The Amaranth Enchantment

  My only hope was the man behind the desk. I rubbed my aching arms. I would place no hope in him. That was what he wanted me to do, and I’d give him no such satisfaction. Hot anger welled up inside of me.

  The pretend laughter vanished from Coxley’s face. “Where did you get those clothes?” he demanded.

  Of all the questions he might ask, why this one? How could my clothes possibly matter?

  I matched his gaze, or tried to. “Someone gave them to me.”

  His piercing eyes dared me to stare back. He doesn’t blink, I realized with a start, at all.

  “Who gave you access to your mother’s things?”

  How could he possibly know about my mother’s things? Even if he’d known her, what kind of man remembered a dress after ten years?

  Beryl. If I told him about Beryl, would he contact her? Would she come to my aid? Or would I be luring her into a trap?

  “Who gave you access to your mother’s things?” The razor’s edge in his voice told me he wasn’t used to being ignored.

  Not even the king had such an air of power as this man—power that had nothing to do with yellow epaulets and gold chains.

  Nevertheless, I thought, staring into his snake eyes, I do not have to answer him.

  He shifted in his chair. “Are you acquainted with the woman called the Amaranth Witch?”

  He knew about Beryl.

  Reveal nothing with your face. Neither ignorance nor surprise. Though this man be the devil himself, tell him nothing.

  He shifted slightly in his chair. Clearly determined not to let my composure exceed his own, he was a picture of calm detachment, but I knew I had unsettled him.

  The clock ticked. The fire snapped. The roses gushed.

  “What did you steal from the prince?”

  I trained my thoughts on Mama, Papa, and home; on Beryl, and the home she yearned for.

  “Miss Chapdelaine, it will go better for you if you cooperate with me. I have the power to oversee your sentencing. Did you know that?”

  Red roses. Red flowers. Love-lies-bleeding. It does tonight.

  “Royer!”

  I head the door open behind me. It jolted me back to this place and moment.

  “What did the prisoner take from the prince?” The prisoner, ropes or not.

  “Rare jewel, sir. Quite large, so Cuthbert tells me.”

  “Did Cuthbert see its color?”

  A pause. “White, I believe he said, sir.”

  A wolfish smile passed across Coxley’s lips. He nodded. “You may go.”

  The door closed again.

  It hit me. He knew about Beryl’s stone.

  Coxley’s long white fingers drummed with excitement on the desk. “You have put on a pretty display of defiance, Miss Chapdelaine. Shades of your father, with much of your mother’s spirit about you, too. But stubbornness will not avail you. Even in your silence, you have told me everything I need to know.”

  He was the someone Beryl had warned me about! Only Beryl never knew that Lord Coxley, head of Saint Sebastien’s Hall of Justice, was the one searching for her stone.

  He pulled a sheet of parchment from a drawer and dipped his quill in a reservoir of ink. With a well-controlled hand he wrote on the leaf. I waited while he finished, blotted his work, folded it, then turned a candle on its side to drip hot wax on the seal.

  “You are in league with the woman called the Amaranth Witch, who occupies your parents’ former home. In some way Prince Gregor obtained possession of her”—he waved a hand in the air—”magical stone. You dared to steal it from him. Alas, your effort was unsuccessful, and now here you stand before me”—he let a snicker escape—”the daughter of my former employer, convicted of capital theft, and sentenced to die by hanging at dawn.” He smiled his serpentine smile, then shuffled together some papers as though finished with me. “Though waiting till dawn is a tiresome convention that I aim to see abolished in time.”

  His former employer? Papa?

  Who could this man have been? Clearly not the gardener’s helper.

  “The lawyer.” As I spoke it, I knew it was true. “Hmm?” he said.

  “You’re the solicitor. The one Papa didn’t like. The one who had oversight of all his papers and properties.”

  Suppressed surprise, then irritation flickered across his face.

  “Your father trusted me implicitly,” he said. “You were too young to know anything at all about his dealings with his associates.”

  “I know he didn’t trust you,” I insisted. “He was planning to dismiss you. I heard him say so to Mama.”

