“Costume?” Christian sagged weakly against the doorframe.
King Rupert came stumping along the passageway. “Flamonde, you must do our guest right!” He slapped the small man on the back, nearly pitching the tailor into Christian’s arms. “There may be an announcement after the unmasking, and Prince Christian will want to look his best!” King Rupert winked and chortled through his mustache, and Christian felt even more ill.
“An announcement! Will there be wedding clothes ordered soon?” The tailor rose up on his toes in excitement, which did not add much to his height. In fact, he was already wearing shoes with heels almost too high to be masculine, and still barely came to Christian’s chin.
“Very soon,” King Rupert said.
“I’m going to ask Lady Ella,” Christian said, hearing his voice as if from a great distance, “Lady Ella to—to marr—”
His head throbbed, the sparkles returned, the wool band itched, and Christian reeled back into his bedroom. He barely grabbed the chamber pot in time, retching into the freshly scrubbed porcelain.
“Oh no, Your Highness,” Monsieur Flamonde trilled in dismay.
“Prince Christian, what’s all this, then?” King Rupert demanded.
Christian almost burst into hysterical laughter. Instead he wiped his mouth on a handkerchief and lurched out of the palace.
He didn’t bother to call for a carriage. He just stumbled down the street until he saw a hackney cab. It nearly ran him down, in fact. He flung himself into it, ignoring the driver’s cursing and brandishing of the whip, and yelled for the man to take him to Seadown House as quickly as possible.
When they reached the Seadowns’ front gate, the driver climbed down, grabbed Christian by the coat collar, and unceremoniously dumped him on the pavement. Christian reached into his pockets, searching for some money, but the man just rolled his eyes.
“Jus’ doan get in my cab again, yer daft drunk!” He climbed back onto the cab and sent the horse off at a trot.
Christian staggered through the gate and up the drive. The butler was so shocked by the prince’s appearance that he let him inside without a word, pointing toward the drawing room.
Christian managed to get himself through the drawing room door before collapsing. Looking up in a daze, he saw the Seadowns, Poppy, Roger, Marianne, and Dickon all staring down at him.
“What’s happening to me?”
“Two might do it,” Poppy said enigmatically. She plucked a bracelet from her work basket and tied it around Christian’s other wrist. “And Roger, another glassful of that horrid stuff, please.”
Dickon propped Christian up and Roger poured something foul down his throat, then guided his hand to break the glass on the hearthstones. Christian could only retch and mumble in response.
Then the green sparkles subsided, and so did the throbbing in his head.
“You’re in trouble, my lad,” Lord Richard told him when his vision cleared. “A creature known as the Corley has you in her sights.”
Christian sat up and stared at His Lordship.
“We’re doing our best to stop her,” Roger Thwaite said, his voice lower than Lord Richard’s. He helped Christian off the floor and onto a chair.
“Oh, good,” Christian mumbled.
Then he fainted. Again.
Invalid
But what if she discovers Poppy?” Eleanora sank a little deeper into the pillows of her bed. “She’ll be so angry!”
Her voice was little more than a whisper. She wanted to be brave, but lying in bed and hearing horrifying tales about the Corley had made her pray she would never see her “godmother” again.
In an effort to make her feel less useless, Roger had brought her several dusty old books he had discovered that told about the Corley—who she had been and why she had been banished to her strange glass palace. Eleanora had read them with sickening fascination, and now wished she hadn’t. Now she knew why the Corley wanted her, or Marianne. And now she knew what lengths the Corley would go to get what she wanted.
The Corley had once been a woman named Mary Bright, the wife of a famous naval captain back in the time of Great Queen Bethune. Her husband, the celebrated Captain Bright, had chased the Spanian pirates from Bretoner waters and been knighted as a reward. But when the Danes had attacked shortly after that, Captain Bright had changed sides and gone to command the Dane fleet, leaving behind his wife.
