Ash & Bramble

  “How—how dare you,” Stepmama pants. She slaps me again, and then, as my head whirls and the tiny room spins around me, she claws the pearls from my neck and grips the collar of my blue dress with both hands and rips it down the seam in the middle, until I am left stunned and shaking in a few rags of silk and a petticoat and Precious’s corset.

  Stepmama draws herself up in the doorway. Her hair has come loose, and she is gasping for breath. “You have no idea what you have done, you stupid, stupid girl.” She takes a breath to say more, then puts her hand to her chest and goes even paler. Taking a lurching step backward, she slams the door, and I hear the key in the lock.

  Shivering, I sink to the floor.

  I have been too slow, too stupid. I should have realized that Lady Faye is making her point again. Do you see what happens when you resist?

  I am in trouble—far, far more trouble than I realized before.

  CHAPTER

  14

  THE SUN IS SETTING, THE MISSUS IS ABOUT TO CALL THEM for dinner, and the gray-haired customer wants her servants’ shoes ready by the next morning. Most shoemakers wouldn’t have any trouble getting the shoes made, but Natters has spent the day dithering about which leather to use, and then he can’t find the paper with the measurements on it, and then he finds the paper and loses his favorite awl among the clutter on his workbench.

  “Do you want me to straighten it up?” Shoe asks. In the Godmother’s fortress, he always kept his work area clean, the tools neatly racked. Seeing Natters’s disorder makes him feel twitchy.

  “No, I don’t,” Natters snaps. “And you don’t need to be staying so busy, either.”

  Shoe has been sweeping the front step, airing out the shop. During the morning, he cleaned out his cubby, and then he sanded the sign and repainted the red shoe and hung the sign back over the door again. Something about the work is satisfying; he’s learning about himself that he likes order and for things to be clean and in their proper places. “I work for you,” Shoe protests. “This is what I’m supposed to be doing.”

  A dark mutter. “Go and see if the Missus has anything for you to do.”

  The Missus has been scrubbing the kitchen floor, so she has Shoe move the table and chairs back in, and then they have dinner. Natters picks silently at his food, and the Missus casts him worried glances and then gives Shoe another cup full of goat milk and the rest of the boiled potatoes to eat.

  After dinner, Shoe says good night to them and goes down to his cubby, where he waits until the kitchen floor overhead stops creaking, which means Natters and his Missus have gone up to the third floor to bed.

  Stealthily, Shoe creeps into the workshop and lights a candle. At Natters’s workbench, he sorts among the scraps of leather and jumble of tools until he finds the paper with the measurements on them. Making the servants’ shoes shouldn’t take very long.

  He sets to work, choosing a last for each shoe, then cutting out the leather and stitching it. It feels good to be doing his shoemaking work again; it’s as if his hands have missed the old, familiar movements.

  While the glue on the soles is drying, he slips out the door and through the shadowy streets to the tavern. The boy with the tray gives him a wink and a grin, and then nods toward a table in the back where Spanner the ratcatcher is hunched over a tankard.

  Shoe slides onto the bench across the table from him. “Did you find her?” he asks.

  “Good evening to you, too,” Spanner says, then takes a long drink of ale. He sets down the tankard and wipes foam off his upper lip. “I b’lieve I did, Shoe. I b’lieve so.”

  It’s what Shoe was hoping, but to hear that Pin is actually here, in the city, makes his heart start to pound. “Is she all right? Where is she? Did you talk to her?”

  “I think it was her.” Spanner leans across the table and lowers his voice. His breath smells of ale and of the garlic he must have had with his dinner. “She looked like what you said, tall with the dark hair and the gray eyes. But she says her name isn’t Pin, it’s Penelope. Lady Penelope.”

  Shoe frowns. “That can’t be right.”

  “Could be she’s hiding?” the ratcatcher asks. “Pen sounds like Pin.”

  “Maybe,” Shoe says, but he doesn’t really think so. It doesn’t seem like something Pin would do, hide under another name. “What else about her?”

  “Well, Yer Shoeship, she’s Lady Penelope, like I said, and I put out the word with them that’s got their eyes open about such things, and they put me on to her.”

