Princess of the Silver Woods (Twelve Dancing Princesses) Page 3

  “I don’t believe any of this,” Petunia spluttered. “We won the war! Why would we give Analousia any of our land? And if you were really a friend of my mother’s, then Father would have listened to you when you went to him for help!”

  Petunia’s face was burning hot, and there was a tight feeling in her chest. Her father would never take away someone’s land and just give it to someone else! Preposterous!

  “My dear,” Lady Emily said quietly. “By the time Oliver and I went to court, you and your sisters were caught up in whatever mischief it was that saw your dancing slippers worn through every night.”

  Petunia thought her head would burst, it felt so hot, but the dowager countess was moving on.

  “We spent weeks trying to get an audience with Gregor, but he could not—or simply would not—see us. Then they arrested dear Anne Lewiston, your governess, on charges of witchcraft, and a friend advised me to flee before I, too, was charged. I had once been a confidant of your mother’s, after all, and I was a foreigner. I brought my sons back to the forest to hide. We went to Analousia and tried petitioning King Philippe for help in regaining that part of the estate, but since my sons were Westfalian and I Bretoner, he would not listen to us either.”

  That was something that Petunia could believe. King Philippe’s bitterness over losing the war ran deep, and she knew that her father’s every message to Analousia had to be carefully worded so as to avoid the merest hint of gloating.

  “The only good news,” Lady Emily continued, “was that no one seemed to want this old hall. We’d taken refuge here during the war, when the fighting came too close to our estate, and here we have stayed. Eventually some of the men turned to crime to feed us. Stealing from farms, poaching deer and pheasant, surviving as best we could. We tried to send most of the people away. A few left, but many stayed to support Oliver in the only way they could.” She smiled sadly. “It would have been easier if they had all gone, but we hadn’t the heart to refuse them. Karl, the large man you saw earlier, discovered that the easiest way to live was to rob the coaches that come along the highway, and then send people out with small amounts of money or jewels to various markets to purchase what we need. And you see how the old hall has been kept dilapidated? All to hide from the Analousians, though it is rare for anyone to wander into this part of the forest.”

  Petunia was completely aghast. She had never heard such … she had had no idea that there were people in her own country who lived this way! Well, in what had been her own country. She felt vaguely uneasy about having crossed into Analousia without knowing it. Shouldn’t there have been some sort of fence or gate? Something guarded by soldiers?

  “But I still don’t understand why part of Westfalin is in Analousia now,” Petunia said after a moment, though really that was the least of her questions.

  “Because Gregor took a large portion of the Analousian plains to the north of here,” the dowager countess explained, ever patient. “The vineyards there are unparalleled; even after the battles that were fought in them. As a small concession to Philippe, Gregor gave him this little piece of forest, which straightens the border between our two lands and makes the road easier to access for the Analousians.”

  Petunia’s head was spinning. “Oh” was all she could say. She thought about asking why Oliver and his mother didn’t go back to court and demand his rights as an earl now that he was grown and the mystery of the worn-out dancing slippers had been solved (not that the reason behind it had been made public). But she knew how easy it was to get used to things, and how much simpler it was to just continue doing them the way they had always been done. After all, she had danced nearly every night of her life from the time she could walk until she was almost seven years old. And she had liked it, even though she and her sisters were under a curse, because it was all she had ever known.

  And when she was eleven and her father sent her halfway around the world to Russaka as some sort of genteel hostage, she hadn’t said a word, either. She had simply gone and smiled and pretended to understand what all the Russakan ladies were saying when they chucked her chin and patted her head as though she were a small dog. It was just too easy to do what you were accustomed to doing.

  Not to mention the guilt she felt, knowing that it was at least partially her fault that Lady Emily hadn’t been able to get an audience with King Gregor in the first place. If she and her sisters had found some way to fight back earlier, to defeat the King Under Stone before the rumors of witchcraft and murder, then the kingdom wouldn’t have been in such a shambles after the war.