Instead Captain Bright had taken his “lucky charm” with him: his goddaughter, Mary Bess Corley. Mary Bess’s parents had died when she was only two, and the Brights had raised her as their own. Captain Bright had even named his ship The Corley in honor of her and her late parents, and never put to sea without his goddaughter’s blessing. But Mary Bess had fallen in love with the Crown Prince of the Danelaw, and King Haakon had promised that she would marry his son if Captain Bright would engineer Breton’s downfall.
Driven to madness by her husband’s betrayal and abandonment, Mary Bright had turned to magic. The daughter of a glassblower and a village wisewoman, Mary conjured a ship of glass, crewed by mute glass sailors, and sent it after her husband’s ship. The glass ship rammed The Corley and shattered its oak beams into a thousand splinters, sending Captain Bright, his crew, and Mary Bess to the bottom of the sea. Mary Bright, known thereafter as The Corley, vanished.
“She’s trying to replace her goddaughter,” Poppy said without looking up. She was knitting another charm.
“Do you really think …?” Eleanora blinked.
“I really do,” Poppy said. “She wants her goddaughter alive and married to a prince of the Danelaw. She’s trying to erase her mistake.”
“But that won’t… I mean, she knows that I’m not her, doesn’t she?”
Poppy shrugged. “Who can say?” She stopped knitting, unraveled a few stitches, and started up again.
Eleanora was filled with a sudden horror: she would never be free of the Corley! Even if she wasn’t called upon to dance at the masked ball, even if the substitution of Poppy worked, the Corley would still chase after her.
“Don’t worry,” Poppy said. “We will fight, and we will win.” Her needles clicked together and the yarn slid through her fingers.
“How can you just sit there and knit?” Eleanora pulled herself up in the bed, her breath coming fast. “How can you just sit there at all? We might be killed!”
“I have to,” Poppy said levelly.
“What do you mean, you have to? No one is holding a knife to your throat, forcing you to knit those things!”
Poppy stopped knitting.
She set the yarn and needles on the little table by her chair, folded her hands in her lap, and looked at Eleanora with her large violet eyes.
“I have to keep knitting,” she said in low voice. “Because I’m the strong one.” And then her eyes filled with tears, and Eleanora watched in helpless shock as Princess Poppy of West-falin sobbed like a child.
“I’m the strong one,” she sobbed. “The tough one. Everyone says so. I’m not like Daisy, I’m not like Lily, I’m not gentle and sweet and ladylike. My father says it, everyone says it. When we had to dance, at the end, every night and we were so tired and sick I heard Papa saying to the doctor, ‘Ask them, Hans, see if they’ll tell you what’s happening. But don’t bother with Poppy. She’ll never crack, she’s as tough as an old boot.’
“And I was. I never cried, I never gave up. I did what Rose and Galen said, and I never cried. But I thought it was over, I didn’t think I would have to do this again, to face something like this. Without my sisters, without my father and Walter and Galen to protect me. I can’t play cards against the Corley, I can’t swear her to death, so I have to knit. There’s nothing else I can do.”
“You can dance,” said a voice from the doorway.
Both girls turned, and saw Prince Christian standing there, his gaze fixed on Poppy. Seeing the intensity of his eyes on Poppy’s tear-streaked face, Eleanora knew that the prince could never have loved Lady Ella t
he way he loved Poppy, and she wondered if Poppy knew.
“You can dance as Lady Ella,” the prince said, coming the way into the room and taking Poppy’s hands. “Dance with me. And before the clock strikes midnight, we will defeat her.”
“Blast,” Poppy said shakily. “It would have to be dancing. I really was hoping to challenge her to a game of cards.”
Eleanora laughed out loud.
Replacement
Hands shaking, Poppy poured water over the fire she had built in the parlor grate. She uttered the words that Eleanora had taught her, and waited. She wondered if the rhyme would work, since the Corley was not, in fact, Poppy’s “dear godmother.” Behind her, she heard tense breathing and rustling clothing, but she shut her ears and said it again.
“Cinders, cinders, smoke and water, take me to my dear godmother!”
The mantel arched up, and what had been a fireplace became a passageway.
