Princess of the Midnight Ball

by Jessica Day George

  Schelker was nodding. “Think on it, Gregor. Your daughters deserve husbands who can stand up to a little intrigue, face up to these ‘strange doings,’ as you put it. It will be a good indication of a young man’s character, to see how he reacts to this.”

  King Gregor sat across from his old friends for a long time, turning over the conversation in his head. “What do we tell him?”

  “Tell him the girls sneak out to go dancing every night, as though it were a lark,” Kelling said. “No mention of witchcraft and monsters in the garden. If he can find out where they go, he proves himself to be a resourceful candidate for the throne.”

  “The throne!” King Gregor’s face reddened. “Now I’m to give my throne to some foreign prince?”

  “Gregor,” Bishop Schelker said patiently. “You have no sons, no nephews. You’ve always said that one of the girls’ husbands would inherit. Make this a condition of that inheritance. It will be a worthy king indeed who can solve this puzzle.”

  King Gregor nodded slowly. “It would be a good way to find a successor. And put an end to the girls’ troubles.”

  “You will let the Spanian prince come?” Kelling sat forward in his seat.

  “I will.”

  Spania

  Galen learned about the Spanian prince’s assignment from Princess Poppy. Strong-willed Poppy had been the first of the princesses to recover her full strength, and she began to take walks in the gardens again a few days after Rionin and his shadowy companions had invaded the grounds.

  She immediately sought out Galen.

  “So, you’re the new under-gardener,” she said when she found him wrapping strips of burlap around the trunk of a weeping cherry tree. “Galen.”

  He straightened and bowed. “Indeed I am, Your Highness. Is there anything I can do for you?”

  She peered up at him from beneath her fur-lined hood. Winter was settling in, and she had been bundled up until she could hardly move. As she studied Galen, she unwound no less than two scarves and tossed them onto a nearby bench.

  “They itch,” she explained. “Were you really a soldier?”

  “Yes. Your Highness.” Galen did not want to talk about the war with this young girl, and he glanced down at the “tree bandages,” trying to hint that he needed to keep working, without being rude.

  “And did you really face off against Ri—the … people … who came into the garden the other night, with just a switch?”

  “Yes, although the switches were Walter Vogel’s idea. He was there with me.” He thought it interesting that Poppy was more curious than afraid of what had happened that night. Both Rose and the other princess—Walter had told him it was the second eldest, Lily, who had fired the pistol—had been quite terrified.

  “Walter is a dear, but quite strange,” Poppy said. “I’m hardly surprised. What did you think of the creatures?”

  “I—I don’t really know, Your Highness. They were quite … I’ve never seen anything like them. I thought they were human, but then they seemed to just fade away.”

  She pounced on his description. “As if they weren’t really here? As if they were an illusion?” Her expression was eager, and almost … hopeful.

  “They weren’t an illusion,” Galen said. “The switches made contact; I drew blood from one I struck in the face. And the one who tried to climb the ivy, to get to your windows, certainly felt the switch on his back. It tore his coat, and I thought…” He stopped. For all her avid expression, she was still very young, and he didn’t want to scare her.

  “What did you think?”

  “I thought the wounds were smoking, Your Highness.” He watched her carefully.

  If anything, Poppy looked disappointed. “So they really can come here,” she said in a low voice.

  Galen looked down at her face. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her cheeks were pale despite the cold that he knew was making his nose red under his tan. His uncle discouraged any contact between the under-gardeners and the royal family, but Reiner was on the far side of the gardens, working in the hothouses.

  “Princess Poppy,” Galen said, casting aside the burlap strips and taking a step toward her. “What were they? Why did they come here?”

  She looked up at him with her deep blue eyes. They were violet, really, and dark with an emotion he would not have suspected her capable of, from the teasing way she had spoken before.

  “They came to give us a warning,” she said.

  “What warning?”

