Palace of Mirrors (29 page)

And yet, and yet—perhaps these girls can be happy? Perhaps they can be nurtured and loved; perhaps they can grow to become lovely, strong young ladies, as others cannot?

Perhaps some good can come out of evil, some joy from all my sorrows?

Or perhaps . . . I fear even to write this. I have not forgotten that I am not certain that all the knights are trustworthy. I have not forgotten that the evil and greed for power that led to my husband’s death has not been expunged from our kingdom. I pray that I am not consigning any of these girls to a worse life than she would have had in the orphanage.

Strangely, it is Desmia’s face that my eyes stray to at that moment. She stares back at me, an indecipherable expression on her face. I go back to reading.

I pray that these girls will never be used as pawns in political games, as I have sometimes been used, as queen. I pray for them quiet lives out of the
public eye, their sorrows few, their joys many—and all of their emotions kept to themselves, not thrown out for the entire kingdom to see.

And yet, I fear . . . I fear . . . Is the darkness I see before me only because my eyes grow dim? Does any hope remain? I must believe that hope remains . . .

I am writing out thirteen copies of this letter. I shall tell each knight that I will send one royal object with the child in his care. These are objects my husband has used for sending out spies; each object contains a secret compartment for hidden messages.

“Hey, Cecilia, guess what!” Harper says. “That means you didn’t actually have to break open your harp to get your message out!”

How can he make jokes at a time like this? I don’t even bother looking up.

I will leave it to God’s will—to his providence? to fate?—to determine when and if my messages will ever be found. I think of you—whoever you are—there in the future, reading this, and I hope you do not judge my actions too harshly.

“Isn’t she ever going to say who the actual true princess is?” the captain of the royal guard asks impatiently.

“Yeah, why would she wait so long to reveal her big news?” Harper agrees.

“Well, maybe because she thought it would be
obvious
, because the true princess would be so clearly different from the ordinary orphans,” one of the girls says. I don’t know her name—I decide I don’t want to know anything about her.

“Or maybe she’ll just say that she gave the true princess to the most trusted knight, the man she was sure would never be a traitor,” one of the knights says. “The queen always liked me.”

“Can’t you just skim forward a bit, until you come to the princess’s name?” another knight says. “Just look for ‘Porfinia’; it’s P-O-R . . .”

I gasp, and that silences him. I’m already reading ahead. I’ve already read quite far enough.

“What is it?” the royal captain asks. “Can you see—who’s the true princess?”

I look up at all those hopeful faces, all those self-satisfied, self-assured, all-too-certain faces.

“None of us,” I whisper.

  33  

A tumult breaks out in the crowd. In an instant I see the certainty and confidence on just about every face turn to astonishment, disappointment, shock. Two or three girls begin to wail. They hide their faces against their knights’ shoulders, though the knights themselves are reeling. They look as though I have delivered a worse torture than the rack, than the thumbscrew, than the executioner’s pike.

“You mean, it really was Desmia all along?” the royal captain asks.

“No, not even Desmia. She came from the orphanage too,” I say. I glance toward the pale-faced girl. “Sorry.”

She winces.

“I think . . . I think Lord Throckmorton knew,” she whispers. “I used to have a crystal globe that he took away from me . . . I saw it in his office later, cracked open . . .
And after that he always looked at me like . . . like . . ., ”

“Like he’d read your copy of the queen’s letter?” Ella asks gently.

Desmia nods. Her shoulders slump; she sways unsteadily, standing alone. I feel so sorry for her that she has no knight to cling to, no grandfather figure to comfort her from the most devastating blow of her life. I am glad to see Ella step forward and put her arm around Desmia.

Desmia looks grateful too. But then she quickly glances back toward me, bafflement spreading across her expression.

“Then . . . did the queen give the true princess to her trusted maid?” Desmia asks.

“A maid—pshaw!” one of the knights grumbles.

Desmia ignores him. “If none of us is the true princess, who is?”

“Just listen,” I say. I resume reading, though it is difficult to do so. My eyes blur; my voice shakes.

Perhaps you are wise enough to deduce how much I’ve left out of my story. I’ve left this part for the last, because it is so hard to write about—even harder than writing about my husband’s murder, my own impending death. Can you not guess what else I have to tell you? Must I pour my bleeding heart out onto the paper thirteen times?

I must, I know. I must be clear, for the sake of all the girls.

The night of my beloved daughter’s birth, even as the entire kingdom celebrated, my child did not breathe. Though she emerged as perfect and beautiful as any child, she never took a breath. I held her in my arms, willing her to open her eyes and look back at me, willing her to draw air into her lungs, willing her to live! But she did not. . . . When the royal physician finally took her from my arms, I went wild with grief, and the physician gave me a heavy draught, to blunt my pain and send me into sleep.

When I woke to myself three days later, I found my grief unabated—nay, multiplied. For my husband had feared to tell our overjoyed kingdom of the child’s death, lest his subjects begin to believe that the monarchy—and thus, all of Suala—is cursed. (Are we?) I see now how much he feared, and the accuracy of his fears. But I could not care about the monarchy when my heart was already overflowing with sorrow. My husband forced me to stand on the royal balcony, holding a blanket cleverly folded to look as though it enclosed a child—when really there was nothing there. My husband had the royal physician sent into exile. My husband acted as though he had everything under control.