  His eyes narrowed. “How would you remember such a thing?” He relaxed. “As if it mattered. The worms have long since finished with your parents. And soon they shall with you.”

  He rose and reached out an arm to me.

  “Come, Miss Chapdelaine. You’ve given me no end of pleasure for the evening. To see August and Olivia’s brat swing from the gallows is a perfect finale to a job half-done. Chance has favored me with a way to finish my work.” He almost shivered with pleasure. “And delivered into my hands the one thing I need most.”

  He steered me toward the door, for all the world as though leading me to a dance floor. “And now, let me introduce you to your chamber mates for the remainder of the evening.”

  I shrank back. How could there be yet more to fear? Only two hours ago I was in Prince Gregor’s arms. From bliss, to this, in a moment.

  What would happen to Beryl, with him knowing so much about her?

  Coxley opened the door. The sergeant stood there, blinking at us.

  “Take Miss Chapdelaine to the holding cell, Royer,” Coxley said.

  The sergeant produced a note with a seal ripped open. “Messenger just arrived from the palace,” he said. The palace!

  Coxley reached for the paper. He noted its open seal with a dark look at Royer.

  “It wasn’t addressed to anyone in particular,” Royer said innocently.

  Coxley glanced at the note, then at me.

  “Their Graces,” he bit off the words, “King Hubert and Prince Gregor, have seen fit to bestow a favor upon you.”

  My heart raced. I couldn’t conceal it. A pardon! Gregor loved me still, and that would save me. He’d never let me die! He knew there was a mistake.

  Coxley, who had seemed annoyed by this intrusion, saw my reaction and smirked.

  “They send a special request on your behalf, that you be incarcerated in a private cell, for your protection and comfort while you await your execution.”

  That was all?

  No. It couldn’t be.

  I looked to Royer to refute this travesty. His spectacled eyes showed no emotion.

  It was so.

  “Sweet dreams,” Coxley said to me, then, to the constables, “Take her away.”

  He retreated into his office and pulled the door shut.

  Royer bound my wrists. I made no resistance. He took a torch from the wall and led me down the stairs. I followed dumbly, unable to see in the dark through my tears.

  Oh, I’d made an impression on the prince, all right. Better had he forgotten me utterly than send me this cruel half kindness, this private passage on my way to death.

  At the bottom of both flights, Royer led me down a corridor to its end, past barred doorways from which the snores and groans of uncomfortable sleepers issued forth. He opened the last door on the left with an evil-looking key, and gestured me into a narrow cell, not wide enough for two people to stand abreast. There was one small window and a rough wooden bench. Little more than a stone coffin standing on end.

  The door clicked shut behind him. I watched, wishing even he wouldn’t leave me alone. His face appeared once more, making the lock fast. His brief glance my way held only resignation and indifference.

  I stumbled backward until the wooden bench tripped me, and sat heavily upon it, smacking the back of my head against the rock. Numbness engulfed my skull.

  Numbness was welcome.

/>   Chapter 18

  I huddled on the wooden bench all through the scant hours that remained, rubbing my prickly arms and legs and rocking on my hips. I am alive now, I told myself. I must savor it, even in this cold, rat-infested place, for I, Lucinda Chapdelaine, am alive. I am not dead. Yet.

  Only the people I’d loved were dead. Papa, proud and clever Papa, snuffed out in his prime; and Mama, whose laughing eyes saw into my thoughts; and Uncle Ernest, poor old browbeaten Uncle Ernest, who saved me tidbits of dinner when Aunt was in a rage.

  All those I’d loved were gone. If Prince Gregor had cared for me, even for a moment, he was wise to abandon it, for caring for me could bring nothing but ill luck.

  Gregor. He was a bitter taste in my mouth, the sourness left after sugar ferments on the tongue. They were wrong, those who babbled that it was better to have loved and lost. I wished I’d never seen him.

  Didn’t I?

  What had I done to end up like this? It was Beryl who dropped that accursed gem into my lap. Aunt who made me carry it back. Peter who stole it from me, and Beryl once more who sent me to retrieve it.

  The sky through the bars of my window turned from black to pewter gray.

