Hunter's Moon (13 page)

At that moment, someone else came into the hall – an older and slightly larger version of Emilia, with the same shade of red hair.

‘Mama!' cried Emilia, brandishing the flask. ‘It's come, and so fast, too!'

‘Wonderful,' said the woman who must be Emilia's mother. Turning to the maid, who was hovering at the end of the hall, she said, ‘Horatia, please go and ask Cook to get some tea and cake ready for this young lady to thank her for such promptness.'

‘No, I mean, no, thank you very much,' I gabbled. ‘It is very kind of you but I really need to get back to the store. I have another errand to run, and –'

‘Well, then, let me at least give you this,' Mistress Jemans said, rummaging in her pocket and bringing out a silver coin, which she handed to me with a smile.

‘There's no need –' I began, but then Emilia interrupted me, with a puzzled frown.

‘Wait a moment. Have we met before somewhere?'

‘No … No … I hardly think that would be likely,' I managed to say. ‘I've only arrived from Mormest this week.'

‘Mormest! I don't know anyone in Mormest. Are you sure you're from Mormest?'

‘Emilia!' broke in her mother, before I could gather my scattered wits. ‘What is the matter with you, asking such questions? Apologise at once.'

Emilia went scarlet. ‘Sorry. So sorry. That was rude of me. Sorry.'

All her bounciness had gone so suddenly that you could see it had been a desperate, almost manic attempt to keep up her spirits.

‘It's no problem,' I said, through the lump in my throat. ‘Don't mention it.'

‘I'm not usually like this –' she began, then with a little cry, she turned on her heel and flung herself out of the hall as impetuously as she'd rushed in.

‘Is she … Is Miss Jemans … I didn't mean to upset her …' I stammered to Emilia's mother, my heart as heavy as lead.

‘It wasn't your fault,' said Mistress Jemans, gently. ‘It's just that, you see, you're from Ladies' Fair – and from Mormest – that was the last place anyone really spoke to that poor girl – to Lady Bianca Dalmatin – before she disappeared. My daughter had met her at the Presentation Ball, just the day before she disappeared. When she heard of Lady Bianca's death … It was a great shock to her.'

It took every bit of energy I had not to go after Emilia and tell her that it was all right, that I was alive and well, even though her instincts that something wasn't right were correct. But I knew I could not. It was too dangerous. For me and for her. If I were to bring Belladonna down, no-one could know that I was still alive. No-one.

‘Oh. I am sorry,' I said, because she seemed to expect a response. ‘I … heard about it, of course …'

‘My daughter feels things intensely, more than most people,' sighed Mistress Jemans. ‘She didn't know poor Sir Anton Dalmatin and she hadn't known his daughter
for very long, but you know how friendship is. Emilia liked her very much. She has a soft heart.' Her tone changed. ‘I must say, I am very impressed that even in the midst of such sad and turbulent times, Ladies' Fair continues to give such excellent service. It speaks highly of Sir Anton's widow that she has been able to keep the ship on its course without a hitch. Please convey my gratitude to your employers.'

‘I will. Of course,' I muttered and, not trusting myself to say any more, I took my leave.

Out in the street, I walked blindly for a short while, feeling quite shaken from my encounter with Emilia. Like her mother had said, we hardly knew each other, but it seems that she had felt the same as I had at the ball: that we would be friends. An instant sympathy had sprung up between us, as instant as the attraction that had sprung up between the Prince and I – only different in type, of course. It touched me that she thought of me still, even though she had been told that I had died.

As I walked I felt calmer, more capable of assessing what had just happened. Fate had led me into a strange situation, but in so doing had done something very useful for me: showed that my disguise was good enough to pass muster. It felt like a step in the right direction, a sign that fate was in my favour.

But on the way back to the store, I called into the great cathedral. Inside, I knew, was the humble shrine of St Fleur of the Snow. With the silver coin Emilia's mother had given me, I bought three candles and lit them: for Lisbet, as I had promised; for my father, in his memory; and for Emilia, so she might stay safe.

