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Instead of eating, she searched the room until she found writing supplies in a drawer of a desk in the corner. She had asked the king before he left whether she might relay a message to her father. He had promised her use of one of his personal messengers, who would ride through the night to ensure Arthur didn’t worry longer than he needed to.
Shortly after she’d penned the note, there was a knock on her door. ‘I’m here for your letter, miss,’ came a boy’s voice.43
Surprised, Oriane crossed the room and opened the door. The young footservant bowed at the sight of her, and she tried and failed to suppress a laugh.
‘You don’t have to bow,’ she told him. ‘I’m no royal.’
The boy smiled shyly. ‘The king says you’re to be treated with respect, my lady. That you’re an honoured guest who’s come a long way to visit us.’
Oriane felt a twinge of relief that her identity remained mostly secret, for now. She needed to take things one step at a time, and it was enough that a handful of people already knew what she was.
As the evening drew on, Oriane found herself at a loss for what to do. For a while, she entertained herself by looking out into the darkened palace grounds. Dozens of tiny lanterns were placed at intervals around the stone paths below, twinkling beacons for anyone out on a night-time stroll. Oriane found it inexpressibly charming. Perhaps she might wander those paths herself, before her time here came to an end.
She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, staring down into the shadowed gardens and their specks of flickering gold. The silence around her suddenly seemed all-encompassing, oppressive. Oriane padded over to her door and put an ear to the wood. Silence beyond. It was as if she were alone in the palace.
Abruptly, her mind began to swirl with doubt. Strange thoughts flowed in, first a trickle, then a flood. Wasn’t it odd that she’d been accepted as anhonouredguestinto the home of the king himself? Had she really met him, and his seneschal and physician, and the beautiful woman with the distant demeanour? Or was she still out44cold, curled on the forest floor with an injured head? Perhaps none of this was really happening at all. The scene did have a strange dreamlike quality – the magical golden gardens, the perfect silence of the palace …
‘Stop it,’ Oriane said aloud. She was being foolish, and she probably just needed some sleep. But no matter how welcoming the huge bed looked, she would find no rest there yet. The vast chamber seemed stifling, the walls pressing in around her, making her feel trapped.
She needed to get out of these rooms.
Oriane felt like some kind of thief as she slipped through the door. She had picked up the lantern Andala had first lit that afternoon, and she held it before her now as she stepped into the corridor. She needn’t have bothered; the hall was well lit, with cheerfully burning torches mounted in brackets along the length of both walls. A wide blue carpet ran down the centre of the stone floor. Choosing a direction at random, Oriane began to walk, nervous energy fizzing in her chest.
The hallway opened out onto a magnificent walkway overlooking a marble-floored hall below. Oriane wandered aimlessly for a while, following corridors and descending staircases, pausing to look at portraits on the walls. The sheer size and scope of the palace was dizzying.
It wasn’t until she found herself at an enormous set of oak doors that she realised she hadn’t yet seen another soul. One of the grand doors was ajar, as if someone had just passed through it. But for all Oriane could tell, this entire wing of the palace was deserted. She was alone.45
Feeling bold, she pushed the door open further, and stepped through. Her mouth fell open when she saw what was inside.
A library.
But if her collection of books at home was called a library, then this, surely, had another name – something grander, more befitting of its enormity. There were more books here than Oriane had ever imagined existed. They sat in their hundreds on shelves that stretched gracefully to the ceiling: one level, two, three, with little balconies that ran between them, and tall ladders that crossed them like giant arms reaching for their favourite volumes. Eyes wide, Oriane ventured further inside. Like the rest of the palace, the library was well lit, this time with covered lanterns instead of open torches. The towering bookshelves stretched around three of the walls, covering every inch and giving the effect that the room had been built not from stone, but from books.
As Oriane spun slowly on the spot, she saw that the fourth wall was something different. It was made entirely of windows – enormous, floor-to-ceiling windows, hung with colossal curtains of heavy velvet that were drawn back to reveal a magnificent view of the night-painted gardens outside.
‘This is the only time you can look out,’ came a soft voice.
Oriane’s lantern almost clattered to the floor as she jumped, letting loose a startled cry. She whipped around, searching for the source of the voice.
Someone was curled up in an enormous chair by the window: a woman with a cloud of white-blonde hair, her slight figure almost swallowed up by the seat.
‘Hello,’ Oriane ventured tentatively. ‘I … I’m sorry to disturb you.’
‘Not at all.’ The woman waved a carefree hand; it looked like a tiny white bird fluttering through the night. ‘Please feel free to join me.’46
Nervously, Oriane smiled and took a seat. ‘I apologise – what is it you were saying, before?’
The woman turned back to the window. ‘Night is the only time these curtains are opened. The constant light during the day would damage the books – make their spines and pages fragile. I understand that, of course, but I’ve always thought it was a shame to obscure this view.’
Oriane followed her line of sight. The gardens and grounds unspooled beyond the glass. It was a perfect, cloudless night, the stars strewn across the boundless heavens like a scattering of seeds waiting to bloom. ‘It is beautiful,’ she agreed.
The woman turned back to her, offering a small smile that tried valiantly to reach her tired eyes. ‘I’m Hana. You must be Oriane.’
Hana.
Oriane couldn’t stop her own eyes widening in shock. This was the king’s sister. Now she knew it, Oriane could see the resemblance to Tomas and Heloise; Hana shared their sharp features. But there was something of her father in her, too – more so than in Tomas. From various portraits she’d seen, Oriane recognised King Edgar’s light eyes and paler gold hair. In life, though, Hana looked delicate, fragile, as if with too much light she would burn and turn brittle, like the spines of the library’s books.
‘My brother told me about you,’ Hana was saying. ‘I understand we’re to hear you sing in the morning.’
