The Last Duchess Page 8

  ‘I’ll be glad to give you a ride, little miss. But don’t stray from the fields, and keep close to your friends. We don’t want anyone else coming to harm.’

  In other circumstances Pattern, who had thought to spend her whole life in a maze of smoke stacks and dirty brick, would have enjoyed the expedition. The valley of Caer Grunwald had the ideal climate for growing fruit, and in spring the acres of orchards, snowy with blossom, were one of Elffinberg’s finest sights. Pattern gazed in wonder at the avenues of apple, pear and plum trees laden with produce, and the harvesters who swarmed around them as purposefully as bees.

  Her driver had needed little encouragement to repeat his account of tragedy. He even pointed out the path the missing child had taken. Once he had pulled up the cart, and his workfellows were occupied with loading it, Pattern slipped away from the orchards and into the hills. After nearly an hour’s walk, the path meandered down to a small wooded gorge. There was a clearing in the middle, scarred by a shallow crater about two feet wide. The grass all around was burnt black. Not far along, giant scratch marks had been gouged from the ground.

  Standing out in the sun, it was hot and very still. The only sound was the dry rustling of the trees. There was a faint smell of eggs gone bad, or mud flats at low tide. As Pattern picked her way across the scorched earth, flies circled lazily about her head. She began to wonder exactly how far she had come and, if she were to suffer a misadventure, how long it would be before she was missed.

  She swallowed hard and resolved to concentrate on the task in hand. In the alarm and distress of the initial discovery it was quite possible some clue had been overlooked. She did not know what to make of the fact that all that was left of the child was a couple of buttons. If one was to believe the dragon was responsible, this would suggest the boy had either been carried off elsewhere – perhaps even to the lair under the castle – or else had been burnt to nothingness by the same fire-blast that had made the crater. But until a body, or the remains of a body, was found, it was possible to hope he was still alive.

  Pattern bent to retie her laces, and her eye was caught by a plum stone lying on the ground. She would have thought it was a bit of pebble, but for its yellowish sheen. There were no fruit trees in the wood.

  A little further along she found another plum stone nestled in the grass. Then another. Pattern moved deeper into the trees. She pictured the child sneaking off from his labours and loading his pockets with stolen plums. Rather than spitting out the stones, he kept them as trophies. Perhaps he intended to make a game of them. And then, having been taken captive, he threw them out of his pocket to leave a trail . . .

  The trail ended in something equally interesting: boot marks and trampled grass. A wisp of yellow hair.

  Pattern felt a lifting of her heart. The driver had described the lad in sentimental detail, including the golden curls that had been his mother’s pride and joy. Now it seemed he had not been taken without a fight. Much encouraged, she combed the area for further signs of the scuffle. At first, she did not know what to make of a frayed bit of cord she spied in the roots of an elder, but she put it in her pocket just in case. Then she found a torn scrap of brown paper in a bramble bush. It bore what looked like a Chinese character.

  Pattern’s formal education might be sadly lacking, but the Academy’s single-volume encyclopaedia had nonetheless provided a ready supply of facts and figures. Madoc had deemed facts dull in comparison to fairy tales, but Pattern had always found the accumulation of them a great comfort. From the encyclopaedia’s entry on China, she knew that the Chinese were renowned for three great inventions: printing, pyrotechnics and porcelain. Prince Leopold himself had reminded her of the latter. In fact, he had even boasted of his close association with a Chinese personage of high rank. Might his love of porcelain have led him to an interest in pyrotechnics also?

  She considered the crater. It was possible the piece of cord had been used as a fuse to light an explosive. Witnesses had reported sounds like thunder, which might sound like a dragon’s roar, but was almost certainly the rumble of an explosion. It would surely take a very little quantity of gunpowder to create the hole she had seen. Claw-marks were easy to stage-manage; so too were the savaged cattle and burnt crops.

  Pattern knew she had little in the way of proof. A handful of plum stones and a wisp of hair were nothing in themselves, and a scrap of foreign packaging and bit of cord did not add up to anything much. Yet it was enough to convince her that Eleri was right. The only monsters at work were human ones. They must have been watching the orchards, waiting for a child to move away from the safety of the group. Then they had followed him through the trees to a place where no one would hear his cries . . .

