12. Lope
12
Lope
In these gilded halls,
I am no more than a ghost,
Heard but never heeded;
A girl without a name.
I n the morning, Ofelia was summoned to breakfast with the king. I was not invited, but Ofelia steadfastly refused to be separated from me. The maids relented to her insistence that I join, and to my relief, they led us both out to the gardens.
We walked the gravel paths of the parterres, surrounded by swirling hedges and flowerbeds, until we were along the eastern facade of the palace. I was mid-stride when Ofelia gasped and caught my arm. My heart quickened, and I reached for the sword that wasn’t there as I followed her gaze.
The breath left my lungs.
Before us, sloping gently into the horizon, the grand canal glowed in the morning light like a road made of gold. Set between us and the canal was a large white-and-gold fountain spraying plumes of water into the air. A dreamy mist hovered over the gardens and made it such that the forests of linden trees looked almost like green mountains in the distance.
No etching could capture so marvelous a view. And yet here it was, hidden away from the rest of the kingdom for only the nobility to enjoy.
I longed to stand there for hours, simply gaping at the majesty of these gardens, but my moment of peace was interrupted when the king called out for Ofelia.
He was in the same parterre, not far from where we stood. He sat at a small table covered in plates of fruit and pastries. Immediately, I glanced at his shadow—but today, a maid held a parasol over his head while he ate. There was only the silhouette of the table, the girl, and the parasol cast onto the gravel.
“Dearest!” cried the king as we approached. He rose to his feet to take Ofelia’s hand. “Good morning. Did you sleep well?”
“Everything is perfect,” she assured him softly.
Her new room was even more ostentatious than the last. A beautiful washroom with a marble tub, a large bed with a dozen down pillows, a daybed hidden behind curtains stitched with golden lilies, and a view directly into the marvelous gardens.
King Léo’s eyes snapped to mine, as sudden and arresting as a clap of thunder. I’d never looked into the face of a king before. The illustrations I’d seen in books and the etching of his profile on our coins—they were nothing like this. He did not look like any human man I knew. The angles of his face were too sharp. His eyes were too piercing. His hair was the color of spider silk, silvery and strange, nothing like the white hair of the aged governess who’d raised me at the orphanage. Even his smile was wrong, like he knew some joke, some secret, that I did not.
This was the man the gods had chosen?
“Mademoiselle,” he said, slick as oil, “you’ve brought me my daughter as requested. You are dismissed.”
I stood, rooted to the spot, and Ofelia stepped between us, reaching back to cling to my hand. “No! No, this is Lope. My closest friend, my confidante, my guard—she is to remain at my side.”
The king brought a blue porcelain teacup to his lips, his expression almost bored. “From which family do you hail, Mademoiselle Lope?”
He asked that question, but I knew he meant another: You aren’t nobility, are you?
“I am one of the children who was trained to hunt Shadows—”
The king hushed me. I’d forgotten. He preferred to pretend the Shadows didn’t exist. Even though I still bore a barely healed gash down the side of my face. Even though I had lived my entire life with the sole purpose of fighting them.
“I was trained to hunt beasts since I was small,” I amended slowly. “A necessity, as our soldiers were—and remain—in other lands.”
His Majesty set aside his tea, meeting me with a gaze that, I supposed, was meant to be warm. Something about him, about all of this, taking tea in this beautiful garden while monsters roamed just outside, made the hairs on the back of my neck rise.
“So you’re an orphan,” he said. “You’ve no peerage.”
I stood steady against the blow I knew he had meant to inflict. I had heard it before: my accomplishments meant nothing. I was not born into one of the families that a king favored a thousand years ago. One of those great, gods-blessed families, like Ofelia’s.
“No, sire,” I replied, smiling as the courtiers did here, false as fool’s gold. “I’m just a girl.”
“Then why do you keep company with my daughter?”
This blow rang true, cutting me to the quick. This man was decidedly my enemy. But he spoke the truth. Who was I, a servant, to be clinging so to her mistress? To be so besotted?