  “That we are not free.” She gave a bitter laugh, sounding much older than her years. “And what are they? They are the things that you find crawling under a rock. Under a stone, actually.” Again the laugh, and she started to turn away. “I should go back before someone comes after me. We are expecting a very special guest for dinner.” The teasing tone was back, and she fluttered her eyelashes at Galen. “Prince Fernand of Spania! Are we not honored?”

  “I’m sure he’s very handsome,” Galen said, managing a smile. He was still troubled by what she had said, about them not being free. And what did she mean that the invaders were things you find “under a stone”?

  “But is he intelligent? That’s the real question,” Poppy said. “Intelligent enough to find out all our secrets? If he is, he gets to marry one of us, you know. And be the king after Papa dies.”

  Galen was almost more taken aback by this than by what she had said before. “What’s this?”

  “Father just told us,” Poppy said. Her voice was still light, but Galen detected an underlying edge to it. “If Fernand can find out why our dancing shoes are worn through at night—it’s now every night that it happens, you know—then he gets to pick one of us to marry, and he’ll be king one day.”

  “And if he doesn’t find out?”

  “Then Papa will invite another prince, and another, until one of them does!” Her voice sounded slightly hysterical now, and she laughed, but Galen saw tears in her violet-blue eyes.

  “Your Highness,” he began helplessly. Then he just shook his head. Who was he to tell her it would be all right? He couldn’t even begin to fathom what her life was like. Galen just took her arm and led her through the garden.

  “Galen!” Uncle Reiner came out of the rose hothouse just as they were passing and stopped short when he saw who was with his nephew. He bowed. “Your Highness, please forgive young Galen’s forwardness.” He glared furiously over her head at Galen.

  “Herr Orm,” Poppy said, nodding her head at him. “Your nephew is helping me back to the palace. I am not as well as I thought.”

  Reiner Orm made a harrumphing noise through his mustache but didn’t say anything. He bowed again to Poppy, and Galen and the young princess strolled away.

  “I think he’s angry with me,” Galen said out of the corner of his mouth.

  “But he can’t do anything about it,” Poppy pointed out. “I am a princess, after all.”

  “And I’m very privileged to be able to assist you, Your Highness,” Galen said with a smile.

  Poppy laughed. “Rose will be jealous, if she sees us,” Poppy said, looking up at Galen from under her eyelashes. “She thinks you’re handsome.”

  Galen stopped in his tracks. Now his cheeks really were red under his tan. “But we’ve never … I only … by the fountain.”

  “She sits by the window in the afternoons, to try to get some sun. She watches you working,” Poppy told him. “And she said you looked so strong and brave, standing in the moonlight with your switch that night.” She giggled at Galen’s discomfiture.

  He gave a wary look. She was teasing him, he knew, but teasing him with the truth? Did Princess Rose watch him? He glanced up at the windows of the palace, but the angle of the weak wintry sun made it hard to tell if anyone was beyond the glass.

  “Of course, she’ll kill me for telling you that,” Poppy said cheerfully.

  “I certainly won’t tell her,” Galen said fervently.

  “I didn’t think you would.” She la
ughed again. “Oh, look, Prince Fernand is here.” She made a face.

  Someone was throwing open windows along the east side of the palace, not far from the princesses’ rooms. Galen and Poppy could clearly hear orders being shouted in Spanian, and see servants running to and fro.

  “Well, he sounds pleasant,” Poppy said dryly.

  “I’m sure he has many fine … qualities,” Galen said.

  He wasn’t sure how he felt about this Spanian prince, really. Spania had been an ally of Westfalin during the war, and Galen had fought alongside some Spanian regiments. He hadn’t much cared for them: they were too concerned with keeping their uniforms clean. The Westfalians tended to be a rather rough-and-tumble people. Galen wondered how a Spanian prince would like ruling over such a nation.

  He saw Poppy to the wide terrace doors that faced out on the gardens. A maid scurried out immediately to scold the young girl and sweep her inside. Galen felt abashed for a moment, hoping that the maid, too, wouldn’t think him forward for strolling with a princess. But instead she thanked him for finding her errant charge and returning her. Galen went back to work relieved on that count, but not on his concerns about the prince.

