The Safe-Keeper's Secret (21 page)

“I wasn't expecting you for another week!” she exclaimed, hugging as much of his big frame as she was able. “How are you? Where's Isadora? Why did you come back early?”

“Homesick,” he said. “I wanted to be with you.”

“Come in. You must be freezing. I'll make you some tea.”

He followed her into the house. “Where's Allison?”

“Down at Elminstra's. Did you see the house when you pulled up? It's going to be charming. We'll walk over and inspect it once you've warmed up.”

“It'll be strange having neighbors so close,” he remarked, sprawling in one of the kitchen chairs.

“But neighbors I'll be happy to have,” she said.

She served hot tea and leftover tarts, and he ate as enthusiastically as if he hadn't stopped for lunch on the road, which he'd already admitted he had. She watched him covertly, to see if there were signs of strain or exhaustion on his face, but he seemed, as always, happy and at ease.

“So! Tell me about the royal city,” she said. “How was Isadora doing? Did you meet the king?”

“Isadora—oh, there's a story there—Isadora's just fine. No, I never met the king, but I saw him more than once.”

“How did you manage that?”

“Oh, well, every time he left the palace he would ride out in an entourage. The streets would be lined with people, common folk just waiting for a glimpse of royalty. There would be the king, guards in a ring all around him, riding his black horse and sitting as straight as you please, gazing directly before him.”

“And what did you think of him?”

Reed considered. “Well, of course, it's hard to tell much just from watching a man ride by on horseback. But I thought he seemed very stern. He never smiled. Sometimes he would wave, or toss a few coins, particularly to the children. But he did not look like a warm man. He did not look like someone who had experienced much affection.”

“He's dark, people say.”

Reed nodded. “Oh yes, the blackest of hair, though it's starting to go gray now. He keeps it cropped fairly short and he wears a small silver crown when he goes out. Very elegant. But he—” Reed shrugged.

Fiona stirred her tea. “Did you think he looked like you?”

“No!” he burst out. “That's what I was going to say! He doesn't look at all like me! Not just the color of his hair, but the shape of his mouth and the slope of his nose—all of it was wrong. None of it was familiar. Fiona, I don't think he is my father after all.”

She lifted her cup and sipped the hot liquid. “And what do you think of that?” she said neutrally.

He spread his hands upon the table. “I don't know what to think! My whole life people have said—but I don't think it's true! So then, well, it's even more confusing. My father could have been anyone. Anyone! It makes me feel very strange. Untethered, almost.” He shook his head. “But
I wasn't really disappointed. I mean, I didn't look at him and think, ‘Oh, I wish I belonged to that man.' I was just as glad I didn't. I just wished—well, it would be good to know whom I did belong to.”

“You belong to me,” she said, “and Angeline and Thomas and Elminstra and all of us. As you always have. Nothing has changed.”

“Yes,” he said. “Though it seems to have changed a little bit. I can't exactly explain.”

Fiona took another swallow. “So! Did you see Princess Lirabel? What was she like?”

Reed sat forward, excited enough to forget his own mysteries. “I almost
met
the princess,” he said. “It was the most amazing thing.”

“No! What happened?”

“I had gone to visit Isadora—she rented a little suite very close to the palace, and it was much nicer than mine, so I would go by every few days to have tea with her. And she would tell me stories of this rich lady and that great lord who would come by her rooms in stealth and open their hearts to her. ‘Can you believe that people as grand as these have such dreams?' she said to me once.”

“Well, and what sort of dreams?”

“Oh, there were the ones you might expect—the woman who would beg to bear a son for her husband, the man who would ask for wealth. But sometimes—well, Isadora told me that one woman said all she wanted was to go live in the country, as far from the palace as possible. Another one sat there and cried, wishing her mother would love her. I mean, it might have been anybody from Tambleham or Thrush Hollow sitting there. The things they wanted so badly were sometimes the most simple things.”

“And how did you meet the princess?”