  I am not dead.

  I am not to blame.

  If I was not to blame, then why was I in prison?

  No one robbed the prince but I. No one plotted to do it but I. I chose it, I planned it, and I did it. No one else can claim that distinction but me!

  I ceased my rocking and digested this information. It was strangely exhilarating. I was to blame. I was audacious! Determined! Resourceful! I did an unspeakable thing, myself, alone!

  I jumped up off my bench, heedless of the damp chill of the flagstone floor.

  I was a marvel of ingenuity and nerve. If I’d been one yesterday, surely I could be one now. I did it! They’re going to hang me for it. But first they’ll have to make me hold still long enough to tie the rope. And I’ve got talents they don’t know of. Maybe those talents can save me.

  I climbed onto the bench and stood on tiptoe to see if the window held any possibilities. Its iron bars were closely spaced and crisscrossed into a grate. I was able to poke my fingers through—there was no glass—but they didn’t budge a bit. There was no wooden casement, only bars sunk deep into the mortar and rocks on every side. Undaunted, I grasped every bar and tried with all my strength to rattle it, to find some give to it, like a child examining her mouth for a loose baby tooth.

  Sure as Gibraltar, all of them.

  Another way, then. I hopped down and hurried to the door. The silvery sky afforded me enough glow to see the knob. I rattled it, finding more satisfaction as it made a splendid racket.

  “Shut up!” came a croak from across the way.

  That wouldn’t do. No sense in alerting the whole prison to my plan.

  Time was fading. I crawled on hands and knees around my cell, combing across the floor with my fingers, in search of something that might help—a fragment of stone or metal, maybe, that could be used to aggravate the lock. But the floors held only dirt. No success.

  I went back to the window and clutched the bars once more. So sweet, that moment’s elation, letting me believe that with pluck alone I might steer events my way. It ebbed as quickly as it had come, leaving me full of nausea and dread.

  Something warm and wet seized my fingers. I nearly fell backward off the bench.

  “Meh-heh-heh,” said a voice.

  “Dog!”

  He nuzzled my fingers affectionately, only biting them once or twice. He bit something on the ground and shoved it through the bars at me. It fell with a soggy plop on my upturned face and bounced onto the bench below me.

  I stooped to pick it up. It was an apple, spongy and wrinkly, that he’d found goodness knew where, dripping with his saliva.

  Bless his loyal heart. He’d brought me my last meal. I ate it.

  “Thank you, Dog,” I said between bites. “However did you find me?”

  “Meh-heh,” he said.

  “I don’t suppose you could fetch me a file, or some other bit of metal, could you? Something to pick a lock?”

  “Meh-heh-heh.”

  My words buzzed in my head. Something to pick a lock.

  “Dog,” I cried, “where’s Peter? Can you bring me Peter?” I begged a goat to bring me a rescuer. Desperate times leave no room for dignity.

  “Peter, Dog,” I cajoled. “Find Peter.”

  In answer, he leaned the whole wiry, hairy weight of his body against the grate, crushing my fingers between the cold metal and his warm hide.

  “I love you, too, Dog,” I said, and let my tears fall. We both knew Peter wouldn’t come.

  We stayed there for a while, watching the sky grow lighter. Surely they’d be coming soon. Dawn was practically here. Nothing but a miracle could save me now. If they must kill me, couldn’t they do it now and spare me the dread of waiting? That would be just like one of Coxley’s tricks, to promise execution at daybreak, then delay to prolong the torment.

  Stirrings of morning were beginning to sound in the corridor. A voice called an insult to a cellmate. Another voice answered. From farther away came a voice telling the prisoners to shut their mouths.

  I could begin to make out the cobblestones of the street, and the shuttered shops across the way. My time was short.

  “Go, Dog,” I said, shoving him with my fingers as best I could. “Hurry and go, before Coxley roasts you for dinner.”

  He shoved back at me and refused to budge. I prodded him harder, using my nails. “Go, you stubborn goat, for your own good! You can’t help me now.”

  Footsteps and jingling keys sounded in the corridor. My bowels turned to water. They were coming. Fear? From where I stood fear seemed a luxury.

