Princess of the Midnight Ball - Jessica Day George [60]
Again, Galen slipped up the stairs before the princesses without making a sound. When Rose checked to see if he was sleeping, he was snoring peacefully, inhaling the scent of her perfume as she leaned over the back of the sofa.
Governess
Galen awoke feeling confident, but that began to fade soon after breakfast. He had made a chain out of the crone’s black wool that was long enough to wrap around the handles of the gate, but would it do the job? The crone’s cloak really did render him invisible, and he had knitted the black wool chain with the twigs of the silver trees, his hands tingling with dormant power. But was this the answer? Would it really stop the King Under Stone from getting what he wanted?
Galen had made Rose’s shawl out of the crone’s white wool, thinking that it would somehow protect and comfort her, but it had no effect on Illiken when he danced with Rose. Now he worried that his instincts weren’t correct.
Galen went out to the gardens that afternoon, looking for Walter, but he couldn’t find the old man. He was in need of advice but didn’t know where to go.
Galen stood at the entrance of the hedge maze and stared up at the palace. The pink stucco was cheery, despite the lowering clouds and threat of snow. Galen shook his head over all the nights wasted patrolling the garden, when all along the princesses were using a secret passage in their own sitting room. He frowned. Who had set up the secret passage? The King Under Stone or Queen Maude? If the princesses knew, they couldn’t say.
But there was someone else in the palace who might know.
The Bretoner governess was being kept in one of garret rooms where the lowliest scullery maids slept. She had both a priest and a palace guard watching her door, and no one was allowed to speak to her without Bishop Angier present. Galen thought about using his letter from King Gregor to see her, but it gave him the freedom of the grounds only, not the palace, and certainly not the right to speak to a prisoner under Bishop Angier’s care.
So he fastened on the cloak and went around to the back of the palace. The building was modern and square, and there were copper drainpipes at all the corners. Galen shimmied up the one at the western corner, closest to Anne’s room. When he was level with the garret windows, he reached across, catching a window frame with one foot and his hand. Heart thumping, afraid to look down, he let go of the drainpipe and half leaped onto the narrow window ledge.
He strained at the window, which was latched from the inside, and saw a white face peering out, looking for the source of the small scraping noises he had made. The governess’s eyes were puffy from crying, and her graying hair was tangled.
Galen unhooked the chain of the cloak, and the governess let out a small scream as he appeared right in front of her. He held a finger to his lips and smiled to show that he was friendly.
“I want to help,” he mouthed broadly.
She didn’t look entirely convinced, but she unlatched the window and opened it a crack. “Who are you?”
“I’m Galen Werner, a gardener,” he told her. “Please let me in. I need to ask you some questions.”
“I’ve been asked enough questions,” she said, and made as if to close the window again.
“Please,” Galen begged. “I’m only trying to help.”
She hesitated, then opened the window a little more. Galen grabbed the edge and slid it all the way open, tumbling forward into the room.
The tiny chamber contained only a cot, a table, and a chair. There were no books or sewing to occupy the governess’s empty hours; there wasn’t even a basin to wash her face.
“How did you— You just appeared—Who sent you?” Anne backed away from Galen, looking wary. But she kept her voice down, all the same, so that her guards would not hear them.
“My name is Galen; I work in the garden. I’m trying to help the girls … the princesses,” Galen amended. “I followed them last night, using this.” He refastened the cloak and disappeared.
Anne gasped and put her hands to her mouth, and Galen quickly took off the