  “Every year it grows harder and harder to stop,” the dowager countess said softly, once again interpreting Petunia’s thoughts. “We talk about it all the time. Or at least, I talk, and Oliver pretends to listen. I try to convince him to go to King Gregor and beg for clemency. But he could be hanged a hundred times over, earl or no earl, for what he has done.”

  “If you let me go, I promise to talk to my father for you,” Petunia said, attempting to soothe the older woman. “I’m sure once he hears your reasons it …”

  But Lady Emily was shaking her head. “Please don’t, Your Highness. It will only make matters worse if he hears it from you, after Oliver kidnapped you! No, I’ve told my son that this is the catalyst; he must come clean now. It would help if you would put in a good word for us when the time is right, but this is something that Oliver should do himself. After he delivers you safely home. Or wherever it was you were going,” she added.

  “Best go there first, yes,” Petunia agreed. “The grand duchess must be frantic by now.”

  “The grand duchess?” The dowager countess’s eyes widened. “The Grand Duchess Volenskaya? The Duke of Hrothenborg’s widow?”

  “Yes, do you know her too?” Petunia had been wondering if she should ask the dowager countess more about her mother. Petunia barely remembered her mother and knew her mostly through the beautiful gardens that her father had made for his bride.

  “By reputation only,” the dowager countess said. “But why, may I ask, are you traveling to her estate? Alone?”

  “I met the grand duchess in Russaka a few years ago,” Petunia said. “Now that she is in residence in her Westfalian estate, she asked for me to visit.”

  “I see,” the dowager countess said, her voice chill.

  Petunia didn’t know what to do. The look on the older woman’s face was frightening her. Still, if the dowager countess had been friend of her mother’s, and she was so kind to Petunia now, surely it would not hurt to ask.

  “My lady? Why don’t you like the grand duchess?”

  “I don’t know her one way or the other, so cannot like or dislike her,” said Lady Emily stiffly. Then she softened a little. “It … simply … makes me nervous to see someone as young as you traveling alone.”

  Petunia was almost certain that that wasn’t what the countess had been thinking.

  Guide

  Oliver was sitting on the cracked floor of the little chapel when his mother found him.

  He often took refuge there. It was barely larger than an outhouse, having been built some seven centuries before to appease the handful of his ancestors’ court who had converted to what must have seemed to be an odd and fleeting new religion, with its single god and its stiffly worded prayers. When the Church had taken a firmer hold on Westfalin, a larger chapel had been built behind the old hall, and the little cubby with its rough altar had been abandoned.

  Oliver still liked it, though. It was made of thick stones left over from the outer wall and was very quiet.

  “Oliver? Are you in there?”

  Oliver hadn’t bothered with a candle, so his mother couldn’t see him sitting cross-legged within, his back to the altar. He sighed heavily in answer, and she came in, blocking the feeble morning light so that Oliver couldn’t see her either.

  “Did you spend the entire night here?”

  He couldn’t tell from her voice if she was still angry with him, but he assumed that
she was. He was still angry with himself.

  “No, I slept in Simon’s room,” he said. “But I woke up before dawn and I didn’t want to bother him.”

  Simon’s ankle was broken. By the time Karl had gotten Simon into bed and Karl’s wife, Ilsa, had come to look at the injury, the boy’s ankle was three times its normal size and livid with bruises. Ilsa had given him tincture of poppies to help with the pain before setting it, and he was sleeping like the dead still.

  His little brother’s injury was on top of botching the robbery, causing the royal coach to crash, and kidnapping the youngest princess. Not Oliver’s finest hour.

  If he were more religious, and if the little chapel was still a dedicated place for service, Oliver would have spent the entire night praying. But Oliver was sure that for his many crimes, God had long ago stopped listening to his prayers.

  “Simon will be fine,” Lady Emily said softly.

  “He should never have been with us,” Oliver replied. “I know you hated it. And now you have the perfect excuse to keep him here.”

