Palace of Mirrors (8 page)

“You’re going to have to carry it some of the time too,” he growls at me. “It’s heavy. Danged harp!”

“No problem,” I mutter.

We escape the village without running into the watchman again, although I think I hear a faint echo of his voice from near the village store: “Four o’clock of the morning. All’s well. All’s well. . . .”

I shiver and wrap Nanny’s shawl tighter around my shoulder. All isn’t well. We’ve got a dark path ahead of us, the beginning of a journey full of unknowns. For all I know, the path just between the village and Nanny’s house is lined with enemies. Maybe I won’t even make it that far. Maybe I won’t even get to tell her good-bye.

A lump grows in my throat, and I realize that, for all my ideas about what to tell Harper’s mam, I haven’t thought of anything to write to Nanny. If I tell her where I’m really going, she’ll send Sir Stephen after me. She’s spent the last fourteen years of her life taking care of me, keeping me safe. How can I tell her that I don’t care about being safe anymore? That I’d rather sit on a throne and wear silks and satins than stay with her?

Dear Nanny,
I compose in my head.
I believe that my enemies are closing in on us. I don’t want to endanger you, so I am leaving. . . .

That sounds so noble and high-minded that I’m proud of myself. I didn’t know I had that in me. Maybe once I come out of hiding, I will be a better person. I will go down in history as Cecilia the Good. Generations from now people will talk about how kind and gentle I was, how saintly.

Harper stops in front of me so suddenly that my face slams into his harp, the wires digging into my skin.

“Ow!” I complain loudly. “Double dragon drat, Harper, give me some warning next time. Now I’m going to have bruises in stripes all over my face.”

“Shh!” Harper says. “Listen!”

Above the racket of the crickets and other noisy night insects, there’s a swell of sound coming from ahead of us, a keening. It’s even eerier than the village watchman’s “All’s well . . .” It’s sadder, too, because even though the sound is far away and I can’t make out any words, it’s clearly the wailing of someone who does not believe that anything’s well, someone whose world has just fallen to pieces.

Then the wailing gets closer, and I can make out a word: “Ce-ciii-liiia . . .”

“It’s Nanny!” I hiss at Harper, and take off running. “Maybe she’s hurt!”

I promptly trip on a rock in the path and tumble to the
ground.
More bruises to go with the wire marks,
I think. But I spring up right away, calling out, “Nanny! Over here!”

Harper pulls me back.

“Hush!” he cries. “What if she’s the bait in some trap? You need to be quiet!”

I jerk away from him.

“Nanny! I’m coming!” I yell.

Now I can see the glow of a lamp up ahead on the path. I sprint forward, toward the glow. I can see it’s just Nanny, by herself, out searching in the dark. As soon as I draw near, she all but leaps at me, wrapping me in a hug.

“Cecilia, child—I thought I’d lost you,” she murmurs into my hair. “I thought—”

“I just had to go tell Harper something,” I tell her.

Harper catches up with us just then. I’m amazed to see that he was clever enough to hide his harp and knapsack before stepping into the light. Nanny draws him into a hug too.

“And you were kind enough to walk Cecilia home,” she marvels. “I’m so grateful.”

Harper’s eyes goggle out at me. Both of us now have our heads smashed in against Nanny’s shoulders, the lamp clutched between us. Nanny gives no sign that she’s ever going to let go. Harper starts making faces at me, his expression clearly asking,
What do we do now?

I push away from the hug.

“Nanny, I’m fine; everything’s fine. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“No, no—I think you saved us both,” she says dazedly.

“What?”

Nanny releases Harper from her hug and straightens her skirt. She smoothes back her hair.

“I woke up, and you were gone,” she says. “I thought maybe you’d just stepped out to the privy, but I went to check, to see . . .” She says this matter-of-factly, as if I would expect her to be so paranoid. “It’s a ways from the cottage, you know. . . .”

I wait, because it’s obvious that she has more to tell me than the distance to the privy.

“I was almost there when I heard the muffled hoofbeats,” she says. She shoots a glance at Harper, as if she’s hesitant to tell this story in front of him. Then her eyes well up with tears and she clutches my hand and the words just burst out, as if she can’t stop herself. “They were trying to sneak up on us, being quiet—all these men on horseback. They circled the whole cottage before they made a single noise loud enough to wake anyone. And then they just attacked, screaming and hollering and climbing in through the window and the door. . . . It was like they just expected that door to give way for them. . . .”

The cut door latch,
I think. I remember what I suspected before—that someone had cut the latch ahead of time to prepare for a middle-of-the-night attack. To make sure we
had no warning, no chance to escape. I shiver, thinking,
If it hadn’t been for the wind blowing the door open, and my going to Harper’s . . . and then Nanny going out to look for me . . .

“Oh, Cecilia,” Nanny wails, clutching my hand tighter. “I think they wanted to kill us. They had their swords drawn, their knives unsheathed . . .”

Her words dissolve into sobs, but she doesn’t loosen the iron grip on my hand.

Harper steps closer, his arms out in a defensive pose.

“Are they still there?” Harper hisses. “Still looking for Cecilia and you’re out here screaming her name?”

He’s peering around in all directions at once, but there’s only darkness around us. He reaches for the lamp—to extinguish it, I think, so we won’t be so obvious—but Nanny swings it away from him.

“They’re gone, I’m sure of it. I heard them riding away.”

“But if someone comes back on foot . . .,” Harper argues.

I can tell Harper is trying to think like a thief or a murderer, like my enemies. I lean over and blow out the lamp. In the sudden darkness Nanny begins sobbing harder.

