Ash & Bramble (13 page)

Shoe grits his teeth. He's going to fail before he even gets started. “No, wait. I don't want to be your apprentice. I can
work. I'm a very good worker.” He puts every ounce of his honesty and sincerity into his words.

“Are you now?” the shoemaker says.

“He's very hungry, is what he is,” says a piping voice. An old woman, barely taller than she is wide, half the old man's height, hobbles into the room. She's wearing a brightly striped dress, an apron made of red flannel, and has a flowered kerchief tied under her chin. “Just look at him, Natters. A stomach on legs, this one. Hungry, I tell you, and he'll say anything to get a bit of food into himself!”

Stooping, Natters peers at Shoe. “He does look a bit peaked, Missus.”

Shoe's stomach gives a hopeless growl. “I'm not a beggar,” he insists. “I can clean the windows in front. You'll have better light in here for your work if I do.”

Natters and his Missus exchange a speaking glance. Shoe isn't sure what it says, but the Missus gives a decided nod.

“What's your name, young man?” she asks.

“Sh—” Shoe starts, then stops.

“Sh? What?” Natters says, cocking his head.

“Shoe,” Shoe says with a shrug. He can't think of any other name to give.

“That's a bad sign, Missus,” Natters says darkly.

“Hm. Maybe. Maybe not.” The Missus looks Shoe up and down with sharp eyes. “I expect you eat a lot of food.”

“I probably do, when I can get it,” Shoe answers.

“Hah!” The old woman gives a sudden gap-toothed grin. “He'll do, Natters. We'll just have to be careful.” She reaches up and grabs Shoe's arm. “Come along with me, skinnybones. You can have some dinner and then get to those windows, and then we'll see what happens.”

“P
ENELOPE, TEA,
”
MY STEPMAMA ORDERS.
S
HE AND MY
stepsisters are at the table eating tiny bites of toast and mushrooms. I am in the doorway, leaving the blue breakfast room after lugging the chafing dishes on trays from the kitchen. My feet hurt, and I have a blistered burn on my hand from picking up a boiling kettle, and I am tired after working until midnight polishing the silver. I woke before dawn, curled up on the kitchen hearth as close to the cooling embers as I could get for warmth.

“Now, Penelope!” Stepmama insists. “Tea!”

And it is all so . . . predictable. Stepmama playing the role assigned to her by Lady Faye, one she appears to relish very much, my stepsisters playing their roles not quite as convincingly, and me stuck in the middle of it.

Or so it would seem.

“I don't have to put up with this,” I tell her, and tuck the tray under my arm.

Stepmama rears back from the table. “What?” she sputters. “What did you say?” Dulcet has paused with her teacup halfway to her lips; Precious stares with her eyebrows raised.

“I don't have to stay here,” I say. “I may not have any money, but I'm not stupid, and I can certainly make my way in the world.”

Stepmama lurches to her feet, bumping the table; the teacups rattle in their saucers. “You cannot leave!” she gasps, and I see a flash of what might be fright cross her face.

“Why not?” I ask. Dulcet and Precious stare as if the possibility of leaving an unhappy home is something that has never even remotely occurred to them.

“Insolent!” Stepmama sputters. “How dare you?”

“It doesn't really take that much daring,” I answer, feeling very cool and collected in the face of Stepmama's outrage. She thinks things have to be a certain way, and I know that they don't.

With a shrug I leave the room, stride down the hallway, and let myself out of the front door.

The morning is bright with sunlight, the air chilly. I catch sight of the castle looming just a few streets over from Stepmama's house—no,
my
house—and a wide expanse of parkland lies across the way. I clatter down the stone steps to the road and cross it. I'll begin with a walk in the park
to gather my thoughts, and then I'll decide what to do. Fortunately, I've had breakfast, so I won't have to worry about eating for a while.

Swinging the silver tray, which I brought with me by mistake, I amble along the empty, neatly raked gravel paths in the park. Every blade of grass, I realize, is exactly the same length, without a single dandelion to be seen. It's a little unnerving. Even the bushes are trimmed into smooth green spheres. My stepmother's house is rather alarmingly clean, too. Now that I've been banished belowstairs, I can see how every maid and footman is poised to swoop down on a room whenever a member of the upper family leaves it, straightening pictures, whisking away traces of dust. It's no wonder they're such a twitchy lot, my stepmother's servants.

When the clock strikes, it freezes me in my tracks. The sound rolls and echoes through the park; I look up to see that the central tower of the castle has an enormous clock set in it. It strikes nine times, each stroke a booming roar. As its echoes die away, it leaves a shuddering silence behind it. I imagine that I can hear, even from this far away, the gears of the clock turning as the long minute hand ticks into place.

