CHAPTER
19
MY STEPSISTERS AND STEPMOTHER HAVE BEEN INVITED to the prince’s ball at the castle. They spend the entire day getting ready. I am run ragged lugging bathwater and washing silk stockings and hanging them up to dry, and ironing acres of petticoats with lace trim, and fetching restorative cups of tea that had better not be lukewarm, or I’ll get my ears boxed for it.
Wearing silk robes—peignoirs, maybe—over their petticoats and corsets, they have a light supper that I bring to them on a tray. They eat most of it, so I am left only a few leftover crusts, which I gulp down as I carry the tray to the kitchen. Then I hurry back upstairs to watch them finish getting ready.
The dresses were made by the finest dressmaker in the city and must have cost their weight in gold, or maybe more.
Dulcie puts on hers first—it is a confection of sky-blue silk cut very low to reveal her corset-plumped breasts. It has an overskirt of lace and a bodice stitched with seed pearls, and there are shoes of silver leather fetched from the shoemaker’s shop by a footman earlier in the day. Precious fusses around her, adding an ostrich feather to her piled-high blonde hair, changing her pearl necklace for a sapphire one.
“Pen, fetch my new gloves,” Dulcet orders.
I go to the closet to get them, handing her the box. She wrinkles her nose at me and makes a shooing motion with her hands. “Go stand over there, out of the way.”
I consider giving an elaborate curtsy, but I suspect the irony of it would be lost on her.
After Dulcet has pulled on the elbow-length white kidskin gloves and fastened their mother-of-pearl buttons, it is Precious’s turn. Her dress is more modestly cut at the neckline—she doesn’t have as much cleavage to show off as her sister does—but the skirt and bodice are an elaborate swathe of midnight-blue velvet. The overskirt is sheer net covered with gleaming crystals that must have taken the poor seamstress who stitched them days to finish. The effect of the crystals over the dark velvet is of a midnight sky studded with stars. Precious’s gloves are the same midnight blue—a daring choice—and she wears no jewelry around her neck, but diamond pins glint in her sleekly braided brown hair.
They link arms and stand admiring themselves in the gilded mirror. They are both stunning. “Prince Cornelius will surely choose one of us, Dulcie, don’t you think?” Precious asks.
Dulcet gives a self-satisfied nod. “I do think so, Precious.”
Oh, so I see now what they’re up to. They both want a husband, and they’ve got their eye on the prince. I know that a prince lives in the castle, of course, but I can’t remember ever seeing him before, and I’ve never thought about him as a real person who might end up marrying one of my stepsisters. Wouldn’t that please Stepmama, if Dulcie or Precious ensnares a prince!
Still, I can’t help admiring their reflections in the mirror.
I catch a glimpse of myself there, too. Compared to them, I am a drab, ragged blot. My hair is tangled and dirty, I am too thin from being sent to the attic without any supper, the bruise on my cheek has turned a lovely greenish-purple color, and one of my eyes is still swollen from my stepmama’s latest fit of fury.
“Stop staring, you stupid girl,” Dulcet says to me.
I blink. “You both look beautiful,” I say truthfully. They preen for a moment, and then I add, “It’s too bad you don’t have tempers to match.”
Unfortunately my stepmama, coming into the room, hears the end of this comment. She scolds for a moment, but she is too pleased with her daughters’ turnouts to pay any more attention to dirty, ragged me.
“Oh, girls,” she says, and clasps her hands on her wide bosom. They both pose and turn so she can appreciate the entirety of their splendor. Stepmama is handsome in rich blue silk with a dangerously wide skirt. All the blue, I realize, is a tribute to Lady Faye. Perhaps they are so excited about the ball because she has promised one of them the prince.
It is almost time; they can’t risk being late. In a flurry, they put on their wraps and mince out to the street, where a carriage is waiting for them. Stepmama’s dress has a train, so I have to lurch behind her with the extra fabric bundled in my arms so it won’t drag on the steps or the cobbled street, and then kneel on the carriage floor arranging the train while she settles herself in her seat. I am scolded again and sent for hot bricks to warm their feet, and then I am sent running to Stepmama’s dressing room to fetch another shawl, and at last the carriage door is latched and the coachman shakes the reins and they are off to the prince’s ball.
