A Lily Among Thorns(47)

“In the kitchen. Come on, we’ll get some. If—if you want to.” She didn’t seem to have ever learned how to apologize, and yet she always tried, in her own way. She fought herself, too, when she had to. He nodded.

She smiled, transparently relieved. Solomon felt almost all right. “Just let me braid my hair.”

He watched as she deftly wove her black hair into two plaits. Then she picked up her robe from the floor and wrapped it around her, fastening it securely. She picked up the candle from his bedside table and lit it at his lamp, the light briefly illuminating her face. When she walked past him to open the door, he saw that without a comb, her back part zigzagged crazily.

She opened the door and then, with her hand on the knob, she turned and said over her shoulder, “Oh, and Solomon—I never threaten to kill my father for people I don’t like at least a little.”

The kitchen felt strange without the blazing heat and light and the clamor of upraised voices and turning spits and, from outside, London. Moonlight streamed in through the now-closed sash windows along the high ceiling, silvering the long rows of copper pots.

To his surprise, Serena went, not toward the door to the ice room, but to the opposite corner of the kitchen. She bent and began tugging at something on the floor.

“What—” Then he saw. She pulled on a great hoop fixed into the floor, and a section of floor about four feet square swung up with a smooth gliding of gears and hinges. Serena pulled it back and fastened it open with the hook on the end of a chain that Solomon had wondered about when he first saw the kitchen.

“If you ever read in a history book that no one knows how young James escaped his pursuers when he went to ground here, then you know that that eminent historian has never spoken to anyone that actually works here,” she said.

“A priest’s hole?”

“Better. A secret passageway. I’ve no doubt he made his escape quite easily while they were guarding the doors.”

“No popish treasure, then?”

“I’m afraid not. It isn’t very secret either. It’s a tunnel to the laundry, so we can bring the sheets and things back and forth in the rain without crossing the courtyard. It stays cool, so we have a little icebox here for our most delicate things. I’ll be right back.”

And she and the candle disappeared into the dark mouth of the tunnel. A minute passed, then another, and Solomon grew a little worried. He walked over and looked down the stairs. He couldn’t see her. “Serena?”

“I’m fine, just a moment.” Her cold tone was at such odds with her friendliness of a few minutes ago that Solomon knew at once something was wrong again. He went gingerly down the wooden steps, careful not to hit his head on the edge of the hole in the kitchen floor. The tunnel, its walls covered in neat blue-and-white tile, looked like the other servants’ hallways in the inn. But it was wider and the floor was stone instead of wood, worn smooth by centuries of laundresses’ feet.

There was a gap of about three feet between the staircase and the wall, and Solomon followed the glow of the candle under the stairs to a little icebox and Serena. She was leaning against the wall, her arms crossed tightly, huddled in on herself. When he neared, she turned her face away. “I’ll be fine in a minute,” she said indistinctly.

His first impulse was to go to her, but he tamped it down. He had learned she was a little like a wild bear—you had to tempt her to you with honey, or she would savage you.

Actually, now he thought about it, probably it wasn’t a very good idea to tempt a wild bear to you with honey. What would they do when the honey was gone? Or what if you accidentally got some on your hands? But the principle was sound. “What’s wrong, Serena?”

“I’ll be fine in a minute,” she repeated, and this time it sounded more like she was trying to convince herself than him. “Leave me alone.”

“You know I’m not going to do that.”

She nodded, huddling deeper into herself. “Sometimes I wish you would.”

Only sometimes. Well, that was a victory of sorts. “You’re not having a very good day, are you?”

She gestured at the icebox with one hand while the other stayed tightly clutching her upper arm. Her knuckles were white. “This is one more thing I’ll never get to do again.” She turned her face toward his at last, and the nakedness of her expression wrung something inside him. “How can I leave?” Her voice broke.

Thank you, Solomon said silently. Thank you for letting me see this. He did go to her then, gathering her into his arms. “You won’t have to leave. We have another week. We’ll figure something out. I promise.”