A sense of benefits received naturally inspires a grateful disposition, with a desire of making suitable returns.
J. Bulcock, The Duties of a Lady’s Maid
‘Miss, Miss! Wake up!’
Pattern was assaulted by another odour, but this time she recognized the ammonia sharpness of sal volatile. Dilys had found the bottle of smelling salts in her pocket and was shoving it vigorously against Pattern’s nostrils.
‘Thank you . . . I am . . . I am recovered,’ she managed to say. She was slumped on a landing in the back stairs, and her head ached horribly. It took a moment for her to recollect what had brought her there. Her eyes widened in alarm as everything came rushing back, and she struggled to sit up. ‘The Grand Duchess!’
‘Hush now, and rest a while. You’ve had quite an ordeal.’ Dilys’s work-roughened hand patted hers. Franz the coachman regarded her anxiously from the corner. No one else could be seen in the dingy stairwell or passageway.
‘How long have I been unconscious?’
‘I don’t rightly know,’ Dilys replied. ‘I fear it took a while for us to find you. I’d been coming up these stairs, you see, when I was nearly knocked off my feet by the Prince’s valet. He had a more than usually shifty look about him and he rushed off without a word, your sewing basket under his arm. Very odd, it was. But the castle was in uproar after Prince Leopold and the Grand Duchess’s announcement, and nobody knew which way was up . . . I thought that at such a time you would wish to be near to your mistress and that p’raps you hadn’t yet heard the news. So I went to your chamber and then hers to look for you. Then I came back down here and my eye was caught by that pearl brooch, the one Her Highness gave you, lying right outside the storeroom – here it is, look, though the pin is sadly bent. Well, I tried the door and found that it was locked, which it never was before, and I knew in my bones something was amiss. That’s when I fetched Franz to break down the lock. Oh, we had such a fright when we saw you there, bound and gagged, and limp as the dead!’
Franz looked grim. ‘You had a lucky escape. In all the confusion it could have been hours – days – before anyone found you.’
‘I’m sure you’re right. Thank you,’ said Pattern distractedly. ‘But tell me. Eleri – Her Highness – what –’
‘It’s a terrible business.’ Dilys could not meet her eye. ‘But if she’s the only thing that stands between us and Elffin’s Bane . . .’
‘It is not what you think. The dragon does not . . .’ Pattern paused. She had been about to say that it did not exist, but of course this was not true. ‘The dragon attacks have been manufactured. By ordinary men, not monsters. It is a plot to usurp the Grand Duchess’s throne, and I have the proof. At least . . . I did have it. Mr Madoc stole it from me, and imprisoned me in that cupboard to prevent me from exposing his master.’
Madoc had only ever pretended to betray Prince Leopold. When he recognized Pattern and Eleri in the pottery, and realized how much they must know, his agile mind had contrived a way of delaying them from further action, so that the Prince’s ambush would take his victim entirely unawares. Something must have been slipped into the Grand Duchess’s drink to numb her sensibilities; Pattern was not the only servant skilled in the use of such drugs. But she remained puzzled as to why Madoc had put himself between the Grand Duchess and the foreman’s gun. Surely it would have been simpler for all concerned if Eleri had died by misadventure in the pottery? Could the Prince have another reason to continue with the dragon charade?
Pattern got to her feet. ‘Where have they taken my mistress?’
‘Up . . . up to the mountain,’ Dilys faltered. ‘Most everyone here has gone to escort her. Though she was close to fainting, she went quietly. Willingly, we thought . . . You might be able to see the last of the procession from the window.’
Pattern needed no more instruction. She rushed down towards the ballroom. The castle felt emptier than ever. There were no footmen idling by, no courtiers drifting through the echoing halls. Only the ticking of the clocks broke the silence. It was if the inhabitants had fled from some disaster: chairs were overturned, a tray of champagne saucers were scattered over the sodden carpet, a single dancing slipper lay, like Cinderella’s, abandoned on the stairs.
In the white-panelled dining room, a feast was laid out for guests who would never come. The tables were wreathed in flowers and loaded with syllabubs, jellies and custards; turtle soup and oysters, gammon and roast veal. Sugar-paste sculptures of temples and triumphal arches shimmered frostily among the silver-gilt and porcelain.
