzle.”

King Gregor nodded slowly. “It would be a good way to find a successor. And put an end to the girls’ troubles.”

“You will let the Spanian prince come?” Kelling sat forward in his seat.

“I will.”

Galen learned about the Spanian prince’s assignment from Princess Poppy. Strong-willed Poppy had been the first of the princesses to recover her full strength, and she began to take walks in the gardens again a few days after Rionin and his shadowy companions had invaded the grounds.

She immediately sought out Galen.

“So, you’re the new under-gardener,” she said when she found him wrapping strips of burlap around the trunk of a weeping cherry tree. “Galen.”

He straightened and bowed. “Indeed I am, Your Highness. Is there anything I can do for you?”

She peered up at him from beneath her fur-lined hood. Winter was settling in, and she had been bundled up until she could hardly move. As she studied Galen, she unwound no less than two scarves and tossed them onto a nearby bench.

“They itch,” she explained. “Were you really a soldier?”

“Yes. Your Highness.” Galen did not want to talk about
the war with this young girl, and he glanced down at the “tree bandages,” trying to hint that he needed to keep working, without being rude.

“And did you really face off against Ri—the … people … who came into the garden the other night, with just a switch?”

“Yes, although the switches were Walter Vogel’s idea. He was there with me.” He thought it interesting that Poppy was more curious than afraid of what had happened that night. Both Rose and the other princess—Walter had told him it was the second eldest, Lily, who had fired the pistol—had been quite terrified.

“Walter is a dear, but quite strange,” Poppy said. “I’m hardly surprised. What did you think of the creatures?”

“I—I don’t really know, Your Highness. They were quite … I’ve never seen anything like them. I thought they were human, but then they seemed to just fade away.”

She pounced on his description. “As if they weren’t really here? As if they were an illusion?” Her expression was eager, and almost … hopeful.

“They weren’t an illusion,” Galen said. “The switches made contact; I drew blood from one I struck in the face. And the one who tried to climb the ivy, to get to your windows, certainly felt the switch on his back. It tore his coat, and I thought…” He stopped. For all her avid expression, she was still very young, and he didn’t want to scare her.

“What did you think?”

“I thought the wounds were smoking, Your Highness.” He watched her carefully.

If anything, Poppy looked disappointed. “So they really can come here,” she said in a low voice.

Galen looked down at her face. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her cheeks were pale despite the cold that he knew was making his nose red under his tan. His uncle discouraged any contact between the under-gardeners and the royal family, but Reiner was on the far side of the gardens, working in the hothouses.

“Princess Poppy,” Galen said, casting aside the burlap strips and taking a step toward her. “What were they? Why did they come here?”

She looked up at him with her deep blue eyes. They were violet, really, and dark with an emotion he would not have suspected her capable of, from the teasing way she had spoken before.

“They came to give us a warning,” she said.

“What warning?”

“That we are not free.” She gave a bitter laugh, sounding much older than her years. “And what are they? They are the things that you find crawling under a rock. Under a
stone
, actually.” Again the laugh, and she started to turn away. “I should go back before someone comes after me. We are expecting a very special guest for dinner.” The teasing tone was back, and she fluttered her eyelashes at Galen. “Prince Fernand of Spania! Are we not honored?”

“I’m sure he’s very handsome,” Galen said, managing a smile. He was still troubled by what she had said, about them
not being free. And what did she mean that the invaders were things you find “under a stone”?

“But is he intelligent? That’s the real question,” Poppy said. “Intelligent enough to find out all our secrets? If he is, he gets to marry one of us, you know. And be the king after Papa dies.”

Galen was almost more taken aback by this than by what she had said before. “What’s this?”

“Father just told us,” Poppy said. Her voice was still light, but Galen detected an underlying edge to it. “If Fernand can find out why our dancing shoes are worn through at night—it’s now every night that it happens, you know—then he gets to pick one of us to marry, and he’ll be king one day.”

“And if he doesn’t find out?”

“Then Papa will invite another prince, and another, until one of them does!” Her voice sounded slightly hysterical now, and she laughed, but Galen saw tears in her violet-blue eyes.

“Your Highness,” he began helplessly. Then he just shook his head. Who was he to tell her it would be all right? He couldn’t even begin to fathom what her life was like. Galen just took her arm and led her through the garden.

