Princess of the Midnight Ball (27 page)

Still not speaking, Galen wrapped the chain twice more, then slipped one link through another and cinched it tight. From his satchel Galen pulled the final piece of his plan: his mother’s little silver crucifix. He jabbed it into the woolen knot. The silver flared bright and the chain turned from wool to steel.

“There,” Galen said, feeling a rush of fierce joy as the new King Under Stone drew back with a scream of rage. “That will hold.”

Taking Rose by the arm, Galen led her up the golden stairs to the princesses’ sitting room. Her sisters were all in a circle around the rug, faces gray with fright. They shrieked with joy to see Galen and Rose emerge, running to embrace the two and kiss their cheeks.

Pansy flung herself into Galen’s arms and sobbed into his neck. “I knew you’d save us.”

“It’s all over now, don’t you worry,” Galen said, stroking Pansy’s hair. Over her head, he saw Daisy watching with a disapproving eye. He winked at her, and she blinked. His arms shaking from exhaustion, he put Pansy down, but she clung to his hand.

“We’ll only have to go back tomorrow night,” Hyacinth said in a hollow voice.

“No, we won’t,” Rose told her. “Galen chained the gate shut. We’re never going back, and no one can come after us.”

The princesses cheered, all except for Hyacinth. She fetched an oil lamp and threw it on the maze-patterned rug without warning. The silk burst into flame, making the other girls shriek and jump out of the way. Galen rushed into one of the bedrooms and grabbed a heavy blanket from one of the beds to smother the fire, but he waited until the rug had been thoroughly burned before tossing down the blanket and stamping on it.

“Very clever, Your Highness,” Galen said to Hyacinth once the fire was out.

“You may call me Hyacinth,” she said, giving him a tremulous smile. She stepped forward and laid a timid hand on his arm.

Galen smiled back, bent, and kissed her thin cheek. Then, for good measure, he turned and kissed Rose.

On the lips.

As Rose looked around, blushing and wishing that she hadn’t had her first kiss in front of all her sisters (nice as it was), she saw something that startled her. Maria, their maid, was sitting up in her chair and staring at them.

It was not yet dawn.

“Your Highnesses have returned!” Maria shrieked. She clasped her hands to her bosom and began to cry.

“Maria, you’re awake!” Rose took a step toward the woman but still clung to Galen’s hand. To Rose this seemed even more miraculous than their delivery from the kingdom Under Stone.

Maria frowned around the room through her tears. “Well, the other maids and I waited here in case you returned. I can’t believe I slept at all, with all the fuss these past few days.” She gave the charred remains of the rug an odd look. “What have my ladies been doing, if I may ask?”

Rose took a deep breath. Here was the first test, to see if the underworld’s power over them was truly broken. “We were
the prisoners of the King Under Stone,” Rose said, quite clearly.

Maria gasped in shock. So did Rose’s sisters.

“Rose! You told!” Petunia danced up and down.

“You can say it! We can say it!” Jonquil clapped her hands to her cheeks.

“God be praised,” said Hyacinth, and sank to her knees. She began to pray.

Maria crossed herself. “So Master Werner was right.” She nodded at Galen. “The king has been in a taking since you shouted out that name in the council this morning, Master Werner, but I don’t know if anyone other than myself and two or three maids believed you.”

Releasing Galen’s hand, Rose crossed to her faithful maid and hugged the woman. “Oh, Maria, it’s been simply awful. But it’s all over now.” She turned back to the others. “We must go to Father at once!”

In the hallway outside their rooms, Rose found Walter Vogel sitting on a chair, an ancient musket in his hands. He got to his feet and bowed stiffly to them. Two guards lay nearby, one with a swollen nose and the other with a bruised jaw.

“Walter! What are you doing here?” Rose put a hand to her throat, startled.