The rest of the day passed without incident. That evening, after I finished work, I made my way by tram to the cemetery which was my father's last resting place, in the Dalmatin family vault. At least he has been laid to rest beside my mother, I thought, as I stood at a discreet distance from the vault, tears trickling down my face as I said a prayer for him. Strangely, I felt less close to him at the cemetery than I had that morning in the tram, when I heard his loving voice in my head. His body might be there, in that forbidding monument of marble and gilt, but his spirit was with me, by my side.

By seven o'clock I was back in the safe house, cooking a simple meal of stew made from the dried meat and herbs, with rice. I spent the rest of the evening drawing some new panels of the next instalment of ‘The Queen and the Magic Mirror'. Once again, my pencil flew over the page as I drew a panel showing a portrait of a black-haired girl dressed all in white, with the caption: ‘But the Queen had
a rival in her beauty. Her name was Snow White because her innocence was white as the winter snow.' In the next panel I showed the Queen in a beautiful dress, and Snow White before her, handing her a cloak. ‘Snow White was a lady-in-waiting to the Queen but no-one noticed her because beside the dazzling Queen she only cast a pale light. The Queen reigned supreme, her mirror told her so.' In the last panel I drew the mirror reflecting a ball scene with a flurry of skirts, dancers and twirls and these words: ‘And then came the day that everything changed …'

There were only three panels, but I worked on them for hours, making them perfect. I saw as I worked that the portrait I had drawn of Snow White bore more than a passing resemblance to the portrait of me I'd seen in the display window of Ladies' Fair. There was a curious comfort in it, for it took away the sting of rage and pain I'd felt then – taking something terrible she'd made and using her own work against her. It too would be a weapon against Belladonna, just as the name ‘Snow White' would awaken echoes of my own name, ‘Bianca', which means, ‘the white one'. Signing the panels with a flourished ‘Syrena', I made a fair copy and when at last I went to bed, well after midnight, I felt almost triumphant.

It may have been a feeling of beginner's luck, but from the start I was convinced the
Ladies' Journal
would take my work. When I called into the post office the next morning before work and discovered that there was a letter waiting for me, I wasn't altogether surprised, but I was still delighted to read the picture editor's words: ‘You have very good timing, as we were looking to start a new picture story. An excellent beginning – good
illustrations – we will publish it in Monday's edition. Please send more; we can publish one set every two days.' There was no mention of payment but I did not care about that.

I posted the next instalment. Despite the fact that my creation was not for my own pleasure, I could not help feeling glad that my story had been liked, and would soon appear in print on Monday, in two days' time, and for a few giddy moments I even half-forgot about the serious purpose behind my work. But I soon sobered up. Once upon a time, such giddiness would have been excusable. Now, such dreams were part of a past which had died with my father. There could be no happily ever after for me, not until my stepmother had been punished for her crimes.

That day passed in a flurry of delivery jobs. I kept my eyes and ears open in the store's office for mention of my stepmother but learnt nothing very startling. I did not want to ask too many searching questions yet, for I was afraid that such curiosity might reach the wrong ears, so contented myself with a bland question or two about the store itself. I made friends with another of the messengers, a lad called Jeremie who was a couple of years younger than me but who looked even younger than that because of his small, skinny frame.

But there was nothing childish about his shrewdness. Over a snatched cup of coffee that afternoon he told me, ‘We all worried that Lady Dalmatin would want to make changes now she's in charge, but it seems that so far she's content to leave it to the managers Sir Anton Dalmatin had appointed. But for how long, some say.'

‘And what do you say?'

He shrugged. ‘I don't think anyone knows what Lady Dalmatin will do. She's a deep one.'

‘I got that impression, from what everyone said,' I observed, cautiously. ‘How well is she liked here?'

‘A lot of people love her,' he replied.

I heard the reserve in his voice. ‘And you?'