“I was there having tea with Isadora, and we heard this commotion on the steps. And Isadora said, ‘Oh my goodness, that's someone come here to ramble on about a dream. Would you mind hiding in the other room? This shouldn't take long.' So I stepped into her bedroom, but I kept the door open a tiny bit because I—well, I wanted to see some of these grand folks for myself.”

Fiona grinned. “I'd have done the same thing.”

“And who came through the door but three guards in palace livery, and this young woman dressed in so much velvet and gold that I thought she could not be real. The guards said nothing, but the woman minced over to Isadora and said in this very haughty voice, ‘My lady is wishful of a few moments of your time, if you could see her now.' And I didn't know who ‘my lady' was, but Isadora did, for I could see her hands trembling a little. ‘Yes, yes, I will see the princess any time she likes,' Isadora said. And I
thought, ‘The princess!' And the next moment Lirabel came through the door.”

“What did she look like?”

“Well, her face was very heavily veiled at first. ‘Go, all of you,' she said, and her lady-in-waiting protested, but eventually the lot of them cleared out and closed the door behind them. Isadora seemed a little nervous, but not as nervous as
I
would have been, and she offered the princess some tea and asked if she wanted to sit down, and pretty soon they were both sitting at Isadora's little table. And the princess pulled her veil back to drink but I didn't get a very good look at her face. I didn't think she looked that much like the king—her mouth was the same, and her coloring, but her face was rounder. And sweeter, if you know what I mean. Her eyes seemed very serious, like she spent all her time thinking.”

“And why had she come to see Isadora? I suppose she had a dream to ask about. How strange, that a princess could not just command everything her heart might desire.”

“Which is exactly what I thought! Until she began talking, that is. At first she didn't say anything, just sat there drinking her tea and looking grave. And then she looked up at Isadora and said, ‘All I want is for my father to accept me as his heir. All I want is for my father to look at me and realize I am his daughter, the legitimate child of his body, the one who will rule after him. Why am I not good enough for him? Is it because I am a woman or because I am
me
? Long ago I stopped wanting him to love me. Now I just want him to publicly acknowledge that I will inherit his throne. Can you make this happen?'”

“Oh, poor Isadora,” Fiona murmured.

“I know! Because what happens if you don't grant the wishes of royalty? Do they have your head cut off?”

“What did Isadora say?”

“She was very good. She was very calm. She said, ‘Princess, the magic that is in me chooses what it will perform. Sometimes it grants the wishes of beggars in the street; sometimes it involves itself with the dreams of the gentry. I cannot predict it and I cannot control it. I would grant this wish for you if I could. But I can guarantee nothing.'

“And the princess pulled her veil back on and stood up. ‘Then no one can help me,' she said. She was out the door almost before Isadora had had time to scramble to her feet. I saw her lady-in-waiting come over and take her hand, and then the door shut, and I heard their footsteps on the stairs.”

“Did you come out and have more tea with Isadora?”

“Tea! She had collapsed in her chair and we both felt faint. I poured us each a glass of brandy. It was the middle of the day, mind you, but we didn't care. ‘I think it's time for me to be leaving Wodenderry soon,' Isadora finally said. ‘I don't think I can endure too many more interviews like that one.'”

Fiona rested her chin on her fist. “I do feel sorry for the princess, though,” she said. “Can you imagine? To have lived the way she has for—how old is she now, twenty-eight? To have lived all that time waiting for your fate to be decided. Will I be queen someday? Or will my father keep trying to sire sons who will inherit in my place? And you know all that uncertainty must have affected how everyone at the palace has treated her all these years. Some people would have cultivated her, hoping that she
would
be named heir and that she would then remember their attentions. Others would have shunned her, not wanting the king to think they showed her any favor. Think how bitter and calculating she must be by now.”

Reed was staring at her. “Why, Fiona. I didn't know you had such interest in court politics.”

She smiled and shook her head. “None, really. I just—I am intrigued by the fate of this one woman. I wonder what it would have been like to be her. I wonder what it would be like to know her. She cannot have very many friends.”

