The Court of Miracles

by Kester Grant

  “I don’t care what I look like,” I say fiercely, and I mean every word. It’s not what I look like that has earned me my place, or the protection of my Guild. My size, my speed, my mind, and my daring make me who I am. I am the Black Cat of the Thieves Guild.

  Moon-Face reappears to shoo us out of the room, whispering garbled instructions as she leads us swiftly through back corridors.

  “Remember to curtsy before him, and her, if you should see her. Don’t rise until they tell you to. You can’t speak to them unless they speak to you first. Remember that. Don’t eat with your hands. Don’t take food from the table. Watch him and do what he does. Use your serviettes; no wiping your faces on your sleeves.”

  I don’t have time to go wherever it is that we are being taken, I think fretfully. I need to find the kitchen larders.

  Ettie casts me a glance of worry. I grin at her with far more reassurance than I feel. Meanwhile, the same thought repeats like a military tattoo in my head.

  I must pay the bread price.

  I must pay the bread price.

  I’ve been in this golden cage for over two hours, and I still don’t know where the kitchens are located. And even when I find them, will there truly be enough bread to pay all of the Lords? We are in a time of famine, after all; perhaps the nobility, too, are suffering from scarcity of grain.

  As we’re led down a maze of hallways, we pass a barred door flanked by two armed guards, with three heavy gilt locks hanging on it.

  Every nerve in my body is instantly alert. I’m sure I know what is so carefully locked away in a place such as this. And the temptation to get inside is acute.

  But before I can make a plan, we round a corner and reach a door clearly made for giants, attended by footmen in blue livery. My feet sink into lush carpet. The blank-faced footmen, making no eye contact or sign they’ve seen us, open the door and allow us to enter.

  The room is like the inside of a confectioner’s box, papered in soft, sugary pink. There are giant windows framed by velvet curtains with tassels the size of my head. Ten servants crowd toward the middle of the room, framing two sofas in perfect symmetry.

  A fine smiling lady in a dress of palest blush, diamonds at her throat and ears and an elaborate wig on her head, sits in the middle of one sofa. Behind her stands a gentleman with eyes like a hawk’s. He makes a low-voiced comment to the woman, while in the corner, at an ornate desk of eggshell blue, is a gentleman busy with something I cannot see.

  The other sofa has its back to us, over the top of which I can see a dark head, hair tied back in a blue velvet ribbon.

  A doorman takes his stick and bangs it on the floor, and in a loud voice says, “Les invitées.”

  I glance at him. Like all the other servants, he looks straight ahead, announcing our presence while ignoring our existence. At his words, the occupants of the room turn to us.

  My Cat instincts tell me this is not a place to let down my guard. For a long moment I evaluate my situation: the number of people, the potential for pieces of decor to be used as weapons to defend ourselves, how quickly I could drag Ettie to the door, what expensive items I could take with me.

  The smiling lady beckons to us. Moon-Face pushes us, whispering a reminder to curtsy. We stand right before the lady. She might be attractive under the layers of heavy paint, but it’s hard to tell. I curtsy neatly, but Ettie bows. I kick myself for not having taught Ettie the rules of curtsying. In the Miracle Court all the children bow. But the lady bursts into peals of honeyed laughter.

  “How enchanting.” She puts out a hand to Ettie, inviting her to approach. I trail behind her.

  “What are your names, little ones?”

  “I’m Ettie, and she’s Nina.”

  The lady’s eyes linger momentarily on my face and run down my frame. She dismisses me, and I’m suddenly painfully aware that I’m the only person in the room whose skin is not milky white. In the Miracle Court, race, origin, family mean nothing. We are all one blood. But here…here, with one flicker of her eyelashes, the lady has told me that I’m not worth looking at. Not worth paying attention to.

  As sudden as a viper, the lady’s hand darts out and takes Ettie’s chin in a firm grip. She tilts Ettie’s head and looks at her.

  “Charming, charming,” she says almost to herself. “I am the queen of France. This is Monsieur Sagouin, our most trusted friend and advisor.”

