Page 51 of Thus with a Kiss I Die

At midmorning, Pasqueta brought me bread, cheese, fruit, and watered wine. I thanked her and recognized the opportunity for what it was. “Speak to your princess,” I said. “It is Friar Laurence’s command that we speak to her.”

Pasqueta glanced at me, tears in her eyes, leaned over her mistress, and pushed her white hair off her forehead. “Forgive me for leaving you alone. I never dreamed someone would enter the palace and bludgeon you.” Lowering her face into her hands, she wept.

I gave her a wiping cloth and studied the poor woman.

Pasqueta wasn’t so young. Her black curly hair was threaded with gray, and around her dark eyes, fine lines had begun to form.

“How long have you been with the princess?” I asked.

She mopped at her face. “More than twenty years. She chose me when I was fourteen to be the legs and strength for Old Maria.”

“You’re very fond of Princess Ursula.”

“She saved me from . . . My father wished to sell me. She bought me for a fair price, and when he tried to . . . take me back, she set the guards on him. He’s never returned.” Fiercely she added, “I hope he died in the mud of the street.”

She was the last person to see Nonna Ursula unharmed, and absent during the attack. Conveniently? Perhaps, but her emotion and ferocious dedication appeared to be genuine enough.

“Last night. You went to the kitchen to make her a posset.”

“Princess Ursula waited until Old Maria was asleep. She’s impossible to wake, jealous of our mistress”—Pasqueta gave a sideways twitch of the head to indicate the aged serving woman, who watched us suspiciously—“and Princess Ursula likes my posset better. I add honey to bitter herbs to soften the flavor, and I always make sure the water is at a rolling boil. Everything dissolves so much better and it’s not so grainy on the tongue.”

To make her feel as though she was instructing a person inexperienced in the preparation of medicines, I kept my wide gaze fastened on her face. “Before you left, did you notice anything amiss? Hear anything outside the window?”

“Nothing. I keep thinking, trying to remember a hint of . . . but . . .” She burst forth, “I was only gone as long as it takes to boil water!”

“Does the cook not keep water simmering on the fire?” Our cook did.

“The palace cook is a slovenly brute who feeds the household and the prince’s men bad food and bad wine and—” She abruptly stopped talking.

“And sells the good outside the palace?” I offered.

She sighed in relief. “Aye. You understand. He does nothing if it doesn’t benefit him.”

From that information, I deduced that Pasqueta was gone long enough for someone to break the bars and enter. “When you crossed the threshold, you found—”

“Princess Ursula’s belongings had been overturned and she was unconscious, bleeding, so white—” Pasqueta turned pale and put her hand to her mouth as if to contain sickness.

I wet a rag, wrung it out, and put it to her forehead. She murmured a thanks and leaned forward, holding it in place with one hand and clutching her gut with the other.

I watched her steadily, trying to decide if that twinge of guilt I’d spied meant she’d set up the robbery—such suspicious timing!—and yet had been horrified by her accomplice’s brutal attack.

When she lifted her head, the color had begun to return to her cheeks. “I’m sorry, Lady Rosaline. I hadn’t spoken of it, and in this moment, I was overcome.”

I took the rag, wet it again, and once more put it on her forehead. “Better now?”

“Yes,” she whispered, and glanced sideways at Old Maria. “But I . . .” She swallowed.

“Tell me.”

“I saw something.”

CHAPTER28

“Something?”Although Pasqueta was older than me, I used my firm, encouraging, elder-sister voice.

“It was dark. Even in the palace, the corridors are full of shadows at night. Here and there, a night candle is lit, but”—she shivered—“the restless ghost of Prince Escalus the elder walks.”

“You’ve seen him?”