Princess of the Midnight Ball - Jessica Day George [56]
“There is nothing wrong with a religious education,” Hyacinth reprimanded her, coming into the room.
“There is when you are taught nothing but,” Violet argued. She was shredding the edges of her handkerchief. “There’s to be no more music,” she said in a soft voice. “None at all. Father Michel says … he says that we are not serious minded enough to learn even religious music.” She bit her lip, her eyes filling with tears. “He’s locked my pianoforte and taken the key.”
“Oh, darling!” Rose put her arms around Violet, and the younger girl sobbed onto her shoulder.
“He’s a nightmare,” Poppy said, taking the pillow off her face. “Horrible, odious man! And he’s Analousian, too, just like the bishop.” A calculating look crossed her face. “You don’t think Angier is just trying to humiliate us because they lost the war, do you?”
Hyacinth drew herself up, shocked. “The archbishop would not have sent someone capable of such pettiness, Poppy,” she declared. “We have been charged with witchcraft; this has nothing to do with politics!”
“I don’t care if it’s politics or not,” Violet wailed. “I can’t be cut off from my music!”
Rose gave her an extra squeeze.
“Don’t worry,” Petunia said cheerfully. “Galen will fix everything.”
“Oh, he will, will he?” Rose gave a brittle laugh at Petunia’s firm statement.
At the same time, though, she hoped in her heart that Petunia was right. She and Lily had searched for years for a way to escape the King Under Stone, reading their mother’s diaries over and over for clues, looking up any reference to Under Stone and his banishment that they could find. But the only books they could find about him were legends, and several of their mother’s diaries were missing. Rose suspected that the missing diaries were the ones that would have been the most useful, and she wondered if her mother had destroyed them or if Under Stone had found some way to confiscate them.
The sisters had tested all the physical boundaries of his realm, even asking the dark princes to carry them through the forest when they were tired, to see how close to the gate they could get. They had asked as many questions of the courtiers and the dark princes as they dared, and they had found not a single weak spot. They had tried to tell their father, their governess, anyone who would listen, about the curse, but always their lips snapped shut, or they even found themselves spouting nonsense when they tried to talk about it.
For a time they had given up, hoping that they would be able to simply serve out their term below. But soon after the war ended, the King Under Stone had begun to refer to them as his sons’ brides, filling the girls with new horror. He was going to find a way to keep them there forever. Now Rose and her sisters needed help more than they ever had before, and Galen was so strong and sure that it seemed almost possible for him to “fix everything.” Rose hitched her white shawl a little higher on her shoulders and led Violet over to her dressing table. “Come now, dry your eyes. Let’s get ready for dinner.”
But Bishop Angier had other plans. When the twelve sisters presented themselves in the dining room, modestly clad in high-waisted, high-necked frocks of somber hues, they found their father and Galen already seated at a table that bore a white cloth, a Bible, and nothing else.
“Sit down,” Bishop Angier said.
The princesses sat.
For some two hours the bishop held forth with great animation on the subject of witchcraft and its evils. He also veered into the evil natures of all women, witches or not, and how their fathers and husbands should keep them under firm control. It was vastly different from one of Bishop Schelker’s sermons. The most disconcerting part was that Angier would fix his eyes firmly on the face of each sister in turn, and focus on her for minutes at a time. As he locked gazes with Rose for the second time, she found herself unable