Princess of the Midnight Ball - Jessica Day George [6]
“But why are they well known?”
“They weren’t before the war,” Jutta said. She continued walking, then, so that Galen could not look directly into her face. “Their work was known, of course, known to all of Bruch, but the family itself was not that notable.” She softened this statement with a quick smile. “But then… well, something happened, and there was a great deal of gossip.”
Galen stopped in his tracks. He knew it! There was some scandal attached to his mother’s cousins. Well, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to get tangled up in it.
“It’s nothing that will affect you,” Jutta said, taking his arm and leading him on. She bit her lip. “I hate to carry tales, and heaven knows that I’m not privy to the whole story, but I can assure you that your family is not defamed.”
“Then what happened?”
“It’s not for me to say.”
And that is all she would say as they walked along in awkward silence. They passed a storyteller surrounded by a group of children and shared a smile as the man spun the tale of the Four Princesses of Russaka.
“The king and queen of Russaka had four beautiful daughters,” the storyteller proclaimed. “Their hair was bright as gold, their eyes like sapphires, and their lips like the ripest cherries. Wanting to protect them from any evil, the king and queen locked their daughters in a high tower, to which their mother alone had the key. No man ever saw them, and they spent their days singing and embroidering cloths for the church altar. Yet one dark, terrible night, wails were heard coming from the tower. The king and queen unlocked the door, ran up the thousand stairs, and entered the princesses’ chamber. There they saw their four sweet daughters, each with a black-haired babe in her arms. “What man has done this?” their father demanded. But the princesses would not say. Then a great shadow covered the moon, and when it had slipped away, the babes were gone. Gone to live deep below the earth, with the creature who was their sire, that black magician whose name is never spoken.”
The children listening could be heard squealing with gleeful fright as Galen and Jutta turned a corner and came to a row of houses that faced the western wall of the palace grounds. These were tall, grand houses, with white stucco walls painted with flowers and birds. Halfway along the street, one of the houses stood taller than all the rest, with pink stucco the exact color of the palace and bright green shutters. Window boxes full of white and red geraniums sat beneath each window, and there was a large brass knocker in the middle of the green door. Above the door was a garland of withered ivy twined with a black ribbon: there had been a death in the house. Although, judging by the state of the ivy, it had been some time ago. It was not an unusual sight on this or any other house, however, thanks to the war.
“This is the Orm house,” Jutta said, stopping in front of it.
Galen gaped at the imposing house, his stomach dropping into his boots. “Are you certain?” He was convinced that Jutta had made a mistake: his mother’s family couldn’t possibly live in a house that grand.
“The Orm family has special permission to use the same stucco that is used on the palace,” Jutta replied. She patted his arm. “I’ll leave you here, Galen. But you’re always welcome at the shop.”
Galen swallowed. “Thank you. And, er, my best to your husband.” Galen bowed.
Jutta gave him a dimpled smile in return and walked away. Galen stood on the pavement in front of the pink house, feeling more lost than he had been before Zelda had called him off the street.
He was about to turn away, to find a kind innkeeper somewhere who would take in a lonely soldier while he screwed up his courage to face his kin, when the green door opened. A woman in a brown dress and fresh white apron stepped out, a basket over her