Princess at Heart (The Rosewood Chronicles)

Part 3: Truth Coming Out of Her Well

1896 painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme

Ellie stormed the Maravish palace hall. Abandoning her coat and scarf on the marble, she moved like a white tornado. ‘How could you keep this from us?’ she screamed at her parents, and Lottie was sure she saw the room rattle.

‘Eleanor –’

‘No!’ Her voice boomed like thunder. ‘You’re going to tell us everything. Now.’

The king and queen shared a look, then they began to lead the way to the lilac quarters where Ellie’s grandmother waited.

Everything had moved so fast once Lottie had found Jamie’s shattered wolf. Within the hour they were flying back to Maradova. Here in the palace all the fear was starting to seep into her bones like the cold in the walls.

When they reached her grandmother’s quarters, Ellie didn’t pause to knock. She pushed the door, slamming it back on its hinges. Lottie jumped at the sound. Lying in bed, frail as an autumn leaf, Ellie’s grandmother was propped up on a throne of silken pillows. Other than a knife-thin slit of light from a crack in the curtains, the room was dark apart from the glow of Willemena’s eyes.

‘No ceremonious crap,’ Ellie said. ‘You tell us both everything, right now.’

King Alexander draped himself over an armchair in the corner of the room, head resting in his hand, while his wife stayed in the slit of light, gazing out and away at something beyond the windows. And there was Ellie, stood at the end of her grandmother’s bed, looking like death itself come to take her away.

Lottie remained by the door.

‘Is it true?’ Ellie stared her grandmother down, the storm simmering, ready to take a bite at any sign of a falsehood. ‘This whole time, was Jamie just my Partizan as some messed-up punishment?’

Willemena tried to speak, but a cough cut her off, hunching her over while they watched.

Has she always been this frail? Lottie wondered. Had she always been putting on a show of strength or was this decline a recent development? Either way, right now, she was no match for her granddaughter.

‘We did not mean for –’

‘I don’t care what you meant to do.’ Ellie cut her off with a growl, turning to her parents to make sure they wouldn’t attempt to intervene.

‘I made a mistake.’ The queen mother’s voice was thick with guilt. ‘I made a terrible mistake, and now we are all paying the price for it. Eleanor, please take a seat, and allow me to explain.’ She shuffled over on the bed, so Ellie could sit beside her. ‘You too, Miss Pumpkin.’

Lottie blinked, surprised to be called further into the room. Reticent, Lottie and her princess moved to settle on the bed.

Up close, Lottie could smell bergamot and lilac, a sleepy Earl Grey that covered up a dwindling rot like tooth decay which occasionally caught in her nose. It felt strange to be sitting here in such an intimate fashion, and Lottie kept thinking of the wolf in the grandmother’s clothing, wondering if all this was only a ruse to lure them closer before swallowing them up. Looking at the yellow-eyed old woman, feeling the lump in her throat that wouldn’t go away, she realized she needed to trust the queen mother. She had nothing else left.

‘No one really knows what they’re doing, Eleanor,’ Willemena said slowly, her lips trembling. ‘We can only keep trying to do the right thing, to retain the image of strength for others. This is what you have to do when you rule, when people rely on you.’

Lottie listened intently, hearing the words like an echo of her mantra to always be kind, brave and unstoppable. But it felt hard with Jamie gone and Ellie drifting away, the future uncertain.

‘That’s stupid,’ Ellie said, her face still and emotionless.

‘Perhaps.’ The queen mother coughed and it almost sounded like a laugh. ‘But that is the way it is.’

The sliver of light clouded over and Willemena’s glance turned heavy. Lottie felt the shift in the room. A story was about to unravel, and this one would hurt.

The king and queen spoke quietly to each other, before silently making their way out. The moment the door shut, the spell was in place.

‘Hirana,’ she began, and the way she said her name, there was no hint of the malice Claude had suggested, ‘she did not simply work for us for a little while as we have told you. She designed all the gardens in the palace.’ There was a wistfulness to her voice that made her words feel like an ode to something beyond their understanding. ‘She was a genius, and had a way with flowers and horticulture that was unparalleled. We were thrilled to have her finally bring some life back to the palace gardens, and she was as deep-rooted a part of the palace as any one of us.’

‘But she wasn’t good enough to be part of the family,’ Ellie scoffed, nearly snapping the spell, but Willemena pulled the threads back together with one sharp look.

‘Is that what that despicable son of mine has told you?’ Willemena took the silence as confirmation. ‘I knew he’d get to you sooner or later. I might appear a cold and bitter old hag to you, but what happened to Hirana was not my doing, although it is my fault.’

In Lottie’s entire time working for the Wolfsons, she’d never heard the queen mother say something so honest, and there was something powerful in the admittance, like the chains of an old curse were finally coming undone.

