So she turned the corner, leaving the tapestry behind.
Yet another corridor was lined on both sides with spears, their tips reddened with ancient blood. Another was glutted with cats, fat-bellied tabbies with mauled ears who raised their hackles at her and hissed until Agnes retreated. Another was lined with birdcages, though thesecages held no birds, only feathers and crusted droppings. Did death lurk here, in their absence? Agnes felt increasingly fearful that she would be discovered, and she quickened her pace yet more.
The most curious corridor of all was one that was empty save for a glazed clay statue at the end, in the shape of a handsome youth with a collar around his throat. There was a crown askew on his head, and he was missing his hands. Agnes could not tell if they had been broken off, or if they had never been sculpted in the first place. The statue bore the cracks of age but had no coating of dust, suggesting it was visited and polished regularly.
The youth’s stare was so baleful that it made Agnes shudder. She turned away and hurried down another corridor, then immediately thought she should have examined this statue more closely, for perhaps it held a secret clue. It was surely the most enigmatic thing she had encountered on this treasonous journey. But when she tried to retrace her steps, she could not find it again.
At last, as a current carries a fish, a narrow corridor bore Agnes into the daylight. She blinked and raised a hand against the sudden brightness of the sun. The courtyard was rather compact, dusty, more scruff and yellow earth than growing leaves and reaching vines. It was not wild enough to look untamed; rather it appeared merely abandoned, the plants left to their own apathetic devices. Agnes fingered the stem of a dandelion, which curled upward from a spindly nest of goosegrass. So light a touch, and still the plant resisted her, releasing its seeds instantly. The white down scattered and then was carried away on a thin breeze.
Here, in this courtyard, she would commit treachery. Even in the sunlight, she felt cold; she glanced again and again over her shoulders, scanning the windows that looked down into the area from above, searching for watchful faces. And though she found none, she could not exorcise her fear. If she were caught, not even Marozia’s new status as princess would protect her.
But this was her task, as ever, and so Agnes knelt. With a cupped hand, she began to dig a small hole in the yellow, cracked earth. Thesoil did not come away easily. It burrowed up beneath her fingernails. She reached and reached, searching for the deeper place where she might find moisture, yet it was dry all the way down. Nothing would grow here. A dejected feeling started in the center of her chest and unfurled outward. It made her limbs feel leaden, and her head too heavy for her neck to hold aloft.
Once more she had failed. Agnes pressed the petals into her palm, feeling the bite of pain as her tender fingers flexed. She was mired in this gloomy mood when she heard someone call out her name.
“Lady Agnes?”
By now she recognized the sound of these syllables on the prince’s lips.
Yet when she did turn, Liuprand still found a way of surprising her. It was not his presence alone, which was unexpected, for why would the prince find himself in this neglected corner of Castle Crudele where even the plants only halfheartedly sought out the sun? Rather it was his aura, which ordinarily seemed so preeminently golden but was now somehow paler, reduced. His doublet was perhaps a shade closer to gray than to blue. His stride, always deliberate, was hesitant, as if he approached a creature he thought might startle and run at the very sight of him.
Agnes was no such creature. She rose, dusting off her skirts and brushing her palms clean. She was long past being afraid of him. In fact, when she lifted her gaze to meet his, she felt a bristle of defiance.
Liuprand held her gaze, but she did not miss the swallow ticking in his throat. “You always appear to me in the strangest places.”
Marozia had left their bed and he had risen alone. He must know that Marozia had told her of their failed consummation, of his cold refusal. Perhaps this was why he appeared slightly diminished. It was not only Marozia’s duty to please her husband, but his duty to furnish the realm with an heir. The fault and blame for this was always assumed to lie with the woman, if no one was any the wiser. But Agnes knew the truth of what had occurred in his bedchamber—or rather, what had not.
“Your cousin tells me you do not speak at all,” Liuprand said. “Not since you were a child. I had thought that maybe you spoke to her alone, where none else could hear. But she tells me this is not true.”
It was bold of him, Agnes thought, to mention Marozia. She also thought it was odd that she had been a point of conversation at all, in such close proximity to their marriage bed. Still, she did not understand the prince’s interest in her speech, or lack of it. Many others found it a mild curiosity, at first. But with time its novelty wore, and they abandoned their interest in her muteness, and usually in Lady Agnes altogether. If their interest did persist, it was only because they found the totality of her silence maddening. Yet never had Liuprand seemed angry.
“Is it fear?” he asked, quite baldly. “Do you think you will be punished if you speak?”
Agnes pressed her lips together. She shook her head.
“Are you afraid of what you will say, if you cajole your tongue to move?”
If Agnes did speak, she would have told Liuprand that he would tire of this guessing game long before he could defeat her silence.
“I would not think you weak, if you were afraid. We all armor ourselves against our fear the best we can.”
Agnes examined the prince’s beautiful face. She had not precisely grown accustomed to its beauty; it was more that she could now appreciate its subtleties and finesses, having had the opportunity to look upon him so closely all these times. She saw the faint cleft of his chin. She saw that his hair was not that pure dark gold, but in fact woven with strands of lighter flaxen, which caught the glare of the sun and held it. And she saw, with some alarm, the bruised circles under his eyes. They were not dreadfully deep, but she had never seen such a human-looking imperfection upon his face. If Marozia had slept uneasily, it seemed as though he had not slept at all.
There was a shifty, slippery feeling in her belly. It occurred to her that perhaps Marozia had not told her the whole truth of what had occurred in that bedchamber. But her cousin had never lied to her before. Why would she begin now?
Liuprand then said, “Will you come with me?”
Agnes stiffened. She still had the roots and buds in her gown pocket and did not want to risk losing them, and with every moment they wilted and grew less liable to bloom when they were put into the earth. And what if—by some measure of misfortune—Liuprand discovered them? He was perceptive, and in their every meeting he watched her intently, almost overly so. Still she could not guess why the prince found her such an intriguing creature.
She also found herself unable to shake the indignation she felt on Marozia’s behalf—no matter the details, he had not deigned to lie with her; that much she knew Marozia would not fabricate.
But for all Liuprand’s lack of forcefulness now, he was still her prince. She could not outright refuse.
So Agnes merely nodded and allowed Liuprand to lead her through a white stone archway on the east side of the courtyard. There was a narrow dirt path shaded by vaulting olive trees, and the sun came warm and dappled through the branches.
A low rustling sound reached her ears, which she thought at first was the wind among the leaves, but the olive trees remained unruffled. It was only when the path ended and bore them both into the courtyard that Agnes could see the sound’s source: a great flurrying of a hundred pairs of wings.
It was a proper garden blooming with a riot of colors, almost too garish to be real, as though it were a scene embroidered in a tapestry. Roses turned their bright-pink faces to the sun. Hydrangeas clambered up their lattices, their flowers blooming between the plaits of wood in great, round bunches the size of beehives. The tendrils of willow branches waved in the breeze, and pear trees scattered their white petals through the air like flurries of snow.
