The Amaranth Enchantment

  “Turn him into a toad, will you?” I asked Beryl, indicating Peter. “I’m sure you could.”

  “If I do, will you go to the ball?”

  “Hey!” Peter yelped.

  I rose with all the dignity I could muster. “You’re wrong about females, Toad. But I suppose Gregor’s ball would be the last place Coxley would look for me tonight. So I may as well spend my last night at a ball before I flee the country. I have nothing more to lose.”

  Beryl clapped her hands. “Come. Time’s wasting. Peter, your bath and your things are in the kitchen. You’re on your own. I’ll be upstairs getting Lucinda ready.”

  * * *

  Half an hour later I sat at my mother’s dressing table, drowsy from my bath, wrapped in a cotton robe. Beryl had toweled my wet hair until my scalp ached, but still it was damp. She fussed and fretted, then finally muttered some words I couldn’t understand under her breath. A hot wind blew through the room, lifting my hair into a dark brown cloud. It passed just as suddenly, leaving me completely dry.

  I asked no questions.

  “That’s better,” Beryl said, patting the stone in her pocket. “It’s good to have it back.” She set to work combing out the tangles in my hair. She brushed it in long, smooth strokes using Mama’s silver brush. She’d polished its tarnished handle since yesterday, I noticed.

  When the brushing was done, she set to work coiling and braiding my hair. Her fingers flew, snatching little sections and knotting them around her knuckles, twisting in lengths of beaded ribbon. I frowned at my reflection in the mirror.

  “I look ridiculous,” I said.

  “Patience,” she said through a mouth full of hairpins.

  When at last the coiffure was finished, I eyed myself skeptically. Yes, it was well done, but it didn’t feel like me at all.

  “This way,” she said, leading me to the dressing room. She thrust the candlestick toward me. “Take off everything, and put these on”—she handed me silk underthings and a petticoat—”and these”—a pair of fine ivory stockings—”and this.” She pointed to a cream bodice draped over a fabric bust. “I’ll help you with the rest. Don’t muss your hair, whatever you do.”

  She stepped out and pulled the door shut behind her.

  There was nothing to do but comply. I dropped my robe and picked up the flimsy underthings. They were so slippery-soft and tickly against my skin that I nearly giggled. I pulled on the stockings, unrolling them up my legs, and fastened the garters. I’d never worn anything half so fine, not even the day I’d gone to the Winter Festival.

  I pulled the cream bodice over me, but I couldn’t reach the buttons in the back.

  “Beryl?”

  She opened the door, fastened my buttons, and assaulted me with a glass perfume wand, stroking scent against my neck and arms. Then she held at my feet what looked like a tube of crumpled red satin. “Step in,” she commanded. I did so, and she pulled up a crimson gown and helped me stuff my arms into the sleeves. She pulled the corset tight in the back until I gasped.

  “I’m afraid your mother was a smaller woman than you,” Beryl observed.

  The thought puzzled me. She was always bigger than me in memory. Had I really grown larger? How could I ever be larger than Mama?

  “Now these,” she said, holding a pair of beaded pearl-colored slippers. I slipped my feet into them, and miraculously, they fit.

  “Mama must have had big feet, anyway,” I said. “Mmm,” Beryl said enigmatically.

  “Did you magic the slippers?” I demanded.

  “Ask me no questions,” she said, “and I’ll tell you no lies.” She spun me around by the shoulders and draped a necklace over me, fastening it in the back. She spun me once more and clipped a pair of earrings onto my earlobes.

  They pinched.

  Then she paraded me back to the dressing table and sat me down before it.

  “There now,” she said.

  I broke out in goose pimples. Looking back at me from Mama’s mirror was someone else. Like a ghost of Mama, but different.

  Like a princess.

  The gown circled low over my shoulders, leaving my neck bare. Through the magic of dressmaking, or perhaps some extra magic, I suddenly had a figure.

  The gold and onyx necklace she’d put on me gleamed dark against my pale skin.

  Lace trim from the underbodice peeked out underneath my red gown, which fit snugly until it tapered to a point at my waist. From there it billowed into voluminous skirts that swished with each movement.

