Chapter Eleven
Whenever the need arose, Alice would dress herself in men’s attire and oversee the chaise, drawn by Arno, our spindly horse. Alice sat, in cap and livery, waiting for me. “Goodness,” she exclaimed when I finally emerged from the house. “What a charming sight!”
“You’re one to talk,” I scoffed, but we regarded one another with a shared smirk, and then I pulled my skirts up with one hand so I could climb into the carriage beside her.
My dress—one of Rosamund’s elaborate patterned concoctions, an affair so draped and pleated my head was like a decoration on top of a cake—had elbow-length sleeves with flared cuffs and a two-foot train.
I arranged the fabric around our feet so it wouldn’t dirty. “Shall we open the calash?”
Alice clicked and Arno lurched forward. “Might rain.”
I looked up at the cloudless sky. “That’s the spirit.”
“Don’t let them see those.” She nodded at my feet.
“I know that!” I slid the old leather latchets behind my skirts.
With the exception of my footwear, I had been cinched and tied into the shape of respectability.
Over a linen shift, I wore bone stays, followed by a quilted silk petticoat, a bow-covered stomacher, and an open-faced robe.
Engageantes and combs decorated my elbows and hair.
Though I carried nothing but a fan and gloves, I could not have looked more prepared if I had been wearing a knight’s brigandine.
“Just…” I waved my hand in the air. “Drive.”
Alice looked forward, not quite hiding the roll of her eyes. The calash remained closed. And we were on our way, bumping along the country road until it could be called that no more.
Eventually, the city arose before us, appearing first as a smoke-covered anomaly in the green country hills, then making itself known through the increase of hagglers and traders and children running amok as we reached its outskirts.
We passed under an arched gate in the ancient outer walls and made our way through crowded streets.
The air thickened with the smell of woodsmoke.
As we approached the city center, people and livestock filled the mud-slick roads.
When we could move no longer, Alice directed Arno to the side of the road, stopping behind an old man selling roasted nuts from a cart.
“You’ll make better time on foot.” She climbed down and held out a hand. “Watch the muck.”
“An appropriate city motto.” I held on to Alice as I lowered myself, wishing I could give her a shilling so she could buy some of the chestnuts.
The cart’s aroma might at least disguise some of the other smells: The open sewers and the sulfuric stench of a tannery and the blooming algae from the palace moat.
“Best of luck,” she called.
There was no need for directions. Though the city’s buildings had, over time, grown up and out in pieces, each new extremity jutting over the street to block the light and view, the castle was on yet higher ground, and I could see it perched on the rise of the hill.
As I got closer, my surroundings hardened: both wood buildings and earthen streets turning to stone.
Proximity to power desired permanence—and was not without its dangers.
The sun occasionally caught on the castle’s blue-gray turrets, causing brief, bright moments of blindness.
I used a gloved hand to hold the fan above my eyes.
As I neared the outer walls, my path, lined with topiaries and stone benches, filled with people.
Courtiers rushed past, tittering and clucking in groups of two and three.
A bearded man played a stringed instrument beneath the shade of a maple tree.
A youth, missing his leg, leaned against a marble plinth, attempting to adjust his bandages.
A pregnant redhead sat on a bench, crying into a handkerchief.
Castle servants hurried in currents around us all.
I crossed a small bridge over the green-watered moat.
The guard house, a squat functional building, attached to the palace wall like a growth.
Next to it, the massive gate lay shut. A smaller door, cut into the wood, was partially ajar, though flanked by a uniformed guard standing on duty. He watched me approach.
“Good day.” I nodded.
He remained expressionless. “State your business.”
His eyes were small and high on his forehead, giving the impression that there was not much space for thought inside. He had a cut on his chin from a poor job shaving. “I am Lady Tremaine,” I told him. “I request an audience with the queen.”
His expression barely changed. “Time with the queen isn’t doled out based on request.”
“Nevertheless, please pass the message that Lady Tremaine is here for an audience.” I stared at the cut on his face for a moment too long and he raised a hand, unconsciously, toward his chin.
“Her Majesty isn’t available.” When he lowered his finger, there was a spot of dried blood on its tip, which he inspected.
