While Beauty Slept (47 page)

“For a fortunate few,” I said. “It did for your parents.”

I knew as soon as I spoke the words aloud that I had made a mistake. Rose’s face sank, and the room’s darkness passed from soothing to oppressive. I jumped up quickly and lit a candle on the table beside the bed.

“All this talk of love has made me wonder,” I said lightly, hoping to move Rose’s thoughts elsewhere. “You never told me what passed between you and the handsome ambassador that night in the Receiving Room.”

“You will think me so foolish.” She stopped abruptly, with the sort of dramatic hesitation girls use when they wish to be urged on.

“Hardly. Have I not confessed my own tragic romance? I must have your story in return.”

“You said something about your young man, Marcus. How you knew he had certain qualities, even though you’d barely spoken. It hardly seems possible, doesn’t it, to feel you know a person you have just met?”

“Is that how it was with Joffrey?”

The words poured out of her in an unstoppable torrent. “If you could have heard him at the feast that night! He was charming, of course, as a man in his position must be. But it was not that. He spoke with proper deference, but also as an equal. I could have talked to him for hours and not once tired of the conversation. When he smiled, it felt as if my entire soul lightened. And then, when we danced and our hands touched . . . an understanding passed between us. Something beyond words. I know that it was wrong, but I led him to the Receiving Room without a second thought. I was desperate for a few moments alone.”

She paused and looked down at her skirt, then continued in a hurried, nervous voice. “He kissed my hands and said I had stolen his heart. I know that courtiers make such declarations all the time, and I should have laughed in his face, but I did not. I believed him.”

Her story had all the marks of youthful infatuation: love springing from a glance, two hearts coming together without words. I had read such stories a thousand times in the queen’s poetry. Which did not make this tale any less true in Rose’s eyes.

“Joffrey struck me as an honorable man,” I said. “Not the sort to trifle with a woman’s affections.”

“I said I would visit Hirathion,” Rose continued, cheered by my encouragement. “That I would not rest until I saw him again.”

I remembered how it felt to be filled with that urgency, the surge of warmth flooding across the skin, the desperate need to see and touch your beloved, again and again.

“If the bond between you was as strong as you say, then your paths will cross once more,” I assured her.

“They have, in a way.”

Rose slipped a hand under her pillow and drew out a piece of paper folded into a tight square. She offered it to me silently, and I opened it near the candle that flickered at her bedside, gently spreading out the creases. It was well crafted, as one would expect from a man skilled in diplomacy. Joffrey sent congratulations on King Ranolf’s victory and expressed his own sovereign’s wish that their two realms remain united in friendship. He spoke of the warm welcome that would await her family should they choose to visit and the sights he hoped to show them. It was not a love letter, for any of the lines could have been read without suspicion by a curious parent or guardian; there was no such thing as private correspondence for a royal princess. Yet a tone of yearning pervaded every line, if one were disposed to see it.

“Is this the only letter he has sent?”

Rose shook her head. “There were others, before the war closed off the northern roads. This is the first I have received in months. I was so desperate to know if he still thought of me!”

“He did,” I said. “He does.”

“I know I cannot marry him,” Rose said, looking at me with the intent stare that reminded me so much of her father. The look of a woman strengthening herself to take on the weight of leadership. “I will do my duty. I will marry a prince. But I want to feel what it is to love, just once.”

King Ranolf would have thundered with rage to hear such a declaration from his sheltered Beauty. It nearly broke my heart.

“Then you will have it,” I said. “Your parents have already agreed to such a journey. I will see to it that you and Joffrey are able to steal some time together, alone.”

It was a reckless promise. Rose was brash enough to kiss him, perhaps more. I did not care. We passed the rest of that night in girlish chatter as she relived every moment of Joffrey’s visit. Blocking out the darkness around us with memories of a time Rose shone with happiness.

That was the last lighthearted conversation I remember between us. A few days later, most of our buckets of water sat empty and the liquid in the final one covered no more than a finger’s length. The stench of our chamber pots had long since overpowered the dried lilac and sage I had placed on the wooden box that enclosed them. By my reckoning we had been shut away for three weeks. Despite the king’s admonitions to await his summons, I could no longer delay an expedition beyond our locked door.