Everyone in the room took a step backward, and Poppy trod on Dickon’s toes. She blurted out an apology, straightened her spine, and took a firmer grip on her pistol. She was holding it at her side, with a shawl draped across her shoulders to hide the weapon. She didn’t know how much good it would do against an immortal creature like the Corley, but its weight comforted her all the same.
“I should go with you,” Lord Richard said.
“We’ve already discussed it, my lord,” Roger said. “You were ensnared by her once before; you shouldn’t expose yourself again.”
Poppy felt the silver dagger beneath her gown. She could get off one shot with the pistol, drop it, and draw the dagger in less than thirty seconds.
She’d been practicing.
No one said anything as she stepped onto the hearth and over the grate, ducking her head even though the entranceway was high enough that even Roger wouldn’t have needed to stoop. Soot sifted down onto her hair and clothes, and Poppy reminded herself to apologize to Eleanora later. It seemed clear now that the other girl hadn’t put soot on Poppy’s linens deliberately.
“Good luck!” Marianne’s voice echoed and Poppy waved her left hand by way of acknowledgment, without turning around.
Once past the fireplace and into the hallways of the Corley’s palace, the soot and marble were replaced by tinkling glass ornaments and hard, slick floors. Delicate pillars, also made of glass, lined the passageway, and the light was provided by candles in round golden orbs.
“This is certainly more elegant than Under Stone’s palace,” Poppy said aloud. “Everything there was black or purple, and always seemed a bit tatty.” She ran a hand along the smooth walls. “The silver gilt was peeling from the furniture, I swear.”
She continued to drag her left hand along the smooth wall with a casual air. She was glad that the long stole around her shoulders hid the pistol from view. That way no one could see how white her knuckles were. A trickle of sweat ran down her back, and she was fighting the urge to turn and run back to the safety of Seadown House.
“But it isn’t safe there,” she murmured. “Nothing is safe.”
She turned down the corridor and entered the great hall. It was filled with people, silent, slick-skinned people, standing in ranks and staring at her. Poppy muttered a startled oath.
“I’m here,” she said a moment later, forcing herself to sound bright and innocuous. “Tonight is the masked ball! See, I already have a costume!”
She twirled so they could see the gown she wore. She was dressed as a Spanian dancer in a purple and scarlet gown with a black mask fitted over the upper half of her face. The Corley would have another costume prepared, of course, but Poppy hoped to keep the mask on, to keep up the ruse that she was Eleanora.
Without hurrying, without even making any noise, the silent servants surrounded Poppy. They didn’t touch her, much to her relief, she was afraid she would start screaming if they did, but they turned as one and quickstepped out of the great hall and down a long corridor, herding her along in their midst.
Sitting bolt upright on a bench in the enormous bath, Poppy suddenly wished she had brought someone with her. She had never faced this type of thing by herself before. The last time she had been trapped in an otherworldly palace—the Palace Under Stone—all her sisters had been with her.
Of course, she wasn’t exactly alone.
She was, in point of fact, surrounded.
A dozen or so of the Corley’s mute handmaidens were in the bathroom with her, lying in wait. As soon as she twitched a finger, they would leap forward to offer her a towel, scented soap, a glass of lemonade. Poppy had refused their offers to bathe her like a baby, and now she was at the far end of the tub, soap in one hand, eyes on the servants, wondering if they would try to scrub her back the moment she began to lather.
Finally she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and washed herself as quickly as she could. She scrubbed her hair and face so fast that she pulled several hairs out and nearly put a finger up her own nose, but at least she was out of the tub quickly. She grudgingly allowed the servants to wrap her in towels and help her onto a padded bench, where they greased her up with various lotions and combed out her wet hair. She kept her face pressed into the bench as much as she could, alert to every sound, in case the Corley should come to check on her beloved goddaughter, but she hadn’t so far.
Then the servants led her to a dressing room bursting with fabulous gowns. The sight of them irritated Poppy more than anything: they were just there to taunt Eleanora! Where and when would she ever wear them? The girl had only worn two gowns so far, both of them copies of someone else’s finery.
