“We’re here,” says the old driver, lifting the lid of the coffin.
As she sits up, Isbe can tell that they have pulled off the side of the road into the shadow of some pine trees, hopefully hidden from any passersby. Not that there are any. They seem to be in the middle of nowhere. Isbe shivers. They haven’t heard a passing cart or rider in many hours. But they have safely crossed the border into Deluce, even if they are in the most remote part of the kingdom.
They have been traveling the river road for several days. At one point they drove right through a village where a riot had broken out after pro-LaMorte mercenaries showed up and demanded recruits, on pain of death. Isbe had practically held her breath until they’d cleared the area, and barely exhaled until they reached the land bridge connecting Aubin and Deluce through the small, neutral territory of Corraine.
Even here, there’s been little reprieve from the murmurings of Malfleur’s rise. They say she hears everything. They say her defectors have been found stabbed in their beds.
William helps Isbe out of the hearse, and as her shoes touch the dewy grass, her legs wobble, leaden and numb.
“This is Isolé, where I leave you,” the driver says hurriedly. The waver in his voice betrays his regret in having aided in their secret plan. He is gone almost before the prince has a chance to slide a purse of coins into his hand with a quiet clink.
“What does it look like?” Isbe asks.
William takes her shoulders and turns her. “Up a hill,” he says. “Surrounded by a high stone wall and rows of cypress.”
Isbe has always imagined cypress trees like thick furry soldiers, stiff and orderly.
“The sky is a wash of variegated white fog,” the prince goes on, his voice moving closer to her ear, “like cows’ milk once it has begun to separate. Still, you can see the sun just about to set through the tops of the stone archways in the cloister, and—”
“William,” Isbe says. “I didn’t realize you could be so . . . descriptive.”
“You don’t realize very much about me at all, Isabelle.” There’s no note of sarcasm in his response. He is simply stating fact.
“Perhaps not.” She wants to reach out and read his facial expression with her hands, like she would with Gil or Aurora, but she refrains. She had asked him if she could do so before, and he had refused her, without saying why. Instead, she marches up the incline in the direction he has pointed her, clenching and opening her palms as she walks, left to imagine the high ridge of his cheekbones, his serious mouth.
Isolé. The desolate convent where the council had intended to deposit Isbe. She tries to imagine a life of seclusion: nursing the sick, giving alms to the poor, spending hours in silent prayer. It’s possible she never would have seen Aurora again—she’s sure that’s what the council wanted.
As she makes her way up the hill beside William, she hears women’s voices chanting—evening vespers, the last prayers before sundown. She hears something else too: the ding of metal on earth. Shovels, or pickaxes.
They enter through the cemetery, which smells of solemnity. Sage and skunk.
“Sisters,” the prince says in polite deference.
The dull metal clanging stops. They must be digging a grave, Isbe realizes. There are two or three of them at most.
“’Tis it you need?” one of the nuns asks. “Sick calls commence at seven in the morning.”
“We’re seeking temporary asylum here.”
There’s a silence, during which Isbe figures the nuns are taking in their appearance. She can hardly fathom her own, even in the clean cloak and traveling dress William procured for her. Her hair no longer comes down farther than her chin. She has gotten even skinnier in the past few weeks. She probably looks like a ghost. And William beside her, said to be both tall and handsome with the dark skin common of the Aubinians, must provide a stark contrast.
“Aren’t any free beds in the dorter,” one of them whispers, “and now’s not a good ti—”
“Hsst, Sister Katherine,” a second nun interrupts. Her voice is a thin hiss, and Isbe pictures the pointed face and sharp, pronged tongue of a snake. “It is not for us to say. Sister Agnes will summon Reverend Mother Hildegarde. She will make the decision about what to do with our visitors.”
“Yes, Sister Genevieve,” says a third, quieter than the other two. “Please,” she says to Isbe and William with a rabbitlike sniff, “follow me.”
They follow Sister Agnes through the graveyard, into the cloisters, and then into a building that the sister tells them is the calefactory. “Only warm spot in all of the convent,” she explains, stoking the big fire, whose heat sparks out, penetrating the entire space.
Isbe is grateful for the warmth as she and William sit down on a long, narrow bench beside the roaring flames while Sister Agnes leaves to find the prioress. She knows the calefactory is likely the only room other than the kitchen in which a fire is allowed. The sisters favor a life of deprivation.