Now I start seeing other people walking about, ladies in fine dresses, and men in suits, and primly dressed nannies pushing prams full of babies. Perfect, all of it. They stare as I go past in my shabby, ash-smudged black dress, carrying my tray. I am horribly out of place, a blot on the morning. No matter. I walk for a long time, until the clock strikes ten.

Strangely, by the time the last strike echoes over the city, the other walkers have left the park. It is as if they have one hour allotted for walking, and then they must go and do other things.

With a shrug, I go on my way. I am rounding a corner when two burly men wearing light-blue, lace-trimmed uniforms appear on the path before me. For some reason, seeing them makes my heart speed up. I whirl and start back the other way, and two more blue-liveried men appear. They are all wearing white wigs—they are footmen, somebody's servants. I stop. They crunch toward me on the gravel path, two before me, two behind.

“Come with us, if you please, miss,” one of the men says.

I grip my tray tightly. It's not much of a weapon, but it's something. “And if I don't want to?”

“You
do
want to,” the man insists.

From behind, iron-hard hands grip my elbows. I glance down. One of the hands is strangely hairy, the nails long and curved. As much a paw as a hand. Shuddering, I try to pull away, but he holds me tightly. “Lady Faye will have a word with you, miss,” says the footman in a gruff voice. “If you will just come this way.”

It's four against one, which means that I don't really have a choice, even with my tray. The footmen bring me to the grandest of all the grand houses along the park, the one closest to the castle that crowns the city.

“Lady Faye lives here?” I ask. “I thought she'd be living in the castle.”

“No, miss,” one of the footmen responds. “It's the prince who lives in the castle.”

Of course. It hasn't even occurred to me until now that the city has a prince.

The footmen hustle me up the wide white stairs and inside the double front doors, and down a marble-paved hallway to a sitting room encrusted with gold.

Lady Faye is there. She is wearing a silver-blue gown that matches her eyes. “Ah, Penelope,” she says, and smiles as if I have done something particularly clever.

A chill prickles up my spine. I suddenly feel as if I haven't done something clever at all, but unbearably stupid.

“Have you run away from home?” Lady Faye asks.

I glance toward the door. Two of her footmen are stationed there. “I'd hardly call it a home,” I say.

“Oh, are they treating you badly?” Lady Faye asks with false concern. “Have they made you sleep in the cinders yet?”

I stare blankly at her. Something is going on. I can almost hear it, like giant wheels grinding into motion. The itchy feeling comes back. “I'm not supposed to be here,” I say to myself.

“Yes you are.” Lady Faye rises gracefully from her chair and glides toward me. “The more you struggle, you silly girl,” she says, reaching out to touch a cold finger to my forehead, “the more tightly you'll be entangled. Now,” she adds, “I
would like you to meet some people. Dear friends of mine. I want you to think of them as an example.”

The room is empty except for us. As I'm thinking this, the footmen turn smartly to the drawing room doors and swing them open.

“Good morning, my dear ones!” Lady Faye sweeps forward to meet the two people entering the room.

The couple—a handsome man with a neat mustache and a young woman wearing a blue visiting dress and a fashionable hat covered with feathers and lace—step into the room. They are both smiling.

“Lady Faye,” the man says with a precise bow. He hands his hat and gloves to a footman. Then he takes his wife's arm again. The woman stands still. With an impatient jerk, the man pulls on her arm, and she turns her head and nods, then hands her parasol to the footman. She continues to smile, her blue eyes wide, like a doll's.

“Lord Meister, Lady Meister,” Lady Faye says, “may I present Lady Penelope, a dear friend of mine.”

I stare at them. The couple bow and curtsy and, still smiling, perch on one of Lady Faye's couches, which is upholstered in blue velvet. Lady Meister reaches a hand toward her head; her husband intercepts it and pulls it down to her lap again.

“Won't you join us?” Lady Faye asks me, sitting in her chair. “I shall ring for tea.”

I shake my head. I'm frightened, and I don't know why. Something is wrong here.

“Lovely weather we're having,” Lord Meister says. “Don't you agree, my dear wife?”

Lady Meister doesn't answer, she just keeps smiling. She reaches for her head, and again her husband pulls her hand away.

I can't look away from her smile. Then my breath catches. She is looking at me, too, straight into my eyes. As her husband's voice drones on, her smile doesn't waver.

A smile, I realize, is a horrible thing if it's held for too long.

“Excuse us just a moment, will you?” Lady Faye says brightly. Lord Meister gets up from the sofa and takes her hand, assisting her to her feet. “We would like a few words in private. Will you entertain each other while we step into the hall?”

