Entwined (4 page)

A
zalea dreamed that night of drowning in torrents of hair, and woke up with hair on her face. She vaguely remembered allowing Jessamine and Kale and Ivy onto her bed when they cried the night before, but she couldn't remember Hollyhock, Flora, Goldenrod, Eve, Delphinium, and even Clover and Bramble coming for comfort. Yet they were all piled together, and those who hadn't fit on the bed slept on the rug next to it, or propped on the mattress.

The girls slowly awoke for the day, washing their faces, brushing their hair, more out of habit than anything. They shared a crowded third-floor room on the north side of the palace, square, with six beds and window seats about the sides, and a massive fireplace at the end. It smelled of powder, flowers, and old wood. A lot of maneuvering and tripping took place when they readied.
Today, however, when they opened their trunks to dress, they were surprised. The trunks were empty.

“Perhaps they're being washed,” said Flora as Azalea swept down the hall in her nightgown, the girls padding after. “It could be laundry day.”

“Oh, yes, the maids are washing them,” said Goldenrod, Flora's twin. The nine-year-old twins reminded Azalea of a pair of dainty sparrows, both timid and eager at the same time.

“They don't wash all our dresses at once,” said Azalea. “Something's afoot. Mrs. Graybe!”

Azalea rounded the corner to the mezzanine and made to go downstairs, when she spotted Fairweller in the entrance hall below.

“Oh!” said Azalea. Fairweller's eyes caught her, and he turned his head away to the door. Azalea ducked back into the safety of the hall, blushing furiously.

“Minister,” she called out. “Have you seen Mrs. Graybe?”

“Forget Mrs. Graybe!” said Delphinium, running to the banister railing. Being only twelve, she did not care if Fairweller saw her in her nightgown or not. “Where are our dresses? We haven't a stitch to wear!”

“They are in the kitchen. Drying, I believe,” said Fairweller.

Azalea inched her way so she could see a sliver of
the entrance hall below. Fairweller kept his head down, focusing on pulling on his black gloves. He had a rosy bruise on his face.

“We were right, then!” said Flora. “They were being washed.”

“They were being dyed,” said Fairweller. “For mourning. Good day.”

Fairweller left before the girls could ask him any more questions. Instead, after the door had slammed, the girls turned to Azalea, their faces puzzled.

“Morning?” said Flora.

“Oh,” said Azalea. She had forgotten about this part of a person's death: the isolation, the clocks, the clothes, the rules, the entire year of it—and the silence. Now, it came back, a heavy weight. She exhaled slowly. “Mourning.”

 

Delphinium screamed when they found their dresses, hanging from lines in the kitchen like black shadows. Every stitch of cloth they owned had been dyed unrecognizable.

“It's just a color,” said Azalea soothingly as Delphinium cried over her favorite rose-colored dress, now black. “It's all right.” She helped unpin the dry dresses and laid them neatly on the servants' table, a pile for each girl. Some were still in the large washtub, billowing night in black dye.

Azalea had the girls dress right there in the kitchen, over bowls of hot porridge. And while they dressed, Azalea told them everything she knew about mourning.

She told them about how balls and promenades and courting weren't allowed, and how they were to keep inside, not even allowed out to the gardens. She told them that the windows would be draped for a year and that they would have to get used to wearing black for a year, too. And she told them about the clocks, how they would be stopped at the time of the person's death, and that music wasn't allowed, either.

It took a while. When she had finished, the girls all looked like miserable, drooping black blossoms.

“Is d-dancing allowed?” Clover stammered.

Azalea bit her lip and turned her head away.

“Oooh!” Delphinium lifted a dainty hand to her forehead, closed her eyes, and fell back onto the wood floor.
Thum-thump thump.

She lay on the floor, unmoving.

“Oh, get up, Delphi,” said Bramble. “When people really faint, they bang their heads up on the floor. It's very unromantic.”

“A year!” Delphinium cried. “We're not allowed to dance for a
year
! I'll
die
without dancing!”

“M-Mother would let us dance,” Ivy peeped.