  Them that’s got their eyes open. “You mean you’re a spy? And there are more spies in the city like you?” Shoe asks.

  Spanner puts a finger alongside his nose and gives Shoe a meaningful nod. “Them that knows.”

  Shoe leans forward, across the table. Maybe Spanner is like the Huntsman, a rebel. “Are you fighting the Godmother?”

  “Not much we can do, is there?” Spanner coughs and spits on the filthy floor.

  “I don’t know,” Shoe whispers. Maybe there isn’t. There’s only one thing he has to do here, anyway. “What about Pin?”

  “Your girl lives in a fine, great house up by the castle,” Spanner answers. “Very rich place, the house that she’s living in. Very fancy.”

  So Pin—or Penelope, if that’s her name now—is a fine lady. That would worry him, except he knows Pin, and she won’t care if she’s a lady and he’s a simple Shoe. He puts his hand into his coat pocket and grips the thimble. It doesn’t pull anymore. Maybe he and Pen have been apart for too long.

  “Rats, though,” Spanner continues.

  Shoe blinks. “What?”

  “It’s a fine house, but it’s still got rats in the walls.”

  “So you can go back again,” Shoe realizes. “Will you take a message to her for me?”

  “That I will, Shoe,” Spanner says with his gap-toothed grin. “That I will.”

  AFTER SHOE HAS given Spanner his message for Pin, he hurries through the dark streets to Natters’s shop. For the rest of the night, he works on the shoes, finishing just before dawn, when he falls into bed in his cubby and drops straight into sleep.

  He wakes a short time later when the Missus calls down the stairs that breakfast is ready. To wash off the sleep that is clinging to him, he goes behind the house and sticks his head under the pump, then eats breakfast and follows Natters back down to the shop.

  At the sight of the four finished pairs of shoes lined up on his workbench, Natters freezes. He blinks twice, glances aside at Shoe, and then, without saying a word, goes to the bench and starts rummaging around in the tools and scraps of leather.

  With a shrug, Shoe goes to prop the door wide so customers will know they’re open and fetches the broom so he can sweep the front step. Then he runs a few errands for the Missus. As he comes into the shop again, he sees that the gray-haired woman has come to collect her order. She is holding up one of the shoes, inspecting it, examining the sole.

  “These are very fine,” she says. “You do exceptionally good work, Natters. You deserve more business; I shall spread the word.”

  “No!” Natters blurts. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t make the shoes.” He doesn’t look at Shoe, who knows that Natters knows he is a shoemaker and that he must have done it. “It was . . . it was elves. Must have been. Elves coming into the shop at night and making up the shoes. Here, I’ll ask my servant.” He glances aside at Shoe. “Did you see any elves in the shop, Shoe, or were you sound asleep in your cubby?”

  “Um, I didn’t see any elves,” Shoe says slowly. He shoots Natters a what are you talking about look, and Natters lowers his bristly eyebrows and gives a tiny shake of his head.

  Shoe keeps quiet.

  “Still, it must have been elves,” Natters says. “There’s no other explanation for it.”

  “Elves!” exclaims the woman. “From the stories I’ve heard, you are a lucky shoemaker to have elves working in your shop.” She places a few more coins on the workbench. “I shall certainly spre
ad the word about that.” With a last nod to Natters, she sweeps out of the shop.

  When the door closes behind her, Natters puts his head in his hands. “Elves,” he mutters to himself. “That was the best you could come up with? Elves?”

  Shoe braces himself because he knows Natters will be angry with him. “I did something wrong, Natters,” he begins, “but I’m not sure what. Whatever it was, I’m sorry about it.”

  Natters sighs. “I used to have a shop at the upper end of this street, you know. I was an excellent shoemaker.” He glances up at Shoe from under his bushy eyebrows. “Not as skilled as you are, Shoe, judging by the shoes you made last night, but I was good. I used the finest leathers, and I was paid in gold, and I had the best apprentices. You see where this is going, lad?”

  Shoe gulps. All of a sudden he does, and it makes his blood run cold. “The Godmother.”

