by Hannah Parry
Ruby looked at Isabella, her face white.
“I know you didn’t mean for it to happen,” was all she said, before melting into the darkness after Zachariah.
Isabella sat back down With her head in her hands, she tried to get her thoughts in order.
What had happened?
The duchess must have discovered the painting missing already. What terrible luck! Surely though, Alix would have persuaded her mother not to come after them? Maybe she’d been unable to or, even worse, maybe she didn’t even know about it and the duchess had planned to have them caught and hanged, before Alix was any the wiser. Isabella felt her face harden.
That awful woman.
The duchess had hated Isabella from first sight, and now she was blaming her for Alix leaving.
This, then, was to be her revenge.
The worst of it was that it had been Midge who’d been caught and not her. She should have gone back for him. What kind of friend was she? Not only that, her father’s bag with the painting, Abhaya’s letter and pouch, and her nutmeg shells were all still sitting on the seat of the coach.
Isabella scored her scalp with her nails, the momentary physical pain distracting her from the pain of having lost the few reminders of her past. She heard her breath, ragged and dragging against the thickness of the icy fog around her. She must try and control it.
“Think, think, think, Isabella! Most battles are won before they are started.” Her father’s voice was harsh.
“Why is that Papa?”
“Planning. You must have a plan, always.”
“But Papa what happens if you have a plan and it goes wrong?”
“You will have a contingency plan.”
“Contingency?” The ten-year-old Isabella’s mouth stumbled over the unfamiliar word.
“Yes, contingency. Your back up plan.”
“And if you don’t have one?”
“Then use RPO.”
“RPO?”
“R as in Reconnaissance, where am I? P as in Provisions; what do I have available to me? And O as in Objective; what is it I want to achieve? Do the first two help me achieve the last one? If they do, then go ahead with your plan. If they don’t, then withdraw.”
Bumblebee had been eating Abhaya’s roses.
“What is your contingency plan going to be, now your pony has eaten all of Abhaya’s best blooms?”
“Retreat?”
Isabella’s father had let out a shout of laughter.
“In this case yes.” Then his face had changed again. “But you would do a lot worse than to remember, there is always more than one way to achieve something. Just because life doesn’t work out as you expect, doesn’t mean it won’t work out all.”
The foliage around her sparkled with ferny icicles and the earth, though frozen, smelt sweet. Next to her left boot, a tiny shoot of brilliant green had pushed up one inch above the ground.
What would a soldier do?
“Reconnaissance,” she said to herself. “Where am I?” A long low bell sounded, as if in answer to her question. She lifted her head. The bells were coming from the east. She must be near Westminster Abbey. A distant call of the night watch came through the mist. Ten o’clock. Was that all? This night seemed to be going on forever.
“Provisions.” What did she have? She tapped her person. Her belt of money hung securely at her waist. It was all she had left.
“Objective?”
It could only be to rescue Midge, couldn’t it?
Even if she had the money to pay for her ticket, she couldn’t leave Midge to hang for her crime. No doubt the duchess would make sure Alix knew nothing of it, until it was too late. She would hand herself in if she thought the Peelers would let Midge go, but she knew they wouldn’t. Zachariah was right – they’d charge Midge with being an accomplice.
No, nothing else but a full rescue mission was called for now. The hairs on the back of her arms lifted, and she felt her toes curl upward in her boots, forcing the blood through her frozen feet, getting them ready to move.
So what if she had to spend another year here? She had friends and a home. Things could have been a lot worse. What she wasn’t going to do was to be responsible for the death of someone she loved.
Not again.
Running at a steady lope, Isabella found herself in Parliament Square in fifteen minutes. Traffic around it was light and the windows of the houses all around the square were open. The sound of happy laughter and the chinking of glasses trickled down to where she stood. She crossed the street trying not to look at the gallows, which stood lonely and forbidding outside Westminster Abbey. A low blackened building stood next to the church and she came to a halt outside it. A girl was unloading pails of milk onto the pavement.
“Are you taking them inside?” Isabella had sidled up to the girl.
“Law! You made me jump! Yeah, what of it?”
Isabella took out another shilling note. “Can I take them in, in your place.”
The girl snatched the note. “For that, you can do what you like. The storeroom is past the cells. Your name is Mercy.” She lifted the reins of the cart and clicked her tongue at the thin white pony
“Thanks, Mercy,” Mercy nodded back at Isabella and clopped off down the street.
She lifted the pails and made her way down the steep steps to the dank corridor beyond. There was a foetid smell of mould, excrement and fear. How could the prisoners bear it?
“Ere, where you going?” A voice came at her through the dark.
She peered into the gloom. “I’ve got to take these pails of milk to the storeroom.”
The guard grunted. “Alright.” He stood and unlocked an iron gate. As she passed through, Isabella could see a row of cells crowded together on her left. At the end of the corridor was another locked gate.
“Storeroom’s through there,” said the guard, unlocking it. “Come back this way when you’ve finished and I’ll lock up behind you.”
Isabella took her pails through the second gate not daring to look at any of the occupants of the cells on her left. There were catcalls as she passed and she thought she heard someone spit. The storeroom was very cold with shelves piled high with cheese and sausage and beer. She would bet it wasn’t the prisoners getting this food.