“Funny thing, that,” Walter said calmly. “I was sitting at home, smoking my pipe, when there was a knock at the door. An old woman of my acquaintance had come to tell me to get out my musket and bring it to the palace. ‘The princesses need
guarding,’ she told me. ‘You keep folks out of their rooms so that Galen can do his job.’” Walter shrugged. “And I did.”

“I could have used some help down there,” Galen said.

“I’m an old, old man, Galen,” Walter said quietly. “Which I think you know. If I’d gone down with you, it would have finished me, and there are still things I must do. Under Stone was not the only one of his kind.” The wrinkled face broke into a grin. “And it seems that you did admirably on your own.”

“Yes, he did,” Rose agreed.

“That bishop’s with your father in the council chamber now,” Walter warned.

“Good,” Rose said. “Walter, I want plenty of witnesses. Will you please come with us?”

“Of course, Your Highness.”

Rose led the procession down the hall to the council chamber and entered without knocking. Inside King Gregor sat, not in his usual tall carved chair, but in a smaller chair in the middle of the room. The normally gruff king seemed pale and cowed.

The king’s customary chair was occupied by Bishop Angier, who presided over the room with obvious satisfaction. The prime minister and a half dozen of their father’s chief councillors were also in attendance, looking variously mutinous or humble, as though they had all been chastised by the bishop.

But even Angier looked stunned by the sudden entrance of Rose, her sisters, Galen, Maria, and Walter. Rose found their shock quite enjoyable, and stood there for a moment to let
them all get a good look. She knew that she and her sisters looked awful: their strange dark gowns torn and muddied with sparkling black dirt, faces smudged and sweaty, hair in disarray. Galen had gunpowder stains on his cheek, and Lily’s hands were black with it.

“Father,” Rose said finally, after everyone had stared enough and she could see Angier starting to swell up prior to making a declaration. She curtsied. Her sisters and maid followed suit; Galen and Walter bowed. “We have returned.”

“Returned? From dancing with the devil?” Angier’s voice had lost some of its force.

Rose didn’t take her eyes off her father, though. “We have long been under a curse, Father,” she said. “But it is broken now.”

King Gregor looked anxiously at Rose, and then beyond her at his other daughters. “It’s over?”

“It’s over,” Rose told him firmly. She took Galen’s arm and drew him forward. “Thanks to Master Werner.”

Relief washed over King Gregor’s face. The councillors began babbling all at once, and Angier got to his feet, pounding a meaty fist on the arm of his chair and shouting for silence.

“I will conduct this inquiry,” the bishop insisted.

“What inquiry?” King Gregor’s voice cut through the noisy room. “My daughters have come with joyous news for me. There is no need for an inquiry.” He sat up straight and smoothed his coat, his gray, worried complexion clearing minute by minute. “Master Werner, were your words this morning true? Have you at last discovered where my daughters go at night?”

“This is nonsense! These girls have learned the ways of the devil from that Bretoner woman,” Angier ranted. “You are fortunate, Gregor, that your station protects you and your daughters—”

“Now, Brother Angier, let us not be too quick to condemn,” said a soft voice. In the far corner of the room, as though cast aside by his more flamboyant brother in the church, Bishop Schelker stood. That good man, who had baptized Rose and all her sisters, smiled with relief at the princesses as he came forward.

“Bishop Angier, I confess myself a bit disturbed by the cavalier way in which you seem to have declared King Gregor and his young daughters guilty.” His mild blue eyes fixed on Angier, who began to turn very red.

“The archbishop has full confidence in my judgment!” Angier roared.

“Does he?” Schelker pulled a scroll from his sleeve. “I have a letter here from His Holiness, Angier. It arrived just moments ago. He asks how our
joint
investigation of this matter is proceeding. His Holiness also makes reference to the instructions that you were to deliver to me, which I never received.”