‘We always knew Claude enjoyed the company of beautiful people, and it was important that we kept it under wraps, because he had an arranged marriage, a tradition he was perfectly fine with if it meant he would be king. He understood this but he simply couldn’t resist Hirana, and likewise she could not resist him.’

While clearly embarrassed, there was no disapproval in her tone, not a thread of the story Claude had woven.

‘Something happened between them that caused Hirana to resign from her post rather dramatically. We begged her to stay, told her the gardens would die without her, but she said she’d seen what the future of the Wolfsons was, and she wanted no part of it. We had no idea she was pregnant with Claude’s child.’

‘What did he do?’

‘What made her leave?’

Lottie and Ellie’s voices came out in unison, and they leaned forward to find out more.

‘That is still a mystery. All I know for sure is that there was something evil and ambitious in Claude, and Hirana had been unlucky enough for him to let it slip in front of her. I trusted her, and I had to take it seriously, so I confronted my son. For the first time his behaviour had had a serious impact on the palace and its workers.’ She paused to look at Ellie, a grave expression that felt like a warning. ‘This was my first mistake. I told him that his claim to the throne would be in danger if there were any more indiscretions that would hurt the family.’

‘How did he react?’ Lottie asked the question alone this time, Ellie too wrapped up in thought.

‘He left the palace.’ Willemena almost laughed, but it turned into a splutter. ‘He packed a bag, like a child having a tantrum, and moved into one of our properties in the city.’

Stopping abruptly, Willemena gestured to a cup of water on the bedside table before she was racked with another coughing fit. After a few sips she patted her chest, preparing to continue.

‘On the twenty-sixth of July 2000, Hirana arrived back at the palace, heavily pregnant and begging for help.’ She patted her chest again, as if trying to pound the words out. ‘Someone was trying to kill her – and they had already wounded her.’

At her side, Lottie saw Ellie squeeze the bedcovers until she had made angry clumps of balled-up silk.

‘She’d escaped and found her way to us, but the shock and the injury she’d sustained was too much for her. She told us that she wanted the baby to be called Jamie. We promised we would raise him in the palace. It was the very least we could do.’

Rubbing her chest, Ellie’s grandmother took in a long breath that sounded like a rattle, the last of the story still stuck inside her. There was another fit of coughing before she began to speak. As the last of the story finally emerged, Lottie felt the weight of this awful lie that had been kept for so long.

‘You see … upon learning that Hirana was pregnant with his child, Claude – spoiled and obsessed with being king – ordered her death.’

The sick feeling in Lottie’s stomach grew, the acid taste at the back of her mouth becoming unbearable.

Willemena went on. ‘He believed her baby was an indiscretion that would endanger his claim to the throne. And I’d been the one to foster that belief.’

Lottie felt the room spinning, and, like a strange zoetrope, Claude kept flashing across her vision, his face melding with Jamie’s.

‘So you made Jamie a Partizan?’ Ellie’s voice was like a knife, coming down sharp on the image.

‘That was my second mistake.’ Willemena sighed. ‘And one it has taken me much longer to admit to.’ She closed her eyes, composing herself before continuing. ‘I wanted to give Jamie a place in the family, but I was panicked, too afraid to let anyone know the truth about my son, and, above all, fearful of what Claude might do if he found out his son was alive.’ Lottie wondered at what point Claude had discovered who Jamie really was, and how long he’d been plotting. ‘I did not mean it as punishment by demoting him in social standing, and yet that is precisely what it became, my own grandson paying for the mistakes of his father, who he didn’t even know, and by the time I realized what I had done we couldn’t bring ourselves to tell him. We had persuaded ourselves he was happy.’

‘Were you ever planning to tell him?’ Ellie asked.

Willemena nodded, clearing her throat. ‘Next year, after the completion of your school studies. But after you discovered Claude’s link to Leviathan, I was scared Jamie might find out the truth on his own. And now he has. We are too late.’

The light from the crack in the curtain returned, stretching like a long pointed finger up to Ellie’s grandmother where it split her face down the middle, one yellowed eye shrinking, and beside her Ellie’s hand began to unwind itself from the bedsheets, the fabric turning slack again.

Lottie’s head was still sore from the information and she was racked with exhaustion, but she watched Ellie, knowing it all fell on her. She seemed calm, and it was the simmering storm she was used to; it was decisive. She saw Ellie bring her hand to her ribcage, rubbing something that made her wince.

‘Lottie,’ she finally said, as soft as sleep, ‘could you give me a moment alone with my grandmother? I’ll come and find you later.’

Picking herself up, Lottie instinctively went to put a comforting hand on Ellie’s shoulder, withdrawing it at the last second. Instead she put on the bravest face she could so they’d all have one less thing to worry about. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you later.’