  “Which he will hate,” his mother said.

  “I don’t care if he hates it,” Oliver said roughly. “When he’s healed, we’ll have to find some other excuse to keep him from coming. He was terrible at it, anyway. Maybe I should just tell him the truth. He can’t shoot worth a damn, and he won’t keep his mouth shut.” Oliver felt lower than ever, saying such things about his own brother, but they needed to be said. It was a savage feeling, like pressing a wound to feel the pain.

  “Oliver, stop it,” his mother chided. “When Simon is recovered, I am going to have Herr Ohmsford train him to be the next steward. Poor Herr Ohmsford is getting on in years, and I don’t think he’s keeping careful enough accounts of what you bring in and how it’s distributed. I want to make sure everyone has enough, but just enough. There is no sense in getting yourself killed over gold we don’t need.”

  “That would help,” Oliver admitted.

  He had been trying to do the accounts himself of late, but he never seemed to have enough time. And Simon was excellent with sums and very meticulous for someone his age. He’d long ago finished his schooling, having far outstripped the tutelage of Fraulein Ohmsford, the old steward’s daughter, who was the nearest thing they had to a schoolteacher.

  “At least one of us will be spared a life of villainy,” Oliver said, and was surprised by the bitterness in his own voice.

  “I’m sorry,” his mother said. “I should have fought harder for you, but I didn’t know how, and I … I was afraid. I was afraid that they would take you and Simon away from me, or that we would be driven out of even this poor shelter. I didn’t know what to do then, and every day I see our chance to make things right slipping away.”

  “Don’t blame yourself,” Oliver said. He got to his feet, lurching against the altar as he tried to maneuver in the tiny space. “You did the best you could.”

  “Did I?” She sounded more thoughtful than selfrecriminating. “Perhaps. It will be for future generations to judge.”

  Oliver felt rather at sea. He wasn’t entirely certain that Lady Emily was even talking to him, at this point. “It will be all right.…”

  “Did you hear that poor child crying in the night?”

  Oliver felt a fresh stab of guilt. “The princess? She was crying?” She hadn’t seemed that frightened…

  “Some terrible nightmare, I think,” his mother said. “She was calling out strange names, arguing with them, I don’t know what all. I tried to go to her, but she had barred the door from within.”

  Oliver shook his head, not sure what to make of this. “Do you think she and her sisters really are witches?”

  “No,” his mother said earnestly, not laughing off the idea the way he’d half hoped. “No, I don’t think so. But something unnatural happened after the war. And Maude … poor Maude! She was prone to strange fancies. That’s why I’m so surprised at where our little Petunia is headed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She has no desire to bring you to justice, and she doesn’t want to go home to Bruch,” Lady Emily said. “She wants to continue on, to the estate of the Grand Duchess Volenskaya, the Duke of Hrothenborg’s widow.”

  Oliver felt his mouth go dry, and a surge of emotions rose in his breast. He had escaped hanging for another day. The estate was closer than Bruch, which made his job of escorting the princess much easier, but …

  “That’s our estate,” Oliver said, his voice coming out strangled. “Our home.”

  “It should be, yes,” Lady Emily conceded. “In happier times, it was. But that’s not the strange part: do you realize who the grand duchess is?”

  “A reclusive old lady whose husband stole my estate?”

  Oliver was surprised at how angry he felt. Maybe it was the way the princess had lied about being the daughter of an earl, as though earls had nothing to steal. Maybe it was the way she had looked at him when he’d seen her just before going to bed last night, staring at him so intently, like he was some rare animal in a menagerie. He’d known then that his mother had told her their history, and the princess would forever think of him as the earl without even enough land to keep a herd of sheep.

  “Oliver,” his mother said, a warning in her voice to shake him out of his self-pity. “The grand duchess is one of the Nine Daughters of Russaka! You know the story: about how they were placed in a tower by their father, because they were so beautiful and he wanted to discourage unworthy suitors?”