  She made her way back to the clearing, deep in thought. But she was no longer alone. Two men were standing there, wearing the livery of Prince Leopold’s personal guard.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ barked the elder, who bristled with a most fearsome moustache. ‘This is a crime scene, not a picnicking spot.’

  Pattern begged pardon, hoping that her surprise did not detract from the accuracy of her Elffish lilt, and that her down-turned face remained hidden by her bonnet. She began to back away.

  ‘It’s not safe to wander the countryside alone,’ the other fellow said, narrowing his eyes. ‘Surely you know that. Where are you from? What do you know of the attack?’

  ‘I don’t know anything, sir. I’m very sorry. I – I’ll leave at once.’

  ‘How old are you, girl?’

  ‘Wait a while!’

  They called out something else, but she was already scurrying away through the trees. Her heart did not stop pounding until she was back in the orchards. The orderly avenues, the scent of warm grass and ripeness, were lovelier than ever in the late afternoon light. Yet as Pattern picked her way past the windfalls and wasps, she caught in the air’s sweetness a rotten taint.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Sickness, danger, and adversity, usually level distinctions of rank.

  J. Bulcock, The Duties of a Lady’s Maid

  Pattern found her way into a covered wagon filled with fruit-pickers bound for home. Most were too weary to talk, their backs aching and noses sun-burned, fingers and clothes stained with juice. Pattern, who had eaten nothing all day but the meat pie and a couple of bruised plums, was as hungry as she was footsore by the time she reached Elffinheim’s walls. However, as she limped along the road to the castle, she was surprised to find herself part of a stream of people. A jostling, muttering crowd had gathered outside the gates.

  It was composed of both country folk and townspeople, and the mood was ugly. ‘Come out and show yourselves,’ one of the ringleaders shouted. ‘Our children have been taken, our livelihoods destroyed. And still no word from our royal masters!’

  ‘For shame,’ others cried. ‘Cowards!’

  Pattern, lurking on the edge of the crowd, could see very little but the backs of people’s heads. There was a new kind of commotion at the entrance to the avenue, and shouts from the sentry-men. She feared the roughness of the protesters had spilt over, and that the demonstration was about to turn violent.

  ‘Fellow countrymen! Honest citizens! Friends and neighbours! Peace, I beg of you. Peace!’

  Prince Leopold. This was interesting. He was greeted with as many jeers as cheers, yet his voice rang out confidently.

  ‘Be assured that we in the Royal Household are not insensible of your plight. Not in the slightest! It pains us grievously.’

  ‘Then where’s the Grand Duchess?’ somebody yelled. ‘Did she send you because she’s too spineless to face us herself?’

  Some applauded, but others shook their heads. ‘Why, she’s nothing but a child,’ said one old lady.

  ‘She’s still our Head of State,’ another retorted. ‘And she should know there’s a price to be paid for sitting cosy in the castle, eating peacock pie off a golden plate.’

  ‘Shh!’ said another. ‘Let the Prince speak!’ />
  ‘I have come here to tell you,’ said the Prince, once the rumblings of the crowd had subsided, ‘that I will personally compensate each and every one of you who has suffered hardship as the result of an attack on your livestock or crops. Give your name to my man here, and we’ll do our utmost to put things right. Furthermore, if any of you were witness to these scenes of carnage, or have any additional information to supply, you will be amply rewarded. Very amply!’

  Pattern stood on tiptoe and craned her neck. She glimpsed Madoc, looking graver than ever, wielding a notebook and pencil at his master’s side.

  Now Prince Leopold’s voice grew slow and heavy. Pattern did not need to see the gentleman to picture the tears of emotion in his eyes. They welled up moistly through every word. ‘Dear, dear friends. I know that the loss of children is a blow beyond compare. Nothing can compensate. Nothing can ease the pain. All I can say is this: we will leave no stone unturned in our quest to discover the fate of your little ones. No stone, no twig, not even a pebble! My own guard have been tasked with investigating these incidents, under my personal supervision.’ He paused impressively. ‘Rest assured, we – that is, the Grand Duchess Arianwen and myself – will do whatever necessary to curtail this threat. However high the cost, however bitter the blow. Whatever necessary. You have my word. Thank you, and a very good night!’