Poppy glared at the gowns all while she was being dressed in peacock blue satin. There was a great fan of peacock feathers standing behind her head, and feathers trailed from her sleeves and skirt. When she was finally laced and tucked into the gown, she looked at herself in the multiple mirrors and made a face of disgust.
“What a ridiculous gown,” she remarked, even though she knew none of the servants would—or could—answer. “How precisely am I supposed to dance with anyone?”
“You aren’t supposed to dance with anyone,” the Corley said. “You are supposed to dance with Prince Christian!”
Poppy snatched the feathered mask from the dressing table and held it to her face. The mask that matched the peacock gown covered even more of her face than the one she had brought. Now if she could just keep her eyes down and her Westfalian accent in check.
“You look so beautiful, my dear,” the Corley simpered. “Like a princess … no, a queen!” The old witch put her hands on Poppy’s shoulders and smiled at her in the mirror, her mouth stretching wider than a human mouth should have been able to.
Poppy shuddered and kept her attention on the maid applying her cosmetics. There was gold and green powder around her eyes already, making them look more blue than violet. Now rouge was added to her cheeks and lips, and a design of green and gilt that curled up the left side of her face from her jaw to her cheekbone. It looked like a peacock’s plume, and Poppy found it pleasingly exotic.
Her hair was fastened high with gold combs that sported more plumes, and the blue feathered mask tied in place with a ribbon that was hidden in her hair.
“Come, my darling! It’s time for the final touch!”
Poppy tried not to shiver as she walked barefoot down the passageway in the Corley’s wake, to a chamber that smelled of magic and strangeness, and sat down in a large chair with an attached footrest. On a table to the side were bubbling pots of thick liquids, and Poppy broke out in a cold sweat. She thought of Eleanora’s feet and reminded herself that it would only be for one night, and Christian and the others would help her.
Unclenching her hands from the armrests, she sat up straight and watched the Corley with her face impassive. She was a princess, after all, and refused to give this creature the satisfaction of seeing her flinch. It helped that a mask hid the upper part of her face and shadowed her eyes, however.
The Corley swept aside Poppy’s abunda
nt skirts to expose her bare feet. She snapped her fingers, and a servant brought her a shallow pan of molten blue glass.
The Corley looked directly into Poppy’s eyes and without saying a word poured the boiling glass over the girl’s feet.
Emperor
Wigs itched, Christian was discovering. His emperor’s costume was topped with a long black wig, and it felt like a hot compress draped across his head. But even worse than the warmth was the itching along the edges where the mesh foundation of the abominable thing touched his face and neck, and it was held in place with clips that jabbed his scalp.
Were it not for the wig, the costume otherwise would have been very comfortable, since it was rather like a loose dressing gown of silk over billowing trousers. Even the pointed slippers were light and flexible, and the heavy ivory-and-silk fan that hung from his waist was much more manageable than the cumbersome fake swords that many of the other gentlemen wore.
He had already turned down several offers to dance with various young women. King Rupert, unsubtly dressed as his ancestor, Horcha the Magnificent, smiled benignly at this from his position on the dais at the far end of the ballroom. He was looking forward to announcing Christian’s betrothal after the unmasking at midnight, and no longer felt the need to throw every young lady in Breton at Christian.
For his part, Christian felt like a clock that had been wound too tight. At any moment he feared he might spring to the dais and start screaming at all the smiling, laughing courtiers. Poppy was in danger, they were all under a spell, how could they just drink and dance as though nothing were amiss?
Princess Emmeline twirled by, dressed like a milkmaid (albeit a milkmaid in a satin gown), and Christian fought down a surge of dislike. He remembered her derision about her former maid’s clumsiness, which Eleanora now suspected had been caused by the Corley. The poor girl had been orphaned, thrown into the streets, and then slowly drawn into a witch’s clutches. All Emmeline ever had to worry about was convincing her parents to let her stay up late to attend a ball, as she was tonight.