He laughed. “Then perhaps it is time for
you
to travel to Wodenderry and see if she needs her own Safe-Keeper! She must have many secrets she would like to share with someone she can trust.”

She toasted him with her teacup. “Ah, now there is a good thought,” she joked. “I am sure the princess and I would have much in common.”

They talked for the next hour or so about the other sights Reed had seen in the royal city. He had taken a job with one of Robert's merchant friends and rented a room over a bookstore in a quiet part of town. In his little free time, he had explored many of the city's streets and alleys. Fiona listened with interest to his descriptions of paupers and lords, shopkeepers and traders, houses and mansions, and taverns and cathedrals.

“You'll have to go someday,” he finished up. “It is so much more exhilarating than you can possibly imagine.”

“Someday,” she said, with such uncertainty that neither of them believed it. “For now, I am happy here.”

Isadora arrived a week later, signaling, in Fiona's mind, the true start of the Wintermoon holiday. Time for Allison to move down to her grandmother's, time for the other beds to be aired out, time to replenish
the stores of flour and eggs and butter so that all the traditional baking could begin.

But Fiona put only part of her attention to these tasks; with the rest of her energy, she was fretting about Isadora. “You look so thin!” she exclaimed when she first shepherded the Dream-Maker into the kitchen to warm up with a pot of tea. “Haven't you been eating?”

“Oh, I eat, but nothing tastes very good to me,” Isadora said with a little shrug. “I'll grow fat again on your fine cooking, don't you worry.”

“Are you sleeping? I can give you a serum that will stop you from waking up in the middle of the night.”

“Now, that I'd be happy to take because—well—sometimes there is so much on my mind that I cannot fall asleep, to be honest,” Isadora said. “I find—I wish—well, now. I'm an old lady.”

Fiona set a piece of cake in front of her and sat next to her. “You wish what? We are alone. You can tell me any secrets.” And she smiled, for she did not expect Isadora to comply.

But the Dream-Maker looked around the room, as if checking for eavesdroppers in the shadows, and she lowered her voice. “My dear, I am so tired of it,” she said at last. “I do not wish to carry this burden anymore. It is time to hand it off to someone younger and stronger.”

Fiona was silent a moment. “And is there a way you can do that, a way you can let go?”

Isadora shook her head. “I don't know. And I'm—I'm afraid to. What if the power passes to my daughter, who has had so much misery in her life already? How could I do such a thing to her? Even now she is expecting another child—and you know that they have all been stillbirths, every one. I should be at her side, but she does not want me there—I drag woe in my wake, she says. How can I say, ‘Take this power from me,' and foist it on her instead? Doesn't she deserve some joy in her life?”

Fiona put her hand over Isadora's curled fist. “Let it go,” she said in a quiet voice. “Release it. It is somebody else's time.”

“I would, I would. Even knowing what might befall my daughter, I would,” Isadora said, her fingers turning to entwine with Fiona's. “But there is so much left undone. So many dreams left unfulfilled. What if the burden passes from me, and
doesn't
go to my daughter? Suppose no one else picks it up at all? What if there are no more instances of magical joy in the world, all because I am too weak to inspire them?”

“Then the world will go on well enough. It is not your job to make everyone in it happy.”

Isadora sighed. “No, but I would make you happy. And Reed. And Angeline. And Thomas. I would wave my hands and—like that!—each of
you would be struck with a blinding joy. I would give each of you the dearest wishes of your heart, and then I would lie down and let this strangeness pass from my bones.”

“We are all happy enough,” Fiona said firmly. “You need not hang on even one more day just for us.”

“Well—well—we'll see,” Isadora said. She sounded so tired that Fiona was seriously alarmed. “I may feel strong enough once the holiday is past. We shall see what happens after Wintermoon.”

Fiona and Reed were out gathering the wreathing branches, so they didn't see the fine coach pull up at the house and discharge its passengers. Nonetheless, Fiona was not entirely surprised, returning with her bundles in her arms, to find three more guests on hand for Wintermoon—Angeline and Thomas, who were expected, and Robert Bayliss, who was not.