  Oliver looked at his mother, incredulous. “That old fairy tale? About the nine sisters having nine sons by a sorcerer who stole their babies away that same night?” He snorted. “I saw the puppet show once in a marketplace.”

  “Scoff if you will,” his mother said, “but Queen Maude believed there was truth in that story. She spoke of it often.

  “And something strange did happen in Russaka years ago,” she went on. “I remember hearing reports of it—real reports, from the Russakan court, not just fairy stories!—when I was a girl. The Russakan emperor tore down the tower and all nine sisters married within the year. The grand duchess’s husband wasn’t even a duke at the time, but an earl like your father. The emperor gave him the title of grand duke as a wedding gift, and it was for valor during the Analousian war that he was elevated here—”

  “And given my estate?”

  “Yes,” his mother said with a sigh. “The grand duke died shortly after that. But do you not find it odd that Princess Petunia, after having had the childhood she has had, is being sent to this woman’s house? Alone? The grand duchess’s life is shadowed by rumors of strange and violent magic. Surely Gregor would be more cautious!”

  “Would he?” Oliver shook his head. “Didn’t he farm the princesses out to any court who would take them? He might as well have offered to marry them to anyone who volunteered, just like the Russakan emperor!” Oliver had actually felt rather bad for the princesses when the news had come of the royal heir exchange a few years ago. To be traded around like an unlucky card at Devil’s Corner must have been truly humiliating. “He was probably just angry that they didn’t all come home betrothed, and now he’s trying again.”

  “Now, Oliver, there is no need to be disrespectful! Gregor is your king, after all.”

  “We’re on Analousian soil right now,” he reminded his mother. “And I never swore fealty to him. He was too busy to bother with me, remember?”

  “Oliver,” said Lady Emily firmly. “I am sorry that this is your life. But we must make the best of it that we can. Petunia wants to go to the grand duchess’s estate—” She held up one hand to stop him before he could correct her. “It is her estate, Oliver, no matter how it galls us. And you must take her there. But I want you to be careful. Not just to avoid capture, but I would also like you to be … sensitive to anything that seems untoward.”

  Oliver gave his mother a baffled look.

  “If it seems like the princess is not safe there, I want you to
bring her back,” Lady Emily clarified.

  “You want me to kidnap her all over again?”

  Lady Emily gave a sigh of great suffering. “I want you to ask her to come with you,” she explained. “Insist, in fact.”

  “What if insisting doesn’t work?” Oliver was not about to throw Princess Petunia over one shoulder and run off with her into the forest. Not that it would be all that hard, she wasn’t very big, but it was the principle of the thing.

  “Just do your best, please,” his mother said.

  “All right,” Oliver agreed, though he still felt like the conversation was slightly beyond his grasp.

  He wasn’t sure how he felt about his mother’s believing in fairy tales, and that one of the Nine Daughters of Russaka was currently living on his estate. According to the stories, each of the Nine Daughters of Russaka had been visited in the night by the King Under Stone, had borne him a son, and then wept bitter tears when he took the children away to his invisible kingdom. What on earth would lead his mother to believe that one of the Nine Daughters would take up residence in the middle of the Westfalian Woods?

  And how did his mother expect him to know if the princess was in trouble? He wasn’t going to go into the manor house with her. He was going to leave her at the gates … just within sight of the gates, actually, and then run for it. It was his very fervent hope that he would never have to see Princess Petunia again, despite her thick, dark curls and blue, blue eyes. It could only lead to discovery or death for him, and either would be a disaster for his people.

  But his mother seemed satisfied that he was going to look after the princess and so she left the little chapel after giving him a warm smile. Oliver wondered why she even cared. Being friends with the late Queen Maude hadn’t helped their family one whit. Still, he gathered himself mentally and went out into the weak winter sunshine to find the princess and take her to the estate that should have been his home.