“We have to get her somewhere—somewhere safe—to calm her down,” I tell Harper. “Can we go to your mother’s?”

I hope he understands that our little adventure, our trip
to the capital, is off. I can’t leave Nanny like this, in hysterics. We’ll go back to Harper’s cottage, and he can destroy his note before his mother sees it, and then, I don’t know, Nanny and I will cower in hiding at the Suttons’ until Sir Stephen shows up and tells us what to do. I feel such a strange swirl of emotions thinking about this change in plans: relief and regret all mixed up together. What I don’t feel is fear. I think I’m too stunned for fear.

But there were horsemen, hunting me. . . .

“No!” Nanny screams. “We can’t go to the village—you can’t go to the village. You have to leave. You have to get to Sir . . . to Sir . . .” Her voice falters, and I know she’s remembered again that she shouldn’t reveal secrets in front of Harper.

“Of course. We can go to our good friend who visits so often,” I say quickly, because there’s not time to explain that Harper already knows everything. Not that I’d want to explain that to Nanny anyhow. “Our friend will keep us safe.”

“Yes!” Nanny says, relief in her tone. “I’ve got money. We’ll hire a carriage . . .”

She starts pulling me back toward the cottage. In the dark we slam into tree trunks and get our faces slashed by branches, but Nanny doesn’t seem to notice. Harper grabs my arm and follows along, constantly swinging his head right to left, left to right, like a sentry. But what good is a sentry when there’s no light to see by?

We reach the cottage and Nanny dashes in. Harper won’t let me follow.

“Stay hidden,” he whispers, huddling with me behind a tree.

Nanny reappears in seconds.

“They stole all my money!” she wails, the panic escalating in her voice. “They ransacked the entire place—they even took your books!”

This loss reaches me. It’s not that I was fond of Latin or geometry or
A Royal Guide to Governance.
But those books were my link to my true identity, my proof that I wasn’t just another barefoot peasant girl. I had kind of thought that I would carry them with me when I went to the capital, to show to Desmia. After all, she wouldn’t relinquish her throne to just anyone.

“I could sell my harp for you to have money for the carriage,” Harper says, calmly.

“There isn’t time!” Nanny says. “You don’t understand—Cecilia has to leave
now.
She has to get to safety as fast as she can, and I can’t walk that far. And I can’t send her alone—”

“I can take Cecilia wherever she needs to go,” Harper says, and it’s almost annoying how polite he’s being, how helpful.

Nanny stares at him. In the past few minutes the earliest light of dawn has started to creep through the woods, so I can see the emotions playing across her face:
despair, hope, worry, fear, and then resignation.

“Yes,” she murmurs. “I suppose that’s our only chance.”

“And you go stay with Mrs. Sutton, so you’ll be safe too,” I urge.

We’re in a rush then, packing up more food, Nanny writing directions to get to Sir Stephen’s. Before I know it, Nanny is wrapping a cloak around my shoulders and hugging me good-bye.

“I can’t leave you like this,” I whisper into her hair.

“You have to,” she whispers back, and this time she pushes me away.

  9  

We’ve barely started up the village path—the path away from the village, the path that leads to the cow pasture and then to the world beyond—when I realize that we’re walking on fresh hoofprints. I can see the exact imprint of the horseshoes: strange horseshoes, with a crest at each end.

“This—this is the way the horsemen went,” I gasp, and clutch Harper’s arm in sudden panic. “Harper, we’re following them.”

“We’re not going to catch up with men on horses,” Harper says.

“What if they stop and lie in wait for us?”

“How would they know to do that?” he asks. “How would they know that we’re behind them?”

But he flicks the hood of my cloak up over my hair, and I notice that he slows a bit, carefully scanning the path
ahead every time we come to a bend or a rise.

Once we’re past the cow pasture, the path splits. The horseshoe marks continue to the left. The path to the right, which is actually wider, looks innocent and safe. It’s bright enough now that I can make out the signs at the crossroads:
WEDGEWEDE
with an arrow pointing to the left;
CORTONA
with an arrow to the right.

Sir Stephen lives in the direction of Wedgewede. Regardless of the horseshoe prints, that’s the way Nanny told us to go.

Cortona is the capital, where Desmia lives in the fabled Palace of Mirrors.

I come to a halt right in the middle of the path’s split.

Harper’s so busy looking around—right to left, left to right, examining every bit of the horizon before us—that he doesn’t seem to notice that I’ve stopped. He veers to the right, kicking up a cloud of dust that glows in the dawn light.

“Harper!” I mutter through clenched teeth. “Where are you going?”

“Cortona—isn’t that the capital? Where the palace is? Where you wanted to go?”

I squint at him in confusion.

“That was before,” I say. “Nanny thinks you’re taking me to Sir Stephen. To safety.”

Harper’s gaze follows the line of hoofprints leading in the direction Nanny wanted us to go, toward Wedgewede and Sir Stephen’s.

“Do you really think you’ll be safe there?” he asks quietly.

I wince. I can feel my long, sleepless night weighing on me, immobilizing my brain as well as my feet. I want to curl up and sleep for about twelve hours—then maybe I’d be capable of making a decision. Each path leads to a different fate, and I can’t see more than about twenty steps into either choice. Harper’s question echoes in my ears. Is safety really what I want, anyhow? Safety—or action, power, control, and a chance to treat Desmia honorably? Even staring at that line of hoofprints I still have faith that Sir Stephen could protect me in Wedgewede. He’s a knight; he knows everything. Even now Cortona seems like the greater danger, the greater unknown.