As if responding to her thoughts, William mutters: “I’ve never understood the absolutism of religious practices. What sort of higher power would create fire in the first place, only to ask that his worshippers all but forego it?”
Isbe nods. “It sounds exactly like the kind of thing a selfish dictator would do—or one of the fae.”
“It would be both blasphemous and deeply unwise,” says a booming female voice behind them, “to compare our heavenly father to a corrupt faerie.”
“Reverend Mother,” William says, standing quickly.
Isbe follows suit. “We only meant that—”
“I don’t care what you meant, daughter. If history teaches us anything,” Mother Hildegarde says, “it’s that the intentions behind our statements matter far less than the way they’re interpreted.” Her presence is commanding; her voice fills the room, as pervasive as the heat of the flames. “Men have warred and died for centuries over the interpretation of a few words.”
“But of course,” William says with immaculate manners.
“In answer to your question,” the prioress continues, “I’d love to heat the dorter and refectory, but we can only afford the maintenance of a single fire. My women are too busy for chopping firewood.” Pride reverberates from her voice like the echo of an empty wine barrel. A woman nearly as wide as she is tall, Isbe guesses.
“Perhaps we may be of service to you, in exchange for shelter and protection from the elements,” the prince says. “We have a long journey ahead of us.”
“Here,” the prioress says, handing them each a bucket. “You may as well make yourselves useful while we talk. The water must be boiled and prepared for the laundry.”
Isbe can almost feel William tense in response to the demeaning task. Then again, the reverend mother doesn’t know he’s a prince. They take the buckets and place them on a rack over the flames. Sister Agnes returns with a cart full of dirty linens, and then the prioress dismisses her so that they are once again alone in the calefactory.
While William and Isbe awkwardly attempt to wash the clothes, the prioress questions them about where they’ve come from and where they’re going.
“Reverend Mother,” Isbe says, “we were driven from our village by supporters of Malfleur. We are traveling north to see my sister.” That part, at least, is true.
“Your sister?”
“She’s . . . she’s at the Delucian palace.” Again, it’s the truth, even if Isbe is gambling on the fact that the prioress will interpret her words to mean that her sister is employed by the palace, not its royal heir.
“You’re planning to head straight toward the sleeping sickness.”
“We don’t have any other options,” William replies.
“So will you house us tonight?” Isbe asks, feeling anxious as she wrings out a cloth. She wishes she could see the reverend mother’s face.
The prioress is quiet for a moment. Finally she answers. “Yes, but you must do me a favor.”
“Anything,” William quickly says. “We are happy to perform any other chores you may wish.”
“You must bring a message to the palace for me. The council has failed on a promise.”
“I’m sorry?” Isbe asks, confused.
“Sixteen years ago, when I was still chief minister to King Henri, he and I came to an agreement.”
Isbe stands there in astonished silence, a drenched sheet heavy and dripping from her raw hands. The prioress was once on the king’s council, and during Isbe’s lifetime? How did she not know this?
“Perhaps hard to believe now,” the prioress says, obviously in answer to Isbe’s stunned expression. “But at one time his highness had many female advisers.”
Her father had many female advisers? This is news to Isbe. She knows only that he had many mistresses. But quite a bit changed after her father married Queen Amélie and Aurora was born.
The prioress continues speaking. “I was to accept his bastard daughter upon the eve of the wedding of Princess Aurora, in exchange for a healthy sum to fund my orphanage. It was a fair enough arrangement, but years have gone by, the princess has succumbed to disease, the young woman I was expecting never arrived, nor did the money. Now our granary is empty, and we are up to twenty-four orphan girls here at the convent, all of them lacking proper winter clothing, food, and supplies. One of the girls, Josette, only six years old, is suffering from pneumonia. I fear she won’t live to see spring. Still, my requests have fallen on deaf—or should I say sleeping—ears. I ask only for what was promised me.”
Now Isbe’s mind reels. The king had promised to send his bastard daughter here. She is the bastard daughter. Isbe had no idea that the council had been intending not just to send her away, but to deliver much-needed finances to help the lives of orphans! She hadn’t even realized Isolé housed orphans at all.
