The guardhouse knew me this time. Or knew my proclamation: I was the mother of the woman betrothed to the prince. Queen Sigrid was expecting me, I said, and I was let in, without delay. Power, proximity to it, felt greasy. Doors sprung open. Guards stood at attention. I walked up to the palace, and right into its mouth.
I was led through the long gallery with the checkered floors and oversized paintings. This time, I read the portrait of the royal family differently: Saw intensity in Simeon’s posture. Weakness in the arched back of the king. I could not read Hemma at all—her pouty pink lips, her yellow hair, were inscrutable. Before I could weave any of this into a semblance of understanding all I had learned, we were continuing into the series of sherbet rooms that followed. Each as sugared and frilled as the next. All the curtains pulled shut on the east-facing windows.
I kept my eyes on the walls. Looked for cracks in the silk wallpapers and gaps in the tapestries. Motes of dust and places where the air came through. I thought of Otto, bustling out of the panel in the wall. Simeon, stepping into the throne room from a door that had sprung from nowhere. I knew the rooms, now, for what they were, what they had always been: varicolored jewel boxes of deception, paper palaces, constructed to conceal as much as they showed off.
I counted the chambers as we passed. When we had gone far enough, I stopped, and turned back to the footman escorting me. “I require a moment for personal matters.”
He paused, a stockinged foot thrust forward. “My lady?”
“A long journey without rest, and personal matters beckon.” I gestured to my torso. Embarrassed, he pulled his foot back and stood up straight.
“Of course, just through these doors.” He gestured ahead. “If you’ll allow me—”
“Personal matters,” I repeated, holding up a hand.
He nodded. “There is a privy three rooms forward. Would you like me to call a lady’s maid?”
I hid my smile—Morwen had already given me all the assistance I needed. “That isn’t necessary.”
I glanced back only once to ensure the footman did not follow.
The walls of the privy room were covered in a mural of a hunting scene. It depicted only men, leaning forward from horseback in billowing robes. On one wall, a dead boar lay on its side, a spear stuck into its gut, blood pooling. The artist had used only one shade of paint for the blood. Death, they must have reasoned, being simple. I searched the mural, looking for flaws, a variation in the pattern. And there, in the back, I saw it, blended in, but noticeable if you knew to look: an outline of a door.
Morwen had explained that the inside of the palace was made up of a series of servants’ hallways, used by staff and royalty alike. Windowless corridors that ran alongside the rooms like veins that kept the palace supplied. The hidden panel swung inward easily.
The passageway was dark. Walls of rough, raw wood—in complete opposition to the pomp of the rooms it sat next to. There was little to see by, except for rectangles of light that came from doorways ahead and behind. I began to move down the hallway, just as Morwen had instructed. Some of the rectangles—the doorways—had voices on the other side. More often, they were silent. I picked up my pace; I could not be caught.
Morwen had said to follow the passageway all the way to its end, and take a set of stairs to the right. I was nearly to the stairs, I could make them out ahead, when I heard voices and a door swung inward,ahead of me. I sucked in air. I had no time to check. I reached for the nearest rectangle of light without any idea of what awaited me on the other side.
The room was empty.
I was not sure what I was after. Why was I taking such risks? Proof, perhaps. Something about the look in Rosie’s and Mathilde’s eyes.Information, I had told Morwen. But what does one do with information? Wield it? Trade it? I only knew I felt urged forward.
I looked around the bedchamber I stood in. A white sheet covered what appeared to be a desk and chair. The bed had a coverlet, but no pillows, and beneath the cover the mattress was bare. On the other side of the secret doorway, I could hear the voices—two chambermaids, it seemed—get closer.
Here, too, the shades were drawn on the east-facing windows. I pulled them aside to reveal a view of the enclosed garden I had seen from the ball. In daylight, I could see its outer wall was new. No vines grew upon its surface, and the stones had the flinty look of a recent quarrying. As I had noticed before, the wall was unbroken by gates or breaks or arches. Inside, there were roses. A series of fountains. A copse of trees. No people. The whole thing—well manicured, thoughtfully looked after—was empty. Inaccessible.
When the voices from the passageway had passed, I listened at the secret door for a moment longer, and, hearing nothing, pushed back into the inner hallway. I found the stairs at the end of the hall. Went down them, and through an archway, past a pile of mops and hazel brooms. From there I reversed directions and counted doors—rectangles of light—and came to a stop in front of the seventh.
The entry was locked from the exterior with an iron dead bolt.Icould open it—what lay beyond was what could not get out. But there were no ghouls or beasts or demons in this cage: If Morwen was right, inside, I’d find a pregnant woman.
With a scraping noise, the bolt loosened. I pushed through, intent on reaching Hemma.
I understood right away.
Elin’s malleable delicacy—her fainting, her weakness, her years of conditioning by the sweet maxims of her well-worn book—was appealing, certainly. The nature of a girl who could be cajoled to participate in a lifelong ruse. But she had been picked for her looks.
Hemma’s hair was as colorless as Elin’s. Icy, near-white tresses. She had the same pinkness around her eyes. Skin so pale it looked translucent. Even if the girl’s dress hadn’t belied an obvious swelling at her belly, I would have seen the truth of Morwen’s tale in an instant: The women looked too similar for the story to have been made up. The princess’s baby would look like Elin’s without raising any suspicion.
“It all makes more sense now,” I said, to myself, more than to Hemma, who was staring at me, the stranger who had burst into her room, with alarm. She had sprung to her feet when I came through, and held, still, the sampler she had been working on, the needle now brandished like a weapon.
“Who are you?” she demanded. Clutching the hoop in her other hand.
A part of me wanted to laugh. At the absurdity and intelligence of it. On Rosie’s behalf. After all my orchestrations—the market, the picnic, the damn broken chaise. Both of my birth daughters had sun-kissed skin and dark, abundant hair. Hair that flowed black. There was no amount of performance, no beauty, that could have passed this inevitable test. Otto had been right: For this task, they were wholly, undeniablynot suitable.
Something had loosened inside of me, some tightness I had been holding on to. The world unspooling. “I am Etheldreda.” I took a step toward her. “The stepmother of your future sister-in-law.”
My announcement did not relax Hemma. The hand that held the needle flipped and rested protectively in front of her belly, as if the splayed fingers might disguise its swelled form. “You should not be here.”