  I stood up, tripping on the heel of my slipper and clutching at the necklace.

  “I can’t do it, Beryl, that’s not me. I’ll make a fool of myself. I can’t carry it off.” I tugged at the necklace, but it wouldn’t yield. “Please don’t make me. I’m bound to fail.”

  Beryl placed both hands on my shoulders. I felt calm flow into me through her.

  She gave me a long look through the mirror.

  “Don’t be frightened by your beauty, Lucinda,” she said. “You haven’t, until now, known you had it, and so you’re uncorrupted by it. You can never take any credit for it, or make it your aim.” She smiled. “But it would be as much an act of deceit to deny your beauty or tell yourself that what you see is not you. Beauty hovers around you wherever you go, which is why these two poor young men chase after you when you’re covered in dirt and dressed in rags. Not beauty of the face or form. Something eternal. This beauty that comes from dresses and jewels”—she paused to tuck a curl of my hair back into place—”is somewhat of an illusion. But even illusion has its place. And that’s what parties and dancing are for.”

  She bent and kissed my forehead. “Go be beautiful tonight, my dear,” she said.

  “Your mother and father would burst with pride if they could see you right now.”

  My eyes filled with tears.

  “Heavens, don’t do that,” Beryl said, thrusting a handkerchief at me. “Nothing like crying to break the illusion.” I wiped my eyes and laughed.

  One word she’d used stuck with me. Now, tonight, with Mama almost looking back at me through the mirror, I dared to ask the question it raised.

  “Beryl,” I said, “you’re… eternal yourself. The priests in this world teach that life, even for mortals, goes on after death, in some other place. Is that true? Do you know? Is your world our heaven?”

  She pulled a stem from a vase of flowers on the dressing table and trimmed its end, her face thoughtful. It was her favorite flower, the love-lies-bleeding.

  The name she’d given herself, meaning deathless—amaranth.

  “My world is not your heaven,” she said, stroking the blossoms. “That I know.But sometimes I find, in the writings of your poets, words that make me feel as though they’ve been to my home. Which is why I don’t read poetry much anymore. It hurts too much.” She tucked the stem behind my ear. “This, I think—for all the frailties and cruelties and stupidities of your kind, you’re still too much like us not to be eternal, at least in some way. You’re all too valuable to be disposable.”

  I frowned, skeptical. “Even Coxley?”

  She turned, a look of surprise on her face. “Oh, my dear, haven’t you figured it out? I thought you must have.” She rubbed a hand across her forehead. “Coxley isn’t from your world. He’s from mine.”

  Chapter 25

  “Carriage!” Peter bellowed up the stairs.

  I turned to face her. “If he can’t ever die, then he’ll never stop chasing me.” I felt my breath catch in my throat. “I’ll never be rid of him. And I won’t be able to stay here with you. I’ll have to flee.”

  Beryl cocked her head to one side. “With me?”

  I looked at her. “Yes, with you. Don’t you want to stay?” She brushed a strand of hair off my forehead. “Do you want me to?”

  “Of course I do!” I leaned forward and embraced her. “That is, I would if I could. What good is a big house without some company?”

  Beryl took her time disentangling
herself from my hug. She draped a fur-lined stole over my shoulders. “It will be cold in the carriage.”

  I held her face with both hands. “I don’t want to lose you, Beryl.”

  She gently removed my hands from her face and pressed them between her own.

  “Nor I you,” she said. “Remember that. Don’t be afraid, and don’t lose hope. I may be able to do something about Coxley. Hush now.” She dabbed at me once more with a kerchief.

  “Carriage!” Peter called once more.

  “Coming,” Beryl replied. She opened a drawer on Mama’s dressing table and pulled something out. “For your hands,” she said, offering me gloves, and then, “for your face.” She held up a black feathered mask attached to a slim wand.

  I tested its appearance in the mirror. It gave the stranger in the red gown an exotic, mysterious look.

  “Was this Mama’s?” I asked, incredulous.

  “It certainly isn’t mine,” Beryl said.

  “I’m going without you,” Peter called, his voice now coming from the hallway.

