Midnight's Song (31 page)

“
Primitive Folklore,”
she read aloud
as she took the book into her arms. It immediately fell open to the
chapter I had last read, the corner folded down as a means to mark
the exact page. “This is absolutely perfect! She’s been hiding this
book as if she must keep something a secret, hasn’t she? Perhaps I
can give the royal guard good reason to try her for
witchcraft!”

Her envious gloating was brought to a
hasty end. I had been so nervous lying next to my grandmother and
awaiting my trial the next day that I had decided to get up and
stretch my legs. Now it was time to attempt to get some sleep back
in my room, much to Beeti’s surprise. I turned the corner and
hasted my walk when I saw that my door was wide open. When I poked
my head around the corner, Beeti quickly thrust the book behind her
back.

“…Aunt Beeti?” I recollected in
surprise when I saw her suspiciously standing in the center of my
room. I think that she actually snared at me. “What are you doing
here? And why are my pillows on the floor?”

“Oh…yes…” she spluttered. “I was in
here...helping Emily! She said that she found a rather large rat. I
wouldn’t have helped her otherwise, but the poor girl was
terrified. We looked for it, but it turns out that what she saw was
simply a shadow. She left right before you came in, and I was just
about to go myself.”

“Oh…alright,” I
uncomfortably told her. Beeti kept the book out of sight and left
the room in a flash. She nearly ran to her quarters and locked
herself in her bedroom with the article that she had found to spite
me with. It wasn’t much, truthfully – but Beeti knew that right now
she could probably use anything
to get me
disinherited. Accusing me of being a witch seemed to be a perfectly
fitting method of this at the time. It didn’t matter what it took,
either; even if ridding me from her life meant using
witchcraft
herself.

She would do anything – even if it
meant putting my life in jeopardy in the process.

When I awoke, the house
was silent. People still moved about doing daily tasks because they
knew they had to, but they did so voicelessly. The night had been
nearly sleepless for me, a nightmare waking me up every few hours
with sweat covering my forehead and occasional tears in my
eyes.

I woke up on my own and
sat up in bed before the very first servant in the household could
be heard in the hallway. The anxiety gnawed at my bones. There was
no way to escape this now.

“Get up,” was the only thing that
Emily told me when she walked into my room that morning. Now she
was numb too.

When I stood up Emily whisked me away
to the bathhouse. When I arrived, I saw that Wren was already up
and solemnly waiting for me. She grasped one of my appendages, then
the other. She pulled them in close to her face to examine them for
any unseemly marks. She found a stray mark from a pen beside my
wrist and gave me an odd look before calling in the bath attendants
to begin scrubbing.

“It’s the law that you must be
unblemished to come before the Magistrate.” Wren informed me. It’s
not like I hadn’t heard it 1,000 times before.

The attendants scrubbed me until they
knew my skin couldn’t take it any longer. They washed my face over
and over again until the very last speck of dirt had been
extinguished, then harshly pulled a brush through my long curls
before tightly binding it up into a bun. A long, droopy black dress
was then pulled over my head and draped over my body. It was a far
cry from what any woman in this region would wear, but if there was
one thing considered immodest about me today the approval that we
needed was never going to come.

“You’re ready,” Wren told me after
topping my head with a plain black bonnet. My heart was thumping
even harder now, and I felt my eyes begin to burn as if I was about
to cry. But, I drove the tears as far backwards as I
could.

I walked behind Wren
toward the door of the manor, and servants seemed to be frozen in
place; lining our path the entire way. They curtsied and bowed as I
passed, giving me tribute as if I was a queen going off to war. My
heart pounded even harder now. It felt like anything could give me
a heart attack right now, even the sound of the gravel as I walked
out onto the drive. I came to the door of the cart
shaking.

“You alright?” Jackoby
quietly asked me.

I nodded, but we both knew it was a
lie. Everyone was depending on me now, so I had to be strong. I sat
down in my seat and looked back out the window at the respectful
crowd that had gathered around the front door. Scanning their
faces, I thought of the fact that they were all human beings.
Regardless of caste, they had a life, a family, and friends. Their
life here might have been hard, but it was their livelihood. Now
their lives and my family’s lives rested on my
shoulders.

If I couldn’t be strong for them, no
one would.

Archie cracked his whip, and the
horses began moving. We pulled out of the drive and onto the open
road, and I could hardly contain myself. I tried to block all of
the fearful thoughts from my mind, but as hard as I tried I knew
that I couldn’t. So, I began to pray. It calmed me down just enough
to doze off. It felt like just a few seconds, but almost as soon as
I had closed my eyes Wren patted my hand and nudged me
awake.

“We’re here,” Wren told me
half-heartedly, trying to seem jubilant through her apparent
distress. To Wren’s surprise, I calmly took her hand and gave it a
squeeze for reassurance.

“It’s okay,” I whispered as a guard
waved us in. “I know what I have to do.”

We pulled up to a
home much like our own, but one with a door at least 20 times
wider. A man in a dark blue tuxedo opened the carriage door and
cordially helped us step out. Our feet on the ground, Wren and I
respectfully curtsied. Even though he was a servant of a caste much
lower, he had power over us here. Strange as it seems, it was true.
If we offended
anyone
in this house, it could mean our heads.

“Welcome to the Magistrate’s grand
palace!” The man bellowed.

I had to keep myself
from even breathing the notion that his appearance was humorous. It
was extremely difficult, I’ll tell you that. The man wore a
ridiculous top-hat that was bedazzled with the Imperial Crest. In
fact,
every inch
of the man seemed to have the crest on it somewhere! It was
lining every part of him from the top of his hat to the ends of his
shoelaces.

