Ash & Bramble (11 page)
Authors: Sarah Prineas
“I expect she does,” Shoe says morosely.
The Huntsman fries two more sausages and adds them to the trackers' bowl; they look up, their dog faces grinning, and then plunge their muzzles back into their breakfast. “They'd wag if they could,” the Huntsman says with a sad sigh. “But she didn't give 'em tails.”
Feeling better now that he's got breakfast and coffee in him, Shoe studies the thimble again. He's seen it do magic, when Pin lit the fire in the cave, and when she made the smoke arise from the cobblestones outside the Godmother's fortress. He frowns. It's Pin's thimble. “It's leading me to Pin,” he whispers, feeling stupid for not realizing it before.
If the thimble is leading him to Pin, the same place the Huntsman's been ordered to take him, then the Godmother must have plans for both of them in this city, whatever it is.
Shoe realizes that his hands are shaking. He clenches his fist around the thimble.
The Huntsman is sitting on his log, drinking coffee from a tin cup. “Afraid, are you?”
Of course he's afraid, but he's not going to admit it to his captor. Shoe shrugs. He doesn't want to think about what's going to happen to him. His story is going to be very short, and it will have an ugly ending.
“Hmm.” The Huntsman maneuvers the cup under his
drooping mustache and takes a sip of coffee. “What if you could do something else. Like, say, join up with other people who've escaped?”
Shoe looks up. “You know people like that?”
“I may,” the Huntsman answers. “They might be hiding away in a place where the Godmother can't find them. You interested?”
Before he can stop himself, Shoe nods.
“I can take you to them,” the Huntsman offers. “We've got a place in the forest.”
Shoe's noticed how the Huntsman has switched from the vague
maybe I might know some people
to the more certain
we've got a place
.
He frowns. The Huntsman is the Godmother's man, isn't he? His offer of escape is much more likely to be a trap. But . . . he seems kind. Gentle, even. And he'd put the salve on the trackers' backs, where they'd been whipped.
Maybe the Huntsman is a rebel, and he's offering a way out. In Shoe's fist, the silver thimble warms. He can feel it pulling him toward Pin. Toward his own death. The thought of that makes him tremble down to his bones.
This fear isn't doing him any good. In the fortress he was afraid all the time, especially after the post. He'd kept his head down and worked hard, and he hadn't done anything to change the horror of it all until Pin had come and led him out.
He can't be afraid anymore. He takes a deep breath to
steady himself, to face what he's got to do. Stiffly he sheds the blanket and, leaning against the tree, levers himself to his feet. “No,” he tells the Huntsman. “I need to go on.”
The Huntsman shakes his head. “She'll kill you.”
“Pin is there,” Shoe says stubbornly. “The girl who was captured by the Godmother. I can't get out unless she does, too.”
“Your Penâ” the Huntsman starts.
“Pin,” Shoe corrects.
“Right-o.” The Huntsman nods. “This girl of yours. Pin. It's clear enough that she's been chosen for a special fate.” He gives a grim shake of his head.
“It's bad, this special fate?” Shoe asks.
“The worst,” the Huntsman says.
“Then we'll have to hurry.” Shoe grips the thimble, feeling its pull. “Do you think we can get there today?”
“Maybe, if the forest wills it.” With a huff, the Huntsman gets to his feet. “Well, come on, Jip, Jes,” he says to the two trackers. “Our desperate criminal here is bent on meeting his doom before dinnertime.”
While the Huntsman packs up his bags and saddles his horse, Shoe shoulders the knapsack and sets off. He can only hobble through the trees at first, with his muscles so stiff and sore, so it isn't long before the Huntsman catches him.
“Off to find your Pen,” he comments, after riding in silence for a while.
“Pin,” Shoe corrects again. “Yes. I, um . . .” It feels strange
to be saying it out loud. “I think I might love her.”