“You must stay here,” I urged Rose.

“Mother and Father . . .” Rose begged.

“You cannot leave this room until I tell you it is safe. I will find your parents, and I may venture into St. Elsip to see to my cousin, Prielle. I will be as quick as I can. Promise me you will wait.”

Rose nodded her assent.

The bolt pulled back with a metallic screech. I opened the door and peered out into the hall. It was deserted. While the quiet of this remote wing had always unnerved me, I had never heard it so utterly silent. There were no distant footsteps, no clatter of horses or workmen from the front courtyard, no voices at all.

I dragged our foul pots to the privy around the corner and emptied them into the waste pit, then picked up a clean jug. Rose stood in the doorway, watching, her face blank. I handed her the new pot and took hold of our empty water bucket, nodding quickly to her before pulling the door closed. From the other side, I heard the bolt heave into place.

Before me snaked the gloomy corridor that led to the heart of the castle, interspersed with shadowy recesses marking the entries to the servants’ passages. Finding my way to the royal apartments meant navigating these darks halls and stairs alone, and for a moment I lost the will to proceed. Fighting the urge to turn back, I tightened my grip on the bucket’s handle and walked forcefully ahead. My steps echoed against the stone walls, and I quickened my pace until I reached the wide staircase that led directly to the public rooms on the main floor of the castle. I had never seen this stairway empty of people, and it was in that moment that I knew in my heart what I would find at the bottom.

The smell was what struck me first. Anyone who has slaughtered pigs or chickens on a farm recognizes the stench of death. I emerged from the stairs and walked hesitantly along the wide passageway that led past the castle’s grand public rooms. And so I came to the chapel and a scene of carnage I wish I could banish from my nightmares.

It had begun in an orderly fashion. Ladies and gentlemen of noble birth had been laid in neat rows directly before the altar in preparation for burial, Lady Wintermale likely among them. But that careful respect had degenerated into sickening mayhem. As death stalked the castle, bodies had been tossed one upon the other in heaps throughout the room, the foot of one lying across the eyes of another. A few had been wrapped in white sheets, but the rest lay as they died, figures clothed in simple brown maids’ smocks entwined with others clad in costly dyed velvet. I did not approach the scene close enough to recognize any of the faces; I doubt I could have done so, for the features were swollen and monstrous, the ravaged skin and blood-spattered lips giving all, no matter what their birth, the same death mask.

The nauseating odor made my head spin, and I dropped the bucket, fearing I might faint. But I could not return to Rose’s side without discovering the fate of her parents, even though I knew in my heart what that fate must be. Whatever turmoil the castle had suffered, the bodies of the king and queen would never have been added to this gruesome heap. They would have been left to lie in state, as their position demanded. Slowly, reluctantly, I quit the chapel and made my way up the grand staircase that cut through the center of the castle.

Queen Lenore’s sitting room appeared unchanged: chairs arranged neatly before the fireplace, the harp in one corner awaiting a musician’s entertainment. Only the withered flowers in a vase beneath the window showed any sign of neglect. Through the doorway of the bedchamber, I witnessed a scene that momentarily weakened me with relief. The king and queen lay peacefully together on the bed, their backs to me, asleep.

It took only one step to reveal the tableau as a tragic portrait. As I came close enough to see the king’s face, I realized the pox had wreaked its devastation upon him. His handsome features had been conquered by oozing pustules, and his mouth, ringed with dried blood, had been forced open by his swollen, blackened tongue. To look upon him was to see death’s agony made real.

Beside him the queen’s face appeared remarkably untouched. Though red welts were scattered over her neck and chin, her cheeks remained smooth and her forehead clear. The pox, it seemed, had respected the remnants of her beauty even as it snatched her final breath.