  “Now,” Beryl whispered, “go give that prince of yours something to think about.”

  My jaw dropped. Beryl winked, and beckoned me out the door.

  I followed her into the candlelit hallway. There stood Peter, his hands on his waist, posing for us in his finery.

  And not without cause. I wouldn’t have recognized him. His once-mangy hair was washed and shining, tied in back with a black ribbon. He wore a resplendent amber coat with broad cuffs and lapels, all magnificently embroidered with black and purple twist, and a snow white lace cravat at his throat, over black hose and gleaming shoes with silver buckles.

  I was trying to think up a suitable compliment that wouldn’t inflate his vanity too much when I noticed his expression.

  He was gaping at me. Specifically, at my dress. His eyes bulged like a fresh-caught fish’s.

  I pulled my wrap tight around me and brushed past him down the stairs.

  “Weren’t you the one in a great hurry, Peter?” I called over my shoulder.

  I reached the door and looked back. Peter descended in a daze, nudged along by Beryl.

  “If you dawdle any more you’ll miss the reception line,” she said, nearly pushing Peter headlong down the stairs. “Then you won’t be presented to the king and queen.”

  “Reason enough for me,” I said, heading back up the stairs. “I’m not sure this dress fits, let’s go find another one…”

  Beryl blocked my path with a smile on her face that didn’t hide her resolve.

  “The dress fits,” Beryl said. “Doesn’t it, Peter?”

  “Um-hmm,” Peter said, his face flushing.

  I glared at him.

  “W-well enough, I mean to say,” he stammered.

  I groaned. Reception line? Presented to the king and queen? “Beryl, must I go?”

  She nodded. “You must. If only to show the palace how you look tonight.”

  “That’s a ridiculous reason and you know it,” I said. “Must I go with him? He’s sure to steal my earrings.” I bit my lip to hide a grin.

  Beryl fixed Peter with a stern look. “Peter, do you promise to steal nothing this night?”

  Peter’s forehead creased with thought. “I promise not to steal… from Lucinda.”

  “Fair enough,” Beryl pronounced. She reached for the doorknob and shooed us both out.

  The cold sent a shock through me. It made the night sky feel huge and barren.

  Even so, far beyond my reach, millions of stars blazed in the heavens. The moon, just past full, hung low and fat over the house.

  “Don’t come back until midnight at least,” Beryl called. Peter sprinted down the walk toward the carriage and held the door for me, shivering.

  At the sight of the carriage, I drew in my breath. It was pale and glistening, small and graceful, like my pearl dancing shoes. A team of four white mares with braided manes stamped their hooves, eager to get moving. The driver, swaddled toe to chin in wraps, waved to us.

  I allowed Peter to help me in. He fell into the seat beside me as the horses took off. With four of them pulling such a light vehicle, we fairly flew over bumps in the road.

  “Where’d she find this carriage?” Peter said. “It beats Prince Gregor’s by half.”

  “Does it?” I remembered my earlier ride. “You seem to be a connoisseur of carriages.”

  “Plan to have some of my own, someday,” Peter said.

  This caught my attention. “With all your thieving and profiteering, you ought to live like a lord. What d’you do with all your money?”

  “Save it,” he said.

  “Such discipline! What for?”

  “Just what you said. I ought to live like a lord. And I aim to.”

  That Peter had a driving ambition fascinated me. There was a purpose to his depravity! “So, you’ll buy yourself a chateau somewhere and live a life of retirement and ease?”

  “I don’t know about ‘retirement,’” he said. “I’ll keep busy enough. But I don’t just want to live like a lord. I want to be one.”

  I turned to face him, but of course, he was only a hole in the darkness. “You what?”

  He hesitated. “I want to be one. Be a lord.” He sounded defensive.

  I tried not to laugh. “But how can you?”

  “Buy a peerage.”

  He made it sound like the most mundane thing imaginable, like buying a spool of thread or a pennyworth of salt. Buy a peerage. Buy a named title and the lands and estates that went with it. Why shouldn’t a street thief do that?