‘It is not my place to like or dislike her,' he said, and from the tone in his voice I knew that he did dislike her. ‘All I can say is that I miss Sir Anton. He was a great man.'

I could only nod, for his simple words had brought a bitter lump of grief to my throat, and I had to turn away so that he could not see the prickle of tears in my eyes.

On my way home to the safe house that evening, I passed a newsstand and bought that day's edition of the
Mirror
. This one featured four pages of photographic tribute to what the headline dubbed ‘A Beautiful Love Story', featuring pictures of my father and Belladonna – at their wedding and at various social events. In every photograph, my father was smiling, but seeing his face so happy like that was like a stab to my heart. He had so trustingly welcomed that snake into our home, and he had been happy because he had been so much in love with her. How dreadful it must have been for him when first he suspected that his Belladonna may not be who she pretended to be … How he must have struggled against suspicion, wanting to give her every chance, hoping against hope that it was all a mistake. From the telegram in the package that the Prince had given me, I knew that my father had known the truth, at the end. He knew what black heart beat beneath that beautiful breast, what evil genius lit those lovely eyes. It hurt to think that such bitter
knowledge must have filled my father's last conscious hours …

The second-last photograph, titled ‘Sad Goodbyes', showed Belladonna in an elegant black velvet dress and hat with a black veil, placing white roses onto my father's coffin. By her side were Duke Ottakar, stiff in his braided bemedalled dress uniform, and his sister, Lady Helena, dignified in black brocade. Behind them stood the cream of Lepmest society, looking grave and solemn, and behind them again was a mass of other people. My father had been a popular man. He had touched the lives and hearts of so many people. I wiped away a tear from my eye and looked at the last photograph.

The final photograph showed Belladonna at the Lepmest Ladies' Fair store with staff members all around her. She was at a desk, with piles of ledgers surrounding her, and was looking into the distance. The caption read: ‘The grieving widow dries her tears and sets to work in honour of her beloved husband's memory.'

It nearly made me retch. There sat the usurper, the queen of lies, her crocodile tears quickly dry, digging her vicious claws into my father's legacy. Anger at the fatuous fools at the
Mirror
for only seeing a ‘grieving widow' welled up inside me – until I remembered that even I, her stepdaughter, had never seen Belladonna for who she truly was until that night in the forest with Drago.

There were no photos of me, of course. It must have been for the same reason that the Ladies' Fair store had not wanted to focus too much on my death: they would have thought they were sparing my memory, avoiding the scandal that was attached to suicide. Again, I could
see just how perfectly it worked with Belladonna's plans: no inconvenient questions would be asked, my existence would be brushed from people's consciousness.

I didn't care. I didn't care about this gutter rag, I told myself, as I flung the paper across the room. But I did care, and that night I was unable to work on my cartoon, I felt so angry.

The next day was Sunday, the only day the store was closed. It was raining heavily and I spent most of the day indoors, working on the third instalment of ‘The Queen and the Magic Mirror'.

‘The day of the ball was the day everything changed,' read the caption under the first panel, which was of the Queen looking into her mirror again. And curling like black smoke out of the mirror, I wrote: ‘You are no longer the fairest, oh Queen, no longer the fairest to be seen. Another has taken your place, another is fairer of face.'

The Queen's furious face – teeth bared, eyes flashing, claws out – filled the next panel, along with these words, rendered in jagged, shouting script: ‘Mirror, mirror, who is she? An evil witch she must surely be!?' And coming from the mirror: ‘Not a witch, but Snow White, and her beauty is real, and right.'

The final panel showed the Queen drawing the curtain across the magic mirror. She is turned towards the reader so that we can see her face, which is cruel and filled with a wicked light. The caption read: ‘She will pay, she will pay with her life, for her beating bloody heart I will hold in my hand this very night!'