  His departure was accompanied by a storm of exclamation and excitement. Many of the crowd surged forward to surround Madoc and his pencil.

  ‘Elffinberg is fortunate to have such a Prince,’ exclaimed a whiskery woman standing next to Pattern. ‘As wise a counsellor as he is generous a master.’

  ‘Are you in the Prince’s employ?’ Pattern asked curiously.

  ‘I’m his housekeeper,’ the woman replied with pride. ‘That is, I have the care of his hunting lodge. However, it has lately been shut up, for at the first rumour of an attack, my kind master closed the house and sent all of the servants to shelter within the town. He has promised to pay for our keep until the danger is passed, and the remote countryside is safe again.’

  ‘This lodge . . . it is in an isolated spot?’

  ‘It is not so very far from here, but deep in the Forest of Annwn. If the dragon should strike, we’d have little chance of rescue.’

  Although Pattern had thought herself prepared, it still came as a shock to hear the threat named so plainly. ‘Surely we cannot be certain what – or who – the culprit is. The evidence is entirely circumstantial. Nobody has actually seen the creature.’

  ‘Ah, but they have, you know. More reports are coming in by the day – of plumes of fire, almighty roars and the flapping of great black wings.’

  Pattern feared this was likely to be true. As the hysteria mounted, people of a nervous disposition would imagine they spied monsters everywhere. Moreover, if Madoc and his master were rewarding witnesses with money, there would be plenty of rogues ready to swear to seeing whatever they asked.

  The whiskery housekeeper shook her head. ‘Small wonder the Grand Duchess has been hiding away for all these weeks. I wouldn’t like to be in her shoes right now, for all their satin trimmings.’

  Eleri was indeed in hiding, having overheard from a footman of the demonstration outside the gates. Pattern found her huddled in the back of her wardrobe, quaking under a pile of furs. ‘They’ll storm the castle the next time,’ she said, ‘and come for me with pitchforks and knives.’

  Pattern offered what comfort she could. ‘I have found – if not absolute proof – strong evidence that whatever is happening to the children and the farmland has been done by human hands. As soon as the people realize this, they will be reasonable again.’

  She related her discoveries, but Eleri hardly listened. ‘Yes, yes,’ she said impatiently, throwing off the furs. ‘I already told you it was my uncle. I do not see why you had to go gallivanting all over the countryside to find that out.’

  ‘But I am near certain the missing children are alive. Your uncle is not wicked enough to murder them. Surely that is good news?’

  ‘He still means to murder me. For how else will he claim the throne?’ Eleri stared at Pattern. ‘Do you know what happens to princesses who are fed to the dragon? They are dressed all in white and led in solemn procession to a patch of wasteland, high in the mountains. And there they are chained to a rock, and left for the dragon to tear them to pieces. I wonder how much of me my uncle will leave as evidence of my fate. Perhaps a finger; perhaps a foot. Or an eye.’

  Pattern suppressed a shudder. ‘It will not come to that,’ she said firmly. ‘We will find the stolen children, and so prove the dragon is not to blame. Then the country must unite to find a way of putting an end to the beast once and for all. With all the technological advances of recent years, I am sure something can be done. Modern weaponry—’

  ‘Bullets would simply bounce off the thing. A dragon’s hide is practically armour-plated.’

  ‘Then we could try poison gases. Or use explosives to blow it up in its lair.’

  ‘But my castle would blow up with it!’

  ‘You can always build a new one.’ Something well-appointed and modern, Pattern thought, with half as many stairs, and decent quarters for the servantry. ‘Tell me: Prince Leopold already enjoys wealth and influence, so why is he intent on stealing your throne? I do not doubt his motives,’ she added hastily. ‘I merely seek to understand them better.’