Lady Meister doesn't answer, so I nod for both of us. Lord Meister and Lady Faye exit the drawing room.

I sit down on the couch, setting the silver tray on the floor at my feet. The polite thing to do would be to converse with Lady Meister about something inconsequential. The weather. The latest fashions. Her pretty blue parasol. I have absolutely no interest in those things, however. And Lady Meister, apparently, has no conversation. She just stares straight ahead with her doll-like blue eyes, and smiles her wide, fixed smile. Then she reaches up with her hand and plucks a long hair from her scalp. Carefully she wraps it around the end of her forefinger, making a little round nest, and then drops it to the floor. Still
smiling, she reaches up and plucks another hair.

Her head, I realize with a shudder, is covered with bald patches, only partly hidden by her hat. As I watch, she pulls out another hair, then another. A pile of tiny hair-nests grows on the carpet by her foot. She doesn't blink at all. After a few long, silent minutes, I lean forward to speak in a low voice. “Are you all right, Lady Meister?”

Her head turns and her wide eyes lock onto mine. Her smile doesn't falter. She is very beautiful, and elegantly dressed, but she is not all right. I can see it in her ravaged scalp, in every taut line of her body, and in the rigidity of her face.

When she speaks, it is through the gritted teeth of her horrible smile, and her voice has the muted shriek of straining gears. “Help me,” she grinds out. “Help me, help me, please help me.”

My heart pounds. I lean forward and touch her knee, rigid under the soft folds of her silk dress. “How?” I ask. “What can I do?”

“Kill me,” she pleads. “Let me die.” Her eyes are desperate, but she is still smiling. In the silence, the only sound is her harsh breathing.

“I—” I begin, but I'm interrupted by the deep boom that rolls out from the castle clock striking the half hour.

A moment later, the drawing room door swings open.

Lady Meister's gaze is wrenched away from mine and she lurches to her feet like a puppet pulled by strings. Her
husband hurries to her side. “Ah, look at the time,” he babbles. He glances at the floor, no doubt seeing his wife's hair on the carpet. But he doesn't react.

I step closer to him, daring to reach out to grasp his coat sleeve. “What is the matter with her?” I whisper, too softly for Lady Faye to hear me.

For just a second, his eyes flash terror, and he flinches away. “Nothing, nothing, it's nothing,” he mutters.

So he's just as desperate as his wife is; he's just better at hiding it. My hands clench. I can't help them; there's nothing I can do.

“We must be on our way.” Lord Meister takes his gloves and hat from the footman who has appeared at his elbow. He puts his wife's parasol into her limp hands. She drops it, and he picks it up and shoves it into her hands again. “Come along, my dear,” he says, with a stiff nod to me. They go out the door.

I pick up my tray from the floor and get to my feet.

“Lovely couple, aren't they?” Lady Faye asks, coming to stand at my side, all glittering perfection.

I shake my head. “You said they were an example.”

Lady Faye gives me a chilly smile. “I believe I mentioned what happens to those who struggle, didn't I?” Without waiting for me to answer, she goes on. “Certain things are inevitable, Lady Penelope. If you simply accept that, you will find much happiness in your future.”

I open my mouth to argue when Lady Faye reaches over
to tap the silver tray that I am holding. “Did you steal that from your stepmother's house?”

“What?” I start to say, still seeing Lady Meister's ravaged smile. “No, I—I mean, I didn't steal it.”

“Oh dear.” She shakes her head with mock sadness. “I am afraid she's going to be very unhappy with you.”

L
ADY
F
AYE IS
right. When the blue-jacketed footmen deposit me on Stepmama's doorstep, she hustles me upstairs, where she shoves me into a tiny attic room. The door locks behind me.

“And here you shall stay, Penelope,” says Stepmama's muffled voice from the other side of the door, “until you mend your manners!”

Her footsteps fade away.

I take a deep breath and look around. A narrow bed with a thin mattress on it, but no sheets or blankets, is pushed against one wall. I stoop to peer underneath, and sure enough, there is a cracked chamber pot. High on the other wall is a narrow window; its panes are broken, and chilly air blows in from outside. On the third wall is the door, and on the fourth is a low hearth choked with ash, but no fire.

For a long time I pace, angry, and that keeps me warm. This is
my
house, I think, and Stepmama has no right to treat me like this, and
how
could I have been stupid enough to get tangled up with Lady Faye, who is, I am realizing, a lot more dangerous than she appears. She is like a knife. So far, I've
only seen the lace-edged, blue-velvet sheath, but it's hiding wickedly sharp steel, of that I am sure. I don't know why she introduced me to Lady Meister. She was making some kind of point, and a warning, but I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing about it.