by Finley Aaron
Ella stood in front of the mirror. She still wore the ugly brown dress, and sighed. “And if that doesn’t work, I’ll ride off to Devin by myself. And if I die there like my father, well, it can’t be worse than playing servant to Madame De Bouchard for the rest of my life.”
By this time she was weeping silent tears, which dripped from her cheeks unchecked. She cried mostly because her father was dead and her brother imprisoned, but also for the loss of their horses and probably Caprese as well.
And if I’m honest, I was crying, too. My god daughter had wished for happily ever after, and in spite of all my magic, I’d somehow given her the opposite.
It rained that night, but the morning dawned as clear and lovely as any day ever was. The summer day was warm, but the unbearably hot spell of a few weeks prior had broken.
Ella had finished Madame’s alterations in the night, and started in on altering the brown dress for herself, though there was little she could do for the garment. She served breakfast in her usual plain cotton dress, and Madame shrieked at her.
“Where is the gown I gave you?”
“Upstairs. I started the alterations, but they aren’t finished yet.”
“Lazy, good-for-nothing Child! Finish them and put it on! I’m expecting a visitor today.” She raised her cup almost to her lips, then paused. “You’re expecting a visitor.” Then she laughed in a way that made Ella think maybe she should ride off to Devin that very moment and skip the ball completely.
But going to the ball meant seeing Henry again. He might hate her—he might even refuse to listen to her—but she couldn’t help wanting to see him, and there was the slight possibility that maybe, if he danced with her out of pure politeness, she could make him understand what was going on. He was a sensible man, and had seen through subterfuge before.
Ella went upstairs and finished altering the brown dress, which was still ugly, but it finally fit, at least. It wasn’t quite a ball gown properly, but considering the silk embargo, there was a strong likelihood that other women would be wearing less-than-ball-worthy gowns.
And anyway, Ella had no other options. She went out to the stable to tend to the horses, since the pair would be needed to pull the carriage, and she’d have to ride Mirage once Madame and her daughters had left.
Ella was still brushing down the animals when Bertha came outside, panting and red-faced, calling for her.
“Yes?” Ella put down the brush when she heard her name, and went outside to meet Bertha.
“You have a visitor!” The red-faced girl exclaimed. “Mother’s been calling for you, and she is not happy!”
Ella hurried up to the house. She had a terrible feeling she wasn’t going to like whoever this visitor was. Perhaps it was some legal registrar come to dispute the ownership of Caprese. That wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have, but it was still better than the alternative. The only other likely candidate, based on what Madame Augusta had said weeks before, was Raedwald.
And in no way did Ella want to visit with Raedwald.
Madame was standing in the front foyer as Ella came through the house from the kitchen.
“Ah, Ella, there you are.” Madame sounded unusually relieved to see her. “You’ve a guest in the parlor.”
Since Ella had just come from the sunny outdoors, the parlor seemed even darker than it was as Ella stepped into the room. The parlor curtains were closed, as usual, and given the warmth of the day, no candles burned, nor was there any fire in the fireplace.
A man sat in their stiffest high-backed chair. He was turned to face the fireplace, empty though it was.
Having had proper etiquette drilled into her, and knowing Madame De Bouchard was scrutinizing her every move, Ella walked into the room, past the man in the chair, and stopped in the middle of the rug. She dropped into a curtsy even as she turned to face her visitor, so that she didn’t quite see his face until she lifted her head to stand tall.
“So, we meet again,” Raedwald said. He sounded unusually pleased to see her.
Ella looked instinctively to the door, thinking perhaps she ought to bolt away.
Einhard stood next to Madame De Bouchard, effectively blocking the main exit.
There was another door on the rear wall of the room that led to the kitchen via the back hallway. Ella glanced at that door next.
Uliad stood in that doorway next to Thomas.
She was trapped. Ella’s heart rammed against her throat.
Raedwald chuckled.
She’d never seen him so pleased.
