the Princess Chamber. If my son has ceased to hunt, save for prey, they will be dying.
I sign that I want to go to the Princess Chamber, and Cloud-Marie takes the mug. By the time I reach the door with its dove handles I am calmer, but even so, when I open the door and see the floor is white with petals, I feel weak with relief and near to weeping. I close the door and return to my chamber where Cloud-Marie stands, still holding the cup, a bead of chocolate clinging to the down on her upper lip. I laugh aloud at the realisation she has greedily drained my cup and, taking it from her, I set it down and enfold her in a hug. At first she stiffens but then she hugs me back and burbles with laughter. When I release her she all but capers.
I sit down and look into the fire and think of her mother.
Cloud-Marie looks nothing like Yssa, and yet there is something in her mouth that sometimes reminds me of my friend. Yssa as she was in the end, not as she was when first she came to the palace, dressed in drab clothes with limp hair and dull skin, her back bowed under the weight of some sorrow whose cause she would not name. How wearily and resignedly she asked if she might have a place in the palace. How humbly and drearily she said that she did not mind what work she did. Lonely in the absence of my husband, I had impulsively agreed to take her in, making it my own little quest to drive the melancholy out of her. She did not smile, but only looked grim as she curtseyed and thanked me. Then she asked if I meant she was to be my maid.
I answered that she would be my companion and she nodded, half flinching. Her evident lack of delight in her new appointment piqued me and made me even more determined to win a smile from her.
I was thereafter unfailingly sweet to her, even though she would not meet my gaze and took all of my orders with a sullen glower. Once or twice I wondered if she thought I mocked her with my kindness because I surprised a look of real hatred in her eyes, but that seemed so unlikely that I told myself she only brooded on whatever hurt had been done to her. Whatever she had fled from to come to the palace had scarred her, and whenever her hands were not busy, she chewed her nails down to the quick. This human-like flaw endeared her to me, and I had gone from regarding her as a project to really caring for her. I gave her gifts and stroked her hair and kissed her and made her sing with me, refusing to notice her determined lack of response. I could see that her life at the palace agreed with her. Her skin soon glowed like a pearl and her fiery hair shone and rippled as she lost her thin, hollow-eyed look. It gave me pleasure to discover what a beauty she was, or would have been, I amended wryly, if ever she would smile or look anyone in the eye.
Then one day, we were walking in a field and I stopped to offer the stick of celery I had been nibbling to a rabbit. It was very timid and it could not make up its mind whether it wanted the vegetable enough to overcome its fear of me. It crept forward and shrank back and crept forward again many times until at last it came close enough to snatch a bite before bounding away.
I looked up to find Yssa watching me with a queer expression on her face. ‘You are very patient,’ she said. It was the first time she had ever said a word to me that I had not had to drag out of her, and I think she was as startled by it as I. It was on that day that I noticed her eyes, which I had thought grey, were a very clear, pale, turquoise blue, like my husband’s. It made me realise that I had never looked into her eyes before. She had always prevented it by looking down or away or by keeping her lashes lowered.
She must have regretted her momentary lapse, because she was full of sour grimaces and frowns for a few days, and did