The Prince of Midnight (36 page)

Dove stuck out her lower lip mulishly.

"Do you deny it?" Leigh snapped.

"I'd not do anything to hurt Mr. Bartlett."

"Only pour acid in his ear!"

"That was before," Dove cried. "Master Jamie had me in a spell! Besides, it
wasn't acid, was it? 'Twas only water. Perhaps my miracle worked after all!"

Leigh turned her head, beyond the power of speech. She would have happily
pushed Dove of Peace right back into the mud, for the good it would have done.

The Seigneur was watching her, with a faint curve to his mouth.

"You got out of there unharmed," she muttered. " 'Tis all that's important."

He grinned at her, his face shadowed by the gathering darkness. "Oh, no," he
said softly. "I'm going to destroy the bastard. That's what's important."

Heavenly Sanctuary slept, the men in their single dormitory, the women on
their mats in the parlors and dining rooms of all the houses along the street.
Some of them sat up praying late into the night for the soul of Dove of Peace,
who had gone away. Master Jamie had preached a sermon every day on her behalf,
and wept, and told them all to forgive her for her weakness. He never mentioned
Mr. Bartlett, so they all knew they were not to think of him or of the way his
rebellious spirit had been taught to submit.

If some of them disobeyed and spent the midnight hours recalling his face and
the way he moved, his outsider's confidence—arrogance, Master Jamie would call
it—that had died with his hearing and been replaced by silence, then they had
Master Jamie's extra prayers to say.

Sweet Harmony knelt on her mat beside Chastity; they both prayed very hard to
be given the strength to forget Dove and Mr. Bartlett, even though it had been
their task to help Dove care for him. Sweet Harmony had brought him meals and
Chastity had shaved him and kept him neat, and sometimes, as he sat listlessly
in the chair staring at nothing, their eyes had met over his head and Harmony
had almost cried.

She tried not to blame Dove. Master Jamie had said they must forgive, and
certainly Dove herself was distraught. She had wept constantly for the whole
time, and never left Mr. Bartlett, and said over and over that she was sure she
had enough faith, and there was something wrong, and once she'd even said she
wished that Master Jamie hadn't made her do it.

It was the next day that they were gone. Harmony and Chastity had climbed up
to the attic room and found it empty. They ran to tell Master Jamie, but he'd
only smiled and said it was his will; Dove had suffered enough for her small
faith. He didn't say where Dove had gone or what had become of Mr. Bartlett.

Somewhere down in the depth of her heart, where she tried to cover it up with
prayers and habits and the old sense of safety and happiness, Sweet Harmony was
afraid.

She looked at Chastity hunched on her mat in the dim moonlight through the
window and knew that Chastity was afraid, too.

Sweet Harmony moistened her cold lips and lifted her head just enough to see
outside the unshuttered glass. In the two days since Dove and Mr. Bartlett had
been gone, a hard frost had frozen the mud that swamped the unpaved edges of
High Street. The church bell started suddenly, pealed out a loud clamor, ringing
on and on in the frigid air. On the mats around her, other girls rustled and
dragged themselves out of sleep for the hour of midnight prayer.

A few figures walked quickly and silently down the cobbled center of the
road, penitents who'd been required to kneel in the church all evening and pray
with Master Jamie. One of them would be his special disciple, Divine Angel, who
always did penance, even though she was never obligated by making the little
mistakes and failures that haunted the rest of them. Once Angel returned to the
house, there would be no sneaking looks out the window during prayers, or
somehow Master Jamie would be calling out one's name in the next noonday service
and asking for confession.

Sweet Harmony didn't think anyone else in their house had guessed that Angel
spied on them. Harmony herself had only been certain of it lately, since Mr.
Bartlett and Dove had been locked in the attic and Divine Angel had been so
assiduous in her concern and fondness for those whose duty it was to care for
the rebellious sinner. Before, Harmony had only been awed that Master Jamie
could see so clearly into her heart and mind that he knew of all her frailties.

She resented Angel a little. It seemed to tarnish what had been glowing and
bright. Not that it was her place to question. She loved Master Jamie, just as
he loved her, but she would rather think that he didn't need spies. Once the
suspicion had come into her head, though, it just wouldn't go away. And the very
fact that she carefully didn't betray it to Divine Angel and Master Jamie never
called upon her to confess her lack of faith, made it seem all the more real and
upsetting.

