Palace of Mirrors (28 page)

“Exactly,” Sir Stephen says, as if I’ve made some incredibly astute observation. “I knew I could never leave something that conspicuous with you, because I was afraid the local villagers might guess who you were. For three days and nights as I rode my horse away from Cortona, with you and the harp tucked into my saddlebags—desperate, terrified, always in fear that your identity might be discovered—I was also racking my brain about what to do. I couldn’t store the harp in my home, because it might be seen there, too, and link me to the true princess. I couldn’t simply discard the harp, because it was the last reminder you’d have of your mother’s love, and”—he glares a bit at his fellow knights—“I feared someday you would need it as proof. And then, out of the night, as if by providence, a woman appeared, begging me, ‘Please, kind sir, do you
know music? Can you give my son music lessons as he grows?’”

“Harper’s mam,” I breathe.

On the other side of Sir Stephen I see that Harper’s mother, strangely, is blushing.

“Aye, and you were such a fine music teacher,” she murmurs. “Teaching me so I could teach my lad. I couldn’t believe my good fortune, you
giving
me the harp, and then giving me the lessons for free. . . .”

“Weren’t you afraid that that would endanger Harper?” I ask sharply. I shoot a glance back at my friend.

“Yeah, I thought those harp lessons were going to kill me,” Harper mutters.

I shake my head impatiently.

“No, because then
he
was associated with the royal harp,” I say. “Then the evil forces might have hunted him down—”

It is strange how anxious that thought makes me feel.

“He was a male child, not a female,” Sir Stephen explains, in that same overly patient voice he always used when he thought I was taking too long to understand algebra. “There was no danger that someone would think he was the princess.”

I think about how everyone in the village always whispered about Harper’s mam, wondering where she’d gotten the harp and how she learned to play. Truly, I’m not sure anyone ever asked her directly, because she always
seemed so sad. Who would want to add to her pain? Or maybe the entire village just wanted her to stay a mystery, so they’d have something to speculate about.

“It was a calculated risk,” Sir Stephen says. “The harp would be nearby, but not actually in the same cottage as the princess.”

“Thanks a lot,” Harper mutters. “Thanks for ruining my childhood.” He’s wandered over to peer down at the harp, which fell to the floor with Lord Throckmorton. Nobody has bothered it to pick it up or set it right. I’m almost expecting Harper to give it a kick, just like all those other annoyed, angry, hateful kicks I’ve seen him give it over the years. Instead he kneels down and pats it, like it’s a beloved pet that’s about to die.

“Uh, Eelsy?” Harper says. “I think you just broke your own royal object.”

I look down, and the harp does look shattered. The frame is twisted and warped, and splinters stick out where the wood cracked against Lord Throckmorton’s head. A few strings have popped off.

“Can’t it be fixed?” I ask, because now it’s not just my friend’s harp; it’s also the last remnant of my mother’s love for me. If I believe that story.

Harper plucks a string, which gives a forlorn, out-of-tune peal and then falls off.

“Oops,” Harper says. He bends closer. “What’s this?”

He’s pulling a tightly coiled scroll of yellowed parchment
out of the cracked frame. As soon as he’s freed it, he begins unrolling the page.

I read over his shoulder as each word comes clear: “‘Last words . . . and . . . confessions . . . of . . . Charlotte . . . Aurora . . . Serindia . . . Marie,’” I say. I gasp as Harper unrolls the last bit, and three more words appear: “queen of Suala.”

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Within seconds everyone is clustered around me. Even the feeblest of the knights somehow manages to leap up from the bed and crowd in close.

“Now, now, give the young lady some room,” the captain of the royal guard scolds, and at least then everyone edges back a little so I can breathe. I see that the captain is looking at me with new respect—because the queen’s note came out of
my
royal object?

I am still having trouble breathing, and it has nothing to do with the people crowded around me.

“That
is
the queen’s writing,” Sir Stephen says, peering over my shoulder at the parchment document. “I remember it well.”

The script is perfectly formed, and completely free of blots. Of course.

“Read it out loud,” Nanny urges.

“‘I, Charlotte Aurora Serindia Marie . . ., ’” I begin, and then stop, because I’m thinking,
She had the same middle names as I do! Does that prove anything?
I can’t decide if I should point that out.

“Oooh,
my
middle names are ‘Aurora Serindia Marie,’” one of the other girls says.

“So are mine,” practically all of the other girls say at once. Even Desmia.

Okay, no big deal,
I think. Obviously all of the knights had the same idea, passing along those names.

I take a deep breath, and keep reading:

I, Charlotte Aurora Serindia Marie, queen of Suala, being of sound mind and much less than sound body, feel compelled to put pen to paper to tell my tale. I am certain that I have little time left, and even now I fear that I may be dooming others to a fate as dire as my own. But whosoever shall someday read these words, please know that I have never had anything but the most hopeful and merciful of intents.

I begin my tale in happier days, when my husband, King Bredan the Third, took the throne of Suala at the death of his much beloved but long-ailing uncle. Though my husband ruled with a fair and kind hand, a small number of jealous rivals were determined to stir up discontent, and they challenged his claim to the throne. Of greatest concern, they
said, was the fact that my husband and I were yet childless, though we had been married for more than two years.

