Palace of Mirrors (11 page)

He looks down at me. The sides of his moustache begin to twitch.

“By ‘one,’ you mean yourself?” he asks. “It’s you who’s wanting an audience with the princess?”

“Yes,” I say, making myself stare straight back into his eyes, even though it’s really hard to do that, the way he’s looking at me.

“Then”—he begins laughing—“there ain’t nothing you can do, because the princess ain’t never going to have anything to do with the likes of you!” His laughter bubbles over, and spreads, and soon the guards beside him are laughing too.

“Imagine, a beggar thinking she can meet with the princess!” one whispers to each other.

“Hey, girly!” another one calls. “The princess expects her visitors to wear shoes!”

I’m thinking that as soon as I reveal my true identity, my very first official act should be firing these guards.

“Let’s go,” Harper says, tugging on my arm.

But the guards aren’t done making fun of us.

“Hey!” one hollers after us. “If you can play that harp—if you didn’t just steal it—maybe you can get to see the
princess by entering the palace music competition. She’s one of the judges!”

This makes some of the other guards double over with laughter.

“Imagine! Beggars in the royal music competition!” They chortle.

“I’ll have you know—,” I begin.

“Er—thanks for the advice,” Harper interrupts. He jerks on my arm so hard that I’m sure it’s dislocated this time. Or maybe not, because the rest of my body seems to realize that it has to follow along. He jerks me completely off my feet and all but drags me away, my shameful bare feet scraping along the flagstones.

“Stop it!” I hiss. “I can walk on my own!”

“Fine,” he says, letting go so quickly that I fall to the ground.

I glare at him and toss my head, because the guards are still watching, laughing so hard they’re practically rolling on the ground as well. We’re like a comedy show to them, maybe a Punch and Judy routine. With as much dignity as I can muster I stand up, turn around, and walk away. I don’t even check to make sure that Harper’s following me until we’re outside the city walls once more.

“Wait!” he calls. “Where are you going?”

I don’t answer. I veer off the road and climb a small rise in the shadow of the walls. Away from the crowd I sink down onto the bare ground. I want to curl up into a
little ball and sob my eyes out, but I’m still trying to hold onto a little bit of dignity.

Harper sits down beside me.

“The ragamuffin look is a horrible disguise,” he says. “You were right—we should have at least washed our faces.”

I shrug.

“At the moment it’s all we have,” I say, trying my best to keep the humiliation out of my voice.

I tell myself that I shouldn’t care about the guards making fun of my bare feet and rags, because that’s not who I am. It’s only a disguise, and soon everyone in the kingdom will know that I’m the true princess. I’ll wear gauzy dresses like Desmia. I’ll stand on that balcony, and people will cheer for me even louder than they cheered for her. And when my enemies are vanquished, then I’ll come down from the balcony and walk directly through the crowd, shaking hands and patting heads and kissing babies. And if I see anyone in ragged clothes and bare feet—even someone filthier and more ragged than Harper and me—then I will be especially kind to that person. I will invite all the beggars into the palace, and I will feed them the most exquisite foods in the royal larder. I will give them shoes. I will . . .

“What are we going to do now?” Harper asks, as if to remind me that there’s the slight matter of revealing my identity before I can take up my role as Lady Largesse.

I peer off into the distance, toward the hordes of people streaming in and out of the city gate.

“I still think Desmia’s the first person I should tell,” I say. “She’s the only one I’m sure I can trust.” I think about all the lessons Sir Stephen has given me in the art of negotiation and compromise.
You have to think about what other people truly want. You have to listen to what they’re not saying. You have to make them think you care about their interests as much as your own. . . .
In this instance that last part shouldn’t be hard, because all I’m trying to do is help Desmia. I don’t know anything about her advisers and courtiers and guards; I don’t know whose side they’re on. But I know Desmia will be very happy to see me, if I can ever get close enough to her to talk.

I tilt my head back. From this vantage point I can see the very peak of the turret that rises above the balcony where Desmia stood. Maybe if Harper and I got a very, very long rope, and managed to fling one end of it up on the balcony in the middle of the night, and then . . .

I dismiss this possibility as completely insane.

“There’s got to be some way to get in to see her,” I say.

“The guards had a suggestion,” Harper says sulkily. He’s tugging at the blades of grass at his feet; he pulls so hard that an entire tuft comes up in his hand, scattering clumps of dirt onto his harp.

He doesn’t bother brushing it away.

“You mean the music competition?” I ask. “That only
gets you in, not me. And Harper, if you hate it so much, I can’t ask you to do that.”

Harper shakes his head.

“Do you believe in fate?” he asks. “Do you think that God made each of us for a certain purpose, and no matter what
we
want, we have to do it? Even if we try to run away, even if we try to make some other choice, he shoves us back onto the path he wants for us?”

“I don’t know,” I say, because I really haven’t thought much about fate before. None of the books Sir Stephen gave me were titled
A Royal’s Guide to Fate
. I always kind of thought being royal meant I’d get to make lots of choices. Once I came out of hiding, anyway.

“I mean, look at us,” Harper rants. “You’re the true princess, I’m the harp player—and there’s no way we can be anything else, we have to fulfill our destinies.” He kicks at the wooden frame of his harp. “I might as well have this thing nailed to my hands!”

“It’d be kind of hard to play, then,” I tease. He doesn’t laugh. I sigh. “Look, Harper, once I’m on my throne, I’ll pass a royal decree that says you never have to play the harp again. I’ll make you, I don’t know, Lord High Chancellor of Fishing Ponds. You can spend the rest of your life fishing. Or whatever else you want.”