The church bell fell silent. As the echoes died away against the side of the
hill, Harmony became aware of another sound: the slow, even strike of a horse's
iron-shod hooves against the cobbles.

She lifted her head openly, peering out the window. It was certainly late for
Old Pap—who never answered to the name "Saving Grace" anyway—to be bringing the
wagon back from Hexham. She didn't think he'd gone to town at all today, but
she'd been kept busy with bleaching the floors in the new Sunday school that was
to open next month for the country children.

The brilliant, steady ring of metal against stone grew louder. She saw two of
the penitents pause in the street. She forgot her prayers and craned her neck to
see. Out of the moon shadows along the road, a pale horse came into view, moving
leisurely, its mane and tail like a fall of silver in the night.

Harmony drew in her breath. The rider wore a dark cloak that spread over his
mount's back; he and his horse made the somber shapes of the penitent members in
the street look small. As he walked slowly past, he turned his face up toward
her window, and beneath the rakish shadow of his tricorne Harmony saw the mask.

It was silver and black, painted in jester's patterns, the angles and
diamonds and distorted geometry of a midnight Harlequin. There was a
luminescence to it, a glow in the tessellated pattern that made the eyes only
empty space, only blankness set in the crazy designs that formed half a face: a
forehead, a nose, the shape of human cheekbones and the rest lost in shadow. It
was as if the night had incarnated itself, moonlight and darkness rode a horse
of living alabaster and stared up at her window.

It seemed to beckon, that patterned mask; it seemed to laugh silently, the
more terrifying for the humor in the whimsical design. She felt as if she were
mocked all the way to her heart, every conviction she lived by laid open to
those deep eyes. She clutched her hands together, unable to draw back until the
eerie gaze turned from her window and the horse walked past.

"Lord bless us!" breathed Chastity, who'd craned over her shoulder without
Harmony even realizing it. "Lord God bless us, 'tis the Prince! That do be the
Prince hisself, knock me down if it don't."

"What?" Harmony could hardly seem to get enough air in her lungs to speak.
The other girls were shuffling and pushing her back, trying to get a view out of
the window. "Are you mad?" Her voice quivered upward. "That's never the Prince
of Wales!"

"The Midnight Prince! The French sin-yoor. Old Pap, 'ee said 'ee seen 'im
once—'e told me—in that heathen mask, on a horse all black as pitch!"

" 'Tis a white horse," Harmony said.

"What's it for, eh?" Chastity's fingers suddenly dug into her arm. She
dragged Harmony back from the window and toward the door. "What an' if 'tis over
Mr. Bart-lett?" she hissed against Harmony's ear. "What an' if the Prince do
want revenge fer that what Dove done?"

The Prince. Harmony suddenly understood who Chastity meant; she remembered
newspapers and stories and lessons in French.
Le Seigneur . . . le Seigneur
du Min-uit
—of course, of course! Her throat tightened with terror and a new
excitement. She grabbed at her shawl and fumbled in the dark to find her shoes,
stuffing her bare feet inside. Chastity was already stumbling out the door,
bumping into the stair rail in the dark.

They ran into the street with the other girls clattering behind them. As if
their emergence had broken a spell, from every dormitory came others, some with
their skirts pulled hastily over their heads, some still barefoot on the frozen
ground. No one spoke; they all trotted quickly toward the church, where the pale
horse stood still facing the steps.

Harmony and Chastity were first to catch up. The mounted figure turned his
head; the outlandish mask stared at them.

They instantly came to a panting halt. Sweet Harmony pulled her shawl closer,
wanting to go closer, torn between fear and fascination.

"Do 'ee be the Prince o' Midnight?" Chastity's demand was bold enough, but
her breasts were heaving beneath her woolen gown.

The mask turned toward her. Beneath the painted pattern, he smiled; there was
just enough light to see his mouth curve upward.

The gray horse swung around, facing Chastity. It lifted one front hoof,
extended the other—and bowed, its fine neck arched and its long forelock
dangling to the ground.
"Je suis au service de mademoiselle, "
the
rider said in a wonderful low voice.