  The standing man stares at us without smiling. The queen does not introduce the gentleman at the desk. Which speaks volumes about who he is.

  “Madame.” We bob our heads.

  “In this time of suffering, it is our custom to invite young friends from the less fortunate neighborhoods of the city to take tea,” the queen says. “I want my son to know that not all children are as fortunate as he.” She raises a hand. We turn, and there’s the dauphin, watching us, wide-eyed.

  I try my best to smile in a friendly, Ettie-like way, hoping he doesn’t instantly have us arrested.

  He rises at the queen’s lifted hand. He’s pale and wears a jacket of midnight-blue velvet edged in silver frogging, with a scarlet pin at his chest.

  “Mesdemoiselles, this is Louis Joseph Charles Romain, the dauphin of France.”

  We curtsy yet again, and the dauphin comes toward us, which causes his mother to raise a delicate eyebrow. Doubtless, the dauphin usually doesn’t greet common guests. But now he takes Ettie’s hand, while keeping his eyes on me, and then takes my hand, and whispers, “Nina—so that is your name,” in a quiet tone of victory. He waggles his eyebrows at me as if to communicate something; I assume it is that he is not going to give us away, or to implicate me in the theft of his necklace, and I breathe a sigh of relief. He returns to his sofa, and a servant appears at his left and offers him a silver platter, on which is balanced a tiny cup. He accepts the cup and has a sip. Another servant appears at his right and offers him a folded serviette. He uses it to dab at his lips delicately before returning it to another servant to be taken away.

  I decide that he is ridiculous. How many servants does one person need to drink a cup of tea?

  A new servant appears and pours black tea. He adds a golden spoon of sugar and a drop of rich cream to each and, after stirring them, extends the tray toward us. Ettie and I both take a cup. The china is whisper-thin, the handle so fragile I’m afraid I’ll snap it. It would fetch a tremendous price in the Thieves Guild. I take the smallest sip. The tea is piping hot and creamy. It tastes like heaven.

  Yet another servant holds out a tray full of miniature cakes. I recognize them from the larders of the great houses I’ve robbed. You learn a lot of things when you’re hiding in the kitchens of nobility, waiting for the household to fall asleep. One is that cooks are artists of a rare caliber. Another is the names of delicacies served to the wealthy. There are fat réligieuses filled with crème anglaise and topped with salted caramel. Milles-feuilles with their wafer-thin pastry between layers of cream, and dominoed icing. Puits d’amours, delicate tarts filled with almond paste. Charlottes loaded with raspberries. Miniature tarte tatins and plump profiteroles oozing melted chocolate.

  I crane my neck to see if there is any bread anywhere, but there is only cake. Perhaps la Reine des Gâteaux was right, and there is nothing else here to eat. But looking on the piles of delicacies, I find my stomach turning.

  “What’s that one?” Ettie points to a tiny mountain of macarons sandwiched together with fondant. My breath catches; they are so small and simple, so beautifully colored: soft pink for rosewater, red for strawberry, dark brown for chocolate, sienna for café. The burned-gold ones are salted caramel, and the white, delicate vanilla.

  “That one please.” I point at a pale green one. The servant picks it up with silver tongs and places it on a saucer. I look at the macaron, the smallest smudge of green against so much pink-and-gold porcelain.

 
“That’s all?” Ettie asks, surprised. Her plate is piled high with cakes. She’s definitely making up for the weeks of hunger.

  I can’t explain; there’s a lump in my throat. How can I be surrounded by such riches when hundreds of my brothers and sisters are dying of starvation? I signal to another servant. He brings a serviette of pink embroidered cloth. I take it and thank him. The prince looks at me, bemused.

  “You don’t need to thank them,” he says in an undertone.

  He’s right. Gentleman George would smack me for an error that blatant. I turn my mind to a way of bringing the conversation around to the kitchens, and where the larders or bakery might be.