I stand in the darkened street watching them go. The streets of the upper city, usually quiet at night, are teeming with people; in the distance I hear shouting and laughter, and then the unexpected sound of glass breaking. On a nearby street, a line of carriages trundles toward the castle; the horses’ hooves clop loudly on the cobblestones. Beyond the house, only a few streets away, stands the castle. Its tall white towers are aglow as brilliant blue lights beam from their tops. The clock in the central tower is lit from within, and shines over the city like a stern, always-watching face. The clock weighs heavily on me, looming more than it should, really. For just a moment, I feel like a tiny clockwork girl, enmeshed in gears so huge I can’t even see them, I only know that they are there, grinding on toward some unknown end.
As I watch, a heavy fog creeps up the street. It flows around the houses, turning the lanterns into muffled glows. The fog swathes the castle; it wraps smoky tendrils around the slender towers. It flows around my ankles and washes like an incoming tide up to the doorstep. The fog should smell dank, like the river, but it reminds me of pine trees and ferns, a fresh, green smell. Perhaps it has come from the forest outside the city.
Despite the fog, the sky above the castle stays clear and spangled with stars.
With ringing booms, the clock strikes the hour. At the sound, the mist swirls as if disturbed. The last strike fades away. Eight o’clock. Time for the prince’s ball to begin.
The fog thickens again. My stepmama and stepsisters won’t be home until after midnight. This might be the only time for me to escape, if I still dare it.
As if summoned by the thought, heavy footsteps echo on the cobblestoned street as the fog parts and two sturdy men dressed in light-blue livery—Lady Faye’s footmen—emerge. They both stare insolently as they pass into the fog . . . and their footsteps stop. They are there, waiting. Guards.
Like the little clockwork girl that I am, I turn and, wading through the fog, climb the front steps and go into the house. It is dark and empty. All the servants have been given the night off. I stand in the front hallway for a moment, feeling strangely bereft.
Would I go to the ball if I could? Almost everyone from the upper city was invited; my tea shop man is probably there, too. Maybe he will dance with Dulcet or Precious. And Lord Meister and his horribly smiling wife; surely they will attend. I am a lady, the daughter of a duke, and I should have been invited, too. Perhaps I was. . . . Perhaps I never saw the invitation.
The shoemaker’s servant, Shoe, won’t be there, I am certain. I don’t think servant-thieves get invitations from princes.
I don’t even know why I’m thinking of him. With a weary sigh, I make my way through the silent house to the kitchen. It is dark except for a few embers in the hearth. It smells like the ghost of gingerbread. Now I really do feel unhappy.
“Don’t you dare cry, Pen,” I tell myself in a quavery voice.
I sit down on the hearthstones. My feet are tired and sore in their pinched shoes. Slowly I unlace them and take them off. I remember that I don’t have the shoe in my pocket anymore, the one perfectly fitting shoe from the outfit I was given to meet my horrible suitor in.
I lie down on the hearth, getting as close to the warm embers as I can. “What did you do with your shoe, Pen?” I ask myself wearily.
Before I can answer, I am asleep.
CHAPTER
20
WHEN I WAKE UP, LADY FAYE IS THERE.
She is sittin
g in a straight-backed chair beside the hearth; she is splendid in a ball gown—ice blue, of course—and a necklace of diamonds as big as knucklebones. She glimmers with a cold light as if lit from within. If I was a blot next to my stepsisters, I am a mere smudge next to her.
I groan and sit up, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. “Somehow I knew you would come here tonight,” I say.
“It does have a certain . . . shall we say . . . inevitability about it?” she answers. Then she gives me an almost benevolent look. “You’ve been having an awfully bad time, haven’t you, Penelope? Isn’t there anything I can do for you?”
It is a tiny kindness, and certainly one with other motives, but it makes a lump of sadness rise in my throat so that I can’t speak. I shake my head. I will not ask her for anything.
