The old lady fixes me breakfast. I wonder, at first, if I should eat it, but then I realize that if she wished to kill me now, she need not poison me. Indeed, she might easily have killed me already.
After breakfast, I dawdle about, clearing the dishes, looking out the window at the chestnut tree. Would that I could climb it, be free once more. Malvolia reproaches me. “I should have known not to expect much work from you.”
Considering that she intends to kill me, this seems only reasonable. But I finish the dishes, and then Malvolia begins the chore of teaching me to sew.
Breakfast was a silent meal, but afterward, as we are sitting together at the table, it occurs to me that I should use the diplomacy skills that were the work of years. After all, perhaps if I talk to her, she will begin to like me, rather than see me merely as a spoiled extension of my hated father. Then she may be less likely to kill me. At least, it is worth a try.
“You sew extremely well,” I say as she shows me how to fit the pieces together.
“I am not sewing, Princess. You are.”
“No, but I meant the dresses you made for me that day. Perhaps you do not remember it, for it was three hundred years ago, but they were the loveliest I had ever seen. Were they made with magic?”
She shakes her head. “Nay. Magic can sew a dress, but it cannot design one. To make a beautiful gown, one needs skill, not merely arts.” There is an unmistakable hint of pride in her voice.
“Well, you certainly have skill.” I have managed to thread the needle and am now attempting to make a knot in the thread. “I have none.”
“I was a seamstress by trade, before your father destroyed me.”
“My father?”
“Oh, drat!” The old woman looks past me to the window. “How have they found me?”
I turn, looking for what she is talking about. At first, I see nothing. Then, far off in the distance, I spy a man on horseback, then another. I recognize the shape of the larger one. It is Pleasant, one of the castle guards, the drunkard who watched Jack that night in the dungeon. They ride toward the cottage. I am saved! I am saved!
“They are coming for me!” I cry.
“Silence!”
And then, when I try to cry out again, I find that I cannot. My mouth will make no sound.
“And sit still.” As soon as she says it, I cannot move. “Much better. I do not know how they have found me. My location has been secret since before your birth. But they shall not thwart me.”
I know how they found out. Jack! Jack believed me, and he remembered—the highest hill in Euphrasia. Jack has contacted my father somehow. They are coming for me.
But they will not find me, for the old woman is now, with surprising strength for one over five hundred years old, dragging my stiff body across the room. She kicks aside a rag rug, and I see a trapdoor under it. She opens the door, and proceeds to pull me down the cellar stairs. The staircase is long and steep, and I fear there may be rats at the end of it. I suppose I should be happy that Malvolia at least drags me by the arms, lest my head bump against each step. But this is small comfort when rescue is so close.
Finally, we reach the bottom of the stairs. It is pitch-black, and Malvolia drags me to the corner, throwing a blanket atop my unmoving form.
“Rest, Princess,” she says.
Her footsteps move away, but I cannot see her. I can see the smallest bit through a hole in the blanket, and only when she reaches the top do I spy her face. She has changed into someone else, not Malvolia, not the old thing who displayed the dresses at the castle that day, either, but an entirely different old lady, a sweet and kindly looking one, one I have never seen before.
She shuts the trapdoor, and I am left in darkness.
I hear Malvolia walking around upstairs, maybe pulling the rug over the trapdoor or, perhaps, even enchanting the door itself. Then there is silence and blackness and nothing. I struggle to move, struggle to speak, but there is no way. Finally, I stop. Will I stay this way forever? Will she remove the spell after they leave? And what does it matter, if she intends to kill me, anyway?
Upstairs, I hear the two men enter.
“We have to search the house.” I recognize the voice of Pleasant.
“Oh, me!” A high-pitched old lady’s voice. “Must ye? I am afraid I have not cleaned too well.”
“King’s orders,” another voice—my father’s guard, Cuthbert, who is not renowned for his wit—says. “We shan’t be a minute, ma’am.”
“Ah, me. Can I get ye a cup of tea, gentlemen?”
“No, ma’am. We will just look around.”
I hear the two clumsy oafs walking about, overturning things, and all I can do is hope—just hope—that they will see the trapdoor.
“What is this about, then?” Malvolia asks.
“The king’s daughter,” Cuthbert says.
“The pretty one with the curse on her? How is she?”
“She’s disappeared, ma’am. The king believes it was the doing of the witch Malvolia.”
Malvolia laughs. “Do I look like the witch Malvolia, then? Were I a witch, I would be able to free meself from this rheumatism.”
Cuthbert laughs, too. “King’s orders. Is there a cellar here?”
“Nay. ’Tis only a small cottage, and I can barely keep that.”
“We must have a look around, nonetheless. The king requires it.”
I hear them walking toward the door. I am saved! I am saved—although possibly a mute paralytic for the rest of my life.
“Ye look parched,” Malvolia says. “Would ye not care for a wee bit of port?”
“We should not,” says Cuthbert, who is clearly the conscience keeper of the two.
“Should not, my arse,” Pleasant says. “’Twas a long ride and a hot day—and a fool’s errand if ye ask me. There is nothing here.”
“Indeed,” Malvolia says. “Nothing but an old lady offering a nice bit of port. Please join me, for I hate to drink alone.”
Something—a fly or even worse—crawls onto my cheek under the blanket. I wish to scream, to flail, but I can do nothing. It is as if I am already dead, and maggots are munching upon my face.
“Aye, we should have some,” Pleasant goes on. “There is naught to drink at the castle.”
Can the dead hear the living? I wonder. And, if so, would that be a comfort or a curse?
“True,” Cuthbert says.
And then I hear the clinking of a bottle and tankard and the scraping of chairs.
“Did you know,” Malvolia says, “that Malvolia was once employed at the castle?”
“Truly?” Pleasant says.
“I seem to remember hearing something of it,” Cuthbert says. “She was a seamstress. That was before this whole spindle business.”
Malvolia employed at the castle? How strange. And stranger still that my father never mentioned it to me.
The fly has left my nose and lit upon my hand. No, they are two separate flies.
“Do ye wish more?” Malvolia asks.
“You are too generous, ma’am.”
“Nay. I am grateful that you are out, protecting us all.”
I hear the clink of glass once again. I know how it will be. The wine will be poured and the bottle drained, and the guards will leave, saying they saw nothing. They will not return. And I—I shall spend the rest of my days (what few are left) sewing my dress and waiting for death.
Where is Jack?