She put the pails on the ground.
At the far end of the narrow room was a hatch in the ceiling. She quickly ran to it and pulled a stool over so she could stand on it, then she pushed gently on the wood. To her delight it was well used, and gave way immediately so that the icy air of outside poured down around her from the pavement above. She replaced the hatch and got down from the stool. She removed a large hairpin from her hair, took a deep breath and walked quietly toward the cells.
A giant man with slicked skin shining with dirt watched her with his good eye. His other eye was hidden behind a bandage set askew around his head, filthy and blood-soaked. Isabella could smell the infection from where she stood.
“Please sir, do you know of the foreigner Hassan Al Hassan?”
The man’s voice was a rumble. “I do.”
‘Do you know where he is held?” Her voice was a whisper and she tried not to sound too desperate. At any minute this giant might sound the alarm and bring the guard running. He didn’t. He just inclined his head, a tiny bit, to the right. Isabella bent down and ripped a piece of clean muslin from her petticoat.
“Use this,” she said to the man, thrusting the fabric through the bars. “You must keep your wound clean.”
In the cell next door, Hassan Al Hassan was standing upright, waiting for her.
“I heard your voice. I thought I had imagined it,” he said with a gentle smile. Isabella gripped the icy bars.
“Hassan Al Hassan. I need your help. I care little now for what you tried to do to the Memsahib Alix. I know it might not have been of your own intent, but if I can free you from here, will you help me?” In the flickering yellow shadows, Isabella saw Hassan’s face change. The chin s
tart to jut, the eyes narrow.
“What is it you think I did to the Sahiba?”
Isabella was taken aback.
“You threatened her life, but it’s alright, I didn’t believe…”
Hassan hissed at her, the red scratches on his face looking more livid in a sudden surge of flame from the lamp.
“I am Pathan. I do not threaten children. Is that really what those keeping her safe are thinking?”
“Shhh.” The man with the bandage urged them to be quiet.
Isabella pulled herself close to the bars.
“I know you don’t threaten children. I’ve known it wasn’t you all along! I know the Russian Ambassador was behind it all, pulling your strings. It was me who gave you those scratches wasn’t it? On the night you came into the Blue Salon to poison the Princess Alix?” Something was wrong, thought Isabella. He should be nodding and agreeing with her. Instead he was looking at her with both horror and contempt.
“You still do not know the danger the princess is in?”
Isabella felt her heart clench.
“No,” she shook her head, “what danger? She’s not in danger anymore. The Ambassador is in prison,” she paused, “so she is safe. Isn’t she?”
“No, she is not.”
“So you didn’t…”
“Never. I would never harm a female, let alone a child. It is not permitted.”
Isabella felt as if she were sleepwalking.
“So who…”
“Give me that hairpin,” he commanded. “We have no time, if it is not already too late.” The lock was picked in a trice. The man in the cell next door looked at them. Hassan Al Hassan stopped for a moment, and then picked his cell lock as well. The man gestured with his head toward the storeroom.
“I’ll wait here until you’re clear.”
Hassan hoisted Isabella through the hatch into the night and pulled himself up behind her. He closed it quietly and then he and Isabella stole across the square, two black figures barely visible in the fading glow of the lamplights.
Isabella and Al Hassan ran along the bottom of Parliament Square.
“Hassan Al Hassan, I do not understand. I hoped you would help me to free my friend from prison. He is only young and it is because of my carelessness that he is held prisoner.” The noise of parties still echoed from the windows. A line of carriages stood outside one particularly grand entrance and, as the drivers all gossiped together at the side entrance, Hassan unhitched a pair of horses and led them quietly to the entrance of St James’s Park. “But now, I find the princess is in danger too. I don’t know what to do.”
“I must attend to the princess before we can help your young friend. It is doubtful anything will happen to him until tomorrow, is it not?” He said, hoisting Isabella onto one of the horses.
How long had she dreamt of this night? The night she would finally return home.
Now, not only did it lie in tatters, she was being forced to choose which of her friends needed her help the most. Al Hassan put his hand over hers, and looked into her face.
“If we can save the princess, your young friend stands a better chance of rescue.”
Isabella leant down and gripped his arm, her eyes filling with tears of frustration.
“Do you promise?”
He handed her the reins.
“I promise.” Then he leapt up onto the back of the other horse. “Follow me.”
“Where…?”
But she wasn’t to get a chance to ask anything else, the horse shifted beneath her and then leapt after Hassan’s horse, away across the park and there was nothing for her to do, except ride like fury to keep up with him.
Finally he turned his horse off the road and onto the sandy gallops in Hyde Park, which stretched all the way to Kensington Palace. Isabella felt sick again. How could she have so misread the situation, ignored her intuition. She’d known deep in her heart Al Hassan would have had no part in harming Alix… and yet she’d convinced herself she’d been wrong, and allowed him to be imprisoned. The carrot of escape and riches had dangled in front of her and she’d been powerless to resist it. It had distracted her from the job in hand. Now, despite all her past efforts, for dearest Alix it might be too late.