Guilt prickles her throat and becomes a wrenching pain as she swallows it down into her gut. If she hadn’t run off with Gilbert, if she had instead followed through with the council’s plan for her, would these twenty-four orphans be better off? Would little Josette have a better chance of surviving?
She’s tempted to say something—to admit her identity, to claim responsibility, to vow, at least, that once the curse has been reversed, once Aurora is healthy and restored to power, Isbe will do everything she can to make sure Hildegarde gets the support she has sought from the palace.
But she knows she can’t say any of this. With royals dying and Malfleur on the rise, it simply isn’t safe to reveal her identity, even if she is merely a bastard. More importantly, she isn’t in any position to make hollow promises. She doesn’t know what will happen when she reaches her sister. If she reaches her . . .
She must be gawking, because the prince nudges her in the ribs with his elbow. “As you wish, Mother,” he says.
“Yes.” Isbe stumbles and turns her face down, hoping to disguise her discomfort. “As . . . as you wish.”
William is instructed to sleep alone in a tiny guest room off the scriptorium, which, it turns out, is really an impressive library. Isbe, on the other hand, is given a straw mat on the floor of the calefactory, alongside the orphan girls, who come flooding into the room silently after their supper, the hurried patter of their little shoes the only indication of their size and number. There’s not a single whisper or giggle among them. Isbe marvels at how well-behaved they are; it’s like a room full of young Auroras.
Though they’ve put out the fire for the night, the room is comparatively cozy, and Isbe is grateful to be crowded in on all sides by the warm bodies and soft snores of the girls.
But still she can’t sleep. When she tries, she dreams of Gil, of his hands holding her against the rocking rail of the ship, his body so close to hers, sheltering her from the worst of the freezing, violent wind, his kiss—so sudden, so unexplained . . . and then his name wants to dislodge itself from her chest and fly out, calling for him.
It’s not very late. The sisters all go to bed almost as soon as the sun sets and get up well before it rises for early prayer. Isbe lies there, trapped in the tomb of her dark thoughts. Every way she turns, there’s an invisible wall pushing in on her. She can’t get Mother Hildegarde’s voice out of her head. She can’t stop thinking about her father. How he banned all his mistresses from the royal court . . . around the same time that the prioress claims to have struck a deal with him.
Is it possible the prioress had been more than just an adviser to the king? The thought causes heat to boil in her stomach, bubbling up into Isbe’s head. Was Hildegarde one of her father’s mistresses?
And then the shadow of that question looms behind it: could Hildegarde in fact be . . . Isbe’s mother?
She tosses on her mat. The notion is staggering. It stands to reason that her mother, whoever she was, would have preferred her child to be raised in the palace, and why else would the chief minister have wanted her to be sent here once she was of age? What other value could a bastard half princess have for the reverend mother?
Something about it doesn’t feel right to Isbe, though. Hildegarde’s voice, she realizes, is not the one from her mother dreams. The voice that sings the rose lullaby to Isbe in her sleep is softer, sweeter, more wavering. Still, should she trust the hazy convictions of a dream over the logic of the facts? If there’s any chance the reverend mother is the same woman who birthed Isbe and left her all those years ago, she has to know. But she can’t simply ask Hildegarde without drawing suspicion.
Isbe sits up. She must investigate. She must discover the truth.
Carefully she extricates herself from the group of sleeping girls and slips out of the calefactory into the courtyard, where she stops, trying to get her bearings. She wants to start in the scriptorium. She will have to awaken William so he can assist in reading the stored scrolls and letters. If what Hildegarde says is true, then there must be correspondence between Isolé and the palace, and if that’s the case, then surely one of the letters might hint at the true nature of the prioress’s relationship to the king and maybe, even, to her.
The air echoing through the cloisters is crisp and cold. Wind whistles faintly through the dense needles of the cypresses, braiding threads of their woodsy odor across the dusk. On nights like this, Isbe is reminded that she’s inhaling the breath of ancient history, of those who lived and built civilizations and died out long ago . . . and this is the same air that will be breathed by the great unimaginable tribes of the future.
She once told Aurora that there is a scent of almostness. Well, there’s a scent of alwaysness too.
There will always be winters.
There will always be loneliness.