“Ah.” After a silence full of cogitation, the Huntsman adds, “You're not a Prince in Disguise, are you?”
“Nothing like that,” Shoe says.
“Didn't think so.” He gives Shoe a pitying look. “Here, I'll carry this for you.” He reaches down from the saddle and takes the pack from Shoe's shoulder. “Listen, lad, you don't want to go to the city. Come with me. The forest will protect us.”
“I can't,” Shoe says, and, free of the weight of the pack, shifts from a walk to a slow shuffle.
The Huntsman nods sadly. “All right, then. I see how it is. I'll get you secretly into the city. The wheels'll be turning, though, so you won't have much time to find your girl.”
Pin, Shoe thinks as he trudges along, knows who she is. Somewhere inside her head, she's got her selfâher own selfâhidden away, a girl who sweeps her skirts aside when she sits, a girl with a proud tilt to her chin, a girl who laughs at irony even when she's dirty and bloodstained and exhausted after running through the forest for a day and a night. Shoe hasn't any idea who he is, except that he's a shoemaker, not a secret prince. He could be somebody's son, or brother, though he doesn't know about lover, because if that were the case he's sure he would've been better at kissing Pin.
He'd give anything, he thinks, to be able to kiss her again.
9
I
SEARCH THE ENTIRE HOUSE FOR MY THIMBLE.
I
START IN
the library, where I spent all night in the cindersâthinking maybe it fell out of my pocket while I was sleepingâbut the hearth is cleanly swept. Then the blue breakfast room, drawing rooms, dining rooms, a vast ballroom, all of it only half familiar, as if I've been told about this huge mansion of a house but never actually walked the hallways or peered into any of the rooms. It's a strange, disconnected feelingâthat itch, again, that tells me I'm supposed to be somewhere else.
Having explored the entire upper house, I head down a set of narrow stairs to the servants' areasâthe kitchens and wine cellars and storage roomsâwhere the servants exchange sidelong glances as I ask the maid Anna if she found my thimble. She says no, and I go back upstairs. The music room was
empty when I searched before, but as I step softly past the door, I hear a faint note played on a piano. A moment later, the note is echoed by a voice. Catching a tune, the voice soars into a ripple of notes, a quick breath, and then a leaping, joyful song full of trills and high notes.
Quietly, I turn the knob and ease the door open. Through the crack in the door I see my stepsister Dulcet, her back to me, standing by the piano singing. Her voice is so rich it fills the entire room like golden sunshine and spills out into the hallway. What would it be like, I wonder, to open my mouth and have such glorious music come out? Somehow I am sure that my own singing voice is more like frogs croaking.
Dulcet is my stepsister, and we seem to be settled into certain rolesâher proudly disdainful, me the cinder-smudged annoying one who is disdainedâbut what do I really know about her? She, and her sister and my stepmother, too, are like the houseâonly half familiar to me. It's as if I know perfectly well what a stepsister is, but I don't know Dulcet at all.
The floor under my feet squeaks and the music stops. Dulcet holds herself absolutely still; slowly she turns toward the door. Seeing that it's me, she lets out the faintest relieved breath, and then she is her usual carefully controlled self.
“That was beautiful,” I tell her. “I didn't know you could sing.”
Dulcet takes a breath. “Oh, that,” she says, with a false-careless wave of her hand. “I hardly call that singing.”
“It was glorious,” I say. “You should sing so others can hear you.”
Dulcet's face turns cold. “In public, you mean?” Her every move elegant, she closes the lid of the piano and crosses the room toward me. “Certainly not. A lady never performs in public. It would not be attractive or at all appropriate. It's a terrible suggestion.” She brushes past me, takes two steps down the hallway, and then pauses. Without turning to face me she adds, “You don't need to mention this to my mother, Pen.”
“I won't,” I promise, and I mean it. It's Dulcet's secret, and now it's mine, too.