I was pretty positive that during the
last uprising his family was full of loyalists.

“Thanks be to the Great Magistrate for
allowing us this opportunity to honor his reign!” Wren replied in a
robotic tone. I was certain he could tell that her words were
rehearsed, but he didn’t say anything about it. He only looked down
at us and shot us a cold, prideful glare.

“Come,” he instructed.
“First you must tour the house, the Great One insists! Then you
will be presented to him. I am Bernard Edwinson, Head Caretaker of
the Magistrate’s household. I will be seeing you through
today.”

Without another
word, Bernard turned from us and briskly walked into the house.
Wren and I looked at each other a bit cluelessly for a few seconds
before we realized that the introductions were well over and he
expected us to follow him
right
now.
When we caught up with him, we could
hear that he was already giving us a complete oral history of the
foyer. Luckily, he hadn’t realized that we had missed half of his
lecture while we were standing outside.

“…200 years ago, the
Magistrate commissioned three brick layers and three stone masons
of the 6
^th
caste to come and help design the marble in the foyer.” He
explained, clearly having given this same tour many times
before.

For the first time since we had stood
outside, he glanced behind at us. Bernard had been standing on a
narrow, golden carpet while we stood next to each other on the
marble. For some reason, it infuriated him. He pointed his finger
at us, scolding.

“No, no, no!” He
exclaimed in a near shout, “Please, take your feet off the
marble!
Only the Magistrate
may have his shoes touch it! You must stand
single file on the rug! Oh, now we have to sterilize the
floor
again!
Do
you realize how much scrubbing it takes to make something spotless
for the Magistrate?”

Actually, I was well aware. But, I was
also well aware that the Magistrate would not think well of me
unless I continued saying absolutely nothing.

“My apologies!” Wren quickly exclaimed
as we jumped onto the rug. “It will not happen again,
sir!”

“It had better not, for if either of
you steps out of line today –” the flamboyantly dressed man began
ranting; but before he could finish he was quickly cut off. A dark
figure stepped into sight at the top of the stairs and hushed him,
and at his word the man fell inexplicably silent.

“Bernard – is that any way
to treat our guests?” A familiar voice suddenly called from the top
of the grand staircase. That voice – I recognized it. I’d heard it
many times before! The dark figure crept down the stairs, and my I
almost fell back in shock when he came into clear view. The moment
I heard it I thought I could pinpoint the voice to someone I knew –
but at first I denied it. It absolutely couldn’t be! But…it
was.

It was
Winston.

The moment I recognized
him I think he must have seen my expression, because he immediately
put a finger to his lips. For a minute I had to hold my breath. How
could he have been here? Just because he was a duke didn’t mean
that he had a free pass to stay at the grand palace. In any case,
his presence was enough to make Bernard fall silent.

“The Magistrate
would never approve of the mistreatment of people who have come
great distances to see him. You must be more lenient about these
things, Bernard.” Winston authoritatively informed him, half
scolding the man himself. He came down into the foyer and stood at
my side. “
I
will
give them the grand tour. Go on your way.”

Bernard gave Winston a cursory nod and
left the room. As soon as he did, I whispered into his ear: “What
are you doing here?”

“My father was invited long ago,” he
whispered in return. “Your scheduling isn’t a
coincidence.”

When he said the
words, I didn’t know if I felt anger, happiness, or just utter
shock
.
Either he
had something he was going to attempt to pull at this very
inconvenient time; or he was stupid enough to think that he could
outwit the king. Either idea seemed plausible. And now that Winston
was actually here – whether he thought he was helping me or not – I
had added pressure. Being around Winston always made me a tad bit
stressed.

“Since when do you get a free pass to
come here?” I mutedly argued with him.

“Since I’m the Duke
of the Northern Coast! Celeste, the Magistrate is my
uncle,”
he whispered in
return. I momentarily paused, not having really pieced together his
title with his lineage until now. Still, I wasn’t satisfied. I was
under too much stress to be anywhere near
content.

“Why exactly did you do this?” I
whispered back to him through the corner of my mouth. He ushered me
across the carpet and into a long hallway before giving me his
answer.

“I have always vouched for
your family,” he responded, almost annoyed. “If he knows that
you’re a friend of mine he might be a bit easier to
please.”

He gave me a stern glare, acting as if
I was doing something evil by distrusting him. It didn’t seem like
him being here would help me very much – in fact, it actually
seemed more like a danger. Though, Winston obviously believed he
had everything planned out. Under endless surveillance, I decided
that it would be best to hold my tongue from here. The last thing I
needed was a security camera catching me spluttering some kind of
insult to the Magistrate’s nephew!

Winston showed us around the palace
for what felt like an hour before the Magistrate sent any word of
when or how he wanted to see me. The place was so vast that we
probably would have gotten lost and missed the appointment if there
was a set time for it.

“This is his art room,” Winston
explained as he ushered me into another vast corridor.

Massive paintings hung
from almost every wall, all of them depicting the magistrates who
had ruled over our country and their families. I read the
inscriptions underneath a few of the pictures, all of which
over-glorifying praises to the Magistrate’s family name. Some
pictures were shockingly ghoulish, even sadistic as they depicted
mountains of slain rebels during the Great War. When I first saw
it, I hadn’t expected to be faced with such a shocking depiction. I
had turned my head just a few inches and spotted one, a picture of
a general with a gun pointed at the head of the last rebel standing
in a family execution.