  ‘Well, he is greedy for power, like all tyrants. But he is also greedy in the more common way. He lost a deal of money investing in some foolish scheme to enhance the manufacture of porcelain, and then yet more in improving his country estate. Consequently he is not nearly so rich as he was, nor half as rich as he believes he ought to be. His great ambition is to swank about the royal courts of Europe, boring all the other poor monarchs to tears with tales of his wretched pots. He might manage this as a Grand Duke, but he has little chance as an impoverished princeling.’

  Pattern rubbed her nose thoughtfully. ‘Is this country estate separate from the Prince’s hunting lodge?’

  ‘Oh yes. It lies by the northern mountains, which are even craggier than the ones here, and covered in snow half the year. But the lodge is in the forest by the spa town of Llanotto Wells, some thirty miles from Elffinheim. I have only been there once, when Papa was still alive, but my uncle is there often. He likes killing animals almost as much as he likes fondling pots.’

  ‘I heard that the lodge has been all shut up, and its servants sent away.’

  It had struck Pattern that if Prince Leopold was planning to fake a dragon, he would need a headquarters suited to the task. His apartments in the castle were always abuzz with the comings-and-goings of friends and cronies, servants and supplicants. An empty house in the middle of a forest was far more practicable.

  She explained her reasoning to Eleri. ‘If we can be sure the Prince is not at the lodge, we must contrive a way to visit it. Perhaps the stolen children are imprisoned there. Perhaps we will find other proof of his misdeeds.’

  ‘It is certainly worth trying.’ Yet Eleri did not look particularly hopeful. ‘You know, Pattern, if the dragon were to rise again, I would give myself to it. I am horribly afraid to die, and I do not like the people very much, yet I know my duty. I could not sit back as they were slaughtered in their fields.’

  Pattern did not know what to say to this. She tried to steer the conversation back to more practical matters. ‘The Prince’s plot—’

  ‘The Prince’s plot may yet succeed,’ Eleri said flatly. ‘So if we do not find the children, or some other evidence of my uncle’s crimes, I must go to him and give him the crown of my own free will, and he will have to find some other explanation for these so-called attacks.’

  ‘You . . . you mean to abdicate?’

  Eleri hunched her thin shoulders. ‘Well, it is better than having my throat slit to placate a dragon – imaginary or otherwise. I shall be the last true duchess of Elffinberg, in any event.’

  That ni
ght, Pattern dreamed of the dragon. She dreamed of rising from her bed and creeping down the narrow passage through the rock. She dreamed of standing by the iron grate, watching the monster sleep.

  In her dream, she put her hand through the bars, and stroked the creature’s rusting scales. The heat of it beat through her flesh, so that her body throbbed with it, and her bones quaked in time to the pulse of its heart.

  ‘Little girl,’ it said. ‘Little stranger. I have tasted your scent, now, and weary as I am, I feel the old hunger rising. I feel the old hunger, and I hear a new call!’

  Then it opened its eyes, and this time there was no film of sleep upon them, only fury and fire, white-hot as the core of the sun, and rimmed with the blackness of an infinite night.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  You must consider that your employers like to have things done their own way.

  J. Bulcock, The Duties of a Lady’s Maid

  A Grand Duchess needed to account for her time in much the same way as a lady’s maid. A few stolen hours were one thing; a whole day’s absence quite another, for which she needed the approval of her guardian as well as the company of a chaperone. Accordingly, Eleri applied to her uncle for permission to travel to the von Bliven estate to pay her respects to her godmama’s heir.

  Prince Leopold was in a self-important whirl of bustle, for the Prince Elffin’s Day Ball was a mere five days away, and he had taken all its organization upon himself. Whether he was distracted or unwilling or both, he did not approve his niece’s plans until late the next evening. In the meanwhile, Eleri and Pattern spent a long afternoon at a musical soirée, where the ladies of the court tutted and clucked behind their fans, and ventured looks at their monarch that were as greedy as they were pitying. It was the same at the whist game before supper. In the Mirror Gallery, cold and bright as the heart of an iceberg, the shuffle of cards was interspersed with all manner of sly whispering.