She moves quietly in the direction of the scriptorium, passing the refectory where they ate their meager supper of tough mutton and dry bread, and steps through a narrow stone doorway. She realizes this is not the scriptorium but the infirmary when the heavy herbal scent of medicine hits her nostrils. An older nun is snoring loudly in a corner, a sound like a wagon that has come off its wheel.
Isbe is about to duck out when she remembers something.
“Josette?” she whispers.
There’s a stirring. “Yes?” comes the voice of a young girl.
Isbe slowly makes her way toward that voice, careful not to bang into any of the other beds and awaken the snoring nun. She kneels down beside Josette’s bed and takes the girl’s hand. It is icy cold.
Josette coughs. “What is it? Are you one of the travelers?”
“I am,” Isbe tells her. She wants to say more, but she can’t tell her that it’s her fault the convent is owed money, that it might be her fault Josette hasn’t gotten better care.
“And are you really going all the way to the palace?” There’s awe in the girl’s voice.
“Yes.”
“But aren’t you afraid of the sickness? Or the evil faerie queen?” she whispers.
“I suppose I should be,” Isbe replies, realizing it’s true.
“You remind me of Mother Hildegarde,” Josette whispers.
Her words send a shiver down Isbe’s spine. “Tell me about her.”
“Reverend Mother knows about everything. She is said to have visions. I have seen her roll through fire and come away unburned.” Josette’s whispers get more excited with every detail. “She has stood in freezing water in the winter for hours and not caught even a chill. She sometimes goes away for days, and we discover she has been meditating all that time within a tomb under the ground.”
“What stories!” Isbe says with a smile.
“They aren’t stories. It is all true. There is something special about Mother Hildegarde. Like you.”
“There’s nothing special about me.”
“Yes,” Josette says simply. “There is. I heard Sister Agnes whispering that you arrived here in a hearse. Is it true? Have you come from . . .” The girl’s voice drops lower. “The other side?”
“No,” Isbe whispers, a mixture of laughter and sadness bubbling in her throat.
“Are you dead?”
“Not that I know of.”
Josette coughs again. “I’ve read stories of the dead coming back.”
“You know how to read?” Isbe asks, startled.
“Of course!” she cries, a little too loudly. Then, more quietly, she goes on. “Mother Hildegarde teaches all of us to read, and to write too. She is very . . . political.”
Isbe stifles a smile.
Josette doesn’t seem to notice. “Are you afraid to die?”
Isbe thinks for a minute. “I suppose I am. But I’m more afraid of all I have to do before then.”
“Me too,” Josette says.
“Then you’d better get your sleep.” She leans over and kisses Josette’s forehead.
“What was that for?” the girl asks.
“You remind me of someone too,” Isbe whispers.
William is not as easy to awaken. She has to physically shake him before he comes to with a startled intake of breath.
“I was dreaming,” he explains. “It was so real. I dreamed you had no sister, that you were the princess of Deluce but were pretending not to be. That you had invented the idea of the sleeping sickness as a cover so no one would find out you had fled the palace in search of adventure.”
Isbe doesn’t know what to say to that at first. “I assure you, I’m not clever enough to have invented any of it. It’s all too serious and all too real.”
“I realize that. It was only a dream,” William replies, though he seems to be saying so as much for his own benefit as for hers. “It’s just . . .”
“What?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
“No, tell me what you were going to say,” she presses.
“I can’t shake the feeling, Isabelle, that there’s something you haven’t told me.”
“You think I’m lying to you?” Isbe asks, truly surprised.
“Maybe not,” William answers. “I just have a sense that there’s more to you than I yet know.”
“Well, of course there is. We’ve only known each other a short time.”
They pause for a moment, their breath coming and going and neither one saying anything.
Then William grabs her hands. “I should have done this before, when you first asked me.” He guides her palms to his face.
The gesture is startling, but Isbe eagerly seizes the opportunity to scan his expression, to memorize his features, to fully take him in. Her fingers dance lightly across his full lips—much more pronounced than Gilbert’s. His eyes are big and widely spaced. He has a prominent forehead. A regal forehead. His skin is smooth . . . except for a slight scar along his jaw.
“Like I mentioned,” he whispers, by way of explanation, “my brothers weren’t very nice.”
They sit there in the unlit guest quarters, a room hardly larger than a closet, Isbe taking in what he has said, and not said.