“She’s just as I told you, Aunt Augusta,” Raedwald called, talking about Ella as if she wasn’t standing in front of him. “This is the girl from the Paris masquerade. I could have been here months ago, if you’d believed me.”
“Yes. Yes, you’re quite right,” Madame De Bouchard agreed.
Ella had never before heard her step-mother admit to being wrong, though she’d had many opportunities to do so.
This did not bode well.
“I could have had her wedded and bedded by now,” Raedwald chuckled again, looking Ella up and down as though she was a horse he wanted to buy. “But as it happens, the timing may now be even better. They’re after Henry to find a wife. If I marry first, I’ll win the people’s approval. And if I marry the girl Henry loves, perhaps he’ll challenge me to a duel.” Raedwald laughed again.
He seemed to be in a jolly mood, except that he was scowling, and there was ice in his tone, a spear of pure hatred such as Ella had never heard before, not even from him. It pierced the air between them and held her silent.
Ella’s head spun. She had to get away. The doors were blocked, and Raedwald’s chair sat between her and the windows. She’d never get by him, let alone get past the curtains and open the panes in time to jump out.
Raedwald looked her up and down once more. “Little imp. She’s rather on the scrawny side. Don’t you feed her?” He sighed. “Not that it matters. I’ve never looked so forward to claiming my prize.” He stood and took a step toward her, his hand open wide as he stretched out his arm to take hold of her.
Ella bolted to the fireplace.
Quick as a mouse, she ducked inside, scrambling up the familiar bricks and nearly slipping on her silk gown. In spite of that, she moved up beyond his reach before he even so much as bent his frame low enough to peer up into the chimney.
When he did so, a dusting of soot, loosened by Ella’s upward scramble, fell down into his eyes.
Raedwald roared in anger. “She’s gone up the chimney! Up the chimney! After her! Someone get up there!” He bellowed as he wiped at his eyes.
Ella climbed higher, but she needn’t have bothered. Neither of the Ulster brothers, nor Thomas, could fit in the narrow space, and Madame Augusta wasn’t nearly strong enough to pull herself up, even if she had been willing to try (which she wasn’t).
“Smoke her out,” Thomas suggested, cackling.
“Yes indeed, smoke her out,” Madame agreed.
Raedwald was less excited about the idea. “That girl is just stubborn enough to stay in that chimney and die of the smoke. I need her alive.”
“Oh, I doubt she’d die. She’d more likely pass out and fall down, and then we could revive her,” Madame argued.
Ella decided not to stick around to see which way the discussion went. She hoisted her skirts high out of her way, and climbed up through the chimney all the way to the roof.
From there, she had a limited number of options. The drop from the edge of the roof to the ground was a long one, and she was likely to be injured. If she turned an ankle or broke a leg, Raedwald would capture her and that would be the end. She couldn’t risk that.
There were four chimneys total, and she knew them well from having cleaned them recently. She hurried across the roof to the chimney that led down to the fireplace in her brother’s room, and lowered herself silently inside. His window opened to the great oak tree, whose branches extended near the house. They’d both of them used the oa
k tree as an exit when they’d wished to sneak out after their bedtime.
Ella did this now. She’d never been so glad about Madame’s insistence on keeping the curtains closed—at least no one would see her escape. She dropped from the tree and ran for the barn.
Mirage was brushed, watered, and fed. Her saddle and gear were at the ready, since Ella had expected to leave in a hurry for the ball that evening. She saddled the horse quickly and exited through the rear door of the barn, which couldn’t be seen from the house, and rode swiftly down through the pasture to the stream, which she followed toward the village.
Ella didn’t go all the way to the village—she didn’t dare let anyone see her for fear Madame or Raedwald or any of the others would ask around and learn which direction she’d gone. She went as far as the spot where the narrow spring-fed stream from their pasture joined another larger stream, where blackberry brambles enclosed the streambed in a thicket of thorns all around.