At the mention of Mother, the girls' composure,
frayed already, fell apart, and Azalea found herself in the midst of sobbing girls.

Azalea wanted to sob, too. She hated this feeling, one of dancing a step she did not know, confused, bumbling over her dance slippers to get it right. It happened so rarely—she knew
every
dance—that fumbling through the movement frightened her.

This was a thousand times worse. The palace, known for its tall, mullioned windows that dappled light through the halls, would be muffled with drapery, turning day into pitch-black. They would be kept inside, trapped in a cage like those peeping birds at the wire-and-bottle shop on Hampton Street, and only allowed out on Royal Business…which would not be often. If Mother were here—

Azalea's throat grew tight, and her chin trembled. She hated herself for it. Mother would have known what to do. Biting her lip to keep from crying, Azalea pulled out Mother's handkerchief. Silver shone in the light, followed by that peculiar tingling sensation. Azalea's throat untightened, and she was able, almost, to smile. There was something to that handkerchief. Azalea did not know what.

But Azalea did know one thing: She was a fast learner. When she fumbled through a dance step, it was only a moment before she caught the rhythm and glided back
into the motions. If Mother could smooth things over, then she could, too.

Azalea helped Delphinium up from the floor, and lifted five-year-old Ivy to the table, spooning her a bit of extra porridge from the pot. Ivy had an insatiable appetite. Azalea gently wiped faces and soothed their cries.

“Hush,” said Azalea. “It's only for a year. I'll watch out for you all. I promise.”

 

The next evening, the girls set the table in the dining room, their moods as dark as the drapery. The dining room was a fine old space, with a long table, cabinets, and arched doorways flanked with curtains. The hearth in the great fireplace cast a light over their sullen faces, not really making up for the muffled window light. They heard the tower chime seven, the silverware clinking against the plates.

“They can't stop
that
clock,” said Delphinium, raising her pointed chin. “You'd need an actual clocksmith for that.”

Azalea loved the huge clock and bells at the top of the palace, creaking through the hours and chiming in off-tune peals. It made the palace feel alive, something she desperately needed now that everything had been stifled.

“The King wouldn't allow it to be stopped,” said
Azalea, helping Kale onto her chair. “Mother loved it too much.”

At the mention of the King, the girls grew quiet. Flora raised a dainty finger, as though she were in lessons.

“Lea,” she said. “Do you—do you think he meant it? When he said—”

“Of course not,” said Azalea, giving her and her twin, Goldenrod, an encouraging smile. “He's just aggrieved. Like in one of Eve's storybooks.”

“I don't know.” Eve stared at her plate. “In storybooks the children call their father
Papa
.” She removed her spectacles and rubbed her eyes.

Azalea paused. They had never been exactly close to the King, but he had always come to breakfast and dinner, at least. It was a rule they had, to eat dinner as a family. Now, these past several days, he had remained in the library, tending to Royal Business and ignoring them all.

“He's missed every meal since Christmas Eve,” said Delphinium. “And he's not coming now. I feel like an orphan.”

As if on cue, the King's voice echoed down the hall, stiff, firm words that were indiscernible but most definitely out of the library. The girls lunged for the doors, but Azalea held them back.

“Brush down your skirts, everyone, hands in your lap.
Clover, make them presentable. Bramble and I will fetch him. Behave.” Azalea cast a lofty look at Delphinium. “
Orphans
, for heaven's sake.”

Through the dark halls of faded wallpaper and mismatched portraits to the entrance hall, Azalea grasped Bramble's hand. Bramble squeezed back equally hard. Azalea hadn't thought she missed the King, his hard adherence to rules and his formalities, but the giddiness in her chest proved otherwise.

Arriving at the entrance hall, they found the King outside the library in discussion with a young gentleman. The gentleman looked up when Azalea and Bramble brushed in. Even though the entrance hall was dimly lit, black linen over the windows, light still caught in the gentleman's warm brown eyes. Lord Bradford!

The King looked up, too, and a frown etched his face. His beard was well trimmed and his suit crisp, but he looked half starved. Azalea felt grateful they would have fish pies for dinner. They filled a person up.