  And the contest to win one of the princesses’ hands.

  Galen need not have worried about that. A week later the Spanian prince left empty-handed and furious. One of the other gardeners, who was courting a chambermaid, told Galen and Walter that the prince had spent several nights in the hall outside the princesses’ rooms, one night waiting in the garden under their windows, and had even been permitted to spend a night in the sitting room that led to their bedchambers. He had seen and heard nothing, yet their shoes were worn out every morning and they were as tired as ever.

  Galen stood with Walter and watched Fernand leave. The prince was quite a dandy, and as he supervised the loading of his many trunks into the luggage wagon, he waved his arms in the air expressively and ranted to the Spanian ambassador, who had come to see him off. The lace on Fernand’s cuffs flew, but his elegantly styled hair was so thickly pomaded that it hardly moved as he raged.

  “Too proud,” Walter commented.

  “What’s that?” Galen jumped. They had been standing there in silence so long that he’d almost forgotten Walter’s presence.

  “That young man is far too proud. He was in the gardens a few days ago, and I thought to give him some advice, the benefit of my wisdom, as it were. But he was too proud to listen.”

  “I see,” Galen said, giving Walter a sidelong look. “And what advice did you try to give him?”

  “The advice I would have given him is vastly different from that I’d have given you, young Galen,” Walter said cryptically. “He hasn’t been as … blessed … as you have been.” And with that, the older man stumped away.

  Shaking his head, Galen turned his attention back to the courtyard.

  Seeing Galen watching him, the prince whirled around and began to rave in his direction. Galen thought about answering back, but the only Spanian he knew was extremely unflattering, so he merely bowed and went back to the gardens.

  A week later, the second son of the king of La Belge arrived.

  La Belge

  The second son of the king of La Belge was handsome enough, Rose thought as he bowed, if you liked dark hair and blue eyes. Which Jonquil did, judging by the look on her face. As for Rose, she was indifferent, reclining on a sofa in their sitting room, propped up by pillows and draped in shawls. She nodded her head graciously.

  “I am Prince Bastien,” he said in heavily accented West-falian. “It is a pleasure to meet you. All of you.” His eyes flickered appraisingly over the rest of the girls.

  Pansy and Petunia shared a sofa to Rose’s right; Daisy was on the sofa to her left, with her twin, Poppy, curled up at her feet. None of them were at their best: red noses and watery eyes still abounded. Half of them were racked with lingering coughs, and Rose was too weak to stand for long. But her fever had cooled, so she had agreed to greet the Belgique prince formally.

  “It is a pleasure to meet you, Prince Bastien,” Rose said, very softly. If she talked any louder, she would cough.

  Jonquil, who had recovered almost as fast as Poppy had, came to the rescue and introduced her sisters. Rose could see the prince’s eyes glaze over as Jonquil rattled off the twelve flower names to him, and suppressed a sigh. From experience she knew that he would remember her name, since she was the oldest, but she steeled herself for Poppy’s complaints about being called Daisy, or worse: Pansy. Few visitors could tell the twins apart, and fewer still bothered to sort out the names of anyone younger than fifteen-year-old Hyacinth.

  True to form, Prince Bastien barely spared a moment on the younger girls after the introductions were made. He pulled a chair up to Rose’s sofa and proceeded to regale her with the story of his journey from La Belge to Bruch. He was quite comical in his descriptions of his riverboat’s captain, who spit after every sentence. Rose noticed that he didn’t focus entirely on her, though, also including Jonquil and Lily in his conversation.

  Later, as they dressed for dinner, Lily wryly agreed. “Oh, yes, he has his heart set on Father’s throne all right. He’s flirting with all three of us equally.”

  “Why is that?” Jonquil fussed with her hair, trying the effect of a scarlet ribbon threaded through her brunette curls. “In case one of us proves to be stupider than the others?”