Harper snorts, and stands up. He picks up his harp and begins striding down the hill.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“I’m going to play on the street corners in Cortona and hope there are enough fools willing to toss me enough coins so we can buy shoes,” he says. “And then I’m going to sign up for the music competition. The Amazing Harper and Cecilia—the one and only two-person harp-playing team!”

  12  

I follow Harper back into the city. He finds one of the few corners not already occupied by soldiers, squats down, and settles his harp in his lap.

“Harper,” I whisper, “do you want me to announce you or anything? I could say, I don’t know, maybe, ‘The amazing Harper—he looks like a beggar, but he plays like a prince!’”

“
No,
” Harper says, glaring at me. “Don’t say anything!” He takes off his cap, tosses it to the ground in front of us. “For collecting money,” he says awkwardly.

He launches into one of the lugubrious tunes I’ve heard many times coming from the Sutton cottage back home. I don’t think there are any words to this song, but if there were, they’d be something like,
Dead, dead, just about everyone we love is dead; sorrow is everywhere, and all we can do is cry.

People are edging away from Harper’s corner. One
cheerful-looking fellow with a jaunty feather in his hat crosses the street just before he comes to us, and I’m sure it’s because of the music.

I tug on Harper’s arm, causing him to drag his fingers across several strings at once. The harp gives out a waterfall of sound, a cheerful noise, like even the harp is glad to be done with that song of misery.

“Eels! What are you doing?” Harper hisses.

“Can’t you play something peppier?” I ask. “That song makes people want to lie down in the gutter and die, not give you money.”

Harper frowns at me.

“My mam says harps are made for slow, sonorous tunes,” he says. “She says peppy pieces aren’t . . . dignified enough for a harp.”

Behind the dirt on his face he looks every bit as miserable as the music he was playing.

“Well, then—aren’t there any
happy
slow songs?” I ask. “Can’t you play, I don’t know . . . a love song? Something to make people feel good?”

“A love song,” Harper repeats numbly. He gapes at me. “You want me to play a love song?”

“Well, yeah,” I say. “People like love songs. I know you’re not in love with anyone or anything, but you could imagine what it’s like and pretend, just while you’re playing . . .”

“A love song,” Harper says again, as if he’s never heard of such a thing.

A young woman behind us squeals, and calls out to a cluster of her friends looking into a millinery’s window on the next block, “Ooh—Mabella, Liandra, Suzerina! Come away from those hats and listen! This one’s going to play a love song!”

Harper narrows his eyes at me.

“Only if you leave,” he says brusquely. “Go find out what shoes cost or something. I’m not playing a love song while you’re standing here listening!”

“Fine,” I say, glaring back. “I’ll be back in three hours.”

I haven’t really been paying attention, so I’m not sure if the clock tower by the palace last chimed out one o’clock or two o’clock. But I’m not about to ask Harper which it was. Not now. I’ll just have to listen closely for the next chiming.

I shove past three giggling women—Mabella, Liandra, and Suzerina, I suppose—already clustering around Harper before he plucks his first note. I don’t understand why this bothers me. I don’t understand why it suddenly seems like we were having a fight. Unaccountably, tears sting at my eyes, and I brush them away.

Well, thanks a lot for your concern, Mr. Harper Sutton,
I think.
I guess you don’t think it matters if I go wandering around all by myself, where anybody could attack me. You really don’t think I’m anybody important, do you? Even if you don’t care about me at all, don’t you care for your kingdom? What part of “true princess” don’t you understand?

Angrily, I stomp off down the street. I’m not sure how many blocks I walk before I remember to look for a cobbler’s shop. The signs in this area are written in such fancy script that I have to squint to figure out the words hidden in the curlicues. I resort to simply looking in the shop windows. Here are flowers in one window, then dresses, then men’s coats, then more dresses, then—aha!—shoes.

I push my way into the shop past a heavy wooden door.

“Yes?” a tidy young man says, as soon as I’m in the shop. “How might I help you?”

He’s wearing a linen coat and pants, along with a white shirt so perfectly clean that it must be the first time he’s ever worn it. His hair is neatly tied back with a black ribbon, and he’s got shiny brass buckles on his shoes. Looking at him I remember every burr tangled in my hair, every patch on my skirt, every clump of dirt on my ankles. I bend my knees, so at least my skirt will cover my bare feet and dirty ankles. My fingers brush the nearest pair of shoes.

“How much do these cost?” I ask.

“Shoes in that style?” he asks. “Fifty gold coins.”

I gasp. Maybe I don’t have enough confidence in Harper, but I can’t imagine that he’ll be able to play any love song well enough to earn a hundred gold coins.

“And we have a backlog of requests, so any new orders will take at least three months,” he adds. “We’re starting to take orders for the winter season right now.”

I gasp again. Winter is months and months away.

“Do you know of any shop that’s cheaper and faster?” I ask weakly.

I force myself to look up, and I see that this young man has a kind look in his eye. He glances around, as if to make sure no one else is listening, then leans in close and whispers, “Try the poor section of the city. You might be able to find some secondhand shoes that you could walk home in.”

I blush, because I didn’t know that the city has a rich section and a poor section. (Back home in my village, there’s only one section—I guess because everyone’s poor there. We don’t even have a cobbler.) And I’m embarrassed that, despite my efforts to hide my bare feet, this man has very clearly seen that I need shoes now, that I can’t wait another day, let alone months. He probably even noticed exactly how many burrs I have in my hair.