  I yanked my fingers free and hissed to Dog to go away, then turned.

  The keys rattled in the lock. I saw Cuthbert, the constable who’d arrested me and brought me here, through the hole in my door.

  My breath came in gasps. Steady!

  He opened the door and entered, holding a finger over his mouth, signaling me to be quiet. I wrapped my arms tightly around myself. He approached me and bent to whisper in my ear. His damp breath made me cringe.

  “You want to live?”

  I couldn’t stop myself from nodding.

  “Come with me, then, quiet as a fish, unless you’re wondering how hanging feels.”

  Cuthbert, helping me escape? Was this a trick? Did I dare question this chance?

  I rose. He headed toward the door with a glance over his shoulder. I followed from a distance, my heart thumping. If he did intend to spare my life, what did he have in mind? Whatever it was, I could face it when it came.

  I followed him through corridor after corridor, around labyrinthine turns and twists. As far as I could tell, we avoided the entrance hall entirely. Here in the depths of the great building the darkness pressed heavily upon me. The sleeping, muttering sounds of prisoners faded until the only sound was Cuthbert’s boots on the stone.

  The hallway ended with a wooden door. Cuthbert pulled a key from his pocket.

  “She’s out there, waiting for you,” he said, wrestling with the stubborn lock.

  “Who is?”

  He eyed me sideways, as though I were a simpleton. “Your lady friend, the one that’s bought your freedom.”

  Beryl. I began to tremble. How had she known? I wasn’t alone after all. She’d saved me.

  Cuthbert rattled the doorknob, and my anxiety rose. To be this close to freedom—hallelujah!—and still be impeded by a rusty lock was excruciating.

  “Bought my freedom, you say?” I asked. “From Coxley, you mean? A pardon?”

  He snorted. “You daft? Nobody buys a pardon from Coxley. Not little folk like you or me, leastways. No,” he made the reluctant bolt spring back with a satisfying click. “She bought it from me.” He jingled the coins in his pocket and showed his teeth. “Here’s where I get the rest.”

  I sh
uddered. Thank heaven for a corrupt, underpaid constabulary.

  He pulled the door open. Even the pale light of dawn was startling after the darkness. We were at a small door in the rear of the building, which abutted a narrow alleyway. The packed-dirt ground lay covered in frost, and a cold wind swept through the doorway.

  “Get on with you, before I change my mind,” he said. “She’s waiting for you.”

  I stepped forward. The windowless bulk of the Hall of Justice loomed above, and on the other side, only a few feet away, another wall of stone rose, the rear of a building I did not know.

  A hooded form appeared from behind some tall dustbins and handed Cuthbert a small sack. He seized it, shook a few coins into his palm, nodded, then slammed the door violently, leaving me face-to-face with Beryl.

  Except, it wasn’t Beryl. The shape was wrong. She threw back her cloak.

  It was Aunt.

  Chapter 19

  Her eyes were full of spite.

  “You!” I said.

  Was I going mad? Had they already executed me, and this was my delirium on the doorstep of hell?

  “I’m sure we’re both equally glad to see each other,” she said. She seized my hand and slapped something into it. It pricked my palm.

  “There,” she said, turning to leave, “that settles things. I’ve done with you.” She took off down the alleyway.

  In my hand lay my rose-red bracelet, unrepaired, but clean. Sweet love of heaven.

  I leaped after her and seized her arm.

  She shook me off like I was a contagion.

  I scurried to the other side of her so that I blocked her escape. I had to know.

  “Why, Aunt?”

  She scowled and made as if trying to get by me, but she didn’t use all her force, as I knew too well. I planted myself firmly.

  “I want to know why.”

  She looked up at the high bulk of the buildings on either side of us. Away from Uncle’s shop, neither of us seemed to know what to do with each other.

  “Them constables are going to be out here searching for you in a minute,” she said. “You’d best run and ask no questions if you want to live.”

  She hurried off, disappearing down a connecting alley. I chased after her. She crossed a street, then darted into another alley. I caught her there and tugged her sleeve.