Perhaps he was a bit wild with grief, himself.

I do not know if my husband would have someday announced the child’s death, when the politically expedient moment came. Or mayhap we would have turned to the orphanage—as I’ve done now—for an impostor princess. But I tell you, now that I’ve heard these girls cooing in the royal nursery, I will be able to look each knight in the eye tomorrow and tell him, with all sincerity, “This is my child. Please take care of my child.” As far as I am concerned, these girls are all my children now. They stand in place of the children I would have had, had I been allowed to live.

If these girls are not my children, then what do I have to leave behind? What has my life been worth?

When I stop reading, it is so quiet in Desmia’s chambers that I swear I can practically hear the tears rolling down Nanny’s cheeks.

“That poor woman,” she murmurs. “That poor, poor woman.”

She lapses back into a respectful silence. It feels as though we’re all at the queen’s funeral, mourning her life, mourning the sorrows she was never able to get past.

Then the royal captain moans, “Poor Suala! That’s what you should say!”

Harper’s mam, who knows everything there is to know about respecting grief, whirls on him.

“How can you say that? At a time like this? When we’ve just found out that that poor woman . . .” She sniffs, unable to go on.

The royal captain all but rolls his eyes.

“When that poor woman—what?” he says sarcastically. “Practically guaranteed that Suala would be plunged into civil war? If she wanted to pass off a fraud, she should have picked just
one
girl, preferably one who looked a lot like her and the king, so no one would ever suspect. And then—”

“She wanted to help as many girls as she could,” I say, forcing the words out through a clotted throat. “She wanted to save us all.”

I’m thinking that, really, she succeeded. Mostly. I can look around at all the other girls and tell that they’ve been well-loved, well cared for. Except for Desmia, who became Lord Throckmorton’s pawn. . . . I wonder if he did find the queen’s letter in Desmia’s royal object. Or if he figured out that there were twelve other “true princesses” just from spying on the other knights, and didn’t care whether any of the princesses were authentic, as long as he could use them for his own purposes. It really doesn’t matter.

None of us are pawns now.

“Humph,” the royal captain grunts. “I’ve got daughters. I’ve seen them nearly scratch each other’s eyes out
when two of them want the same boy. And now we’ve got thirteen girls who are all going to want the same throne, but none of you actually deserve it.”

He’s glaring at us all, as if to steel himself for the coming battles.

“I’ve had reason lately to research royal law,” Desmia speaks up, in a trembling voice. “It says that anyone the dying monarch designates as heir is, by law, the heir.”

“Oh, so you think you have a greater claim than the rest of us?” one of the other girls argues. “Sure, as if we’ll all just go away now, back to our little villages, while
you
get to stay in the palace, wearing silks and satins, eating feasts, being courted by handsome princes from other kingdoms. . . .”

Except for the prince part, this is so close to some of the resentful thoughts I had about Desmia, back when I was at Nanny’s, that I’m jolted. It sounds so . . .
nasty
, spoken out loud.

But Desmia seems jolted too.

“No,” she says quickly. “I don’t mean I have a greater claim. I mean that
all
of us are princesses. The queen said so. Read that last part again, Cecilia.”

It takes me a minute to grasp what she means.

“Uh . . . um . . . here it is. I think this is what you want,” I say, fumbling with the parchment. “The queen wrote, ‘As far as I am concerned, these girls are all my children now.’”

The royal captain releases another disdainful snort.

“You can’t have thirteen princesses ruling as equals!” he scoffs.

“Why not?” I say.

Everyone is staring at me. I stare right back. Desmia and Ella both have faint smiles on their faces, as if they can guess what I’m getting at. Most of the knights and girls look puzzled, but a few are beginning to arch their eyebrows as understanding overtakes them. Sir Stephen and Nanny look proud. Harper looks gobsmacked. And Harper’s mam just looks sad, like she always does—no, wait, even she is starting to look a little hopeful.

The royal captain shakes his head.

“I don’t have time to explain palace protocol to you,” he says scornfully. “Or monarchical authority, or divine right, or—”

“I know all about palace protocol,” I retort. “And monarchical authority. And I don’t believe you can invoke divine right, not when King Bredan was killed by a
man
, but anyhow I’ve been studying this stuff all my life! And so have the other girls, so we’re ready. Of course we could rule as equals—there are thirteen of us, so there’d always be someone to break the tie. Or . . .” My gaze falls on Ganelia, the one who claimed in the secret stairways not to have any leadership skills. “Maybe we wouldn’t rule as equals; maybe it would be better if we all just specialized in what we’re best at. Ganelia could oversee building in
the kingdom, and Rosemary is good at ordering people around, and everyone loves the way Desmia waves on the balcony”—Desmia’s smile turns down a bit, so I rush to add—“and she knows more about royal law than anyone else, and . . . what are the rest of you good at?”

“Lucia knows every principle of leadership inside out,” Sir Roget volunteers.

“Sophia can speak four languages,” Sir Anthony says.

“Fidelia is an expert strategist,” Sir Alderon adds.