There she stopped. The water was cold against her lower legs, and had soaked through her awful brown gown, making it weigh heavily on her. All the rest of her was covered in soot. She looked down at her blackened arms and choked back a sob.
“I haven’t got anything,” she whispered to me. “I don’t have any money with me, none at all. I’ve lost Caprese—there’s no way I can go back there, not unless I can bring Bertie home to claim it. And even then, I’ll have to do something to keep Raedwald away. What could ever keep him away?” She shivered, partly from the cold of the stream, and partly from the fear of what he may have been going to do to her.
Jerome had told her once, long before, of how Sigismund had come to work for Henry. The little boy had started out as Raedwald’s page, but Raedwald was so unspeakably cruel to the boy, Henry had paid his cousin to let Sigi come work for him.
And Raedwald hadn’t even had reason to hate Sigismund. No, she didn’t doubt his cruelties to her would be worse.
Far worse.
“Where am I going to go?” Ella asked, looking around her at the thick woods beyond the blackberry thickets, which were impassible in that area, save for the streambed. “I haven’t any living relatives. Gustav would help me, but he lives at Caprese, so that’s no help. Sigi doesn’t have a home. I suppose I could try to stay with Jerome, but we were never close, and the way he babbles when he’s drunk—which is every night—even if I told him to keep my presence a secret, he’d likely tell everyone, anyway. So that’s no good.”
Ella splashed over to a clump of thicket whose branches hung low with ripe, heavy fruit. She hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, and that had been merely a few hurried bites between serving Madame and her daughters, and finishing her usual chores (gathering eggs, milking the cow and goats, and feeding the animals).
Now she plucked berries and munched them down, thinking out loud. “I’ll have to travel to Devin all on my own. I’ve no choice but to free Bertie. I can’t think how he must be suffering there. Perhaps I should have left already.”
While Ella chattered to herself, I grew to the size of a bluebird and flew to a branch not far from her face.
I waited for her to stop talking a moment, then interjected. “You know why you haven’t left already. You need to visit Henry first. This is a bigger job than you can do all on your own. He needs to know what’s going on. He can help you.”
“He hates me,” Ella countered.
“Does he?” I challenged her. “You thought he’d hate you when he found out you were really a girl, but he didn’t, did he? He’s only ever loved you, and I don’t think a few lies from Madame would change that.”
“But she told him I’m a servant.”
“And he sent an invitation to the ball to you, Lady Ella. Don’t you think he knows what he’s doing?”
“It was probably just the pages who wrote up the invitation. I’m sure they keep a list of all the nobility.”
“If your name is on that list, then he knows you’re noble!” I shouted, though even red-faced and screaming, my voice was not terribly loud, due to my small size. “Motley-minded malarkey! He’ll know that foot-licking fustilarian has lied to him! He’s a bright young man who can see beyond subterfuge far better than most—just look at the life he’s lived, with his uncle and cousin always plotting to dethrone him or kill him. Give him a bit more credit than that.”
Ella swallowed a mouthful of berries and sniffled back her tears. “You are right. I know Henry is capable of seeing past the lies, but Fairy Godmother, don’t you see? It doesn’t matter. Every time I’ve let myself hope—that I could compete without being found out, that my father could do his job without being imprisoned or killed, that we’d get our carts and horses back—every time, that hope is dashed. And not just dashed. Obliterated. So what am I to hope for this time?”
“Hope that Henry listens to you! Hope that he can help you!”
“But he’s already tried talking to his father. The king won’t listen. And how am I supposed to see Henry? I can’t go to the ball dressed like this. I’m a mess! I’ve got soot all through my hair and everywhere else. I haven’t got my invitation. Supposing, just supposing I managed to sneak into the castle through the tunnel again, I don’t know how to find the ballroom from the kitchen, and I’d be sure to be spotted long before I ever reached the prince. With my luck, Raedwald would find me first.