“Mmm.” She pulls something out of a pocket in her skirt and slips it onto her finger. It glints in the dim light of the fire.
It is a silver thimble, the twin of my missing thimble, the thimble that Shoe stole from me. As I stare, she taps it against her pearly-white teeth, thinking. “In some ways you are very like your mother,” she says unexpectedly.
“My mother?” I manage to croak. I have no memory of my mother, apart from the painting of her in the long gallery at the top of the house.
“Oh yes. And you are not at all like her in other ways.” She is silent for a moment. “Sometimes I miss her, you know. Her whole purpose was to thwart me, but we were good friends at one time, your mother and I.”
“I suppose my purpose is to thwart you too,” I say, but I really have no idea what she is talking about.
Lady Faye smiles, and now the smile has an edge. “You can be a bit of a trial, my dear,” she says condescendingly, “but you’re not exactly a challenge.” She waves her hand, changing the subject; the thimble gleams on her finger. “Now. On your feet. The clock struck ten while you were asleep. It is time to get you ready for the ball.”
I stay where I am in the cinders. “I don’t want to go to the ball,” I say.
“Yes,” she says, almost gently. “You do.”
The wheels groan into motion. I can almost feel the house shaking as they turn. I really am caught up in it, something much bigger than I am. I am only one person, and I cannot resist the pull. I am so tired of not knowing who I am. So tired of resisting. Tonight—just for tonight—I will let it sweep me away.
Because I do want to go to the ball. I want to find my tea shop man and see him smile at me and then dance with him until midnight, and then I want—well, I don’t know what I want, but it’s anything but staying here to be slapped and scorned and locked up in a freezing attic.
I hold out for another lurching turn of the wheel, and then I give in. “All right.” I get to my feet. “Send me to the ball if you have to.”
“Such grace!” Lady Faye snipes, but she is clearly pleased. “But I suppose that is part of your appeal, isn’t it?” She gets to her feet too, and shakes out her skirts. “We must hurry. We shall go to my house for your transformation, and then you shall make your entrance. Come along!”
AT HER HOUSE Lady Faye brings me to a dressing room of gold and blue, glimmering with candlelight, as exquisite as a jewel box. She seems excited, her movements brisk. “Out of that foul dress, my dear,” she orders. A clap of her hands, and a troop of mouse-like maids clad in light-blue uniforms scurries into the room. In a twinkling I am bathed and dried, standing naked and perfumed in the center of the room. The maids hurry out the door with their eyes lowered.
Lady Faye paces around me. The thimble is on her finger again. She examines me from head to toe.
I raise my chin and keep still under her critical gaze.
“You’ll have to wear gloves to cover your hands,” she says. I look down at my hands, and yes, they are reddened and chapped from scrubbing pots and kitchen floors and grates, and it’s not something any lotion can fix. Also there’s the livid scar on my wrist from the wound I don’t remember getting.
She touches my shoulder with the thimble. It is bitterly cold against my skin. She drags the thimble along my collarbone as if she is measuring me, and it leaves a trail of ice behind it. I control a shiver. Then she reaches out and taps the thimble against my cheekbone, right where the bruise is worst.
“This I cannot fix,” she murmurs. “Stupid woman, leaving bruises where they can be seen.”
I blink.
“Your stepmother,” Lady Faye explains. “Instead of striking your face, she should have had you whipped where the marks wouldn’t show.” She gives a delicate shrug. “But she is a crude, intemperate woman.”
Her words leave me colder than the thimble’s touch.
“You will have to be masked,” Lady Faye decides. Her voice turns satisfied. “Yes, that will do. The Mysterious Stranger arrives late at the ball. All turn to watch her enter. It will be perfect.” She paces around me again, muttering, and her measuring gaze darts up and down my body. The air tightens and tingles; the walls close in around us. All but two of the candles flicker out; shadows crouch at the edges of the room.
I find that I am gasping for breath as if I’ve been running. Every inch of my bare skin prickles with excitement.
“The flame, I think,” Lady Faye murmurs. “Oh, you will burn brightly tonight, my dear.” Her hand swoops up. In the dim room, her thimble throbs with an icy glow. Around she paces, and the cold touch of the thimble slashes across my shoulders, between my breasts, down the long length of my legs.
