Steffan climbed the stairs after his work was done. His feet were heavy, and he could barely keep his eyes open. How would he ever have time to look for his portrait when he was so exhausted he could barely put one foot in front of the other?
“Steffan!” a whisper came from his right.
He lost his balance and started falling backward. A hand caught his arm and pulled him back solidly onto the step.
“Sorry to startle you.” Magdalen emerged from the dark staircase.
“Are you well? Do you need my help?”
“No, I am well.” She came closer and accompanied him up. “I wanted to tell you that Lord Hazen suspects that Agnes is not Lady Magdalen.”
For some reason, her raspy whisper made his heart beat faster. “What else does he suspect?”
“I don’t know, but apparently someone told him something to make him suspicious. Do you know who it could have been?”
He was so tired and she was so near him her arm kept brushing against his. “No. Do you have any ideas?”
“The only people who know are Agnes’s father, us, and Lenhart.”
Warmth and compassion imbued her voice. What made her so caring? He already knew she did not have a kind and compassionate mother. His grandmother had never let him doubt that she loved him, but she’d also been rather stern. And he did not remember much about his own mother except that she kissed his cheek every night at bedtime.
“I can’t help wondering if someone—even Lord Hazen—might have overheard you and me or Agnes and me talking.”
“Hmm, yes.”
“You are very tired. I should let you go to bed. But I am anxious to get those letters sent by courier.”
“Do you know a courier?”
“Well, no, but—”
“The letters are safer where they are. What if Lord Hazen were to search your possessions?”
“I suppose you are right.” She sighed. “And we probably should not be talking on this dark stairwell. Someone might be listening. I will try to talk to you tomorrow.”
“Very well.”
They were on the fourth level now, walking down the hallway to their rooms. Before they parted, he reached out and grasped her hand. She turned and faced him, looking up into his eyes. Her green eyes sparkled in the light of the one torch.
“Be careful. If you feel you are in danger, come to me. I will protect you.”
Her lips parted and her mouth hung open. She just stood there.
“Gute Nacht,” he whispered.
“Schlafen Sie gut,” she whispered back, then hurried to her room, leaving him at his door.
Magdalen sat on a stool making alterations to some of her own gowns. Agnes had her sewing a higher waistline on one of the dresses.
“I can’t let Lord Hazen think these dresses were made for someone else,” Agnes said.
Agnes should be making her own alterations to the dresses, but she claimed she was too afraid of getting caught doing menial work by Lord Hazen. Fortunately or unfortunately, Magdalen’s mother had ordered her to learn to sew from the other house servants just in case she needed to know it someday, as sewing was one of the only tasks a lady of means was allowed to perform.
As Magdalen ripped out the seam, she tried not to hate Agnes’s teeth, which jutted out slightly, or her smirk, which she’d enjoy wiping from her face, or her laugh, which sounded like a dying animal. It was difficult not to hate her for stealing Magdalen’s identity. And yet, she could be thankful that Agnes had taken her place, since Lord Hazen no doubt would have forced her to marry his son—or murdered her when she protested that he was not the real Duke of Wolfberg.
“God,” she whispered, “forgive me for hating Agnes. I want to curse her, but I know that I must not hate anyone. Give me the power over my hatred to forgive her. I can pity Agnes for her evil father and be thankful that my father was kind and good. Besides, I know Agnes will be punished for her deception and wrongdoing when she is caught and I am restored to my rightful station.”
The prayer made her feel calmer, but then she stuck her finger with the needle. She put her finger in her mouth as someone approached, their soft footfalls on the flagstones of the corridor announcing the person to be a small woman wearing soft-soled slippers.
Katrin appeared in the doorway.
“Katrin! I wasn’t expecting to see you.”
“Maggie, how do you fare? I was sent to assist you in your work.”
“You were?”
“Yes, Lady Magdalen sent me.” She looked pointedly at the dress in Magdalen’s lap and then at the stack of dresses beside her. “She said you had some mending I could help you with.”