  Natters nods sadly. “She took them. My apprentices.” He sighs. “The apprentices were good lads and they were as dear to the Missus and me as our own sons would have been. First we lost Jory. He just disappeared one day, gone without a trace. The Missus and me were the only ones who noticed. Nobody else even remembered him. After that I trained up another apprentice—Jo, that was—and he went, too. I think she was using me to train them up, and she took them when they were ready.”

  Shoe thinks back to the other Shoemaker in the Godmother’s fortress, the one who had gone mad after making sets of twelve dancing slippers for days and days without end. “Was he—” His voice is rough, and he clears his throat. “Was one of them a bit older than I am? Brown hair and a nose that looked like it had been broken a couple of times, and a missing tooth here?” He taps one of his front teeth to show Natters which one.

  “Yes. That’s him. Jo. He looked like a rough sort, but he made a fine shoemaker.” Natters rubs his eyes. “I suppose he was with you in that place?”

  Shoe nods. “So you know about it. The fortress.”

  “Yes, we know. Or we guess, at any rate.” He sighs. “Did you know him, then?”

  “Not really,” Shoe says. “We weren’t . . .” It is hard to describe living in the Godmother’s fortress. “We didn’t have names, and we weren’t allowed to talk, and we didn’t have anything to talk about, anyway. We were only supposed to work.” Pin had changed all that for him, but before her he’d been a good and obedient Shoemaker. Except for the dogskin slippers. He’d done that right after the other Shoemaker—Jo—had been taken away. It had only been a tiny rebellion, but he’d paid for it at the post.

  “You escaped, did you?” Natters asks. At Shoe’s nod, he goes on. “The Missus figured it out—where you came from. And now you see why we didn’t have the windows cleaned or the sign repainted?”

  Shoe nods. “You don’t want to draw the Godmother’s attention.”

  “Right.” There is a long silence. Absently Natters lines up the tools on his workbench, then starts sorting scraps of leather into neat piles. “Most people don’t realize what it means to be caught up in it, as we are.” He falls silent again.

  Shoe has his own ideas about what the Godmother is up to, but he wants to hear what Natters has to say about it. “Caught up in what?” he prompts. “What, exactly, is going on?”

  Natters shakes his head and sighs.

  Shoe steps closer. “Tell me,” he insists.

  For a long moment Natters regards him from under his bushy eyebrows, as if gauging how far Shoe can be trusted. “No, lad,” he says at last. “We don’t have the heart for it anymore, me and the Missus.”

  Shoe shakes his head, not accepting Natters’s refusal to say more. “There’s a girl who helped me escape from the Godmother’s fortress. Her name is Pin and she’s here in the city. I think she’s important, somehow, to whatever the Godmother is planning.”

  “Then you want to stay away from her, Shoe,” Natters says, frowning.

  “I can’t,” Shoe says. “I have to help her get out.”

  Natters lurches to his feet. “Don’t be stupid, lad. You can’t help her. You could go in and try, but you’ll only draw the Godmother’s notice, and then you’ll be killed or broken, or you’ll disappear without a trace like my other apprentices.”

  Shoe gives a stubborn shake of his head. He puts his hand in his coat pocket and closes it around Pin’s thimble. It warms at his touch. “I don’t care what happens to me,” he says. “Pin saved me. Now I have to save her.”

  CHAPTER

  15

  PRECIOUS HAS KNOTTED THE LACES OF THE CORSET SO tightly that I can’t breathe. They are tied at my back and I can’t unknot them and I can’t get any air into my lungs.

  Tears run down my face, stinging where my stepmother hit me. I gasp for a breath, and then another, and scrabble at the corset laces. It will not come off.

  “Stop it,” I gasp and try to take a deep breath to calm myself. The corset cuts into my ribs. “Stop. It,” I grind out, and with an effort of will I push all the air out of my lungs. It’s enough to loosen the laces in the back, and I get my fingers under the knot and with a vicious jerk I break it, and the corset loosens, an enormous relief. I take a deep, shuddering breath. With shaking fingers I unlace the corset and fling it away from me, into the corner of my tiny prison room.

