Spindle Fire (Spindle Fire #1)(53)

Now Isbe’s mind reels. The king had promised to send his bastard daughter here. She is the bastard daughter. Isbe had no idea that the council had been intending not just to send her away, but to deliver much-needed finances to help the lives of orphans! She hadn’t even realized Isolé housed orphans at all.

Guilt prickles her throat and becomes a wrenching pain as she swallows it down into her gut. If she hadn’t run off with Gilbert, if she had instead followed through with the council’s plan for her, would these twenty-four orphans be better off? Would little Josette have a better chance of surviving?

She’s tempted to say something—to admit her identity, to claim responsibility, to vow, at least, that once the curse has been reversed, once Aurora is healthy and restored to power, Isbe will do everything she can to make sure Hildegarde gets the support she has sought from the palace.

But she knows she can’t say any of this. With royals dying and Malfleur on the rise, it simply isn’t safe to reveal her identity, even if she is merely a bastard. More importantly, she isn’t in any position to make hollow promises. She doesn’t know what will happen when she reaches her sister. If she reaches her . . .

She must be gawking, because the prince nudges her in the ribs with his elbow. “As you wish, Mother,” he says.

“Yes.” Isbe stumbles and turns her face down, hoping to disguise her discomfort. “As . . . as you wish.”

William is instructed to sleep alone in a tiny guest room off the scriptorium, which, it turns out, is really an impressive library. Isbe, on the other hand, is given a straw mat on the floor of the calefactory, alongside the orphan girls, who come flooding into the room silently after their supper, the hurried patter of their little shoes the only indication of their size and number. There’s not a single whisper or giggle among them. Isbe marvels at how well-behaved they are; it’s like a room full of young Auroras.

Though they’ve put out the fire for the night, the room is comparatively cozy, and Isbe is grateful to be crowded in on all sides by the warm bodies and soft snores of the girls.

But still she can’t sleep. When she tries, she dreams of Gil, of his hands holding her against the rocking rail of the ship, his body so close to hers, sheltering her from the worst of the freezing, violent wind, his kiss—so sudden, so unexplained . . . and then his name wants to dislodge itself from her chest and fly out, calling for him.

It’s not very late. The sisters all go to bed almost as soon as the sun sets and get up well before it rises for early prayer. Isbe lies there, trapped in the tomb of her dark thoughts. Every way she turns, there’s an invisible wall pushing in on her. She can’t get Mother Hildegarde’s voice out of her head. She can’t stop thinking about her father. How he banned all his mistresses from the royal court . . . around the same time that the prioress claims to have struck a deal with him.

Is it possible the prioress had been more than just an adviser to the king? The thought causes heat to boil in her stomach, bubbling up into Isbe’s head. Was Hildegarde one of her father’s mistresses?

And then the shadow of that question looms behind it: could Hildegarde in fact be . . . Isbe’s mother?

She tosses on her mat. The notion is staggering. It stands to reason that her mother, whoever she was, would have preferred her child to be raised in the palace, and why else would the chief minister have wanted her to be sent here once she was of age? What other value could a bastard half princess have for the reverend mother?

Something about it doesn’t feel right to Isbe, though. Hildegarde’s voice, she realizes, is not the one from her mother dreams. The voice that sings the rose lullaby to Isbe in her sleep is softer, sweeter, more wavering. Still, should she trust the hazy convictions of a dream over the logic of the facts? If there’s any chance the reverend mother is the same woman who birthed Isbe and left her all those years ago, she has to know. But she can’t simply ask Hildegarde without drawing suspicion.

Isbe sits up. She must investigate. She must discover the truth.

Carefully she extricates herself from the group of sleeping girls and slips out of the calefactory into the courtyard, where she stops, trying to get her bearings. She wants to start in the scriptorium. She will have to awaken William so he can assist in reading the stored scrolls and letters. If what Hildegarde says is true, then there must be correspondence between Isolé and the palace, and if that’s the case, then surely one of the letters might hint at the true nature of the prioress’s relationship to the king and maybe, even, to her.

The air echoing through the cloisters is crisp and cold. Wind whistles faintly through the dense needles of the cypresses, braiding threads of their woodsy odor across the dusk. On nights like this, Isbe is reminded that she’s inhaling the breath of ancient history, of those who lived and built civilizations and died out long ago . . . and this is the same air that will be breathed by the great unimaginable tribes of the future.

She once told Aurora that there is a scent of almostness. Well, there’s a scent of alwaysness too.

There will always be winters.

There will always be loneliness.

She moves quietly in the direction of the scriptorium, passing the refectory where they ate their meager supper of tough mutton and dry bread, and steps through a narrow stone doorway. She realizes this is not the scriptorium but the infirmary when the heavy herbal scent of medicine hits her nostrils. An older nun is snoring loudly in a corner, a sound like a wagon that has come off its wheel.