Two half-starved kitchen maids were huddled in a corner, stuffing their mouths with candied plums and pigeon pie. A steward was quietly pocketing a fistful of silver spoons. Pattern ignored them all. She flung herself through the French doors and on to the balcony that ran the length of the room.
The moon was full but the balcony entirely dark, for the castle rose like a cliff above, cloaking it in shadow. Far below, a few fairy lights twinkled. And far ahead, across the wide lawns, deep in the woodland at the base of the mountains, was the quavering glow of torches.
She remembered Eleri’s words:
Do you know what happens to princesses who are fed to the dragon? They are dressed all in white and led in solemn procession to a patch of wasteland, high in the mountains. And there they are chained to a rock, and left for the dragon to tear them to pieces . . .
Pattern doubted that Prince Leopold was a cold-blooded killer; in this respect, Madoc had probably spoken the truth. But what a fate, for Eleri to spend her whole life locked away in a lunatic asylum!
The Grand Duchess was reckless sometimes, hot-tempered too, yet always quick to acknowledge when she was wrong. For all the isolation of her status and upbringing, she was generous and warm-hearted – a Princess who had reached out in friendship to a servant girl. Pattern gripped the little pearl brooch all the harder. She was sure Eleri had the makings of a kind and wise ruler, if she was allowed to be. How frightened she must be now, how alone . . . And Pattern, who never cried, not since she was a baby, felt her cheek grow wet with tears.
Brusquely she dashed them away. This was not the time to indulge in weeping. She turned to where Dilys waited in the shadows, Franz by her side.
‘So why aren’t you part of the procession? Is it not one of Elffinberg’s proudest traditions?’
‘We’re told the ritual is a holy thing,’ Dilys replied hesitantly. ‘A solemn pact between the people and the Crown. It is supposed to bind us together. But I’ve no stomach for it.’
‘That’s right.’ Franz’s jaw was set. ‘They’re a gang of ghouls, those folk who’d march Her Highness to her death. The same vultures who flock to public hangings.’
Pattern remembered the children’s game of dragon-taming in the town gardens, and the girl who had played the Princess. How still and severe she had been, alone on her bench.
‘What happens when they reach the mountain?’
‘The Princess and her nearest male relation go on to the place of sacrifice alone,’ Dilys explained. ‘It’s forbidden for others to accompany them. There she will say her prayers, and be chained to the rock. And then she is left to her fate. The dragon always comes at dawn.’
‘And the rest of the gathering?’
‘They keep a vigil at the mountain’s base.’
Pattern took a deep breath. ‘I must go to her. I must stop this. Franz, will you take me?’
Dilys twisted her hands. ‘There’s a curse upon those who try and disrupt the ritual. It’s against all the laws.’
‘This ritual is false. Elffinberg is the victim of an elaborate fraud. The damage wreaked on the country has not been done by a dragon, but by Prince Leopold and his friends. You must believe me, and help prevent a very dreadful crime.’
Quickly Pattern related what she had found at Caer Grunwald, and the discoveries of the porcelain manufactory. Every second’s delay brought Eleri closer to her doom, but she knew her story must be a convincing one.
‘Gunpowder and fireworks!’ exclaimed Dilys at the end. ‘Chinese potters! And those poor, dear captive children! How my blood boils to think of it.’ She shook her head. ‘I never cared for the Prince, but who’d have guessed he was such a fiend?’
‘He’s played us all for fools.’ Franz snapped off a piece of sugar-paste temple and chomped on it disgustedly. ‘And that’s what we are, I suppose, for swallowing such lies and never questioning our masters.’
‘So you’ll take me to the place of sacrifice?’
He exchanged glances with Dilys. ‘We’ll do whatever you want. I reckon it was a good day for Elffinberg when you came home.’
Elffinberg? Her homeland? How strange to think of it at such a time! Yet until recently, Pattern would have thought it incredible to have made even one friend in the Duchy. Now she had three – and she intended to fight for them.