“Close your eyes,” she hisses, and sweeps around me again. The thimble flares with a brilliant light, and I clench my eyes shut. She rests the thimble against my bruised face, pressing it against my cheekbone.
“Do not move,” Lady Faye whispers, and I can hear the tension in her voice.
I take a dragging breath, and then there is no air at all in the room. My eyes pop open, but see only darkness.
All at once I am hit by a blow that strikes my entire body at once as if I am a fly trapped between two closing hands. Freezing silk slithers against my skin. I give an undignified squeak, and then the pressure goes away and I am left wavering at the center of the room, trying to find my balance.
Lady Faye is panting. With shaking hands, she lights a few candles.
As the room brightens I steady myself, then realize that I have something covering my face; I can see a mask at the edges of my vision. I look down, and I’m not naked any longer.
Moving with less grace than usual, Lady Faye goes to a corner and drags out a mirror covered with a velvet cloth; she pulls the cloth away and lets it fall to the ground.
“Look,” she orders.
I step closer to see myself in the mirror.
She said flame, and that is what I am. The dress is deceptively simple, a plain bodice that leaves my shoulders bare and then flares into a swirling skirt. But every stitch of it is exquisite, and is fitted to the lines of my body with such perfection that I appear tall, proud, graceful.
And the color. At the hem is the faintest hint of ashy gray, but the rest is flowing silk the color of living flame. I burn against the shadowed walls of the dressing room. I turn and the skirt swirls with vermilion and gold and the brilliant crimson of glowing embers. The air shimmers around me as if with the heat of fire.
The heels of the shoes are impossibly high, but they fit so well that they make my feet forget the weariness of an endless day of work and long to dance all night. They are aflame with hints of ruby and fire opal—and the rest is as clear as glass.
Around my neck are more fire opals, each burning with its own flame. My gloves are of gray silk fastened with tiny fire-opal buttons. And I wear a mask of gray silk that covers my bruises and makes my face beautiful and mysterious at once.
I become aware that Lady Faye is standing at my shoulder regarding my reflection. She gives me a smug smile. “You are transformed, Penelope.”
I have to admit that I am. It is just a dress, I tell myself. It’s just jewels and gloves and well-mad
e shoes. But it feels like more than that. It feels like power.
“You are ready,” she goes on. She gives me one last approving look. “Come along. It is time to go to the ball.”
CHAPTER
21
THE MISSUS HAS USED HER CONNECTIONS IN THE CITY TO find black trousers for Shoe and a dark gray sweater and a black knitted cap to cover his light-colored hair, all for blending into the shadows of the night. In a small pack he has candles, rope, a hooded black cloak, and the boots he made for Pin. In his pocket he has the thimble.
Three times Natters has described where he’ll find the boat and reminded him to be extra careful when they get to the last part of the path where the spray from the waterfall makes the rocks particularly slippery.
“I’ll be careful,” Shoe promises. “You’re sure you’ll both be all right? You won’t get into trouble for helping me?”
“We’ll weather it,” the Missus assures him.
“You’re just a runaway servant,” Natters adds. “We had no idea what you were up to.”
And finally it is time to go.
They stand in the darkened shop; Natters has his arm over the Missus’s shoulder, and she leans into him. “Be careful, lad,” Natters says.
“I will,” Shoe says. “I’ll send word somehow. I mean, if you don’t hear from me, you’ll know . . .”
“Best not to speak of that,” Natters says gruffly.
Suddenly Shoe feels desperately sad to be leaving them, this old, lonely couple who have shown him nothing but kindness. “Thank you,” he says, his voice rough, and then the Missus is pulling his head down for a kiss and Natters is giving him a hug, and they push him out of the shop into the darkened street, and he hears the lock click closed behind him.
Shoe takes a deep breath, settling himself. He has a plan for getting Pin out, and the time to start it is now.
The streets of the lower city are busier than usual at this time of night. He keeps to the side streets and the shadows, and nobody gives him any trouble.