“How generous of Lady Magdalen.” Ironic to be praising Agnes for allowing someone to help her resew her own dresses to fit the person who had usurped her.
Katrin picked up a dress, and Magdalen showed her how to rip out the seams in the middle of the dress in order to sew a higher waist, since Agnes was shorter and thicker in the middle than Magdalen.
“Where was Lady Magdalen off to?” Katrin asked.
“Oh, she went for a walk in the gardens with her husband.”
“It is a pleasant day for a walk. Tell me about your home in Mallin. That is where you are from, isn’t it? How did you come to Wolfberg?”
“You know I came here—” She had to swallow before saying the words. “With Lady Magdalen.” Perhaps she should just tell Katrin the truth. It would be easier for Magdalen, but the truth was a secret that would be a heavy burden for poor Katrin to have to carry around.
Katrin kept sewing.
“I left my mother and sisters in Mallin. They saw it as my opportunity for a better life.” That much was true.
“But why were you sent to take care of the geese when you first arrived?”
“My mistress was displeased with me. But she decided she wanted me back as her personal servant.”
“Oh.”
“Mallin is a beautiful place, with rocky hills and trees. My friends—I mean, Lady Magdalen’s friends, the Margrave of Thornbeck and his lady—sent us some sheep and goats so the people of Mallin would have a new way of earning money and feeding themselves, but many of the sheep contracted some kind of sickness and died. Our people used to work in the mines, but the copper ran out and the mines are standing empty now.”
“I see.”
“What about you, Katrin? Have you always lived in Wolfberg?”
“No, I came here from Arnsbaden. Lord Hazen cannot do without my family.”
“Lord Hazen?”
“Oh, look at this. I’m not sure I’m sewing this right.”
Magdalen examined the dress. “Oh yes, that is right. Your stitches are very even.”
“Thank you. I am good at mending. My mother used to make me do all my little brothers’ mending, and they were always putting rips in their clothes. I mended them until their clothes were nothing but rags sewed together. I didn’t have a father, as he died before my last brother was born.”
They sewed for quite some time, both talking about their childhoods and sharing memories. It was nearly time for the evening meal when Agnes rushed in the door and went straight to the wash basin to splash water on her face and wash her hands and neck.
When she dried her face and hands, Agnes stared at Katrin as if she had never seen her before, which was strange since Katrin said she had sent her.
“I am going down to the Great Hall for the evening meal with the duke and Lord Hazen.” Agnes pointed her nose in the air. “You may finish those dresses in the morning.”
Agnes left and Magdalen and Katrin put away the dresses, with Katrin telling her a tale from when she had played a trick on her brothers. Then they went down to the servants’ dining hall. She wanted to say something to Katrin about how strange it was that the cooks and Frau Clara had allowed her to spend all afternoon with Magdalen, helping her mend Agnes’s dresses, but she didn’t want to interrupt Katrin’s story.
The next morning Steffan sneaked up to Lord Hazen’s chamber. His uncle was at breakfast, so he needed to search fast.
A thought had come to him last night when he was half asleep in his bed. His uncle once hid something on the back of a framed portrait on the wall. Steffan had seen him retrieve it when he didn’t know Steffan was looking. And now he remembered a few paintings and wall hangings in Hazen’s bedchamber.
He once again made his way down the corridor on bare feet and slipped into the room—and found himself face-to-face with Magdalen.
Their eyes met, but they did not speak. She turned away from him and opened a trunk on the floor and started looking through it. Steffan strode to the first painting—a portrait of Lord Hazen—and lifted it from the bottom. He felt along the back of it and all around the frame, looking for anything that might be attached or hidden inside. He found nothing unusual. Next he went to a large tapestry hanging on the wall next to his uncle’s bed. He lifted it, getting under it, feeling all around, but there did not seem to be anything there either.
There was one last portrait on the wall, a portrait of Steffan’s grandfather. He lifted it, but it came off its hook into his hands. Steffan turned it over, feeling all around the inside of the frame. Still he found nothing.