  “I’ve waited years to see you again. I thought I never would,” the prince mumbles to me, looking as if he is making bored, polite chatter. “You took the pendant of Charlemagne from me. I was in so much trouble!”

  “Did…did they beat you?” I ask, curious as to how a dauphin qualifies “trouble.”

  He turns to me, astonished.

  “Beat me? Of course not. Nobody would ever dare beat me.”

  I splutter into my teacup. “But you said you were in trouble.”

  “Yes, well, Mother was very disappointed in me, and she does know how to make life extremely uncomfortable when she chooses.” He pauses to reflect. “I had a whipping boy when I was younger….What was his name? They would beat him if ever I did anything bad.”

  A whipping boy. He’s worse than ridiculous; he’s horrible. I change the subject abruptly. “Do you want it back? The necklace?”

  “What? Oh, well, it might be a tad difficult to explain how it’s turned up now, after so long,” he says dismissively, as if we were discussing a lost glove.

  “It is one of the crown jewels of France,” I say, deeply reproachful, even while envisioning it around Tomasis’s neck, remembering the appreciation it earned me.

  “Hmmm, yes…,” the dauphin says distractedly.

  “Come here, child,” the queen says suddenly, beckoning Ettie.

  Ettie looks at me nervously.

  “There’s no need to fear,” says the queen. “I just want to see your lovely face.”

  Ettie inches forward and the queen peers intently at her. Her words are soft and kind, but there’s something hungry about the way her eyes bore into Ettie’s that makes me think of a spider considering a fly.

  “You’re so lovely. Does she not make the room lovelier simply by being in it, Romain?”

  Ettie blushes brilliantly.

  “Undoubtedly, Maman,” the dauphin agrees.

  “Perhaps we should keep her,” the queen says.

  My heart beats faster at the thought of Ettie remaining in the palace. Wouldn’t that be an answer to our troubles? Surely even the Tiger would not be able to take Ettie from the protection of the queen of France. Yet there’s a strange tightness in my throat at seeing Ettie here with them. She looks like one of them. And somehow, it hurts.

  “You would make a fine companion for the dauphin,” the queen continues. “He’s quite a lonely boy.”

  The prince flushes. I’m not sure what he’s embarrassed about, or how it’s possible to be lonely when there are fifteen people with you at all times.

  The queen settles on her perch and taps the seat beside her, inviting Ettie to join her. “Now, will you entertain us, my pet?”

  Ettie looks panicked.

  “Don’t be shy. Perhaps you know a song you could sing us?”

  I catch my breath, hoping Ettie doesn’t sing any of the songs we know, since they are all quite vulgar.

  Ettie thinks. “I can tell you a story.”

  “How delightful,” the queen says.

  Ettie has collected so many stories. I silently hope that she repeats none of the saltier ones she’s heard.

  “This is the tale my Father told, as it’s told to all the children of the Dead,” she begins. “There was once a country so full to the brim with mice that they overflowed into every city and town.”

  Rennart’s balls!

  Not that story; not now, not here!

  At first, Ettie sits ramrod straight, with her back to me so she can’t see my expression of warning, and she doesn’t turn as I cough loudly.

  “Are you all right?” the prince asks, alarmed.

  But Ettie doesn’t notice me at all. She is concentrating, trying to recount the tale exactly as Orso has told it to her.

  I unfold my napkin and tuck the macaron inside, carefully wrapping it, and put it on my lap.

  “If you don’t like the cakes, we can throw them away,” the prince whispers, looking at me curiously.

  “I’m sure they’re delicious.” I’ve just lost my appetite. Ettie is casually telling the tale of the failed revolution that almost overthrew the royal family, and short of a dramatic intervention, there’s nothing I can do to stop her.

  “You don’t have to keep that one. We can have fresh ones sent up for you whenever you like,” the prince insists.

  “Leave me alone,” I say under my breath.

  He stops eating and sits silently while my head spins with possible outcomes. Will we be arrested for repeating the tale? How will we get a message to the Court or Femi if they take us?