A shivery, anxious murmur of delight came from the press of girls behind
them.

"What's that mean, then?" Chastity quavered.

Sweet Harmony put a hand on her shoulder. "He said he's at your service," she
murmured hastily. "Don't talk to him."

"Ah! Cette petite lapine parle francais. "
He sounded amused. The
white horse came upright. It shook its head and snorted, dancing on its
forelegs. "Why shouldn't she talk to me?" he asked in English. "She's braver
than thou, little rabbit."

"Begone!" Sweet Harmony tried hard to keep her voice steady, but the cold
made her shake like a leaf.

He put his hand over his heart. "You wound me!" he said dolefully. His black
gauntlet glittered, studded with silver.

"Master Jamie won't like you here." "Then let him come and tell me so
himself,
ma petite.
I wish to have the honor of an introduction."

The church door opened; a broad ray of candlelight spread over the steps and
then disappeared as Master Jamie let the door fall closed. If the horseman and
the crowd surprised him, he showed no sign of it. He stood a moment at the top
of the steps. Beneath his hat, his powdered hair looked dusty in the moonlight.

He held up both his hands.

Harmony tensed. She was certain he was not pleased; she was afraid he would
call down something terrible on the man and the white horse, require some
punishment worse than what they'd done to Mr. Bartlett—for what could be more
insolent, what could be more unholy than this ominous, laughing figure that
dared stand in silence before him? The Prince of Midnight was a highwayman, an
outlaw, a renegade: challenge and discord and defiance; all that Master Jamie
said was the wellspring of corruption.

Master Jamie began to pray aloud, and the words chilled her. "The Lord God of
Hosts has declared: I loathe the arrogance of Jacob," he prayed. "For behold,
the Lord is going to command that the great house be smashed to pieces and the
small to fragments."

Harmony could feel the girls around her shift uneasily. Some of them moved
back, and they all knew what was to come.

"You have turned justice into poison"—Master Jamie lifted his voice—"and the
fruit of righteousness into wormwood, you who rejoice in a thing of nothing." He
lowered his hands and stared at the man before him. "For behold, I am going to
raise up a nation against you," he said softly, menacingly, and Harmony saw from
the corner of her eye two of the others bend down and search on the ground for
stones.

She opened her mouth, and closed it. She wanted to warn him, and did not
dare. Divine Angel was right behind her, kneeling down to gather a rock. Harmony
would be punished if she warned him; she'd be ostracized and unloved. She was
shaking all over, sinking to her knees.

"And they will afflict you!" Master Jamie cried suddenly, "From the entrance
of Hamath to the brook of the Arabah!"

The pale horse moved, stepping onto the first stair of the church. It leaned
forward, pushed out its nose, and nuzzled Master Jamie's face.

Harmony fell on her knees and stared. Everyone grew still except Master
Jamie, who kept praying, shouting with his eyes closed as if the animal weren't
there. The horse nibbled at his hat brim, took it between its teeth, and pulled
the hat away. Then it swung and faced them, dangling the headgear from its mouth
drolly. The animal walked over to Divine Angel. She shrank back as it flipped
the hat upward, bringing it down to rest on her head at a crazy tilt.

The horse stepped back, tossed its head up and down, and lifted its forefeet
off the ground, picking them up together in a neat and elegant advance.

"Most ravishing," the Prince murmured.

The big horse moved forward leisurely, and no one, not even Divine Angel with
the hat balanced absurdly on her head, stood firm in its path.

"Au revoir, ma cherie courageuse. "
He leaned down to touch
Chastity's cheek as he passed. "I'll come back for you one night, if you like."

Master Jamie had stopped speaking. In the silence, Divine Angel lifted her
hand and threw her single stone, but the horse was already walking away, out of
Angel's poor range. The rock hit Chastity between the shoulder blades.

"Here!" Chastity jumped and turned. "Blasted maggoty-head, what'd ye do that
for?" She thrust through to Angel and gave her a shove. It landed the other girl
on her rump, but Chastity didn't pause to see what came of her wickedness; even
as Master Jamie spoke her name, she began to run up the street after the horse.