“Father,” interrupted Ofelia, her voice firm but upset, “Lope brought me safely to Le Chateau, despite the danger. Where I go, she will also go. You cannot deprive me of my mother and then deprive me of my companion!” She stopped her tirade just as her voice was growing more and more tearful.
The king waved at me. “Stand guard, then.” He reached out a hand, and Ofelia carefully took it, sitting down beside him at the breakfast table. At his glare, I reluctantly stepped back a few paces, but kept Ofelia steadily in my view.
From his breast pocket, he procured an envelope for Ofelia. “You see?” he asked. “I do not wish to deprive you of your mother.”
She gasped and tore it open. A tiny, pink seashell dropped onto her lap. She examined it, smiling, and then eagerly read the note. After a few seconds, a soft little sob burst forth. I ached, my fingers instinctually reaching for the handkerchief tucked in my pocket—but the king had already given her one.
“I told you she was at Lantanas,” he said. “Why do you not believe me?”
Ofelia hunched over in her seat, her head bowed. “I—I just want to see her now. I want to embrace her again.”
He held her hand in his. “You will, very soon. I know it is difficult being apart, but you must wait for her, as she says.” Even from afar, his smile looked false to me. “I waited seventeen years to meet you.”
She laughed, small and half-hearted.
“There’s something else I’d like to show you,” he said.
He lifted something over his head, something that glinted when the light hit it at just the right angle. Ofelia gasped, reaching out for it.
“Mother’s locket!” she exclaimed, clicking it open.
My heart skipped. The ledger and now the locket. Had Her Ladyship really been here?
“She let me keep it while she is away,” said the king. “This painting—this was the first time I ever saw your face. I know you’ve changed a lot, but... for a moment I could imagine it, if you had been raised at the palace. Your little footsteps scurrying through the hallways.”
“Mother didn’t let me run indoors at home,” she said with a smile, and I remembered the last incident well—when she’d asked me to chase her around the manor, and she’d then run face-first into a wall. Apart from some blood and some bruising, she was all right, but Her Ladyship and I were mortified. It was only due to Ofelia’s begging that I was allowed to enter the house again.
Soon, the king and Ofelia were eating together, chatting away about the past. About Ofelia’s mother and her life at Le Chateau. About the king and all he wished for Ofelia.
One thing was plain: he intended for her to stay.
Night fell, and a great feast was held to celebrate Ofelia. In this strange palace, royal dinner was a strange affair, too. The king sat at a table with Ofelia at his side. The table overflowed with food, roasted pheasant, warm bread, bountiful vegetables, sugared fruits, wines, and cheeses from all over the kingdom. But no one else sat at the table. Instead, the courtiers watched the supper, quietly speaking to one another and ogling the table and their hosts as a quartet accompanied the affair.
Occasionally, as she spoke to her father, Ofelia would look at me, would point to me—but the king would always touch her hand and redirect her attention.
Unlike the nobility, I did not find enjoyment in watching the king eat.
It was suddenly too much. The smells. The sounds. The bodies of strangers pressed so close to me. The distance of Ofelia. I slipped out of the king’s private dining chamber and into the corridor. All I needed was space. Just for a moment.
At night, the corridors were an odd dusky blue. It felt like I was walking through a dark sky. Instead of stars, candles floated in the shadows every now and again. I approached one of these lights—a tangle of candle flames.
It was a candelabrum in the shape of a woman, painted gold, her arms and her fingers molding and transforming into the candlesticks that bore the flames. The candles were decorated in crystals, and the woman’s face was still and serene. Happy to be a decoration in the king’s hallowed halls.
I tore my gaze away from the display, bile rising in my stomach.
The farther I walked, the more I glanced out the windows. The garden was so dim, lit only by a few torches. Each flickering flame was a potential Shadow. And something told me that even if I hadn’t seen them, even if the king ignored them, there were Shadows roaming those allées.
If this palace was to be Ofelia’s home, and my own, for the near future, I wanted to know it better than my own heartbeat.
I plunged deeper into the dark halls, passing paintings that looked faceless in the shadows of the night. When I found a small, simple candelabrum, sitting on a table, I lifted it up, using it to light my path.