  “Do they not have a lot of food where you live?” The prince interrupts my plans. The pity lacing his voice is as subtle as a club, causing all my hackles to rise. We are in a time of famine, after all, and someone has failed to tell the dauphin.

  “Have you looked outside the gates of the palace recently?” I hiss quietly. “Did you not see anything during your ride through the city today?” I look him straight in the eye. “The bodies are lying in piles on some street corners. People are starving to death. When we do have food, we don’t throw it away, or have fresh food sent up.”

  He stares at me, dumbfounded.

  I don’t care. I don’t have time to care, or to sit here eating frilly confections while Ettie is repeating seditious tales and I’m meant to be figuring out where the palace grains are stored and how exactly I’m going to get them out of the Tuileries undetected.

  As Ettie continues her tale, the atmosphere in the room becomes charged. There’s something worrying about the expression on the queen’s face, though she continues to smile.

  Beside me the prince is sipping his tea, pensive, quiet, annoying.

  “The story. What’s it about?” he mutters at me.

  I’m so amazed he doesn’t realize that I momentarily forget how annoying he is.

  “It’s about the failed revolution. The cats are the nobility, and the mice are the revolutionaries.”

  At that, the prince’s eyes dart from Ettie to his mother, and then to the man in the corner, who has turned around now. He’s pale and soft-looking, with a monstrosity of a powdered wig and clothing of delicate baby blue.

  I try to get up, but the prince grabs my sleeve and yanks me down.

  “Don’t. You can’t do anything, not now,” he says, holding on to my arm tightly. “If Maman demands your head, then I’ll beg for your life. Don’t worry.”

  Well, that makes me feel so much better.

  Ettie’s voice grows more dramatic as she describes how the cats managed to summon their brethren, who rescued them from hanging and instead imprisoned the mice.

  The room seems unbearably warm and close. I shrug away offers of more tea from the servants. I can’t eat or drink; I can barely breathe. I can do nothing but listen as Ettie seals our fate.

  The queen grips Ettie’s hand as she finishes the tale. I fight the panic building in me.

  “Thank you, my dear one,” the queen says, planting a kiss on Ettie’s forehead. “Where did you hear that fascinating tale?”

  “It—it is known,” Ettie answers, thankfully not mentioning Orso or the Guilds.

  “Out!” s
ays the man at the desk, his voice sharp and high. “Everyone out.”

  The queen turns to look at him. She releases Ettie, who slips off the sofa and stumbles toward me, at last feeling the tension in the air around her.

  Monsieur Sagouin and the servants move to the door.

  Ettie and I rise to go after them. Perhaps if we sneak out now, we can find the kitchens and leave this place before—

  “Not you, my dear,” the queen says to Ettie, pinning her in place with her eyes.

  “What is wrong, Father?” the prince asks the minute the door closes.

  The queen opens her mouth to answer but is cut off by the man at the desk, who has risen and is coming to her side.

  “What is wrong? You dare ask what is wrong? Did you think it a good story? Did you pity the mice? For they were indeed so small and so brave, at the mercy of a kingdom of cats!” He snorts.

  The prince seems to shrink into himself at the bitterness of the words.

  “Are you such a fool that you can’t hear? Commoners come into our palace and tell of sedition whispered in the streets. It is known. These are the stories our people tell their children?”

  “Father, it was only a story. I doubt she even knows what it means….”

  “Show him,” says the queen. And to my horror, the man starts to unbutton his waistcoat.

  “I was a child of six when they took the palace. They came screaming for la Reine des Gâteaux—they made her eat until she was sick, and they took the heads of all her ladies-in-waiting. They forced her to march half naked in the streets, and they made me watch.” He loosens his cravat clumsily, as if he is not used to removing his garments himself.

  “My mother married into this family at fifteen—younger even than you, Romain. She had no choice in the matter. They would have hated her no matter what she did. She tried to win the people’s affection. My father tried. He longed for his people to love him.”

  He peels the cloth from his skin, and then we see them: deep, jagged scars that crisscross his chest, from neck to navel.