“No.” She shook her head sternly and ate more berries. “I’ve got to do better than hope. I can’t just hope and run headlong into trouble. I’ve got to plan. I’ve got to prepare. With my father dead and my brother imprisoned, I’m the last hope for my brother and the horses and all of Caprese. I can’t waste the freedom I have now. I’ve got to use it—and use it wisely. Now, what advantages do I have? If I could get to Henry, I imagine he might listen to me—but there’s the big if of getting to him.”
I flew into the air, buzzing, excited. “The ball is tonight. Henry’s supposed to meet every noble lady. If you can get in, you can meet with him!”
“Yes, that’s a fabulous opportunity, but look at me!” Ella held her berry-stained hands out, and looked down at her sodden, soot-covered gown, which had been ugly before, and really wasn’t much better for the soot.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Tatterdamlion troglodyte! You’re standing in a stream! Take a bath!” I urged her.
“Oh, great. And then what?”
“We’ll think of something. The ball doesn’t start for, what, five more hours? We’ve got time.”
“Not time enough to sew a dress,” Ella peeled off the ugly gown and waded into the deeper water where the small stream joined the larger one. She unbraided her hair and did the best she could to wash it in the stream.
“I haven’t even got a comb.” Ella said as she ran her fingers through her hair.
“I could fly back to the house and bring you your comb.”
Ella smiled for the first time in hours. “Could you bring me dry clothes, too? And dry shoes?”
“I’ll bring whatever I can carry,” I promised. “And I’ll see if I can’t learn what Raedwald’s up to, too.”
“Ah.” Ella leaned back in the water, letting the stream’s current run through her hair, so that it flowed like a golden river from her head. “You are too good to me, Fairy Godmother.”
“I do try,” I admitted. After warning her to stay safe, and inquiring whether there was anything else she wanted me to try to bring, I shrunk myself tiny as a twinkle and streaked away like a shooting star.
Back at Caprese, Raedwald was still roaring. They’d started a smoky fire in the parlor fireplace, only to conclude afterward that Ella wasn’t in the chimney after all. The Ulster brothers were stomping around the house looking for her, shaking the bushes and calling for her to come out, which made me wonder if they were really that dull-witted, or if perhaps they weren’t trying to warn her away.
Madame Augusta screamed for her daughters and told them to run down to the barn to check whether any of the horses or sa
ddles were missing. Agatha and Bertha screamed back at their mother that they needed to be getting ready for the ball, for it was almost midafternoon already, and Charmont was half a day’s journey by carriage.
And there was no way the two of them were going to ride there on horseback.
But their mother would have none of their excuses, and insisted they run down to the barn at once. The girls first seemed scared of the idea, as though Ella might be lying in wait to inflict some violence upon them, but they finally decided their mother was more frightening even then Ella, so they went down to the barn to look, returning to report that they couldn’t tell whether any horses or saddles were missing, since they weren’t sure how many were supposed to be there.
All this activity would have been entertaining, and I was tempted to stay and watch more, but I had a job to do. After taking what I needed from around the house, I flew to the attic, where I grew to the size of a cat and assembled a bundle of the things Ella had requested. I flew them out the window, and was lugging them through the sky above the pasture when I spotted Gustav fishing at the stream.
It occurred to me that he could be of some help. He’d never liked Madame, and was wary of her tricks, which was largely why he spent so much time at the stream and not in the house.
I flew down and landed beside him, surprising him.
“Oh, what’s this? Are you Ella’s fairy godmother? I haven’t seen you in some time. How did you get so big?”
“I grew. Are you aware of the commotion at the house?”
“Yes, yes.” Gustav frowned. “Madame Augusta had me carry up an armload of firewood for the parlor, and there are men looking in the bushes for Ella, which makes no sense, because Ella knows better than to hide in the bushes this time of year, with all the mosquitos. Madame wouldn’t tell me what the fuss was about, but with all their screeching, I decided it was a good time to go fishing.”