Princess of the Midnight Ball - Jessica Day George [61]
“A kindly old woman gave it to me,” he told her. “Along with the wool I used for this.” He pulled the black chain out of the pouch at his belt. “I want to seal the entrance to the underground realm where they dance at night. There is a gate the princesses must pass through….” His voice trailed off. The idea seemed so foolish now. “Do you know anything that would help?”
Fingering the chain, Anne shook her head, and Galen’s heart sank. It was true: she was completely innocent of her charges’ midnight activities.
But her next words turned Galen’s pity for her imprisonment to anger.
“This feels so flimsy. I don’t know that it will be enough to hold Under Stone,” she said.
“You know about the King Under Stone?” Galen barely kept his voice under control. “Why didn’t you tell someone? Why didn’t you help them?”
“I only just discovered what Maude had done,” Anne told him hastily. She sat on her narrow cot and pulled the boiled wool blanket around her plump shoulders. “And I wasn’t about to tell that awful Bishop Angier.
“I was Maude’s friend, her only confidant, for many years,” she continued, “yet she did not confide this in me. I knew that she’d done something, but I thought that she’d merely found some witch to provide her with a fertility charm. She visited them all, you know. Every midwife, wisewoman, white witch, fortuneteller … She drank horrible concoctions, ate nothing but boiled eggs one week, grapes another; had the maids wash her clothing in rainwater and dry it under the full moon….” Anne shook her head. “None of it worked. And then Maude stopped talking to me, stopped sharing her secrets with me, and Rose was born. Rose, and the rest of the girls. Twelve children in eleven years would wear anyone out, but I always felt in my heart that something more was weighing on poor Maude. And when she died, and the girls began to look exhausted all the time, when they wore out their shoes every third night, I knew that whatever Maude had done to have her daughters was still being paid for.
“I searched the entire palace over and over again, even the rooms up here.” She gestured around at the bare cell. “I only just found the books, hours before Angier came. He caught me with them. I never had a chance to do more than glance at them.”
“Which books?” Galen had to clear his throat before he could ask. He had been leaning forward, listening to her tumbled words, and had forgotten to swallow.
“A history, moldy with age, that told the story of Under Stone and how he was cast down. And a diary of Maude’s, detailing her dealings with him. They were hidden in the library. I only found them because I dropped a pencil, and it rolled behind one of the bookcases. The books were wedged there.”
“What were you able to read?”
“Only that Maude made two bargains with him: one for her children, and one to end the war with Analousia. And something in the history, about the magicians who survived the imprisoning spell. They’re not dead.” She shook her head. “I didn’t have enough time to make sense of it,” she said, frustrated.
“Where are the books now?”
“In Angier’s chambers, as far as I know,” Anne said. “But how will you get to them?”
“Easily.” Galen refastened his cloak and turned invisible. He felt a smile spreading across his face. The answers were waiting; all he had to do was snatch them. “Easily.”
He went to the window and swung himself out and down the drainpipe. “Good luck to you,” he called softly back to Anne.
“And to you,” she answered, but there was still great doubt in her voice.
Third Night
Hurrying through the palace corridors, still invisible, Galen knew what the crone had been cackling about when she said that the cloak was dangerous. Dodging the maids was bad enough, but one of the footmen pulled a rug right out from under his feet, taking it up to be aired. A door was nearly slammed on his hand, and he had to pause and compose himself outside Angier’s door.
Galen listened at the keyhole but didn’t hear anything, so he picked the lock with a penknife and entered the rooms. A quick search showed that