The sight of them, together in death, nearly undid me. How could I tell Rose that both her beloved parents were dead? What comfort could I possibly offer after such a loss? Desperate to escape the rank air of the king and queen’s death chamber, I raced from the room and down the stairs. I picked up the water bucket and hurried through the deserted kitchens, making my way to the well in the back courtyard. The horse stalls were empty, as were the pens that housed the sheep and hogs, and streaks of grain and flour traced the path where sacks had been pulled out from the storerooms. Discarded apple cores and gnawed bones were evidence that people had been here, not long ago, gorging themselves on the castle’s provisions. But the clatter of my bucket and the squeak of rope as I pulled up fresh water brought no call, no response. Were Rose and I the only living creatures left inside this vast fortress?

I walked to the front courtyard and saw that the main gates stood open. Below me St. Elsip beckoned, and I was momentarily reassured by its sturdy houses and churches. I placed the water bucket in the castle’s front doorway, awaiting my return, and ran down the hill toward town, my eyes hunting for any movement, any sign of life. The crowds of people who once would have jostled past me had vanished. I heard nothing but my own lonely footsteps as I walked through the eerily empty streets. Houses, shops, taverns—all sat silent behind bolted doors. Amid the quiet I felt the strange sensation of eyes upon me, watching. I myself was proof that the pox did not kill every person it touched.
I cannot be the only one,
I thought.
Others must have lived.
If so, they preferred to observe my progress from the shadows.

My aunt Agna’s house had the same abandoned aspect as all the other buildings I had passed. Planks of wood had been nailed across the downstairs windows, and the door appeared to be bolted from the inside, for it did not budge or creak when I attempted to open it. I rapped a few times with my knuckles, then slammed the wood with a flat palm.

“Prielle!” I called out. “Is anyone there?”

I pressed my ear to the door but heard no movement inside. A weary sorrow settled over me, and I leaned against the doorway, unable to conjure up the will to move. I had thought my letter to Prielle would keep her safe from the contagion, but she had been taken all the same. Would there be no end to my losses?

A sudden clatter rang out through the silent street, and I perked up at the unexpected sound. More desperate for human companionship than wary of danger, I stepped out to see where it had come from. As my eyes roamed over the buildings, passing quickly across Aunt Agna’s house, I thought I saw a flash of white at an upstairs window. Could it be a face, drawn by the commotion, just as I had been? Whatever it was quickly disappeared, and I put it down to a trick of the light.

A grubby, wild-eyed man emerged from a house at the corner, a bulging sack flung over one shoulder. He stared at me, then turned and ran. Had the pox so terrified him that he feared contact with any other living thing? I hurried to the house from which he had come and glanced inside. Silver goblets and painted dishes lay scattered across the floor. Only a well-off family could afford such fine things, and the man who ran out had been dressed in rags. I remembered the sack, his shifty expression. The man was stealing from the homes of the dead.

Fearing what other lawlessness I might stumble upon, I quickened my steps as I hurried back toward home. If thieves were ransacking St. Elsip, would they turn their sights to the undefended castle? How long would we be safe there? I felt so alone, so lost. So desperate for the sight of a familiar face.

I had arrived at the Bridge of Statues and, beyond it, the road that led to Marcus’s tannery. The place where he had offered me shelter. A force beyond my body urged me forward, and I crossed the bridge, my steps picking up speed until I was running. I might have been a foolish young girl again, heart racing at the thought of seeing my beloved. Such was my desperate need for comfort that I did not pause to think what a sight I would present, appearing without warning, dirty and disheveled at his door. I did not consider the possibility that Marcus might be ill, or dead, his family perished around him. I stumbled along the muddy path through the trees, my thoughts fixed solely upon my destination.

Though I knew where the tannery lay, I had never visited it, so I was drawn up short when I arrived at a tall iron fence. The gate at the center was not locked, and I pushed it open carefully, taken aback by the size of the property. Before me stood a fine two-story brick house, with three chimneys. To the right was a large wooden barn, to the left a neatly planted kitchen garden. Behind the garden, some distance away, sprawled a spacious plaster-walled building that I took for the tannery, surrounded by modest cottages that most likely housed the workers. The stench I expected from such work was not evident, though perhaps that was due to the pox. All work must have come to a halt in the past few weeks. Perhaps forever.