My thimble search ends in a picture gallery on the third floor of the house, which is a far grander mansion than I realized. The gallery is a long hallway with floor-to-ceiling windows on one wall, windows that look out over a parklike square edged by other grand houses. On the other wall is a row of oil paintings, each one as tall as I am, almost life-size portraits of people who, I guess, are ancestors who once lived in this house. Most of them I don't recognize, stiffly posed women in old-fashioned dresses, solemn-faced children, bearded patriarchs.
Then I come to the end of the gallery. One last painting is leaning against the wall, as if placed there as an afterthought. In the picture, a woman is standing in the midst of what looks like an untamed forest that is a riot of fir trees and ferns, vines and moss. She looks directly at me. Her dark
hair is braided and pinned into a severe style. Her face is not softly pretty, but sharp-featured and lined with care, though I can see a wicked smile lurking at the corner of her mouth. She has blue eyes set under dark brows, and the wildness of the forest is reflected in them, almost hidden, but still there. A coil of brambles and roses twines around her feet and up the sides of the picture, almost like a frame. Her hand rests on the skirt of her simple dress, and on one finger she is wearing a silver thimble.
The thimble.
My
thimble.
This must be my mother.
I step closer to see. The setting sun comes in through the gallery windows, shining over my shoulder and illuminating the thimble, which is painted in exquisite detail. Silver, dimpled, thorny brambles and roses, just as I remember it.
And I
do
remember it. I can almost feel the weight of the thimble in my hand, heavier and more solid than it should be, really, as if it carries with it portents and power. Absent, it is more real to me than anything in this house. I could never have lost it.
Never
.
I examine the rest of the painting from top to bottom, but I cannot find any more clues. Except that my mother and her wild forest seem strange and out of place here in this grand house.
From outside, in the city, comes the sound of an enormous clock striking the hour. The muffled booms make the
air tremble; dust motes rise up and swirl around, glinting gold in the light.
Somehow I'm sure that my mother, watching with that knowing smile, could answer all of my questions. “I expect you know where I lost my thimble,” I mutter. She smiles on. “Stop looking at me like that,” I tell her.
A bustle and thump from the end of the gallery interrupts me. A tall footman dressed in dark-blue livery hurries toward me. “Lady Penelope,” he gasps.
“Yes?” I say, and raise my eyebrows.
The footman pauses, looks from me to the painting and back again with his mouth open, then catches his breath. “Lady Penelope,” he repeats. “Your stepmother wants you in the blue drawing room right away. She's right tetchy, m'lady, that you weren't in your room when she wanted you.”
“All right,” I say. I'm not going to hurry for Stepmama, so I turn and take one last look at my mother's picture before following the footman along the gallery and down the stairs to the blue drawing room.
As I enter the room, my stepmother turns from the mantel, her face flushed and peevish. “Penelope, where
have
you been?” she chides.
“Looking for something,” I say absently. Sitting in a brocade chair next to the hearth is a woman who, I guess, is Stepmama's friend.
Lady Faye gives me a careful, assessing look, from the tips of my scuffed shoes to my tousled hair.
I study her just as carefully. Stepmama is all bluster and impatience. Somehow I am sure that Lady Faye is something else altogether. She is wearing an ice-blue velvet morning dress that is shaped perfectly to her form; priceless lace as fine as cobwebs edges the low-cut bodice and cuffs and foams in three flounces at the edge of her skirt. Though she is white-blonde and has silver-blue eyes, something about the sharpness of her features reminds me of the portrait of my mother.
“Hello,” I say, testing.
At the hearth, my stepmama blows out an exasperated breath. “Do you see, Lady Faye, what I must put up with?” she huffs. “A graceless hoyden! No address, no elegance.” She glares at me and hisses, “Curtsy to Lady Faye, Penelope, and mind your manners.”
I ignore her.
Lady Faye raises one perfect eyebrow.
She
has grace to spare, I can see. “Good afternoon, Lady Penelope,” she says in a low, musical voice with just the faintest edge to it. “I am so pleased to make your acquaintance.”