  I sit on the bed against the wall and draw up my knees and wrap the shreds of my silk dress around me. I use the snowy white petticoat to wipe the tears off my face. With my fingers I feel the place where Stepmama hit me. A bruise is rising on my cheek; it feels sore and swollen. My head is pounding from the blows, and from the crying.

  “What now, Pen?” I whisper to myself. I thought myself so clever, pitting myself against Lady Faye, but I am not winning this contest. She was right, and she is still right—the more I struggle, the worse it gets.

  I rest my head on my knees and contemplate the wall of my prison. The plaster is cracked. Black mold is crusted where the walls meet the floor. I haven’t eaten anything since the scrap of bread and cheese I had last night. The wind hisses through the broken window. It’s going to be a cold, hungry night.

  I am so alone.

  Tears start leaking from my eyes again, running down my cheeks and soaking into the petticoat. For a while I let myself cry.

  At last I run out of tears, and I wipe my face again with my damp petticoat and lift my head. I have to get out of here.

  All right. I have a shredded silk dress. That’s something. Silk is a strong material, and if I could squeeze myself out the attic window, I might be able to use it as a rope to lower myself to the roof. From there I could climb to the ground. Or fall to my death on the cobblestoned street.

  I am wearing only a petticoat.

  If I manage to get out the window and down to the street without falling, I will be practically naked, and I can’t go running through the streets without any clothes on. If things get desperate enough, though, I might consider it.

  I also have two silk stockings. I’d have to use them as part of the rope.

  And, one of my shoes fell off as I was being dragged by my stepmother to the attic.

  So that is all I have. One shoe.

  It is a good shoe. Well made, and it fits me perfectly.

  But a single shoe can’t save me.

  IN THE MORNING there is the sound of the key at the lock, and the door swings open. I sit on the bed and pull my legs up so the petticoat I’m wearing will hide my naked front.

  It is Anna with my ragged black dress over her arm and my toe-pinching shoes in her hands. Her sympathetic gaze lingers on my face. During the night, the bruise from my stepmother’s blow moved to my left eye, which is swollen shut. “Am I—” I have to stop and cough to clear my throat. “Am I being let out?”

  “We’re not supposed to speak to you. I’m only to tell you to put your clothes on and go to the kitchen.” Anna hands me the dress and the shoes and then hurries from the doorway.

  Stiffly I get to my feet. I button my ragged black mourning dress, then lace my ill-fitt
ing shoes. I keep the one shoe, putting it in my pocket.

  I make my way to the kitchen; the shoe in my pocket bumps against my leg as I walk, as a reminder. The cook gives me some leftover eggs and toast from breakfast, and when I finish gulping them down like the starving thing that I am, she puts me to work scrubbing out pots. The cooks and servants look carefully away from me, and they speak in hushed voices. They seem frightened, as if something terrible is about to happen.

  Or maybe it already has.

  Lady Meister, I hear a maid whisper. Yes, it’s true. She— The maid glances aside at me and then falls silent.

  I feel a chill in my stomach. What? What is true?

  In the afternoon, I am lugging cans of bathwater up to Dulcet’s room—she doesn’t speak to me, either, just pretends I am not there—when I meet the ratcatcher. It seems like such a long time ago that I saw him before, but it was only yesterday.

  He is poking his long nose into a hole in a dark corner of the hallway; he pulls it out as I pass. “Greetings, Lady Penelope,” he says, with his gap-toothed grin.

  I set down the heavy cans of water and rub my tired arms. “Hello,” I say. “More rats?”

  He shakes his shaggy head. “No, miss. Message for you.”

  I blink my one good eye. “For me?” I don’t actually know anyone else in the city—at least, not that I can remember.

  “From Shoe,” the ratcatcher says.

  “A shoe?” It doesn’t make any sense. I pull the one perfect shoe from my pocket and inspect it. The stitching along the sole is almost invisible; the shoemaker who made this is an expert craftsman. “I have a message from a shoe?” I repeat.

  “No, Your Ladyship.” He lowers his voice. “From your young man.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t have any young man.”

  “Shoe,” the ratcatcher insists. “Nice-looking chap, yellow hair?”

  “I don’t know anybody like that,” I say, putting the shoe back into my pocket.