  “But surely,” I said, “a peerage itself would be a vast amount. And then you’d need capital to live on, to invest, to build, to operate. Why not keep the money and simply live as a rich man in a fine house somewhere?”

  The fervor in Peter’s answer surprised me. “Because my whole life I’ve looked around me and thought, ‘What puts you here at the bottom, Peter, and those high-and-mightier up top?’ Are they cleverer than me? Not likely. Harder working? Not on your silver buttons.”

  I fingered the front of my gown. No silver buttons.

  “‘Make way for Lord Fleur-de-lis,’” he mimicked.” ‘Bow to Lady Beauregard.’ ‘Clear the area; Count Rymington and his party are arriving.’ What makes them better than me?”

  Possibly, the fact that they aren’t criminals, I thought of pointing out, but he was so overcome by the violence of this passion that I stayed still.

  “Make no mistake, though,” he said, “I’ve sold to most of the men, and bought from all the ladies, too, when their finances get pinched. They’re not all so grand as they like to make out. And someday I’ll be Sir Peter Such-and-such, their financier, who makes discreet loans at high interest, and they’ll come groveling to me. And we’ll see who’s bowing then.”

  I’d never seen him like this before. I listened to the creak of the carriage wood filling the night and thought of all I’d learned about Peter in just a few short days. He was a rascal, a liar, and a bare-faced cheat, and yet he seemed as inevitable as a force of nature.

  “Well, Peter,” I said, “it’s a bold ambition, but you’ll do it, if you’re not murdered first.”

  “Oh, I won’t be,” he said. “I’m much too careful for that.”

  The rattle of wheels on cobblestones showed we’d reached the city. Lights from homes and shops reflected inside the carriage, and I took a better look at Peter. In the dim light he looked pale and moody, somber as a judge.

  A generous impulse overtook me. “You look fine, Peter. The clothes suit you well.”

  He looked at me, his face unreadable. “You’re toying with me. Like at the festival.”

  That he should think such a thing! “Indeed, I’m not. But if you won’t have my compliments, never mind.”

  The palace came into view. Every window blazed with light. I felt suddenly clammy with sweat, even in the cold.

  The mask. I held it up to my face. Could I, perhaps, wear it all evening a
nd remain hidden from Gregor as a silent observer? I tried it on again, for practice.

  “You look quite nice, too,” Peter said, startling me. “Now that I have the mask on? Thank you kindly.”

  “No,” he said. “With or without the mask. More so without it, I’d say.”

  I made a show of wiggling a finger in my ear. “Is this Peter talking? Is there another girl in the carriage?”

  He looked out the window. We couldn’t see the palace anymore; we were approaching it head-on, and nearly there.

  “Come, come,” I said. “You may be a lord someday, but you aren’t one yet. No need for the courtly manners, and certainly not the moody temper. If you’re to be my escort tonight, I insist you be a cheery one. You can even insult me if you like. It always makes you feel better.”

  The carriage pulled up at the drive and stopped. Up the sweeping granite staircase I saw the broad doors thrown open to admit other new arrivals. It might have been noonday inside, so many lamps were lit.

  And somewhere in this glittering chaos was Gregor. I reminded myself to breathe. And breathe again.

  I stood on the curb with no notion of how I’d exited the carriage. The driver chirruped to the team and moved off toward the stables.

  Don’t leave me here, pretty horses.

  We both stood, looking up, speechless. A line of footmen in powdered wigs and matching gray jackets stood at attention, clearly wondering why we didn’t approach.

  “You’ve been here often, haven’t you?” I whispered to Peter.

  “Never through this door,” he said.

  He held out his arm, and I took it. I was bound to stumble in these infernal slippers. I had no practice moving about in such foolishness.

  I used my free hand to hold my mask in place, and concentrated on each step to avoid looking at the door.

  A tall, dour-faced man stood by the doorkeeper. He’d probably been greeting palace guests since the Flood. He inspected us up and down as if committing us to memory, and asked, in a voice as deep as the grave, “Your names?”

  Oh dear. I hadn’t thought about that.

  “Dorian Carlucci,” Peter said, and elbowed me under the cover of my wraps. The man frowned at Peter, looking down at him through his small spectacles.