If Belladonna hadn't guessed earlier, this instalment of ‘The Queen and the Magic Mirror' would make her know
for certain that the mysterious Syrena knew her secret. I couldn't wait for the first instalment of my story to appear in tomorrow's paper, but I knew, too, that the next thing I needed to consider would be to somehow make sure that Belladonna saw it …

On Monday morning, after posting this instalment, I went to the newsstand on my way to work. ‘Sorry, young lady, today's edition of the
Ladies' Journal
has been delayed a little,' said the friendly newspaper seller, when I asked after it. He saw my crestfallen expression. ‘It'll be out this afternoon,' he continued. ‘Don't you fret, young lady. You'll soon get your fill of society gossip.'

I gave him a weak smile and hurried away. But I couldn't help worrying. The editors would by now have received the second instalment of my story, too. Had they understood the real meaning behind my story and panicked and changed their minds? Even though my original plan had been to frighten Belladonna into doing something rash, I had become more and more excited thinking that other people reading the story might make the connection to the real-life Queen, Belladonna. I didn't just want to catch her out, I wanted to expose her. What if Belladonna had somehow learnt of ‘The Queen and the Magic Mirror' and made the
Ladies' Journal
pull it? Or was I fretting over nothing and it wasn't even the picture-story page that had been holding up the printing?

All through the morning at work I worried, and by the afternoon I'd bitten my nails down to the quick. Jeremie, seeing my turmoil, asked me if I was ill. When I said I was fine, he told me I'd better be careful, that Master Philipi was kind but he didn't like his staff to be distracted
in work hours and made sure to keep a sharp eye on such things. I knew Jeremie was right to warn me to be careful, so I tried hard not to think about the
Ladies' Journal
and to give all my attention to my work. But in the afternoon, I ran to the nearest newsstand to buy a copy.

Hiding in the staff bathroom, I leafed through the paper feverishly. There it was! It was in the mid-section of the paper, prominently displayed, in bold type. As soon as I saw it, my heart beat faster. The editors had changed their minds and decided to devote almost the whole page to my story – not only had they printed the first instalment, they had printed the second one as well! And, underneath ‘The Queen and the Magic Mirror', they'd added a subtitle that hinted that there was more to the story than met the eye: ‘Exciting New Story Mirrors the News'.

My pulse raced; my ears rang with excitement. The editors had clearly guessed that this was a story with a key. There was no need for me to think up a plan to force it on Belladonna's attention; the whole of Lepmest would be talking about it! The trap was sprung. I only had to wait, wait for Belladonna to panic, to do something rash, and then to catch her in the act and expose her.

I went to bed feeling pretty pleased with myself, sure that now I had my prey within reach. She'd go berserk when she read the story. She'd know exactly what it referred to. She would know that there was someone in Lepmest who knew what she had done to me and, because of the Aurisolan name I'd picked to sign the artwork and the Aurisolan crest I'd drawn beside Syrena's name, she would know that that someone knew the truth of her past. Would Belladonna go to the
Ladies' Journal
, make a scene,
and demand to know who the mysterious Syrena was? Or would she try to ignore it but inwardly, the first tendril of unease would creep into her heart …?

I did not work on another instalment that night. With any luck, the journal would print the third one in their next edition in two days' time, and I wanted to leave a little time for it to be digested, for readers to start wondering, to start asking themselves questions about Snow White and the Queen, before I drew the fourth instalment. I wanted Belladonna to slowly roast on the hook of suspicion, of fear, of panic. I wanted my weapon of paper and printers' ink to do its deadly work, to make her feel so unsafe she started to make mistakes. I would wait for her to be tried in the court of public opinion, wait for her reputation to be torn to shreds. And then I'd go in for the kill. I'd reveal myself to the world, and reveal the truth about the real Belladonna.

But despite going early to bed, I found it hard to sleep. And it wasn't just thoughts of exposing Belladonna that kept me awake, but softer ones, those I desperately tried to banish. I'd told myself so many times that I must not think about Lucian, or wonder what he was doing. But in the dark reaches of the night, I kept playing over and over in my head that final scene with him at the haven and my longing to see him again was like a sharp thorn under my skin.