Isabella could see the glow from the palace in the icy night sky before she saw the palace itself. She felt unreal as she rode, flat to the neck of her mount, behind Al Hassan into the stable yard.
“We must find the princess,” Al Hassan whispered. “Where will she be?”
“Dancing, I suppose.”
Al Hassan looked grim. “I hope so.”
“Isabella could hear the music in the distance, smell the food she’d forced down so excitedly, just hours before. The last boat for home for the next three months was leaving now; Midge was in prison, and she’d lost every last one of her possessions. How was it possible so much could change in such a short time?
“Why can’t you tell me who threatens the princess?” she muttered in Pashtu, as they crept along the servant’s corridor to the ballroom.
Al Hassan frowned. “It is not safe. You must concentrate only on finding the princess.”
Isabella held her breath as she pushed herself into a tapestry hanging, not moving as a guard passed on his way to relieve the others of their duty outside the main door. Their time was running short. With his eyes, Al Hassan gestured at the doorway to the ballroom. Two more guards stood outside.
“You must find her, I will create a diversion.”
Just as she drew a shuddering, fearful breath, she felt a heavy hand on her shoulder.
“Got you, you thief!”
It was John Conroy.
With him were four guards who pounced on Al Hassan, and wrestled him into an arm lock.
“How you got back in here, either of you, I don’t know, but I am looking forward to hearing all about it. What were you going to do? Steal something else?”
“Mr Conroy,” she was breathless with fright. “The princess, she’s in terrible danger.
“So you keep saying Isabella. If she’s in such danger why did you leave her here, and run off with a priceless painting?”
Isabella shot a beseeching look at Al Hassan. Why didn’t he say something?
“And you,” Mr Conroy poked Al Hassan with his cane. “Why you’d come back here I really don’t know. Natives must be stupider than I thought.”
Al Hassan’s face was white. “Do you know where the princess is right now, Mr Conroy?”
“Of course I do. She’s gone upstairs to pack.”
“Would you please check?” John Conroy looked furious, but one of the guards, young with a shaving rash, spoke.
“I don’t mind checking, sir.” John Conroy paused.
Isabella tried one last time. “You don’t want to get into trouble if something has happened to her, Mr Conroy, do you?”
The guard was gone for six minutes; six silent minutes in which the seven people eyed each other suspiciously, standing like statues listening to the distant chatter of the party guests. Isabella felt as if she was a violin string, pulled too tight and at risk of breaking. It was all she could do to keep from pushing past everyone and hurling herself up the stairs after the guard.
A moment later the guard was back, skidding to a halt in front of them, flushed with nerves.
“The princess is not in her room, sir!”
“What of her personal guard?”
“He was unconscious, sir!”
At this point, several things happened all at once. John Conroy’s face blanched, and he started to yell for more guards. Al Hassan twisted free of the guards restraining him, which gave Isabella a chance to run across the black and white marble floor, down the crimson carpeted corridors, armoured figures and beautiful paintings flashing past her, all the way out to the ballroom.
Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the flickering candlelight. Guests twirled this way obscuring Isabella’s view as she circled around them, but it was of no use. Alix wasn
’t there. Not one of the shifting skirts was hers, the particular tilt of her head as she danced, now so familiar to Isabella, was no longer visible.
Alix had gone.
Isabella stood in the crowded ballroom.
She was too late. The guards would be here to arrest her any minute. She and Al Hassan would have been able to save Alix, but there was no way they’d be allowed to now. John Conroy probably still thought she was responsible for the danger Alix was in; in some way conspiring with Al Hassan.
She stood for a moment and then walked to the tall sparkling windows through which the full moon could now be seen, the moon whose reflection she’d thought to be watching on the Thames, as her ship pulled away….
“I say… Isabella?” There was a quack from behind her. It was Eloise. “I thought you’d gone.”
“Have you seen the Princess?” Isabella tried to keep her voice steady, despite the blood rushing in her ears.
Eloise giggled. Her cheeks were pink, and the yellow feather in her hair was askew. Bending towards her, Isabella caught the faint smell of champagne on her breath.
“I have. I saw her leaving with Mrs Jolyon…” Isabella breathed out with relief. “I wanted to go with them, but Mrs Jolyon told me to push off… jolly rude, I thought. Got rid of the guard too. She said they were going to pack and didn’t need any help doing it.” Eloise hiccupped. “She never liked me. Even when Mama and I visited Countess March’s last year Mrs Jolyon was horrible to me, and she didn’t even know me!”
To Isabella, as Eloise spoke, time had started to warp and slow, as if there was something important which lay outside her understanding; and that time wouldn’t start again until she had worked out what it was.
“I didn’t know you’d visited Cawnpore. Mrs Jolyon didn’t ever mention it.”
Eloise sniffed. “Well, no she wouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Probably doesn’t want to be reminded of it.”
It was all Isabella could do to not shake it out of her. “Reminded of what?”
“Don’t shout at me, Isabella.” Eloise’s spoilt face looked cross. “Well, you know, all that business about her son.”
Isabella blinked.
“What, Christopher?”