He bent to set the painting on the floor when he heard footsteps.
Steffan froze. The steps were firm and steady, getting louder.
His blood raced through his limbs. He lifted the painting, his hands shaking. He aimed to place the painting back onto the little hook as he plastered his cheek against the wall. The portrait slipped off. He tried again, willing his hands not to shake. On this second try it slipped back on and held.
Magdalen stood on the other side of Lord Hazen’s large curtained bed frantically motioning at him. Then she sank down and disappeared.
He dashed toward the bed, falling to his hands and knees, then onto his belly as his momentum sent him sliding underneath it.
He suddenly felt as if he’d fallen into a tight hole. It was dark and cold, and he could barely breathe. Something closed in above him, with the hard stone beneath him. He was trapped. His heart beat painfully in his throat, cutting off his air.
Calm down, calm down, calm down. He was not in a hole. He was under his uncle’s bed. He focused his eyes on the light to his right, where he had just slid under the bed. He could slide out just as easily, whenever his uncle left. Just breathe.
Sweat beaded at his temple and between his shoulder blades.
Magdalen. He had to think about Magdalen. She was in danger too. His uncle already suspected that the servant girl pretending to be Lady Magdalen was an imposter. If he found them in his room, hiding under his bed, he would kill them both.
Her shoulder was pressed against his. She must have been there the whole time, but he’d been too panicked to notice. He reached out and took her hand. She held on tight.
His uncle went to one side of the room, then the other. Was he looking for something? Was he looking for them? Under the bed was a rather obvious place for a person to hide. He’d surely find them if he was searching for them.
His footsteps moved toward the bed and stopped.
Steffan kept his eyes wide open, straining to see as he concentrated on remaining motionless. Suddenly his uncle’s feet moved again, this time toward the door and then down the hall, growing fainter.
“Let’s get out of here,” Magdalen whispered.
Steffan crawled toward the light and to freedom. But as he freed himself from the bed, his back scraped against the bottom of the wooden bed frame. He stood and a metallic ping sounded behind him, something hitting the stone floor.
Steffan squatted and picked up a small key. He felt above it, along the underside of the bed, and felt something sticky. The key was also sticky. Lord Hazen had been hiding the key under the bed.
He hurried to the stacks of locked coffers on his uncle’s trunk. Magdalen had already found her father’s mining books in these coffers. What else might Hazen be hiding?
He moved the unlocked boxes out of the way, Magdalen helping him. He grabbed a locked coffer and inserted the key. It didn’t fit. He tried another box and another. He tried almost all of them.
“Make haste!” she whispered. “He could come back at any moment.”
Steffan wanted to tell her he was hurrying, but he didn’t take the time. He just kept trying the key in all the little wooden boxes. He had only two left. He tried the key in the first lock. It slipped in, but it wouldn’t turn. Then he tried it in the very last box. It slipped in. And turned. And opened.
He lifted the lid, and there was a piece of rolled-up parchment lying on the bottom. If it was locked with the key hidden, it must be important, so Steffan grabbed the parchment and stuffed it in his pocket. Then he closed the box and locked it.
Magdalen was already busy stacking the boxes back up exactly the way they had found them. Only it was impossible to know exactly how they had been arranged. There were so many of them. He hoped Lord Hazen had not memorized how they looked either.
When all the boxes were neatly stacked up again, he took Magdalen’s hand and ran for the door.
Voices could be heard somewhere ahead, probably on the staircase. He ran the other way, pulling Magdalen with him, toward the corridor that led to the east wing.
His heart was still beating hard, but it was also soaring high. He had not been able to locate his portrait, but he had found something that might be valuable. At least some of the pounding of his heart was from the hand holding on to his and the pretty, daring girl to whom it belonged.
They went up three short stone steps to the east wing. He kept an eye out for guards. Not seeing anyone or hearing a sound, he opened the first door he came to and pulled Magdalen inside with him, then closed the door behind them.