“Galen!” Uncle Reiner came out of the rose hothouse just as they were passing and stopped short when he saw who was with his nephew. He bowed. “Your Highness, please forgive young Galen’s forwardness.” He glared furiously over her head at Galen.

“Herr Orm,” Poppy said, nodding her head at him. “Your
nephew is helping me back to the palace. I am not as well as I thought.”

Reiner Orm made a harrumphing noise through his mustache but didn’t say anything. He bowed again to Poppy, and Galen and the young princess strolled away.

“I think he’s angry with me,” Galen said out of the corner of his mouth.

“But he can’t do anything about it,” Poppy pointed out. “I
am
a princess, after all.”

“And I’m very privileged to be able to assist you, Your Highness,” Galen said with a smile.

Poppy laughed. “Rose will be jealous, if she sees us,” Poppy said, looking up at Galen from under her eyelashes. “She thinks you’re handsome.”

Galen stopped in his tracks. Now his cheeks really were red under his tan. “But we’ve never … I only … by the fountain.”

“She sits by the window in the afternoons, to try to get some sun. She watches you working,” Poppy told him. “And she said you looked so strong and brave, standing in the moonlight with your switch that night.” She giggled at Galen’s discomfiture.

He gave a wary look. She was teasing him, he knew, but teasing him with the truth? Did Princess Rose watch him? He glanced up at the windows of the palace, but the angle of the weak wintry sun made it hard to tell if anyone was beyond the glass.

“Of course, she’ll kill me for telling you that,” Poppy said cheerfully.

“I certainly won’t tell her,” Galen said fervently.

“I didn’t think you would.” She laughed again. “Oh, look, Prince Fernand is here.” She made a face.

Someone was throwing open windows along the east side of the palace, not far from the princesses’ rooms. Galen and Poppy could clearly hear orders being shouted in Spanian, and see servants running to and fro.

“Well, he sounds pleasant,” Poppy said dryly.

“I’m sure he has many fine … qualities,” Galen said.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about this Spanian prince, really. Spania had been an ally of Westfalin during the war, and Galen had fought alongside some Spanian regiments. He hadn’t much cared for them: they were too concerned with keeping their uniforms clean. The Westfalians tended to be a rather rough-and-tumble people. Galen wondered how a Spanian prince would like ruling over such a nation.

He saw Poppy to the wide terrace doors that faced out on the gardens. A maid scurried out immediately to scold the young girl and sweep her inside. Galen felt abashed for a moment, hoping that the maid, too, wouldn’t think him forward for strolling with a princess. But instead she thanked him for finding her errant charge and returning her. Galen went back to work relieved on that count, but not on his concerns about the prince.

And the contest to win one of the princesses’ hands.

Galen need not have worried about that. A week later the Spanian prince left empty-handed and furious. One of the other gardeners, who was courting a chambermaid, told Galen
and Walter that the prince had spent several nights in the hall outside the princesses’ rooms, one night waiting in the garden under their windows, and had even been permitted to spend a night in the sitting room that led to their bedchambers. He had seen and heard nothing, yet their shoes were worn out every morning and they were as tired as ever.

Galen stood with Walter and watched Fernand leave. The prince was quite a dandy, and as he supervised the loading of his many trunks into the luggage wagon, he waved his arms in the air expressively and ranted to the Spanian ambassador, who had come to see him off. The lace on Fernand’s cuffs flew, but his elegantly styled hair was so thickly pomaded that it hardly moved as he raged.

“Too proud,” Walter commented.

“What’s that?” Galen jumped. They had been standing there in silence so long that he’d almost forgotten Walter’s presence.

“That young man is far too proud. He was in the gardens a few days ago, and I thought to give him some advice, the benefit of my wisdom, as it were. But he was too proud to listen.”

“I see,” Galen said, giving Walter a sidelong look. “And what advice did you try to give him?”

“The advice I would have given him is vastly different from that I’d have given you, young Galen,” Walter said cryptically. “He hasn’t been as … blessed … as you have been.” And with that, the older man stumped away.

Shaking his head, Galen turned his attention back to the courtyard.

Seeing Galen watching him, the prince whirled around and began to rave in his direction. Galen thought about answering back, but the only Spanian he knew was extremely unflattering, so he merely bowed and went back to the gardens.