Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow - Jessica Day George [53]
“I don’t know,” Rollo declared, “but I think we should stick to Hans Peter’s advice. Wait, be careful, and go home.”
“But don’t you want to help?”
“I don’t think we can help,” Rollo countered. “I think we can just make things worse. And when this year is over, maybe Hans Peter will tell us what happened to him. And this girl.” He nosed the bunad. “I think her mother helped her sew it,” he added. He turned his head aside, and sneezed. “Somebody who liked rosewater, and freshly dug potatoes, did the seams on that skirt.”
The lass sat for a long time in the mess of her dressing room and pondered all that she and Rollo had discovered. When it was time for dinner, she packed Tova’s things neatly into the knapsack and put it in the first wardrobe with her own clothes. She left the troll dresses where she had thrown them.
The isbjørn looked taken aback when he saw her old clothes. They appeared even shabbier in the light from the chandelier over the dining table, but he said nothing. He made conversation as best he could, and the lass answered in monosyllables. Rollo’s words about them only making things worse were haunting her, and she didn’t try to winkle any information about the enchantment out of the bear that night. Subdued, she went to bed early.
When the young man came to lay with her at midnight, she rolled close to him as though she were having a dream. When she thought he was asleep, she sniffed him. He smelled like soap. She wished again for Rollo’s sensitive nose, or at least that he would wake just once when her visitor came. But she didn’t have a wolf’s keen nose, and Rollo wasn’t even in the room, so she gave up. He didn’t smell like troll, or even potatoes.
Chapter 20
The next day, the lass was sitting in the library making notes when Mrs. Grey came in to dust. Remembering how she had gotten the housekeeper to volunteer the information that she was from Frankrike the last time, the girl prepared herself to ask another question. The only problem was deciding which one. Her plea for information from Hans Peter the day before had been rewarded with only the brief message: “Be careful. Don’t ask.” She had mentioned the clothes she had found to the isbjørn, but he had no idea whom they belonged to.
So she opened her mouth to say something about her nighttime visitor. The strange visitor who smelled of soap and linen, who snored but never spoke, and surely must be known to the servants.
“My lady?”
The lass’s mouth snapped shut and then opened again in surprise when Mrs. Grey spoke first. “Yes?”
“Erasmus is dead.”
“What?” The lass leaped to her feet, dumping her books onto the floor. Her elbow joggled the inkpot sitting on the table next to her chair and it fell to the carpet, spilling ink like black blood across the floral pattern.
“He said too much and now he is dead,” Mrs. Grey said. She was wringing her duster in both hands, shedding feathers all over the ruined carpet. Her hideous face twisted with grief. “I shouldn’t say anything, either, but Erasmus was a good friend to me. You’re not to blame yourself: he knew better. But we’ve never had one of you who could understand us before.”
“How did she find out?”
The gargoyle snuffled and fingered the ribbon at her throat. “I’m sorry to distress you, my lady. But I wanted you to know.” Her bat wings flapped miserably. “I wish that I had tears to cry for him, but my kind don’t.” Then she fled, dropping her mangled feather duster into the widening pool of ink.
The lass sank back down into her chair. She watched the pool of ink seep into the carpet. Her troll dictionary was on the edge of the puddle—actually, it was in the puddle now—but she didn’t care. Erasmus was dead. Because she had asked him questions. And he had answered. He was six hundred years old. Had been. But now he was dead. She had taken him away.
“The troll princess,” the lass said. Then she started to cry. Once she started she couldn’t stop,