Eighty-Four
Beau looked across from the cliff’s edge to the castle, unable to believe what his eyes were telling him.
The bridge, the one he and Arabella had built together, was gone. The only evidence that it had ever existed was a few planks floating on the half-frozen surface of the moat.
He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted. Once. Twice. But no one came. He stamped his feet, then hugged himself hard, trying to bring warmth back into his body. His clothing was frozen stiff. He couldn’t feel his feet. After he’d fallen into the creek, he had trudged through the woods for hours. It had taken all his will, and every last bit of his strength, to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Mercifully, the snow had stopped, but the sun was going down. If he didn’t get inside, and quickly, he would die.
“Valmont!” he bellowed. “Percival? Can anybody hear me?”
He saw movement inside the gatehouse and laughed out loud with relief. Someone was coming. Someone would help him. Thank God. But then a man walked out of the shadows and stopped at the edge of the threshold, and Beau’s laughter died.
It was the clockmaker, in his black frock coat. He seemed impervious to the lethal cold and stood silently and solemnly, framed by the archway. He was joined by the ladies of the court. They made a gallery of the grotesque, with their grim, triumphant smiles and their garish finery. Each one looked as if she’d dressed for a ball. Espidra stood at the clockmaker’s right side, regal in gray silk. She held a lantern in one hand. The many diamonds she wore glittered in its light.
Beau hated the idea of being among them again, but he had no choice. “Get Valmont! Get Florian and Henri!”
He had no idea how to get across the moat, but he hoped they could figure something out. Maybe they could throw an old door into the water and shove it toward him with a pole and he could use it as a raft. Maybe they could somehow catapult a length of rope to him. Together, they would think of something.
“Go! Hurry!” he urged the courtiers.
But no one made any move to help him. And he soon saw that no one would.
“No,” he said, stunned by disbelief. “You can’t just leave me out here.You can’t.”
One by one, Arabella’s court turned and disappeared back into the shadows. The clockmaker gazed at Beau a moment longer, and then he, too, left.
“No, wait … wait. Clockmaker, stop! You have no right! Who are you to doom Arabella? To leave me here to die? Who the hell are you?” Beau shouted at him.
There was a wrenching screech and then a window, high over the gatehouse, opened and a small head popped out. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? He’s DEATH, you blockhead!”
A child was hanging out the window. Beau squinted at her through the gloom.
“Faith?”he shouted.
Another head popped out next to hers.
“Where’s Arabella? Get her! Hurry!” Beau shouted at the two sisters.
“Beau … Arabella is dying,” Hope said.
A hole opened up in Beau’s heart. He felt himself caving inward, falling through it.
“No!” he cried. He pounded the heels of his hands against his forehead, trying to think. There had to be a way to get to her. There had to be.
“We have to go,” Hope shouted. “They’re hunting us. We have to keep moving. Do something, Beau! Use the vines! The chain!”
And then they were gone. Had they been cornered by members of the court? The clockmaker? Beau had no way of knowing. All he knew was that if he was going to get into the castle, he was going to have to do it himself. But how?
The vines … the chain … Hope had shouted. His eyes scanned the wall above the moat. A length of chain was trailing down from an iron ring near the gatehouse arch. His eyes dropped to the thick, ugly vines growing out of the murky water and up the stone wall. He remembered tangling his feet in them when he’d climbed down the wall to rescue Arabella. They snaked off in all different directions; a few, twined together, stopped only feet away from the chain.
Beau knew what he had to do.
He took a deep breath.
And jumped.