“The man operating the gate doesn’t determine who gets an audience,” I scoffed.
He squinted at me, the scab forgotten. “Do you know how many people come here demanding to be let in?”
“My name is Lady Etheldreda Verity Isolde Tremaine.” I enunciated each word with clarity. Soft voice, controlled pace, Agatha reminded me. “I am here to request an audience. Duty obliges you to relay my message.”
Finally, the guard looked me over, taking a moment to examine my dress, pausing on the series of bows down the front of my stomacher. I did not look the same as the crowd—the people of missing limbs and falling tears—that lined the path to the gate.
“Lady Tremaine,” he echoed.
I gave him a curt nod.
After a moment’s hesitation, he shrugged. “I’ll relay the message.”
“As you’re obliged to.”
His small eyes narrowed. “A response may take a long while.”
I set my jaw. “Then I shall wait.”
Lady Tremaine did not exist. Or rather, she was not a real person.
But, though it was not the world’s name for me, it was my truest one: An accurate depiction of what I gave and took from each of my marriages.
Tremaine was the name from my first, the marriage of my heart. My title came from my second.
After marrying Robert, arriving at Bramley Hall that first day was like unwrapping a gift I’d chosen for myself and then forgotten.
Spring blossoms blanketed the trees, scenting the air and scattering their petals like aromatic snow.
The ground was dry, and the house looked bright and clean, and larger than I had allowed myself to imagine.
Though I held Robert’s purple lips in no higher esteem than the day we had met, as he helped me and the girls down from the carriage, I could not help but think: If the future were a person, I would kiss them.
The staff was all lined up in front of the manor.
Housemaids and kitchen maids and footmen.
I insisted that Robert introduce me and my daughters to each one in turn.
We went down the row—bobbing to the scullery maid and the groundskeeper and the coachman who had driven us over—until the end, when it became more obvious that it was only the staff who stood to greet us.
“Where is Elin?” Robert asked.
A tall, thin woman stepped forward. The housekeeper, a metal ring of keys attached to her belt. Alice. “In her room,” she informed him, with an efficient nod.
“She should be out here, shouldn’t she?” Robert asked out loud. I wasn’t sure who he was asking. The staff remained quiet. He turned to me. “Should I fetch her?”
“Perhaps—” I began.
“Or should I send someone to get her?” He peered upstairs at the mullioned windows.
I glanced over at Rosie and Mathilde, who had jostled for days in a carriage to come to a new home where they knew no one. They stared back at me, open-eyed. “We might—”
“It is cold out. And if she comes here, then we will just end up inside anyhow,” Robert mused. “But if—”
“We will all go inside now,” I said, firmly. “And meet her where she is.”
From down the row, the cook gave me an approving nod.
Of all the staff there had been no nursemaid, which explained, amongst many other details that would come to light, both Elin’s absence and why she was alone in her room.
“Elin,” Robert called softly from the doorway. “Your papa is home. And I’ve brought you your new sisters.”
She was playing with her dolls, turned away from us, sitting in front of empty plates laid out on a child-sized table.
I could not see her face, but the conflict that must have been upon it reflected itself across her shoulders.
I was not offended by her shyness. She was a motherless girl surrounded by baby dolls.
And a new family was an unexpected arrival, even if her father had written ahead.
I watched as she lifted an empty teacup to a doll’s lips and poured air down its throat.
When the pouring was finished and still she did not turn, I took Rosie’s and Mathilde’s hands and brought them one step forward into Elin’s nursery.
All three of us looked around in astonishment.
There was a peach chaise and peach walls and peach tapestries and peach curtains.
The room was like being inside a cloud if a cloud was also filled with toys.
The surfaces were covered in every manner of doll and animal.
Exquisitely realistic dolls with porcelain faces and curled hair.
Little-girl dolls in lace gowns and baby dolls in bundles and blankets and cradles.
Unable to contain herself, Rosie shook off my hand and ran forward, stopping short in front of one doll that was discarded, face up, on a cupboard.
Extending a hand, she touched it gently with the tip of her finger, turning back to me after, eyebrows raised in a belated request for permission.