Angier swallowed and then straightened his cuffs. “Well, Schelker—”

Bishop Schelker interrupted him. “It seems that the archbishop has long been concerned with your overzealous methods in investigating matters of witchcraft, and that you were not his first choice to take care of this matter. But his first choice, and his second, were both quite suddenly indisposed. This
naturally has made His Holiness suspicious. In addition to making certain that King Gregor and his daughters are treated with all respect, he asks me to keep an eye on you and to put a halt to matters if I think you have overstepped your bounds. And I believe that you have.” Schelker never raised his voice. “Guards. Please escort His Excellency to his rooms, and make sure he stays there. Father Michel, too.”

Angier adjusted his robes with great dignity and swept out before the guards could lay a hand on him. As he passed Rose and her sisters, he gave them a vicious look. “Evil never triumphs,” he hissed at them.

“I know,” Rose retorted.

The guards did have to lead away a babbling, wild-eyed Father Michel, who was insisting that he knew nothing of the other bishops’ illnesses, and that he was an innocent man. Schelker watched with a look of deep disappointment, then turned back to King Gregor and gave a little nod.

King Gregor, in turn, looked to Galen. “Now that that unpleasantness is done, would you please enlighten us all?” His normal brusque manner was back.

Galen came forward and bowed again amid the babble that arose from the council. He held up a hand for silence, waited until he got it, then said, “Your Majesty, every night, a deep sleep would fall upon your daughters’ attendants. The princesses then descended a golden stair through the floor of their sitting room.” He pulled something from the pouch at his belt: a charred bit of silk. “This was the rug that transformed into
the staircase, now destroyed by fire at the hands of Princess Hyacinth.” He laid it on the table in front of King Gregor.

“They passed through a gate of silver and pearl and into a forest of silver trees.” Galen reached over and plucked something from Rose’s hair. She started and he smiled at her, then laid a silver leaf before her father.

King Gregor lifted the silver leaf and studied it carefully. All along the table, the councillors watched Galen with rapt attention.

“After the forest they were met on the shores of a great black lake by twelve suitors, who took them in golden boats to a palace on an island at the center of the lake.” Galen took out a handkerchief and spread it before the king, revealing the remaining teaspoonful of glittering black sand. “There they danced till dawn with their suitors, the sons of the King Under Stone.” And Galen produced a silver goblet set with precious stones. “It was he who held your daughters in thrall. He who kept them from speaking a word of this enchantment.”

The prime minister could not hold back. “And how was it that this fiend got control of the princesses? Young ladies of their upbringing do not have dealing with devils!”

“Nor did they.” Galen addressed him calmly. Rose had started forward, a protest on her lips, but Galen squeezed her hand and stopped her. “At least, not of their own will.

“They were bound by the ill-made promise of another,” Galen said. “They are innocent of witchcraft, as is their father.
The deaths of those princes were brought about by the King Under Stone, who was as real as you or I, and as evil as Bishop Schelker is good. The King Under Stone did this without the knowledge or the aid of the princesses. But now he is dead, many of his sons are dead, and those that live are bound within their dark realm.”

“How can you be sure?” King Gregor put a protective hand on Hyacinth’s arm.

“Galen made a chain,” Rose said, stepping forward. After years of enforced silence, she couldn’t bear to let Galen be the one to tell the whole story. “Of black wool knit with silver needles made from the branches of this tree.” She held up the leaf. “The trees in the underworld were sprouted by Mama’s brooch, the one given to her by her godfather in Breton. The gate is chained, and the knot pierced with a silver cross. The creatures of the Kingdom Under Stone can no longer influence our world.”

“You did this?” King Gregor was on his feet now, looking at Galen like a man reprieved. “You saved my daughters and barred the underworld?”

“Yes, sire,” Galen said quietly. “Walter Vogel helped me, and so did Fraulein Anne. I had the cook boil the chain with basil and nightshade, to strengthen it, and the cross was my mother’s.”

“He was invisible!” Petunia could no longer be contained either. “He was running around, and shooting the bad princes, and yelling, and he threw me and Pansy on the raft so that we could get away. Oh! The shawl he made Rosie was magic, and
it turned into a raft! And he gave Lily a gun, and she shot someone!”