If I were polite and elegant, I would say the same thing back to her, but since I am a hoyden, I nod and say, “I'm not looking for a husband.”
Lady Faye cocks her head. “No?” She beckons to me, and I step closer, my feet sinking into the deep carpet. “Every girl wants a husband, Penelope,” she says softly, only to me. “A strong, brave man to love and cherish her and protect
her from the outside world, to be a father to her children, to instruct her and counsel her and allow her to be the sweet and lovely adornment of his home.”
I am about as far from
sweet
and
lovely
as any girl could be. And the very thought of a marriage like that makes me shudder.
“I want the best for my girls,” Lady Faye goes on. “I want them to be happy, forever. If I choose to sponsor you, Penelope, you too will enjoy blissful happiness.” She looks me up and down, and when she speaks it's louder, so my stepmother can hear. “But you will never attract a man dressed as you are, with such crude manners. You must seek to transform yourself.”
“
Exactly
,” Stepmama interrupts. “She will not behave in a ladylike manner, and she refuses to change that shabby dress for something more appropriate to a young miss.”
“Mm, it is a very ugly dress,” Lady Faye notes. “Though it suits her well enough.” Then she turns to talk further with Stepmama, and I stand there stupidly, like a piece of furniture, realizing that Lady Faye has just given me a carefully phrased insult.
“Do you think there is anything to be done with her?” Stepmama asks.
“Oh, she will be drawn in, despite her intransigence,” Lady Faye replies. “It is simply a matter of getting the wheels turning. Can I count on you to play the role we discussed earlier?”
My stepmother draws herself up as if she's about to sail into a sea battle. “Yes, indeed, Lady Faye. I know just what to do.” She turns to me and raps out an order. “Go to your room at once, Penelope, and await me there.”
With a shrug, I go.
I
N MY ROOM
I sit at my desk and look over the pages of writing. Maybe I got the calluses on my fingertips from holding a pen. I am beginning to think that my stepmother was lying when she said I haven't been ill, because what else could explain the strange holes where my memories should be? Perhaps I had a knock on the head?
A bustle at the door, and Stepmama barges into the room.
Ah. Battle is engaged.
“You have been living in this house at my sufferance, Penelope,” she begins. “You are an ungrateful girl, and far more trouble than you are worth, and you owe me much; more than you could ever repay. Your rudeness to Lady Faye forced me to this, you know.”
I stand. “What
are
you talking about, Stepmama?”
She stabs a finger at me. “Your father was a duke, but he had nothingâhe was hardly a proper man at all, to be sureâand he left you nothing. Despite your proud ways, and your Lady this and Lady that, you are a pauper. You cannot depend on me to support you. From now on, you must earn your keep.”
I reach into my skirt pocket for my thimble and feel a
little faint when I remember that it's still missing. “Are you turning me out into the street?”
“Believe me, I have considered it. Your mother knew the streets well enough, or so I've heard.”
I seize on her words. “My mother? Did you know her before she died?”
For just a moment, Stepmama falters, as if searching her memory for something that isn't there.
“Her picture is here,” I persist. “Upstairs, in the long portrait gallery. Have you seen it?”
Stepmama stares blankly at me for a long moment, and then I see itâthe memory slots into place behind her eyes. “Her portrait. Yes, of course,” she says, and then recovers her bluster. “But that is not to the point, Penelope. Lady Faye has convinced me to let you stay, if only to repay what you owe me. You've never done a stitch of work in your life, but you will learnâoh yes, you'll learn.” She looks around the room. “I have long needed a second dressing room at this end of the east wing of the house. You may leave your things here. Go down to the kitchen, and one of the servants will tell you about your new duties.”
I think about arguing, insisting that the house is mine, not hers, but I don't have money or influence or lawyers. My stepmama is an implacable force, and for now I must bow to necessity.