Finally she breaks the silence. “You’re probably wondering why I woke you.”
She hurriedly explains that she needs him to scan through the convent’s stored documents, and to her relief, he readily agrees to help. “I won’t be falling back to sleep anytime soon anyway,” he says. She can’t help but wonder if it’s more than that—maybe he’s the one who longs to pretend he’s someone else. Maybe he’s the one who was looking for a reason to flee from his life in search of more.
They spend awhile carefully combing through stacks of correspondence in the scriptorium—a room that tickles her lips with the taste of dust and worn hides—but fail to find any letters from the Delucian court.
Isbe is beginning to feel frustrated. “Let’s try another tactic. Perhaps there’s something about Mother Hildegarde herself that we can dig up. About her past, before she came to Isolé.”
“What is it, exactly, that you’re hoping to uncover?” the prince asks.
“It’s like I told you. I have reason to believe the prioress knows secrets relating to the late king, my father. Secrets that she might decide to hold over the palace in the future.” It’s not a complete lie, but Isbe isn’t about to reveal the whole truth. The fact that she doesn’t know her own mother’s identity is humiliating and private. It doesn’t concern William in the slightest.
“Well, I’ve found something interesting. It doesn’t pertain to King Henri per se, though,” he says, handing her a piece of folded vellum.
“What does it say?”
“It’s a . . . well . . . a sort of medical—or metaphysical—analysis.”
“Of?”
“Of Mother Hildegarde.”
“Read it to me,” she demands, quickly biting her lip in an attempt to hold in her impatience.
William mutters to himself as he reads, sharing the highlights. “It seems a doctor was summoned to bear witness to the mother’s miraculous capabilities. Withstanding extreme circumstances, handling fire while exhibiting no bodily harm, fasting for many days without visible effect, that sort of thing.”
“And?”
“Well, it seems the doctor decided that the prioress displays an inability to experience pain. He concludes here that this is a viable explanation of the miracles . . . and that it’s also most likely she is barren.”
“Mother Hildegarde is barren? Are you sure?”
She hears William folding and unfolding the vellum. “I’m not sure of anything. I’m only reading to you what I see here. The doctor believed her to be incapable either of feeling pain or of bearing children, that’s what it says.”
“It’s true,” says someone from the doorway. It takes Isbe a second to place the asplike voice.
“Sister Genevieve.”
“Everyone knows Mother Hildegarde couldn’t have children of her own before she came here,” she says. Isbe has the impression that each of the nun’s statements is another fly lapped up by a forked tongue. “It’s one of the reasons she entered the fold and began taking in orphans. She was married once, before, you know.”
Isbe swallows. “We didn’t mean to pry, we were only . . .” But she can’t think of a proper excuse. She shifts her weight, wondering if the nun is going to report them to the reverend mother and have them thrown out into the cold.
Instead, Sister Genevieve says, “It’s all right. Visitors are often intensely curious about Mother Hildegarde. She is quite extraordinary. However, if you have any questions, you may ask them of her directly, during daylight hours.”
“We’re sorry to have disturbed you,” William says. “We didn’t think anyone would be awake at this hour,” he adds.
There is the briefest of pauses before Sister Genevieve replies. “I happened to have heard a noise and needed to check that an animal had not gotten into the granary. We’ve had a problem with rodents.” She clears her throat lightly. “It would be my pleasure to escort you back to your sleeping quarters now,” she says, calmly but firmly.
Isbe steps toward her, and Genevieve holds out her thin arm to guide her.
It’s only once Isbe is back among the sleeping orphans, lying on her mat and drifting off to sleep, that she pinpoints what has been bothering her since Sister Genevieve discovered her and William in the scriptorium. Certain oddities.
First, Genevieve had appeared silently, unaccompanied by the faint crackle of a lantern’s burning wick. Though perhaps that’s not so peculiar. Maybe the nuns are taught to conserve oil.
Second, she had claimed to be checking the granary for rats, but didn’t Mother Hildegarde explicitly say their granary was empty? Still, it’s possible the prioress had been exaggerating.
However, the third peculiarity is what has Isbe quite convinced that the sister, despite her divine oath of truth, was lying: the scent on the nun’s hands. They smelled like fresh dirt. Like rust. And like blood.