  “In case one of us forms a tendre for him and tells him the secret, is my guess,” Rose said. She blew her nose into a handkerchief, relieved to be alone among her sisters where she could do so without looking unladylike. “Why did I get out of bed?”

  Rose’s head had been spinning by the time Prince Bastien had finished his narrative, and the effort of holding in a fit of coughing was making her breath come in gasps. One of their maids, seeing the eldest princess’s distress, showed Bastien out and then hastened to get Rose out of her tea gown and into bed.

  She had hoped to be able to attend the state dinner that night but sent a maid to inform her father that Lily would once more be playing hostess. She decided that Petunia, Pansy, and Daisy should stay in bed as well.

  “The bow looks better at the back,” she told Jonquil. “Now stop primping.”

  “Going to lecture me on vanity, like Hya?” Jonquil arched an eyebrow at Rose in the mirror.

  “I don’t care if you’re vain, but you’re bothering me with your rustling and humming.”

  “I’m not humming!”

  “You are, too. You always hum when you do your hair. It’s annoying.”

  “She’s right, you know,” Lily said as she put on a pair of amethyst earrings. “You hum when you do your hair, and just before you fall asleep.”

  Stunned by the knowledge that she had a bad habit, Jonquil finished her hair in silence and went out of the room. Rose had just closed her eyes and was starting to drift off when she heard her younger sisters squealing and chattering in the sitting room.

  Iris burst in, a huge bouquet in her hands. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

  She spread out the flowers, and Rose realized that there was not one large bouquet, but three small ones. One was all lilies, another all miniature irises, and the third was a cluster of deep scarlet roses.

  Oddly enough, each bundle was tied with a knitted cord of black wool, but Rose thought it was quite a pretty effect as Iris handed her the scarlet roses. She held the flowers to her stuffy nose and tried to breathe in some of the scent. Only the faintest trickle of the flowers’ perfume came through, so she gently stroked her cheek with the soft petals instead, savoring the exquisite feeling. She sometimes felt guilty that her father spent so much money on the gardens, especially on heating and watering the hothouses, but right now it all seemed worth it.

  “Greta told me the new under-gardener brought them,” Iris burbled. “He gave them to her in a big basket, and asked her to bring them to us as a special treat. I’m going to put a ribbon to match my gown around mine, and carry it at
dinner.” She went out, still admiring the deep purple and gold flowers of her bouquet.

  “The new under-gardener?” Lily looked over her own white flowers at Rose. “Isn’t he the one who made you fall in the fountain?”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” Rose said staunchly. She had blamed Galen rather a lot in the first week of her illness, but she had felt more charitable toward him recently, watching him work so tirelessly in her mother’s garden. Holding the beautiful flowers to her cheek helped soothe her mood a great deal as well.

  Poppy, her bouquet of bright red blooms showing up wildly against the pale pink gown she wore, stepped into the room next. “Lily, it’s time for dinner. I could only just hear the gong over the sound of them gabbling out there.” She jerked her dark head toward the sound of their other sisters, who were in the sitting room comparing bouquets.

  “Just let me put a nicer ribbon on mine,” Lily said, hurrying to her dressing table to find something to match her gown. “Why do you think he sent them? Do you suppose he got permission first?”

  “I’m sure he did,” Poppy said airily. “He escorted me back from the garden the other day, when Fernand arrived. He’s very kind. And handsome.” She wiggled her eyebrows at Rose, who chose to ignore her. “Don’t get a new ribbon; they look more interesting this way,” she told Lily, adjusting the cord twisted around the slim stems of her namesake. “Galen made the cord, too, I think. He sits on the rocks just beneath our windows to eat his lunch and knit. I think he knits his own socks.”

  “He does?” Lily looked up from the dressing table.

  “Yes, but Rose would know better than I,” she said mischievously. And she wandered out with her nose in her flowers.

  Lily looked at Rose, who just shrugged, hoping she wasn’t blushing. “He’s an odd young man,” she said.

  “But handsome,” Poppy shouted through the door.

  Her two older sisters rolled their eyes.