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“His face?” repeated Fen shrilly.

The Queen smirked. “Quite. For it was a youth, a mere boy. In short, one of the palace pages. As Lady Doverdale, she drags him from the bed, her daughter’s long hair it falls from under the bed-cap and scatters all over the floor.”

Fen’s mouth fell open. “Her hair?” she uttered faintly. It was starting to sound like some sort of awful nightmare.

The Queens eyes gleamed with amusement. “She-cut-it-off!” she said punctuating each word with a stab of her finger in the air. “She cut it off and donned the page’s suit three nights previously and ran away from court.”

Fen collapsed back in her seat aghast. “I can hardly believe it!” she uttered in a stifled voice. But something about it rang true. The pages. The pages that Mathilde had said were her only friends before she arrived.

“Nor I,” said the Queen with a trace of regret. “And to think, all this time, I thought the Lady Martindale to be a little bore, with nary a word to say for herself.” She clicked her tongue.

“But where has she gone?” demanded Fen. “Has she left no word?” The Queen gazed at her so pointedly, that she felt herself turn red. “I mean, did she leave no word for her mother?” she forced herself to say.

The Queen narrowed her eyes, but conceded, “She did leave a very short note for her mother, telling her not to worry and saying she would send word at some later point.”

“But – but-” Fen stuttered helplessly. She could hardly bear to think of Mathilde careering around the countryside with a shorn head and dressed in boy’s clothes! What on earth would become of her! “What is to be done?” She looked around wildly. “What is Lady Doverdale doing to recover her?”

The Queen was giving her a rather hard stare. “Do not alarm yourself, my dear Fenella,” she said slyly. “For did you not say yourself, that she had left of her own will and not been coerced?” She turned back to the tray of refreshments and picked out a small stuffed pastry.

That bought Fenella up short. She thought of her own letter. That was true. But whatever had her friend been thinking of? “Wherever she has gone,” she said slowly. “She had a destination in mind.”

The Queen smirked.

“Is her father still alive?” asked Jane.

“No,” replied Fen absently. “He died several years ago.”

“Some friend of his?” Jane hazarded. “An uncle or a godparent...?”

The Queen sent a look her way and she lapsed into silence. “What say you Fenella?” she asked instead.

Fen frowned, thinking furiously of her letter. What was it Mathilde had said? Something about seizing her lot in life and running with it? Her lot in life? Dimly, she thought of Mathilde stood holding baby Archie with tears streaking down her face. Mathilde was a married woman, not a child. A married woman who had been wed by proxy. She sat forward in her seat, her face tight as she tried to marshal her thoughts. Suddenly, she knew without a shadow of a doubt where her friend had gone. She had gone to her husband, the shadowy Lord Martindale. She gulped, and hastily looked up to find the others keenly watching her. “I – I hardly know,” she lied. Though in truth, it was barely a lie, for she had not the first notion where Lord Martindale was to be found, any clue as to his character, or the reception Mathilde would find there.

The Queen sat back in her seat with a satisfied smile curving her lips. She sighed happily. “And I was wrong about you too,” she said. “Tell to me, Fenella, how would you like to be one of my ladies-in-waiting?”

**

Fen spent the afternoon with Linnet and the children to distract her from her woes, though she did not fool herself that she’d made good company. Luckily, the girls weren’t at all shy around her now, and were determined to show her all their treasures. This meant she could sit with them and exclaim over their books and hair combs and trinkets without much more being expected of her. Linnet was kind and did not press her for any more information about Mathilde’s disappearance, for which Fen was profoundly grateful. When she’d dragged herself to bed after supper, she’d thought herself exhausted. But as soon as she’d pulled the covers up to her chin, she was prey once more, to her clamoring fears. What would become of her? What would become of her friend Mathilde? She’d received a letter from Orla before supper which she’d tucked into her purse unopened. She debated now whether to go and fetch it, as it was hard to imagine sleep would ever come, but she didn’t want to wake her sister-in-law’s family. She had been completely stunned by the Queen’s proposition to elevate her to the ranks of her attendants. She had fallen from grace with her husband, at practically the same time her stock had significantly risen with the Queen. How ironic that she would have been delighted by such a triumph a few weeks previously. The problem was, the person she would have wanted to please would have been her husband. And he no longer cared for her presence at Court.

She glanced down to the fireplace where Bors now dozed. He’d been most put out by Roland’s disappearance, but had finally consented to join his mistress in her bedchamber. He raised his head from his paws now, to look at her.

“All is well, my boy,” she told him softly and he lowered his head again, happy to take her at her word. If only she could allay her own fears as easily. She rolled onto her other side and stared at the grey light coming through the window. It was late, so she thought it meant more snow. Her thoughts turned to the King’s party. Would they be warm enough in their tents overnight? She wondered if Oswald was lying awake thinking of her. Her heart broke a little more to think that if he was, then it would only be hard, unforgiving thoughts. Probably regretting the day she’d come back into his life, wreaking havoc on his reputation. She sighed, thinking of the fact that she was now tied up in yet another scandal. One he remained in blissful ignorance of, but that would not continue. Lady Doverdale viewed her with frank suspicion. She was sure to be implicated when it all came to light, no matter how hard Mathilde had tried to keep her out of it. Perhaps it was just as well she was being bundled off to Sitchmarsh. The King was sure to be outraged by such goings-on. She dozed off again at some point around dawn, and woke around the hour of nine. She could already hear the Cadwalladers moving around in the other rooms, and made haste to join them around the table. Cuthbert made a noise when she appeared, his mouth full of herring. He reached into his tunic and produced a note for her.

“Thank you,” she said flipping it over and recognizing the handwriting as Eden Montmayne’s. “Good morning,” she greeted Meg and Lily who were sat in their shifts having their hair brushed by Nan.

“Morning, Aunt Fenella,” they caroled.

“The mistress is just feeding master Archie,” Nan told her grimly through a mouthful of hair pins.

“I see, thank you Nan.” Her own hair was still loose as Trudy had not yet appeared. She wore her rose pink gown with the gold cuffs and seated herself at the table to finally read Orla’s letter. Meldon plunked some toasted bread in front of her and she turned to smile at his crabby face.

“There’s this too,” he said handing her a bowl of spiced red wine to dip the toast in. “I noticed as you don’t like fish of a morning.”

Fen nearly dropped her toast in astonishment. “That’s very kind of you, Meldon.”

He nodded, and disappeared with his stomping gait.

“You’re his favorite,” said Cuthbert.