“You're finally out!” said Bramble. “It's about time!”

“We're waiting for you, in the dining room,” said Azalea. “We won't start without you.”

“Rule number eighteen,” Bramble reminded.

The frown lines in the King's face deepened.

“I have business to tend to,” he said. Cold, formal,
stiff. “This young gentleman is going to stop the tower for mourning.”

“Stop the tower!” Bramble flushed. “What? Sir, you
can't
! Mother loved it! She even had a bucky little dance for it—you remember!” She grasped the King's hand, a plea in her face.

Bramble!
thought Azalea. The King's ice blue eyes grew even harder and colder at the word “Mother.”

“It's all right,” said Azalea quickly, hoping to smooth things. “I'll escort him to the tower. You can go to dinner.”

“Very well. You may escort him. And you, young lady”—the King tugged his hand from Bramble's grasp—“will tend to your sisters, at once.”

Azalea's chest trilled with hope, right up until the King strode
past
her to the entrance hall doors, taking his coat from the stand and yanking the door open. Hope sputtered into indignation. He was—he was leaving! Azalea stopped the door with her boot before he shut it, biting back the pain.

“You can't leave,” she whispered fiercely. “And you can't stay in the library, either. This is more important than R.B. We need you!”

The King released the carved doorknob and left. In a fit of temper, Azalea slammed it after him.

Why
was the King being like this? He had never been
the way Mother was, but he had never been like this. Everything was tense and tangled, but Azalea felt she could still manage it all if the King was there. Now she felt abandoned.

Bramble's chin tightened at the door. She swallowed, then snapped to Lord Bradford.

“You!”
she snarled, her yellow-green eyes flaring.
“You!”

She dashed down the hall in a rustle of black skirts and deep red hair. Her footfalls echoed.

Only now Azalea realized she had been clenching her fists, hard. She slowly unclenched them, and in the dim light saw the crescent-moon marks her nails had dug into her palms. A bit of skin curled up around each mark, as though Azalea had dug into a bar of soap instead of her hand.

A polite cough sounded, and Azalea flushed, remembering Lord Bradford. She turned.

“I didn't mean—” he said, in his rich voice. He kneaded his hat rim.

“Of course not,” said Azalea. “Things are a bit unstrung here. How is your hand?”

“Better,” he said solemnly. “Thank you.”

True to her word, though feeling wrung inside, Azalea led him up the main stairs of the palace. She didn't say much. He spoke, filling the silence in a mellow baritone way, of how he owned the clock shop on Silver Street, and
the King had sent for the clocksmith, but Mr. Grunnings was out, and that he himself knew quite a bit about clock mechanisms, so he came instead.

“I know it isn't allowed to visit, in mourning,” he said haltingly. “But I thought if it was Royal Business…” He paused. “I wanted to tell you how sorry I was. About your mother. She had the nicest laugh, I think, of anyone I ever knew.”

Azalea wanted to burst into tears and throw her arms around his neck. Instead she turned, several stairs above him, feeling the polished banister beneath her hand. She considered his rumpled blond-brown hair and, in a quick movement, reached out and smoothed it down. She had wanted to do that since the Yuletide.

Bemusement passed over Lord Bradford's face, and Azalea, face hot, led him up the rickety stairs to the tower attic.

The tower stood above the entrance hall, square and symmetrical and old. It smelled of sweet must, with a tang of metal. She had to shield her eyes when they reached the main platform. Sunlight streamed through the glass clockface, casting shadowed numbers across the floor. The gears and pulleys clanged and creaked.

Lord Bradford examined it all with fascination, touching each large carriage-wheel-sized gear, his eyes lighting with excitement.

“This is magic,” he said, pointing up to the main gear that turned the rod and hands. “I was wondering how the counterweights could propel themselves without any steam or force. Look.”

Azalea peered at the gear. Near the center, marked like a smithy's brand, was a
DE
, identical to the tea set's. The D'Eathe mark.

“It must be,” she said. “There are still pockets of magic about, from when the High King lived here.”