So it was with great joy last September that I told my husband that he could announce to all of Suala that I was with child. In the ensuing months I dreamed often of the coming child and paid much less attention to the troublesome affairs of state. I wanted nothing but to be around children; my greatest joy was to visit the children of Cortona in their homes, in their schools, even in the orphanage. But it disturbed me to think that my child would be dressed in the finest clothes, eat the finest foods, receive nothing but the finest care, while many of the children I saw were barely able to survive. I asked my husband for more money from the royal treasury for the orphanage in particular, as the poor motherless children there broke my heart. But alas, the royal treasury had been depleted by the war with Fridesia, the same war that has consigned so many children to their orphaned state. My husband and I fell into a harsh dispute, the most serious of our marriage. It was with heavy heart that I fought with him, day after day, but my joy knew no bounds when he began to take my side. What followed was a time of many meetings and negotiations for my husband, as he planned to do everything he could to end the Fridesian War.

“What?” Ella explodes behind me. “But—if that was fourteen years ago, that never—”

“Let’s hear the rest,” Sir Stephen says, blinking his wise old eyes at her.

I look back at the parchment, and read on:

We announced the birth of our child, our beloved daughter, on April the thirtieth, a day of great rejoicing and celebration throughout the kingdom.

“Doesn’t she say the baby’s name?” one of the knights interrupts.

“Did you skip over my name?” a girl asks. “You did it on purpose, didn’t you—you’re trying to cheat, you—”

“If I was trying to cheat anyone,” I say through gritted teeth, “don’t you think I would have pretended the queen wrote my own name in there?” I hold up the parchment for all to see. “Look. It doesn’t say the princess’s name at all, just”—I swallow a lump in my throat—“just ‘our beloved daughter.’”

There are a few moments of jostling—everyone trying to see the parchment—and then they all fall silent.

I go back to reading.

Alas, I have come to the sad part of my tale, sadness upon sadness. I can hardly bear to write this; the quill trembles in my hand. Such suffering as I
have known, in such a short span of time . . .

Two nights ago a man entered our royal chambers. In the darkness I could not see his face; I heard no utterance of his voice. All I saw was the flash of a sword’s blade, and then my husband lay dying, and I . . . I was mortally wounded as well. The life ebbs from me with each word I put to paper.

I believe the killer was a man known well to us, a man my husband and our royal guards (who were also slain) would have trusted. I believe my husband must have recognized the man, because Bredan cried out, as he expired, “What? More blood spilled over Fridesia?” I can only conclude that the killer opposed my husband’s plans to end the war; I am heartsick that my persuasions may have led to my husband’s death, when my intent was only to prevent the loss of other lives.

I would weep for my husband, my Bredan, but there is not time for that. My time on this earth is coming to a close; soon enough I will meet Bredan in heaven, along with the others I have loved and lost. I need only a few more hours of courage, and then my pain will end.

Beginning at daylight the morning after my husband’s death, the knights began to come to me, secretly, alone. The Order of the Crown, the assembly of knights most loyal to the king, is made up of
thirteen men; thirteen times I heard a whisper beside my deathbed: “Your Majesty? How can I protect the princess?”

What was I to do? Whom could I trust? What if any of those men were traitors?

I sent them all away. I told them to come back the next day. I prayed that I would have a next day, just one more day in which to make my decision, to take action.

“Wait a minute,” Harper interrupts. “Did I miss something? Where was the baby princess during all this? How did the king and queen keep the assassin from killing the princess, too? See, that’s something I’ve never understood about—”

An entire roomful of knights, would-be princesses, and guards all turn on him at once: “Shh!”

“Keep reading!” Nanny begs.

I obey.

I thought of the children at the orphanage, all those poor, motherless babes I’d seen lying in rickety cribs, crying after food that was never enough. Though my other attempts to help have led to nothing but tragedy, would it be wrong, in my last actions, for me to try to provide for at least some of them? A knight in possession of an infant he believed to be the
princess would surely treat her well, would he not?

I sent a trusted maid to the orphanage director. I asked for baby girls, only those young enough that they could pass for newborns. It seemed providential—a sign of divine blessing upon my plan—that the maid returned with exactly the right number of infants.

“You mean—the queen gave out
orphans
?” Sir Roget demands, sounding appalled. “She passed off common babies from the orphanage as the true princess?” He turns to the girl he must have raised, the one who is at his side holding him up. “Except for you, of course, dear Lucia, because you really are—”

“Perhaps you would let Cecilia finish reading before you draw any conclusions?” Sir Stephen asks in a barbed voice.

Sir Roget shrugs and nods his consent.

I go back to the parchment.

Now I am lying here listening to thirteen happy babies cooing in the royal nursery—such a glorious sound! Such a sound to heal a shattered, grieving heart! But I am beginning to have my doubts about my plan. I will tell each knight to keep each child hidden, to keep her safe above all other goals. I know the knights are disbanding the Order of the Crown
and going their separate ways, and this will keep the girls from ever meeting. I will tell each knight that the girl in his care must never attempt to sit on the throne as long as there is any danger—and I believe there will always be danger. I fear our land will be marked by turmoil and bloodshed for generations to come.