The first thing illuminated was the painting above me. It was of a man riding a white horse, his sword held out, positioned perfectly behind the steed’s head so that it resembled a unicorn. I raised the candelabrum farther, and my insides twisted at the face above me, watching over me—the king. And yet... and yet here, his hair was the same chestnut shade as Ofelia’s. I tried to remember her stories, anything about why the king, a young man, would have white hair. She would have called it some mark of the gods, I thought. But there were other stories of hers—ghost stories, where those who had seen something truly frightening lost all the hue in their hair in one night. I canted my head, looking at the proud, haughty face of the young king, victorious in battle.
What was he afraid of?
Behind me, there was a soft murmur.
I whirled around, wielding the candelabrum like a blade. “Who’s there?” I said.
The only faces around me were the paintings, dozens of paintings of the king. My heart was pounding in my throat. I glanced back in the direction from whence I’d come. Perhaps it had only been the chattering and the music from the king’s dinner. But I was so far from the party now.
I took a shaky, steady breath. One voice within me, the colder one said, You’re a knight, damn you; stop trembling in your boots! And the other voice said, Perhaps in your fatigue you imagined a voice.
Fairy tales and ghost stories. I needed to be vigilant for Ofelia. I turned to stride back toward the dinner party.
A note floated through the air, bright and faint, like fading sunlight.
I jolted to a stop. If the song lasted another second, another two... then it was real, I vowed.
And it did. But it wasn’t just music.
There were words.
“Farewell, my love; farewell, my heart! Farewell, my hope!”
Once more, I spun back, holding out the candelabrum. The hall extended onward. The voice remained like a thin, silvery thread....
I followed it. I kept one hand in my pocket, upon the hilt of the penknife.
The song continued, a lone voice raised high. No instruments supported the singer, this mystery woman. Perhaps it is a courtier singing to herself in her bedroom , I thought. But the music was imbued with such passion, such agony, that I couldn’t ignore it.
Step-by-step, the voice became louder.
“ Since we must serve the king, we must part forever ,” sang the woman.
Around another corner, I saw, for the first time in an eternity, people. Two men, standing guard outside a door. Black and gold in the light of my candelabrum.
The Hall of Illusions?
I treaded closer on silent steps. The beautiful, mournful voice continued, a little faint, still—but clearly coming from behind those guarded doors. When I was mere steps away, the knights finally saw me and startled.
The two knights crossed their halberds in front of me.
“You should be in bed,” said the one with a mustache.
I frowned over his shoulder, as if I could see the singer behind the doors. “There’s—there’s someone in there. Can’t you hear her?”
The one on the right with pale blond hair laughed, like I’d missed something obvious. “It’s not real,” he said.
I jabbed the candelabrum at the door. The song continued faintly within that room. “My senses are perfectly keen,” I told the guards. “A woman is in there, in the Hall of Illusions.” And she sounds like she’s in misery , I didn’t say .
“Yes, the Hall of Illusions ,” said the blond knight slowly. He snickered and shot his fellow a look. “Whatever is inside that room, whatever sounds or voices there may be, they’re nothing more than illusions. More enchantments created by the gods.”
“How do you know? Have you been within?”
“Only the king enters,” said the knight on the left. He struck his halberd once against the floor. “Now on your way, girl.”
I looked him in the eyes. For a moment, I granted myself a little fantasy, imagining that I had my rapier back in my hand. In a second I’d have the tip of my blade pressed into his jugular. I could sweep up his halberd and use it on his partner. I’d watch the haughty contempt in their eyes turn quickly into fear.
Such behavior was unwise. And I had no rapier, anyhow. To them, I was just a helpless, wandering girl. I took my leave.
As I walked back to the dining room, the strange song, the song that supposedly did not exist, grew fainter and fainter. Those guards may have thought me silly, but I was not a fool. If the hall was simply a room where false images and sounds could appear from nothing, why would the king conceal such a place? Everything in this palace was on proud display, framed in gold and held up to the light.
Something was in that chamber. Something he, the great, fearless king, wanted to hide .